February 26, 2008
I danced with a girl
“The room was wooden, like a ship, and once in it we were trapped and couldn’t escape. I danced with a girl who had no fingers. Her hand kept slipping out of my grasp.” –Julia Darling, Crocodile Soup.
This happened to me, during a short-lived career as a ballerina during late 1984. It was the sole remarkable feature of this experience, and I can’t quite believe I’m not the only one. Fictional or otherwise. Books are so amazing.
February 25, 2008
No no no
Highlights of this weekend included brunch with Erin and Ivor, diets managing not to start even tomorrow and not cleaning our house. This afternoon I played Scrabble in support of Frontier College with Stuart and Rebecca, and learned how much is too much sushi. Yes, two thirds of us are writers and though Rebecca did beat me, our game was won by the graphic designer with a Bachelor of Science, but ah well. The event put was put on by the Toronto JETAA (and my friend Natalie Bay) and it was tremendous fun. Fun continued into tonight, as we attended an Oscar Party at our friends’ Katie and Alan’s. It was a grand evening, although having seen only one film last year which was Alvin and the Chipmunks, I wasn’t so interested in the show, and really just hijacked the whole event to (rather inappropriately) fulfill my lifelong desire to dress up like Amy Winehouse. Which was perfect because then I won the prize for most creative costume which was the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But the very best part of this weekend was the sunshine, and the fact it felt like spring.
February 24, 2008
Julia Darling
I first learned about the poet/novelist Julia Darling in early 2005, when she was instructing a Guardian Poetry Workshop, and something about her voice, even the prose in her instruction was so compelling, that I became interested in her work. Only a few months later Darling died of breast cancer at the age of 48, and the remembrances on her personal website (as well as her own blog) are a testament to her spirit, to the power of her writing.
I’m now reading her novel Crocodile Soup, which I picked up in a booksale ages ago. Oh, it’s such a pleasure. Hard and funny, reminiscent of Kate Atkinson– always a good thing. I’m just getting into it, but I expect to be recommending it wholeheartedly very soon.
February 24, 2008
Falling by Anne Simpson
Unsurprisingly the emphasis of Anne Simpson’s novel Falling arrives in unexpected places. Unsurprising, as one might say that Simpson is a poet first and foremost– she has won the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, she has been shortlisted for a Pushcart– but perhaps that is too easy. And Falling is Simpson’s second novel after all. However I will still assert she is a poet, for poetry is absolutely Falling‘s greatest strength. The usual bones of noveldom– plot and character– to some extent jettisoned for the sake of poetics instead.
And with these poetics, instead of a novel Simpson has assembled a series of moments. Moments so singularly perfect, absolutely realized right down to every atom, that the novel works: the girl Lisa drowned in a stream, the water moving over her fingertips; Ingrid, her distraught mother at the funeral being comforted by her ex-husband, and the hole in the toe of her panty-hose; her brother Damian, unconvinced that there was nothing he could have done, forgetting his mother’s car and arriving home in the morning, and though his sister is dead, he’s fallen in love with a girl.
This is a world constructed not by verisimilitude, but by language. The characters themselves not so much people as a reason for the words, the images, for the moments. And because the language is so remarkable, this is enough to build a world upon. Ordinary images rendered extraordinary– pictures of a brother and a sister joined by a hinge, the thick heat of summer, the imprint of Lisa’s toe inside a shoe. The falls, and that rushing water, which becomes more the guiding force of the novel than a plot is.
Some sections of the book do demonstrate that Simpson is capable of more plot-driven writing. Following an odd but lovely sequence of chapters, which are otherwise unnumbered throughout the book but here counted down from ten– liftoff instead of falling, as Damian finally confronts the force of his grief– causality is apparent, tension is resonant. One thing leads to another, as novels have taught us to expect, and maybe I would have liked more of this, but then perhaps this isn’t the sort of novel Simpson was writing.
She is writing something quieter than this, something subtler. The rushing river and falls a metaphor for life, but also for the state of life in grief. And so the characters will not be so clearly outlined, merely being swept along. Which is only a bit unsatisfying in the case of Lisa, who is just thought of, and yet the reason for the story. Here is a novel constructed around an absence, but one that remains undefined, which is tricky– I would have liked to know her better. But the metaphor works for the other characters, inside their state of grief and amidst the thickness of their atmosphere. The noise, the rush, unceasing.
So perhaps as readers we too must give in to the current, letting us carry us where it may. Here we will find spots of absolutely illumination, and of beauty. And just as it does for the grieving, maybe even for the dead, surely the current will take us someplace new. Follow that poem, momentum enough– towards the river “opened up, opened wide.”
February 23, 2008
Wunderspace
It’s a time of excitement and nerve-wrackage, and of general up-in-the-airness here on the Pickle Me This homefront.
First, having finished my first novel and now beginning the process of finding it a road to publication, I’ve started work on my second book. It’s been buzzing about in my head for a long while now and it’s exciting to finally get writing. How brilliant then, to have the possibilities still be infinite.
Second, and most nerve-wracking: the homefront is being relocated! After two and a half years here, we’ve outgrown our gorgeous apartment and are ready for a change. And though we’ve been thinking about buying for a while now, we’re opting instead to find another rental, save for another few years, thus enabling us to continue eating expensive cheese and going on vacations. Also so that when things break we will continue not to have to fix them. I further like the idea of renting because it still leaves open the possibility of me taking up cafe-sitting full-time, which would just not be possible with a mortgage.
So we’re now on the hunt for a perfect two bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, aboveground with a deck. And wherever this wunderspace happens to be, come April 1st we are going to live there.
February 22, 2008
When whole cities fit into books
I’ve recounted already how we spent our last vacation day scrambling around San Francisco in search of a used Tales of the City. The novel of San Francisco, according to our guidebook, and I just had to have it. A piece of San Francisco to take home with me.
I usually have little interest in reading about a place whilst I’m in it, but once I’m far away and homesick, novels and stories can be the next best thing to being there (which is why I now love Haruki Murakami). And I knew San Francisco homesickness would be long-lasting, so I wanted the remedy on-hand. I was also excited to purchase a book from the Gay Lit section (though such a label seems a bit reductive so far– is a book considered Gay Lit because there are gay people in it?) because it made me feel open-minded in that way gay people probably find inordinately irritating.
As a reward for accompanying me on my scramble, I let Stuart read the book first. He quickly forgave me for scramblage, loved the book, and said its lightness might be a nice way to follow The Poisonwood Bible. And now I’m halfway through, prepared to read the rest this evening in a hot bath (which is interesting because I’ve just learned from a wise source of a connection between this book and The Serial, which I read in another bathtub six years ago, but I digress).
The story is light indeed, and it’s a perfect book for a bathtub, but it’s delightfully entertaining and how brilliant that it establishes a map of the city in my mind.”Valencia Street, with its union halls and Mexican restaurants and motorcycle repair shops, was an oddly squalid setting for the gates of heaven.” Absolutely! Although for me heaven was bookshops, not steam baths, but alas. I’ve sat in Washington Square too, and I can see Coit Tower, and Marina, and the Castro, and even the Safeway on Market, where we bought rice-a-roni the San Francisco treat (not half bad, by the way). Polk and Hyde, The Mission, from the Tenderloin to Nob Hill.
That a whole city disappeared from my horizon can live on in my mind is really nothing short of a tremendous thing.
February 21, 2008
Good things I've read lately…
…include Rona Maynard’s gorgeous tribute to her friend, the writer Val Ross; yes indeed, The Poisonwood Bible; another celebration of letter writing. “12 or 20 Questions” with Zoe Whittall. And oh, lunar eclipse aside, February has never ever been more blah.
February 20, 2008
I'll give you a reason
“A novel can educate to some extent. But first, a novel has to entertain– that’s the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I’ll give you a reason to turn every page.” –Barbara Kingsolver
February 19, 2008
Accidentally Bookish
Read my Descant blog post about my trip to San Francisco, regarding my (mostly) purely accidental bookish adventures whilst travelling.
February 18, 2008
Zadie etc.
Another looong listing of reader comments at Bookninja. (See my post below). I find it interesting that these topics which have incited such debate are both in regards to women who other people think are much more successful than they deserve to be. Zadie Smith, in this case, who I personally believe is every bit as successful as she deserves to be for she is a legend. I heard her speak at Harbourfront two years ago, and I swear I would pay her anything to sit in my house and lecture me. She is fascinating, and oh so smart. Her books are some of the most exciting and inspiring I’ve ever encountered in literature, contemporary or otherwise. And yet there are those who’d see fit to knock her off her star.
Such as this commmenter: “… while I’ve picked up a couple of Smith’s novels to skim them, I’ve not read nor purchased one because I find them similarly lacking in quality, much less greatness.” He who could detect “greatness” in a skim? Perhaps he is the legend after all.
My friend K, who attended the Z. Smith Harbourfront reading with me, has recounted in her blog the horrible incident that took place in the Q&A. In which some jackass thought it be clever and/or polite to ask if Smith supposed she would have had the success she’s had were she not so physically attractive. It was mortifying. I mean, what this woman has to deal with. That after three novels, short stories, editing of anthologies, incredibly astute literary criticism, marvelous and generous work as a public figure, that it would all come down to her face. There is an underlying sense here that as a woman Smith is incapable of greatness on her own terms. The same sort of sense you get from a guy who’d dismiss the possibility of her greatness having not even done more than skim one of her books.
It makes me angry.
Margaret Atwood hating is exactly the same. It’s so stupidly easy, you know. Hating Margaret Atwood or Zadie Smith is not the express ticket to clever. Hating them without having read their books could possibly make you the least literary person ever, and the stupidity is only underlined by being in this position and even supposing you’ve got something to say.
