January 22, 2006
Queenly
I had $5 leftover on my book voucher, so after dinner last night with my Mom and Sis, Stu and I ducked into Bad Blue Bookstore and I purchased The Sea House by Esther Freud out of the bargain bin. So that was exciting. Also, now reading The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. The classics (Classics?) don’t normally interest me, which I will admit is one of my greatest flaws, but I thought the contemporary language might have the story appeal to me. And so far it’s working. In fact The Penelopiad has a great deal in common with Drabble’s The Red Queen, both written in modern voices by long dead women, famous for their husbands. I look forward to reading how the similarities diverge or continue.
A brilliant article here on Angela Carter, Japan, a Toronto Authors’ festival, and the expatriate writer, the writer as an outsider. Which of course is right up my alley.
January 20, 2006
A treasure
Today was sunny days and red wellington boots. Carolyn to dins last night, lunch with Britt and Jennie tomorrow, and dinner with my mom tomorrow night. Tonight I get to stay home. Oh such joy, because for me staying home means hanging out with Stuart. I had breakfast out with Rebecca and Erin this morning, wrote wrote wrote, and got a postcard from Margaret Drabble. It’s true! When I finished reading The Red Queen, just a couple of weeks ago, I had to send her a note just to tell her how much she meant to me. That Drabbling is now a verb, thanks to her. And one of my favourite thing to do. And isn’t she an efficient Margaret Drabble, because her postcard flew back across the ocean at a rapid rate and I’m absolutely in love with it. A treasure.
January 19, 2006
Kama Reading Series Update
Wow. The reading tonight was amazing, and I am now in the market for Luck by Joan Barfoot, A Perfect Night to Go to China by David Gilmour, and The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly. Oh Karen Connelly. What a phenomenal writer, and such a fascinating personality. Her reading had me literally on the edge of my seat, an entire audience gasping in relief. That takes power. I also really appreciated the dynamics of the reading (as well as the food and wine). All three writers stood out in their own right/write, they all really seemed to appreciate and respect each other, and were wonderful in three very distinct ways.
It is apparent that I am currently obsessed with words. Now reading non-fiction though- The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran for research purposes. And also enjoying poetry by Ken Babstock, who is visiting my class next week.
Currently: an undecided voter. Somebody woo me.
January 18, 2006
Since
I do love Carol Shields. First, Various Miracles is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. And her novels are really wonderful. I reread Small Ceremonies last spring, and was struck by much of Shields’ writing was about writing. I noticed this especially upon re-reading Unless, which in my way of the multitudinous superlative is the greatest book I’ve ever read. This book is about wifehood, mamahood, womanhood, but it’s also a how-to guide for aspiring novelists- it’s so much about language, words, names, how to write a sex scene (or at least how you will struggle to do so), how to occupy your characters, how to persist, the evils of the industry. Layers upon layers of richness.
January 18, 2006
Sugoi
I’ve been given a ticket to The Kama Reading Series tonight at the ROM. How exciting!
January 17, 2006
What the students are sleeping to
Number two in our series of books clutched by sleeping students here at the library. Today’s volume is How the West Grew Rich.
January 17, 2006
Jack Layton's Product Endorsement
Admittedly not an exact quote, but the essential bits are there, from Jack Layton on CBC’s The Current this morning:
“And I see that support when I go into Tim Hortons (pause- and then quickly) or the local coffee shop.”
January 16, 2006
In Your Face
Hang your self-portrait in the Art Gallery of Ontario. Details here under “In Your Face”. I think it’s such a fun idea and will definitely check out the exhibit in July.
January 15, 2006
A brief note on cultural appropriation
This article by Margaret Drabble says some really excellent things about appropriation in relation to “The Red Queen”, not all of which are entirely politically correct. This concept is a fairly new one for me, and I’m still grappling with what I think, but one less controversial aspect of appropriation is factual correctness and how a failure to achieve this can disturb the spell fiction casts.
I read “White Teeth” a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. Now I know nothing about Bengali culture, and really at the time I knew nothing of British culture either, so I didn’t read it with an altogether critical eye. But I know other people did, and Zadie Smith received a lot of negative feedback from her protrayal of Bengali characters specifically. I went to see Smith speak in October, before I read “On Beauty”, and I was curious to know whether she found bridging the American/British culture gap more/less/as difficult as gaps in her previous books. Her response, with trademark self-confidence, was that it was a story, fiction. It didn’t all have to be true, and she wasn’t bovvered if others picked it to pieces. I respected her gumption. But.
I read “On Beauty” recently (and I loved it). But there were bits that were like hooks, that cut into me and pulled me out of my reading experience. Why were the American Belsey family travelling in a “people-carrier”? There were other examples of this. And I wasn’t trying to read this and “pick it to pieces”. Similarly I read the wonderful “Case Histories” by Kate Atkinson this summer. It took place in East Anglia, but there was a character whose daughter had moved to Canada. She lived in the suburbs, but like most Torontians had a cottage on the shores of Lake Ontario, where they hiked through the ancient forests and canoed on the rapids. Torontians, Torontonians and Ontarians alike will see the problem I had with this passage, and “bovvering” about it ruined the book a little bit for me. Maybe this was my fault, but I didn’t want it to happen.
This is important to me, because I have written a novel about English people that takes place in London, and I want it to resonate with truth. As a writer, am I even capable of that? My next big project involves a family living in Iran during the 1979 Revolution, where I’ve never been, when I was barely born. Is it possible? I don’t want to be limited to only writing about brown haired girls called Kerry who are twenty-six and live in Toronto. How do you use facts in fiction? Where does the fault lie when facts let you down- with the reader, the writer, or -perchance- the editor?
