Month: November 2019

It’s not just old white men getting the the Hadada award anymore. It’s poorly behaving old white men. And a couple white women, here and there for optics. But no POC. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present a man famous for a few fantastic books and some face-spitting (not to mention some bad decisions with firearms–I wonder which way he votes?), Richard Ford.

The Paris Review’s decision to award its august lifetime achievement prize to Richard Ford has been criticised, with readers pointing to the American novelist’s history of poor conduct, such as when he spat in the face of fellow writer Colson Whitehead.

Ford will be presented with the Hadada prize in April by Bruce Springsteen, who once described Ford’s work as “poignant and hilarious”. Ford follows in the footsteps of previous winners including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion, with the magazine saying that his “writing has been commended for its ‘linguistic mastery … rivalled by few, if any’ and for the ‘terse poetry’ he brings to his prose”.

Your good news inoculation for today: First Book Canada is sending 5000 books to families in women’s shelters.

“These shelters accommodate women and their children when they are fleeing violence. We know a good book and skincare products can help women and their children transition to a new life,” said Tom Best, executive director of First Book Canada in a press release.

Jenny Heijun Wills, Stephen Collis, and Andre Alexis win for memoir, mid-career poetry, and fiction respectively. I would love to have seen folks like Alicia Elliott, Ayelet Tsbari, and Michael Crummey win something, but it’s a good list.

From America’s first banned book to the purposeful and gradual erosion of the education system to instill ignorance in the populace to the sudden grab for power by rich oligarchs exploiting the populace’s ignorance… It’s the circle of life. I mean, sniff, sad as it is, it appears this totalitarian state is… (I promised myself I was going to cry!) …growing up.

Scorsese responds to criticism of his criticism of Marvel movies. Listen, I love me some explody-spandex mental downtime, but I can’t say I disagree with him. And there are literary parallels galore here.

In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all.

When I was a kid growing up in small town Ontario, we still had a Bookmobile that would come by the school. It was my favourite thing ever. Even better than the Scholastic catalog (back when Scholastic still sold books and not plastic toys, video game tie-ins, and virtually anything but plain and simple books). But, damn, it didn’t look like this. It looked like a painted cube van with stacks of books, iirc.

While for many commuters a bus or train journey presents a rare opportunity to get stuck into a book, in some cities public transport is being commandeered as means of getting books to communities that need them most. Vehicles are being reimagined and upcycled to not only to spread the joy of reading, but to educate and improve lives.

On patching together your book.

I remembered my mother’s quilt work, the graph paper on which she plotted her designs with colored pencils. I thought of John Sims’ MathArt quilts projects, in which he materializes “the square truth of connected stories.” I remembered the calm of the geometry classroom. I decided to try mapping my book onto that soothing blue grid. I borrowed my child’s colored pencils.

Kelly Armstrong has done it more than 40 times. I suppose we should give her a listen.

It’s a promise that says “If you like this, stick around… and if you don’t, maybe this isn’t the book for you.” To achieve that, your first scene should reflect the tone of your story (dark or light, fast-paced or leisurely.) It should also demonstrate the point of view and tense (first-person, third-person, past tense, present tense etc.) Try to establish the genre as well (literary, mystery, science fiction or fantasy, et cetera). A reader who is enjoying an opening chapter that seems to be a romantic comedy will not be pleased if they later realize they’re actually reading a dark thriller.

Yeesh. I bet this Andre Aciman fellow is going to have a great time at parties for the next long while.

What book would you elevate to the canon, and what book would you remove?

I would remove “Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf, and elevate “Nightwood,” by Djuna Barnes. As is the case with “Ulysses,” everyone speaks very highly of “Nightwood,” but few read it cover to cover. “Nightwood” is a bold, exceptionally well-written modernist prose poem, and remains the closest thing to James Joyce. No wonder T. S. Eliot wrote the introduction for it. “Mrs. Dalloway” is an overrated novel that I don’t find particularly gripping or interesting. I’m not even sure it’s well written.

Looks like a developer got hold of the property (as developers do, and will–even wherever you are buried will one day be purchased, excavated, and built on if things are allowed to keep going as they are (hint hint: pitchforks and torches, people)) and Dubliners are saying the “soul” of Dublin is at stake (come now).

Joyce himself framed it best: “Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.” The line, uttered by his alter ego Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, alluded to the parochialism and spiritual impoverishment that prompted Joyce’s self-exile to continental Europe in 1904. More than a century later, Ireland is culturally unrecognisable – tolerant, open, ethnically diverse. But artists – and artistic legacy – now face a threat from hotels, hostels and offices that are popping up like toast across Dublin.