November 12, 2008
Giller Hopes
Various circumstances conspired against my reading the entire Giller shortlist, one of which was the fact I had no desire to, but one book I did read was Mary Swan’s The Boys in the Trees. I’m in no place to say it deserves to win of the lot, but I do know that this is a book deserving of celebration. So of course I would be most pleased if it took home the prize tonight.
UPDATE: Alas, was not to be. But do read The Boys in the Trees anyway. Congratulations to Joseph Boyden, and perhaps read his book too?
November 10, 2008
Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio
For some reason, I thought I knew LM Montgomery. The spiritedness of her characters probably gave me that impression– their voices spoke so true, it seemed some part of them had to be their creator. And then there were the myriad ways their stories paralleled her own– the lonely childhoods, the dead mothers and lost fathers, a love of books and a desire to write. I’d visited the Green Gables House in Cavendish PEI (and I’m not sure now if I didn’t know then that Montgomery had never lived there). I once even came across the home in Leaskdale Ontario where she’d lived for many years as the Rev. Mrs. Ewan MacDonald– the house was identified by a historical plaque, and an older man who was walking by told us that he knew her. And all I remember of that conversation now is that he mentioned her bad son, Chester.
It never occurred to me that there would be more, as her books always seemed quite enough. I never thought though, in particular, to consider Montgomery within the literary context of her time. Or the social context either– that she was a woman with no parental support who didn’t marry until her late thirties. That she launched her own career with sheer gusto, knowing early that she would devote her life to writing. Managing to make a name for herself publishing short stories to North American journals before she finally sold her first novel– Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908.
The Gift of Wings shows Montgomery is a complicated woman with a complicated story, made all the more mysterious by the nature of her sources. Her biographer Mary Henley Rubio had been co-editor of the five volumes of her selected journals (published from 1985-2004) which become central to this text. Henley Rubio explaining that these journals were as much a literary creation as any of Montgomery’s novels– she kept notes, and often didn’t write entries until months after the fact; later in her life she would completely rewrite all of them with eventual publication in mind, and so they’re often censored, granted the insight of retrospect, and slanted to tell the story she wants the public to know.
Montgomery’s true nature was as various as her journals, this reflected in her dual lives as world-famous novelist and respectable minister’s wife. Her journals revealing a deeper darkness to her personality that was not detectable in either of these lives– Henley Rubio suggests that today Montgomery would have been diagnosed with a mood disorder.
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in 1874 in Prince Edward Island to two families proud of their Scottish heritage. After her mother died when she was very young, Maud would be raised by her maternal grandparents. Henley Rubio positing that her upbringing was particularly spun for its hardship when Maud revised her journals, but that she came of age in a wonderfully close community she’d hold dear for the rest of her life, and she was surrounded by a wide extended family.
She did well at school, displaying her writing talent early. She did not have the financial support to pursue her education, however, and was only able to complete teacher training. After which she was unable to venture very far to work, because her grandfather would not allow her to drive to interviews. It was only after his death that her writing career began in full force, as she moved back home to live with her grandmother and was able to write full time.
She married Ewan MacDonald after her grandmother’s death, and then they moved to Ewan’s appointment in Leaskville. Montgomery had long wanted to be married and she was anxious to be a mother. Henley Rubio quotes interviewees noting the MacDonalds as a well-suited couple who were fond of one another, though dissatisfaction in her marriage is evident in Maud’s journals from early on. Part of this was due to Ewan’s bouts of “melancholia”, culminating in full-fledged breakdowns a number of times. Though it is noted that this was not so apparent to outsiders, and so either the family either took great pains to hide these problems, or Maud exaggerated them in her journals, or both.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this biography was the insight it provided into the creation of Montgomery’s fiction. How her romance with Ewan provided the spark and energy of Anne of Green Gables, for example, or how much her work was influenced by cultural changes– Rainbow Valley penned in the midst of WW1, Emily portraying the struggle of a woman to be taken seriously as a writer, aspects of Magic for Marigold written pointedly to challenge gender roles, and the furor over taboo subjects in The Blue Castle.
Also fascinating is Montgomery’s publishing history– how she was taken advantage of by her original publisher and deprived of substantial income, which ended up in lawsuits that lasted well into the 1920s. And her place in Canadian letters– how her success served to promote Canadian literature, and she devoted considerable amounts of her own time for the cause. It was fascinating also to see the range of readers touched by her work, with famous writers and statesmen the world over contacting her and wishing to meet her. However in spite of this, her credibility diminished throughout her life and she was frustrated to find herself increasingly marketed as a children’s author, or a writer of merely sentimental novels.
Henley Rubio has done formidable work with materials on which she is expert, though I might criticize the biography’s over-reliance on Montgomery’s journals. Not that I’ve a more suitable source in mind, of course, but some parts of the book do read much like a retelling of the journals themselves. Moreover the journals are so patchy at times and the holes are often left unfilled– we read of Friday January 29, 1937 from her journals, “On that day happiness departed from my life forever…” Imagine my frustration then as Henley Rubio goes on to recount, “We don’t know what she learned [that day], but it seems to have been about Chester.”
Which was a fair guess, as Montgomery’s son Chester was a nasty piece of work. His misbehaviour would be a blight on her existence from the time he was young until her death– he lied and stole, took advantage of his parents, had two children with a woman he’d barely support, spent years and years failing law school on his mother’s dime. For a woman much concerned with images (she was the minister’s wife, of course), Maud’s oldest son caused considerable heartache.
The later years of Montgomery’s life were a sad decline, in health, happiness, and literary reputation. For many years she was much involved in the Canadian Authors’ Association, but was eventually sidelined from this organization. She remained busy with speaking engagements and responding to her fan mail, but her diminishing reputation was a blow. Her journals portray her husband as sinking deep into his mental ailments, though Henley Rubio speculates much of that might have been caused by over-medication, and Montgomery herself probably experienced something quite similar.
And so her books had always been quite enough, but Henley Rubio has illuminated them and their author even further. Providing Montgomery with a context she sorely lacks in all her singular fame– so s
he had contemporaries, a place in literary society, a family. Underlining the importance of her work within this larger context, which goes far to explain how she has come to occupy the singular place she does.
November 7, 2008
HCC's "Prosecast"
This afternoon I’ve been enjoying HarperCollins Canada’s Prosecast, in particular conversations with Francine Prose (Goldengrove) and Helen Humphries (Coventry).
November 6, 2008
We love the whole world
We’ve always loved America here at Pickle Me This, for such love was the religion upon which we were raised. But all the same, we have never been so proud to be your upstairs neighbour, never more inclined to break out in a round of I Love the World. We have never been more inspired to believe in change, to look with hope towards the future, and believe that anything is possible. That the whole wide world can be so much better than this, and your country is the reason why it will be. You’re the kind of city I’d like up on my hill, and I am so envious of the opportunity you all had to elect a person so deserving of victory. Congratulations. The road is still long, but because of yesterday, everything is different already.
Bookish Election links from The Guardian: PrezLit Quiz; do good writers make good leaders?; a new short story by Lorrie Moore; and a review of Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife.
November 6, 2008
Plan Zafoot
There is so much going on right now that it’s really quite remarkable. That a while ago I was having weekends whose highlight was the purchase of track pants, but days lately have been a bit more whirlwindy. Exciting projects on the go, new beginnings on the horizon, and so many unbelievably amazing things coming up. Ok, not *so* many that I can’t count them all on the fingers of one hand, but I assure you I’m using the whole hand. It never rains but it pours, in particular pouring five fabulous things. And slowly but surely, all will be revealed.
November 5, 2008
The only character who really gets to talk
(Via The Pop Triad) Lionel Shriver on quotation marks and why their absence is off-putting: “The appearance of authorial self-involvement in much modern literary fiction puts off what might otherwise comprise a larger audience. By stifling the action of speech, by burying characters’ verbal conflicts within a blurred, all-encompassing über-voice, the author does not seem to believe in action — and many readers are already frustrated with literary fiction’s paucity of plot. When dialogue makes no sound, the only character who really gets to talk is the writer.”
November 4, 2008
Novel About My Wife What Happened?
At least a few times a day, according to my webstats, somebody will land on this site because they want to know “Novel About My Wife””What Happened”. And these poor people must perpetually go away quite disappointed, because neither my book review nor interview with the author are especially illuminating in that respect. I mean, if you’re looking for some plot summary, then I’m your man, but I’ve a feeling these people are seeking something a bit more specific. Something more like, what in heaven’s name was all that chaos at the end?
Full disclosure: I’ve got NO idea. Author Emily Perkins knows, and I know this because I asked her. In the vaguest terms though. What a waste! I had in front of me the only person who could answer that all-consuming “What happened?” question, but I thought it would be rude to pry. I figured if she’d wanted me to know, she would have put it in the book, but I did want to know if she knew. If what happened to Ann Wells was ever nailed down as a fact.
Perkins said, “No, I do have it. And I had written versions where the gaps were more filled in, but in the end I just thought the thing about Tom is that he is trying to investigate or work out the truth of his wife, but the point of the book for me is that he’s left it too late. He had his chance to look her in the eye and be with her in a real way and he was so busy, caught up in himself, romanticizing her and being in love with the mystery and not wanting to know. I didn’t want to let him off the hook for that…”
And so we’re implicated too as readers, because the text is Tom’s creation. His blindness becomes our own, which is annoying for a reader who has been invested in Ann as much as possible, unlike Tom. Annoying that we’re invested in Tom’s point of view rather than Ann’s, but that’s interesting too. A pretty powerful narrative device.
I can be a generous reader. If a book or a story is good enough, I am willing to make concessions. The best lesson I ever learned as a reader was in my graduate creative writing workshop, when we were told to look at what we determine as flaws in our classmates’ stories,
and to try to understand what the writers might have been doing. Not even what they were trying to do, but just imagine everything is deliberate. Imagine this author actually knows what she’s doing, and as a reader that was such a revelation. It wasn’t as though the stories became perfect then, but new doors were opened for analysis and understanding. We learned that just because a story isn’t the way you’d like it to be doesn’t necessarily mean that story isn’t the way it is supposed to be.
Which means that when I first read Novel About My Wife, and when I read it again, though I was not wholly satisfied with so much unknowing, I thought the narrative gaps had some purpose. Of course I had suspicions of what might have happened to Ann, and with the rest of the story so full, I was content with my own speculations. (I have also learned to love short fiction, as I’ve mentioned before, which has well equipped me to be able to make much of pieces I am given.)
Not everybody else was so content though. I started thinking when I read this review, and the following line in particular: “Perkins’s attempt at ambiguity draws the reader in, but does not completely provide the insight needed to satisfy.” Which is entirely right, and I had really failed to consider whether satisfying the reader might be the point. I still don’t think it’s the entire point, but perhaps it’s more important than I considered. Alternatively, could readers be looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places?
Update: for a bit more insight on what happened to Ann, check out the fascinating comments on Rachel Powers’ blog.
October 31, 2008
On Tilly Witch
For Halloween’s sake, I bring you Tilly Witch, the 1969 book by Don Freeman (who was also the author of Corduroy). I had forgotten about Tilly, until I encountered her by chance this summer, and remembered that I had been obsessed with this book as a child. I have a feeling now that being obsessed with a book back then meant being in love with the pictures, pictures you could gaze into for extended periods of time, and detect new entire stories.
The pictures are pretty wonderful, dark and spooky, but made magic by juxtaposition– Tilly’s yellow surfboard, the witch doctor’s mask, the colour from the window in the picture shown here.
The story begins with Tilly Ipswitch, Queen of Halloween, suddenly finding herself in a rather jolly mood. She doesn’t see why she shouldn’t be– after all, “if boys and girls get to have fun pretending to be witches, I don’t see why I can’t play at being happy and gay, just for a change!” But Tilly soon finds that playing at happy is sort of like pulling faces– once in a while, you might stay that way. Tilly dancing around with flowers, and on the eve of Halloween– even she knows something has to be done.
Naturally, and most politically incorrectly, Tilly hops on her surfboard and flies the the tiny island of Wahoo to see a Doctor Weegee. (Walla walla bing bang). He is horrified upon examining her, and writes an emergency prescription to Miss Fitch’s Finishing School for Witches.
Upon re-enrolling at the school where she’d once been star pupil, Tilly’s problems only get worse. The lessons fail to take, she keeps giggling, and finally she is sent to the corner to wear a dunce cap. Such degradation proves too much for the Queen of Halloween, and Tilly begins to get angry. Seething– she is not a dunce! She leaps up from her stool and stomps on her hat. It is Halloween night, and she has duties to attend to.
Tilly flies back home, takes some great joy in frightening her cat, and then sets out on her broomstick to scare children the world over. The story ends with a moral: “For Tilly had indeed learned her lesson. As long as Halloween comes once a year you can count on her to be the meanest and wickedest witch in all Witchdom”.
So the lesson is bad is good– and as a little girl, I think I appreciated such a complex message. The greater lesson being that non-conformity (and rich pictures) can really make a children’s book delicious.
Happy Halloween.
October 31, 2008
Someone left The Good Book out in the rain
On Sunday during a walk in the rain, I came across The Good News Bible lying on a ledge. Perhaps a sign, but I didn’t notice it; I took a photo instead.
