March 19, 2008
The best things
The best things I’ve found online of late are as follows: a link to a fabulous radio interview with Lois Lowry. Spitzer through the prism of fiction (via Kate). Rona Maynard’s considered response to The Sexual Paradox. The Orange Prize longlist. Smut of my youth: My Sweet Audrina reread. Anne Enright profiled.
March 12, 2008
All print, no demand
Last week in his Globe column, my friend Ivor Tossell wrote about the internet and self-publishing. Putting forth that the internet has begun to eliminate the stigma of vanity presses– “after all, the Internet is a giant vanity press full of self-published content. The spirit of the Web is to put whatever you’ve got out there, and see if it sticks.”
Ivor explores the exciting potential of online print-on-demand– small runs of textbooks, bad love poetry collections just in time for Valentines, keeping obscure books from ever being “out of print”. But, he writes, “At the same time, it means that books will lose their special status. The mere existence of a book with your name on the spine will no longer mean as much; nor will putting out one of your own make you look hopelessly self-absorbed.”
But I am not sure that I agree with him. Perhaps I just get riled at suggestions of the book losing status, but this seems to me one of those cases in which a book isn’t a book, after all. Poetry may be a different story, but I’m thinking in terms of fiction. Though of course I’ve not been round the world on this one, I hold fast to a belief that good books tend to get published– a belief I can hold if only because I read so many of them. And that a published book is the product of significant investment, not only by a writer, but by editors (and more editors, hopefully), and book designers, and art designers, and by publishers at the top who were willing to take the chance on it.
There are exceptions of course, and instances in which print-on-demand is the best route for a writer, but my suspicion is that any book devoid of such investment would be lacking. The lack would show in the look of the book and the reading, and any wannabe author could probably find these instructions a cheaper way to the same results. Economics being the point, which is where Ivor’s analogy between self-published books and blogs break down. While both are probably equally vain, awful and substandard, at least blogs can be accessed for free.
March 10, 2008
Digging Out
Heather Mallick on the fake memoir craze: “The phenomenon is interesting, but the reasons behind it are fascinating. Is it mere animal spirits? Or is it what P.G. Wodehouse called the craze for notoriety, the curse of the modern age?”
Ali Smith on Carson McCullers: “She was capable of reading so deeply that she wouldn’t notice her own house go up in flames around her, as once happened when she was lost in Dostoevsky. Unable as a child to stop reading Katherine Mansfield’s stories when she went to the store for groceries, she carried on as she asked for the goods at the counter, then under the street lamp outside. As a fledgling writer, she was sacked from her day job as a book-keeper for a New York company when the boss found her deep in Proust’s Swann’s Way under the big ledger.” (I am going to try this trick, and hopefully be sacked from my day job too.)
The Monsters of Templeton, which I adored upon reading, is called “a pleasurably surreal cross between The Stone Diaries and Kind Hearts and Coronets” in The Guardian. More on Alan Sillitoe on his 80th. Janice Kulyk Keefer’s wonderful novel The Ladies’ Lending Library is awarded (and you might recall I adored that one too).
And I am very excited because I just put Katrina Onstad’s novel How Happy To Be on hold at the library, as well as Rebecca Rosenblum‘s favourite novel Weetzie Bat, and Mom the Wolfman and Me (for old time’s sake). Now reading Zoe Whittall’s novel Bottle Rocket Hearts.
March 6, 2008
Tired of snow
Did you know I’ve never read Harriet the Spy? I don’t even know why, especially since I had this peculiar obsession with its sequel The Long Secret. Anyway, recent events have inspired me to give Harriet a try at some point soon. And Kate’s post has inspired me to add The Stone Angel to my list of summer rereads. I’m now reading Brighton Rock, and I get excited every time it mentions the hotel where I spent my honeymoon. Yesterday was Allan Sillitoe’s birthday and on why he’s still an angry young man at 80. (Indeed, his Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was one of the most powerful books I read last year.) And I am terribly tired, as well as tired of snow.
UPDATE: Holy Louise Fitzhugh! Lizzie Skurnick on The Long Secret. And then read more on our YA favourites. (This via Kid*Literary).
February 18, 2008
On envy
All right, so when I was twenty-one years old and had a column on the back page of my school newspaper, I once wrote an article about a certain notorious Canadian newspaper columnist which was headlined, “I hate [said newspaper columnist]”. (Please forgive the vagueness; I have no wish to incur the wrath of Google). I didn’t write the headline, and nor in the column did I actually cite any hatred. But I did outline my numerous problems with the principle of this woman’s success, and it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I ever wrote, though I also doubt it was much above the abilities of said columnist either.
The point of this being that I have a particular position, I think, on the loooong thread of comments recently unfolded on Bookninja, in response to a post about columnist (who is still columning her way through life with gusto). My particular position being that of one who did once spend innumerable hours slinging vitriol her way (as many of the commenters do) and then having subsequently grown up.
I know I’ve grown up, not because I suddenly find her columns altogether inspiring, but because I don’t really get off on being vitriolic these days. (I’ve previously acknowledged that she might have grown up a bit too). Because I understand now that she’s paid to do something, and she seems to do it well, even if it irks me. And finally because I understand now that what I felt towards this woman more than anything when I was twenty-one years old was envy.
And of course it was! She was assured, high-profile, well-paid for writing, and I was penning a column on the back of a school newspaper. Of course I couched my envy in technical terms, but I really don’t think I would have directed such reproach towards, say, a celebrity biologist or a supermodel. She was a writer, I wanted to be a writer. She had what I wanted, and life is unfair.
This all comes up on the Bookninja comments– one particularly vitriolic is accused of the deadly sin. He asks, “Why whenever someone is called out for being a public asshole, some ditz invariably appears to accuse people of envy?” Well, I guess I’m the ditz here (and I was on the Zadie Smith post two weeks back too).
It’s because nothing else could make someone that angry about something so incidental. It’s because the people who are so angry are invariably writers themselves (albeit struggling ones). Non-writers don’t give a damn about who gets allotted what column space in the Saturday paper, or which novelist gets what advance. These are just not things that normal people ever care about.
Maybe I am totally wrong, but I doubt it. I know from personal experience what an easy swing envy is to fall into, how comfortable it is to be angry instead of sad. And even if envy is not at the root, still, is the anger doing any good?
I know that for me taking a concerted step away from such mean and greasy feeling was the healthiest thing I’ve ever done, and that the only real solution to any of this is just to write harder. Hating those who’ve got what you want certainly won’t make you any better. There are plenty of words to go around, stories to make your own, and stories to share too.
February 11, 2008
Bookish Updates
Very cool: Bang Crunch is a staff pick at the shop around the corner from here. (Read my review). And my favourite book of 2008 is out now: The Monsters of Templeton gets an absolutely stellar review in The Globe. Just finishing Arlington Park, which I’ve loved. And today I purchased Housekeeping Vs The Dirt.
February 6, 2008
Credible space flight
I’m on the tail end of a short story run– I finished Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien (whose Certainty was one of my favourite books of last year). Now reading Bang Crunch by Neil Smith, now out in paperback. And then back to novels come Saturday morning, as I’ll have airport waiting and flights to pass (dance dance dance). But lately I have found the short story quite delicious– perfect. Which is probably very fitting, as lately I’ve been writing quite a few of my own.
Fabulous things read lately include from Hilary Mantel’s review in the LRB, “Until the idea of space flight became credible, there were no aliens; instead there were green men who hid in the woods.” The Judy Blume profile that Kate was talking about. Boys don’t get it, do they? Bookninja thought the profile went on “a tad lengthily”. And I do wonder if it is girlishness that kept the Guardian Books blog’s celebration of Anne Shirley as one of the few pieces ever there whose comments didn’t descend rapidly into a churlish a*shole contest. Which is not to say that boys are as*holes, but the ones commenting over there usually seem to be. Or commenting most places, actually (but of course, dear readers, not here.)
Also, though I don’t agree with all she says here, I have fallen completely in love with Tabatha Southey. My love for columnist Doug Saunders is much older, but his piece this Saturday comparing today’s terrorists with those of the early ’70s was fascinating.
And also this stellar piece on the Munich air crash 50 years ago in which 8 Manchester United football players were killed, along with the crew members, team supporters, reporters and coaches: “On February 6, 1958, however, the news has only just begun to find the means of spreading itself at speed through the global village. An international network exists, although it is a primitive and unreliable mechanism compared with the digital world of the future.”
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 14, 2008
Sadness and Guilt
My weekend contained best friends at brunches and lunches, perfect chocolate cake, delightful cousins, new shelving units, knitting, reading, jobs done and a bath-to-come. This weekend’s Globe and Mail was terrific. Stephanie Nolen’s “An Inuit Adventure in Timbuktu” is the most amazing piece of journalism I’ve (ever?) come across. (“I wasn’t really intending to read this,” my husband said to me, “but once I started I just couldn’t stop”.) Well-written, beautiful, fascinating, and will make you think of things you’ve never considered before.
And then the books section– G&M Books, what’s happened to you? For you’re becoming sort of wonderful, it’s true. More than an assemblage of watered-down reviews by friends of friends, and paragraph-length excerpts. The 50 Greatest Books Series is terrific, and not just because the first week’s choice is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Oh it’s been done before, I know, but don’t you find that great books can be discussed forever and ever?
And then the reviews themselves, epistolary goodness. Reviewing The Mitford Letters (which I loved), Graham Greene’s letters (which I’m reading), Eleanor Wachtel’s Carol Shields book (which is a treasure), Four Letter Word (which I can’t wait for). It was as though the Books Pages had tapped right into my heart.
I’ve also really enjoyed the latest Vanity Fair, whose lives of rich and famous feature such gems of phrase as, “Robin was an ongoing source of sadness and guilt to Lady Annabel after she allowed him to enter the tigress’s enclosure at Aspinall’s.” As they say, you really couldn’t make this up.
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.
