May 12, 2009
Magazine as Muse
My friend Rebecca Rosenblum (you know her, with a book just nominated for the Danuta Gleed Award, and she’s off to Japan this very day) has a wonderful piece in the current issue of The New Quarterly. “Stuff They Wrote” is part of TNQ’s “Magazine as Muse” feature, in which writers credit magazines that inspired them to start writing down words, and even sharing them. Rebecca has written an ode to edgy teen magazine Sassy, and its “staffers” in particular. She writes, “Sassy was like a novel in a fundamental way. It had characters. Sassy brought that always-lurking I-perspective of journalism to the centre. The writers didn’t take over the stories (usually) but they didn’t elide themselves, either.”
Sassy was a world in which Rebecca could imagine herself, the writers bridging that gap between her life and theirs, suggesting limitless possibilities for the kind of woman girls could grow up to be. And when Sassy became swallowed up by a corporate behemoth, and a strange zombie Sassy emerged, Rebecca knew enough to know the difference, and had confidence enough to put pen to letter-to-editor to say so. It wasn’t too long after that Rebecca had her first story published, and she wouldn’t dismiss the idea of some connection there.
Confession: I didn’t like Sassy. Sassy scared me. Their rules were too loose, they went too far, they used questionable language, and were touting something I found close to anarchy (ie SEX!). As a young teenager, I thought the wide world was generally terrifying, and was convinced that drugs, drinks and dyed hair were signs of slips towards hell. Beware of scruffy boys with cigarettes who might dare to sport an earring. (And tuck your shirt in, young man). Mine was a puritanism born of fear of the unknown, as most puritanisms usually are.
So I had a subscription to Seventeen. Writes Rebecca, “Seventeen was imperative-voiced: columns and service pieces about how often you should brush your hair and how you might get into a bad crowd if you didn’t listen to your real feelings. Seventeen wasn’t like a story; it was like a textbook, only there were Eye Makeup and French-Kissing classes instead of Math and Geography.”
Oh, but some of us were in dire need of schooling. In a world so incredibly chaotic (with dances, and lockers, and gym class– oh my!), a textbook offered some assurance, and I followed mine quite dutifully. Back to School must-haves, awesome locker organizers, lipstick colours, and the best kind of Caboodle. I learned that it was okay to like Evan Dando (which was something upon which Sassy and Seventeen concurred). Sassy preached that you could be whoever you wanted, but I didn’t know who that was yet. I preferred the message of Seventeen instead– play the game right, and I just might fit in.
Not that I did fit in. I had oily hair and pulled my pants up to my armpits, but one issue of Seventeen in particular suggested that I might have half a chance. It was the issue from April 1993, whose date I only remember because I had it with me on a family vacation to Florida when I was in grade eight. It was the one single issue that I even remember, as not so much a muse as a re-framing of my world view, or at least of my place in it.
This was a new re-formatted Seventeen. A significant departure– I’ve found a record of old covers on line, and March 1993 was neon-hued, Andrew Shue playing volleyball. And then came April, with its muted-toned Earth Day theme. Shouting, Save the Earth, Girl! Which was cool. I don’t remember noticing the model’s hideous eyebrows then, but I liked her funky rings and hat. Inside, I remember a feature on slam-poetry (though it might well have been slam-poetry-inspired Bohemian fashions, but alas…) headlined, “Poetry/ is such a thing now.” Groovy, man. I wanted a beret. Someone wrote a piece about how amazing were the Beatles lyrics (citing, “She’s the kind of girl you want so much she makes you sorry…”) in comparison with whatever hit of the day was out then, and it was the first time I’d ever seen The Beatles (to whom I was obsessively devoted, so much that I was forbidden to speak of them at the dinner table because I was so incredibly boring) noted in contemporary pop culture. Poetry too, which I fancied myself a writer of. Book recommendations included one called Mrs. Dalloway— something like “the cool story of a single day in the life of a woman getting ready for a party!” I tried to read it, didn’t get it, but began to have it fixed in my mind that one day I would.
I probably just should have read Sassy, but I wasn’t ready to leave my shelter. The granola-y “reuse, recycle, renew, respect” Seventeen, however, provided a glimpse of an alternative culture that might provide me some space within it. Books were cool, The Beatles were cool, and poetry was cool, all of which I’d known already, but now somebody else knew it too. It was 1993, and I was inspired. En route to Florida I bought a flannel shirt at a Kentucky outlet mall– this was counter-culture. Naturally, I tucked it into my tapered jeans that were still pulled up to my armpits, but it was something, nonetheless. I was on my way.
May 11, 2009
Thought You Were Dead and Quickening by Terry Griggs
The timing was quite fortuitous in my discovery of Terry Griggs. (My discovery of her for myself, I mean, for Griggs is already well recognized, having published five books, including two novels, two children’s novels, and the Governor General’s Award-nominated short story collection Quickening. She was awarded the Marian Engel Award in 2003). I read her short fiction first in Canadian Notes and Queries 76, which was the infamous Salon Des Refuses issue, and then in The New Quarterly 108. I found that Griggs’ narrative voice had the force of a hurricane, the fortuitousness being that when I wanted more of it, I had not long to wait. Her new novel Thought You Were Dead was released earlier this month with Biblioasis, and her 1990 collection Quickening has been reprinted as part of the Biblioasis Renditions series.
Thought You Were Dead takes the crime novel formula and turns it on its head with such a literary consciousness that book reviewer becomes uncomfortable using such cliches as “turns it on its head.” Literary consciousness is not to mean hoity-toity here, however, or obnoxiously academic, seeing as Detective Chellis Beith only possesses one half of an English degree. Rather that this is a novel very conscious of itself as a book, written by an in author in full possession of her tools at work (which are words). With its tongue in its cheek, sending up the genre– Chellis Beith isn’t even a detective, though he’s frequently accused of being one. Instead, however, he is a literary researcher, formerly a grocery store stock boy, snatched up by a best-selling author one day in the ValuMart “along with the gherkins and the Melba toast.”
We find the body on page 1, and that this body is fictional, the work of Chellis’s employer Athena Havlock makes no difference at all. Griggs makes no firm distinction between fact and fiction, between the literal and metaphoric, and these distinctions become even more incidental when Athena Havlock disappears. Second body turns up on page 145– a live one in the form of a supposed long-lost sister. And then Chellis is forced to start putting the pieces together, to fill out the details in life as he’s so often done in story. He employs his best friend and old frame in a quest to uncover the truth, applying the same level of initiative he applies to everything (which, suffice it to say, is very little.)
Griggs’ fiction is as demanding as it is rewarding, pulling no punches at all. The reader is plunged rather than eased into the story, whose language must be untangled, unraveled in order to work out the plot. Chellis Beith may be a slacker, but Terry Griggs is no such thing, her tangling and raveling deliberate and intricate, sending up crime fiction, small-town culture, and the literary life. And so much more, this becoming clear with every rereading, with every sentence picked apart, with every one closely read. What a richly textured lark is this, how substantial is Terry Grigg’s concept of whimsy.
With Quickening, which is a very different kind of book, stories that were written a long time ago, it becomes clear that textured larks and substantial whimsy have always been Griggs’ way. These stories of island life are various, but linked by their connections to water (swim lit, however darkly, much to my delight), to vanishings, unlikely points of views (by babies, dogs, and fetuses). These are short stories with limits that are elastic, stretching to accommodate narrative shapes that are “tetrahedral in complexity”. Which isn’t easy. But in her foreword to this reprinting, Griggs notes just what she demands of her readers: “If the gist of any particular effort here seems overly elusive, a reader might need to venture in like a beater and drive out the game.” What a novel challenge to have posed, and we’re better readers for it.
*UPDATE: Terry Griggs has penned today’s Tuesday Essay in The Globe & Mail.
May 10, 2009
The Immovable Baby
Though we love our own mothers dearly, continental drift and late-pregnancy laziness meant they were sorely neglected today as Stuart and I enjoyed Afternoon Tea together, a Mother’s Day treat for me though I’m not quite a mother yet. I did earn a bit of mother cred yesterday, however, when a doctor spent twenty minutes or so inflicting great pain upon my abdomen in an attempt to get our determinedly sideways baby to turn. (All reports say I was very brave! and then after I got Dairy Queen). Baby didn’t budge, however, and I’ve got to respect that. And now, after about six weeks of trying to get Baby to move through a variety of means, I’m giving up. I was very much committed to having a natural birth, but this baby is very naturally sideways, and I’m just pleased it has a means to still get here safely. I could spend the next two weeks resorting to further measures, but I don’t think they’d work, and I’m also really tired. I am finished work now, and my sanity will be much more assured if I can spend this time relaxing, planting flowers in my garden, reading novels, writing while I still can, preparing food for the freezer, stocking the pantry, and taking plenty of naps. (This will also give me time to sew reusable baby wipes, which I have somehow been possessed to accomplish, even though I don’t know how to sew. It is unfortunate my “nesting” instinct has taken on such inconvenient forms.)
And who knows, Baby might turn on its own anyway? But short of that, and providing Baby doesn’t decide to come earlier, we are excited to know we will meet the wee one on the morning of May 26th. I’m not looking forward to a cesarean, which certainly wasn’t what I’d envisaged, and in fact I am very scared and upset by the idea of a long recovery when I’ll need my strength more than ever. But so many others have done it fine, we have a lot of support, and I am very fortunate that a) I’ve now met the surgeon and I love him and b) my midwives will be there to take care of the baby and me, and provide after-care (I love them too).
From our prenatal class manual: “Cesarean mothers… are courageous women who are willing to be cut apart for the lives of their infants. Perhaps it is time to congratulate yourself for your strength and courage.”
May 10, 2009
Of mothers, and babies, and books
Today, for the love of Mothers, and babies, and books, my guest post is up at Rona Maynard’s wonderful site. So why not go read “At least the baby’s library is ready” and then have a pleasant Sunday.
May 9, 2009
Thatcher knew the type
“Thatcher knew the type. They broke spines, they dog-eared pages, they scribbled obscene comments in the margins and squashed bugs between the covers, they branded the text with coffee rings, flicked ashes in the binding, wiped freshly excavated ear wax on the end papers, used rusty bobby pins and strips of bacon for bookmarks. Small potatoes, he realized, petty vandalism, but not unconnected to great offences. Thatcher had a panoramic vision when it came to crime, a comprehensive view that took in the roots of evil as well as the fruit. All thanks to the firm, guiding hand of his mother, a long-suffering librarian who filled him in like the empty pages of a notepad, sparing no detail. A child who forgets to return a library book, she had warned, may well grow up to be the kind of person who “forgets” to take a knife out of someone’s back…” –Terry Griggs, “Tag” from Quickening
May 7, 2009
Please bear
This would be a blog entry, but I am too fixated on cloth diaper brands and securing my next serving of ice cream. Plus everything I do these days seems to proceed in a most dilatory fashion. For example, I’ve been writing this for twenty minutes. Please bear with us, and thank you.
May 4, 2009
There has never been a cuter cake
This cake from my baby shower this afternoon was about as delicious as it was adorable. And even home-decorated by one of the wonderful shower attendees, no less. Pretty much typical of the afternoon too– the shower itself was deserving of a cake this good, with amazing food and some of my very favourite company. Family and friends who were patient enough to sit around watching me open presents all afternoon. For such patience, I’m grateful, as well as for the presents themselves, which were so thoughtful, perfect, and as adorable as the cake. This is going to be one very blessed baby, and I’m so lucky already.
May 4, 2009
Sunshine
Today’s sunshine was also quite delicious. We had banana oatmeal pancakes, which have been my favourite Sunday morning treat since we first made them in December. (The recipe is from Chatelaine, and you can find it here.) They’re golden brown and wonderful, and we found using vanilla yogurt in the recipe is good. I will miss them after Baby is born, and we no longer have time to eat. Therefore, I will eat them as often as possible in the time remaining.
Tonight we also were able to sample the results
of our experiment in sorbet making. (Sorbet making, I suspect, is another activity we might see less of when Baby arrives.) The recipe is from Tessa Kiros’ Apples For Jam (which I cannot recommend enough), Mango sorbet from the yellow section, and though she calls for good quality mangoes (for this sorbet can only ever be as good as its mangoes, she says), we got fine results from our Ontario supermarket substandard trucked in from some southern hemisphere variety. It was also really easy, and though it required a day’s preparation, a little whisking every few hours never killed anyone. And homemade mango sorbet really is a sweet delight. (Could have used a bit more sugar, but really, what couldn’t?)
May 1, 2009
So that's what
So that’s what President Obama is reading. (I do so love his formal title. I hate formal titles as a rule, but referring to him by his first name just seems to lack occasion.) The obvious question then is, what about me? I’m now reading Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay, from my stack of novels to get through before Baby is born. It’s only the second book by Hay I’ve read, after Late Nights on Air which I so unsecretly loved. Her fiction is a bit disorienting, characters with such idiosyncratic traits that they’re hard to get one’s head around, the same way people are. The sort of characters you might misuse the word “random” for. I also finished reading Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons this week, after DGR’s review. And I’m not writing much of anything– I have fourteen submissions ready to send out as soon as I can muster up the energy (Saturday?), and I think I’m done until long post-Baby (which is different from “forever”). All I want to do these days is read, read, read, and thankfully I have plenty of material with which to accommodate that.
