March 29, 2007
It's so easy to be charming
“I felt like a writer for the first time when I was twenty-nine years old and writing a series of poems. I was very strict with myself for some reason, and each time I finished a poem, I put the question to myself: is this what I really mean? It’s so easy to be charming. It’s a lot harder to say what you really mean.” – Carol Shields, “An Epistolary Interview” with Joan Thomas.
March 28, 2007
You write because
Lately on all sides I’ve been hearing variations on an old adage; this article quotes Robertson Davies: “There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.” And in other articles, in conversations, books etc. lately, I’ve encountered this same pressing melodrama, and it troubles me. I understand F. Scott Fitzgerald’s take on it, to some extent. He said, “You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.” Point taken. But my first reaction to Davies’s assertion is a crisis of confidence. Because if I never wrote anything again, I don’t know that I would go mad or die. The world is far too rich for such an ultimatum. I know that a hole would grow up in my days, and that my fingers would itch for release by pen or keyboard. I know that ideas would continue to appear in my mind, and they’d wait there patiently for cultivation, until they’d wilt and die. If I never wrote again, I would miss it as I would miss never reading again, or never kissing again. But to go out and out mad, or die? I don’t think so. And so I wonder, does this mean that I am therefore not allowed to write at all?
Lately I’ve sat down to write for six or seven hours every day, and I’ve done it because I love it. In my life so far, I’ve found no better way to spend my days. I know I will have to rejoin the real world soon, which makes me appreciate the last two years all the more. It has been a pleasure to devote my days to reading, learning, and writing. Writing makes me thoroughly happy, and if I never have such freedom again, at least I had it once. And I think that’s enough really. No Robertson Davies lightning bolt has ever shot down from the sky and compelled me to deliver my manifesto, but world all around me inspires me to write all the time.
Everywhere I go is whispering with stories, and I write them down because to do so fills me with joy.
March 28, 2007
The Republic of Spring
As a symptom of springtime, I’ve been oddly compulsive lately. I’m not sure if that’s the word I mean, but I saw a picture of a horse recently and now I’m determined to ride one this summer. I’ve never ridden (rode?) a horse in my life. A similar obsession has taken me over regarding Carol Shields. Now I’ve always loved Carol Shields’s work and she wrote the one book I could classify as a definitive favourite, and her short story collection Various Miracles is a masterpiece, I think. I could go on and on here. I intend to reread The Republic of Love soon. And I’m currently reading Carol Shields: The Arts of a Writing Life, which is inspiring, interesting and wonderful. The quote below from Anne Giardini came from her essay (she is Shields’s daughter, and her beautiful piece is about sharing a love of reading with her mother). I think that as a woman who writes, and as a woman in general, there is so much to be learned from the life and work of Carol Shields. Like Laurie Colwin, I think, Shields was a writer who could capture joy.
Further signs of springtime, last night I could be found drinking too much wine on my front porch. We had to go in once the sun was gone because it was too cold then, but before that the world beyond the porch had been swarming with joggers, dog walkers, a skanky couple making out against a fence, neighbours, strangers, cats, cyclists, cars with the windows down, hipsters, nerds, babies and the elderly. It seems like everyone else was just as eager to get outside as we were.
My husband is on holidays this week, and we’re going out for a sushi lunch. Sugoi.
March 27, 2007
Signs of Spring
The number of things I do not know stuns me sometimes– particularly the things I do not know but stare at daily. There was an outcry in England a while back because children were unable to identify tree and bird species, and I realized I was that stupid too. And so we got a bird book recently (how positively uncool is that?) so that I could make up for my orinthological deficiencies. Now there isn’t much variety in terms of birds where we live, though there are pigeons living below the kitchen window, and sparrows living just above. Savannah sparrows, to be specific (I think). And I can identify starlings too now. Though we saw a sparrow-like bird with a red head today, and I’m not sure what planet that one’s from. Anyway, the big news is that yesterday I saw a robin. And so spring has officially sprung.
I also didn’t know a few things about snooker, or Stuart for that matter. That Stuart knows anything about snooker at all, or that it’s pronounced “snewker” and not “snuhcker”. I had no idea. In The Post Birthday World (now reading) one character is a famous snooker player. Apparently its a British institution. And so I asked my own resident British institution– is this for real? Are there actually famous snooker players? And after correcting my pronounciation, he proceeded to list off famous snookerees, and tell me all about the game. Revealed is a whole other side to him, one which has lain dormant all these years.
March 26, 2007
Straight back into the arms of a stranger
“Reading is usually thought of as a solitary act, although a reader in the act of reading is the opposite of self-absorbed. A reader journeys infinitely further from self than can be achieved in travelling across the globe or into space. A reader interrupted can be vague, disoriented; she has been returned abruptly, without benefit of decompression or debriefing, to one specific point in geography and time, from somewhere else altogehter. To admit to having been lost inside a book is not to resort to metaphor but to admit the turth. A reader reads blindly (even books that have been read before hold new directions and dimensions) and so must have confidence in the writer. Reading is like a game of trust in which one person falls straight back into the arms of a stranger whose job it is to catch the faller and hold her fast”. Anne Giardini, “Double Happiness”
March 26, 2007
Gleaned
A wonderful interview with Joan Didion as her book goes on stage. On that difficult first novel. An extract from the new Ian McEwan. Jane Austen gets a makeover— and reaction.
March 25, 2007
Tealish
Today we finally made it to Tealish. I’ve been interested in going for ages, but I never knew where it was. And then today we were down on Queen Street and there was a sign pointing toward it (on Walnut Avenue, just around the corner from Type Books). It was a superior tea experience, really, and the man behind the counter was so nice, helpful and full of tea saavy. We got a small bag of “Kiwi-licious Green”, as well as a tea ball (finally). We’ll definitely be going back again, to try their ice teas, and esp. chai lattes. Mmmm. Another good reason to trek down through Trinity Bellwoods Park.
March 25, 2007
My mom's literary hijinks (part II)
A new feature here at Pickle Me This. You might remember my mom met Z. Smith’s uncle a few months back. Well, she’s up to her old tricks again, stalking literary superstars and their kin. Though this time not kin. My mom went to see Ami McKay today (recently read), and she met a woman in the washroom who was holding a copy of The Birth House. My mom asked if she could sneak a peak at the book’s author photo because Ms. McKay was soon due to arrive and my mom wanted to know which one she was. To which the woman replied that it was perhaps too late for that, as she was Ami McKay. And she was!
(My mom reported that Ami McKay was beautiful, and that the rest of the event proceeded wonderfully, without further embarrassment).
March 25, 2007
Prairie Fiction should come with a warning label
I had book trauma this weekend. I don’t mean this lightly. As I have mentioned before, reading prairie fiction sends me into despair. Which I always forget about until I’ve nearly finished the book and am filled with deep sadness for the human condition. And I never stopped to think that Obasan is actually prairie fiction too, as well being, well, Obasan. Which, when read following my recent Burmese prison tale rendered the world pretty bleak. And the sky was the colour of paper, and I kept staring out the window pondering the meaning of it all. So in other words I was in dire need of a good slap, and around people far too kind to administer one. Luckily life got better.
First, I’m now reading Orphan Island by Rose Macaulay which is a delightful and interesting romp. You can read the 1925 review from Time Magazine here (ain’t the tinternet grand?) I’ve not read Macaulay’s novels before, though her Pleasure of Ruins is the most beautiful book I own, and I loved her essay on English “Catchwords and Claptrap” (which you can read here). I am reading this novel on the recommendation of Decca who acknowledged it in one of her letters as a favourite. It’s simply lovely.
And next up is The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (who I hope to go see read at Harbourfront next week).
Second, I watched Stranger Than Fiction last night, and I can’t think of the last time I enjoyed a movie so much. And it’s a bookish film, but I watched it with two boys who are a little less bookish than I, and they liked it as much as I did. I found it purely enjoyable from start to finish, I didn’t get bored once, and part of the reason I was so engaged was I had no idea how the plot would sort itself out. But it did perfectly, and all of us were so engrossed in the story that when we feared one character would meet an untimely (or timely, in this case, I do suppose) demise, we were out of our minds with agony. And I like a movie that allows you to care so much. Lately we’ve renting movies last minute with little selection, and then yelling at the screen begging the characters to off themselves so we wouldn’t have to watch them any longer. So it was very nice to feel differently, and of course the bookishness was ace. Six thumbs up.
The sky is still the colour of paper, but my outlook has greatly improved.
March 25, 2007
The Robin Hood Archive
The project I mentioned in this post has nearly come to fruition, thanks to Stuart’s graphic design prowess.
