The Post

If I had to pick just one thing about the English novel, I don't think I could, but if pressed to pick five things, one of them would have to be the post. Much in the same way that cell phones are pivotal to contemporary plotting, the British postal system is essential to the 20th century Englist novel. As are teacups, spinsters, knitting, seaside B&Bs, and the vicar, or maybe I've just been reading too much Barbara Pym, but the mail is always coming and going-- have you noticed that? Someone is always going out to post a letter, or writing a letter that never gets posted, or a posted letter goes unreceived, or remains unopened on the hall table.

My day is divided into two: Before Post and After Post. BP is the morning full of expectation, anticipation, and (dare I?) even hope. AP is either a satisfying pile on the kitchen table, or acute disappointment with fingers crossed for better luck tomorrow. In my old house I was in love with the mailman, but that love remained unrequited because I was in grad school then and he only ever saw me wearing track pants. When we lived in Japan, I once received a parcel addressed to me with only my name and the name of the city where we lived (and humiliated myself and was given a sponge, but that's another story.) When we lived in England, the post arrived two times a day and even Saturday, but the only bad thing was that when I missed a package, I had to take a bus out to a depot in another town.

All of which is to say that I love mail as an institution, as much as I love sending or receiving it. I once met a woman who told me that her husband was a mailman (though she called him a "letter-carrier", I'm not sure if there's most dignity in that), and I think she was taken aback when I almost jumped into her arms.

So when I read this piece in the LRB by a Royal Mail employee regarding the recent British mail strike, I had mixed feelings. I was troubled by the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Royal Mail of late, the compromise that comes from profit as the bottom line, the explanation of how Royal Mail is part-privatized already, their focus on the corporate customer. "Granny Smith doesn't matter anymore," this piece ends with, and they're not talking about apples, but instead their Regular Joseph(ine) customers. Those of us whose ears perk up at the sound of mail through the letterbox, at the very sound of the postman's footfall on the steps.

I took some heart, however, from the article's point that it is a falsehood that "figures are down". "Figures are down" appears to be corporate shorthand to justify laying off workers, increasing workloads, eliminating full time contracts, pensions etc. Apparently the Royal Mail brass has no experience on the floor, they're career-managers (and they've probably got consultants) who come up with ingenious ways to show that "figures are down". Mail volume, for example, used to be measured by weight, but now it's done by averages. And during the past year, Royal Mail has "arbitrarily, and without consultation" been reducing the number of letters in the average figures. According to the writer, "This arbitrary reduction more than accounts for the 10 per cent reduction that the Royal Mail claims is happening nationwide."

So yes, none of this good news about the state of labour or capitalism, but what I like is this part: "People don’t send so many letters any more, it’s true. But, then again, the average person never did send all that many letters. They sent Christmas cards and birthday cards and postcards. They still do. And bills and bank statements and official letters from the council or the Inland Revenue still arrive by post; plus there’s all the new traffic generated by the internet: books and CDs from Amazon, packages from eBay, DVDs and games from LoveFilm, clothes and gifts and other items purchased at any one of the countless online stores which clutter the internet, bought at any time of the day or night, on a whim, with a credit card."

This is hope! I do love letters, namely reading collections of them in books (and particularly if they're written by Mitfords), but I'll admit to not writing many of them. My love of post is not so much about epistles, but about the postal system itself. A crazy little system to get the most incidental objects from here to there. I like that I can lick an envelope, and it can land on a Japanese doorstep within the week. I like receiving magazines, and thank you notes, and party invitations, and books I've ordered, and Christmas presents, and postcards. I like that in the summer, Harriet received a piece of mail nearly every single day.

And I really love Christmas cards. Leah McLaren doesn't though, because she gets them from her carpet cleaner and then feels bad because she doesn't send any herself. I manage to free myself from such compunction by sending them out every single year, and in volumes that could break a tiny man's back. Spending enough on stamps to bring on bankruptcy, but I look upon this as I look upon book-buying-- doing my part to keep an industry I love thriving (or less dying). Yesterday, I posted sixty (60!) Christmas cards, though I regret I can no longer say to every continent except Africa. Because my friend Kate no longer lives in Chile, but my friend Laura is still working at the very bottom of the world so we've still got Antarctica, which is remarkable at any rate.

I love Christmas cards. I send them because I've got aunts and uncles and extended family that I never see, but I want them to know that they mean something to me anyway. And it does mean something, however small that gesture. These connections matter, these people thinking of us all over the world. Having lived abroad for a few years, I've also got friends in far-flung places, and without small moments of contact like this, it would be difficult to keep them. It's impossible to maintain regular contact with everybody we know and love, but these little missives get sent out into the world, like a nudge to say, "I'm here if you need me."

I also send them because I've got these people in my life that I'm crazy about, and I want to let them know as much. Particularly in a year like this when friends and family have so rallied 'round-- let it be written that it all meant the world to me, then stuck in an envelope and sealed with a stamp.

But mostly (and here I confess), I write Christmas cards because people send them back to me. I've never once received as many as I send, but the incomings are pretty respectable nonetheless. I love that most December days BP, I've got a good chance of red envelopes arriving stacked thick as a doorstop. And if not today, there will be at least one card tomorrow. I love receiving photos of my friends' babies, and updates on friends and family we don't hear from otherwise, and the good news and the hopeful news, and just to know that so many people were thinking of us. We display them over our fireplace hanging on a string. It is a bit like Valentines in elementary school, a bit like a popularity contest, but if you were as unpopular as I was in elementary school, you'd understand why strings and strings of cards are really quite appealing.

I love it all. That there are people in places all over the world, and they're sticking stuff in mailboxes pillared or squared, and that stuff will get to us. That at least one system in the universe sort of almost works, and that I've even got friends. And then-- this is most important-- what would the modern English novel be without it?

Virginia Wolf on Louise Fitzhugh (seriously)

A very exciting parcel came to our house today! Finally, my long-awaited copy of Louise Fitzhugh-- a biography by the carefully named Virginia L. Wolf-- has arrived from BetterWorldBooks. There are not a lot of resources on Fitzhugh around, though the Purple Socks Tribute Site is pretty cool. But I was eager to learn more about this author (who wrote Harriet the Spy, for those of you not in the know), and this book had been lost in the depths of Robarts library, and the one copy in the Public Library system was not for circulation. So, obviously, another book purchase was necessary. I can't wait to read it.

Happy Friday

I just received a spam email from "me" with the subject heading, "I'm so proud for you". Totally! We've had a very good week this week, mostly due to the fact that I'm no longer exhausted. Harriet is back to getting up just once a night, probably just because she decided it would be so, but we like to think because I've started waking her for a feed right before I go to sleep. So we'll enjoy it while it lasts.

She's also going bed early, however eventually, which gives me a marvelous break in the evenings. And since I've (almost) quit Facebook, I've ceased my epic time wasting. I'm getting lots of reading done, working on knitting a little sweater for Harriet, working on a writing assignment that I'm finding absolutely thrilling, as well as a bit of fiction. Little Women is wonderful, actually. I have a short story coming out in December, and I'm very excited about that (with details to come, of course).

I am very grateful to have two good friends also on maternity leave right now, and their company is the best way I've found yet to pass the days. And not just to pass the days, but to enjoy them. Today we all finally went to The Children's Storefront-- it was my first visit, finally, and was an absolutely magical place we'll be returning to. And we're looking forward to Sunday, when Harriet hosts her very first party.

It is a happy Friday indeed. (And is this where we cue the baby going ballistic, and not sleeping at all tonight? Just in order to make me eat every word I writ. Oh, we'll see...)

Some things on Saturday

Oh, I wish I could tell you what I'm now reading, but you'll have to wait for the December issue of Quill & Quire to find out. Alas, but I'm enjoying myself. Birds of America is on its way to me in the post. For the last few days, I've been composing a love letter to the Spadina Road branch of the Toronto Public Library (which I'll put down on paper soon, and copy here). We've been listening to Elizabeth Mitchell at our house, and we're totally obsessed-- everyday I have a new favourite, but I like her version of "Three Little Birds" and also The Tremelos' "Here Comes My Baby". I've been playing guitar myself these days, and Harriet is entranced by the shiny tuning pegs. She also likes strumming the strings. We're going to England in less than a month, which is exciting, but seemed like a much better idea when the baby was still hypothetical. Now, I am a bit terrified, but pleased that her brilliant sleep patterns are wrecked already so that I don't have to worry about the time change doing so. (In terms of baby sleep, how about this: ask moxie hypothosizes that sleep is this generation of parents' "thing" [whereas, it once was potty training] because babies sleep on their backs now, where they do not sleep as well as they did on their fronts. This is also why our parents have little sympathy for the sleeping plight). I continue to be exhausted, much the same way I was when Harriet was born, except I have a life now and do not spend my waking hours sitting in a chair sobbing, and therefore the tiredness feels worse (and yet, I would not, could not, go back there, no). I've also quit Facebook, sort of. You see, I was totally addicted, checking it whenever I was feeding the baby and often when I wasn't, and there are better things I could do with my time. And yet, there are many things I love about Facebook-- friends' photos, event invitations, cool links, finding out about friends' achievements, that many of my FB friends' aren't friends otherwise, and I'd miss them if I went. But there are only so many strangers' photo albums you can peruse without feeling your life is slipping away, so, I had my husband change my Facebook password, and now I have to be logged in by him. And I really hope this doesn't happen all that often. So this should free up some time for me to finally read through my stack of London Review of Books that has been accumulating since Harriet was born. And I mean that. I am also going to knit Harriet a sweater from the Debbie Bliss Baby and Toddler Knits book I got from the library today, but I'll use the 12-24 month sizing, because I'm realistic about how long it takes to get anything done. Today, we had the most wonderful brunch at the Annex Live. And the baby is awake, so I must go lay out the newspaper on the floor so I can read it while I feed her.

A Novel Gift

Stuart and I both like the song "Daughter", but the lyric "everything she owns, I bought her" doesn't really apply to our situation. It's more like, "That's our daughter in the water, everything she owns was a gift from our extraordinarily generous friends and family." She gets packages in the post near daily, always full of delightful things. We feel so lucky and appreciative of these gifts, and all the thoughts and good wishes we've received. Harriet lacks for nothing, no thanks to us really. Our freezer is also similarly stocked.

But one gift does stand out a bit. In addition to adorable summer outfits, Harriet's Auntie Jennie also gave us a novel. Or, gave me a novel. It was Catherine O'Flynn's novel What Was Lost, which I've wanted to read for ages. And this novel gift really was particularly novel, because nobody ever gives me books. Oh, as I've said, people give me lots of things, but I've read so many books already and my tastes are quite defined that friends are more inclined to give me other things. So that rarely do I ever receive a book as a surprise, let alone a book I've been dying to read anyway. I imagine I'm not the only bookish sort who suffers from this plight. Oh, the tortured problems of the middle class...

Clearest, starkest brilliance

"Motherhood is a storm, a seizure: It is like weather. Nights of high wind followed by calm mornings of dense fog or brilliant sunshine that gives way to tropical rain, or blinding snow. Jane Louise and Edie found themselves swept away, cast ashore, washed overboard. It was hard to keep anything straight. The days seemed to congeal like rubber cement, although moments stood out in clearest, starkest brilliance. You might string those together on the charm bracelet of your memory if you could keep your eyes open long enough to remember anything." --Laurie Colwin, from A Big Storm Knocked It Over

That I've read an entire book over the past twelve days means that all is not lost. And indeed, there have been numerous "moments standing out in clearest, starkest brilliance," though these don't include the hours we spent in the Sick Kids Emergency when Harriet when just four days old (she was fine, thank goodness, but that experience was like staring straight into hell), her much too-much weight loss that has had both of us struggling to make up for it ever since, that I may have cried as much as she has, and the overwhelming dread at the thought of her Daddy returning to work on Monday. But we've enjoyed taking her out for her first walks in her carrier, trying to figure out what she likes (not much, but we suspect being in her carrier is a comfort), getting massages from Daddy, midwife visits where she's gained an ounce every day, the sun shining through the windows, all the support we've had from family, friends and our most excellent neighbours, and that she's received so good wishes from all over the world. Harriet has also received post every day, though she's not yet old enough to realize how exciting that is. We've also been fortunate that I've come through my surgery so well and easily. My crush on the surgeon went into high gear in the days after her birth (which, in spite of the operating room, was as gorgeous as any birth could be, and I don't feel I've missed anything) because he looked like Paul Simon circa 1970s, and because of what a good job he'd done, and what a beautiful baby he'd delivered (though about three nights ago at three o'clock in the morn, I was sorely tempted to go firebomb his house). It's been a very difficult time for all of us this past while-- I've never been much inclined to work hard at things I'm not loving, and this isn't a job I can pass along to anybody else. Though I'm finding, ever-increasingly, those moments standing out in clearest, starkest brilliance when I don't want to.

This morning's sweet delight

Oh, I know I've left all two of my avid readers hanging. I know you've both been asking, "What HAS Kerry received in the post of late?" Well, I can tell you: not much. Recent haulage has been pathetic, really. Until this morning's sweet delight. Descant 144. An "Irish Writers" postcard sent from my best friend Britt, who is currently back in the Old Country. A gorgeous thank-you note from our friend Carolyn, that made me cry. And another postcard from my fabulous sister, who saw fit to think of me on her recent sojourn to sunny Mexico. My credit card statement was not as fun as the rest of the pile, but alas. I love the idea of these little items being placed into mailboxes all over the world, specially aimed right to my doorstep.

The post in literature

Though I make no bones about literature in the post being my very favourite thing, a close second has to be the post in literature. Two such highlights lately (and by UofT creative writing grads) being Laura Boudreau's story "Strange Pilgrims" in The New Quarterly 109 (out now), and Naya's brilliant post "Stamping and Stomping". Clearly, clearly, after my heart.

The latest postal haul

I arrived home today to a mailbox overflowing with literary goodness. The latest issue of The New Quarterly, a brand new Canadian Notes and Queries, as well as The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power, which should still have been en-route from Australia by sea, but I suspect someone put it on an airplane by mistake-- what a treat.

Amazingly above-average

Today's postal haul wasn't huge, but was mostly amazingly above-average (or at least way not just bills and flyers). The Good: two letters, one from the Governor General and the other from The South Pole. The Bad: another issue of magazine whose subscription I'm definitely not renewing because, once again, upon perusing table of contents, I see the editors have forgotten that women can write.

Today's things to do list

• check the post
  
• go swimming
• pick up a book at the library
• pick up a parcel at the post office
• bake three apple pies
• write, read and knit
  
• be cooked my favourite dinner
• look into becoming a lady of leisure
  

Postal Motherlode

Today we arrived home to a bundle on the doorstep-- ten (10!) Christmas cards, all for us. It was as good as Christmas morning, really, and we opened them one-by-one, delighting. And then had to add a second string to our fireplace display, which is quite remarkable for one day's pickings. Oh, for the love of December and perpetual post.

We are also happy this year to have a fireplace at all, though of course hanging our stockings on the bookcase was never a bad thing, but there is a certain authenticity here at the new house, even if the fireplace is a wee bit bricked up and a storage space for magazines. We trust Santa will find his way...

From the desk of...

Like a treasure

"I receive remarkable letters. They are opened for me, unfolded and spread out before my eyes, in a daily ritual that gives the arrival of the post the character of a hushed and holy ceremony. I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence... Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a children crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more than all the rest. A couple of lines or eight pages, a Middle Eastern stamp or a suburban postmark... I hoard all these letters like a treasure. One day I hope to fasten them end to end in a half-mile streamer, to float in the wind like a banner raised to the glory of friendship./ It will keep the vultures at bay." --Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (trans. Jeremy Leggatt).

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Writes Juliet Ashton in a letter to Dawsy Adams, "I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true." But it might be, homing instinct or no homing instinct. That this delightful book was brought to me, full of all the things I like the best-- an epistolary novel, begun on the basis of a used book's passage from one reader to another, full of wonderful literary references, even a bookish mystery of sorts, plus a reference to the joys of peering in windows, and a teapot that's used as a weapon.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is a novel comprising a selection of correspondence, primarily to and from Juliet Ashton. Ashton, living in 1946 London with its war wounds still so fresh, is a writer seeking the subject of her next book-- she's previously published a commercially unsuccessful biography of Anne Bronte, and a very popular collection of humorous columns she'd written during the war. Her interest is sparked by a letter she receives from Dawsy Adams, a pig farmer from Guernsey in Britain's Channel Islands, who has somehow acquired a book that was once hers, Juliet's name and address inscribed on the inside cover.

Dawsy has written seeking other books, which are proving hard to find where he is-- Guernsey still a long way from recovering from 5 years of German occupation. Books, Dawsy explains, have become very important to him, and his friends, far more than it was ever figured they would be during that evening they devised their Literary Society as a ruse to hide a pig from the Nazis.

Letters between Juliet and Dawsy, Juliet and her publisher, and also from the other members of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, come together to form a marvelously engaging narrative, with characters so real their letters shout off the page. Their stories a testament to the power of literature upon all different kinds of people, as solace during hardship, to bring friends together. Portraying also the horrors of life during occupation, Juliet reflecting that all through the war she hadn't thought much about the Channel Islands, and I don't imagine many of us since have thought about it more. A fascinating, if awful, piece of history, and Mary Ann Shaffer's enthusiasm for this subject is evident in her work. Unnatural exposition the risk of any epistolary novel, and where it happens here (which is rarely) is with these stories, these historical details, but we forgive them because they hold such interest.

The novel's prose lives up to all the great works it references, which is certainly something. Offering such a fabulous critique: Juliet writes, "P.S. I am reading the correspondence of Mrs. Montagu. Do you know what that dismal woman wrote to Jane Carlyle? 'My dear little Jane, everybody is born with a vocation and yours is to write charming little notes.' I hope Jane spit on her."

One Society member writes of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, edited by Yeats who excluded WW1 poems due to his "distaste" for themes of "passive suffering": "Passive Suffering? Passive Suffering! ...What ailed the man? Lieutenant Owen, he wrote a line, "What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns." What's passive about that, I'd like to know? That's exactly how they do die. I saw it with my own eyes, and I say to hell with Mr. Yeats."

I would urge this novel upon you, with all its wonderfully funny writing, shocking in places, and in other turns sad. Hardly shying away from the brutal realities of this time period, absolutely and bravely unflinching, but also masterful at capturing the nuances of ordinary life. A certain erudition evident, but always underlined by a joy-- in books, in reading, in human relationships, and the connections between all three.

(Read DGR's Review.)

Poem in the Post

Kawaii. Today in the post was a "Hello Kitty Everywhere! Haiku Postcard" from my sister. Haiku as follows:

Peeking through the soil,
The flowers shyly emerge.
I am their first friend.

Their own body bags

Nathan Whitlock writes that requiring self-addressed stamped envelopes to accompany literary journal submissions is "kind of like making soldiers go into battle carrying their own body bags".

Forgetting to bring a camera

I've got a train journey coming up this weekend, and I can't decide what novels to take. Of course I've got a mess of magazines waiting-- this week Walrus, London Review of Books, and Canadian Notes and Queries all arrived in the post. I'll also soon have my mitts upon the New Yorker Summer Fiction Issue. But still, I feel a train trip takes a novel, and that periodicals won't suffice. Mostly because no journey is complete without a novel irrevocably linked to it.

To and from California in Feb. was Arlington Park and Anagrams. To and from Montreal in Sept. was A Short History of Tractors... and Atonement. The last time I went to Ottawa, I read Sweetness in the Belly. Town House en route to England last June, and Bliss on the way back. Etc. etc. You see what I mean?

It would be like forgetting to bring a camera.

Links for Today

Links for today: we've got Emily Perkins' Novel About My Wife racking up great reviews in The Guardian and in The Toronto Star. (Read my review, and interview. An aside: very exciting, my copy of Perkins' first book Not Her Real Name arrived in the post today.) Somewhat dissimilarly bookish, how to make a hardback into a handbag (via The Pop Triad) and I'm going to do it! Baby Got Books celebrates the death of the death of online criticism. Mrs. Dalloway Digested is funny. Hilary Mantel remembers 30 years of Virago. Lizzie Skurnick rereads The Girl with the Silver Eyes.

And one of the many highlights of my weekend was reading the actual printed Guardian Review, particularly Zadie Smith on Middlemarch. Citing Henry James' 1873 review: "It sets a limit," he wrote, "to the development of the old-fashioned English novel." Writes Smith, "It's strange to see wise Henry reading like a dogmatic young man, with a young man's certainty of what elements, in our lives, will prove the most significant."

The Postal Phantoms I have known

I've just finished reading The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear, which I have absolutely fallen in love with. I'll fit in a review during my empty tomorrow, but at the moment I want to write a bit about something I read in the "PS..." section of the book (and may I point out how always interesting is the "PS content" in these books).

Maclear writes about the "postal phantom" at her house, the inspiration for her novel-- "Mr. Szabo-- a man who, for whatever reason, never got around to having his mail redirected." And of course I know about postal phantoms, though I'd never considered them in such specific terms, never thought of these people as a collective, and it hadn't occurred to me that such figures could even be given a name.

My postal phantoms as follows: there was Robin Stephenson, in my university apartment on Dundas Street. I can't remember if it was her or a roommate that received Scientology paraphernalia, but Robin had forgotten to change her address when she finished university, and was always getting alumni notices from the U of T Geography Department.

No phantom, I believe, will ever be as prolific as Mrs. Sandra M. Spencer from our house in Nottingham. We'd suspected she'd died, as she'd left all her cake tins behind, and death is as good an excuse as any for leaving no forwarding address. She owed a ton of council tax, going back a few years, received regular notices for mammograms, and often was summoned to court to come and testify against her son. Note, we didn't start opening the mail until about after a year, after we'd called the council to tell them she wasn't there anymore, and they said they'd keep sending her bills anyway, because it was her last known address (which also goes part way towards explaining why there's no longer a British Empire).

We received a lot of mail for the Moniz family here at our current address, as well for Amanda Hickman (who is on the list of numerous charities) and Michael Popowich (and in case he googles himself, Michael-- McGill University is desperate to get in touch with you.) Each of these are characters, wholly present in their own peculiar contexts, which is their absence. And we practically know them, we do, though the foundation of this knowledge is the fact we never ever will.

Further, what about the bizarre idea that somewhere out there, somebody's postal phantom is you.