August 22, 2005
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids
Here you can find Heather Mallick’s critique of the CBC’s recent “Open Letter to Canadians”, which I can’t find online. She’s on the mark, and I think it follows well from Margaret Wente’s column last week. The Guardian celebrates the underrated, including Atomic Kitten, deservedly so. On my third day with Stuart in O’Neils’ in Nottingham, their version of “The Tide is High” came on the radio and I cried, though perhaps that was more due to my mental imbalances than great musicianship. I also love their “Someone Like Me”. An excellent article, on Ms. Dynamite’s new album and the important role played by women in protest music. No more prodigies at Oxford. Multiculturalism from the British child of Pakistani immigrants. In The Globe, Doug Saunders compares reaction to the London terror actions with that of the Gunpowder treason 400 years ago. And this article contrasts British and Canadian multiculturalism.
Other incidents recently included the German man in Book City who kept repeating the title “Hop on Pop” repeatedly to a clerk. The fact that the Don Valley Parkway was in the midst of flooding as we drove through it Friday night. The clip we heard as we flipped through the radio stations, “…and Deanna Smith who will shoot herself out of a cannon daily…” and just how excited we are to be moving to Toronto in a matter of days. The amount of furniture we picked up off the roadside driving home last night. We’ve seen some photos from the wedding last weekend and they’re beautiful. Will post a link this week.
I bought Lunch With Jan Wong for $2 the other day and really enjoyed it. Also fell in love with the Terry Fox book by Douglas Coupland, but alas as it was not $2, I could not buy it.
August 20, 2005
Less than
Sad to hear about the death of Mo Mowlam, who was such an unusual breath of fresh air among politicians. Sad also to follow the story of the missing woman in Toronto, who is one of about four missing women in Canada in the news right now. It’s a sick and scary world sometimes, and women are so vulnerable. I hope she is found safe.
August 20, 2005
With its checkerboard floors
Three days spent as follows. Drive to Toronto, have lunch in the Annex. In-laws to shoe museum as we buy a futon (our first piece of furniture!). To Greg’s Ice Cream, where they were sadly out of roasted marshmallow. Walk to Honest Ed’s and down Markham to Harbord, and then over to Ossington and our new neighbourhood. Check out the apartment, which is now empty and grow very very excited. Walk through Little Italy, have Ice Tea in Kensington, walk through Chinatown, get in a row over a Miffy pencil case and then go to my Aunt’s for a lovely dinner. Day two- drive to Niagara Falls, see Falls and the Tour Behind the Falls and get very wet. Walk along the river a bit, and avoid the city. Drive the Niagara Parkway to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Have lunch there and shop around a bit. Drive back to Toronto and have dinner in Chinatown, buy Miffy pencil case. Walk across King’s College Circle to Katie’s gorgeous place for dessert. Day three- go to Centre Island, walk to Ward’s Island and have a drink. Have a hotdog for lunch, followed by Smoothies, and then let them loose in the Eaton’s Centre, while we sit on a couch in the housewares department in Sears and are bothered by no one. Dinner and then home.
August 17, 2005
When toasting a bagel, the cut sides must face away from each other
There hasn’t been much time to settle down and there won’t be for a while. It was a good, though tiring weekend and family tensions were running high. Highlights for me were having so many friends together, repeating our vows, good weather, excellent food, hopefully good photos and wine. It was wonderful to see Mike for the first time in ages. In other reunions, I met up with high school friend Laura Conchelos last night for a drink, and then we had breakfast this morning with Carrie Nicholls (who is no longer Carrie Nicholls but always will be in my mind) who had her third baby in tow, a beautiful five month old boy. Last night we were treated to a boat ride on Stoney Lake by Britt’s family. Today we went to the zoo and then saw the amazing “That Summer” at the 4th Line Theatre. Tomorrow we’re off to Toronto for three days, which will also include a trip to Niagara Falls. In fabulous second-hand news, Stuart got a bike for $20 and a Game Cube for $60, and we both can’t wait to move into our new apartment.
I’ve been lacking the time/concentration to read much but really enjoyed this article by the gas-guzzling Margaret Wente, about how the language of the marketplace has spilled over into every part of life. She writes, “Anyone who cares about language, about meaning, about clarity, should revolt. Citizens are not customers, and democracy is not a product. If Barbra Streisand had sung “Customers . . . customers who need customers,” would anyone have cared? If Martin Luther King had said, “I have a vision statement,” would anyone have listened? Words matter more than we think. We need them to express our deepest values. As a wise man once said, what does it profit you if you gain market share but lose your soul? Or something like that.”
It’s not just the language of the marketplace, it’s a manipulation of language to exalt the mundane, to make giving read getting something in return, to trick people into accepting bad news. There is an art to that, but it’s too common now to really matter. I recently received a toaster with two pages of instructions as to how to operate it. Any literature your bank sends out and the very fact that banks send out literature. The day our train broke down in Southampton, due to a “safety feature”. It’s annoying to have to translate everything from bullshit into plain English. As a writer, I don’t know what that says about me. I guess I think it’s ok to bend English, but it’s just being done for all the wrong reasons.
August 14, 2005
Rattle Your Jewelry
I am fairly incoherent today, mixing up words like “balloon” and “elephant” and announcing others’ adultery to rooms full of people. Stuart and I got married again last night, and our (that was supposed to say “are” but there you have it, I am braindead) actually quite happy to have finished with all the weddings we will ever have. Weddings are a headache, but I think when you’ve just been wed and you’re full of gooey goodness you can take it. It’s different when you’ve been married nearly two months. While we were getting our photos taken yesterday, we had to pretend to still love each other though the humour in it all was not lost and it was not long before we actually did. It was great to have so many people together, though I found making sure they were all happy a bit stressful and don’t think I really succeeded. I also eventually got really drunk which made it difficult to make sure of anything. We got some incredible gifts. I hope the givers felt the party made it worth it and that everyone did enjoy themselves. Stay tuned for photos then!
In the news- Hi Ivor Tossell! On foster parenting, dear to my heart due to former career as a social services admin worker. The legend of John Lennon, apparently usurped by 50 Cent’s. A new poetry workshop in The Guardian. On Islands in fiction.
More later. I am so so so tired now.
August 9, 2005
Beautiful Books
I am obsessed with the design of “Falling Cloudberries” by Tessa Kiros, perhaps the most beautiful book I’ve ever seen. You get a good image of the cover here. Wallpaper patterns are throughout the book and I just love them and I am thinking of using samples for the binding of my haiku book. Another nice book I’ve seen lately is Ticknor by Sheila Heti, to whom good book design must be old hat by now.
I am obsessed with Devil’s Lake, Lionel Shriver and Zoe Williams thinks living by yourself is selfish. It’s interesting to see the difference between Canadian and American coverage of the Devil’s Lake issue. Here, Margaret Wente lauds cars as symbols of freedom, in much the same way I did in an essay composed in Grade Ten history class, and declares that it will take way more than $1 a litre to make her give up her SUV. Good on you Margaret.
Finished George and Rue by George Elliott Clarke today. The language was astoundingly beautiful, though sometimes I felt I was wading through adjectives. My problem with it is that I knew the outcome from the outset, which naturally kept me from barrelling through in in search of a conclusion. But, I realised, that perhaps was the point of it all. Clarke writes of the Hamilton brothers that “as soon as the sun first shone on them. it’d been shining on their graves.” Their end had been as forecasted to themselves as it was to the reader, which is a pretty interesting bit to think upon. So, now reading The Ice Age which is by Margaret Drabble and so will prove to be Drabbley.
Fun stuff at McSweeneys.
Tomorrow, Pearson bound to pick up my Ma n’ Sis In Law.
August 7, 2005
That's astute, I said.
Well, the really exciting news is that I have been actively hobbying lately, and you can read all about it here. We went camping last night at Serpent’s Mounds with Britt and it was wonderful, the highlight of the evening when Stuart asked if the geese had a “no-honk guarantee”. They didn’t. We also went out for drink when Jennie was in town on Friday, and that was fun too. And I broke my guitar and its springs, which wasn’t fun. As wasn’t when the invoice for my tuition turned up in the mailbox.
But enough of that. There were newspapers to read. I enjoyed this article on what books are, and what the internet can never be. Marina Warner notes that “reading in cyberspace seems to me to make different use of cognitive faculties, unfleshing the word, and correspondingly disembodying memories.” The Wedding Planner woman from The Guardian two year back is quite unhappily married. Lucky for her, Bridget Jones is back!Here, a brilliant article on the need for good editors, how editors shaped “Sons and Lovers”, “The Great Gatsby” and “The Wasteland”, and how perhaps creative writing programs teach writers how to edit as much as how to write, and I really appreciate that idea. In The Guardian, on the anniversary of Hiroshima. Here on Hiroshima Haiku. I also thought The Globe had some good coverage, including this piece on Canadian POWs in Japan, a story that needs telling though it would be simple for the more liberal minded of us to sweep that bit of history under the table, and keep on about ending nuclear proliferation. Lynn Crosbie here on stupid-inducing TV fandom, asking “Have we arrived at a cultural cognizance crisis, where, say, Screech’s locker from Saved by the Bell is more vivid to us than the black boxes of crashed planes?” India Knight angrily on the “invisible” gender. Which our new Governor General perhaps will aid in rectifying. Columnist Kate Taylor astutely writes, “With Jean’s appointment, Martin is addressing an increasingly embarrassing discrepancy in our political leadership: Our elected representatives do not really represent us. In the current Parliament, there are 308 MPs; 65 are women — that’s only 21 per cent of the house. About 16 to 18 of those members could be considered of a visible minority — that’s less than 6 per cent of the House, while Statistics Canada’s last census, in 2001, showed that 13.4 per cent of the population is visible minority. For whatever reason — and I would suspect the fault lies with political parties’ inability or unwillingness to find a more diverse group of candidates, rather than with the electors’ preference for white men — blacks, Asians and women are not adequately participating in Canadian politics. As long as that remains true, astute political appointments can be used to do something to right the balance.”
August 3, 2005
!
Busy. We’ve got a second wedding to plan you see and in-laws due to visit in a week. I am going to begin a series of poems based on a old book we bought in Brighton about tiger hunting, and work on edits for my novel, which is now a hard copy for the first time in its life. In other news, I will be a student again in just over a month.
Regarding books, I finished “Small Island” by Andrea Levy and then read “Case Histories” by Kate Atkinson on Sunday. Yes, in one day, and it’s not a short book, I just couldn’t rest until I got to the end. Those two books, along with “We Need to talk about Kevin” by Lionel Shriver, constitute some of very best modern literature I’ve ever read. And now “the best by women” or “the best written recently”. I mean it full stop. Shriver’s book left me gasping and gutted at the final twist. Levy’s book was just astounding, written from four points of view by four quite sympathetic/unsympathetic characters, depending on who was speaking and she bore right into their souls. To write a story so convincingly multi-dimensional in its narrative voice is a feat. It was also a very interesting book about Englishness and what it is to be an outsider in Britain. Atkinson’s book was a whodunit with a litfic twist. I charged through the book, obsessed with finding out who had done it, and once all was known it was clear that the journey had been as good as the destination.
(I don’t want to criticise but “Case Histories” broke down in one spot. There was a character who lived in Toronto and was thus a “Torontian” and had a cottage up in the wild ancient forests on Lake Ontario. I don’t think so! I hate factual inaccuracies in books, because it undermines the storyteller’s authority. It’s a massive responsibility for a writer to get everything perfect, and sometimes it doesn’t matter but often it does.)
In gleanings. Lauren Snyder writes about her Las Vegas wedding and why she didn’t have religious marriage ceremony, explaining that “When I got married, I didn’t want to be lying under oath.” The ever-provocative Lionel Shriver on the troubles: “For the citizens of that province to have murdered one another for decades over a trifling border dispute is a scandal.” The life and times of a dyslexic novelist here.
July 31, 2005
I'm on the ride and I wanna get off
One of the reasons I can’t wait to move into my new apartment next month is to have all my books on my shelf again for the first time in nearly 3 and a half years. It will be wonderful to rediscover them all over again. There is a profile of Dorothy Parker in The Guardian this weekend. I had forgotten how fascinating she was and I can’t wait to read her stuff again. I feel the same about my many LM Montgomery books, which you don’t outgrow as you might think. I found a fun page here with lots of Anne info, including a quiz to discover what Montgomery character you are. Apparently I am Jane, but I would argue with that. Thuis website is bizarrely fantastic. Click to find snapshots of people o’gasming, but not in a doity way. A really powerful article here by Margaret Drabble, about her experiences writing The Red Queen and cultural appropriation. She asks how do we “only connect” (as Forster put it) with other cultures without stealing or invading. A fantastic article here on the dying voice of Hiroshima survivors. The article mentions the letters the city government of Hiroshima have written to every country since 1945 that has staged nuclear tests, and how the display of letters at the Hiroshima Peace museum has nearly run out of space. I’ve seen the exhibit, and to me it was the most symbolic and powerful image I was left with. The lessons learned from Hiroshima are not well-received these days, when they are needed more than ever.
It’s been a good weekend. We went shopping in Oshawa on Friday, yesterday I ventured back to Durham region and met friends in Whitby, and we had lunch at the world famous Hanc’s Fish and Chips and Chicken and Ribs. Such a various menu! I have been reading madly, newspapers, magazines and the wonderful Small Island, by Andrea Levy, which I will write about in more detail this week. I have now started “Case Histories” by Kate Atkinson, which comes with an endorsement by my husband and I am enjoying so far. Tonight we are going to Dusk til Dawn at the Mustang Drive-In!
