January 6, 2009
Thoughts about used books
(Via Bookninja): Should we be ashamed of buying used books online? The article discussing secondhand sellers who work through sites like amazon specifically, where you can get a book for a penny plus the shipping/handling costs. I have used amazon second-hand sellers to purchase books, though usually as a last resort because a) the book I wanted was available nowhere else including the library, and my local bookshops or b)I was a student and couldn’t afford it otherwise (and also couldn’t find it in my local bookshops. I always looked first, never missing out on a reason to visit a local bookshop of course, and also because once the shipping/handling was involved, a used book online or off was about the same price). I would suppose that buying new books this way (incl. review copies, which are often available before the book is even in stores) is more than a little tacky, however. But then it is only in the past two years that I’ve become so privileged to be able to spread my bookish dollars so lavishly– not everybody can afford to drop $40.00 on a hardcover in order to feel (deliciously) smug about doing the right thing.
A bookninja commenter makes the very good point that using the library at the very least would provide authors (in Canada) with a small amount of money through Public Lending Rights— nothing a writer could live off of, but it’s the principle.
The problem is not with used books, however, but rather the emptiness of the online exchange. The NY Times article makes a comparison between such exchanges and Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road, Hanff’s “classic account of a woman in postwar New York who bought her books from a London shop she never saw” noted as being “ahead of its time.” But the whole book captures the rich exchange between Hanff and the booksellers at Marks & Co. Antiquarian Booksellers, who encouraged Hanff’s book buying habits for years and years, supplementing her own requests with their recommendations– in short, doing what local used bookshops are meant to do, which is fostering a literary community, albeit via epistle. Local is a decidedly a relative term, and Hanff’s story is not the same at all.
I enjoyed a piece on the Guardian blog last week about Britain’s charity bookshops. Suggesting it lessens the compunction of depriving authors of the royalties if you know a few quid is going to Oxfam instead. The article noting the impeccable organization of most of these shops, the skill of their clerks at spotting a special book’s value. There is a charm to their shelves, which will always feature a copy of Hilary Mantel’s Fludd. When I lived in England, I was an avid browser, and found many a treasure that brought me to the till. And I feel that authors did ultimately benefit from my purchases, or at least the ones who’re still publishing did, because these shops gave me a route to their discovery and so many of them I’m devoted to now.
Are there any cousins more distant than new books and used ones? One eventually becomes the other, of course, through a certain evolution, but takes on a new kind of value with the change, will become a different kind of cherished. New books have their crispness, their cleanliness, and their smell– their margins at least are a tabula rasa, and a reader can feel like an intrepid explorer venturing out to see the world. Whereas used books wear their history on their pages, with their stains, their own peculiar smells, and stray hairs stuck inside. The names written in and then crossed out on the inside cover suggesting the hands that may have flipped through these pages, the people who might have read them. Suggesting all the readers in the world.
Any reader with integrity will understand that used books have their place, that new books have quite another one, and the problem really isn’t the system at all. Rather, the problem is these supposed “sheepish” bargain hunters who keep bargain hunting anyway, and whose articles should probably be headlined instead, “I’m cheap and a bit of a wanker.”
January 5, 2009
Hear me read.
Today I’m the reader reading at Julie Wilson’s marvelous Seen Reading, and I’m reading from Rebecca Rosenblum‘s Once, from the story “The Words” which I’ve loved for years– this passage in particular. I am reading in a bathroom with a book launch crowd outside, and Julie Wilson had to teach me to say “ennui”, but the rest I knew already.
January 5, 2009
On Context: Dream Babies and Great Expectations
The kinds of stories in Great Expectations: Twenty-Four Stories about Childbirth (eds. Dede Crane and Lisa Moore) are the kinds that any woman could tell. About labour gone long, rings of fire, gruff obstetricians, and idyllic birthing pools left unattended as women are rushed to the hospital in a cab. Certainly, after reading Ina-May’s Guide to Childbirth in a state of dumb bliss, I was in need of this sort of reality check: Stephanie Nolen’s contribution begins, “For about forty perfect minutes, I had the birth I wanted…”
Anyone can write about childbirth, and the experience of becoming and being a parent, but what I remain most grateful for is that good writers actually do. I felt this profoundly after reading Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work and Anne Enright’s Making Babies: that thank goodness novelists write about this sort of thing, for who else would be so capable of doing so? Of capturing the various sides of this most multi-sided and and ordinary event, and then casting them in a light that is entirely new. For anyone can write about this stuff, but not everyone will do it well.
So I had confidence in Great Expectations, which comprises contributions from Canadian novelists I love including Lynn Coady, Christy Ann Conlin, Karen Connelly, and Lisa Moore, as well as journalists (including Nolen), poets, editors, and other writers I should have already read. Caroline Adderson’s essay made me scream on the book’s first page, with its mother with the burst blood vessel in her eyes. “She paid at both ends, poor thing.” Esta Spalding’s essay on twinship followed, which broke my heart and made me fall in love: “Joy and sorrow. Twins.”
And onwards. I read this book in a single day, twenty-four births (at least) and the moment never ceased to be a miracle. I appreciated the points of view of the few male contributers (including Curtis Gillespie’s advice to those who follow him: “take off your wedding ring to avoid crushed fingers”). As a pregnant lady, I’ll note that Great Expectations is not an easy book to read, and certainly doesn’t serve to ease any fears (for I just learned new fears I didn’t even know I could have), but it was the context I found most reassuring. That this sort of thing happens all the time, and very often things go wrong, but then they’re okay, and in the end there’s a baby. How at the the end of her piece, Sandra Martin says of her children, “without them my journey would have been soulless.”
So 2008’s reading finished with Great Expectations, and I began 2009 with Christine 
Hardyment’s Dream Babies: Childcare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, in which context is the object, providing the most fascinating illuminations. That we have always had “childcare experts” among us, from Rousseau (“Emile [was] the most famous childrearing manual of the age”) whose own history shows desertion by his father, and abandonment of his own children to foundling hospitals. “His dream children were born free, natural and innocent, but became instantly oppressed.”
Hardyment’s book is a 2007 update to her 1983 original, and surveys childcare advice and practice from the 17th century to the present day. She shows that advice and practice were not always the same thing, but that both were influenced by fashion, politics, and sociological changes– how one thing has always lead to another. During the 20th century, with “behaviourists” between the wars creating model citizens, post-war Soviet backlash leading to Benjamin Spock’s acknowledgment of babies as individuals, child-centred babies raising their own children, to how childcare manuals have become the “parent-centred” volumes we see today. And throughout all these changes, parents have been grappling (differently) with the same problems: how to deal with feeding (breast best or not, depending on the era), sleep patterns, intellectual development, and toilet training. The evils of mouth-breathing, however, thankfully have ceased to be considered.
In noting how successive editions of 20th century childcare bibles were constantly adapting with the times, Hardyment makes clear how our ideas of baby raising are always in flux. Which is often a good thing, some advice of yore completely ridiculous so it seems from where I stand– hanging apartment dwelling babies out of windows in cages for daily airings was one, as were midwinter dunks in cold rivers, and mothers who were amateur apothecaries.
But on the whole, Hardyment marks no divide between a “silly then” and “sensible now”; there is no such thing as progress but parents are going in circles instead. This perspective making Dream Babies as useful as it is fascinating and amusing, the past available for the choosing of its best ideas and not just ridicule. Also making clear that the contradictory advice of those most ubiquitous baby user guides is just as chaotic as it seems to be, and so it has ever been. This most interesting corner of history (and history is all corners) providing a context so absolutely necessary, for otherwise, how would we know not to be told what to think? Hardyment writes, “Manuals need to be kept in their place: tools, not tyrants, a helpful indication of the varied options that face us, not holy writ.”
December 31, 2008
The pause before the scones
Before heading downstairs to bake the final scones of 2008, I pause to post some New Years wishes. For 2009, I make no resolutions, because things will be changing whether I will them to or not, and certainly, I am no longer (as) in control of it all. During 2008, we drove down some amazing highways, saw new places (California!), found a new home, I read 155 (some) extraordinary books, I’ve written and published an amount that satisfies me, had fun in all kinds of weather, and enjoyed myself much in the company of family and good friends. For 2009, I wish health and happiness to those around me, a fat kicky baby in my arms, to read some more extraordinary books, and at least two handfuls of truly good days.
December 30, 2008
To be outraged and confused
And do you want to read about my December knitting projects? Because you can check them out here. Heather Mallick’s wonderful New Years Resolutions. I thought Tabatha Southey’s column was funny (‘I couldn’t help but wonder if I should take a page from her book. But then I thought, “Heavens no, it’s a Maeve Binchy novel and it’s absolutely drenched in mint cocoa”‘), but the commenters were outraged and confused. (Why are these people never embarrassed when they fail to get a joke? I would be, and I don’t even post my ignorance on national forums). Sandra Martin’s “Confessions of an Obituarist” was splendid. Vital context was acquired from LRB pieces “A Chance to Join the World: A Future for Abkhazia”, and “Lessons in Zimbabwe”.
December 30, 2008
The Almost Archer Sisters by Lisa Gabriele
I decided to read The Almost Archer Sisters by Lisa Gabriele, because Katrina Onstad blurbed it, and I trust Katrina Onstad. Onstad’s own novel How Happy to Be was one of the smartest and funniest novels that I read last year, the best of what “women’s fiction” is aspiring to be when it’s not busy pandering to outright stupidity (though I’d also argue that Onstad’s novel has broader appeal). And unsurprisingly– for when is Katrina Onstad ever wrong?– The Almost Archer Sisters didn’t disappoint me.
Told by Georgia “Peachy” Archer Laliberte, a frazzled wife and mother, who seeks solace in imaginary adultery and scouring the internet for information about her son’s epilepsy. She lived in the same house she grew up in, gave up her own professional dreams when she got pregnant at twenty, and in short did everything differently than her glamorous sister Beth did.
Not completely differently, however. Peachy’s husband’s is Beth’s high school boyfriend, and he’d gotten her pregnant too once upon a time. (“Jesus. That man’s sperm could reforest the goddamn tundra… It could be cure baldness. He should be caged and studied.”) But Beth had made a very different choice, unabashedly getting an abortion and continuing in the direction of her dreams, which culminate in a successful career in television and a high-flying life in New York City.
The story turns on a plot that is somewhat melodramatic, Peachy discovering her husband in the pantry with Beth in a most compromising position. It is what Gabriele does with this, however, that gives the book its substance. In her rage and devastation, Peachy leaves her family behind and makes her own way to New York for a few days in her sister’s life. A premise that sounds more cliched than it actually is– this ain’t no Freaky Friday, I mean, but that Peachy follows through with a weekend trip that had already been planned, stays at Beth’s apartment, meets her friends, and discovers there is quite a lot she never knew about her sister and about herself.
Dark in turns, told in a wry tone throughout, Gabriele’s narrative voice inhabits Peachy’s character so completely– in particular, her fierce love for her sons. This most significant considering that Gabriele doesn’t have children of her own, as she states in the reader’s discussion guide at the end of the book. That such authentic and unwavering fierceness could be imagined is a testament to Gabriele’s skills as a writer, which seems too obvious, I realize, but isn’t when you consider how much of women’s fiction is compromised by writers who can’t imagine out of themselves enough. Because it is through imagination, and not necessarily personal experience that stories take flight, and this is surely why this one has wings.
December 30, 2008
Christmas update
I received a Slanket for Christmas, after years and years of longing, and so I will never have to suffer the agony of cold arms again while reading. It really is the most remarkable bookish accessory, the only problem being that whenever it’s on me I very soon find myself falling asleep. But it did keep me snug as I make my way through my Christmas books. Already did the trick with Lush Life, and I’m sure there’ll be more of the same as I read Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth. I also received Inside the Slidy Diner by Laurel Snyder and Jaime Zollars for me and my yet-born babe, and I bought the baby Night Cars, which I think it really liked. Our beloved Smiths gave us each a book by Todd Parr— The Mommy Book and The Daddy Book. (We now wonder if it might be safe to be prepared, knowing where this kid comes from, and buy it an early copy of Parr’s It’s Okay to be Different). Oh, and we also got us a copy of Pulpy and Midge in our house via a present for Stuart, which meant I was startled in bed the other night as we were reading by Stuart exclaiming in woebegone tones, “Oh no! Pulpy just fell on his potluck contribution!!”
December 30, 2008
Two Odd Things
1) It is strange but true that I’ve been craving sweet foods much less since I got pregnant. Which is part of the reason I never really got around to Christmas Baking mania this year. I baked apple pie for Christmas dinner, and gingerbread cookies two weeks ago– but only half a batch. And I kept meaning to bake at least half a batch of sugar cookies too, for though I’ve been craving sweet foods less, usually I can rouse myself enough to eat them. I’d even found the perfect sugar cookie recipe, simple and easy, as the one I’d been using the last couple of years has always caused me trouble. I’m not sure if I found it on the internet or in a magazine, but I do remember the recipe was printed against a blue background, and the recipe below was a chocolate variant of the same.
Except that I actually think I dreamt it, because when I got (nearly) down to getting those cookies baked, I couldn’t find my perfect recipe anywhere. Not in any magazines, or on websites I frequent, and I spent quite a bit of timing just searching, searching, all of it coming up naught. So that was disappointing.
2) Less disappointingly, however, is that I’ve located my grade three teacher. You might recall, as I’ve written about this before, that she wrote me a letter well over a year ago, after reading my story in The Toronto Star. And that she had been that teacher, the one who first encouraged me to write, to want to be a writer. All very good news, except that she’d sent the letter to my dad’s house, where the filing system is a bit dubious, and somehow the envelope had gotten lost, and with it her return address. Efforts to locate her via internet searches came to absolutely nothing, and I wasn’t even sure in what part of the province she lived.
However this summer whilst weekending at our friends’ cottage north of Belleville, the power went out in a gusty storm. Staying out for nearly twenty-fours, which halfway into we decided to alert the Hydro company of. Because perhaps they didn’t know, however unlikely? And then flipping through the phone-book by candlelight (and keep in mind this is a small phone book with a very large font), a name jumps out at me, and I swear it’s my former teacher’s husband’s. An address written beside it, and of course I’m not sure, but I decide to take my chances. The address being not quite right postal-wise, however, and so the note I send takes its time, but it arrives eventually. So my teacher and I are back in touch, I was able to thank her for her lovely note about my story, and all this only because of a terrible storm that knocked out the power last July.
December 30, 2008
Lush Life by Richard Price
In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard notes, “The printed word cannot compete with the movies on their ground, and should not… [So w]hy would anyone read a book instead of watching people moving on a screen? Because a book can be literature. It is a subtle thing– a poor thing, but our own.”
So then how would Dillard contend with the recent fashionable claim that movies or television can be literature too? Is their “thing” just as subtle? What would she make of Richard Price, whose novels have been made into movies, who has written screenplays of his own, and is a noted writer of the television show The Wire?
But as Deborah Friedell remarks in her LRB review of Price’s latest novel Lush Life, “writing for the screen also seems to have given [Price] the enthusiasm of an outsider: his novels delight in being novels.” Which is Dillard’s “subtle thing”; that it is language and not spectacle used to tell the story here. However cinematic and paced Price’s writing might be, this effect is created through careful attention and deftness with words and not by a trick of a camera.
So why would anyone read a book, particularly one so decidedly steeped in a world we know from film, instead of watching people move on a screen? For the love of language first, of course, but also for the experience of ten or twelve hours entrenched in the story. And the experience of re-imagining the scene from words on a page, so that the act of reading becomes one of creation. Particularly the creation of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where I’ve never been before, but from Price’s narrative I can decipher the points on its map. The part of New York City as much a character in the story as anybody else, Price plumbing its depths sometimes quite literally, whether historically and topographically.
Though I was completely lost during the first fifty pages of the novel– in unfamiliar geography, references, a language in which I’m decidedly unschooled. I persevered because the novel’s premise continued to intrigue me so– three young somebodies (if even in their own minds) robbed by two characters they identify solely by their race. One victim too drunk to stand and falls apart, the second handing over in wallet in sheer terror, but the third, Ike Marcus, who “walks around starring in the movie of his own life,” steps to his assailant saying, “Not tonight, my man.” And then he’s shot dead.
But as the novel progressed, I found my way into it eased. Going back to reread the beginning (by which I am imploring you to follow it through), I made more sense of it all. As suspicion is cast upon Marcus’s companion that night, Eric Cash, the thirty-something restaurant manager who “had no particular talent or skill, or what was worse, he had a little talent, some skill…” In a world where everybody is trying to become something else, Cash is old enough to realize he might never succeed, and bitter enough to find Ike Marcus’s confidence more than irritating.
What follows is more than just a police procedural as detectives investigate Marcus’s murder. The narrative shifting point of view from Cash himself, the police involved, to Tristan, a young black teenager who lives in one of the neighbourhood’s surrounding housing projects and writes hip hop poetry in his notebook. The juxtaposition of Cash and Marcus’s lifestyle with Tristan’s in such close proximity is as jarring as its meant to be, though for its commonalities as much as the differences.
Lush Life could be a movie but it isn’t, and as a movie it would still be something very different. In the meantime then taking full advantage of its literary-ness– the effects of language, depth of character, such a scope. Demonstrating that their very own way, books are as capable as movies of extraordinary things.
December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas
Christmas Eve was always such a funny day, so wondrous and yet so ordinary. You’d have to keep reminding yourself, “It’s Christmas Eve!”, all the while incongruously eating your cheerios, brushing your teeth, going through the motions. This all to push yourself forward, because the magic is never apparent until after the sun goes down, so you have to conjure it in the meantime. And enjoy this lazy lovely day, should you be so fortunate to be spending it as a holiday. It is to be hoped that those who aren’t so blessed are granted an early dismissal.
Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays from Pickle Me This. If you don’t have any books on your tree, I’ll cross my fingers you find some good ones under it.
