October 14, 2010

On Bolting, and Bolters

One good thing about rereading What Maisie Knew was considering the character of Maisie’s mother, Ida Farange, a rather loathsome woman, and not just because she abandons her daughter after manipulating her or ignoring her for years. At one point, they refer to her “bolting”, to her being a “bolter”. Which made me think of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, which is the story of the Radlett family as narrated by their cousin Fanny. Fanny lives with her cousins because her parents have abandoned her as Maisie’s do (though in a far more light-hearted fashion), and her mother is referred to as “The Bolter”.

Perhaps Bolters were a blip in maternal history, a brief early twentieth century phenomenon amongst the English upper classes. (There is a biography called The Bolter as well, of someone called Idina Sackville). But I think we could actually do with a bit more literary bolting these days, mothers who take off without compunction. It was suggested to me that Alice Munro wrote about bolters, but we decided it didn’t count– her boltings always required sacrifice, but bolting doesn’t, by definition.

It occurred to me early on in motherhood why a mother might leave her children. (Not that I’d leave my children, but I have to say that, don’t I?). Because motherhood is all-or-nothing, overwhelmingly so, and if you discovered you just weren’t cut out for it, that you were terrible at it, and if you had financial means to flee, well then, wouldn’t you have to?

This is all assuming that there are women who just don’t “take” to motherhood, which I think is a healthy idea to be considered because of the number of times it turns out to be true. And I kind of admire the stance of the bolters, who don’t take to motherhood but don’t have to pretend that they do. They don’t have to run away and pretend they’re all torn up about it either. Which isn’t to say that the kids are all right, but maybe they are, or at least they will be, and the bolters don’t care regardless.

Now I’m not advocating bolting itself, though yes, undoubtedly, I’m glamourizing it. But I think these kinds of characters are positive figures in what they represent, in their freedom and their shamelessness. Adding the “bolter” to maternal archetypes, I think, would elevate maternity in general. Those of us who don’t care to bolt might be better mothers for carrying a bit of their spirit within us.

Update: See comment below re. Mrs. Brown who bolted from Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. And I just now thought of the mother from Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Replace Your Name, who had her own reasons.

October 14, 2010

On rereading What Maisie Knew

Well, I’ve been defeated. I reread Henry James’ What Maisie Knew, all prepared for that smug “I was so much stupider then, I’m starter than that now” feeling I often receive when I revisit a book I read in university. Because I remember really disliking Maisie when I read it back in Major British Novels or some such second year course, and how in our prof’s lecture notes, every fifth word was “ambiguous”, and I don’t know if I’d ever heard that word before, but by the end of the lecture I hated it. But I’m a better reader now, and I like everything else by Henry James I’ve ever read, and I read this after Room by Emma Donoghue to compare the children’s perspectives. But it just didn’t do it for me.

Of course, it’s not you, it’s me, I say to What Maisie Knew. And I really mean it– somewhere beneath these many-claused sentences, and multi-paged paragraphs, and so much explaining of just what I lost track, there is a really good novel here. The story of a young girl whose parents divorce and use her as a weapon against the other, and then the web is further tangled by step-parents, and other lovers, and a love-sick governess who refuses to do what she is told.

How much does Maisie know? Probably more than she’s meant to, but then I really don’t know. This novel required far more work than I was willing to offer in order to extract just what exactly was going on. Skip half a paragraph, and you’re lost, but reading the character carefully, word-for-word, I was still lost, so what was the point?

This is probably a really remarkable book, but I’m tired and have a head-cold.

October 14, 2010

Fervent Guardians

“Those of us who read and say we want to spread the love of reading, much of the time we’d rather be commentators, interpreters, analysts, critics, biographers, exegetes of works silenced by our pious respect for their greatness. Imprisoned in the fortress of our expertise, the language of books is replaced by our own language. Instead of letting the intelligence of stories speak for us, we turn to our own intelligence and talk for the stories. We have stopped being the messengers of literature, and turned into the fervent guardians of a temple whose miracles we praise with the very words that close its doors. You must read! You must read!“– Daniel Pennac, Better Than Life: Secrets of Reading

October 13, 2010

Vicious Circle reads: The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

The Vicious Circle assembled in The Junction last night to talk about Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver. Some of us had read Jansson before, and copies of Fair Play and The Summer Book were passed around. Most us really liked this novel, one of us thought it was okay. Based on Jansson’s photo in The Summer Book, we thought she resembled a Moomin a little bit. And then we talked about the Moomins, which none of us were really familiar with, but everyone we’ve overheard who is familiar had talked in terms that were only glowing.

One of us thought the prose was strange. Not bad, but just weird, but maybe it was the translation? It was noted that Thomas Teal had apparently kept his translation very close to the original. The narrator switched from first person to third person in a such a subtle way you could almost miss it, and this subtlely was the case with everything in the book. Was Katri narrating the third-person sections? We could argue either way. It’s odd discussion a book where everything leads one in a circle.

Some of us really liked the shut-in, isolated, wintry, in-from-the-cold sense that abounded through the story. We wondered which of the two main characters had triumphed in the end– who was the “true deceiver”? Impossible to say, and we argued both ways (and then we ate some dops). We commented on the gaps in the prose, in the narrative– how oddly the perspectives were filtered. Very unconventional, and allowing for such surprising glimpses. We wondered where Katri’s intentions had come from, what had gone on before the novel began. How had she garnered such respect in the village? What were her feelings for Edvard, and what had been the feeling she felt when she changed her mind about what she had told him. We speculated, but were never sure.

Katri was always questioning, doubting, second-guessing her own intentions. Was there good reason for this? Did she really believe in her own honesty, or was she just telling herself, and what’s the difference? When she confesses to Anna at the end that she hadn’t been cheated, is Katri confessing her own deceptions, or is she finally deceiving now having realized the consequences of her brutality.

We were fortunate to have a children’s illustrator in our midst, and so we talked about Jansson’s portrayal of Anna whose job was the same. The same as Jansson’s too of course, and we note the games she played with autobiography in her works (this insight via Ali Smith in her wonderful introduction). Why did Anna stop drawing the rabbits, but it was suggested that the problem had been the rabbits’ cutesiness, that with their flowers they were not honest. That after years and years of drawing the same thing, maybe Anna wanted to try something different. We remarked upon the incredible merchendization of cartoon characters, which led us to Hello Kitty douche.

Somewhere along here, off the rails, there was a joke about radial tires and blowjobs. We went and helped ourselves to more guacamole. Broke out the sweets– YUM: apple pie. The cats came and went as we chatted. Our numbers were fewer, as some of us were elsewhere preparing to give birth, or else working. We kept bringing it back to Tove though– what was it like to live in a small village? Lesbian undertones? And then we talked about Stieg Larrson. Among other things. And it was, unsurprisingly, a most wonderful evening.

Other Books mentioned during our meeting:

• The Summer Book and Fair Play by Tove Jansson
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Turtle Diary, novel by Russell Hoban (which became a movie)
• Franklin’s Thanksgiving
• Kiss the Joy as It Flies by Sheree Fitch
• Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading by Lizzie Skurnick
• anything about The Mitfords
• Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock
• As For Me and My House by Sinclair Ross
• A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez
• Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

October 12, 2010

Thankful

This weekend, I covered our family chalkboard (which we like to call “The Real Twitter”, even with hashtags) with a list of things we’re thankful for, and with more than 140 characters, I still ran out of space. Another thing I’m thankful for, that I didn’t include, however, is that I’m not usually reticent about conveying my thanks to deserving parties either, but I’ve decided to start taking it one step further. Whenever I intend to send a grateful email in the next while, I’m going to write an actual thank you note instead and put it in the post. I’m a prolific thank-you note writer anyway, but usually in response to gifts or dinners, but how about, “Thank you for writing that story I read last night”, “Thank you for hosting us all in your magical apartment last Thursday evening”, “Thank you for your marvelous company on Friday afternoon”? An actual object in the world as testament to my gratitude, and I think I like that. So I think that this will be my plan, until we go bankrupt from too many postage stamps.

October 11, 2010

Room by Emma Donoghue

I am one of the legion of readers who initially found the premise of Emma Donoghue’s Room off-putting. Not because it was horrifying, a woman kidnapped and kept in an impenetrable cell ala Fritzl, who bears a son and has to protect and care for him within such a perilous universe. No, I thought it would be boring, two people, four walls, and the perspective of a five year-old to boot. Until other readers started reading it, and I’d never heard anyone short of raving about it, and I was promised I wouldn’t be sorry. I wasn’t. Room was gripping, fascinating and lovely, and I am awfully glad I changed my mind.

Like We Need to Talk About Kevin, however, it is a book that’s rarely separated from the issues it confronts. Yes, Room posits fascinating questions about motherhood and childhood, but I think extensive focus on these ideas undermines Room‘s literary merit. Because Emma Donoghue has created, with Jack, a point of view that never falters, that remains true. A point of view whose truth is unexpected and surprising, uncomfortable and horrifying. Through Jack’s eyes, the world is truly seen anew, and not just for Jack, but for the reader too. His unquestioning understanding that Room is the entire universe, inhabited also by Bed, Floor, and Eggsnake, and then his mother reveals that there is a world Outside, and now Jack’s faith in the order of things is shattered.

Jack and Ma’s escape from Room is terrifying, and I had to keep from skipping ahead to see that everything would turn out fine (and even when I knew that it would, I had to skip ahead again. To double check). This is plot, this is the stuff, purely unputdownable. Though the whole book has that effect– perhaps it’s the deceptive simplicity of the prose that makes one think there would be no harm in reading just a little bit more, and then they realize they’ve been reading for hours.

It’s true that the plot-drive relents in the book’s final half, but I was so fascinated by Jack’s perspective of the world Outside that I continued to be as gripped as ever. To Jack, Room was a kind of sanctuary, and now freedom in the world outside is full of threats– dogs, and rain, and UV rays, and social constraints that make no sense. It’s a strange dichotomy, amplified by Donoghue’s decision to make Jack’s extended family in the outside world well-meaning and essentially good. And yet even so, relations are impossible to navigate.

So to the issues… The overwhelming sense one gets from Jack’s existence in Room is how well taken care of he is, in spite of. How savvy his mother has been at keeping him safe, making him smart, about exeeding their own circumstantial limitations. She is a hero, is Ma, and Jack is immune to ill because of her love for him. And then when he gets out into the world, there are problems Ma had never considered. “I thought he’d be all right,” Ma says at one point, surprised at how much the force of her love and protection hasn’t compensated for everything– Jack doesn’t know how to climb stairs, how to make small talk, how to play, he is a afraid that the wind might knock him over. He has to wear a face mask for fear of exposure to germs that he’s never encountered in his life.

All of which says fascinating things to me– ultimately that a mother’s love (or a parent’s love) only goes so far, and a child needs more than four walls can give. And yet at the same time, Room gives a fascinating portrayal of how much a parent constructs a child’s universe, the weight of such responsibility.

Room was criticized elsewhere for failing to take on the politics of breastfeeding, of extended breastfeeding in particular. Jack is still breastfed when he and Ma are freed, and Aimee Bender wonders why Donoghue doesn’t use “breast-feeding as an effective symbol for that initial, primal bond between mother and child, a bond that has to evolve over time.” To which I’d answer that Donoghue’s narrator doesn’t think in terms of symbols, moreover that the extended breastfeeding was probably a purely practical matter anyway– a way for Ma to ensure that her son’s meagre diet is well-supplemented. And that their breastfeeding relationship ultimately ends the way most breastfeeding relationships do– quietly, without ceremony. I admire Donoghue’s matter-of-factness in regards to it.

All that notwithstanding, though, I do worry that critical emphasis on the Room‘s portrayal of the mother/child bond will be further off-putting for other readers, the male ones in particular. Because I think Room is a book up anybody’s alley, and Jack’s perspective would be illuminating for anyone. Though beyond the stunning literary achievement of his perspective (which is no small thing, of course), I wonder if ultimately this is not a book of enormous depth; unlike We Need to Talk About Kevin, for example, Room would not be a very different book the second time around. However, let this point not undermine its considerable force as we encounter it the first time through.

October 10, 2010

"…never have I seen such generosity, passion and commitment"

October 8, 2010

The world in fiction

Last night I was part of a discussion with a group of women whose collective brilliance could light up the universe, and we were talking about using the real world in our writing, fiction or non-fiction. (We were also drinking champagne, eating cake, and delicious cheese, but that is another story.) Everybody had such fascinating input, about the ethics of using other people’s stories, about writing historical fiction or speculative fiction, and using the details but not conspicuously. About writing memoir, and something about fiction being the truth told twice. And then someone brought up Carol Shields’ Small Ceremonies, which was so perfect, being about this very topic, and also because for about two days, I’ve been dying for somebody to talk about Small Ceremonies with.

Anyway, I thought about the one story I’d ever done substantial research for, which was set in 1976 when the CN Tower first opened. I have long been fascinated by my impression of the CN Tower as a permanent fixture on the horizon, as old as the universe, or at least as old as the TD Tower, but then to realize that it’s only three years older than I am (but then, don’t we all envision ourselves too as well as permanent fixtures on some horizon, old as the universe?). That, not entirely literally, Torontonians went to bed one morning and woke up to a tower in the sky.

So that was what my story was about, and I spoke to people who remembered the tower’s construction, and read a 1970s’ Toronto guidebook, and read every archived newspaper article I could find on the subject. I went through the CHUM charts to find out what was playing on the radio (an aside: these were all available online until about two years ago, when CHUM was bought by CTV). I read Toronto fiction from that time, and spent a lot of time thinking about the view from our friends’ high rise apartment at Yonge and St. Clair. We were also so poor at this point in time that a research trip up the tower itself required budgeting for weeks, but we did it on one cold February day in 2006. I’d brought a falling apart book about Toronto from the library so we could compare the views.

Geographic or historical detail, as someone noted last night, can function as a scaffold. We seemed to also conclude that broad strokes work best in convincing historical fiction, and it reminded of what Alison Pick said in our interview: that the essential goal of historical fiction is that its details be grounded in time and place, but the feel and its characters be entirely contemporary. That a scaffold has to come down once the building is completed. That a writer has to ground herself in the details of time and place, and then forget it in order to get the story written. That the detail of where a story takes place, or what is playing on the car radio, or what kind of car it is– that none of this is important, unless it functions in the story at a deeper, symbolic or metaphoric level. And in terms of place, I thought of how Claudia Dey did this so well with Parkdale in Stunt, and Elise Moser with Montreal in Because I Have Loved and Hidden It. The broad strokes with which Hilary Mantel evoked the Tudors inWolf Hall. How with the best novels we’ve read in our book club (Shirley Jackson, Muriel Spark), we’ve remarked that these stories are ageless, could have taken place in any time. And perhaps a similar spirit needs to be striven for in historical fiction too, in any fiction. Spirit can’t come from detail for the sake of detail– everything has to mean something. That the song on the car radio is a kind of cheating, and it shows.

My CN Tower story was a mess, a catalogue of facts and coordinates. I haven’t tried to set anything in the past since, but I’m thinking about it now, as a kind of challenge. A detail-less historical short story– I wonder. And I will keep in mind a point somebody made last night– that people themselves are the centre of our stories, and people themselves don’t change that much. Reflecting this morning upon this, I remembered how my CN Tower view was nearly identical to the pictures in my battered book. Perhaps this means something more than itself, and I’ll try to keep it in mind.

October 7, 2010

Two factors

Harriet is ill! And I am reading Emma Donoghue’s Room! These two factors conspiring to eat up all my time, take away my sleep, and make me incredibly conscious of how everything I say and do shapes my child’s world.

October 5, 2010

Lionel Shriver and Carol Shields

I never plan to read Lionel Shriver and Carol Shields, one right after another, but it keeps happening, and every time it does, it underlines to me how much their work has in common. Not tone, of course– you don’t have to tell me twice. But they’re always writing about the same things, about intimacy, domesticity, about love, and marriage and relationships. The parallels are really uncanny– I think I read The Post-Birthday World and The Republic of Love together before, and the similarities blew me away. Now I’m rereading Small Ceremonies (Shields’ first novel, and stay tuned for me singing madly about just what a fantastic novel this is) after We Need to Talk About Kevin, and though two novels might never have been more different, they share many of the same pre-occupations. As demonstrated by the following two excerpts:

“My fantasy house would be old, Victorian. If it had to be big it would be high, three stories and an attic, full of nooks and crannies whose original purpose had grown obsolete– slave quarters and tackle rooms, root cellars and smokehouses, dumbwaiters and widow’s walks. As house that was falling to bits, that dripped history as it dropped slates,that cried out for fiddly Saturday repairs to its rickety balustrade, while the fragrant waft of pies cooling on counters drifted upstairs. I’d furnish it with secondhand sofas whose floral upholstery was faded and frayed, garage-sale drapes with tasselled tiebacks, ornate mahogany sideboards with speckled looking glass. Beside the porch swing, struggling geraniums would spindle out of an old tin milking pail. No one would frame our ragged quilts or auction them off as rare early American patterns worth thousands; we’d throw them on the bed and wear them out. Like wool gathering lint, the house would seem to accommodate junk of its own accord: a bicycle with worn brake shoes and a flat tire; straight-backs whose dowel rods need regluing; an old corner cabinet of good wood but painted a hideous bright blue, which I keep saying I’m going to strip down and never do.”

“The house that I once held half-shaped in my head was old, a nook-and-cranny house with turrets and lovely sensuous lips of gingerbread, a night before Christmas house, bought for a song and priceless on today’s market. Hung with the work of Quebec weavers, an eclectic composition of Swedish and Canadiana. Tasteful but offhand. A stufy, beamed, for Martin and a workroom, sunny, for me. Studious corners where children might sit and sip their souls in pools of filtered light. A garden drunk with roses, criss-crossed with paths, moist, shady, secret.”