January 25, 2008
Out of hand
This has gotten out of hand. Now reading Sister Crazy by Emma Richler, My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides, Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, Bear With Me by Diane Flacks, The New Quarterly Issue 105, and The Paris Interviews Vol. II. So now I have to quit my job and never sleep again. Hurrah!
January 25, 2008
My new quest
I had to go into a bookstore today to pick up a gift for a friend, and of course, while I was there, why not get something for myself? For this is how my mind works, and why bookstores– for me– require infinite will not to go broke in. But I got The Paris Review Interviews vol. II, which I think was most sensible. For they’re interviews with writers, of course, and good ones, and one of my favourite book bloggers has raved about it. So there is learning aplenty, but multitudinously, for this book shall also be the textbook of my new quest to learn to interview.
Interviews are the one written form I’m afraid to take on– I’d sooner write a play (which is not to say that I’d be good at that either). They’re an art-form, I think, and a difficult one done in dialogue. A dialogue in which you must be the guide… or do you follow? I just don’t know. Learning to interview will also challenge my tendency to break off into long-winded tangents about lies I told when I was seventeen, or my new favourite pop song, or whatnot. I also think it will make me a better storyteller, socializer, and writer in general. It will also be fun.
The plan is to post an interview monthly, once I’ve got some study under me belt. How exciting. Maybe I’ll even interview you!
January 24, 2008
Always Carry a Book with You
“7. ALWAYS CARRY A BOOK WITH YOU.
This is a very important rule and easy to slip up on. Here is how. You say to yourself, I have carried that book with me every single day this week and never have I had the time to pull it out and read it. It is making a big fat unseemly bulge in my pocket, it is bumping up against my hip when I walk, it is weighing me down. Today I am not taking it, goddamnit. That is the day your friend is forty minutes late and you are left at the restaurant with the foot of your crossed leg swinging loose and you have studied every face and every painting in the place. That is the day your bus gets caught in a traffic jam or you end up having to take someone to the emergency room and wait four hours for the person to emerge. Always carry a book with you.” –Emma Richler, Sister Crazy
January 24, 2008
Cleistogamous
New words I’m fond of are “jactitation”, “lintel”, “spoor”, and “cleistogamous”. Now reading Sister Crazy. Also quite pleased that the latest The New Quarterly has arrived in the mail. And it’s about time I read AL Kennedy, I think.
January 23, 2008
Four Letter Word by Knelman and Porter
Whatever it is that’s just a bit thrilling about despair, it’s the very reason “Long Long Time” has been running through my head for about fifteen years. Linda Ronstadt warbling the entire spectrum of human emotion, with no intention of cheering up anytime soon, and though it’s enough to make tears pool at the brim of your eye, you’re not going to cry. As another song goes, “It’s only love, and that is all… but it’s so hard…”
Only love. As wrong as the most empty conjunction I’ve ever read: “mere happiness.” How much its writer mustn’t know, for there is nothing “mere” about happiness. And there is also nothing “only” about love, but who wishes to be “mere” or “only” anyway? With just a simple injection of despair (“living in the memory of a love that never was”) love is elevated to the stuff of epic drama, or at the very least the stuff of cheesy seventies pop lyrics. Warble warble warble.
Which is not to say that Four Letter Word is the stuff of pop lyrics, warbled or otherwise. Rather than this book has set me thinking about love, what we make of it. And what happens to love when we set it down in letters, here letters in the fictional: an ingenious premise for an anthology. By some absolutely brilliant writers, including some of my favourites, and a dust jacket to die for (I wish you could see the spine and how it’s printed like a whole packet of different sized and coloured letters, all gathered by a ribbon thank you Kelly Hill).
These fictional love letters were collected by editors Rosalind Porter and Joshua Knelman in order to “resurrect [the] dying custom [of the love letter] and to remind us of how seductive words are.” Indeed, these letters manage to seduce us with entire stories, communicated in one voice with limited perspective, often with second-person narration, some in just mere paragraphs. What a literary feat, I think, for what results is not a gimmick, epistolary indulgence, but storied stories, with all the voice, character and plot one would look for in such a thing.
And that it’s not “only love” and very rarely “mere happiness” which run through these stories is unsurprising, considering their form. As romantic as love letter might be, they’re indeed a sign of something gone wrong, for shouldn’t lovers be together? Kept apart by distance, death or fate would bring inevitable despair. Peter Behrens’ soldier writing from the front, traumatized by France 1944. Nick Laid’s Ruth writing to her deceased father: “Do not come back to us. Do not come back.” Joseph Boyden’s husband looking for his wife in post-Katrina New Orleans: “I didn’t want to let go of your hand.”
Certainly there is darkness here, letters by vulnerable children with no idea of the burdens they bear. Letters which we, the readers, know will inevitably go unsent, unreceived or unread. But there is considerable humour too, even amongst the despair. From a lovelorn chimp to “Miss Primatologist Lady in the Bush Sometimes”. Lionel Shriver’s Alisha’s emails, increasingly erratic as she’s not responded to. Tessa Brown’s letters in which a lover scorned critiques her boyfriend’s phone messages are disturbingly amusing (with footnotes).
Interesting that the stories here which come closest to “mere happiness” are not written to people at all: James Robertson’s ode to hillwalking, Jan Morris’s song to her house. The always-impressive Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie does write a letter tinged by possibility rather than loss, and driven by an undercurrent of joy.
Four Letter Word is useful on a variety of levels: being definitely readable, time slipping by like the letters were true and addressed to you. Inspiring thoughts of what love means, today and for always. Providing exposure to a variety of contemporary writers from a variety of locales and even (!!) some in translation. And being completely unlike any anthology I’ve ever encountered before, a whimsical exercise resulting in a collection with literary solidity and truth.
January 22, 2008
Brilliantly Before Them
Congratulations, with so much love, to my best friend Jennie and to Deep, who has become a friend in his own right. For they’re getting married, and it’s official. Throughout the last three years they’ve begun a wonderful life together, and the future lies brilliantly before them. I couldn’t imagine anyone more perfect for she than he, who is smart, hilarious, astounding in his generosity, and unflinchingly honorable. Moreover he is good enough for my gorgeous, accomplished, amazing friend, which in itself is truly something.
January 22, 2008
Stuff and Links
Now reading Four Letter Word, which is really lovely, and fascinating as anthologies go– more to come on that. I finished reading The Gathering last night, though I’ve not yet formulated my reaction. Too bogged down in hype and expectations for clarity yet, but my sense was that it was very good. Perhaps the story itself was more ordinary than I would have liked, but then: “Because, just at this moment, I find that being part of a family is the most excruciating possible way to be alive.” And challenging language in a way that was most rewarded. Yes then, I think I liked it.
Taking my thoughts about abortion’s inherent boringness and narrative challenge a bit further, Tabatha Southey dares to make it all a comedy with brilliant results. On why we should go back to myths (for it seems that snazzy modern takes do not suffice). My friend K. has a new blog called The Pop Triad. Dictators don’t do it better.
January 21, 2008
This Little Golden Book belongs to…
I read a review today of a wonderful-sounding book called Golden Legacy. Which set me awash in nostalgia; my favourite Little Golden Book remains We Help Mommy, for reasons which probably have more to do with said nostalgia than literary merit (or the lessons it imparted, which seem to have been minimal). Though there is literary merit, and the illustrations are beautiful. All of this led me to the Little Golden Books website, which tells their story. They were treasures of my childhood, these books. I remember spending ages studying the characters populating the little train on the back of the book, lining up the shiny spines, and the “This Little Golden Book belongs to:” label on the inside cover: here was a book and it was mine!
