April 18, 2011
We read Room Magazine 34.1
I wasn’t planning to make a project of this, but I encountered so many wonderful things as I read through the latest issue of Room Magazine that I really had to share them. The cover, first of all, whose colours go so perfectly with the title, and this eye for detail is reflected in the design of the magazine all the way through. And it’s the case with every issue of Room, which is a feminist magazine run by a volunteer collective of women in Vancouver (and used to be called A Room of One’s Own, but decided to open up onto the world more).
Issue 34.1 is themed “Momentous”, and it’s their contest winners’ issue too. Though it reads more cohesively than you’d expect from that, and I forgot about the contest until I finished reading the magazine and reread the cover. I enjoyed Amy Kenny’s story “Chocolate Season” about a woman in an East Coast tourist town carrying on the family business after her father’s death. The full text of Chantal Gibson’s “The Mountain Pine Beetle Suite” is available to read, and it’s great, brutal, subtle and scary. And “The Goddess of Light & Dark”, which won the creative non-fiction category and one of the best things I’ve read lately, full stop, about the education that comes when the author becomes a clinical teaching associate at BC Women’s Hospital, a model and guide for students learning how to do pelvic exams: “Maybe revolutions are about knowledge”.
Sigal Samuel’s “Love and Other Irregular Verbs” is by a woman whose father has seen the women he’s loved as a portal to new languages, and how she learns these languages to erase the distance between them. I enjoyed the interview with Cathleen With about how her experiences teaching in Northern Canada have influenced her fiction, and the ethics of the decisions she’s made: “It’s about bearing witness; because there are many potential storytellers up there, and yet a lot of these kids are too busy being in it to sit down and write about it.”And I liked Wendy Marcus’s “Just John” about a mysterious neighbour and his legacy of plum trees.
I tried to read Nalo Hopkinson’s “Chance” but just couldn’t. I mention this only because Nalo Hopkinson has enough readers that she won’t even notice this one missing, but more because I am fascinated with my inability to read science fiction. I have so little patience with unpacking these stories, when I can find it for so many other works/genres. It is like the fantastical elements of these stories construct a barrier between me and the meat of the story, and I just can’t be bothered scrambling over it. Part of this is definitely my fault, but it’s also that there are some kinds of readers we were never meant to be.
The issue ends with several pieces that resonated with me: Laurie D. Graham’s poem “Say Here, Here”, about words, place and the depths beneath your feet; Christy Ann Conlin’s “Album”, which whisks its reader across decades and a continent; and “Six Reasons I Miss Being Pregnant” by Anne Panning and not just the “A free pass–however briefly– to wear giant corduory overalls”. And then Room’s backpages, which I always enjoy, which gives me the sense that as a Room reader, I am most certainly part of a wider community.
April 18, 2011
Mired in the fat books
Since I had a baby two years ago, my pile of books to-be-read has never been less than 50 books long. And the books that tend to have lingered have been long, non-fiction, or Great Expectations. This past week, I’ve made a point of picking up some of these (but not Great Expectations), so that’s what I’ve been doing. First, I read Irene Gammel’s book Looking for Anne of Green Gables, which I had trouble with, but ultimately enjoyed. I don’t have much truck with the idea of decoding fiction from clues in the author’s personal life. I mean, understanding an author’s background can provide a fictional work with new dimensions, but it’s not like the solution to a mathematical problem, and sometimes Gammel wrote like it was. (Sometimes she even knew how flimsy was the ground beneath her feet, so revelations would come with a caveat like, “Or maybe Maud never ate tofurkey, but it’s certainly something we can think about”). The best part of the book was the sense it provided of the literary world Anne of Green Gables was born into– what books and magazines had LM Montgomery been reading in the years before she wrote the novel? What with the proliferation of fictional orphans called Ann in the late nineteenth century? I also loved that Montgomery’s kitchen was also the Cavendish post office, and how handy that would have been for keeping private the arrival of rejection letters.
Next, I read Joan Didion’s After Henry, which hadn’t been lingering on my shelf but rather was too tall 
for the shelf, had been resting on top of the books, then had fallen behind them. So I’d forgotten I’d even had it, and picked it up without hesitation when I found it because it was her third collection of essays (after Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album). It lacked the magic of the other two, perhaps because it was not nostalgic and I think nostalgia is what Didion writes best. But it’s smart, and its treatment of the 1988 Democratic and Republican conventions was incredibly timely as we are in the midst of our own federal election. The essay “Insider Baseball” said it all. I loved her criticism of Patty Hearst’s memoir. And the final piece “Sentimental Journeys” kept me up well into the night on Friday, wrapt by her brilliance and challenged by so many ideas that made me uncomfortable. Didion is such an extraordinary writer.
And I decided to follow that with a collection of her late husband’s work, Regards: The Collection Non-Fiction of John Gregory Dunne, which is American-sized, but I love it, and is exactly what you’d expect from somebody who was Dominick Dunne’s brother and Joan Didion’s spouse. I spent this afternoon enjoying his essays about baseball, which is saying something. Now onto a bunch of book reviews. And when I finish this book, I’m going to move onto one that is going to take me ages, but if I don’t get around to it now, I never will. The Collected Stories of John Cheever for the love of the short story, and for its Mad Men-ishness. I am looking forward. Bear with me.
April 16, 2011
A stop on the Sarah Selecky virtual blog tour (with prizes!)
Sarah Selecky’s writing has been published in The Walrus, Geist Magazine, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Event and The Journey Prize Anthology. Her short story collection, This Cake is for the Party, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize, and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award.
Thanks to Sarah for making Pickle Me This a stop on her virtual blog tour. It has been truly lovely having her stop by.
I have taken a leave of absence from Toronto this winter. I’ve been lucky enough to hide myself away in one of my most favourite parts of Ontario: Prince Edward County. For two whole months, I have been house sitting in a beautiful home, all alone, with a big bathtub and a fireplace and a view of the river. There is nothing for me to do here except write.
My plan was to come out here and write every single day. I let all of my students know that I was on sabbatical and I put a hold on my editing and teaching work. I am working on something new – a book about writing – and I was sure that I would be productive and focused while on retreat. I thought that by the end of my time here, I’d have a good chunk of my first draft written.
The truth: I have not written very much while I’ve been on my writing retreat.
When the glittery carnival that was the Scotiabank Giller Prize happened last fall, it was a complete surprise. At first, I thought I could keep up with my regular life, that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But my days quickly became busy and strange. There wasn’t enough time for me to do Giller stuff and keep my regular life running smoothly. With all the interviews and phone calls that came each day, I could barely keep teaching, let alone do any writing. I started taking Gravol at night so I could sleep (thank you Susan Swan for that advice). Eventually, I succumbed to bi-weekly meltdowns (likely due to the aforementioned sleep deprivation) where I would cry my eyes out for about ten minutes and then get up, wash my face, brush my hair, and answer the phone or go to a cafe for an interview with whatever journalist I had an appointment with that day. I felt like the media could find me everywhere. A television crew spent twelve hours with me one day. My husband took that day off work so he could be in the footage, and then he ended up taking a few more personal days, just to make sure I remembered to eat and drink while I was doing other interviews. He also answered my phone for me and took messages. He made a little clipboard with my schedule on it for each day of the week.
Those autumn weeks were one hundred percent nutso. And amazing.
But I was just so – unprepared for it all. So by the time December came around, I felt depleted, exhausted, and completely out of touch with my family, my friends, and myself. I felt like a soggy orange rind that had been totally juiced – I was just the pulpy skin left over. Now, when I think back to last fall, many of my memories are blurry and unformed, like I wasn’t even there. It was official: I’d hit burnout.
So I packed up my suitcase, my laptop, and a box of books and I moved out to Prince Edward County for this writing retreat.
As I write this, I am watching a pair of swans float in the river just out the window. I realized today that I have only five more days left on retreat.
So, what have I done for the past two months?
I watched the entire Friday Night Lights series on DVD, knitted a purple hat and scarf, learned how to make sauerkraut by hand, finally read a book by Malcom Gladwell, attempted to write a song on the electric piano, wrote long handwritten letters to friends in faraway places, went cross-country skiing on the frozen river, checked my Twitter account, developed an addiction to raw cacao, learned the names of the three species of woodpecker that come to the bird feeder (Hairy, Downy and Pileated), listened to coyotes howling at the Supermoon, took long drives on country roads, stared into the eyes of cows, canoed in the river during the spring thaw, and drank shot glasses of locally-made maple syrup straight up.
Have I wasted my time out here, or what? I’m a writing teacher. Every day in my work, I try to help people develop a daily writing practice. I’m all about commitment to the craft: that’s my thing. I’m supposed to be writing about writing, for crying out loud! So, why didn’t I take my own advice? How can I tell people to write every day, when I don’t even do it myself?
Here’s the thing: I know I’m not going to have the energy to write another book unless I take some serious time off from writing. Not writing is important: it’s restorative. Taking a break from the work is also a part the work. Nobody really talks about that part of being a writer, and I know why they don’t. It’s scary. When I’m writing, I feel plugged in and energized and in sync. But when I’m not writing, I feel out of it. I have the very real fear that I’ll never be able to write anything ever again. When you look at the stiff, dark branches of trees in the winter, isn’t it hard to imagine those same trees all lush and full of leaves?
But winter happens. Then spring comes.
Yesterday, I sat down and wrote a rough outline for my new book. Five days left to write, and I just sat down and did it. I’m not going to come close to finishing a first draft in five days, but that’s okay, because after taking half a year off, I finally feel like writing again.
Leave a comment, and you will be entered for a giveaway to win a free copy of This Cake Is for the Party. And one lucky person who visits all of the participating blog tour stops will win an e-reader.
April 14, 2011
On platforms, professionalism, and the "it's just a hobby" excuse
Joan Didion. Not a hobbyist.
Recently, one inflammatory online post led to another, and I found myself reading a comment from a blogger-ish sort who defended his lack of professionalism by claiming that it wasn’t required of him. And he’s right. But then there’s bloggers and there’s bloggers, and if we’d like the enterprise to have any legitimacy (and yes I would, please. Here’s why), then we have to hold ourselves accountable to high standards. Or, more importantly, when we slip up, we should not use excuses like, “I’m not being paid for this. It’s just a hobby.”
Which is not to say that blogging should not be fun. Blogging should always be fun, basically because we’re not getting paid for this and it’s just a hobby. When blogging becomes obligatory, it’s time to stop. But fun does not negate your responsibility to provide material that is thoughtful, original, well-written, and interesting. I suppose that if your blog is very much your own personal project, then these things matter less, but the minute you attract enough attention to work with professionals, then you owe it to them.
If, for example, you are interviewing a writer on your blog, you are responsible for having read her book. (That journalists very often don’t bother to read the books of those they interview does not make this okay.) If you have no interest in reading her book, then don’t have her on your blog. Because that writer (who probably doesn’t earn much more than a blogger to do what she does, and that pay must stretch even thinner to cover the amount of time she spends blathering on about her book on your tiresome blog) is appearing in a professional capacity, and your lack of professionalism will be a waste of her time. Sure, you are offering her a chance to promote her work, but your contact with her offers you legitimacy. Um, and your professional behaviour offers further legitimacy for bloggers everywhere.
Of course, if you’re a blogger and everybody wants a piece of you, and you’re not getting anything out of the arrangement except “legitimacy,” then we’ve got a problem. Because blogging is just a hobby and you’re not being paid for it, you should ensure that you’re getting something out of everything you do, particularly if someone else is making money off your efforts (however indirectly). Write about topics you’re engaged with, read books you’re interested in, write posts to learn and answer your own questions, and ask authors questions whose answers you’re really curious to know. (Also aim to make these questions that author may never have been asked before. Which is no easy feat.) Say no to what isn’t interesting, to any authors whose book you wouldn’t bother reading, to anything that start to feel like an obligation.
Ensure that a professional appearing on your blog represents an opportunity for both of you: for her, the chance to promote her work, and for you, a wonderful read and fascinating conversation.
April 14, 2011
In which Joan Didion articulates my lack of interest in federal politics
“When we talk about the process, then, we are talking, increasingly, not about “the democratic process,” or the general mechanism affording the citizens of a state a voice in its affairs, but the reverse: a mechanism seen as so specialized that access to it is correctly limited to its own professionals, to those who manage policy and those who report on it, to those who run the polls and those who quote them, to those who ask and those who answer the questions on the Sunday shows, to the media consultants, to the columnists, to the issues advisers, to those who give the off-the-record breakfasts and to those who attend them; to that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life. “I didn’t realize you were a political junkie,” Marty Kaplan, the former Washington Post reporter and Mondale speechwriter who is now married to Susan Estrich, the manager of the Dukakis campaign, said when I mentioned that I planned to write about the campaign; the assumption here, that the narrative should be not just written only by its own specialists but also legible only to its own specialists, is why, finally, an American presidential campaign raises questions that go so vertiginously to the heart of the structure.” –from “Insider Baseball” (which I’m reading in After Henry).
April 12, 2011
How to woo a Barbara Pym heroine
I am exhausted from being constantly ridiculously overwrought, so here’s a fun diversion, totally stolen from 5 Dates for the Jane Austen Superfan (via Booksin140). How do you woo a Barbara Pym heroine? It’s no simple task, because spinsters are spinsters for having kept their standards high, and nobody is more romantic. The surefire way is to become a curate, of course, but here are five less dramatic suggestions.
1) Take her to church! High or low, mass or evensong. Going over to Rome and incense. I actually understand nothing about any of this, but that I’ve read and loved each of Barbara Pym’s books anyway is a testament to her wide appeal. At church, your heroine will encounter someone distasteful, either for being sluttish and ostentatious, or mousy and pious, and afterwards (over a nice hot drink) she will regale you with amusing stories about this woman. Someone will see the two of you in deep conversation, sparking inevitable rumours (and where there’s smoke, there’s fire!).
2) Accompany her to the jumble sale, and buy her a special piece of bric-a-brac, supporting foreign missionaries or distressed gentlewomen in the process. At the very least, you’ll get a cup of tea. And then at church in days ahead, you and she can talk about what dress the Vicar’s sister is sporting, and how she must have removed it from the jumble for her own personal use.
3) Arrive at her office (at the Society of Archaeologists) and take her out for lunch at a cafeteria. She will be slightly uncomfortable eating lunch from a tray, but she will try not to show it. She is nothing if not stoic. Listen to her talk of office politics, and who got fired for failure to make a proper cup of tea. Someone will be angry at her for having not sent around her tin of biscuits. And you will wonder how an Oxford grad with an endless capacity for quoted poetry works as an assistant in an office (however scholarly), and you’ll be pleased to liberate her from this life when you make an honest woman of her.
4) Take her to the library, and sit across the table in the reading room. Fall in love to the whispery din, to the scratch-scratch of pencils, and turn of ancient pages. In this atmosphere of restraint, emotions will become heated, and love will surely bloom.
5) Don’t say a word when you encounter the caterpillar in her cauliflower cheese. Ever-discreetly, set it aside, and proceed with your conversation.
April 11, 2011
That damn reflection
That damn reflection really doesn’t do the window any justice, so I invite you to go see it for yourself instead. It’s the Royal Wedding Window at Good Egg in Kensington Market, and it’s a wonderful celebration of all things bookish, British, potty and teapotty. I loved it.
April 10, 2011
Carol Shields, yard sales, departures and arrivals
When I looked out the window at our gorgeous Saturday, I had a craving for a yardsale, but suspected it was too early in the season. Not too early to get outside though and take in that glorious sunshine. We walked down to Kensington Market after breakfast, determined to spend no money, but then got hungry, went to the bank, and bought an empanada, a peanut butter and jam cookie from Miss Cora’s Kitchen, and a block of cheese. In retrospect, it was a very positive change of heart.
Then walking back up Major Street, all my dreams came true. A woman was selling a pile of stuff out on her sunny lawn, and so we crossed the street with glee. There wasn’t much that caught my interest, however, though it’s the browsing that’s half the fun anyway. But double the fun when I see that Carol Shields’ Collected Strories is on sale for 50 cents. Which is not only a bargain, but it contains an unpublished story. What a prize! I couldn’t think of a better find.
And it was the perfect day for it, because I was reading Carol Shields’ play Departures and Arrivals, which I bought at the Vic Book Sale last fall. I wasn’t sure about the play at the start, but I warmed to it quickly– absolutely Carol Shields, about conversations between friends, family, lovers and strangers in the middle of a busy airport. I’d say there were about 30 Carol Shields novels contained within this slim volume, and I am so pleased that I got a chance to read it.
For the next week or so, I will be focusing on my unread books before new releases, trying to clear a little space on my shelf before things get (even more) out of control. It’s funny, there are books on that shelf that have been sitting there for years, and I’ve even tried to get rid of them but can’t, but it seems harder to actually read them. I should have one of those rules like for closets where you have to pitch anything that’s been sitting untouched for a year. And it’s true, there are these books I know in my heart I will never, ever read, but I haven’t quite come to terms with it yet. The others, however, I’ll be getting to soon.
April 10, 2011
Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
My review of Miriam Toews’ new novel Irma Voth will be published in the May issue of Quill & Quire, but is online now. It begins:
“Miriam Toews’ follow-up to 2008’s The Flying Troutmans details its eponymous protagonist’s various attempts to answer the question, “How do I behave in this world without following the directions of my father, my husband, or God?” Only 19 years old, Irma has been abandoned by all three: by God and her father for marrying outside her faith, and by her husband, Jorge, for failing to be a good wife. When a film crew arrives at Irma’s isolated Mennonite community in Mexico’s Chihuahuan desert, she is offered a glimpse of a different life. Irma’s involvement with the crew sets in motion events that force her to flee with her two younger sisters to Mexico City to evade both their father’s violence and a terrible family secret.”
April 10, 2011
On Jessica Westhead's And Also Sharks
Once upon a time, so long ago that Harriet was merely a giant protrusion in an unflattering blouse, I went to see Jessica Westhead read at Pivot, fell in love with her short stories, and ever since have been looking forward to her new book And Also Sharks. And because Jessica is my friend, and because I read her stories with joy, with such utter abandon, I can’t possibly post a straightforward review, but I can say this: my friend Jessica Westhead’s new book And Also Sharks is wonderful.
The book met my litmus test for hilarity on page 3, which is that I started laughing hysterically and woke up my husband to read him the line: “I don’t know if I would’ve said before all this that she was nice enough to give you the shirt off her back, but when you stop to think about it, that’s a lot to ask from anyone.” This from the storyWe Are All About Wendy Now, about how a group of office colleagues rallies around one of their own when she becomes ill. Eunice, the narrator, tries to be magnanimous about her colleagues, who are not always that nice to her, and about their intentions towards the sick woman (Wendy), but the story belies her true feelings. Eunice also lives alone with her sick cat and subsists on a diet of ham sandwiches, but she has a solidity to her that the other characters lack, a sense of herself. What she doesn’t have much of is a sense of humour, which makes this absurd story as delivered through her voice so perfectly deadpan, hilarious.
The pathetic are rendered with sensitivity here, and embued a sense of worth and purpose not apparent to the outside world. There is virtue in understatement, in reserve, in being a misfit. And though Westhead’s touch is light, her stories aren’t– the world through these characters eyes is the world as it is, and these strange and wonderful characters take it it on everyday, brave, weird, and ever-unflinching.
