Alex Boyd's Blog, page 16

Best Canadian Essays launch: Nov 17

Best Canadian Essays 2010 will launch at the crazily comfortable Dora Keogh pub on the Danforth, Nov 17 at 8pm. My co-editor this year was Kamal Al-Solaylee, writer and assistant professor at Ryerson's School of Journalism. I was just as impressed, this time around, with the range and quality of writing to be found in Canadian magazines. Readers will include Jason McBride ("Preparations for the End of the World as we Know It") and Carolyn Morris ("The Illegals"). The Facebook event page is here.

One Question Interview: Marius Kociejowski

Marius Kociejowski is a poet, essayist and travel writer. He has published multiple volumes of poetry, and travel books such as The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey, and more recently the book that covers the return journey, The Pigeon Wars of Damascus.

Your book The Pigeon Wars of Damascus concerns a trip to Syria, and suggests travel writing shouldn't be about going to a place, but should be writing that comes out of it.  Is there something North Americans understand the least about the Middle East?

One should not generalise, of course, because there are numerous Arabists in North America who have a keen understanding of the Middle East. I wish I had a fraction of their knowledge. If only the powers that be would consult them a bit more, then we might have been spared the consequences of their many mistakes. What I find alarming on my trips back to Canada is the tenor of many of the newspaper articles which in their interpretation of the Middle East and of Islam in particular are simplistic and crude in the extreme. Only recently the Ottawa Citizen ran a piece in which it was suggested that the pastor who wanted to burn the Qur'an and the imam who wants to build an Islamic centre, which actually is at some distance from the site of the Twin Towers, are of the same ilk. One wishes these columnists would read a bit more or even visit the countries which they discuss with such apparent ease before committing their erroneous and potentially damaging views to the page. What they have done, of course, is feed the fears of the populace. On September 11th 2001 the terrorists not only hijacked planes but also the religious faith that has been such a source of strength for the Arabic people. The hell they inflicted upon others will be nothing as compared to the hell which, according to their own faith, they will have to endure. Those people serve to make Islam unrecognisable even unto themselves. There is a Hadith saying: "The day will come when holding onto one's faith will be like clutching a piece of burning charcoal." I wonder if that day has not already come. However, it is not a particularly useful exercise seeking out the darker passages in the Qur'an when equally we might do the same with the Holy Bible. I think what North Americans need to understand isn't so much the differences as the similarities between cultures, the desire of most people to simply get on with their lives. As soon as people are turned into abstractions, it becomes all that much easier to call them 'collateral damage.' Also, North Americans must be wary of striking at Arabic pride. If there is a single passage in my book that serves to underline this view it is when Sulayman remarks, "When an Arab is wounded in his honour or in his dignity he will become harmful. He will consider you his enemy. If you hurt him he'll be sad for five minutes and then move on, but if you humiliate him he will be in a rage forever."

Review: The Town that Forgot How to Breathe

Revised since publication in The Danforth Review, 2004.

It's a curious modern epidemic — and ultimately something of an intellectual shortcut — to describe something new using several previously existing things, but despite that, I'll say The Town that Forgot how to Breathe captures a distinct Canadian flavour but feels like it has dashes of Edgar Allan Poe thrown into the mix.

Life in the town of Bareneed, Newfoundland is slowly becoming more unusual: people are beginning to fall prey to a breathing disorder, and the sea is spitting out odd looking fish, who in turn spit out their own obscure objects.  The themes become clearer as the novel progresses, and to spell it all out here would be to risk hurting a thoroughly enjoyable novel where the sea represents secrets — or perhaps more generally whatever has been cut off from the past.  In one passage, the elderly Eileen Laracy attempts to communicate with a spirit:

"Are ye at peace?" Miss Laracy asked.

The glimmer of amusement faded from Uriah's eyes, then the smile steadily wilted.  His body became shrouded in a blood-red pulse that clarified to streams of thin read lines, a multitude of them piercing and leaving his body.  He held out his hands, fragmented by blank spaces while his face dissolved into particles; his nose became a stumpy white fish as it separated, his eyes two throbs of jellyfish, his top lip a succulent sea cucumber, his bottom lip a moray eel."

While it isn't an overly complex plot (and some may expect this from a 471 page novel), it more than makes up for this with meaningful events happening to very human characters, and strong symbolic images. It's something of a modern fairy tale, complete with power lines – and what power lines have to do with it is another of those things I wouldn't want to ruin. The book doesn't feel long – it's engaging, and maintains a good pace.  We're introduced to a number of characters (roughly forty, by my count), but it soon becomes clear exactly which ones are major and minor. And the number of characters allows the town of Bareneed to feel like a real and populated one. In fact, I stopped to think that reading it felt like reading a "real novel," not a screenplay with a little extra description the way some novels can feel.

Harvey writes dialogue that sounds like dialogue, including regional accents, and is expert at relating scenes patiently, staying with the perspective of a character and not getting ahead of his reader. Here's a moment when a major character is reeling from the sickness plaguing the town, suffering paranoia and hallucinations:

"Someone was screaming horribly. He was close to it. The kettle. He noticed that the toaster was unplugged. He plugged in the cord and felt better. How had he moved to the kitchen so quickly, sparked ahead? …The telephone receiver was in his hand, so he assumed he must have picked it up from its cradle on the wall. Perhaps someone could tell him how to stop the screaming."

As someone who finds it disturbing that North Americans seem to be subtly but constantly encouraged to remember little more than the last five minutes of history (is that a consumer/capitalist thing?) I appreciated the theme, implicit throughout the novel, that technology is less important than history, and shouldn't be allowed to interfere with our knowledge of it. The Town that Forgot How to Breathe is recommended as a breath of fresh air itself – as a well written, enjoyable and compelling novel.

One Question Interview: Sharon McCartney

Sharon McCartney is the author of a number of poetry books, including Karenin Sings the Blues and The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her most recent book is For and Against.

Your recent book is described as a visceral exploration of relationships.  Is there a particular way poets should write about relationships, either for the sake of an effective poem or just plain old real-world diplomacy?

I hope that my writing about relationships is truly visceral. I hope that it has power, that it incorporates strong emotion and makes the reader both think and feel. The word "exploration" is particularly significant here because I write in order to understand the world and my place in it better.  Sometimes writing helps me figure out how I feel about a particular challenge. Sometimes I discover things that I didn't realize about myself when I'm writing.

If there is a particular way that a writer should approach writing about relationships, I think that it is in that sense—the sense of discovery and exploration. When you're exploring, you don't always end up in nice places—isn't that part of the fun? If you're writing to be nice, to be diplomatic, you shouldn't be writing. A writer's first loyalty is to herself, as a writer and as a person, a self-reflexive person.

However, you also have to live with yourself. I can't live with myself if I think that I have gratuitously and thoughtlessly caused heedless pain in other people's lives. Some pain is inevitable in any human relationship, but, if you can, it is, of course, best to try to avoid causing unwarranted pain. I try to be as honest and truthful as possible, to acknowledge the good and the bad in both myself and in the other person. It's important to acknowledge love even when you're writing about the end of love. Part of that is just an attempt to preserve integrity, to not feel that I am betraying myself or anyone else by being biased (but of course I am!) or petty or simply dishonest.

You show respect for people by not lying. I think that you can be creative without lying if you try to remain true to the details and to the motivations, including your own. I have occasionally desired revenge. Who doesn't? And what great material for a poem! But you have to acknowledge it as such. You can't let yourself off the hook.

As far as an effective poem goes, I think that the "truth" has more power than anything else. And that means the details — what was said and what was done and when and where. This is what makes up our lives and what we react to. The act of trying to understand and transcend those details is what, I hope, creates art.

Best Canadian Essays 2010

Katherine Ashenburg on cosmetic surgery, Ira Basen on citizen journalism, Will Braun on the tendency to customize Christ, Tyee Bridge on the power of fiction, Abou Farman on the Iranian Revolution, Paul Gallant on future of gay activism,Lisa Gregoire on life in Nunavut, Danielle Groen explores the brain when in love, Elizabeth Hay on the summer of her last poems, Jason McBride prepares for the end of the world, Carolyn Morris on people forced to live underground in Canada, Katharine...

The Publisher

Henry Luce, founder of both Time and Life magazine is examined in a new biography, The Publisher. A long but fascinating review of the book suggests that some of the shrill and utterly partisan political commentary today has its origins in the transformation Luce began:

"Luce shows what happens when the spirit of journalistic inquiry is subordinated to the illusory pursuit of influence. Still, it would be wrong to conclude that he had no lasting impact. The world as sound bite, told and...

Old Man at Forty

I like people. When I meet them, I say "Good to meet you," because my view is that it's good to meet them, until they prove otherwise. I even like dogs. I never had one until I was forty, and while I initially found a puppy exasperating at times, now I shower him with affection, rolling him onto his back to rub his stomach, and laughing openly at some of his clumsily expressive moments.

But I go out into public and become an angry old man. I sat on a streetcar where a woman – blissfully...

Twenty Years Later…

I recall reading a poem in high school that was a brief but effective portrait of a father, and years later credited it with helping me become a writer. It isn't the only factor, but certainly being struck by the sincerity of a poem early on doesn't hurt. I lost track of it, but here it is, something I re-read late last night over twenty years later. I thought it must be some obscure poet, and something I'd never find again, but it's Alden Nowlan, and can be found in Early Poems, published...

Farber on Film

Harper's magazine has a long but worthwhile piece on the collected Manny Farber film reviews, to be found here. Among other details, Farber decried the use of a simple star rating (or thumb up or thumb down) to summarize a film, and thought of himself primarily as a painter, so that a "painter's traits," informed his criticism.

No critic is the gospel (and I don't even think the gospel is the gospel, really) but this strikes me as a valuable contribution. I like the idea of various kinds of...

The Longest Journey

Welcome to 2010, where you finish a novel by E.M. Forster called The Longest Journey, Google those words assuming you'll get some reviews or comments, but all the results are concerned with a video game by the same name.

So what do you say about an acknowledged classic that you didn't enjoy reading? In fact, the impressive moments were so infrequent it felt like eating a bowl of lard with a few juicy little raisins.

I'm sorry, Edward, I really am. But the events of the novel unfold so slowly I ...