Alex Boyd's Blog, page 8

Interview: Carmelo Militano

Carmelo Militano has generously donated his time to thoughtfully interview a number of Canadian poets for Northern Poetry Review, or The Lonely Offices, always taking the time to thoroughly examine their work. And from time to time, I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down to have a coffee with Carmelo when he’s visiting from Winnipeg. Recently, I attended the Toronto launch for his intriguing new novel Sebastiano’s Vine, and came up with some interview questions. The result can now be found here, on the Maisonneuve site.

Digging Up Bones

As Luna publications is not currently producing or distributing books, I’m glad to say Biblioasis is now handling the sales of Making Bones Walk, my award-winning first book of poems.

If anyone is still hunting for holiday gifts, I’ve noticed Amazon.ca still has several copies of The Least Important Man and independent bookstores may have it in stock as well.

I’ve also been very glad to see the Best Canadian Essays series carry on, and think Best Canadian Essays 2013 would make a great gift.

Year in Review: 2013

Favourite novels of the year: The Crow Road (Banks) mixes hard-drinking, realistic characters with thoughts like this: “Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.” I loved the precise language and compelling story of Minister Without Portfolio by Canadian writer Michael Winter. Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (Winterson) is remarkable for being as accessible as it is potent, though some moments were so brief they felt like a sketch, and I wanted more. Rabbit, Run was compelling, though I’m not entirely sure I’ll jump to read the rest of the series, and The Mosquito Coast was an engaging story with a lot of ideas. The Watch that Ends the Night by Hugh MacLennan (who doesn’t seem to be much talked about these days despite winning awards in his day) was a sad, beautiful novel.

As it was two-hundred years old in 2013, I reread Pride and Prejudice and while I get the themes I still find it fairly dull to be perfectly honest. That’s likely a fault in me, not Austen. Lucky Jim, while slightly heavy-handed, was an intelligent and sharply written novel by Kingsley Amis. It’s only looking back on the year I realize I picked up three readable and thoroughly enjoyable novels by Jack London: The Sea Wolf, The Call of the Wild and White Fang. It’s easy to see why he was a popular author in his day. My monster-sized novel this year was Bleak House, which I read in a couple of stages. I enjoyed it, but found it hard to be patient with the leisurely way it unfolded, and thought the description arrived in dollops rather than blended into the story.

Non-fiction: Michelle Orange has the kind of intelligent, slightly offbeat and perceptive voice that make for valuable essays in This Is Running for Your Life. The Christopher Hitchens collection Arguably is excellent and covers a lot of ground. Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Richard Holloway) is a thoughtful and perceptive book: at times I wrote down the titles of the books he recommended, and at other times I made note of direct quotes from Holloway, as when he suggests deeply conservative people are “severely rational,” and unable to loosen “clenched muscles.” So terribly true, and yet not the kind of thing  we’re often easily able to put into words.

Sailing Alone around the World (which dates from 1900) had some great moments of description: “The day was perfect, the sunlight clear and strong. Every particle of water thrown into the air became a gem, and The Spray, bounding ahead, snatched necklace after necklace from the sea, and as often threw them away.” Speaking of older books, I loved Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by British humourist Jerome K. Jerome, who tends to sound fairly light until the final moments of each essay, when he delivers a heavier, punchy finale that has all the more impact because he’s been so casual up to that point. The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by her friend Elizabeth Gaskell, was outstanding and I wrote a blog post about it (not far below).

Poetry: I found much to admire in books by James Arthur (Charms Against Lightning) as well as Darren Bifford  (Wedding in Fire Country) and Michael Lista (Bloom) as well as books by Amanda Jernigan and Karen Solie, though as always with poetry I’ve dipped into many books and not necessarily made note of completely finishing them, so it’s difficult to summarize a year of reading poetry.

Genre fiction: I appreciated the themes and ideas in Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury), but found it somewhat overwritten and heavy with description. It didn’t compare to The Martian Chronicles or Fahrenheit 451. After watching some of the TV films, my first Inspector Morse novel was The Way Through the Woods and it’s certainly superior, even intellectual detective fiction. The collection of stories In a Glass Darkly (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu) really came alive for me in the last (and longest) story that apparently helped inspire Dracula, but I ultimately enjoyed them all. The Dispossessed (Ursula Le Guin) is simply one of the best science-ficiton books I’ve ever read.

Favourite music: I have CBC radio to thank for introducing me to the Robert Schumann symphony #2, which is an engaging, balanced and beautiful symphony. With a pair of headphones allowing you to really listen, it’s remarkable. I may have discovered it through Mad Men like so many others, but Tomorrow Never Knows (The Beatles) is a great song, Revolver a great album. I love a couple of new albums of electronica that aren’t the deeply repetitive kind: Immunity by Jon Hopkins and Tomorrow’s Harvest, Boards of Canada. It’s worth hunting around or going on Amazon for The Art of the Theremin (Clara Rockmore), which is a haunting instrument I’ve loved since ever hearing it on the brilliant soundtrack to The Day the Earth Stood Still (Bernard Herrmann).

Film: I know some were disappointed after expecting something in the same spirit as the Christopher Reeve films, but I thought Man of Steel had a pretty good script and was involving as well as impressive-looking. It came perilously close to tiresome with a long, final fight scene but didn’t quite go over the edge. I caught up with a couple of other blockbusters, Skyfall and Star Trek Into Darkness, reviewing them together for Digital Popcorn as I thought one celebrated a legacy well and the other simply mined it. I revisited Vertigo, which remains the most compelling Hitchcock film for me (I’ve only ever seen it twice, to preserve the potency) with Bernard Herrmann composing one of the best film scores ever. If you’ve never sat down with the Criterion release of Modern Times (Chaplin) it’s a brilliant film that looks terrific restored, and the bonus material is fascinating. Lately I’ve been enjoying film serials and reviewed The Phantom with the captivating Tom Tyler in the title role. I’ve seen a handful of film adaptations of Jane Eyre, one of my favourite novels, but finally catching up with the 2011 film, I thought it was the best one in decades.

Reading: Oct 22

My thanks for my friend Pino Coluccio for taping a reading I did at the Art Bar recently: I’m not technically equipped for this kind of thing and frequently overlook it. If you have the chance to look at part one, part two can be found here, where there’s also a terrific reading by Alexandra Oliver, touring with her new book Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway. 

Shy: An Anthology

A poem of mine called The Culture of Shyness can be found in a new anthology from University of Alberta Press called  Shy: An Anthology.

Edited by Naomi K. Lewis and Rona Altrows, the book includes many contributors from “across the continent” such as Lorna Crozier, Don McKay, Steven Heighton and Madelaine Wong.

Personally, I love the cover, and I’m looking forward to reading a book by such a diverse group of writers. I’ll be reading at the Art Bar Reading Series Oct 22nd for anyone who wanted to take a look at the book.

CBC Canada Writes

After acting as a reader in the CBC Canada Writes poetry competition, I’ve done a brief interview with them. The longlist has been announced and I’m looking forward to hearing more about the results.

Charlotte Bronte: The Only Self-Help Author You’ll Ever Need

The publication of Pride and Prejudice is 200 this year, but another widely admired author isn’t too far behind: Charlotte Bronte will have a 200th birthday in 2016. I’ve long admired Jane Eyre for having the kind of clarity and potency of storytelling that allows her to begin a chapter with four simple words: “Reader, I married him.” But there are also important undercurrents in the book, and I didn’t know their source terribly well until I also read The Life of Charlotte Bronte, written shortly after her death by her friend Elizabeth Gaskell.

In the age of the Internet and immediate gratification, it’s hard to imagine Bronte and her sisters, nearly isolated in rural England, walking home from the library and stealing excited glances at a new title. But there’s lesson one from Charlotte Bronte, and her short life: if you want to be a writer (or anything else) learn it like there’s little else in the world. Her dedication to meaningful progress is described later: “Sometimes weeks or even months elapsed before she felt that she had anything to add to that portion of her story which was already written.”

Fairly isolated, enduring dreary weather and fragile health, these women persevered. Courage? Yes, they had courage as well as focus. Her dedication to culture is also described: “She always said there was enough of hard practicality and useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds. She picked up every scrap of information concerning painting, sculpture, poetry, music, etc. as if it were gold.”

These days we fuss when there’s a lineup at Starbucks, and we’re in danger of losing touch with something important – simply enough, it’s that the delay between desire and gratification is what makes something finally, sweetly satisfying. Bronte gave Jane Eyre a quality of centered satisfaction that gave her depth, and made her appealing. Jane appreciated what she had, and wasn’t constantly looking to the next thing. Gaskell reproduces a number of letters by Bronte, and they have statements like “It remains only to do one’s best, and endure with patience what God sends.”

Looking for proof behaviour encourages behaviour, and that kindness is returned to us? An unnamed local man describes walking ten miles at a time to be certain he always had a supply of writing paper to sell them: “They used to buy a great deal of writing paper, and I used to wonder whatever they did with so much. When I was out of stock, I was always afraid of their coming; they seemed so distressed about it, if I had none. I have walked to Halifax (a distance of ten miles) many a time, for half a ream of paper, for fear of being without it when they came. I could not buy more at a time for want of capital. I was always short of that. I did so like them to come when I had anything for them; they were so much different to anybody else; so gentle and kind, and so very quiet.”

He goes on to say, “Charlotte sometimes would sit and inquire about our circumstances so kindly and feelingly! … though I am a poor working man … I could talk with her with the greatest freedom. I always felt quite at home with her. Though I never had any school education, I never felt the want of it in her company.” Clearly, she treated people as human beings first, without concern for title, rank or position.

Bronte had a discussion with her sisters, who felt a fictional heroine should be attractive. She disagreed, saying “I will prove to you that you are wrong; I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.” So, if not exactly a feminist, she was at least interested to show self-worth shouldn’t be attached to any particular standard of attractiveness.

When her brother Branwell was in a period of heavier drinking, she made this observation in a letter: “You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings? I do, indeed. I have often thought so; and I think, too, that the mode of bringing them up is strange: they are not sufficiently guarded from temptation. Girls are protected as if they were something very frail or silly indeed, while boys are turned loose on the world, as if they, of all beings in existence, were the wisest and least liable to be led astray.”

I’ll make a small confession here: I’m not the biggest fan of self-help books. At least, I don’t trust that the right book frequently meets the right individual at the right time. I think people go through difficult times, and people heal by reaching out to family, friends and community. A belief in God clearly helped Charlotte Bronte, but that may not work for everyone. If anything, I think the right literature at the right time is what can be immensely helpful, and it took a biography of Charlotte Bronte to help me better understand the spirit behind Jane Eyre, and the personality that infused the book. When I worked in a bookstore, I helped a woman looking for a gift for friends who’d just lost a baby. She came to me with various titles and I kept wincing and grimacing until I finally suggested something that doesn’t specifically remind them of their dead baby every time they look at it. Both Austen and Bronte provide rich, graceful reminders happiness is sometimes behind a certain amount of adversity.

Bronte died at thirty-eight, having outlived all her siblings, and despite missing them terribly she tried to remain positive, writing at home with her father on a night of “storms of rain,” she comments, “Though alone, I am not unhappy; I have a thousand things to be thankful for, and, among the rest, that this morning I received a letter from you, and that this evening I have the privilege of answering it.”  She was given fairly little in life, but made remarkable use of it. Today, I try not to judge people too harshly, as it’s human nature to take for granted whatever is almost completely reliable. But that we’re generally far less appreciative in an age of abundance is a great irony.

A Cleano and Shitstool: On Science-Fiction and Literature

“Fulfillment, Shevek thought, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.”

This is from The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin, the best science-fiction novel I’ve read in quite some time. Most people probably don’t blink at a mention of science-fiction as separate from literature, but I think it’s only fair to say science-fiction can be literature, and can be as contemplative and expressive. Much like poetry, the best science-fiction finds way to balance accessibility and expressiveness without tipping over into heavy-handedness. Books like 1984 and Brave New World combine imaginative leaps with enough restraint to craft a coherent vision.

Creating another reality that’s somehow reflective of our own is a remarkable tool, but at the same time what hurts a lot of science-fiction is the need to rename things, frequently somewhat awkwardly. Philip K. Dick uses “laser-tube” instead of simply saying gun in the otherwise remarkable Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. And I find many science-fiction books stumble over this, or the need to lecture is fairly obvious. Stranger in a Strange Land begins wonderfully, with a description of the most alien character I’ve ever read (and his inability to comprehend us) but by the end of the book it feels the story has been contrived to set up a series of points, and Heinlein almost may as well have written an essay, were it not for the fact that novels likely reach more people.

While I found much to appreciate in Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, the ongoing comparison between an ideal world and ours began to feel like an extended lecture, and the novel is peppered with renamed items, such as “cleano” for bathroom.

Le Guin deftly avoids many of these tropes of science-fiction in The Dispossessed, which describes assorted alien cultures but doesn’t trouble with physical descriptions a great deal. Characters are assumed to be more or less human, even though the story is set on another planet and its moon. When Le Guin mentions a one-eyed woman, it’s left to the reader to determine if that means some kind of other alien, or simply a one-eyed woman. Likely, it’s the second of the two, but she isn’t going to spell it out. And while Le Guin can’t resist “shitstool” for toilet, she keeps this kind of thing to a minimum, and excuses any plain philosophical statements with the fact that the central character is an academic. A few lines I found striking, and worthy:

“His gentleness was uncompromising; because he would not compete for dominance, he was indomitable.”

“Even from the brother there is no comfort in the bad hour, in the dark at the foot of the wall.”

And let’s be fair, awkwardness can be found in standard literary novels, even away from the world of science-fiction. I’ve just finished The Watch That Ends the Night (Hugh MacLennan), and it’s a sad, beautiful novel with interesting ideas and memorable characters. MacLennan has moments like this: “Some people have within themselves a room so small that only a miniscule amount of the mysterious thing we call the spirit can find a home in them.” It’s unabashedly Canadian, and addresses not just the development of the country but the way particular “frontiers” in time pass away.

At the same time, and while I think it’s a great novel, it isn’t without awkwardness. Firstly, our narrator remembers particular events in remarkable detail for a character who wasn’t there. At other times, themes and ideas are quite plainly stated, with our narrator asking why we bother living just to risk suffering (as one example), and while moments of description are brilliant, others are simply the fairly obvious, almost lazy way to describe something.

Perhaps it’s ultimately time for readers to stop giving a free pass to literature while rolling their eyes at the very idea of science-fiction, as I know some readers do. As far as I can tell there are science-fiction awards and literature awards, without any crossover  between them, but my recent reading (The Dispossessed and The Watch That Ends the Night, particularly) has reminded me, a very thoughtful book is a very thoughtful book. Genre is important for marketing, and there are only so many novels a Giller prize judge can look at, but it strikes me as unfortunate we all need to be on so many different playgrounds, all the time.

Note: I’ve written out science-fiction in full all the way through this post because I tend to agree with Harlan Ellison when he says using “sci-fi” is roughly equivalent to calling a woman a broad. Is a term like speculative fiction an improvement? I suppose, but it’s so many  syllables it simply cannot roll off the tongue. Perhaps we need another word altogether.

The Rotary Dial: The Indestructible Old Man

The Rotary Dial is a downloadable journal edited by Alexandra Oliver, and I’m glad to say the May issue has a poem of mine called The Indestructible Old Man, if you’re able to take a look.

I’m in good company in the May issue, but I’ve been impressed with the journal from its beginnings, earlier this year. It’s available as a 99 cent download through Kindle, and you can like it on Facebook as a way to stay in touch with the project.

Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton

I’ve written before about how much I appreciate G. K. Chesteron (who has a great selected essays edited by Alberto Manguel) but more recently I’ve been enjoying Orthodoxy, a set of nine essays by Chesterton, amounting to a personal explanation of how he found Christianity. He’s quite good at relating counter-intuitive ideas, and while some aren’t illustrated well enough and simply wash over me — they’re closer to counter-intuitive statements — others give significant pause for thought. Here’s his explanation as to how softness and flexibility are strength, not their opposites. He goes on to suggest even more:

“The swiftest things are the softest things. A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. In perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can maintain itself in the air.

Modern investigators of miraculous history have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great saints is their power of “levitation.” They might go further; a characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet. It was the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity of the Middle Ages.

In the old Christian pictures the sky over every figure is like a blue or gold parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up and float about in the heavens. The tattered cloak of the beggar will bear  him up  like the rayed plumes of the angels. But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes of purple will all of their natures sink downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or leviation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise into a gay self-forgetfulness. A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good TIMES leading article than a good joke in PUNCH. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”