July 11, 2007
Wholly visible and reliable
What is it when pathetic fallacy functions in reading? Because at the moment I feel like I’m reading Salt Rain in just the right climate: “the raindrops making an endless circuit from earth to clouds, the same water falling again and again for decades.” 80% humidity is probably as close to the Australian rain forest as Toronto ever gets. It’s a funny thing.
So far Salt Rain is a pretty good story, but then you’ve got to feel sorry for any book that has to follow Henry James. Such an unfair pitting, but the narrative voice feels so slight in comparison. Which came to mind last night when I was reading James Wood’s review of Edward P. Jones’ Aunt Hagar’s Children in The London Review of Books. Writes Wood:
These days, God-like authorial omniscience is permitted only if God is a sweet ghost, the kind with whom the residents can peaceably coexist. This is especially true in most contemporary short stories, where the narrator may be wildly unreliable (first person) or reliably invisible (third person), but not wholly visible and reliable. Few younger contemporary writers risk the kind of biblical interference that Muriel Spark hazards, or that V.S. Naipaul practices in A House for Mr. Biswas, in which the narrative eschatologically leaps ahead to inform us of how the characters will end their lives or casually blinks away years at a time: ‘In all, Mr. Biswas lived six years at The Chase, years so squashed by their own boredom and futility that they could be comprehended in one glance.’ Comprehended by whom?
And now, post-James, I am craving omniscience. And have set myself a little challenge: the next story I begin will have a narrator who is not a sweet ghost at all.
(Update: Oh, yes, I looked it up. “eschatology [esk‐ă‐tol‐ŏji], the theological study or artistic representation of the end of the world.”)
July 8, 2007
Store Bought Women
We shall save the island for next weekend then, as plans were thwarted. For some reason Saturday morning we didn’t wake up until eleven, and this morning we woke up to thunder. Fortunately there was plenty of other fun to be had. Friday night we had dinner at the Brown-Smiths (who become “the Smiths” full-stop come January how exciting!), and relished rooftop patio goodness and finally the CN Tower lit up. I hadn’t seen it before. Clearly I neither get out nor look up enough. Yesterday’s highlight was a swim in the pool at Christie Pitts– what a delight! Sweet relief from the humidity. Today was such a Sunday– I read The Portrait of a Lady (nearly done), worked on a new true story full of lies, and Stuart devoured The Raw Shark Texts in one sitting. This weekend we watched Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and adored it. You might remember that both of us read the book and loved it earlier this year. I love when a film can so well complement the book it came from. Two more days until the new Crowded House! And the big news? This weekend I successfully baked a chocolate cake. This has never happened before, as my cakes have variously exploded, disintegrated, failed to bake etc. But this cake is perfect, and easy. I shall not attempt a different recipe ever again. And tea of the week? Pomegranate Green. Yum zum.
July 6, 2007
Destination
My husband is a miracle. I was stomping around the house like a troll and instead of administering a good slap, he bought train tickets (!!!). Yes, come September we’ve got a Montreal mini-break planned, and I am absolutely thrilled. Plan to become a character out of a Hugh MacLennan novel for the occasion (though I am a girl and therefore that would involve inspidity, hmm). Further, in travel fun, British seaside towns gallery. I vote for Brighton, but where is Skegness? I am excited for the weekend. Travel still, albeit closer to home, we plan to take the ferry to Toronto Island.
July 5, 2007
The thing with academics
“‘I’ll tell you what my thing is with academics,’ she continued in a harder tone. ‘They take something that is complete, say a story, that is not material to work with– it’s complete; it is to the writer anyway– and they take it as crude ore that they’re taking out of the ground, to suit some purpose of their own, and I find this outrageous.'” -Mavis Gallant in this month’s Walrus.
July 5, 2007
Stackpole
Maud Newton has pointed me toward Marilynne Robinson’s review of The Maytrees. Katie Roiphe shows that a literary allusion can make self-reflexiveness much more interesting. Outsider top tens (though they missed the obvious choice).
Still reading Portrait of a Lady, and enjoying it, but then my twenty-first century sensibilities makes the nineteenth century read at a dilatory pace. But no, it’s a rich book. I like the American/English dynamic, which I believe would have gone over my head the first time. And Henrietta Stackpole is not so much an inspiration as absolutely absurd, but perhaps that was always the point.
June 28, 2007
New news
Ha, I say. Tina Brown’s new book digested. 50 year past the death of Malcolm Lowry. India Knight remarks brilliantly upon the SalmAn(!) Rushdie affair. And closer to home, our friends Carolyn and Steve got engaged last week. Hooray! And yesterday my summer job was offered to me as a permanent full time position, which I couldn’t refuse because day jobs don’t come better than this. How lucky am I.
June 27, 2007
ReReading
Just days until the Second Great Summer Rereading Project begins, though the rules are slightly different this year. Last year I (almost) exclusively reread from June to August, and found the experience invaluable. If you read as quickly (and therefore sometimes as thoughtlessly) as I tend to, revisiting a book is essential to truly having grasped it. It’s also wonderful to judge your own progress by how a book has changed for you, and it’s fun to find lost objects in the pages (last year I found many cryptic phrases by my own hand, and also a two dollar bill). This year I felt like one month would do for rereading for me, as I had managed to get to so many books last year. But then I realized I’ve got too many new novels to be read, and if I stopped, I might never catch back up again. And so the project will go on for two months, alternating new reads and rereads. I look forward to books I’ve not read in ages, some of the ones which I reread every year, rediscovering forgotten things, and making all kinds of connections. First up is Portrait of a Lady. I am feeling brave.
June 24, 2007
Assemblage
We get all celebratory come June, and today is my birthday. I made a project of keeping it quiet this year, which I thought would be somewhat mature of me and worthy of a woman of twenty-eight years. And so this weekend has been easy and sunshine, and full of the things we like best. We’re just back from brunch and are set for bbq tonight. And with all our celebrations, we’ve got a regular shrine going on at our house. A lovely assemblage of cards here, as well as the two splendid flower arrangements which were such a surprise. The tall, gorgeous wild one was courtesy of my sister, and the other in the magnificent vase was from Bronwyn. They’re not normally side by side, and it’s rather glorious to have flowers all around the house. In none floral news, I received so many lovely things (incl. a Miffy umbrella!), but one in particular I’ve got my nose stuck in. Stuart got me A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard. But then that much goodness is certainly overwhelming, and I have to put it down for a breath every moment or two.
June 14, 2007
Remember when the boys were all electric?
What a good lunch break I had today, dropping out of a brilliant game of catch to read in the grass until the boys were ready to go back in. Sunny with a breeze. Now reading So May Ways to Begin by Jon McGregor, which connects me to the England I’m missing furiously post-vacation*. The book is wonderful so far. I read McGregor’s first novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things a million years ago, and though I enjoyed it and McGregor himself was doing something remarkable, the book wasn’t perfect. Whereas the sense I’m getting so far is that in his second novel, he’s finding his feet. Which is so exciting, and it’s wonderful to think of his career still ahead of him and books books to read. It will be nice to follow along, just as it has been so far.
And I was very happy to see that Madeleine Thien’s Certainty was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Pleased that Heather O’Neill’s much-deserving Lullabies for Little Criminals is on the list as well, but I’m rooting for Certainty. O’Neill’s had plenty of fun already, and Certainty is the very best book I’ve read this year.
*Ah, missing furiously. I listen to BBC Radio1 at work, and every since Monday have heard the songs we listened to as we drove across the North of England with the top down, and never in my life have I felt such nostalgia for a last week.
June 12, 2007
Know more
I hope you got the print edition of The Globe this weekend, because Ali Smith’s “Torontode” wonderful, and I cannot find it online. She writes, “I love wandering about in Toronto. I dream about wandering about in Toronto, which could not be more perfect for the wanderer-about, with its leafiness, its windy wide streets in spring and autumn, the smell of sweetness and coffee on Bloor Street by that big grand hotel opposite the museum, the dainty suddenness of Yorkville tucked down the back of all the big-gun commerce like an afterthought, and especially Queen Street, I love wandering around Queen Street, I nearly saw Baby Spice once on Queen Street…” Of course she did.
Also in the same paper, I was impressed that Rex Murphy managed to connect Edward Causabon to global warming, though I am not so sure that I agree with him. Margaret Atwood on Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski: a magnificent article, because I’d never heard of him, but now I want to know more. And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in The Guardian. Cool thing about that? I got to read it first on paper.
