May 3, 2010

House Post 1

I just finished reading Megan Daum’s new book Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, which I’ll be reviewing later this week. I wanted to read Daum’s book because I adored her collection of essays My Misspent Youth when I read it last year, but also because she was writing about houses– the ones she loved, the ones she’s loathed, the ones that got away. She writes about roommates, renting, renovations and running away. About MLS obsession, unfortunate apartments, and the experience if purchasing a home of her own. I’m obsessed with this stuff, and always have been, and just so you don’t think I’m jumping on the Meghan Daum obsessed with real-estate bandwagon, I offer you the contents of the journal I kept for school in grade 1. Keep in mind that this is most of the entire book, which means that my range of subject matter was awfully limited.

I’ve always loved drawing houses. This is significant because I’ve never much loved drawing anything else, but the basic details of a house were so well within my poor artistic grasp– square windows the t-frames, a door (with maybe a window for a garnish?), obligatory chimney and triangle roof. The possibilities for variation are limitless– curtains, shubbery, smoke in the chimney, shutters, a garage, curving path from the door. I loved illustrations of houses too in the books I read, particularly those of the whole house at work with the fourth wall removed, and you could see the staircases connecting all the floors, and each room fulfilling its own specific purpose, the life going on within it. (For some reason, the most fascinating houses were those in trees– I remember Brambley Hedge, and the Berenstein Bears in particular, and how I could stare at the cross section drawings of these tree houses and actually “play” with them for hours).

Houses in television are so important– I remain obsessed with the exterior shots of houses that always preceded any 1980s/1990s’ sitcom’s return from commercial break. These houses’ interiors too, and the ways in which they didn’t match the outsides, and the rooms we rarely saw (like the Keatons’ elusive dining room), and how the Facts of Life set was as familiar to me as my own living room. How none of these houses ever had actual foyers, and how staircases and such would get moved around between seasons and we just weren’t supposed to notice. Whole TV shows based around domicles– Melrose Place! And houses as extensions of their characters– Casa Walsh, and Dylan’s house (because he lived alone), and Kelly Taylor’s ultra modern nightmare. The layout of the Salingers’ house from Party of Five is indelibly etched upon my mind, and clearly, yes, I spent my teenage years watching terrible television. But still, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at Monica’s apartment from Friends.

But it’s houses in books in particular, which I had to imagine up all by myself. How LM Montgomery wrote about houses– Lantern Hill, Silverbush, Green Gables, Ingleside, New Moon. The English houses– Thornfield Manor, Wuthering Heights, Manderlay, Wildfell Hall. The house Isabel Archer came from in America, with no windows that faced the street, and the Ramsays’ house in To the Lighthouse, Gatsby’s house, Dora Rare’s in The Birth House, Howards End (which was ALL about real estate), Rose’s childhood home in Who Do You Think You Are?, Daisy Stone Goodwill’s house in Ottawa where she raised her family in The Stone Diaries.

Unlike Meghan Daum, however, I don’t own my own home. This is partly because paying a mortgage would necessitate me having a job (heaven forbid), but also because I wouldn’t live in my house anymore. Because I really love my house. Daum writes about the struggle of learning to be at home, to live where are you rather than always looking at where to go next. She thinks ownership is necessary to achieve this, but we’ve managed it without a mortgage. The house is home, and we love it because of and in spite of. The neighbourhood, redolent with blooms at this times of year and trees overhead. The tiles in the kitchen, and the how the sun comes through the kitchen door at lunch time, and how you can only run the washer OR the dryer if you don’t want to blow a fuse, and how the sun comes into the bedroom in late afternoon, and we can see the CN Tower in the winter (though the summer hides it with trees full of leaves), and my wonderful attic bedroom (which makes me sad only because I know every bedroom I ever have after this one will be a disappointment), and the trees and the breeze that keep us cool in the summer, and the huge living room windows, and how Harriet’s door doesn’t shut, and the backwards kitchen taps, and our en-suite that doesn’t have a door, and the deck and our fire escape, and the fireplace, and the wide hallway, the squirrels in the attic and the mice under the floor. I used to think that I wanted to buy a house, but then realized what I really wanted was a new apartment, and after two years in this one, I’ve still got no urge to go.

April 26, 2010

In which a poem is dispensed from a vending machine

Because we live in a wonderful city, the highlight of this afternoon was visiting the poetry vending machine at This Ain’t the Rosedale Public Library, as installed by the Toronto Poetry Vendors. Like all the best vending machines, this one jammed a little bit once I’d put in my twoonie and turned the crank, so I had to stick my hand up the chute to get my poem out, and (imagine if I’d gotten stuck? And they’d had to call the fire department? Because I’d gotten my hand stuck in a poetry vending machine? Now, there‘s a story, if only it weren’t fiction, because) my purchase slipped out easily. My luck of the draw was a poem called “Rhyme Scheme (for Condo Country)” by Jacob McArthur Mooney, and now it’s hanging on my fridge.

And, because I was in a bookstore, I picked up Joy Is So Exhausting by Susan Holbrook, as pitched by Julie Wilson today for Keeping Toronto Reading. (Hear Susan read her collection at Seen Reading; I recommend the poem “Nursery” [second from the end] in particular, mainly because the world needs more breastfeeding lit. and the poem is joyous).

April 24, 2010

On literary cakes

Cake is one of my many weaknesses, actual cake and bookish ones. I’ve really never, ever met a cake I didn’t like (except carrot cake, which I hold passionate feelings about. The cake that should not be called cake. An insult to cakes. If you tell me you’re bringing cake and then you show up with carrot cake, you’ve not only let me down, but you’ve told a lie). I like to bake cakes, I like to eat cakes. I think my favourite is chocolate banana cake, or chocolate-anything cake, or vanilla in a pinch. Fillings can be cream, or fruity, but should probably be icing. Oh, icing. When I was little, I used to eat the icing and leave the cake. Since then I’ve learned (but not entirely).

I like cakes in books too, though they’re often markers of tragedy. The cake Rilla Blythe had to carry in Rilla of Ingleside, and how there was nothing more mortifying. Oh, god– the birthday cake in Raymond Carver’s story “A Small Good Thing”. Could it be the most unbearable cake in fiction? Marian McAlpin’s cannibal cake in The Edible Woman.  Does Carol Shields have a cake?? There must be one, though I can’t think of it. So literary cakes, and there must be a couple more.

Cakeish books have had a way of getting my attention lately. I adored Heather Mallick’s essay collection Cake or Death when it came out a few years ago. I’ve been wanting to read Sloane Crosley’s collection I Was told There’d Be Cake for ages now. I can’t wait to read Sarah Selecky’s story collection This Cake is For the Party when it comes out next month. And just now, when I was searching for books on cake, I discovered that Aimee Bender has a novel coming out in June called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (which could never approach the particular sadness of carrot cake, but I digress). I’ve never read Bender before but a proper cakeish book seems like a particularly good place to start.

And note that you’ve still got about a week to enter Sarah Selecky’s Win a Cake contest. I’ve already entered, and I won’t be sharing if I win.

April 19, 2010

100 Books

Today I finished reading Brown Dwarf by K.D. Miller (glowing review to follow!), which was the 100th book I’ve read since Harriet was born last May 26. The last book I read before she was born was The Children’s Book by AS Byatt, and the first one I read after was A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin (which was the best, best, best book ever to read after having a baby). Also, because my computer died last year in June on my birthday, I lost my cherished list of Books Read Since 2006, so the new list starts with the Laurie Colwin, and it seems like these are the only books I’ve read ever.

Naps are my precious, precious reading time, curled up in my slanket with a cup of tea. The naps tend to be forty minutes exactly, twice a day, but I make the most of them, and for those forty minutes twice a day, my entire life feels pretty indulgent. Back when Harriet napped exclusively on my chest (and when did this end? I can’t remember. The last 100 books have been a blur), I got a lot more reading done because I was immobile and she slept for up to two hours, but the freedom of her crib naps is definitely preferable.

I’ve been surprised to find that hardcovers are easier to read than paperbacks– mainly because I have to hold the paperbacks, and this annoys Harriet when she’s breastfeeding, but hardcovers can be laid down on the couch beside me and stay open, and Harriet is none the wiser. The problem with hardcovers occurs, however, when I’m breastfeeding lying down and I drop one on her head. Though I don’t really breastfeed all that much these days (and when did this happen? How can one thing fade into another so subtly?) so soon this will cease to matter. Though paperbacks will continue to be easier to stuff into the diaper bag…

I’ve been much harder on the books that I’ve read, perhaps because my time is more limited, or because I’m in a surly mood more often than I used to be. Or else, there has just been a proliferation of really shitty books published since May 26, but I’m not convinced that’s the case.

I miss reading in bed. Some Saturdays, you’d find me there until noon. I still read in bed in the evenings, but never for very long because I go to bed too late, trying to stuff an impossible number of things into my evenings. The odd time I get a good chunk of reading-in-bed in, however, I am really profoundly grateful.

Anyway, this is just a post to reassure my former self that everything is really going to be fine. A day can be stretched wide enough to accommodate many things, and books are as portable as babies are. Also, that the books discovered through and with babies open one’s eyes exponentially to the magic of reading, and how amazing it is when you start to see the baby falling in love with reading too.

April 15, 2010

Unremarkable Underpants

“Your mommy hates housework, Your daddy hates housework, I hate housework too. And when you grow up, so will you. Because even if the soap or cleanser or cleaner or powder or paste or wax or bleach, That you use is the very best one, Housework is just no fun.” -Sheldon Harnick (from Free to Be, You and Me)

It has come to my attention that I’ve been mistaken about the label of domestic fiction. This came to my attention when I read Ian McEwen’s Solar, and noticed once again that he’s one of the few male authors whose fiction lives up to the standard set by woman writers (and I write that tongue-in-cheek, of course, but I mean it. My bias is showing.) He totally writes domestic fiction! When I emailed Steven W. Beattie with this outlandish statement, however, he politely set me straight– McEwen writes “psychological fiction” (and what that means exactly [if anything] is something to ponder for another day).

So this is what I’d always considered domestic fiction: stories about how people live and/or work together, the details of ordinary lives, how family members relate (or don’t), stories about parents and children, and what people eat for lunch, and sex for the 1500th time, and the birth of the third child, and what’s in the bedside drawer, and on the shelves in the pantry, and how you get to work, and whether the car is clean or dirty, and if there are balled up kleenexes in the pockets that keeping going through the wash, and who spills what at the breakfast table, and what kind of rug is on the living room floor, and the shower curtain pattern, and unremarkable underpants, what goes on in that room called “the study”, and who gets power of attorney? Sibling rivalry, all things Oedipal, they fuck you up your mom and dad, and marsha, marsha, marsha. And then some. Oh, and babies.

By my definition, Lionel Shriver writes domestic fiction. Carol Shields did it better than anyone. Alice Munro, and Margaret Drabble, and Lorrie Moore’s The Gate at the Stairs. Jonathan Franzen. AS Byatt, most recently in The Children’s Book. Siri Hustvedt in What I Loved. Anne Enright. Everything I’ve ever read by Lisa Moore. John Updike (at least in the one book of his I’ve read, which was Too Far To Go. John Irving. Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse. Rachel Cusk. Rebecca Rosenblum in her stories about Theo and Rae. Margaret Lawrence, particularly in my favourite of hers The Fire Dwellers. And Ian McEwen, at least in Solar, Saturday and A Child in Time.

Basically, if the book was like a peek through a golden window that hadn’t had its curtains drawn, I thought it was domestic fiction. But what if I was wrong? What if I’ve been broadcasting myself as a domestic fiction devotee all this time, but I’ve really meant something different? What if I’ve been mis-applying this label willy-nilly and now everyone thinks I’m an idiot who refuses to read anything not written by Bonnie Burnard. And yes, her The Good House was domestic fiction as I see it, but one might consider that book a very-lesser To the Lighthouse, no? By which I mean, it hardly sets the standard.

I worry that my very gendered approach to reading has also been influenced by this mis-labelling, that I see my domestic fiction as a woman’s domain and a writer like McEwen as the exception, but perhaps things aren’t as divided as I suppose? And how wonderful it would be to suppose such a thing as that. Perhaps it’s time for a re-evaluation (and maybe even not just on my part).

March 22, 2010

Just think of all I'd miss

Ten months of not sleeping for more than three hours at a time are starting to catch up with me, I think, as I am absolutely exhausted and keep falling asleep to wake up moments later unsure of what my name is and where I am. Yawn. I am also wonderfully busy with writing work (which is handy, as I’ve just quit my job and this is what I do for a living now, in addition to prying dustbunnies from the baby’s fist. And, if anyone’s asking, I could take on further assignments at any time). I’m currently reading a book for review  that is good popular fiction, as opposed to the bad literary fiction I was reading just before it (and the former is preferable, don’t you think?). I am making good progress on an essay about Sharon Butala’s wonderful book The Girl in Saskatoon, which should appear in a special issue of Prairie Fire next year. And I’m also working on something for Literature for Life, which should be finished tonight or tomorrow (and I continue to be so pleased with my involvement with this group).

Naturally, all the books I’ve requested from the library came in at the same time, and so I’ve got mountains of reading before me (glee!). I will be picking up Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman this week for the second time (last time I had to return it before I got a chance to read it). After that I am going to read Solar by Ian McEwan (which some most esteemed readers have been raving about on twitter, so I am looking forward). Joan Bodger’s The Crack in the Teacup is after that, and then postcard and other stories by anik see (on the recommendation of Steven W. Beattie). We’ve also got Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger coming at you (which I’ve wanted to read ever since I encountered this review), and Lionel Shriver’s So Much For All That (which Rona Maynard has been mentioning on Twitter [and just so you know, I refuse to acknowledge the word “tweet”]). And another book called The Breakwater House, and probably another book, and then another.

So imagine if I woke up dead tomorrow? Just think of all I’d miss!

March 11, 2010

Year of the tiger

I’m now reading The Tiger in the Tiger Pit by Janette Turner Hospital, which I picked out of cardboard box on the sidewalk about three years ago. (The only other book I’ve read by Hospital was Orpheus Lost in 2007.) This book has been sitting on my shelf for about three years because it’s a manky paperback with a dated cover design, because it’s something I feel I should read but have not really been compelled to do so. And between all the other books I’ve found on sidewalks, and other manky paperbacks I’ve picked up from second-hand booksales, these books are starting to add up. I would like to spend my summer mostly re-reading, and so I’m going to make a point of getting through these books before then. They should yield some surprises– Excellent Women was once one of these novels, and now I am head over heels in love with Barbara Pym.

March 11, 2010

ARM Update

I’ve just received an email update through Friends of the Association for Research on Mothering (see my previous post). Apparently, the response has been incredible, media coverage considerable and Andrea O’Reilly writes, “…that this was accomplished by everyday women reveals that grassroots feminist activism is still very much alive in these so called post-feminist times.” Indeed.

She writes also that they’re determined to keep Demeter Press running, and you can show your support by buying one of their titles at the new Demeter website. May I suggest Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the “Experts”, which the likes of me have called “the very best book on motherhood I have ever read”? It’s worth an entire parenting library, I promise you, for $34.95. (Read my review.)

And I think I am going to get White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood.

March 5, 2010

The Book I Bought Today

Today Harriet and I met up with our friends Alex and Baby Leo to scour Value Village for baby-sized treasures, and then afterwards we went to the Holy Oak Cafe. Where they have a book club, which I didn’t join, but I bought the book they had on sale for it anyway. The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman. Why? Because everybody’s talking about it. Because my friend Rebecca Rosenblum swears by All My Friends Are Superheroes. And because the book was absolutely beautiful. So there was no surprise when I opened the cover and found it was designed by Kelly Hill.

March 4, 2010

franny and zooey by colleen heslin

franny and zooey by colleen heslin, as seen in issue 32.3 of Room Magazine. Image used here with permission of the artist. Because I love it.