March 21, 2008
The Postal Phantoms I have known
I’ve just finished reading The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear, which I have absolutely fallen in love with. I’ll fit in a review during my empty tomorrow, but at the moment I want to write a bit about something I read in the “PS…” section of the book (and may I point out how always interesting is the “PS content” in these books).
Maclear writes about the “postal phantom” at her house, the inspiration for her novel– “Mr. Szabo– a man who, for whatever reason, never got around to having his mail redirected.” And of course I know about postal phantoms, though I’d never considered them in such specific terms, never thought of these people as a collective, and it hadn’t occurred to me that such figures could even be given a name.
My postal phantoms as follows: there was Robin Stephenson, in my university apartment on Dundas Street. I can’t remember if it was her or a roommate that received Scientology paraphernalia, but Robin had forgotten to change her address when she finished university, and was always getting alumni notices from the U of T Geography Department.
No phantom, I believe, will ever be as prolific as Mrs. Sandra M. Spencer from our house in Nottingham. We’d suspected she’d died, as she’d left all her cake tins behind, and death is as good an excuse as any for leaving no forwarding address. She owed a ton of council tax, going back a few years, received regular notices for mammograms, and often was summoned to court to come and testify against her son. Note, we didn’t start opening the mail until about after a year, after we’d called the council to tell them she wasn’t there anymore, and they said they’d keep sending her bills anyway, because it was her last known address (which also goes part way towards explaining why there’s no longer a British Empire).
We received a lot of mail for the Moniz family here at our current address, as well for Amanda Hickman (who is on the list of numerous charities) and Michael Popowich (and in case he googles himself, Michael– McGill University is desperate to get in touch with you.) Each of these are characters, wholly present in their own peculiar contexts, which is their absence. And we practically know them, we do, though the foundation of this knowledge is the fact we never ever will.
Further, what about the bizarre idea that somewhere out there, somebody’s postal phantom is you.
March 21, 2008
Remembering Days
The book I’m reading at the moment, which I’m absolutely in love with, contains that quotation, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Which I don’t buy actually, and I never have, because like Albert from Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I “collect good days the way other people collected coins or sets of postcards.” I can remember so many glorious ones, right down to very details, and though today wasn’t exactly glorious, it was definitely very fine.
The finest thing about today being happiness arriving in the post the very week I decide to stop looking for it there. And isn’t there something about a surprise package when you’re expecting nothing? The surprise turned out to be from Sayaka (who has a blog, by the way). She’s our friend from Japan, she stayed with us for a few marvelous days last summer, and now she’s seen fit to surprise me with a gift that blends two of my favourite things: tea and Miffy. Indeed, I do miss living in a land where Miffy kitchenware was so easy to to come by, but it’s nice of Sayaka to ease my yearning. How positively splendid.
In other fortune, another friend gave us our wedding present a few weeks ago, nearly three years late but perfectly on time actually, as it was an HBC giftcard, and I have to buy wares for our new apartment. So I spent the early part of this evening buying new towels and bathroom accessories, and it was fun to spend spend spend (though not so fun to carry the bags home). And then I spent two hours with Rebecca, which is some of the best company I know.
The list goes on: that work has been good of late, but that today I left early, we move in a week and a half and a farmer’s market is starting up in our new neighbourhood, our Easter treats from our English Mum and Dad, going home for the weekend to the Canadian ones, that tomorrow we’re doing nothing at all, the stack of good books to be read, the one that I’m reading, that March sunshine, and that all I want at the moment is a cheese sandwich, and in a matter of moments I will have one.
February 28, 2008
And then I wrote to Jean
“The letter was from me. When I wrote it I was on a train with Gwenny on my way to Paris… Outside there was nothing but rocks and dust. A man with stormy edges was telling me the story of his life. He was only six when I interrupted him.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I must write a letter. Do you have any paper?’
‘And he turned out to be a paper merchant with suitcases filled with paper, papyrus, root paper, paper made from crushed beetles, moist paper, blotting, thin parchment, petal notelets, envelopes made from industrial waste, fried and boiled paper. He displayed his wares on the train seat and I picked a strange mottled shade of handmade parchment which was the most expensive of the range.
And then I wrote to Jean…” –Julia Darling, Crocodile Soup
January 24, 2008
Cleistogamous
New words I’m fond of are “jactitation”, “lintel”, “spoor”, and “cleistogamous”. Now reading Sister Crazy. Also quite pleased that the latest The New Quarterly has arrived in the mail. And it’s about time I read AL Kennedy, I think.
January 23, 2008
Four Letter Word by Knelman and Porter
Whatever it is that’s just a bit thrilling about despair, it’s the very reason “Long Long Time” has been running through my head for about fifteen years. Linda Ronstadt warbling the entire spectrum of human emotion, with no intention of cheering up anytime soon, and though it’s enough to make tears pool at the brim of your eye, you’re not going to cry. As another song goes, “It’s only love, and that is all… but it’s so hard…”
Only love. As wrong as the most empty conjunction I’ve ever read: “mere happiness.” How much its writer mustn’t know, for there is nothing “mere” about happiness. And there is also nothing “only” about love, but who wishes to be “mere” or “only” anyway? With just a simple injection of despair (“living in the memory of a love that never was”) love is elevated to the stuff of epic drama, or at the very least the stuff of cheesy seventies pop lyrics. Warble warble warble.
Which is not to say that Four Letter Word is the stuff of pop lyrics, warbled or otherwise. Rather than this book has set me thinking about love, what we make of it. And what happens to love when we set it down in letters, here letters in the fictional: an ingenious premise for an anthology. By some absolutely brilliant writers, including some of my favourites, and a dust jacket to die for (I wish you could see the spine and how it’s printed like a whole packet of different sized and coloured letters, all gathered by a ribbon thank you Kelly Hill).
These fictional love letters were collected by editors Rosalind Porter and Joshua Knelman in order to “resurrect [the] dying custom [of the love letter] and to remind us of how seductive words are.” Indeed, these letters manage to seduce us with entire stories, communicated in one voice with limited perspective, often with second-person narration, some in just mere paragraphs. What a literary feat, I think, for what results is not a gimmick, epistolary indulgence, but storied stories, with all the voice, character and plot one would look for in such a thing.
And that it’s not “only love” and very rarely “mere happiness” which run through these stories is unsurprising, considering their form. As romantic as love letter might be, they’re indeed a sign of something gone wrong, for shouldn’t lovers be together? Kept apart by distance, death or fate would bring inevitable despair. Peter Behrens’ soldier writing from the front, traumatized by France 1944. Nick Laid’s Ruth writing to her deceased father: “Do not come back to us. Do not come back.” Joseph Boyden’s husband looking for his wife in post-Katrina New Orleans: “I didn’t want to let go of your hand.”
Certainly there is darkness here, letters by vulnerable children with no idea of the burdens they bear. Letters which we, the readers, know will inevitably go unsent, unreceived or unread. But there is considerable humour too, even amongst the despair. From a lovelorn chimp to “Miss Primatologist Lady in the Bush Sometimes”. Lionel Shriver’s Alisha’s emails, increasingly erratic as she’s not responded to. Tessa Brown’s letters in which a lover scorned critiques her boyfriend’s phone messages are disturbingly amusing (with footnotes).
Interesting that the stories here which come closest to “mere happiness” are not written to people at all: James Robertson’s ode to hillwalking, Jan Morris’s song to her house. The always-impressive Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie does write a letter tinged by possibility rather than loss, and driven by an undercurrent of joy.
Four Letter Word is useful on a variety of levels: being definitely readable, time slipping by like the letters were true and addressed to you. Inspiring thoughts of what love means, today and for always. Providing exposure to a variety of contemporary writers from a variety of locales and even (!!) some in translation. And being completely unlike any anthology I’ve ever encountered before, a whimsical exercise resulting in a collection with literary solidity and truth.
January 11, 2008
Wonderful Things
There is turmoil at our house, as a new computer arrived (not for me). Therefore boxes of boxes are everywhere, and no one’s washed up from dinner. Also the phone was just fixed after three days of deadness, so there was catching up to do. The wind outside is blowing, and I’m afraid the house might fall down. But still, there are links.
Some wonderful DGR posts of late: discovering Grace Paley, on the Reading Cure. At the Guardian Books Blog, on enjoying arcane how-to books (which reminded me that I still have to-be-read my copy of How To Run Your Home Without Help). Jeffrey Eugenides on his new book (the anthology of love stories My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, which I cannot wait to read). And please, Chelsea C. vs. D. Huckabee.
And today’s G&M Facts and Arguments essay was amazing: “Nearly Lost at Sea”. About a love letter, returned to sender. “Inside the envelope was a typewritten note from the Returned Letter Section: ‘It is regretted that the enclosed air letter has been damaged by water in transit.” Handwritten across the note in blue ink was the explanation: “Salvaged mail from Comet crash off Elba.’ The love letter John had written had sunk to the bottom of the sea.”
Speaking of love letters: how brilliant is this, Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters. And of course, I knew as soon I glimpsed it: designed by Kelly Hill.
January 9, 2008
In for the night
Apart from the inevitable phone bill (which was smaller than we thought) and two (2) rejections (which, though of course are nothing like acceptances, I try to tell myself are better than nothing [except in those rare circumstances in which no news is good news]), the post delivered me a cheque from Ye Olde Governmente, another cheque for writing (!!), AND a big fat London Review of Books, with Alan Bennett inside.
January 2, 2008
On A Celibate Season
Carol Shields writes to Eleanor Wachtel: “Mail in Montjouvent is always welcome. (On the odd mail-less day the postman knocks and gives me his condolences.)” From Random Illuminations.
I just finished reading A Celibate Season, and enjoyed it so much, to my relief. For I hadn’t been sure: this was co-authored with Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, as well being an epistolary novel (and I don’t think I’d read such a thing since Heloise and Abelard in an undergrad survey course). Also that it was the last Carol Shields novel I’d left to read, which has me less sad than I thought I’d be, for I am grateful instead that I got to read it at all.
I enjoyed A Celibate Season as much as I’ve loved any book by Carol Shields, which is a lot, and it was especially interesting to read in light of A Memoir of Friendship, which was the collection of Shields’s and Howard’s real-life letters. Friends and letters seem to have been twin stars in Shields’s life, and how wonderful to see their intersection in both these books.
December 27, 2007
When we're both in the same room
“I do like presents. No particular thing, just stuff for me you know. I think what I like best about gifts, letters, anything in the mail, really, is that it is evidence that someone thought about me when I wasn’t around. Something about the image of a loved one standing in a card shop, glaring at one of those Shoebox-silliness cards, thinking really hard–‘Would RR laugh at this?’ That just kills me.”– Rebecca Rosenblum
December 20, 2007
Compounded indulgence
“Mrs Simpson took a sharp knife from the drawer, slit the top of the envelope, stealthy as a spy, and withdrew the flimsy sheets. She paused before unfolding them to fetch a bar of chocolate from the fridge, then settled down to the compounded indulgence of devouring sweets and words at once”. –Claire Messud, When the World was Steady
