February 17, 2008
Lucky
We really didn’t want to leave. Yesterday we were right at our gate, crossing fingers that our flight was overbooked and we might stay another day. And we almost did get to stay, for somehow we missed our boarding call. The final call, and then they had to call us by name over the whole airport, all the while there we were right in front of them, oblivious to the whole cruel world and conniving to stay in San Francisco forever. With no such luck.
We had the most glorious week. The weather was gorgeous, the blossoms came out to bloom, we walked that whole city and we got to know it well. My theory is that you’ve never actually been any place unless you’ve been to it twice, and so we left our Friday free to go back for what we’d liked best. Which was the Mission, and Delores Park, and corner cafes, Valencia Street, streets called Lucky and Balmy, and that sunshine. For lunch we had burritos. It was perfect.
The whole week was perfect, so much of this to do with friends. In 2004, when we lived in Japan, Stuart and I were part of a Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip to Thailand. In our group of about 30, all were American save for Stuart, me, and our now-friend Carolyn, who lives in Toronto. And those who were American were the very best of America. No coincidence, I think, that most were San Franciscans. The end result of all this being that a) we came to love Americans and b) we’ll always have a place to stay in SF. We stayed the week with our friend Lynda and her adorable son Henry, and they were so impossibly good to us, perhaps the best part of our week. Further, on Friday we were treated to a Habitat Reunion at our group leaders’ amazing house, high up on a hill (naturally). It was such a delight to see everyone again, to know they’d come out because we were coming, to get their updates– because they’re all such fabulously interesting people. It was a lovely evening, filled with wine, good food and laughter, and we both felt so lucky.
Which was sort of the story of our entire week.
February 17, 2008
Abundance
It might be surprising, all the reading I’ve got done this week all the while touring, unless you consider that for me “touring” consists of reading a lot of books in sunny parks whilst sprawled out on green grass. And that there was an abundance sun and grass in our San Francisco.
I’ve got a lot to say about the books just done, which I will do in posts to come. This week I had the pleasure of Arlington Park, Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt, Hobart 8, San Francisco Poems and Anagrams (which was the entire plane journey home). And then home again, I’ve just finished Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, which has been ongoing for ages. It has been my “dipping into” book, to be now replaced by The Paris Review Interviews Vol. II. And I’ve finally started The Poisonwood Bible, which so many people rave about that of course my expectations are high.
February 13, 2008
Fake Tales
Two thousand miles we roamed. The only bookish event was a sighting of Danielle Steele’s house. Tomorrow morning we’re picking up our car and hitting the road for two days. We’ve both come to look for America.
February 12, 2008
Monday Monday
Another wonderful day, and our faces are sun-kissed. Sea food, sea cruise, sea lions, sea air. City Lights was exceptional. We got Hobart (with a story by Stephany Aulenback), Twilight of the Superheroes, San Francisco Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Stuart got The Maltese Falcon for a bit more local flavour.
February 11, 2008
Bookish Updates
Very cool: Bang Crunch is a staff pick at the shop around the corner from here. (Read my review). And my favourite book of 2008 is out now: The Monsters of Templeton gets an absolutely stellar review in The Globe. Just finishing Arlington Park, which I’ve loved. And today I purchased Housekeeping Vs The Dirt.
February 11, 2008
California Notables
Fruit, the view from our friend’s living room, and the world’s strangest manga. California is beautiful, warm, and everyone who told us it would be rainy and cold was totally lying. Which means we have to go shopping. Today was Haight and Ashbury, Golden Gate Park, Japanese Tea Garden, Divisidero Street!, Alamo Square, Mission, 826 Valencia, world’s steepest hill to Castro. All on foot. Tomorrow is Alcatraz etc. Vacation– all I ever wanted.
February 7, 2008
If we can awaken
“If we can awaken sympathetic comprehension in our readers, not only for our most evil characters (that is easy: there is a cord there, fastened to all hearts that we can twitch at will), but of our smug, complacent, successful characters, we have surely succeeded…” –Graham Greene, London 1948 from A Life in Letters
February 7, 2008
Bang Crunch by Neil Smith
More than anything, I liked Neil Smith’s Bang Crunch for enacting a scene I’ve been dreaming about for ages: husband and wife get pranked in one of these terrible “comedy” candid camera set-ups they’re always showing on airplanes and/or Canadian television outside of prime time. Turns out the wheelchair rolling down the hill has a dummy inside, in an attempt to catch it wife has fallen down and scraped her knee. Man pops out with a camera, there’s a waiver to be signed, but husband beats the crap out of cameraman instead (tossing camera into a nearby gutter). Why doesn’t this happen more often? Never has violence been less senseless.
This is sort of the way it is with Neil Smith’s collection– it’s full of very cool stuff, good ideas, perfect premises. The final story had me breathing in so sharply I thought I’d swallow myself. The end of the first story did shocking so subtly, I scarcely noticed I’d been hit.
A few stand-out tracks: I loved “Funny Weird or Funny Ha ha?”, starring the woman who fell and scraped her knee. She stores her husband’s ashes in a hollowed out curling rock, which is sort of annoying, but it ceased to be the point of the story for me. Notable too, though perhaps it shouldn’t be, that Smith pitches this woman’s voice so perfectly. “Green Flourescent Protein” was a linked story, and managed the same beautiful sadness, cloaked in a sense of humour. Sympathy sympathy. Smith does it. I also liked “Isolettes”– unconventional drama in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The story made me terribly uncomfortable, but after I realized that there was its power.
Smith’s strengths are not always where he thinks they are. I thought he did pinpoint characters beautifully, wacky premises perfectly formed, but sometimes the writing itself was too conspicuous. The similes and metaphors are unconventional, which works sometimes– for example, “Not a blanket or a shroud of loneliness, but something thinner, tighter. A leotard of loneliness.” Which is awkward, and took me awhile to get my head around, but once I did I felt there was a payoff. Whereas, “A vein in his neck looked as swollen as a garden hose” really doesn’t work at all.
So though I enjoyed this work and would recommend it without reservation, I think it’s the work of a writer finding his feet. Which is to be expected of somebody’s very first book, and imperfect first books always make me hopeful, excited when they have that certain something. I’m pleased that publishers take chances on potential. And this book indeed has that “certain something”, with all the “stuff” packed inside it. Though of course “stuff” does not a short story make– I would lay bets on Smith as a novelist, the longer form forcing him to put away his toys and build up something of the substance that shows in glimmers here.
