September 12, 2007
Adoring Rosie
Rosie Little mania abounds. You might remember the rave reviews when I read it recently– and I’m not the only one. My magnificent Jennie has reported adoring it, and wishes that Rosie were her friend. And what company she’s in, as Heather Mallick read it also, reporting ” The stories are odd and witty, but have an undercurrent of pure terror. Young women will love this book, but after reading it, they may not want to go outside.”
September 11, 2007
A goat with one horn sawed off
It is very nearly that time of year, better than Christmas. Indeed The Victoria College Book Sale is just around the corner, and tomorrow I am taking a suitcase full of my own books to donate. You should do the same if you are able.
I was saddened to hear of Madeleine L’Engle’s recent death. I will join the chorus of people singing about being profoundly affected by her work, in my childhood and after. I remember turning to A Swiftly Tilting Planet six years ago tomorrow, and the comfort it delivered me then. In Laurel Snyder’s Salon Tribute, she writes “To compare L’Engle’s universe to the stuff cluttering the post-Harry Potter marketplace is to compare a unicorn to a goat with one horn sawed off: real enchantment standing beside something that approximates felt hat and white rabbit magic.”
And Bookninja’s feature on empathy— it’s wonderful. Says Barbara Gowdy, ” For me, as both a writer and reader, it’s necessary maybe not to like the main character but to believe that he or she can be redeemed, whether or not that turns out to be the case”.
September 11, 2007
Blowing off dust
Today was exciting for a number of reasons: that I woke up and sat down to spend the morning working on my manuscript, which has been living under my bed since April. Had to blow off a layer of dust, but it was easy to get started, and strange to be affected by words I’d written so long ago they’ve ceased to belong to me. My goal is to finish this final revision by the end of this year, and then what’s next would, quite naturally, come with the future. Further exciting, was lunch with my old dear friend Erin Sanko who I’ve not seen in at least five years. Nice to have it feel like no time had passed, and her boyfriend is lovely. (I was also happy to hear that she had so much enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun). I spent the afternoon shopping, for skirts, shoes, and turtleneck sweaters. Also for a new backpack, and any number of things to replace hideousness. And then I had my first visit to Ben McNally Books, which was a marvelous experience, and I had the good fortune of picking up a copy of Jonathan Garfinkel’s new book Ambivalence. It’s a beautiful book, and I am very happy for him. I also look quite forward to reading it.
September 6, 2007
BiblioTravel
A chance google search led me to BiblioTravel. Do you know it? Plug in the name of a place, and BiblioTravel will generate a list of books which take place there. How cool. Peterborough brings up Battered Soles, and I’m intrigued. Montreal’s list is epic, naturally, though the lists are incomplete, I’ve found. Thankfully you can add and amend, in a wiki styly. I intend to explore much further.
September 5, 2007
New Season
My second summer of rereading proved as fulfilling as the first, though it was not as concentrated. But it was a joy to revisit classics: The Portrait of a Lady and To the Lighthouse, which I’d previously just read as a student, but it was something different to approach them on my own terms. My regular rereads: Slouching Toward Bethlehem and Unless were better than they’d ever been. Books I’d read but forgotten, and certainly not because they were forgettable: The Summer Book, and The Blind Assassin. I have a theory that you’ve never really been anywhere until you’ve been there at least twice, and I think this might very well be the case with books.
But now it is September, and new books are blooming. I’ve been binge reading lately– what else are holiday Mondays for if not a book in a day? Looking forward to the long train journey this weekend to get some more books under my belt. Oh, there are some wonderful books coming out this Fall, so stay tuned here and I’ll recommend the best ones. Watch for my review of Richard B. Wright’s October very soon. I am now reading Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, who I’ve never read before.
After reading under restrictions for the last two months, being able to read so freely feels deliciously licentious.
September 3, 2007
To be read
Just finished Mister Pip, and now on to October. In both books characters are reading Great Expectations. The universe appears to be sending up flares then, and I found a copy of Great Expectations at my mom’s. Officially to be read.
August 31, 2007
The Source
Now reading the Man-Booker longlisted Mister Pip. DGR enjoyed it in July, and reviews have been rave. I am enjoying the story so far, and believe the rest will fulfill. It’s yet another book, however, that I am reading without knowledge of the source material– last, of course, was when I read The Seven Sisters without The Aeneid. Mister Pip, obviously, references Great Expectations, which I’ve never read. And so I suppose that now I have to…
August 29, 2007
Senseless destruction
Disemboweled remains of a book were spotted on the corner of Harbord and Spadina this morning, torn pages blowing in the breeze. A thorough investigation managed to retrieve the book’s title and copyright page at the scene, identifying said book as The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper by Douglas Fetherling, published in Toronto by Oxford University Press in 1990. Witnesses to the aftermath of this violence reported being “sickened” by the senseless destruction, the book evidently torn to pieces in a fit of rage, page by page stripped from the spine. Front and back covers could not be found. The Rise of the Canadian Newspaper will probably be missed by Neil Reynolds, to whom its dedication page was inscribed.
August 29, 2007
Incendiary vs. harmonic
Now reading If Today Be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar, the story of a Parsi woman from Bombay who must decide whether or not she should move to be with her son in America after the death of her husband. And it’s strange reading this, so soon after Digging to America by Anne Tyler, and not so long after Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake too. Of course I realize that a Parsi family, an Iranian family, and a Bengali family are each entirely separate entities, but what is interesting is the way that together these books might suggest otherwise, forming what seems to be a generic perspective of the American immigrant experience.
In each of these books a widowed woman somewhat acclimatized to America must approach it as someplace new following the loss of her husband. She must grapple with the American-ness of her beloved only son, and find her place within his family and his new life. Son must struggle between his mother and his wife, and their differing values. A grandchild will be the subject of misplaced adoration and expectations. The woman and her husband will have been upstanding, as immigrants themselves working hard and succeeding. Their son will live in an even nicer neighbourhood in Ohio, Baltimore or Massachusetts, and have two cars in the garage. He will sometimes question the American dream, and his mother will wonder if it was all worth it in the end.
The same-ness is phenomenal. Each of these stories has its own merit (and the Tyler and Lahiri in particular are amazing books), but it is almost as though American immigrant fiction has fallen into that proverbial melting pot.
Further, to compare it to the similar British literature I can think of off the top of my head– White Teeth and Brick Lane. These novels are so much more gritty and their narratives take such incendiary turns, in great contrast to the bird-chirping harmony almost audible in the American books. What does this tell us about each country then? Are the stories really so different, or is it just in how they’re told? Do these works function in respective British or American literary traditions?
I may have to sleep on this one. Or you could tell me?
August 28, 2007
Nothing on earth can equal
Curtis is moving to Ireland, and he wants us to come visit him. Last night he told us that in the new flat “we’ll have a spare bedroom”. And there was something in his “we”– I had to get down To the Lighthouse and get Virginia Woolf to explain:
“‘We went to look for Minta’s brooch,’ he said, sitting down by her. ‘We’ — that was enough. She knew from the effort, the rise his voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time he had said ‘we’. ‘We’ did this, ‘we’ did that. They’ll say that all their lives, she thought…”
It was the second time in the past while that I’ve needed Virginia Woolf to sum up love– in June, you might remember, I read this passage from The Voyage Out at Bronwyn’s wedding, and nothing has ever been more appropriate. And Mrs. Ramsay was able to describe what made Curtis’s “we” so significant, far more succinctly than I ever could have. I love the relevance of VW’s words, not long from a century after they were written. A room full of ordinary people, ordinary conversation on a Sunday night, and that Virginia Woolf mattered there. It surprises people, I think, what she knew about love. What she knew about joy.
What then, for the whole story? How do we reconcile that beautiful passage from The Voyage Out with what happened to Rachel? Paul Rayley’s “we” with what happened to “the Rayleys”? With what happened to Mrs. Ramsay? Should the inevitable darkness in Woolf’s work necessarily obliterate the light? I like to think not. Yes, Woolf is dangerous out of context, but there is nothing wrong with pushing the darkness back sometimes– this is what life is. This is what hope is.
Hope is moving away to Ireland on the trail of a girl, and even knowing what I know, twentieth century aside and all, I look forward to hearing Curtis say “we” all our lives. To Bronwyn and Alex, and the refreshingly solid ordinariness of their love, whose power can bring tears to my eyes. It is seeing the world all around us, and venturing forth anyway, and hope is, surely, as Woolf knew, a most heroic act.
