January 15, 2010
Can-Reads-Indies #1: Century by Ray Smith
Its sombre cover coupled with my misunderstanding that Ray Smith had eschewed story for higher principles would have kept me from Century: A Novel, were it not for Dan Wells’ recommendation. I thought this was a book that wasn’t for me, not only in a “not my cup of tea” sense, but that it was meant for a more erudite kind of reader for whom the act of reading is not meant to be a pleasure cruise (“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song… Wallala leialala“).
So it is my surprise to find I love this book, that it contains everything I look for as a reader, including that most unfashionable self-contained universe. That Smith may have eschewed traditional narrative structure, but he has done so only to compress a 500+ page novel into his first 98 pages, to represent the disintegration and disorder present in the universe the book contains, to have Century be what it’s meant to represent. And that his writing possesses a sympathy for and understanding of women that I found surprising, and striking, and even (dare I suppose in a book such as this?) somewhat heartening.
Heinrich Himmler didn’t shock me. Perhaps I’m just being defiant in my reactions, but Jane Seymour, the young woman in 197o’s Montreal who receives his ghostly visitations in her bed, the nightmares in which he touches her naked body (but oh, I was struck by the details– “the buttons on the cuffs of his sleeve caught on the sheet when he reached under to touch…”)– there is context for her, precedent. Of course, her friends suppose that she has undergone a trauma, perhaps she has been raped, which has led to the visions, which leads to her suicide. And that may be so, but the whole thing is the extreme end, I think, of how ordinary girls become obsessed with Nazism, which manifests in more usual terms with an Anne Frank fascination and YA books about the Holocaust. As a kind of dangerous experiment in empathy, though of course the Holocaust is so sanitized in such literature, but there is a thin line there, and I just think that Jane Seymour has crossed it for one reason, or for many.
But now I’m off on a kind of tangent. Kenniston Thorson, protagonist of the latter half of Century (and perhaps Jane Seymour’s grandfather) goes off on something similar, its conclusions more succinct than mine, but this result, he is told, “comes not from your mind wandering, but rather from your mind turning its subject round and round as a sculptor considers his piece”. Which is a good way to describe a reading and/or consideration of Century for two reasons: one, because it has so many angles, perspectives that I don’t think it could be taken in all at one time, as one thing; and two, because in reading Century, the reader does become sculptor, a book so fragmented requiring its reader to engage by putting the pieces together, thus coming to recreate it in their own way (so I am very sure that your Century will be altogether different from mine).
“The truth is to be found in the way many different things fit together in relation to one another. In a sense, because the relationship, not the parts, has the truth, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Though Century is doubly complicated in that its parts are so much apart, and yet this makes the relationships between them all the more remarkable. Between the first four stories in the book’s first half “Family”, which in various ways tell of Jane Seymour’s family. The first story about the troubled Jane from the perspective of a male acquaintance who sees her problems as emblematic of women in general during these difficult times, the second story of Jane’s brother and his reunion with his wife following a period of estrangement, the third of Jane’s father after the death of his wife and at the end of a long career in African development and international diplomacy as he ponders what he has made of himself, and fourth about Jane’s mother some years earlier and we learn that her husband truly didn’t know her at all (and that though he suspects he didn’t know her, he has no idea just how much).
The second half of the book “Continental” is in two parts, from the perspective of American Kenniston Thorson, in Paris 1892, and Germany in 1923. Written as a period piece meant to be Jamesian (and where all the women talk like women in TS Eliot poems, sometimes deliberately word-for-word), the pace is different here, story less the point. And though the concerns of Kenniston and other characters intriguingly overlap with those from “Family”, I chose to see this part of the novel as a key to the first half. That is, in Kenniston Thorson’s conversations and deliberations about art, music, history and even French Onion Soup, we achieve an understanding of what Smith is accomplishing in “Family”, of how we might put its fragments together and regard them (or how we might choose not to and why).
But being a reader who seeks story, who traces plot, I did note the connection between Kenniston Thorson and Gwen Seymour, and I seized to that in order to steady myself. And though the plot was moving backward here, it didn’t matter, for we look back at history in just this way. To see that Ray Smith has encapsulated a century (and not just “a” century, but “the” century) in a scant 165 pages, in the story of a family, of a marriage, of just one single woman.
And that woman doesn’t even exist, “there never was a Jane Seymour.” And as a reader who seeks story, who traces plot, this kind of trick didn’t deter me one bit, because I am also a reader who tries with reading to make sense of the world, and such blurred metafictional lines are the best way to do so: “These encounters enable me to hold the phantasm and the reality in my mind at the same time; this is much more interesting than either one alone.”
Century‘s is a pessimistic vision, “a world that bears too much truth”. A world in which the weight of being a woman leads to suicide, where imaginary gardens are not enough to shore against one’s ruins, where politics are an unchanging morass, and rapists are ordinary men, where “if man is only appetite: then all is barbarism…” And yet
.
Always “and yet”, because there is art at all made of it. Because at the beginning of the novel (which is close to the end in a sense, which is “now”), we find men and women finally not in opposition and that there is empathy; and because of the last line of the second story (which just might be the end, this is a novel in fragments after all and we can do with them what we may): “and they lived fairly happily for quite a while afterwards.” Which is really the best we can hope for in this life.
And is Century a novel? I vote yes, because its truth indeed lies in how its pieces relate to one another. Because I read the Gwen story “Serenissima” on its own once upon a time, and it seemed to “just be another piece of improbable pornography”, but it the context of the rest of the book, I knew everything about her and she broke my heart.
Anyway, it occurs to me that this response to Century has done it no favours. That its biggest problem is that no one is ever going to to say, “Hey, read this” with a snappy one-sentence reason why. That it raises questions without answers, and begins an engagement that is unceasing, and it’s more like someone handing you pieces of a puzzle than recommending you a book. Except you get to rearrange the pieces over and over again, which is infinitely more interesting, but frustrating too.
It will be hard to compare this book to others, because its level of engagement is on its own kind of plane. I’m not sure whether this will be points for or against it when it comes time to rank it against the other books. Apples to oranges perhaps (though both are delicious). So I’m glad I read it first, and I’m glad I read it at all, and I do hope I’m passing something on of its spirit, and others are inspired to read it too.
Canada Reads Independently Rankings:
1) Century by Ray Smith
January 15, 2010
i hated wolf hall is it me
I could write a post every day of strange internet search terms that bring folks to Pickle Me This. I don’t do this every day, however, because it’s lame, easy, and gets old fast. These terms are sometimes educational though– it’s only through my stats I realized that people are really interested in Leah McLaren’s marital status and in Burmese sex. But could you please indulge me this one day? This one day in which people arrived searching for “masterful literary blogs” (oh, and have you ever arrived!), “i got an incident report at work how bad is it”, and my very favourite (do you think they found what they were looking for?) “i hated wolf hall is it me” (and I doubt it).
January 14, 2010
A cacophony of strident contention
“Some hours later, the ladies played out, Kenniston took a seat in the library and called for coffee and cognac. As he sipped, he perused several newspapers: how silly, vapid, and hysterical it all seemed somehow. He realized that politics is, of necessity, a cacophony of strident contention, but when one is not personally engaged in it, how unnecessary it all seems; and he threw down the papers in a heap.”– From Century by Ray Smith
January 13, 2010
The library is doing nothing
The library is doing nothing to relieve me of my obsessive compulsive bookbuying ways. Instead, the library is widening my exposure to books I will DIE if I do not own. Lately, in this way, the following books have made their way into my library and into Harriet’s: Kiss the Joy as It Flies by Sheree Fitch (about which more is to come), 365 Activities You and Your Baby Will Love,
Baby Sign Language Basics, Ten Little Fingers Ten Little Toes by our beloved Mem Fox, Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, and How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad. And now I also really think I need a copy of The Sleeping Life by Kerry Ryan. I’m not going to mention the two novels I picked up at the used bookstore this morning (Small Ceremonies and Muriella Pent, borrowed from libraries year ago; how did I live this long without them?) because I don’t want my husband to find out about them. (If he happened to, however, read this far in this entry, he’d be relieved to know at least that I’ve read both of them already so the to-be-read shelf has not grown at all.)
Anyway, that is it. I am cut off. No book buying until March.
January 13, 2010
CBC Book Club Interview
Pickle Me This and Canada Reads: Independently are profiled in an interview by Julie Wilson at the CBC Book Club. Thanks, Julie!
January 13, 2010
Can-Lit and the Teenagers
“Upon reflection, I wondered again why Canadian literature isn’t able to connect with the teenage audience,” wrote Michael Bryson on his blog a while ago, which I thought was an interesting thing to wonder. And certainly not anything I’d much wondered about myself, because I rarely think of teenagers very much anymore, except to be a bit intimidated when I squeeze by them on the sidewalk.
Oh, teenagers, ye of the famously undeveloped brains. Though why did nobody tell me then? When I was a teenager, full of angst, and pain, and feeling, I do wish that someone had pointed out the fact that my brain wasn’t actually built and so nothing I felt really mattered yet. Which turned out to be quite true, in retrospect, but I might have been unwilling to face such a fact at that time. A time in which I was ready to die for the right to talk on the phone for six consecutive hours, and my favourite TV show was Party of Five.
The number of things that annoy me are legion, but up at the top would be people who carry with them any negative literary opinion formed by high school English class. No, worse– people who claim they don’t read because their high school English teachers broke down literature into such tiny pieces that they ruined the whole sport. (You can find evidence of this “breaking down” in any text annotated by a high school student, wherein each instance of “light” and “dark” is highlighted, for example. Or wherever there’s a mention of “river” and someone has written “=life”.) These people not understanding that high school is to teach you to learn how to learn first and foremost, and that perhaps all our closest-held opinions could serve to be re-evaluated once a decade or so.
Still, the greatest literary tragedy of them all, I think, is The Stone Angel as taught in Canadian high schools. Does this still happen? Is there a more inappropriate book out there? I reread it recently, and found it powerful (though far from Margaret Lawrence’s best), but could not understand how it could be expected to resonate with a sixteen year old. An extraordinary sixteen year old, perhaps, but most of us were far from that.
So what would be better? What’s a fully-grown Canadian book that could rock a teenage world? And don’t just think any old book with a youthful protagonist will do– a teenager can spot a phony a mile away. You know, the youthful protagonist who is always the cleverest person in the room (and in the book) so as to a) avoid complexities of character b) make sure we know the author is smart and not just writing YA pap c) reinvent the universe to realize ex-nerd author’s youthful fantasies concerning triumph and domination of a just world.
Help Me, Jacques Cousteau by Gil Adamson might work though. Fruit by Brian Francis. When I was in high school, I thought Atwood’s Cat’s Eye is as wonderful as I still do. Maybe Stunt? Alayna Munce’s When I Was Young and In My Prime? Rebecca Rosenblum’s Once. I think Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are would be better than Lives of Girls and Women. The Diviners instead of The Stone Angel (if they could stomach Morag’s stallion). And Lisa Moore’s Alligator, perhaps? Lullabies for Little Criminals?
Or am I mistaken, to suppose that a teenage reader requires a protagonist with shared concerns? Could teenagers be smarter or dumber than they look? What are they (and we) missing? And I know I’ve got some high school English teachers among my readership of six, and I’d be interested to know your opinion, as well as that of anyone else who has one.
January 11, 2010
Canada Reads 2010: Independently UPDATE
Julie Forrest reads Wild Geese. Check out her (favourable) review here. And now she’s got me excited to pick up this book that (I must admit) has been languishing on my shelf for a while now. Because it’s bleak and the prairies, but perhaps what’s best about anything Canada Readish is that it forces us to abandon such prejudices and pick up the books that scare us. Which for me continues to most of all be Ray Smith’s Century, a book I’ll be starting tonight or tomorrow. A book I’m afraid of in spite of Dan Wells’ enthusiasm, because I read his “…Century blew everything open: it’s as if Musil or Walser or Mann immigrated to Canada. It’s an intensely moral, beautiful, horrifying, fearless novel. (If it is, indeed, even a novel…” and I can’t help but wonder who Musil and Walser are. (And though I know of a Mann, I’ve never read him). I wonder if this book is truly over my head, and soon we’ll all find out for certain.
UPDATE: It is the next morning. I still don’t know who Musil and Walser are, but so far, Ray Smith has me hooked, intrigued, confused and wonderfully searching.
January 11, 2010
A recent bookish intersection
“It is past midnight. One of the joys of marriage, thinks Roger, is this late night dissection of events in the privacy of bed, and the glorious intimacy, when the rest of the world is locked out and only you and she exist.”
–from Penelope Lively’s novel Family Album
**
all day
i wait all day
for these ten minutes
awake in our bed,
your minted breath,
lick of dark
across my eyelids,
and the little clicks
your glasses make
as they’re folded
and set on the nightstand
— from Kerry Ryan’s collection The Sleeping Life
January 11, 2010
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen
I was confused every time I came across the name “Louisa” in Harriet Reisen’s biography Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Woman. Louisa? Who was this “Louisa”? For I was reading about Jo, wild, topsey-turvey, irrepressible Jo March, of course. Jo, whose identity was claimed by Alcott unabashedly, because her fiction was an amalgam of her own experiences and dreams of better things. That Louisa May Alcott had to tone reality down a bit to make Jo’s story believable, however, means that her biography is bound to be devourable. And in the most capable hands of Harriet Reisen (who writes like a novelist), the book most certainly is.
Admittedly, as Alcott’s biographer, Reisen did have certain advantages. Louisa May Alcott left quite a paper trail, of journals and scribblings, and an enormous volume of work produced over a very prodigious career. She annotated her own journals over time. Her parents, siblings and many associates all kept journals throughout their lives. She was associated with characters such as Thoreou and Emerson who themselves are objects of great interest. And Reisen is following in the footsteps of other Alcott biographers whose literary sleuthing resulted in the uncovering of Alcott’s pulp fiction and thrillers that were published under the pseudonym of A.M. Barnard.
Reisen’s other advantage was that Louisa May Alcott was absolutely fascinating. The daughter of famed Transcendentalist Bronson Alcott (who Reisen contends made his greatest fame on the back of his novelist daughter’s reputation), a peer of Thoreau and Emerson, Louisa grew up in a family guided by his eccentric whims. These whims make a storied tale, though their result was that the Alcotts were frequently destitute, desperate, much in debt, so that the four daughters had to work for a living from a very young age, constrasting them much from their mother’s socially prominent Boston family.
Work, which became the name of one of Alcott’s autobiographical novels, is one of the most interesting themes of her life. Seeking independence from and support for her family, she work as an invalid’s companion, as a teacher, a governess, as a seamstress– “Needlework offered one great advantage over teaching: ‘Sewing won’t make my fortune, but I can plan my stories while I work, and then scribble ’em down on Sundays.'” She served a nurse in the American Civil War, which was the subject of her book Hospital Sketches. And yes, she wrote, exhaustingly– children’s stories, fairy tales, thrillers and lurid tales, novels and sketches, and short stories– earning enough to support herself, which Reisen notes was as rare for a writer then as it is today.
Of course, Louisa was not exactly Jo. Reisen reports of fans that flocked to her house and were disappointed “(sometimes to the point of tears) to find an old curmudgeon instead of spunky Jo”. Alcott was subject to extreme moods, periods of ill health, and the positive outlook so prized by the Marches was more easily aspired to than attained. Her own childhood experiences had been mined of their most extreme hardship before appearing in Little Women, she’d given Jo a different type of father, the March family’s was a much more just kind of world.
But Jo she was, nonetheless, just as her older sister Anna signed fan letters as “Meg”– noting that she lacked Meg’s good looks, but Louisa had decided that “someone had to the beauty”. Louisa may have even referred to herself as “Jo” in her journals, or else her first biographer had made the error whilst transcribing the journals, which is emblematic of how the fact and fiction began to further blur.
Which means that Reisen had some literary sleuthing of her own to perform, and she did turn up long-lost transcripts of interviews Alcott’s neice Lulu (who was one of the last living people to have known the author). Having such an enormous number of resources at her disposal must certainly have been an advantage, but to pick and choose and then join them so seamlessly would have been no mean feat, and Reisen proves herself up to the task. To have brought Alcott to life, in such vivid Jo-ishness is a remarkable achievement, a credit to the subject, and the whole book is absolute marvelous and inspiring to read.
January 11, 2010
Tricks of Perspective
It’s a strange trick of perspective, and I can never quite figure it out: is Harriet tiny or enormous? It changes from moment to moment, day to day. And I do like this picture, because I so rarely get to see her from a distance, for the individual person she is and will grow to be, as opposed to my forever appendage. She truly is one of the funniest and most interesting people I have ever met, through her staying-asleep skills are appalling. But how I admire her excellent posture and her perfectly round head.
Bookishly, my books to-be-read seem much less overwhelming today, mostly because I cleaned my house this week. I am not sure why there is a link between the two, but I’ll take ease wherever I can find it. And in a similar trick of perspective to the paragraph above, I am now reading Kiss the Joy as it Flies by Sheree Fitch, because I’m altogether intrigued about what a novel would be were it written by the author of Kisses Kisses Baby-O (one of our favourite bedtime board books). And so far, it’s as marvelous as expected.
I discovered Fitch had written an adult novel when it made the longlist for Canada Also Reads, The Afterword‘s response to CBC Canada Reads. It’s an intriguing list, packed with many books I’ve loved before, including The Incident Report, Stunt, Come Thou, Tortoise, Girls Fall Down, Coventry, February, Cloud of Bone, Too Much Happiness, The Killing Circle, Bang Crunch, and Yellowknife. Looking forward to seeing the shortlist.
