Month: October 2020

Expectations will be raised, hopes will be dashed, ooohs will be ooohed and ahhs will be ahhhfuckited. It’s Giller announcement day, the day everyone gets to be ecstatic and/or enraged at the brilliance and/or stupidity of the jury. The Giller has a shiny new award to hand out, one that looks like how most writers actually store their books, and today is going to ensure a handful of hopefuls never get to touch it. You can watch the ceremony live on CBC or on the Giller website. Anyone want to hazard a prediction? It’s hard for me to guess in an unbiased way because I have friends and former students in here, but pressed to answer, I would say Ridgerunner, Five Little Indians, How to Pronounce Knife, Dominoes at the Crossroads, and Here the Dark. That said, my favourite of all these is Indians on Vacation.

Which books will be shortlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize? Find out on Monday, Oct. 5 at 10 a.m. ET!

The $100,000 annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.

Here is the full 2020 longlist:

• Ridgerunner by Gil Adamson
  Here the Dark by David Bergen
  Watching You Without Me by Lynn Coady
  All I Ask by Eva Crocker
  The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
  Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi
  Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
  Dominoes at the Crossroads by Kaie Kellough
  Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
  Consent by Annabel Lyon
  Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo
  The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
  Clyde Fans by Seth
  How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

On how local bookshops are battling the stupidity, bigotry, and moral decay of our time. Personally, I would like to find a quiet corner in a nice shop somewhere, put a cot and a coffee pot in there, and just curl up for five or six years until the pendulum swings the other way. Maybe get a couple chairs or couch cushions and a blanket and a flashlight. Possibly a teddy bear. Maybe also a series of 1970s comic books and a slingshot in case anyone tried to come in. Sigh.

In the current climate of anti-intellectualism and widespread disinformation, bookshops can’t help but take a political stance. Some bookshops, such as Gay’s the Word in London, have been dealing with bigoted attacks for as long as they’ve existed, while other shops’ experiences have been more recent. I’ve been in contact with several bookshops who’ve faced attacks, vandalism, and other action from racist, homophobic, and transphobic groups in recent months, and have found that, no matter how disturbing the attack, booksellers have responded with bravery, dignity, and even good humour.

What can the methods used to study Willie Shakes teach us about how to parse out (the absolute batshit of) conspiracy theories?

The modern conspiracy theories that exist today and those about Shakespeare are both a product of what Budra says is “a failure of imagination.” 

“That might sound counterintuitive because so many conspiracy theories are wildly fanciful and imaginative,” Budra tells the audience, referring to what’s known as the reptile conspiracy theory. David Icke argued that the world was essentially run by shape shifting alien reptiles. 

…

…

…

Really?

,,,

,,,

…

I’m out.

• Publishing is changing, finally, with the times: Jamia Wilson leaves Feminist Press to become VP and Executive Editor at Random;
• NYer poetry editor Kevin Young will lead African American Museum;
• BC Nonfiction prize goes to Jonathan Poh;
• Is binging books starting to compete with TV?;
• Doyle estate is suing Netflix over Henry Cavill playing Sherlock… Mmmmm… Henry Cavilllllll…… Where was I?;
• Burn: HMH is cutting hundreds of jobs;
• Balm: Beacon Press raises its entry-level wage;
• How the USPS chooses its literary stamp subjects;
• Oh no! Another hero of mine has died… RIP: Derek Mahon, leading Irish poet, dead at 78;
• Bob Dylan as Holden Caulfield?;
• SMRT guy Steven Beattie is doing a month of horror fiction at his blog;
• Billy Collins says it took a pandemic to slow the world down to poetry’s speed… Maybe you’re poetry, William…;
• National Translation Award shortlists;
• 2020: the year of giant pink lady faces on book covers, among other things;

Truman Capote, ironically, said he was agin’ it and that it stunted creativity. I have written while baked, many times. And I got a few good things out of it here and there. A bunch of bizarre question marks, too. In days gone by, I… uh… partook… much more than I do now. I still sometimes find poems and lines from those days and they feel as though they were written by someone else. But so does my younger work. And so does anything I don’t really like. So, in the end, it didn’t so much stunt by writing as change it, for better or worse. What it did stunt, likely, was the last 10 years of my life. But we’ll save that talk for the funeral.

Capote’s final years were spent in and out of rehab clinics, as the author fought a losing battle with drugs and alcohol. He died in August, 1984, just a month shy of his 60th birthday. According to the coroner’s report, the cause of death was “liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication.”

Sixteen years previous, at the height of his fame, Capote gave the below interview, in which he talked breezily about drugs and alcohol, and their ruinous effects on the creativity of the artist. It’s kind of a tough watch now, given our knowledge of the toll substance abuse took on his own once-glittering career, but an interesting one all the same.

It’s largely accepted that we need more disability representation in literature. Professor X and Bran Stark are not enough. This article talks about how genre is closer than mainstream, at least when it comes to the core of the struggles. Interesting. I’d love to hear from readers with disabilities on this. Agree?

Horror and fantasy let me see my struggle when I couldn’t find any other representation. Teen Wolf, in particular, has moments where the protagonist, Scott McCall, struggles with the demands that being a werewolf places on him; he is asked to be responsible, to assimilate, to go through the world without causing trouble. He clings to human friendships and resents the werewolf bonds he builds. He claims his identity as a creature of the night while struggling with a werewolf’s bloodlust. I understood his frustration, because I wanted to be part of a community without losing parts of myself that aren’t directly tied to Deafness. When I watched Teen Wolf, I almost felt like Scott too, part of a community that was both visible and yet hidden to the world at large.

Well, it’s October. Gird thy loins in anticipation of a month of horror articles, because our news cycle is so desperate for relevance that everything needs to be tied in to some shopping holiday to be relevant. Also, it’s like 30+ degrees in St. John’s, which is bizarre and terrifying to a Viking sort like me. I don’t know whether to cower in the basement like I did in August or go out to try to soak it up in advance of January when we’ll be buried under another six feet of snow. Lots of good articles here today, many of which deserve their own post, but the spaces between my fingers are sweating and well, I’ve got other things to do.

• Orange Shirt Day founder Phyllis Webstad profiled;
• How did teen movies become hooked on classic literature?;
• Singapore’s National Library has launched a subscription service for kids;
• The Covid-fueled library e-book boom has publishers worried;
• How big will Obama’s book be? Well, they’re moving major prizes like the Booker out of its press zone;
• Jeff Bezos gets earful from Israel;
• In praise of literary novellas;
• Whistleblower Snowden ordered to surrender book profits to US;
• The corporation known as “James Patterson” donates $2.5M to teachers;
• Ramona Quimby was a guilty pleasure of mine back in the day when a boy caught reading a “girl” book was in danger of being wedgied in half;
• What are the most terrifying novels?;
• John Banville’s new mystery is killing off a pseudonym;
• How to NOT store your books;
• DC Comics graphic novel highlights Métis pilot;
• The world’s strangest books, including one made of cheese;
• How William Burroughs influenced a generation… of musicians;
• How are poetry publishers handling this crisis? Fine! Well, at least the one that has Rupi Kaur on the list… I imagine they save quite a bit on ink;