Edward Riche's Blog, page 2

Winged

Flattering attention from one of the new generation of whip-smart scholars.  He gets it.

http://nfldtxt.com/2014/07/14/rare-birds-by-edward-riche/

 

 

The Great Nautical Machine On Which I Shipped

The Great Eastern

[Newfoundland Quarterly, Volume 106, Number 2]

Creatively taxing over long hours but the show was perhaps the most rewarding professional experience of my career. Worked with a team who were “just tremendous”.

Playing the Black���Scholes Equation for laughs

Several years ago I pitched the National Film Board a documentary about the concept of risk. I was curious to learn how those credit default swaps and other “financial instruments of mass destruction” worked and how the parceling and trading of risk, the quantification of that most qualitative assessment, could have brought down capitalism as it was then known. ��I learned a lot of other interesting things in the course of my research, mostly to do with how the human mind weighs, compares and so often misapprehend risks. ��I thought I’d come up with a crafty way to convey some rather abstract stuff but the Film Board passed. I called it “Kild by Severral Accidents” a phrase I took from a 17th century London “Death Table”.

A couple of years later I was commissioned by Donna Butt of Rising Tide Theater to write a play for the annual festival they hold in Trinity. ��I promised something fun, fast and frothy, a comedy for the summer. ��Two couples find themselves in a Bed and Breakfast, in a town not unlike Trinity, with one partner of each having had a one night stand with the other years earlier. ��The characters were dealing with the risk of being exposed and it came to me that they work in that very field. So now the Black-Scholes Equation

is mentioned in the course of some funny business around the Bay.

Great cast being skillfully directed by Charlie Tomlinson. It’s gonna be a grand show, I’m grateful to Donna Butt for giving me the opportunity to write it.

It opens Thursday, June 20 and is called “The Pillow Trade”, ��which has nothing to do with risk but much to do with cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I., you have to go see it to understand why.

Playing the Black–Scholes Equation for laughs

Several years ago I pitched the National Film Board a documentary about the concept of risk. I was curious to learn how those credit default swaps and other “financial instruments of mass destruction” worked and how the parceling and trading of risk, the quantification of that most qualitative assessment, could have brought down capitalism as it was then known.  I learned a lot of other interesting things in the course of my research, mostly to do with how the human mind weighs, compares and so often misapprehend risks.  I thought I’d come up with a crafty way to convey some rather abstract stuff but the Film Board passed. I called it “Kild by Severral Accidents” a phrase I took from a 17th century London “Death Table”.

A couple of years later I was commissioned by Donna Butt of Rising Tide Theater to write a play for the annual festival they hold in Trinity.  I promised something fun, fast and frothy, a comedy for the summer.  Two couples find themselves in a Bed and Breakfast, in a town not unlike Trinity, with one partner of each having had a one night stand with the other years earlier.  The characters were dealing with the risk of being exposed and it came to me that they work in that very field. So now the Black-Scholes Equation

is mentioned in the course of some funny business around the Bay.

Great cast being skillfully directed by Charlie Tomlinson. It’s gonna be a grand show, I’m grateful to Donna Butt for giving me the opportunity to write it.

It opens Thursday, June 20 and is called “The Pillow Trade”,  which has nothing to do with risk but much to do with cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I., you have to go see it to understand why.

You Had To Be There

Not in the habit of providing free content to the CBC but it was David Cochrane asking,Smart, young Drew Brown was excellent company but made me feel old for having lived through much of what is the historical record for him.   I think you can explain the Peckford era in Newfoundland, as for the Moores years, you had to be there,

 

Ray Guy

Ray Guy, the great Newfoundland writer, has died.  Spent a few insane nights drinking in his company back when Mary Walsh was running a branch of the El Farolito on Pennywell Road.  Here is a review I wrote of one his books,

That Far Greater Bay

Before the original, 1976, publication of That Far Greater Bay there was consensus that its author was Newfoundland’s best journalist and, while they were and are admittedly few, among its leading literary stylists.  On reissue by Flanker Press the same holds true. Though he publishes less frequently he remains our great satirist.  And all now agree that Mark Twain could fairly be said to be the United States’ Ray Guy.

The newspaper and magazine pieces collected here were sagely edited by Eric Norman. If you haven’t read them for a time you will have forgotten their concision.  The lushness of the language (it is a word worshipper who tells of “the fructivity at Clarenville”), and the courage of the thought makes them larger in memory.  They were crafted with a newspaperman’s discipline. Lesser bay-born commentators aim Guy high but are too pompous and prolix to pull it off.  This stuff is short and sharp, and funny, terrifically funny. There are those on whom Guy grated, but even they must concede that the man is an astonishingly good and original writer.

Distinguishing the satirical and critical writing of Guy’s from the blogoscreeds and snarky tweets of today is the absence of anything resembling bitterness in the former.  Though he claims to be a cynic Ray Guy is really a healthy sceptic.  He is pointed and tough but he’s challenging hypocrisy, not complaining.  There is a large and generous heart in there, one unable to resist something close to sentimentality when it comes to the “outharbour delights” of late “pod auger days” and the natural world of Newfoundland.   From “When I Was Small”;

“If you had a stick under the bedroom window there was always a draft to stir the scrim curtains. It was so calm that you could hear the seas rolling in on the beaches far, far out in the Bay like someone breathing very slowly.  It was foggy and calm and not even a gull bawled at night.

And a mile across the water at Wrack Cove you could hear every single rock rattle as the water rolled up the broad beach and out again.  Across the road and under the cliff a floating tin can bumped against the strouters on the wharf like a sunken bell”

The one quarrel I have with That Far Greater Bay is that it includes too little of Ray Guy’s political writing and too much of his conflicted love for this place. But this is easily remedied by simply seeking out and reading more of him, the wise course.

It is easy to blame the media for the current dearth of keen criticism the like of that which Ray Guy gave us, to say the television and radio stations and the newspapers are toadies for the big businesses that own them, or that the CBC simply lacks the guts.  The fault lies instead with the audience.  Guy was writing most and best as our colonial inferiority complex was on the wane.  He wasn’t blasting Smallwood’s hare-brained schemes and electoral thuggery as much as he was our continued gullibility, our rush to follow, our faith in führers.  “He [Smallwood] would rant and rave and mock and jeer.  If he was attacking the opposition, what a pitiful sight it was.  Talk about underdogs.  They were underpups yet unborn and their mothers dead.”  Local self doubt wasn’t replaced by confidence as much as it was by puffery and self-congratulation.   Is there an appetite among today’s sunny Newfoundland boosters for Ray Guy’s take on the irrational exuberance of development on the North East Avalon, on Senator Twice Manning, on what awaits a tourist lured here by those ads? There are so many Newfies now among us that I have my doubts.  Read Guy’s piece on Trudeau’s imposition of The War Measures Act and admit he possessed more smarts and nerve than the crowd.

That Far Greater Bay was a marvellous collection when it first came around.  It was welcome then, perhaps more necessary now.

Flippers

I have a  piece in Macleans about seal cookery.

Ed vs. Ed

Here’s a fun discussion I had with Ed Roberts in the latest edition of the Newfoundland Quarterly.  It concerns Greg Malone’s new book, “Don’t Tell The Newfoundlanders”.  I believe I think more highly of the book than does Mr. Roberts.

Suitcase Clones

Such clippings feature in Easy To Like http://www.princeofpinot.com/article/...

Review of the Paperback Edition

Edward Riche’s new novel is Easy to Like

July 12, 2012. 4:24 pm • Section: Books, Entertainment, Food

Posted by:

Peter Darbyshire

Edward Riche‘s Easy to Like is a rich and textured blend of a story. It begins with a sustained explosion of wine snobbery as it follows Elliot Johnson, a struggling winemaker who’s perpetually in search of the perfect taste but must work as a Hollywood hack screenwriter to make ends meet. The parody of Hollywood leads naturally to a mouth-warming satire of CanCon, as Elliot, through a series of absurd and almost laugh-track circumstances, winds up working as a CBC programming exec. There are subtle hints of romantic black comedy and middle-aged melodrama, as well as some sweet notes about Canadian identity itself, that add to the mix without overpowering it.

The overall experience of the book transcends its individual flavours, though, as it will leave readers savouring its questions about artistic creation in a world that is preoccupied with superficial labels and commercial demands to reach the broadest possible audience at the expense of taste itself – of finding something that is universally “easy to like.”

Also, you’ll get drunk just from all the references to great wines in this book.

pdarbyshire@theprovince.com