January 26, 2007
Mmmm she says
President’s Choice Moroccan-Style Mint Green is the tea of choice of late.
January 25, 2007
I'm scared.
On my way through the Canadian Oxford Dictionary whilst searching for the exact definition of “eaves”, I note that in the entry under “Cummings”, Burton gets precedent over Edward Estlin (e.e.), which is very oh canada. And then I start to think about the Burton Cummings poetry I could recite in near-entirety (ie These Eyes, Share the Land, I’m Scared and Stand Tall etc.) vs what I know by e.e. (ie none) and I feel very very subeducated.
Upon investigation, I discover that Burton’s precedent is thanks to alphabetical order, and that biographical entries in the COD are not actually in order of greatness. Though perhaps the alphabet could be considered an order of greatness. I still like that Burton gets top billing though. And I wonder if he appears in any ODs outside of the C?
January 23, 2007
The Third Age
I was interested to see Margaret Drabble cited in the recent Macleans article “The 27 Year Itch” regarding late-life divorce for having coined the phrase “The Third Age” in her The Seven Sisters. On the digitalization of reading. Jenny Diski on compacting the classics, which is horrifyingly awful.
I’m now reading The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches to put a little Canadienne in my CanLit. And it’s wonderful. I came home from the library this morn also bearing Things Fall Apart and Youth.
January 23, 2007
In lieu of sensationalism.
Rather than religiously following Canada’s largest murder trial in all its grisly detail, may I suggest you instead read Missing Sarah by Maggie de Vries. I read this book last May, and it’s stayed with me since, and changed the way I think of both prostitution in general, and this court case. Maggie de Vries tells the story of her sister Sarah with such compassion and love, and instills her with the humanity she was so denied at the end of her life.
January 23, 2007
Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield tugs all the heartstrings in his memoir Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. He writes an elegy for the 1990s: “Remember Brittany Murphy, the funny frizzy-haired, Mentos-loving dork in Clueless? By 2002, she was the hood ornament in 8 Mile, just another skinny starlet, an index of everything we’ve in that time”. His subtitular “loss” is the death of his wife Renee, who loved music as much as he does and died of a pulmonary embolism in 1997. And he tells the story of his life through mix tapes, one per chapter with full track listings– and even the shameful tracks.
In spite of the tugging, Sheffield surmounts bathos. He’s a good writer (contributing editor for Rolling Stone says his bio) and his material is appealing for anyone who grew up in and around the same era. More than an elegy for his wife, Sheffield writes a celebration of her life and the time they shared together, and it’s a joy to read. The book’s mix-tape chapter structure is fun, engaging and inspiring. There is a certain High Fidelityness to it all, but without the pretension. Rob Sheffield doesn’t seem to take himself or his music too seriously, in spite of making a career of it.
Because music is music after all. After his wife’s death, Hanson came out with “MmmBop” and Sheffield regretted that she would never know it, because as cool as she was, it was a song they would have loved together. In the chapter “The Comfort Zone”, he uses a “dishes tape” to tell the tales of domesticity. He taped most of it off Casey Kasem’s American Top-40 countdown, including The KLF/Tammy Wynette with “Justified and Ancient”, Kris Kross “Jump’, “I’m Too Sexy” and “Baby Got Back”. Etc. Also featured was Tom Cochrane “Life is a Highway”: “Tom Cochrane had nothing to say, plus a stupid way of saying it, but he helped me get the dishes done.” “A Little Down, A Little Duvet”, a mix Renee made to fall asleep to at night (and the chapter in which they get married) contains Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing”, which is my favourite song in the world. These guys were cool. Sheffield writes about the grunge and 1993, when “the music we loved had blown up nationwide”. But then his mix from that time also includes Tag Team and and Lucinda Williams. And I like that.
He doesn’t get all up on new technology either, as might be expected. Though the cassette holds nostalgic appeal for Sheffield, he uses the term “mix tape” figuratively (though he’s certainly not the only one who does that). He welcomed the advent of the recordable CD, admits to loving his iPod “carnally”. But it’s the “romance” of the mix tape, and those of us with cardboard box-fulls of the stuff packed down in the basements of our past can certainly understand that. “The rhythm of a mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies… Love is a mix tape” says Rob Sheffield, and his thesis convinced me.
I loved his book like a souvenir of a good time.
January 23, 2007
Shopping
Today I came home with the following in my bag: a bundle of spinach for our supper; an AS Byatt novel from the library (purchaed for a quarter); a Montreal-style bagel for my lunch; and two passport photos. The new passport photos mean I will no longer resemble a fat Italian man internationally, but I will now be going abroad as a fat Italian woman. Yesterday I got brand new brilliant winter boots, and a black turtleneck sweater. I might hasten to say that I’ve got everything I need.
January 22, 2007
Don't say you'll stay cuz then you'll go away
I am talking about the writer/reader connection. I am thirteen years younger than Rob Sheffield, author of the memoir Love is a Mix Tape, but I think we bookended the same formative years. He gets sentimental for the 1990s, and I knew I’d like his book. But then. He’s waxing nostalgic. He notes, “On 90210, Dylan and Kelly were making out on the beach to ‘Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover”. That’s what I’m talking about, because I was watching. It was the year the 90210 season ran into summertime, and Donna and Brenda went to Paris while Kelly stayed home to steal Brenda’s boyfriend. But not steal, exactly, because they were meant to be. And I was thirteen or fourteen years old, watching that scene to that Sophie B Hawkins soundtrack, and I felt more longing than I’d ever known in my life. All the angst in the world wrapped up in my just-teenage heart, but Dylan and Kelly felt it too, and one day that was going to be my life. Or something like it, and it would involve kissing at the very least.
Rob Sheffield was twenty six at the time, and I doubt that scene for him was also merely a most hopeful crystal ball, but he remembered it for whatever reason, and just for that, his book will mean something infinitely more to me.
January 21, 2007
Confronted by Fiction
The book I just finished, I am embarrassed to name, and the book I am reading at the moment, I don’t like much at all. This state of affairs is a deep dark hole which doesn’t please me, and I’ll be climbing out of it in a day or two.
Part two of the Treatise of Zadie Smith. “To read The Virgin Suicides followed by The Idiot followed by Despair followed by You Bright and Risen Angels followed by Bleak House followed by Jonah’s Gourd Vine followed by Play it as it Lays is to be forced to recognise the inviolability of the individual human experience. Fiction confronts you with the awesome fact that you are not the only real thing in this world.” (Oh Zadie I swoon!). Edith Wharton in France. Go Hillary! (How refreshing– a chance for a better world!)
The Robber Bride’s TV adaptation is on tonight. I’ll be watching, mainly because I’ve just started a knitting project and TV becomes handy then– particularly when it’s bookish.
January 21, 2007
Call for Submissions
Now seeking submissions is echolocation, which through its last two issues has proven itself one of the best new literary journals in Canada. (Watch for the Issue 6 Launch on Feb. 1 details to follow). As fiction editor, of course, I’ve calling for short fiction submissions in particular. See here for details, and email me if you have any questions.
