November 5, 2006

StuffRead

I loved Camilla Gibb’s piece in The Globe today, weaving together Borat, Peter McKay’s alleged dog slur, Anna Politkovskaya, and freedom of speech to say something good and profound. I also enjoyed Doug Saunders’ piece The Blueprints of Human Unrest, about the relationship between architecture and the social problems. The Giller Debate was all right, and I also appreciated Warren Clements’ attempts to understand why Fergie-Ferg is a “dutchess” instead of a “duchess”. And lovely! Something nice to say about those of us who aspire to bookwrite. Paul Auster on fiction.

November 5, 2006

New Editions

Last night at Katie D’s bachelorette, guests received Shakespeare’s Complete Sonnets, which I thought was a pretty fantastic gift. And today I picked up A History of Love by Nicole Krauss, which I am excited to read.

November 3, 2006

The Octopus and other readings

Last night, I went to see the brilliant Jennica Harper read, and it was wonderful to put a voice to those words. I enjoyed the evening very much, as Rebecca Rosenblum was there, and we got to hear other readers too, including Leon Rooke, Terence Young and Patricia Young. If I haven’t implored you to check out Jennica Harper’s The Octopus and other poems yet, you should do so. It’s a top-rated Pickle Me This Pick of 2006.

And Jennica signed my copy and I got a bookmark!

November 3, 2006

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

1) In 2006, the prolific Margaret Atwood has released three books: The Penelopiad which reworks the Ulysses myth from Penelope’s point of view; The Tent, a collection of fable-like stories and poems; and Moral Disorder, a collection of connected short stories. I’ve read them all. They were all excellent. Most people are lucky to publish three good books in a lifetime.

2) Last night, as we were lying in bed, I read my husband the story “Moral Disorder” from the book of the same name. My husband and I don’t usually read to one another; we’re just not that way inclined. Originally, I just wanted to read him a passage from the story but I couldn’t stop and he didn’t want me to, and by the end of the story we were laughing so hard, we were crying. The best bit was the haunted peacock. This is Margaret Atwood. Remember Margaret Atwood- the dark, bleak, feminist man-hater (as you no doubt learned when you read Handmaid’s Tale at school?) Margaret Atwood is a first class comedian.

3) At the end of her story “The Entities”, Margaret Atwood writes, “But what else could I do with all that? thinks Nell, wending her way back to her own house. All that anxiety and anger, those dubious good intentions, those tangled lives, that blood. I can tell about it or I can bury it. In the end, we’ll all become stories. Or else we’ll become entities. Maybe it’s the same.” I cite this passage, as Moral Disorder has been remarked on profusely for being quite autobiographical in its content, and herein lies the clue. I don’t see this book as autobiographical, but it is clear thoughout Atwood’s oeuvre that she mines her own life for stuff. Not her own experiences particularly, although they do appear, but more objects and settings. Having just read Cat’s Eye, Moral Disorder, and now rereading Lady Oracle, this is quite apparent. And I think it’s really fascinating to understand the different ways authors use their own lives in their work, and rather than supplying us with the story of Atwood, Moral Disorder provides insight into this process.

4) In addition, I don’t think a story such as “Moral Disorder” could have been written unless it came from some experience, or combination of experience. That sort of story is too absurd to be imagined, and could only be captured by someone who has lived through it. I’m just guessing.

5) I think Moral Disorder is essentially a novel. The stories all could stand alone (and they do– I’d read two in previous Toronto Life Fiction Issues) but the links are essential, a chronology is present. This book is a novel in the way that Lives of Girls and Women is a novel, though I think as a novel Atwood’s book actually works better.

6) I have written this entry as a list, to reflect my confusion about short story collections and how they should be reviewed. I could treat this book like the novel I believe it is, and sum up the narrative trajectory, but somehow that feels cheap. And my automatic response to this work was indeed rent and chaptered, as you can see. So it’s not completely a novel, but I stress its novel-like tendencies so those of you who dislike short story collections will not be put off this most excellent reading experience.

7) I could say this. Some short stories are not meant for collection, and might be happier wandering free. The stories in Moral Disorder, on the other hand, belong together. They centre around a character called Nell, and begin with the story “Bad News” in a present day, which takes a page from The Tent in form and content, I thought. From the second story, we return to Nell’s childhood and the stories continue in first-person until about half-way through when I becomes Nell (and her house is possessed by a lovesick peacock). She grows up, falls in love, struggles with the realities of modern love ala David Bowie (well, no David Bowie but you know, it’s the seventies). The last two stories of the collection beautifully deal with the decline of Nell’s parents and her relationships with them, and contribute to the circular structure of this collection. A fascinating dynamic is apparent, as Nell is caring for the ailing parents and their roles are reversed, and yet she is more a child than she ever was, because this is how they know and remember her.

8) This was a deeply satisfying book.

November 2, 2006

Today

When a shite piece of prose grows legs, and Stuart’s eggs show signs of imminent chickenhood. And there’s Japanese curry for dinner. Cheers all around then.

November 2, 2006

Joe saw me first

Joe saw me first, which wasn’t technically true because I’d seen him plenty before that. I knew him, but so did everyone, in that way a whole crowd knows a singer on the stage but no one expects him to know them back. Joe Brighton had been President of the Student Council the year before, when a radical group organized a sit-in at the Chancellor’s Office in protest of the Vietnam War and the university administration’s draconian authoritarianism. Rather unfashionably, Joe had condemned the students’ actions as irresponsible and ill-conceived, and he lent his support to a police raid that saw the protesters jailed. He’d stood up on behalf of mild-mannered, clean-cut boys everywhere, and even when the school paper pasted a headline over his face proclaiming him a fascist, you still had to admire his gumption. Joe’s council impeached him before his term was up, which only heightened his fame really. Felled politician though he was, Joe Brighton was six foot five and gorgeous, star forward of the Varsity Hockey Team, and when I used to take his order at the restaurant where I worked, I could hardly speak without a stammer.

November 2, 2006

Seen Reading

Bookninja links to Seen Reading, a wonderful blog tracking who’s reading what around town. I’ve gone through it looking for me, but there’s no sign yet.

November 1, 2006

Cat's Eye

Usually when I read marginalia from former academic selves of mine, it makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs. Particularly my high school self, which destroyed my Great Gatsby with banality, but my undergrad self was no treat either– the river, as I noted in The Diviners, “=life”. Now reading Cat’s Eye, which I’ve read a thousand other times. One of those times was 1998 for a course in my first year at university, and I highlighted all important passages in green highlighter. No idiot comments, fortunately, just the highlighter. It’s not so annoying actually, and this time, as I’ve made my own markings through it (which undoubtedly will make me want to kill myself in the future), I’ve become oddly conscious of some sort of dialogue with my former me. It’s sort of wonderful.

November 1, 2006

Trick or Treat?

Trick-or-treating was a smash! Highlights were various princesses and tigers who were too little to walk, and the boy in the noose who was “an emo kid”. Lowlights were the various boys in baggy pants who were “rappers”, and me asking another boy in baggy pants (an old biddy voice), “Are you a rapper too?” except he was a soccer player.

November 1, 2006

Books in the News

Okay, I admit I like the Guardian Books Blog. I just hope the bloggish articles don’t come to take the place of their regular books articles. On writing that first novel: “For years I was bogged down in the paraphernalia surrounding the writing of a novel–the specially sharpened pencil, the new notebook, just the right word processor. I eagerly hovered up snippets of information about how other people wrote their books as if hoping to discover a special secret that would enable me to write mine. With hindsight it is now clear that this hopelessly naive behaviour was a form of decades-long displacement activity that was actually preventing me from writing a novel, and that the only way to write a novel is indeed to write it, one painful word after another.” On giving children books for Christmas. On what reviewers should think according to publishers. Outside of the blog, on Penguins: you know, I don’t know if I like Penguin books because I like penguins, or if I like penguins because of the books. Alice Munro in The Guardian and in The Globe. Plath sonnet discovered.

Am devastated about Reese and Ryan.