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MR. WORDWISE
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| DEAR MR. WORDWISE: About a year ago I told a woman I was a writer to improve my chances of getting her to go out with me. Specifically, I told her I was David Foster Wallace. It worked out OK for a while—she thought I was working on my “new book” for the last year rather than being unemployed—but now the real David Foster Wallace has come out with a real new book. My girlfriend's all excited—she thinks I’m suddenly going to have money to buy her dinner for a change—but I'm worried. It's only a matter of time before she sees a pic of Wallace somewhere and puts things together. Even worse, I read some of his new book and it sucks. What do I do? —DAVID IN DARTMOUTH DEAR DAVID: Every great writer has his share of imitators. For instance, in the 1990s, I was impersonated by a bored Air Canada executive who would fly across the country to read brilliantly from my memoir, Nightsweat in Muskoka, occasionally pen a review in Books in Canada, pay old bar tabs, and make love to eager junior editors and publicists while wearing a hand-stitched silk mask. It was a win-win situation: for years, I would get upgraded on flights. As sales of my books have declined, this executive has taken to impersonating more fashionable writers. Since then, I’ve been impersonated by two homeless men, a compulsive gambler, and a disgraced secondary-school teacher on Vancouver Island. Sadly, none of these fakers have met my standards. What I’m saying is that you should impersonate me and not Wallace. No one knows who I am, nor is it expected that I should have enough money for a meal. What do you think? You must be at least five foot two, carry a few extra pounds, and have at least 75,000 air miles. DEAR MR. WORDWISE: I’ve published a collection of linked stories entitled love in the time of chlamydia (about a day in the life of a Chinese-Canadian diner) and a chapbook of sonnets that centre around my impossible infatuation with Martina Navratilova. Hoping to reach a greater audience (and a less abject financial status), I’ve spent the past five years devoting myself to a more sustained piece of narrative writing. However, the resulting work—Custodians of Cryptic Knowledge, a “what if”-style thriller in which popcorn magnate Orville Redenbacher travels back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK—is a bit short. My girlfriend, an avid reader, tells me not to worry about the length of CoCK—she says that it’s “within average-ish range” (the “ish” just about killed me) and “that it’s all about how you write, not how much you write.” Whatever that means. I just know that the first agent I sent the book to returned my manuscript with a short note: “Thank you for letting me look at your teeny novel. Unfortunately, only larger novels can satisfy the demanding reading audience.” I sobbed in my soiled underwear for three days. I’ve exhausted all the possible remedies. I have experimented with larger fonts. I heard in pornographic novels that writers make their works look bigger by increasing the margins. I’ve even sent away for writing manuals in the back of Quill and Quire that claim to be able to “pump up” CoCK. Is it my fate to write books that come up short? Should I accept my fate? —LACKING IN LABRADOR DEAR LACKING: Let me say that you are not the first man to fall for Martina Navratilova’s sapphic charms. After I spent an afternoon watching my Betamax collection of vintage Wimbledon finals (ah, the muffled grunts as she makes her return and comes back for more), I can only say that my Martina leaves me shaken, not stirred. Personally, I have been blessedly and naturally endowed with a gift for long, thick books that throb with insight. But I have, um, friends who’ve experienced your dilemma and how they resolve these issues depends on each author. According to research and anecdotal evidence, however, it’s not the length of the book that counts, but its girth. Read any Thomas Bernhard novel—none of them long, but they’re as chubby like beer cans. Density also counts. Have you considered removing periods and paragraph breaks like Jose Saramago? Either recourse sure beats the desperate measure taken by one author I know who used to submit his novel “stuffed” with pages from a Canadian Tire catalogue. P.S. I am replying with my phone number and e-mail. If you have it handy, please forward Ms. Navratalova’s contact information. DEAR MR. WORDWISE: This is not a question, per se, but an invitation. You are no doubt aware of the Globe and Mail article linking the sudden downturn of in sales of Canadian fiction to Osama bin Laden and the events of September 11th, 2001. As attempts to spur sales of CanLit through advertising and national book clubs have met with only mixed results so far, some prose-writing friends and I have decided to take drastic measures. Thus, the Justice League of Canadian Fiction was assembled to hunt down and bring terrorists and holders of WMDs to justice. As I write this letter, we have nearly assembled a crack squad of internationally published and critically acclaimed Canadian novelists and story writers. One Booker Prize-winning novelist has brought the research he conducted on landmines in World War II to become JLCF’s explosives expert. Another novelist from Newfoundland has used her ability to render finely observed dramas about dysfunctional Maritime families to become a master of the Arabic language and Islamic culture. A spry story-writer from Winnipeg has been training the rest of the team on the ways of the ninja. Wordwise, we believe that the control of pacing and point of view—not to mention the extensive knowledge of Haaterite culture—displayed in your work are skills essential to our quest to rid the world of organized terror. What do you say? —RESOLUTE IN RED DEER DEAR RESOLUTE: Finally, some real action is being taken to reverse the decline in the readership of Canadian fiction. Unfortunately, I am unable to travel freely due to my history of radical protesting in the 1970s (and some convictions for indecent exposure that stem from my ideology a the time). But I will fully support your efforts by sending some remaindered copies of my books for the JLCF library and will offer my trailer in Prince Rupert as a JLCF retreat and training ground. I urge you, my readers, to support the Justice League of Canadian Fiction. Unless the JLCF triumphs over the extremists’ jihad against CanLit, the reading public will forever be consumed by the works of Noam Chomsky and Dan Brown. * * * Kevin Chong is the author of Baroque-A-Nova and Neil Young Nation. |
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Mr.
Wordwise comes to us much like pictures of Spiderman come to J.
Jonah Jameson through Peter Parker. About once a year or so, Kevin
Chong, author of