October 14, 2012
On Barbara Gowdy, cut-out cookies, and other decapitations
Over the weekend, I read Barbara Gowdy’s We So Seldom Look on Love, which readers and writers I admire have been talking about for years. In a collection full of devastating stories, I was most devastated by “Lizards”, in which a woman’s very tall lover decapitates her baby daughter by carrying her on his shoulders and walking too close to a ceiling fan. For some reason, I thought this was an essential plot point to share with my family, including those among us who are 3.
Harriet, whom I’ve accidentally given a fascination for all things macabre, couldn’t get enough of this story. “What happened next?” she asked. “Well,” I said. “The baby died. Her head fell off.” And no, it couldn’t have been put back on. Harriet eventually suggested that they should probably get a cutting board and cut off its arms and legs for good measure. And then we decided it would be an excellent idea to bake some gingerbread men.
Well, not gingerbread, exactly. We made “chewy oatmeal” cut-out cookies, but we call them gingerbread men anyway. Even the women. Their chewiness was part of their appeal, but it also meant that the men were partial to losing limbs and that the day’s focus on decapitation continued. Stuart and I surreptitiously gobbled up the casualties, which meant that by the time the cookies were all decorated and Harriet was permitted to have her “just one”, we were about ready to be sick.
Incidentally, this version of The Gingerbread Man story is our favourite. As with Gowdy, its author doesn’t shy away from darkness, but points out that a cookie getting eaten is far from the worst way a story could end.
September 5, 2012
All the Anxious Girls on Earth by Zsuzsi Gartner
Last week, I couldn’t focus, and suffered that “couldn’t get into it” reading affliction that you hear about so often. I don’t know if the problem was the books’ or mine, but regardless, there was no hope until I turned to my to-be-read/not-new-releases shelf and picked up All the Anxious Girls on Earth by Zsuzsi Gartner (whose Better Living Through Plastic Explosives had been so admired by both me and Giller Prize judges last year). And suddenly, the world was steady again.
Except, of course, that it most definitely wasn’t. As with her second, Gartner’s first book of short stories is rife with explosions, decay and unsteady earth beneath our feet. It’s that same dystopian Vancouver which looks suspiciously like reality (and sometimes it’s also Toronto). There is weirdness (a woman swims in her mother’s womb with a fetus who’s a brother long ago stillborn) , and humour (another woman programs a film festival and has to content with terrible would-be filmmakers showing up at her door– “I made that film about the dude who goes through all this bad shit and then wakes up and finds out it was all just a dream… Just watch it backwards.”), and violence (when the woman who threatens to set herself on fire if her film isn’t programmed [“Her eyes were a living room of despair, full of mismatched furniture and candles stuck in Chianti bottles, dripping all over the place, a syringe under the wicker chair, a Ouija board on the coffee table.”] follows through with her threat).
It’s possible that short stories were just what I needed, albeit good ones meticulously curated into a seamless collection. A book to sink in and out of, which was about all the attention I could muster at the time. And the vision, the writing! “Lewis worked in a place that looked like a cheese shop but sold soap. A cosmetic deli.” Sentences that jumped off the page, treasures themselves. I also appreciated the many connections between All the Anxious Girls and Better Living, the evolution of Gartner’s preoccupations, how the latter is an extension of the former and they illuminate each other. I’m fascinated in particular with Gartner’s treatment of terrorism, an idea whose definition took on radically new proportions in the time between her books. How has a changing world changed what she’s writing about?
Yesterday, the Giller Prize longlist was revealed, and though people are careful to be polite about these things, the list bowled me over with its unremarkableness. And yes, excellence means different things to different people, and what this prize is all about will change every year depending on the jury in question. But I was disappointed by this list because it’s been a stunning year for Canadian literature and not one of the books I’ve loved best made it into the spotlight. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, I’ll never read any of the nominated books, and no amount of acclaim will ever change that. How glad I am that I know my own mind (and the terrible books that knowledge will same me from!). Though it occurs to me, as it did last year, that perhaps I live too deeply in my own bookish bubble to pay much attention to prize lists anyway. I’m buying books all the time, so I’m not who Giller is trying to woo. Further, I’ve got so many books to be read that I’d be reading into the next year or two with what’s lined up already, so in a way, prize lists are just a distraction. Perhaps it’s a blessing that a list like this is so incredibly easy to tune out.
The point of all this being that there is such tremendous pressure to keep on top of new releases, to read even the books that don’t interest one much. And that tuning out from that buzz can be such a liberation. If any of the Giller longlisted titles are truly for the ages, then I look forward to getting around to them in a decade or so, when it will be like the discovery of something quite precious.
- Check out my Anxious Girls reading list here.
August 9, 2012
On cracking the code of Canadian literary criticism
When I started paying attention to Canada’s literary conversations about five or six years ago, it was quickly evident that I had a whole lot to learn. Until that point, my reading tastes had been determined by prize lists, by what was front and centre at the bookstore, and what the Globe & Mail saw fit to review. I didn’t know that it wasn’t all right to love In the Skin of a Lion or that The Stone Diaries didn’t set every reader swooning. I had no idea of the vast richness of books being published by Canadian small presses like Goose Lane, Anvil and Biblioasis. I still connected House of Anansi to Yorkville hippies. In short, I didn’t have a clue.
So I started taking notes, trying to pin the whole thing down. There was a code, I was beginning to understand, and if only I could get it right. Books with rural settings were bad, and prairie fiction was a crime, I was starting to see. We wanted our books urban. We especially wanted them to be about young men in their twenties. But then it got confusing because it turned out that the prairies were okay as long as they were written by Robert Kroetsch, and even small town fiction about women’s lives were fine as long as it was written by Alice Munro. It got confusing too because it turned out that urban fiction was bad after all, particularly Toronto’s which wasn’t authentically Canadian.
Whether David Adams Richards was okay depended on your point of view, because while he was ticking all the right boxes, he wasn’t ticking them correctly. Bonnie Burnard’s A Good House was a shorthand for all that was wrong with the world. And it turned out that while small press books were really great, small press books were also terrible, and while it was really wonderful that Gaspereau book had won the Giller, did it have to be that Gaspereau book? And who fucking cares about the Giller anyway? You will disdain the Giller. Until your book ends up on its longlist (and not even by popular vote).
Eventually, it became clear that there was no code after all, and that instead we had a whole lot of critics shouting at each other, discussing work in theory, but with no one actually talking about books. That there are as many points of view regarding Canadian Literature and literature in general as there are books themselves, and that is okay. I disagree, however, that all this shouting/debate has made for a healthier literature, mainly because nobody ever listens in a debate, being too busy planning their rebuttal, and the arguments were rarely about reading after all.
It’s such a narrow way to approach literature, to think of it first in terms of themes and tropes. And it’s even narrower when you don’t bother to read the books in question, dismissing them outright based a sentence or two from a publisher’s catalogue. Or because they happen to be set in the past, or on a prairie, or in Toronto, or in a lighthouse, or because people like them, or because women like them (which is usually the worst crime of all for a book to commit).
It may always be 1955 in CanLit, as some say, but I can’t say our sorry excuse for criticism is much more progressive.
July 1, 2012
The seas inside my soul
As a rule, the seas inside my soul are so far from frozen, which is why I always roll my eyes at the Kafka quote about the book as ice-axe. And it occurs to me that while I have no need for an ice-axe, that perhaps I tend to employ my books as paddles, life buoys, fishing nets, and also that what I want from a book more than any other thing is for it to grab my soul and hold it steady for awhile.
June 25, 2012
Summer summer at 49thShelf
I’m in love with the main page of 49thShelf this week, with its Summer Summer list front and centre. Images of docks, beaches, summer reading, barbecues, the Beach Boys and a swing. I’m looking forward to reading Tricia Dower’s Stony River in the next week or so– I enjoyed her first book and interviewed her in 2008. Right now I’m reading Emily Perkins’ The Forrests, which starts slow but becomes enthralling. Also, I received Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl for my birthday, which is my cottage reading set. She’s got blurbs by Kate Atkinson, Kate Christensen and Laura Lippman, which is some pedigree, I think. Can’t wait to be beach-side with this one.
June 24, 2012
On slow-reads, and Robertson Davies' The Rebel Angels
I spent most of last week reading Robertson Davies’ The Rebel Angels upon the recommendation of my book club-mate Patricia, who mentioned it after we’d read Lucky Jim and talked about campus lit. And it is just a coincidence that I’d read it after Sue Sorensen’s A Large Harmonium, which was another campus satire, and also mentioned Patient Griselda, who I’d never even heard of (and which is really a terrible story, actually). It also mentioned Cornelius Agrippa, who I’d read about in Frankenstein, the other book I’ve just finished. And then there were the references and allusions I didn’t get or didn’t pick up on, and there were plenty. But I still enjoyed The Rebel Angels very much, my first Robertson Davies beyond the Fifth Business I read in school. It’s a slow read though, slow to start and packed with detail. And because I’m a notorious speedy reader, it was a bit hard to get used to the pace. To just let myself give into it, to stop thinking that slowness was a problem, or a sign of one. To be patient and realize that I really do have all the time in the world to get through it, that the other books can wait. To realize that this book was demanding time and patience of me, but delivering richness in rewards. And it did.
Whereas Frankenstein, the book I read before it, was a book with a deadline, to be read before our book club meeting last Tuesday. On Saturday evening, when I’d only read 30 pages, it wasn’t really looking likely that I was going to get it read, and so I got down to it. I read most of Frankenstein in 24 hours, and what a joy to get so solidly inside a book, to take it in in almost one gulp, without distractions. Speedy reading can be wonderful.
But yes, there is a place for slowness, for stories that have to steep. I’m grateful to Robertson Davies for reminding me of that.
June 21, 2012
The Girl Giant
Kristen den Hartog’s novel And Me Among Them was one of my favourite books of last year, and my admiration for its author was only intensified when I met her in November for an interview. It’s a quiet book but, like its protagonist, And Me Among Them has made an impact on the world– it was shortlisted for the 2012 Trillium Book Award, and was just awarded the Alberta Trade Fiction Book of the Year Award. And now it’s coming out in the United States published by Simon & Schuster with a new cover and a new title: The Girl Giant.
I met up with Kristen recently and she gave me a copy of the new book. It’s small and square and lovely, but I’ve already got my gorgeous edition from Freehand Books, so I’d like to pass on The Girl Giant to one of you. If you leave a comment below before the end of Sunday June 24 (my birthday!), your name will be entered in a draw and I’ll send the copy of the winner. Good luck, and thanks to Kristen, with congratulations too for all her book’s success.
Update: Congratulations to Deborah! I will be in touch.
June 18, 2012
How to avoid being a spam-bot and change the world in the process
This is Jessica Westhead. Basically, what I’m saying is: “Do it like she does.”
Two of the things I complain about most often in public are terrible examples of authors promoting their work online and women writers’ lack of representation in the media and in the world, and so it is amazing to me that both of these annoying things can be addressed with one solution.
But I will address the former problem first, those head-bangingly awful incidents in which it’s clear that authors don’t understand that the opportunity to shill their stuff an offshoot of social media engagement and not its primary purpose. Though I’ve met writers who go the other way, who get a poem published in a national magazine and think it’s bragging to put a link on Facebook. It isn’t. Linking to cool stuff is what people do on Facebook, on twitter and on blogs. But it’s when writers cross a line from, “Look at this!”” (link to published poem) to “Look at me!!” (link to published poem posted on twitter five times daily for months at a time, and also spamming link to other people’s feeds) that it gets to be a problem. When you’re a human who’s a spam-bot, you’ve clearly gone too far.
So how do you avoid becoming a human spam-bot? Easy: don’t post the same link more than twice. If you run out of links, do something new, something better. And in between those links, how about you talk about somebody who isn’t you? A book that isn’t yours? If you’re part of a literary community, you can talk about what your peers are up to. If you aspire to be part of a literary community, deposit yourself within it by engaging with that community’s literature online. If you’ve got nothing to do with any literary community, talk about the best books you’ve read lately and– ka-pow– you’ve just situated yourself in (close) relation to those books, those authors. It’s amazing. From these references, your readers will be able to figure out what you’re about.
When you have promotional opportunities– to write guest blog posts, to write your own blog, when you’re talking to a reporter or answering a Q&A– share your attention with other deserving writers and books. When someone puts a call out for book suggestions, resist to the impulse to chime in with “Mine!” and suggest somebody else’s. If there is a readers’ choice award going on, take a risk and champion a book that you didn’t write (which is the point of these things anyway. It’s not a “writer’s choice” award). If your book is up for a readers’ choice award, sit back and let the readers choose. (If you win a readers’ choice that you rigged, you didn’t win anything at all.) Engage with social media not just as a writer, but as a reader. It broadens your approach, and makes you that much more interesting.
And it also serves to promote a culture of readers, of reading. If you’ve already got someone’s attention, they know about your book, so why not suggest another? It increases the odds that whoever is listening will buy two books instead of one. And as a writer, you certainly stand to benefit when people start buying more books. When you reference other people’s books, it becomes less about your book than about reading in general, which is a terrifying leap to take, I know, but if your book is really good, it will only thrive in that healthy bookish eco-system. It means that you’re taking the opportunity to support other writers, and not in that annoying “rah-rah we all stick to together” way, but in that you have a platform from which to promote the work you really believe in, the books you’d like to see growing up alongside your own, the writing you admire.
And if you are a woman (and even if you’re not) and if the writing you admire happens to be written by women, then herein lies your chance to be part of the solution to the problem of women’s lack of representation in the media and the world. You don’t have to be a book reviewer or an editor to do something about it. You just have to be a reader as well as a writer, a reader/writer who champions the work of worthy women writers. Use your power as someone with a platform to shine a light on other books, other works. Support great work, be vociferous in that support, and understand how that support has greater impact when it’s a woman’s great work you’re supporting, that you’re helping to change the game for the better.
April 4, 2012
Meg Wolitzer's Rules
“If “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated? Certainly “The Marriage Plot,” Eugenides’s first novel since his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Middlesex,” was poised to receive tremendous literary interest regardless of subject matter, but the presence of a female protagonist, the gracefulness, the sometimes nostalgic tone and the relationship-heavy nature of the book only highlight the fact that many first-rate books by women and about women’s lives never find a way to escape “Women’s Fiction” and make the leap onto the upper shelf where certain books, most of them written by men (and, yes, some women — more about them later), are prominently displayed and admired. ”
Yes, yes, and read the rest fromMeg Wolitzer’s “On the Rules of Literary Fiction for Men and Women”.
(My only qualm is when the women who write really terrible [and usually non-literary] fiction read this and jump up and down screaming, “Right on!” As Dorothy Parker said [and what didn’t Dorothy Parker say?], “I’m a feminist, and God knows I’m loyal to my sex, and you must remember that from my very early days, when this city was scarcely safe from buffaloes, I was in the struggle for equal rights for women. But when we paraded through the catcalls of men and when we chained ourselves to lampposts to try to get our equality– dear child, we didn’t foresee those female writers.” Indeed. Hmm.)
March 29, 2012
My kind-of defense of adults who read (really good) children's literature
I have never read the Harry Potter books, never had any interest in them at all, and have always been a little bit pleased about this because if they’re truly as wonderful as everybody claims, what a joy it will be to discover them together with my daughter. And it is true that it is through my daughter that I’ve really come to appreciate the greatness of children’s literature. I’ve found such richness in the books we’ve read together, books I’d never read before her, like Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books, Russell Hoban’s Frances books, The Wind in the Willows and The House at Pooh Corner. We’re reading Tove Jansson’s Tales from Moominvalley now, the first of her novels for us after enjoying her picture books, and they are so good. There is such depth, the prose is wonderful to read aloud, the stories are surprising, so strange and perfect. I love the idea of Harriet coming to understand the world through these stories because however fantastical, they’re so real, and they acknowledge the complexities of existence and human relations in ways that just make so much sense.
So I certainly understand why reading children’s literature can be a rewarding experience for a reader of any age, but I also understand where the contrarians are coming from when they scoff at adults mad for novels intended for 12 year olds. Partly because there are so many wonderful books directed toward the adult reader that I despair at what these avid readers are missing out on (and I don’t want to hear about how only YA is readable these days. Clearly these readers aren’t looking [or reading] hard enough). And mostly because it is very rare that a children’s book is so rich that it’s as limitless to the adult reader as it is for the child. Which is okay because adult readers are not who these stories are intended for, but it’s the exception rather than the norm.
Arguments for the value of children’s literature (or any literary genre for that matter) usually fail to acknowledge one salient fact: so much of what gets published isn’t very good. And this is true in particular for genres such as children’s literature, fantasy, or chicklit whose formulae have proved to be so saleable that formula and saleability becomes these books’ guiding force. And then readers and writers (who are perpetually feeling much maligned) step up to a defense of the genre whose blanket-coverage undermines itself. It’s never the very best of the genre that critics are talking about anyway.
Here’s something too: a good reader doesn’t ever restrict herself so much. Any reader who reads only one thing, whether it be YA novels, chicklit, or books written by late-20th century female English novelists, has a very narrow view of both the literary and actual worlds. I have a feeling that may of those readers who’ve been impassioned enough to rise up in defense of adults reading children’s literature are not such narrow readers themselves. That, like me, they’re readers who’ve learned to appreciate the value of children’s literature within the wider context of a varied literary diet. They’ve also been trained as readers by reading adult fiction to see what the truly extraordinary children’s authors like Tove Jansson are really getting at.
