February 19, 2010
It was me
All right, I’m not going to deny it. That was indeed me spotted walking through the Annex neighbourhood yesterday, Patrick Swayze’s autobiography glued to my hands and my nose stuck inside. Even though it was cold outside, and my hands were going from painful to numb, and even though this was Patrick Swayze’s autobiography after all, and do I really want to get a reputation as a celebrity-bio-reading flâneur?
But you see, yesterday I had the opportunity to go out all by myself for the first time in centuries, and I wasn’t about to squander that reading opportunity, and really, I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to, because Patrick Swayze’s autobiography was absolutely addicting. I have an infant, and I read it in a day. I got in trouble for reading it at the table. And from the time I opened the book until I got to the last page, Patrick Swayze and his amazing accomplishments were all that I could talk about.
I’d been under the mistaken impression that Patrick had got his start whilst one day sitting in a luncheonette when this guy came in and said that Arthur Murray was auditioning for dance instructors. Turns out otherwise, that Patrick had been set on the path to stardom from a very young age, and that in high school he danced, sang in musicals, played violin, football, kickboxed, was a competitive roller skater, and got a college scholarship for gymnastics. When a football accident and a dangerous gymnastics landing destroyed his knee, he decided to be a professional ballet dancer (as you do). In order to supplement his income, he became a carpenter and taught himself out of a book, and he also was a singer-songwriter. He became a Buddhist. Later, he would go on to act in Broadway shows, in ice-skating shows, act in movies and television, become a pilot and a rancher. And not least of all, he was a husband for thirty five years to a woman who married him when she was just eighteen years old (and I am more than a little bit addicted to memoirs of long marriages. Perhaps for tips? Perhaps for insurance?).
So Patrick Swayze’s life was more interesting than I ever supposed, and though his journey to success took the standard shape (decades of hard work, followed by meteoric rise), that kind of story is also interesting. The book was also setting itself up to be devourable by being structured somewhat like a “Behind the Music” episode: “And so we were happy, but little did we know that tragedy was lurking around the next corner…” It wasn’t well written (Patrick was fond of paragraphs composed entirely of sentences expressing the same idea of different words), but it wasn’t bad either. The prose was hardly the point.
What fun! I turns out that celebrity biographies are not automatically crap. I might venture to qualify that with “celebrity biographies (of celebrities who are over the age of thirty and/or not reality TV stars) are not automatically crap”, but what do I know about that? Nothing. And in spite of this positive experience of celebrity bios, I fully intend to keep it that way.
February 18, 2010
Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Amy Jones
UPDATE: Amy Jones’ book reviewed in The Globe & Mail
It would have been hard not to have encountered Amy Jones’ writing during these last few years, with her stories appearing in a variety of Canadian literary journals and her 2006 CBC Literary Award for short fiction. In 2008, Amy won the Metcalf-Rooke award for What Boys Like, which was published by Biblioasis. Before the collection came out, three of its stories appeared in The New Quarterly 111, and once I read them, I knew this was a book I was going to love. It was.
I’d never met Amy until she arrived for our interview on Friday February 5th, but I can tell you now that she’s lovely. We set to talking in the living room over obligatory tea and scones, while Harriet emptied her baskets.
I: I was curious to read in your The New Quarterly interview that part of your education in short stories was learning to read them as well as to write them. What did that education entail?
AJ: I think it was just reading a lot of them. One of the first short story books I read was Barbara Gowdy’s We So Seldom Look on Love and I read it the way that a lot of people who don’t read short stories would, [thinking] “No! I wanted it to keep going. I wanted to find out what happens next.”
I had to retrain my brain to consume a short story. I think of short stories as more akin to poetry, or like art. A painting, instead of something that goes on and on. You know, I look at that painting on the wall and I take it in for what it is–
I: It was done by an elephant.
AJ: You’re kidding.
I: So maybe it’s not the best example.
AJ: No, but I see it for what it is, I get from it whatever emotion or story I think it’s telling. As opposed to sitting down and watching a movie, or reading a novel. But when I started reading short stories, I thought they would be like novels, but shorter…
So I read [the Gowdy book], and then I read The Broken Record Technique by Lee Henderson. A friend of mine gave it to me when I first started writing short stories and she was like, “You should read this if you want to write short stories.” And I read it, and I really didn’t understand how to read it. And now, it’s one of my favourite short story collections. Same with the Barbara Gowdy one.
I had to learn to slow down, I think. When I read novels, and I’m still guilty of this, I have this really bad habit of jumping to dialogue and racing through descriptions and not really savouring every single word that comes along. But in short stories, every word is so weighted that you have to spend more time with it.
I: Is there a short story collection you’d recommend for someone who wants to get into the form?
AJ: One of my favourite short story writers is Aimee Bender. I read The Girl in the Flammable Skirt because it was recommended to me early on and it totally blew me away. It was so different from anything else that I had ever read and it felt like it gave me permission to do whatever I wanted. So that’s one, and then anything by Lisa Moore.
I: What do you like about writing short stories?
AJ: I like being able to be ambiguous. Right now, I’m trying to write longer pieces, and I’m having a hard time loosening up. I really like the tightness of short stories.
I: But then for a lot of readers, that ambiguity is the problem.
AJ: I think when people say they’re turned off by the ambiguity of short stories, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re used to the story continuing. I get that so much: “I want to know what happens next.”
I: And they think it’s a compliment.
AJ: Totally! “You need to write a novel about this.” They say that about “Church of the Latter-Day Peaches” all the time.
I: I just wanted it edited so Marty didn’t die. Which is different.
AJ: I sort of like the idea that with a short story you can give somebody a little snapshot into a life or a situation and they can use their imagination to fill in the blanks around it.
I: So maybe learning to accept that ambiguity is part of learning to read short stories. 
AJ: I think so. It’s not so much that I’m purposefully obtuse when I’m writing. I want people to know what I’m getting at in a short story, but at the same time I want readers to be able to fill in the blanks around it, to imagine what if these people lived in the world.
I: A lot of your characters are on the edge, particularly the ones we get really close to. The only ones who seem to have control, if only in their ability to manipulate people, are Leah in “A Good Girl” and Emily in “All We Will Ever Be“– both characters seen from a distance in your narrative. But if we were able to get access to their minds, the way we do with the other characters, do you think they’d be as lost as the others?
AJ: Yeah, I’m pretty sure they would be.
I: They were fabulous characters, so hard and ruthless.
AJ: That’s good to hear. Both of those stories started out as experiments, in a way. I wanted to see if I could do the male point of view, for one thing. And I think [Leah and Emily] are very similar characters to the other girls in my stories, but as seen from a different perspective. So, I think a lot of what they are is just the flipside, the way a male would perceive some of the girls, who are actually insecure and pretty crazy. (more…)
February 18, 2010
A question about links
As a reflex, I resort to Amazon.ca when linking to books on my blog. I do try to link to the titles on their publishers’ websites, particularly with current books, but with some books, this doesn’t make a lot of sense (or isn’t even possible). I know a lot of American bloggers link to Powells, but I’d like Canadian links whenever possible. And I also know that many people don’t like Amazon for many reasons. And so my question is, is there a better option for catch-all books links? Any feedback would be appreciated.
February 18, 2010
The Parabolist by Nicholas Ruddock
I’ve determined that the Toronto of Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist must exist in an alternative universe: one which is just compressed enough to accommodate the a walk from one end to another without remarking on the distance, and also one in which everybody is passionate about poetry. Though the time is 1975, and maybe things were different then, but I still think that most randomly assorted groups of Torontonians would always have been hard pressed to answer “Who are your Canadian poets?” with a list extending to eleven.
But of course, Ruddock’s group is not such a random assortment– they’re a group of medical students taking a required English lit course which, due to a series of odd and oddly connected events, is now being taught by a Mexican poet called Roberto Moreno. Moreno is part of a movement back home in Mexico called “parabolism”, which no one seems able to properly understand or define, but this doesn’t matter. Moreno’s passion for poetry is contagious, and soon everybody is writing it, reading it, and shoplifting it.
The novel is structured around a cadaver, dissected piece by piece as the academic term progresses. Medical student Jasper Glass is working on the body with his lab partner, Valerie Anderson, who Jasper is in love with, but loses to Roberto Moreno. Roberto is staying in Toronto with his Aunt and Uncle, who live next door to Jasper’s parents. Jasper’s father sits at home all day watching squirrels on the neighbours’ roof, paralyzed by an inability to finish his definitive book on contemporary French idioms. Jasper’s brother John has flunked out of every course except embryology. And then there’s the feminist poet who begins a literary magazine with Valerie, and the teenage prostitute, and Jasper’s married lover, and the Crisco, and an insane resident in psychiatry at 999 Queen who goes by the name of Krank.
The many strands of the story are off-putting at first, and I was particularly bothered by the novel’s lack of chapters (and quotation marks!) that made going back to sort out the pieces particularly difficult. I was confused by the novel’s hybridity as well– by its violence, its humour, its literary references, its realism, its fancy. Was it a crime novel, medical drama, sex romp– how was I to read it? (I was also deterred by what really might be too much penis, and one character who claimed that he’d be able to put his through concrete). The Parabolist has an epigraph by Roberto Bolano, and I wondered if this was another book whose meaning would elude me due to my complete ignorance of South American literature.
Eventually though, I got it. This book is a mammoth undertaking for a first novel, and though it shows some strain, it follows through on delivery. I got also that Ruddock is writing with a sense of humour at all times– though sometimes this makes his characters border on caricature (and his treatment of poets and poetics less effective than he might intend it). And I also began to see within the novel’s structure Ruddock’s roots as a short story writer– how every detail is there for a reason, how his characters are performers commanding the narrative (and taking it off on tangents too), how the universe is full of people winding in and out of one another’s lives. Which is rare in a novel, but it became quite compelling once I got used to it.
So that all reservations aside, I was hooked throughout most of the book. And not even to find out who did it, because Ruddock tells us straightaway, but I was hooked on the clever humour, and the connections. Like Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, so much of the appeal is referential– how Ruddock casts Toronto in the central role, the CanLit send-ups, and campus humour (as well as campus literary life humour, familiar to many of us).
And yes, the plot had me too– to find out how Ruddock was going to tie such disparate strands together finally. Which would inevitably be just a little too pat, like something out of a book, but we’ll forgive him for it, because what a book it is.
February 17, 2010
Getting Settled
Oh, I do love my new website. I love the colours, and I love the doors (which I photographed in Elora last summer), and I love my cool twitter feed in the sidebar, and my “Features” buttons. In the wider world, I love that celebrating Valentines, Family Day and Mardi Gras, and though tomorrow is the first day in three days that isn’t a holiday, my husband’s got the week off work so the fun continues– tomorrow we’re going to the AGO. Though we’re completely exhausted already, and not just because of pancakes. I now see the advantages to preparing your baby’s nursery before the baby’s birth, as opposed to, say, when the baby is eight and a half months old, because it’s an all-consuming process, and then the baby gets so mad when you’re ignoring it to screw crescent-moon light covers into the wall. The one good thing about it though is that the baby gets an awesome room completely devoid of pastels, and perhaps a bit overstimulating, but something tells me our baby would have had that anyway.
Anyway, all this to say that we’ve had nary a spare moment, but I’m almost through Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist and will be posting a review very soon. And next up for me is Patrick Swayze’s autobiography, if I actually decide to go through with it. Which seems like not the best idea in a world with so many books and so little time, but if I don’t, what might I be missing??
February 15, 2010
Housewarming
Welcome to the new home of Pickle Me This, designed and built by the good people at Create Me This. We (and our extensive archives!) are very happy to be at home here. Looking forward to some great content up in the next few days, including an interview with Amy Jones and a rather shameful post on my own authorial encounters. For now, you can check out my Valentines recommendation for a different kind of love story.
And now, to warm up the house, please leave a note and let us know that you’ve dropped by.
February 15, 2010
Canada Reads 2010: UPDATE 5
This week, Wild Geese went in at third in my personal rankings (so far). Charlotte Ashley is reading Canada Reads and Canada Reads Independently together, this time with Good to a Fault versus Hair Hat. Of Hair Hat, she writes: “Carrie Snyder showed an especial talent for directing me to the very heart of a character with a mere observation of his or her lifestyle… Snyder’s short, sparse book sparkles…” Melwyk reads Wild Geese and attests to its force: “I have to say this was a really uncomfortable read for me. In style, it was very much of its time, something I am used to reading in New Canadian Library selections. But it had a dark energy, a sexuality and a violence which was disturbing. Caleb literally made my skin crawl…” August Bourre determines that Ray Smith’s Century is ” just a spectacular fucking book.” Indeed! Julie Forrest reviews Moody Food to find that it “perfectly captures the experimental headiness of carefree youth… But it also strips away some romantic notions of the age, and exposes the limits of idealism, and the cost of chemically assisted creativity.” And Buried in Print with a take on How Happy to Be, which I’m going to be rereading next…
February 15, 2010
Oh, for a cup of tea and crumpets
” ‘Do you know, Wilmet–‘ the dark eyes looked so seriously into mine that I wondered what horror was going to be revealed next– ‘he hadn’t even got a teapot?’
‘Goodness! How did he make tea, then?’
‘He didn’t– he never made tea! Just fancy!’
‘Well, one doesn’t really associate Piers with drinking tea,’ I said.
‘He drinks it now,’ said Keith. ”
–from A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym
February 14, 2010
Valentines Day Recommendation: A different kind of love story
Old Friends, Rare Books is doubly a love story. About first, an incredible lifelong relationship. One which, the authors note, has been inferred to be sexual, but they say otherwise. That there had been men in their lives, and plenty of other friends, but in no one else did these women begin to find the sense of being so perfectly matched that they’d encountered in each other. Truly– as their joint autobiography attests to– Madeleine Stern and Leona Rostenberg speak in the very same voice, and mostly they’ve been talking about books since their meeting in New York at the beginning of the 1930s. And in recounting their adventures ever since then, the peculiarities of their relationship actually become quite unremarkable, or perhaps only as unremarkable as any extraordinary, enduring absolute partnership could be.
Stern’s work as a biographer brought much acclaim throughout her career– in particularly, her groundbreaking work on Louisa May Alcott. (And with a book on bookish connections, it’s worth noting that I only read Old Books, Rare Friends after seeing it referenced in Harriet Reisman’s new Alcott biography, which I only read because I’d read Little Women in the Fall, and I only did that because I’d found a battered copy in a curbside box two years ago and it had been sitting on my shelf forlorn ever since then). Rostenberg had completed a PhD dissertation on early printers and publishing, but it was unfairly rejected– a wrong that thirty years ago was righted with the granting her degree in 1972. In the meantime, she’d opened up her own business as a rare book dealer, Stern joining her a few years later, and their book recounts their adventures exploring bookshops throughout the world in search of precious volumes, which did have a knack of turning up rather serendipitously. Their sleuthing/detection skills were also put to use in their discovery of Louisa May Alcott’s vast body of salacious short fiction, published in 19th century periodicals under a pseudonym. This find would cast Alcott’s reputation as a kindly writer of children’s fiction into a new light.
All of which are part of this book’s other compelling love story– Stern and Rostenberg’s lifelong affair with books. An enthusiasm made contagious through such vivid and engaging prose. Truthfully, sixteenth century ephemera isn’t my cuppa tea, but I started to wish it was. Their adventures in literary sleuthing were like Possession but in real life! Their extraordinary lives were such a grand adventure, the stuff of a book lover’s dream.
I am so grateful for the literary luck that put me in touch with this marvelous volume. Love love love.
Happy Valentines Day.
