July 3, 2011

Best morning ever

Our friends Jennie and Deep have a new house within the vicinity of Trinity Bellwoods Park, so that was where we met them this morning for a splendid picnic brunch. It was a brilliant walk in the sunshine, from our house all the way down to Clafouti for the best croissants in Toronto. We had teas and coffees, and sat on a blanket under a tree, and marvelled at the goodness of life in general, in particular on a day like today. And then Harriet went to the playground and the wading pool, while Jennie and I dashed across the street for a browse in Type Books. I bought Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems and It Must Be Tall As A Lighthouse by Tabatha Southey. Jennie bought the Jack Dylan Trinity Bellwoods poster (at right). Then back to the park where we splashed around with Harriet in the pool. She was eventually bribed out of the pool with the promise of ice cream, which dripped until she was covered in it, and by then we were home. And then Harriet slept for three hours, which made this probably the very best day on record. Not a bad way to cap off a weekend of patio sitting, bbqs, and reading a big fat summer book. More about that book later…

July 2, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble

All right, please forgive me, but I’d like to take the short story off its pedestal for just a moment or two. Not to demean it in any way, but rather to point out the utter banality of proclaiming a writer “a master of the short-story form”. If only because I don’t think there is any such thing as “the short story form”, which is of all forms is probably the most elastic. Think about what Ann Beattie has in common with Alice Munro, I guess. Or closer to home, even Sarah Selecky and Jessica Westhead’s stories are altogether different creatures. There is such diversity in short stories, which is the underlying flaw in any argument against them as a form, but it also means that many of us are sputtering critical banality when we try to talk about them in general.

But then, here is another thing…

Margaret Drabble’s complete short stories A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman were written by a writer who has never been called a master of the short story form, mostly because most people don’t know she ever wrote short stories, because she only wrote a handful of them, and because she had been altogether occupied attempting to become master of the novel instead. (And can I just say that more than most contemporary novelists, she has probably come very close?)

But yet there are stories here which are masterful, because this is Margaret Drabble after all and she is so, so good. So the conclusion I take from this is that the short story form isn’t necessarily one requiring fervent devotion, the way some would like us to think it is– I’m referring to the pedastal. The conclusion is that anyone is capable of writing an excellent short story… as long as anyone happens to be Margaret Drabble.

The stories here, which are organized in chronological order, represent the same kind of trajectory evident in the progression of Drabble’s novels. Early stories are very focussed on the individual, interior and immediate, and were very fashionable in a way that hasn’t aged terribly well (but their quality remains evident). Her middle stories become more political with a strong feminist bent, and then the later ones are concerned with the limits of fiction, with stretching these limits, and also with history, and science and questioning. A reader seeking something conventional from later-Drabble will come away disappointed, but with an understanding of what she is trying (though not always managing) to achieve), the reader can appreciate these works’ greatness.

It is difficult to talk about a collection like this, which represents the work of five decades and was never intended to be discussed as a whole. Except to say that it’s a wonderful overview of (and perhaps introduction to?) Margaret Drabble’s work, and a must-read for any of her devotees. That a few of the early stories have a certain unsteadiness, but then the other assume the assurance of writers who, if she has not necessarily mastered the short-story form, has certainly managed to master the story in general.

July 1, 2011

The Vicious Circle Reads: Everytime We Say Goodbye by Jamie Zeppa

There were just four of us at the most recent meeting of The Vicious Circle, held in splendid east-end backyard digs last Wednesday. And one of us had absolutely nothing good to say about Jamie Zeppa’s Every Time We Say Goodbye, and nothing bad to say about it either because she couldn’t be bothered, it wasn’t even worth the effort to hate. The book had done nothing for the fiction ennui she’d been suffering from of late, and so she would not contribute much to our conversation. However, two of us were partial to the book’s beginning, the story of Grace who has a child out of wedlock and must put her life together enough to demonstrate that she’s capable of taking care of him. They liked her free spirit. And then the fourth of us confessed that she did not like Grace’s story at all, that she’d read the first part of novel afraid she’d dislike the novel entire. Because Grace’s “free spirit” was just a way to avoid investing her with actual, complicating human qualities so that she could function as a device for the plot the author had envisioned. (We had this with last month’s book too– these ethereal female characters so that authors don’t even have to bother making them human.)

We were all in agreement that the ending of the book should have been chopped right off– the cult storyline. That the tidy ending was too much, and that the precocious young protagonist was annoying. That perhaps 2/3 of the novel could have been chopped off altogether (editor, where art thou?) and what we would have ended up with is the story of the young boy, the charismatic misfit who learns he’s adopted and acts out, but perhaps he always would have. And nature vs. nurture questions that fascinate, and perhaps the only genuinely complicated character in the book, Dean Turner who’s portrayal as a 14 year old boy about to fall off the rails rang so true. (The fourth of our group kept her mouth shut). This part of the novel demonstrating that Jamie Zeppa can really write.

This is a first novel, but unlike others we’ve read, it’s not Zeppa’s first book, and she’s got years of writing experience and life experience behind her, and this shows in the best part of the book. The structure of the novel itself was faulty, but the parts that were sound are indicative of a writer whose next book could be better, of a writer who’s a member of the “one to watch” club.

And then we started in on the ribaldry again, broke out the pie, and sat there talking and talking until we were talking in the dark, and it was finally time to go home…

June 30, 2011

Our Best Book from this week's library haul: Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley

We had very good luck at the library this week, and so to determine a Best Book was difficult. We were delighted with Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine, which was so lovely that Harriet sat through the whole thing even though it was looong. We liked The House Book by Keith DuQuette, Dog in Boots by Greg Gormley, and An Evening at Alfie’s (but then we love all the Alfie books). Our favourite of all of them, however, has been Cinnamon Baby by Nicola Winstanley, about a brand new baby who cries and cries, until her mother (who is a baker) finally soothes her with the smell of cinnamon bread baking in the oven. A very good book for those in our family who remember a certain baby who once cried, and cried, and also for those of us who are absolutely obsessed with babies (hint: not the parents). And Janice Nadeau’s illustrations are as lovely as the prose, whimsical and yet grounded with familiar objects its readers will know. We particularly like the cat who is holding an umbrella…

June 29, 2011

Jiggety Jig

Some of you who’ve been reading awhile know about the summer of 2007 when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, and grew a gorgeous backyard garden (peppers! tomatoes! cucumber! when a raccoon ate our cantaloupe, and I cried, and watermelon!). We were off to a wonderful start as urban farmers, except the next spring we lost our garden plot when we moved to a new house, our attempts at a pot garden were thwarted by squirrels and shade, we learned we’d had less green thumbs than great soil thanks to the Portuguese gardeners who’d been working away at it for years in our neighbourhood. Anyway,  ever since,  I’ve pretty much only grown impatiens.

What that summer did, however, is turn me onto fresh food like serious. I realized the difference in taste between local food and food trucked in is worth every penny extra. And especially since I’m now feeding a little person, and trying to teach her to appreciate the marvelous flavours the world offers, I make a point of buying the freshest, best-tasting fruit and vegetables available. And this time of year, there is plenty of stuff available. Becuase the season of abundant abundance has begun (and oh my, to imagine August– bursting peaches, corn on the cob, tomatoes, necterines, and blueberries…), and our local market offered up plenty of delicious this week.

We got garlic scapes (so good roasted on the bbq, with a bit of olive oil), hamburger patties, zucchini, strawberries, raspberries, rainbow chard, basil, cheese, and heirloom cherry tomatoes. Also a strawberry rhubarb pie in the freezer made with fruit that I bought last week.

So many wonderful ways to eat the sunshine…

June 29, 2011

Drabbling 2011

I fell in love with Margaret Drabble in 2004, when I was living in Japan and first read The Radiant Way. After that, every trip to Kobe necessitated a trip to Wantage Books so I could pick up a few more battered Penguins with bright orange spines (or, more often, with orange spines now so faded that they’d become yellow). When we left Japan, I insisted on sending all of my battered Drabbles home by surface mail. Before we came to Canada, we spent six weeks in England, and I bought a whole pile of mid-period Margaret Drabble books at various charity shops. I read her latest The Red Queen. And then I’d read all the Drabbles in the entire world, and suddenly new Drabbles were a rare and precious thing.

This doesn’t happen to me so often. Most of the writers I like have huge backlists and are usually dead, and so I have many resources at my disposal when I want to feast upon their oeuvre– new books, used books, libraries, random boxes on curbs. When I want anything, I rarely have to wait for it. I don’t know the anticipation of lining up for things at midnight, whether it be for Harry Potter or an iPad, but sometimes I wish I did.

Because I kind of do know it, actually, and it’s wonderful. I’ve known it since Drabble’s The Sea Lady came out in 2007, then The Pattern in the Carpet in 2009, and now as I’m reading Drabble’s collected stories A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman. New Drabble prose: precious and rare . I savour every bit of it, and even when there’s no new Drabble in my immediate future, I am comforted by knowing that in this very room, Margaret Drabble is busy cooking up more.

June 27, 2011

Wild Libraries I Have Known: Brewster Ladies Library

Hamilton writer (and fellow member of the Barbara Pym Society!) Judy Pollard Smith writes about the Brewster Ladies Library in Brewster, Massachusetts:

I have a Golden Rule about Libraries. They have to carry Barbara Pym, May Sarton and Edith Wharton. If they carry all three I know they’ll have everything else that good libraries should have. And last week at the Brewster Ladies Libary, I counted several of each writer’s novels, neatly shelved and waiting for patrons to tuck them into their wicker baskets.

In 1852, when Brewster was a flourishing Cape village, Misses Sarah Augusta Mayo and Mary Louise Cobb, along with friends, raised enough money to place a shelf of lending books in the home of Captain Mayo on Main Street. Over the years the library has added a garden dripping with rich vegetation, and a fabulous addition. The original house still serves as a hushed reading room with stained glass windows and the original fireplace. If you listen you can hear the rustle of the Misses skirts as they pass by.

There is a cheerful children’s room with aquarium, story times, toys and books. There are author chats, book discussions, holiday family programs (works out well if it rains on your vacation!) and local artist’s displays.

There are 200 Senior Volunteers, four of whom were sitting gluing the pages back into books when I was there. There are cosy wing chairs, free internet and a general feeling of amicability. Denise at the Reference Desk redefines the words “pleasant, helpful, lovely.” And summer visitors can get a card for no charge.

I say, “Up with those two Misses who started their lending shelf in 1852!” They had no idea what shining threads they were weaving into the posterity of this tiny village.

June 26, 2011

On reading and riots

Last week,  a young woman who’d been photographed taking part in the Stanley Cup riots posted an online apology in which she first claimed to take responsibility for her actions, and then indignantly outlined the reasons why blame cast her way was disproportionate: mob mentality, that she’d only committed theft and not arson, the theft was for souvenir purposes, she’d been drunk–nice try, works for rapists– and besides, the whole thing was completely out of character. (I think she may have since had some PR consulting, however. The indignant bits of the post have been removed, and she now reads as genuinely sorry.)

As I read the post last week though, I thought about how much this young woman still had to learn about atonement. That perhaps she was victim of a culture that fools us into thinking public apology trumps being good in the first place. I thought of her remarkable sense of entitlement, how her fierce impression of who she was did not seem at all changed by what she had done. And if she was right, I thought, that her actions that night had indeed been completely out of character, then that was only because she didn’t have any character.

Character, according to Joan Didion (in “On Self-Respect”): “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life.”

I thought about the mob mentality which the girl claimed had swept her right up, and I sort of understood it. Though you’ve got to wonder about the kind of person who gets swept up in a mob in the first place. These are the kinds of people who think being alive is a spectator sport.

And I thought about how much I dislike the part of church services where a minister speaks, and the congregation responds in unison. How even fans at a baseball game singing the national anthem makes me cringe a bit, because in circumstances like this, we’re speaking automatically, not thinking about anything we are saying. It’s a different kind of mob mentality, and one that is benign, but then I start thinking about the Nuremburg Rally, like it’s all a slippery slope. On the rare occasions when I happen to be in a church, I don’t respond when called on. I listen instead. And the droning sound of everyone’s voices is always a little bit terrifying.

Naturally, I am being melodramatic, but I was also thinking about reading. About how reading can be a communal experience, how it’s an exchange between writer and reader, but mostly how the latter retains his individuality. The power of the reader to regard the text with a discerning eye, and to re-read so the text changes as he does. I’m thinking about how reading is the opposite of mob mentality, and that armed with critical skills to apply to the world, a reader is unlikely to be swept away by any such thing.

There are arguments against this, of course. Someone will always mention Mao’s Little Red Book. But I’m still thinking that to read well is to learn to reside inside one’s own head, and I think there’s such tremendous value in that.

June 26, 2011

Words can't bring me down

“YOU, FEMALE LIVING PERSON, ARE RESPONSIBLE… for your self-esteem, and this means not listening to self-esteem pop or anyone who says you’re perfect. Do you hear Jay-fucking-Z rapping to dudes about how they’re perfect just the way they be? Ever heard a Stroke talk about how he’s a beautiful burst of true-coloured fireworks that makes stars pale in comparison and the sky feel blessed by God? No, right? That’s ’cause guys (super-loosely speaking, straight guys) are sanguine enough in their guyness to not require number-one anthems of hyperbolic over-consolation. Nor do they read self-help books about how to “celebrate” their “flaws.” Nor, in my not-limited experience, do wannabe-men talk about “just being themselves,” because, duh. You were born this way. Now strive to be (and I’m saying be, not look) better. Ain’t but one thing that’s gonna hold you down, and that’s the airbrushed, slicked-on attitude that you’re a precious gem of beinghood that doesn’t ever need to change. Changing is, quite obviously, the only way you get to be a better person. Anyone who tells you not to change is someone who doesn’t care if you lose at life. Girl, it’s just human sense. Just like you’re not inferior, you’re also nowhere close to being “perfect,” you’re not even consistently amazing, you definitely need to fix like six things about yourself, and you can stop singing total bullshit into your hairbrush, like, now.” –Sarah Nicole Prickett, “Women’s Responsibilties” (emphasis mine, because I love that final sentence madly)

June 24, 2011

I have had a happy birthday

3+2 candles. Have finally finished reading Great Expectations. Ice cream is the easiest cake in the world to make. We had five kids under three (and their moms) over to eat the ice cream cake this morning, and the kids were delightful. Their moms are some of the best company I know. And now I’m going out for dinner with my little family, tomorrow we’ll celebrate birthdays, Father’s Day and my mom’s retirement with our extended family, and then piece de resistance is Sunday, when we have afternoon tea at the Windsor Arms Hotel. When, I guess, we will finally have to declare my birthday over. But until then…

Happy Weekend!