October 1, 2007
So many Penguins
Well, my fears were unwarranted. The Victoria College Books Sale had more than enough books for me and the WOTS crew. And there’s still more, and you can fill a box tomorrow morning for a tenner if you’re interested. But I am finished. From the top left: Forever by Judy Blume, so my future-children can have naughty books around the house appropriate to their age group; Volume Two of Woolf’s Diaries, as I’ve only read the last one so far; Penelope’s Way by Blanche Howard, who I’ve wanted to read since her letters were published last Spring; Larry’s Party by Carol Shields, which, though I can’t believe it, I’ve never read; The Tree of Life by Fredelle Bruser Maynard; Rose Macaulay’s The World my Wilderness; Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat; another Penelope Lively– Cleopatra’s Sister; The Penguin Encyclopedia of Places from 1965, purchased for charm and not currency; At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard, whose sister has already demonstrated that Maynards write good books; Woolf’s last novel Between the Acts; Look at Me by Anita Brookner; Dominick Dunne’s Another City, Not My Own, as we love his books at our house; Lessing’s The Golden Notebook even though Joan Didion doesn’t like it; Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis; two Graham Greenes– The Heart of the Matter, which I’ve read, and Brighton Rock, which I haven’t; Perfect Happiness by Penelope Lively; The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Beach Music by Pat Conroy, which my mom, sister and I love together, and my previous copy I left in Japan.
I am now, quite officially, overbooked.
September 30, 2007
No Nuit Blanche
Here is a photo of Stuart and I experiencing our urban landscape. Alas, we did not get to Nuit Blanche. On the way home from a brilliant night at Rebecca Rosenblum’s (with such good company as Chapati Kid), I shared public transportation with people going to Nuit Blanche, and their company made me want to go home to read. I’m glad I did.
And now we’ve just arrived home from The Word on the Street, which was a brilliant afternoon. I should have paid more attention to the scheduling though, instead of showing up blind, as I’m sure there was a lot of good programming I missed. Such as Elizabeth Hay, whose novel I finished Friday night and was the best book I’ve read this year. I could have heard her read! She could have signed book! I lined up at the author’s signing tent anyway, and told her how much I’d enjoyed her book. Managing not to be too much of a blathering idiot, which is sweet relief. Afterwards I also met the lovely Kim Jernigan of The New Quarterly, which was exciting. And finally to the main event, as Patricia Storms presented and read from her new book 13 Ghosts of Halloween. It was delightful. She was absolutely entertaining, the presentation was fabulous, we got hear her sing!, and after she signed my book. Plus I got to meet her, which was nice. I am an ever-adoring fan.
So a good day, in daylight. I freaked out though, about the proximity of The Vic Book Sale to The Word on the Street Crowd, and wondered if they’d leave anything for the rest of us tomorrow. And then I came to the conclusion, all on my own, that even if they didn’t, I have eight billions books of my own still to read, some of which I bought at the book sale last year, and a whole host of others on reserve at the library. Which I thought was very mature, and I deserved a pat on the back for. Whenever I refrain from childishness, I always feel this proud.
Today I picked up The Beatles Blue Album, which made me fall in love with them years ago, and I want to again. Now reading Alice I Think by Susan Juby, which is out in its own grown-up edition, and, really, it positively should be.
September 30, 2007
Resurrection
On Wednesday I found out that my next-door neighbour died– the man who’d helped us with our garden. I’d heard one of the kids who lived there talking about a hospital, and so I asked one of them what was wrong. “My grandfather is sick,” he told me. I asked him if he was all right, and the kid reported that he’d died this morning. And so I went in my house and cried, and Stuart was also sad, in his mannish-less-emotional way. All I could think of was my neighbour’s beautiful garden going untended, and that I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him. That I would never see him again, and I kept looking out the window expecting to.
I baked a batch of muffins that night (actually two, as the first didn’t turn out) and took them over to their house, gave them to another grandson. In the morning I saw one of the man’s sons out in the backyard, aimlessly fidding with the garden, and I was thinking that this poor guy had just lost his dad, and I felt terrible. I went to work feeling just as bad, and as I got to feeling better as the day progressed, I felt guilty for my good humour. That life goes on, as it did.
It was strange then, this morning, to see the dead man from next door out working in that garden. Needless to say, we are considerably confused, and I keep dissolving into hysterical laughter. And I am also really quite embarrassed about the fact that I took them over a batch of muffins, and I wonder what they thought that was all about. Or what it truly was all about? I’m also worried that this may warp my conception of life and death, and that every time someone dies from now on I am going to expect this to happen.
Life is weird, particularly in my neighbourhood.
September 30, 2007
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
So often, unsurprisingly, we find ourselves employing metaphors of artistry when it comes to a well-crafted book. Writers “weave” narratives, “paint” images, and, yes “craft” at all. Similarly, I recently wrote about a book’s machinery. And all this is high praise, really, to liken a writer to an artisan. But then Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air manages to surmount such praise– “seamless” is the best crafting metaphor I can think of. This book feels too whole to have been created, too perfect. Late Nights on Air is an entity unto itself, its own world, and a truly magnificent literary achievement.
The story is set among a group of people working at a small Yellowknife radio station in 1975. Indeed this is the True North, but not like we might imagine: “It was north of the sixtieth parallel and shared in the romance of the North, emanating not mystery but uniqueness and not right away. It had no breathtaking scenery. No mountains, no glaciers, in the winter not even that much snow.” Sound, not sight, becomes the salient sense, which is natural with the radio, and Hay creates this effect beautifully. Admirably too, for it is hard to write sound. And not just those voices in the night, but also snow crunching underfoot, paddles in the water, crackling fires and birdsong. Truly, this is the most audible novel I have ever read.
The story, quite simply, tells what happens when a various group of people come together in this strange and isolated place. The enigmatic Dido, whose voice causes some people to fall in love with her, and whose presence does others. Harry Boyd, a washed-up has-been, managing the station as part of his demotion. Gwen, who is too young and arrives in town with a bruise on her throat. Eleanor Dew, the station receptionist, the steadying force. Relationships are entered in and out of, loyalties shift in surprising ways. Each of these characters come with their own unwavering backstories, and point-of-view shifts between them with such fluidity. Similarly the story moves back and forth in time in a way that feels only natural, demonstrating Hay’s remarkable skill without actually making us aware of her at all.
The final third of the book tells of a modified version of our original group heading out on a six week canoe trip through the barrens. Though the travellers are light-hearted in their preprarations, a sense of foreboding pervades and clearly something bad is going to happen. And though what does happen is as devastating as one might expect, I found myself quite impressed with how deftly this event had been established, with a lack of emotional manipulation or gratuitous sensation. Also with how rivetted I remained to the story as the group made way along their journey– I tend to like stories that happen in places, usually urban places, but so attached I was to these characters that my attention never faltered as they portaged and canoed for days, sometimes seeing no other living creature but a single ptarmigan or a caribou.
Such is the story then, though what’s it about? It’s about people, and all that their presence entails. It’s about love and longing, otherness and belonging, bookishness and radio, seasons and change. It’s about Canada, and universality, and goodness, and less-than goodness. It is also an absolutely beautifully designed book, and I’d encouraged you to pick it up in hardback if you could. A nice compact shape and gorgeous cover art. And what’s inside is stupendous. Such a fitting title as the narrative felt weightless, but yet simultaneously substantial. Reading was an absolute pleasure.
September 28, 2007
Packed
This weekend: I plan on checking a number of things off a list I should have done ages ago. In terms of fun, workshop reunion at RR’s. Nuit Blanche. The Victoria College Book Sale starts tonight (though I’m saving myself until Monday morning). You should check out the booksale– it’s right in the neighbourhood of Word on the Street, which I’m going to Sunday. Exciting! I went last year, but spent the day in a booth. This year I’ll get to browse. Will you be there too? Let me know, and I’ll come say hello to you.
September 28, 2007
Thinking back and forth
I’m now reading Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights On Air, which is to say I’m positively bewitched. 100 pages from the end, and expect a review sometime tomorrow. I am positively enveloped; I’ve got butterflies in my stomach. To have a story so gripping and writing so good is rare, really. And the book has been doing strange things to me. “After a while it grew on them, on some of them at least, on the ones who would never forget, who would think back on their lives and say, My time there was the most vivid time of my life.”
That passage set me thinking about the most vivid time of my life, and last night around 10:30 I was digging through boxes to find my journal from September 16th 2001-May 31 2002. The exact dates were incidental, but that time was on fire. Anyone who was there would know that, and it seems I remember it very poorly upon rereading my journal. Stories and anecdotes I have no recollection of, which is strange. Though the writing is good– this surprised me. When I read my fiction from that period, I want to bury myself in my backyard, but the journal was really lovely in places. The stories it told were often sad too. Funny with vividness– I think it comes from the whole spectrum of emotions, confined to a small space. “My time there was the most crazy time of my life.” Vivid, yes, but I wasn’t happy. I remember those days epically, but they were tough to be in the thick of.
Whereas. Tonight, in my less vivid life, I arrived home with my husband, who takes the subway to my work every day so we can walk home together. “I need to read,” he said, when we got in the door. He is currently enthralled by Little Children. So we sat down on the couch together, books in hand, the kettle on for tea. A straight hour of nothing but books, tea, and biscuits, and perfect quiet. Elizabeth Hay has created something amazing. And the sweet bliss interrupted only to get up get the pumpkin risotto started.
September 28, 2007
Canoeists carried
“The canoes carried the canoeists and the canoeists carried the damselflies and everything seemed weightless. They were heading towards the first day of August, the street lights were noticeable again, and a few leaves were turning yellow, indicating in their minimal, elegant way an end to this long, warm summer and the beginning of a darker chapter.” –from Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air
September 27, 2007
Particularly telling
From The Guardian Review of When To Walk: “It’s a sign of how good a writer she is that you even forgive Ramble’s perusal of boxes of memorabilia – usually the sign of a book that deserves to be forgotten beneath the bed.”
Exactly.
September 27, 2007
Links for Thursday
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may by Judy Pollard Smith was an absolutely gorgeous essay. “There is a plethora of print for baby boomers to mull over, about how worldly-wise and wealthy we’ve become on some counts, about how many toys we’ve collected, about how we strive to improve upon medical solutions to halt the aging process./ But where, oh where, is the stuff of import? Where is the reading material that tells us that we don’t have to keep on dieting and jogging like maniacs, that it’s okay to let ourselves grow older with élan, with hope, with our friends and families, with happy hearts, with grace? Where is The Wife Of Bath when we need her?” I sent it to my mom.
On books which have opened our eyes to feminism. I love that one is broad-minded enough to include Joan Didion. For me? Three Guineas, The Edible Woman, Just as I Thought by Grace Paley. I’ll think of others, I’m sure. (Yes. Fear of Flying was tremendously important during a rather bizarre period in my life, no matter how cliched and out-of-date that reads). Though of course the books that really formed my conciousness included The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger, and The Real Me by Betty Miles. Much later on came Bust Magazine, which changed my life, I think. Though I’m older/younger than that now.
Some audio links: I listen to online radio at work. Like everyone else, I adore This American Life. And for the last week and a half I’ve been enjoying BBC Radio 1’s Legend Shows, by Paul McCartney, Debbie Harry, Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller etc. Very cool, and you can always listen again.
And if all else fails, you can look up “fruit” on wikipedia.
September 26, 2007
Books in my life
I’ve got all these books in my life, and not necessarily just the ones I’m reading. Books I’m not reading seem to have just as much a presence. Oh, reader’s compunction. I get it rarely, reading as swiftly as I do, but a couple of tomes have been lurking lately, and I know it is absolutely imperative that I get to them, and they’re piled on my bedside, but the dust on their jackets is now this thick. I’m talking nonfiction, usually, when I talk like this. To begin a long nonfiction book is a tremendous commitment, requiring sacrifice as to how it keeps me away from fiction. A Short History of Everything and Guns Germs and Steel are way overdue. I’ll get around to them. This might be absolutely a lie, but I really intend that it not be.
And then books I should be reading. And not should as in “ought to be but won’t” as above, but rather “must” be read, as the whole universe is saying so. Like with Great Expectations quite recently (and yes, I’ll get to that book too). Now it’s Lucky Jim, which Rona Maynard recommends. And in this interview Kate Christensen cites it as an influence on her In The Drink, which I’ve just read. (Do read the Christensen interview [via maud newton] by the way, for a fantastic example of chick lit’s cannibalistic tendencies, which I’ve mentioned before.) So I suppose Kingsley Amis is in the cards for me.
As is Raisins and Almonds, which comes recommended by Becky Rosenblum‘s mother.
Exhausting. But now I actually am reading Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay. Or at least I will be before the night is out. This book has had rave reviews all around, and so I am looking very forward to it.
