May 14, 2009
The Pattern in the Carpet by Margaret Drabble
Oh, but I do wish A.S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble would settle that petty spat about the tea set. You see, they’d have so much to talk about. I just finished reading Drabble’s latest book The Pattern in the Carpet, whose reviewer in The Telegraph was quite correct with “What a puzzle: Margaret Drabble’s memoir cum history of the jigsaw cum paean to her rather dull aunt shouldn’t really work. But somehow, in the end, it seduces.” It did. I’d also listened to the Guardian podcast of an excerpt from the beginning of the book, and so the whole of the book I read in her voice.
It was a very strange book, the kind they don’t let you write unless you’ve been publishing for nearly fifty years and they indulge you. Such permissiveness a good thing, because the book is fascinating. (I’m not sure it will come out in Canada. It is a very English book. Estimates of a limited audience here might be correct, but then again they may not be). The book, of course, is a puzzle in itself (though if I were English, I’d call it a “jigsaw”), made up of memoir, family history, and the history of the jigsaw puzzle. Which comes to encompass a history of games, of amusements and pastimes. (And why does pastime not have two s’s, I wonder, but anyway…) Also a history of childhood, and children’s literature too. Told most unsentimentally, and Drabble admits she’s never had much of an interest in childhood, or explored it in her fiction. But she’s looking backwards now, in light of her own age and her husband’s illness, perhaps because, she admits, she dreads of looking forward.
But The Pattern in the Carpet is hardly a personal indulgence. Drabble was indulged instead in being permitted to publish a book that “shouldn’t work”, whose pieces do not fit together neatly, and together form a whole that is quite difficult to explain/contain. Entire chapters as digressions, anecdotes fitted in for no other reason than that they’re interesting, moving from jigsaws to mosaics, to the city as a jigsaw, production and marketing of children’s games, and reconstruction of ruins, and the “Teas with Hovis” cups and saucers from her auntie’s bed and breakfast. Something called a warming pan, and how Drabble’s mother liked electric blankets, but for Drabble herself the novelty wore off and she sticks with hot water bottles now.
I loved it. Now I’m pretty partial to Margaret Drabble anyway, and have readily embraced her admittedly strange more recent novels that might have put her long-time readers off. But I suspect these readers will find the new book appealing as well, even if they lack interest in the subject matter (and I really couldn’t have cared less about jigsaw puzzles before this book. Now I’m just a little bit inspired). The book is a veritable curiosity shop, scattered with sharp thinking, wonderful questions, and Drabble’s meticulous prose.
But yes, she needs to talk to her sister. Byatt also has a new book out, The Children’s Book, which I was resisting. I don’t love A.S. with the same lack of reserve with which I love Drabble, plus The Children’s Book is 600+ pages and I’m having a baby in a week and a half. The book might just be heavier than the baby, but then I read this review at Dovegreyreader Scribbles, and more thoughts upon the novel over at Crooked House. And now I simply must have it, baby or not. Particularly because of how it relates to The Pattern in the Carpet, to childhood as an invention and its literature. I’m looking forward to it. And maternity leave pre-baby has brought on the return of my ability to focus, and so this whole “reading” idea is not as idiotic as it might seem in the time being.
May 13, 2009
How the future's done
Lyrics from the baby’s current favourite song (or at least song that brings on the most squirms) suggests to me that he/she will fit in fine around here: “I got a man to stick it out/ And make a home from a rented house/ And we’ll collect the moments one by one/ I guess that’s how the future’s done.”
April 26, 2009
Road Trip to Don Mills
I am going to be totally honest– I arrived with heightened expectations and they weren’t entirely met. I’d heard so many good things about McNally Robinson Booksellers out west that I couldn’t miss checking out their first Ontario location, way out in the Don Mills countryside. So we drove out there this morning, me and two bookish ladies, and my husband who couldn’t remember why he’d signed up for the adventure. We arrived at the shopping mall, which was strange and confusing, with people on segways zipping about, and other people on stilts. The sun was bright and the sky was blue, and I was comfortable wearing a tank top– a gorgeous day. We found the bookstore quickly, and hurried our way inside.
The space was great, the shop was crowded, I loved the light, and the trees, and two whole floors of books. It would have been nice, however, if staff hadn’t responded to every question with a shrug and, “We’ve just opened,” or if they’d had a copy of the book I’d come to buy, or if Stuart hadn’t been convinced he was actually in a Chapters. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but dancing elephants might have been involved, and they weren’t there.
They did have Rebecca’s book, however, right beside the dirty avocado book, much to our 
delight. Lots of other books from small presses too, and the children’s section was wonderful, and we explored food books with great enthusiasm. I ended up getting The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer, and Wheels on the Go for a friend of ours who’s turning two. And afterwards we went out for a suburban type meal at a chain restaurant, which was tremendous fun in the land of parking lots and fountains.
March 25, 2009
Strange and sordid
I’ve spent the last few evenings so outrageously tired that I was seeing double, and the mornings drinking excessive amounts of orange juice. I’d self-diagnosed with diabetes, but now I think I just happen to be cranky and craving vitamin C. I no longer feel like sitting at a desk to type, but when I lie down on my back, I’m unable to breathe, and I don’t yet know how to type on my side. Baby is currently kicking my computer, having spent the entire day pummeling me from the inside, which makes me happy actually, nothing to worry about. I slept better last night (except for strange sordid dreams involving Tom Selleck and fondue), and feel tonight I might not actually lapse into a coma at 9:00. Also it is raining=spring.
I am now reading Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist. Her books are never actually so enjoyable, and always take me an age to get done, but they’re worthwhile and so various. Last night I finished reading Doubting Yourself to the Bone by Thomas Trofimuk, as recommended by Melanie. It was a beautiful, strange book, a poet’s book, I think, which might not be everybody’s thing, but I liked it, and didn’t even get bothered that it was mostly in second person. I think she’s right that this is one that leaves you thinking for a while. And now I’ve got a zillion other books lined up on my to-be-read shelf, and I really ought to step up because my wee kicky baby’s due date is just two months away.
March 19, 2009
Get Excited
Via BoingBoing, which came to my attention via Stu. Though we could all use a stiff upper lip, of course, this strikes me as much more fun.
March 16, 2009
What I've learned about children's books
Behold, The Baby’s library, which is a work in progress but well underway. The “nursery” is beginning to come together, which is wonderful, but I continue to be more concerned with the library than any other aspect of it. Perhaps because it means I get to focus on BOOKS rather than the solid terrifying fact of a baby coming to live at our house in just ten weeks. (Eeek. That’s ages away, right?)
In less frightening news in children’s literature, I am finding my experience at The Children’s Book Bank quite fascinating. I remember last December at the Art Matters “A Passion for Reading” panel that my co-panelist, author/illustrator Genevieve Cote provoked a bit of controversy by suggesting that in her experience (through school visits), boys and girls liked different kinds of books. Which is not the sort of thing some people like to hear, but I find it to be true with adult boys and girls, so why not with the wee ones?
I wish it weren’t particularly so, but the little boys I read with at the Book Bank are riveted by books about trucks, and the girls love ones about princesses and fairies. Neither book in either genre even has to be good or interesting, but these kids know what they like. When the girls get older, the fairy fixation continues with a rather wretched series called The Rainbow Magic Fairies, which probably isn’t any worse than The Babysitters Club and Sleepover Friends, which I was devoted to at that age. They all like novelized versions of TV shows and movies. Jillian Jiggs and Robert Munsch go over as well as they did when I was little. (Yesterday a little boy informed me that he knew Robert Munsch. “Really?” I asked. “How do you know him?” “Well, I have his books,” he said.)
Kids have become accustomed to really amazing and dynamic illustrations in books, which means that classic stories like Make Way for Ducklings or Blueberries for Sal often get picked over. Of Eric Carle, no one can get enough. Dora The Explorer books are more educational tools than books, but they’re less obnoxious than I thought they’d be. Surprisingly, Barbie books aren’t atrocious, but they’re all a little bit dumb. Madeleine still has her fans, and Curious George is timeless.
March 16, 2009
Catalogues
Like most people who’ve spent time working in libraries, I’ve got a thing about cataloguing. And it’s alpha-order for me as a rule, which you’d know if you’ve ever seen my own library, or my CD collection. I get a bit horrified when I hear about libraries ordered by size or colour, for example, which might be gorgeous to see, but how do you ever find anything? It also makes the books less books than decor, which is gross. The colour chaos of my own alphabetized spines are pretty mesmerizing anyway.
But today I had two overlapping experiences of cataloguing/classification that were quite remarkable. First, we went back to Good Egg in Kensington Market (because the weather was sunny and warm, and evidently most of the city thought the Market was a good destination.) My husband has grown very tired of having to venture in there over and over again to visit “my book”, Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros. (It was actually her other book Falling Cloudberries that I originally coveted, but I decided Apples for Jam would be more practical, and it was almost just as beautiful.) I wasn’t about to just buy it, as it’s quite expensive, but having had enough of lingering in bookstores (he enjoys it less than I do, and it was the second one today), Stuart yanked the copy out of loving arms, and proceeded to the till. So now I own the book of dreams (this week), and can die now.
I’ve written about Good Egg before, how it’s a treasure trove. The books obviously selected with care, but the method of selection not always immediately obvious. That the children’s section contains Alligator Pie, The Carrot Seed, No I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, and sushi yuppie baby board books. In the window, Omnivore’s Dilemma (obvious) was on display beside Wetlands (for the avocado photo on the cover, I presume). Just the widest interpretation of “food books” imaginable, and I love it.
I love also Apples for Jam, just as much as I thought I would. And how brilliant that the whole book is organized, not by ingredients, or courses, or kinds of dishes, but by colour. Each chapter a colour, except the last two which are “multi-coloured” and”stripes”. So that strawberry sorbet is featured alongside tomato lasagne, beetroot gnocchi with baked ham and cheese bread pudding, white risotto in spinach broth and lemon rice pudding with roasted peaches. The whole book is a rainbow, and the order makes sense. I look forward to trying these recipes, and then the eating. Yum.
March 11, 2009
The thoroughly unregulated state of Criticism
In what will be my last mention of Canada Reads (for this year), let me say that I’m glad that The Book of Negroes won. Though I don’t think it was a great novel– in fact, it was the most failed of the lot, I think, in those elusive “novelistic terms”– but it is a good book, one I enjoyed reading. I don’t know that it’s the novel all of Canada should read, but it’s one I think most people will like reading, which is certainly something. Though I would definitely be interested in the future to see a panel less composed of books that Canada has read already.
How wonderful though, the sound of readers reading. Ordinary-ish readers talking about books the way that people do, provoking similar conversations that must have continued out in waves. Some of the panelists more astute at literary discussion than others, but the mix was interesting. A spotlight, perhaps, on the kinds of bookish conversations going on all the time in this country amongst people who read. Showing people who might talk books less how to do so, opening up new avenues for readers who might be inclined to just look at books one way (though I think the panel actually could have done a lot more of this. Too many questions were stock.)
I was interested to read a commenter on one blog questioning the use value of this kind of discourse though, wondering why Canada Reads didn’t use “trained critics” instead of celebrities. And the “trained critic” thing really caught my attention, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way before. How do you become one of those? What is the system of accreditation? As much as free reign of the common reader in the blogosphere is terrifying, what should we make of the thoroughly unregulated state of Criticism?
Though they have editors, of course, but often these people have no formal accreditation either. Often the critics become critics because the editors are their friends, which makes the whole thing about as formal as a blogroll. Academic background might be considered a requirement, but I’m sure there’s a whole league of critics without one who think such a lack is a kind of merit. That you can’t really understand a book until you’ve worked for a while in a logging camp. Maybe no one’s a critic until they’ve read Northrop Frye (which I haven’t done, except for The Educated Imagination, which was quite short). Point being, there is a certain self-appointedness inherent in literary criticism, a lack of a foundation to the trade, and if I were a literary critic, I’d always be terrified of somebody lurking around every corner demanding to see my papers.
Because for all talk of the problems of democratization, I find the fallibility of criticism no less troubling. Common readers on the internet, at least, (should) lay no claim to authority, but critics do, and they are just as often wrong. I’m thinking about William Arthur Deacon’s limited vantage ground, and the writer who has just realized that an older critic was probably right years ago to infuriatingly tell him he was just too young to “get” Anita Brookner. And what about Henry James’ assessment that Middlemarch “sets a limit to the development of the old-fashioned English novel”?
I just know that I was feeling terribly sick last October, and every single book I encountered was tainted as a result, and I hated most of them desperately. Unfairly too, and mightn’t critics have months like that, or at least days? And wouldn’t it be a lot of pressure for one to have to pretend one is convinced one is always right? When, I wonder, does the doubt creep in. Because it should. Critics are only human.
I write all this not to undermine literary criticism, and not as a blogger’s rant about who owns the books really. I actually am an accredited admirer of literary criticism in that I have a Masters degree, in addition to subscriptions to Canadian Notes and Queries AND The London Review of Books, so there. But the idea of the “trained critic” did frame the whole “online literary discourse is in the hands of the masses” hysteria in a brand new way for me, which is one that I think is worth a ponder.
March 6, 2009
What would you bring?
All week I’ve been contemplating the inevitable– whatever will I decide to bring to the table the day CBC calls me up and asks me to be a panelist on Canada Reads? I’ve thought about this even more than I’ve thought about my Academy Awards acceptance speech, which is saying something. In addition to the fact that I’m delusional.
I’m really convinced that there is merit in celebrating underread “classics”, and that new books indeed could do with a boost, but we just don’t know enough about how they’d stand up yet. My longish shortlist would probably include The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Lawrence, The Watch that Ends the Night by Hugh MacLennan, Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle. Of more recent books, perhaps Muriella Pent by Russell Smith, Alligator by Lisa Moore, Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner, The Way the Crow Flies by Anne-Marie MacDonald, or The Republic of Love by Carol Shields.
No doubt you strongly disagree with my picks. But wouldn’t it be boring if you didn’t?
