September 10, 2012
When this is all over…
The latest in a series of strange objects I’ve found in the road, and actually on the same block as the “another Belfast man doing well” post-it. The story behind this one is even harder to discern, however. It’s actually a broken piece of plaster, painted on one side with a message etched in Sharpie with dubious grammar. I have this feeling it’s leftover from frosh week, as we live close to the university, and in that context, it makes total sense to me. I remember hating frosh week and hating so much about university as an institution, how adulthood was still so elusive, and how the bright spots in my world were a handful of kindred spirits. I probably would have written such a note to any of them, probably not on a piece of broken plaster, but perhaps it was the only surface available. I love how this broken piece of plaster manages to express the same love and longing of The Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Though I wonder how it ended up in the road, if the longing was unrequited, and the plaque’s recipient had had plans to get an apartment with another person altogether…
August 9, 2012
On Inger Ash Wolfe and my career failure as literary sleuth
I thought I’d solved a literary mystery a few weeks back, completely by accident too. It was a Saturday morning and I was sitting at home in my pajamas putting up a new week’s main page at 49thShelf. A new book was out called A Door in the River by the pseudonymous Inger Ash Wolf, and the title seemed familiar to me. I could have sworn it was a song by Crowded House, which was intriguing. (Apparently if you want at least one reader and you want her to be me, you should name your next book Weather With You.) So I googled the title to discover that the Crowded House song I was thinking of was “Hole in the River”, but that was no longer the point once I’d stumbled on this page, a biography of Canadian writer Don Coles on the site “Canadian Poetry Online”.
Inger Ash Wolfe, until more recently than the Saturday morning I’ve been referring to, was the pseudonym of a well-known Canadian literary author, and Door in the River was his/her third Hazel Micallef detective novel. And, as I discovered from the Don Coles biography, “A Door in the River” was also the title of a chapter from an unpublished novel by Don Coles, a chapter that was published in The Tamarack Review in 1964.
A strange coincidence, I figured. What are the odds? Further, Coles and Inger Ash Wolfe share a publisher, which published Coles’ literary novel Doctor Bloom’s Story in 2004. Inger Ash Wolf’s name has its Scandinavian edge, while Coles has spent time living in Denmark and Sweden. And no one else had ever guessed! It was amazing. So obvious, staring us all in the face (as long as we were looking at the Canadian Poetry Online website). I realized that Don Coles was hardly the biggest name in Canadian literary authors, but then all the more reason for the mysterious alter-ego, no? Perhaps Coles had forgotten about the Tamarack Review publication, nearly 50 years ago, when he’d resurrected his long-unpublished novel as a contemporary mystery, and kept the old title. Or maybe it was a clue, that he wanted us to find it. That Don Coles wanted to be found.
Perhaps it was Don Coles himself who’d set me loose that Saturday morning. I got dressed and my family consented to have me leave them, because I was off to solve a literary mystery after all. I am fortunate to have the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library at the end of my street, fortunate to have its opening hours include Saturday mornings in the summer. I was even permitted to enter the stacks, because my part-time instructor status comes with a library card. And so up I went to the 13th floor, which was dark and empty save for two students checking Facebook. When I came to the shelf where The Tamarack Review was stored, the lights switched on above me, almost as though the library knew I was there.
It was even on the shelf, albeit dusty, the issue I needed, from Summer 1964. Don Coles had published as “D.L. Coles”, alongside such notables as Margaret Laurence and George Jonas (and just in case you wondered when I was going to bring all this around to gender, there were two women contributors to eight male). Such a triumph, the book in my hands bringing me one step closer to the mystery’s solution. I was high on the smell of the stacks, bookish redolence I don’t get to experience so much now that I’m out of school. I was imagining that I was Maud Bailey. I wondered if I’d become a little bit famous.
The story itself though didn’t fit so well into the scheme. It was curious that Wolfe’s story of a small down Ontario female police detective had originated with this story of a failed architect in Florence in 1960. Coles’ story was mysterious, surely, full of gaps, but it wasn’t a mystery. I wondered… The key, I decided, would be the door in the river image. In Coles’ story the door is as literal as it is symbolic, a drowned door in a river in Florence, half-submerged, and “around it were squares of masonry and odd chunks of chimney, all that was left of the quartiere vecchio that the tidily retreating Germans had blown into the river with the bridges sixteen years before…”
So you can imagine that I was gutted two weeks ago when Michael Redhill outed himself as Inger Ash Wolfe, completely thwarting my dreams of professional literary sleuthdom. It was doubly frustrating because it was so predictable; Redhill had been suspected of Inger Ash Wolfing for ages. Whereas no one had ever suspected Don Coles, and the 1960s’ Tamarack Review connection. But alas, the answer that would make the best story (written by me, of course) can’t always be the right one.
June 8, 2012
A bouquet of maple leaves
Taking these books back to the library today, and realizing that they do reveal a bit of a pattern in my borrowing habits.
June 5, 2012
Library Owl
While I am quite familiar with the griffin and the lion flanking the entrance to the Lillian H. Smith Library, it was only today that I discovered the owl. It’s on the front of the building toward the west end, sort of hidden behind a sign on the sidewalk and I’d never noticed it before as I charged along the sidewalk, stroller in hand, hurrying home in time for lunch and nap-time. But Harriet has taken to walking, and as a result, our routes along the sidewalk have become much more meandering. Which is kind of annoying, but how brilliant when it yields a treasure. I have no doubt that wandering with Harriet will improve my city sight.
And just when I thought the Lillian H. Smith Library couldn’t be any more wonderful…
More: Joan Bodger and the Lillian H. Smith Library (see final paragraphs)
May 31, 2012
Franklin Stamps
There is not much we love at our house more than we love mail and books (except perhaps for bunting, tea, and train journeys) and it’s always a joy when worlds collide. Yesterday, we picked up a set of Franklin the Turtle stamps at the post office, and we’re in love with them. But they confuse us too, because Harriet thinks they’re stickers and wants to stick them all over her hands and legs, and as for me, I can’t see myself using them anytime soon because then we wouldn’t have them anymore!
More about postal goodness: the joy of postcards.
May 17, 2012
Picture books in which animals are put in jail
This is something I’ve been thinking about for some time. It is by no means a comprehensive list.
Curious George by Margret and HA Rey: Early Curious George was not only an avid cigar smoker, but ends up in jail for making prank calls to the fire department. Being a monkey, he is able to escape from jail with relative ease when a prison guard stands on one end of George’s cot whilst chasing him and lifts the other end up to the window. He floats away in a balloon. Later, he stars in a movie. 
Veronica by Roger Duvoisin: Veronica is a hippo who hates to blend into her herd (whose collective noun is actually “bloat”, but this isn’t part of the text). She gets around her camoflage by escaping to the city, but the gets hauled away for holding up traffic. The jail, unfortunately, barely contains her (speaking of bloat), and they have to bust down the doors to get her out of the place after a sympathetic little old lady comes to her aid and wins her freedom.
Chouchou by Francoise: Chouchou is a little French donkey who leads a simple but pleasant life having tourists pose with her for photographs. One day while provoked, however, she bites a young customer and is thrown in jail. She is only freed once the local children attest to her gentleness, demonstrating to officials that she’s indeed a harmless creature. She is freed in time to officiate at her photographer-owner’s wedding.
May 11, 2012
In which I help solve a literary mystery I unwittingly created
1) Dear Ms. Clare, I recently signed out a copy of Lionel Shriver’s The Post-Birthday World from the Toronto Public Library and found it inscribed, “Kerry Clare, March 2007,” as well as with a hand-written “To Kerry” and an illegible signature on the title page. I did some Googling and saw that you reviewed this book on your blog in March, 2007. So this must be “your” copy of the book, right? I’m just wondering why a library book might have your name in it! And possibly the author’s signature, too?
Hoping you’ll be willing to provide an explanation, I remain
A curious fellow reader (who is, incidentally, enjoying the book very much),
Kyle Miller
Toronto
2) Wow, I gave away an autographed book? That wasn’t so clever. I did see Lionel Shriver at HarbourFront in 2007 and she was wonderful. But I have far too many books in my life, and regularly prune my collection, donating the discards to the Spadina Road Library, which is one of the best places I know. If I’d realized it was autographed, I probably would have kept the book. But then I love a good literary mystery as much as the next guy, and I’m pleased to have been a part of one, so I’m glad I didn’t.
Can I post your message on my blog? My blog is all about literary connections, and this is perfect.
Thanks for writing. I’m glad you’re liking the book. I liked it too, as my review attests.
All the best to you,
Kerry
May 1, 2012
The new bunting is here.
I know you’ve been waiting on tenterhooks, but no longer: the new bunting is here! The bad news about this is that no longer are we awaiting bunting in the post, which is a glorious state of being, but at least we get to have our bunting and hang it too. The new bunting was purchased to replace the old bunting, which I’d handmade from origami paper, scotch-tape and a piece of yarn, and was in a rather sorry state. For the new bunting, we went upscale and outsourced it from one with my craft skills than have I. And I’m totally in love with it, just as expected. No longer do we have shabby bunting to be ashamed of, and the best part of the bunting life, of course, is that each day is a celebration.
January 24, 2012
The sense of a story
Last summer, Los Angeles Times columnist Meaghan Daum wrote about Jaycee Dugard and her story spun as a redemption narrative: “I detect a need on the part of the media to wrap her story up in a bow, to assure the public that she’s OK, to reinforce the central narrative of just about everything we see on TV: Change is possible, maybe even easy; that adversity can be overcome; and that, as Dr. Phil likes to say, there are no victims, only volunteers.” When I read Daum’s piece, I couldn’t help but think of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the expectations that have been foisted upon her since her injuries last January, perhaps perpetuated by the very fact that she’d survived being shot in the face in the first place.
The narrative of her “recovery” though has been so remarkable for its falseness, for its abject denial of the realities of brain injury. Which can’t be wholly blamed on the media, I realize, because Giffords and her publicity team appear to have been much in command of her image over the past year, though I suppose theirs has been a fair response to having to endure what Giffords has in the public eye. If I were Giffords, I would want my audio edited too, my photos carefully posed, my dignity preserved, but this doesn’t change the fact of what many of us can read between the lines: that her story is a tragedy without meaning, without redemption. The miracle is that she’s still here at all, but she’s being pressed to make it more than that.
“Most art is more a matter of finding a few meaningful moments in an utterly plotless flow,” writes Rick Salutin in a recent column “Why the storytelling model doesn’t work.” He notes how inapplicable is story as a model in most kinds of culture, let alone as a metaphor for “Life Itself”. That we usually demand more than mere story from our greatest art, and yet journalists are still required to fit their own work into tidy story-sized packages (and tied with Meaghan Daum’s bow), distorting how the rest of us perceive the world around us.
All of which is true, of course, which doesn’t sit terribly well with me who has lived life so far turned to the novel in place of religion. How to reconcile this? Would the novel telling of Gabrielle Giffords’ story diverge sharply from the shape of a Diane Sawyer interview? Though I keep thinking that maybe story isn’t what Salutin has a problem with per se, but rather that he has a narrow definition of what story is, of its mereness. That perhaps the problem remains, as ever, with the tidy ending, with satisfying that yearning for redemption, both of which are actually a failure to acknowledge the way that story really works, and Life Itself for that matter. (And the simplest solution to this problem is the short story, but you already knew that.)
Penelope Lively’s latest novel How It All Began makes the case for story as Life Itself. Story, her characters remark, is forward-motion, one thing after another, driven by the reader who wants to see what happens next. “Narrative. But a contrivance– a clever contrivance if successful.” Real life, her characters acknowledge, is different from “the unruly world in which we have to live. One’s unreliable progress.” And yet Lively is putting these words in the mouths of her fictional characters to make the point that the novel (and art in general) is actually capable of assuming the shape of reality. That in both life and in art, we must make our way by investing happenstance with meaning after the fact. That story is simultaneously more simple and more complex than how we commonly perceive it, but that it’s only a useful tool when we understand that it’s a tool after all.
Update: I’m reading Skippy Dies, and just came across the passage, “…stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn’t make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to leave out anything that doesn’t fit. And often that is quite a lot.” But as with the Lively book, here is a novel that creates that sense of messy chaos. I don’t think it’s time to give up on story just yet.
Update to update: It occurs to me that I’m 550 pages into Skippy Dies, and that if there is no redemption by the book’s end, I am going to be very dissatisfied. That 600 pages of messy chaos is a mindfuck, and I really do feel like there has to be some kind of pay-off. So perhaps I shouldn’t situate myself too far away from the Dr. Phil-loving masses.
January 22, 2012
"Loving the mayor is a bit like that": Rosemary Aubert's Firebrand
Rosemary Aubert’s Firebrand is a Harlequin SuperRomance published in 1986, and that I discovered it via a footnote in Amy Lavender Harris’s Imagining Toronto is to give you an indication that Harris’ book is chock-full of fascinating stuff. As is Firebrand, actually, which I would bet is the only Harlequin ever whose romantic lead has a painting of William Lyon MacKenzie on his office wall. This is a Toronto book through and through, dedicated, “To T.O, I love you,” and it shows.
It’s the story of Jenn McDonald, unassuming librarian (naturally), but she’s an unassuming librarian at the Municipal Affairs Library at Toronto City Hall (which, under our current city government, has been made to no longer exist). Which gives her a good vantage point from which to observe the city’s mayor Mike Massey (whose not one of those Masseys, the novel tells us), who Jenn remembers from the days when he was a rebellious young alderman and the two of them spent a memorable night together locked up in a police station after a protest.
When they meet again while watching the ice-skaters at Nathan Phillips Square, their original spark is rekindled and Jenn and Mike are drawn to one another. She is baffled by his desire, a man so far out of her league, but it turns out that he’s attracted to her down-to-earth qualities and her spirit, and as they argue about developing Toronto’s portlands and the preservation of the Leslie Street Spit, he can see that she’s a woman who can more than hold her own.
But loving the mayor isn’t all posh cars and white roses. It’s hard to love a man who’s already married to his job, and who is used to commanding all those around him. The path to true love doesn’t quite run smooth, and its bumps include a fierce debate on city council about Toronto police officers being armed with machine guns (Mike Massey is firmly against; his stance is unpopular at a time when officers are being shot with Uzis), Jenn receiving death threats, a custody battle with Mike’s ex-wife, and Jenn’s unresolved feelings with her husband. All this against a fabulous Toronto backdrop: first dates in Chinatown, their homes on either side of the Don Valley (with the footpath between them), Jenn shopping at the Room at Simpsons, galas at the King Edward, a protest near OCAD against arts cuts (including those funding The Friendly Giant, we are subtly told), a stroll together through the Moore Park Ravine, a political rally at the Palais Royal. Michael Ondaatje might own the literary Bloor Street Viaduct, but he’s got nothing on Rosemary Aubert for the rest of town.
It’s really quite a good book. This surprised me, though there are some who will rush to tell me that we all write off Harlequins too quickly, but I’m still pretty sure they’re not my thing. Because this book is a Harlequin, there are passages like, “Whispering, caressing, clutching, they continued, until Mike’s large, warm, immensely masculine body covered Jenn’s completely. Until the soft, shifting eagerness of her beneath him brought him to the brink of ecstasy. He asked. She answered yes. Oh yes.”
And then later in the mayor’s office: “Before her, all six-foot-four of him glowing in the soft window light, stood Mike, fully and gloriously a man. Hungry for her with a hunger that was obvious in every part of his huge body.” Which makes “300 pounds of fun” seem kind of paltry, no?
So there’s that, but aside from huge bodies, Aubert paints the city of Toronto with a vibrant specificity, and anyone who cares about our city’s literature (and municipal politics!) should definitely check out this book. The very best part of Amy Lavender Harris’ Imagining Toronto is its challenge of every prejudice as to what Toronto Literature comprises– the canon is more surprising than you ever imagined. And how fortunate we are that Harris’ book turns up Firebrand, which is out of print, hardly known, and hasn’t a single copy held by the Toronto Public Library. I would urge you to pick up your used copy on Amazon for a penny like I did while there are still copies out there to be had.
