March 19, 2008
Library in Cartons
Here it is, our library in cartons. We packed the books up Sunday, which took up more time and boxes than we had supposed. And now we’re very grateful that we can afford to hire other people to carry that weight, as otherwise we’d be tempted to pull a Robin Pacific. Do note though that the thought of these boxes is the only reason I was able to leave the Balfour Books Half-Price Sale empty-handed on Sunday (but absolutely no reason why you should– the sale is on for the rest of the week). My prudence then negated today when I picked up my own Harriet the Spy.
Anyway the books will be unboxed in two weeks in the new house where they’ll have their own room.
March 16, 2008
Consolation
I consider myself lucky, that I’ve never been so ill that I couldn’t read, as for me an extended chance to read has always been the one consolation for feeling lousy. It’s also somewhat fortuitous that I jumped on the YA bandwagon last weekend, and put a whole mess of such books on hold at the library. My mind was dumb and tired this weekend, and nothing could have been more fitting than delving into novels for people a third of my age. Namely Mom The Wolfman and Me, which could have been written yesterday (and there is something unfortunate about this in terms of our own progress). Weetzie Bat, which was magic, and has given me the courage to put anything in a book. And oh, Harriet the Spy– must buy my own copy asap. I think I never read her before because I thought she was a girl-detective and I went off precocious sleuths very early on. But no, she is a writer! And her book is actually more practical than many guides to fiction I have read.
I also finished Katrina Onstad’s How Happy to Be the other day and I was knocked down by its goodness– there are columnists-turned-novelists and then there are writers, and Onstad is the latter. Her book is funny, wise, wonderful with prose to die for. Hers is also perhaps the best fictional Toronto I have ever read. I will buy her next novel the instant it is available.
March 16, 2008
The Ravine by Paul Quarrington
‘”All cultures promote secrets,’ said Atwood. ‘But the secrets are of different kinds. There are all sorts of places, in literature, where you go to be by yourself, places where you go to make strange discoveries of the soul. There’s the frozen north, the desert, the desert island, the sea, the jungle… We’ve got ravines, that’s about it.'” –from Noah Richler’s This is My Country, What’s Yours?: A Literary Atlas of Canada
Certainly timely was Paul Quarrington’s Canada Reads victory (his King Leary triumphed) with his new novel The Ravine being released so soon after. Though it was not the hoopla that caught my attention, and I hadn’t even read anything by Quarrington before, but it was the title, the subject matter. I’d spent my childhood growing up on the edge of a ravine, and I know what goes on there. “A negative space,” as Richler puts it, the juxtaposition of suburban wilderness. For me the ravine was mythical, a site of dreams and memories and nightmares, and as a recurring theme in Canadian literature I find that ravines are absolutely fascinating.
The Ravine is very meta-meta, ostensibly a novel written by Paul Quarrington’s character Phil McQuigge, referencing other fictional works, among them a novel with a character called Paul who is based on Phil. Phil is still having the dust settle from the recent explosion that was his life– his wife having left him upon learning he’d had an affair, his job in television lost when his lead character dies under circumstances for which Phil might be responsible. Phil’s brother isn’t speaking to him, old friends think he’s pathetic, and he’s moved into a basement apartment where he writes his novel and drinks.
As in Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, the ravine acts as a netherworld for both reality and consciousness– a dumping ground for suppressed memories. The source of all his troubles, Phil decides, has been a terrifying incident from his childhood that took place down in a ravine with his brother Jay and a boy called Norman Kitchen. What happened isn’t exactly clear, and the trajectory of the novel becomes an effort to clarify this hazy memory. Eventually by way of a road trip, and then a car chase, the possibility of Phil’s redemption, and a most enjoyable read.
The Ravine reminded me of Cat’s Eye not just because of the ravines, but rather how Atwood had described her novel as “a literary home for all those vanished things from my own childhood.” The Ravine functions similarly: the big wooden televisions, suburban geography, the matinees– and where else are there people called “Norman Kitchen”? He’s like a character from my parents’ black and white memories, the fat kid in a checkered shirts in their class pictures, but almost certainly there aren’t Norman Kitchens in the present. Quarrington has authentically recreated a past that is almost palpable in its details.
Further, he has created a disgraceful character who keeps our sympathy– no easy feat. Phil McQuigge has done some awful things, but he’s been the victim of circumstance, and the intimate nature of the narrative gets us into his head so we can understand him. Or perhaps he just means his self-portrait to to charm us, but it does. Not least because the book is terribly funny, even in the darkest moments, but also due to Quarrington’s narrative control. Which is necessary to hold together a book so seemingly loose, and here is ever so subtle but steady throughout.
March 16, 2008
What a relief
“Harriet… ran into her room and flung herself on the bed. She lay quietly for a minute, looking reverently at her notebook and then opened it. She had had an unreasonable fear that it would be empty, but there was her handwriting, reassuring if not beautiful. She grabbed up the pen and felt the mercy of her thoughts coming quickly, zooming through her head onto the paper. What a relief, she thought to herself; for a moment I thought I had dried up. She wrote a lot about what she felt, relishing the joy of her fingers gliding across the page, the sheer relief of communication. After a whole she sat back and began to really think hard. Then she wrote again…” –Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy
March 15, 2008
Distastrous Combination
I am sick, driven to bed by a disastrous combination of galloping consumption and the dreaded lurgi. Today I got to work from home (but note: not even in quotations) which meant I was done and supine by 3:00, and having since read The Walrus, The London Review of Books, Weetzie Bat and Mom the Wolfman and Me. Now reading Paul Quarrington’s new novel The Ravine.
March 15, 2008
Kate Christensen wins
Kate Christensen wins the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Great Man. (Also whoever wrote this headline hasn’t read the article or Kate Christensen). I am very excited about this, as I loved The Great Man. Maud Newton is also excited, and it was she who brought me to Christensen after all. I hope I can pass on that favour to one of you.
March 13, 2008
Degrees of theft
A piece at the Guardian Books blog about stealing books, which you might remember I covered properly in my post on bibliokleptomania at the Descant blog. I’ve stolen quite a few books in my time, not so ashamedly. I think I stole my copy of Happiness is a Warm Puppy from a dentists’ office, and Love Story from a desk in my geography class when I was twelve. During the last month I have actually stolen a copy of The Animals of that Country by Margaret Atwood, or rather I liberated it, for it was being ill-treated by its former carers, stuck on a shelf with Barbara Cartlands and its cover torn off. I promise you that they will never even know that it is missing. And that I only steal from those weird sad dump-off libraries that nobody loves. And that once I committed the utter opposite of book stealing, which was donating my books to a charity shop and then deciding that I couldn’t live without them and buying my books back again.
March 12, 2008
Dance dance dance
Stuart surprised me with a present today, and a tea accessory at that! A porcelain tea infuser, as seen on this rather fabulous tea blog. I also ate a raspberry white chocolate scone at work. Today the sun is shining, hinting spring, and Marian M. seems outdated again.
I just finished reading The Outcast by Sadie Jones, which presents a tonier 1950s British austerity than I’d ever before glimpsed. “If she had been a drawing, she would be drawn with a few lines, and strong ones”, and all its characters seemed as such. And quietly cinematic.
And speaking of cinema, I watched Once on the weekend, particularly due to my friend KD’s endorsement. It was truly extraordinary, and I don’t think I’ve been so convinced by a film in a long time. Any writer could learn loads by understanding the dynamics in that love story, a story where plot seemed secondary to human nature. If that makes any sense. And it’s been on my mind for days and days since, running through my head and not just its music. I think I had forgotten the possibility of fundamental goodness in a film.
Do note that my favourite song right now is “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You” by The Black Kids. And I like that their chosen tracks include songs by Sloane and Lauryn Hill.
March 12, 2008
Lately
Everyone I know is in a rage lately. For some of us it’s because we keep reading reader comments in the Globe & Mail, and we should probably stop, but the fact is that lately I’ve been identifying with Marian McAlpin, which is a bad bad sign.
March 12, 2008
All print, no demand
Last week in his Globe column, my friend Ivor Tossell wrote about the internet and self-publishing. Putting forth that the internet has begun to eliminate the stigma of vanity presses– “after all, the Internet is a giant vanity press full of self-published content. The spirit of the Web is to put whatever you’ve got out there, and see if it sticks.”
Ivor explores the exciting potential of online print-on-demand– small runs of textbooks, bad love poetry collections just in time for Valentines, keeping obscure books from ever being “out of print”. But, he writes, “At the same time, it means that books will lose their special status. The mere existence of a book with your name on the spine will no longer mean as much; nor will putting out one of your own make you look hopelessly self-absorbed.”
But I am not sure that I agree with him. Perhaps I just get riled at suggestions of the book losing status, but this seems to me one of those cases in which a book isn’t a book, after all. Poetry may be a different story, but I’m thinking in terms of fiction. Though of course I’ve not been round the world on this one, I hold fast to a belief that good books tend to get published– a belief I can hold if only because I read so many of them. And that a published book is the product of significant investment, not only by a writer, but by editors (and more editors, hopefully), and book designers, and art designers, and by publishers at the top who were willing to take the chance on it.
There are exceptions of course, and instances in which print-on-demand is the best route for a writer, but my suspicion is that any book devoid of such investment would be lacking. The lack would show in the look of the book and the reading, and any wannabe author could probably find these instructions a cheaper way to the same results. Economics being the point, which is where Ivor’s analogy between self-published books and blogs break down. While both are probably equally vain, awful and substandard, at least blogs can be accessed for free.
