On James Wood on Byatt, and the Universe

Too many magazines come to my house, and after I had a baby in May, I didn't get around to reading any of them for ages. So it's only just now that I've read "Bristling With Diligence", James Wood's review of A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book (because I'm superstitious about reading my periodicals and their contents out of order).

Like all of James Wood's reviews, this one was as fascinating to read as the book it pertained to. There was not a single point upon which I really disagreed with him (except for "Byatt is a very ordinary grown-ups' writer"), he got the book right on, and yet I loved The Children's Book and James Wood distinctly didn't. And this is where an objective approach to criticism breaks down, I think, or where I cease to understand it. Wood lets his evidence speak for itself, but what that it says something quite different to me?

I realize that Wood has an agenda of sorts, or rather an "approach" to fiction, and that I've not been paying much attention to what that is, so let us not make that the point. Instead, I want to point out the curiousity of Wood taking down Byatt for characters who are "dutiful puppets, always squeezed and shaped for available meaning." That as author, Byatt "dances, with leaden slippers, around the thought-sleep of her characters... [with] that teacherly, qualifying, authorial judgment." That "an atmosphere of historical typicality drapes the stories' individual forms." That "Whenever a detail could be selected at the expense of another one, Byatt will always prefer to buy both, and include the receipts". (I love that sentence. Honestly, that every book review could be so vital and engaging, but I digress...)

To all of which, I reply, "Yes, yes, yes! And isn't it marvelous?" Because it occurs to me that what I like best about fiction is not its realism (sorry, James Wood), but the way that a novel or story can be its own little universe. I confess: I like witnessing Byatt's manipulations. I like writers that move their characters around like pieces on a boardgame, and I like omniscience, and I like a guiding hand. Ruby Lennox at the beginning of Behind the Scenes at the Museum: "I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall." Realism, this isn't.

I like Margaret Drabble, her novel The Radiant Way, and how "an atmosphere of historical typicality draped... individual forms." Perhaps fiction is not so informed by history, but I think it works especially well the other way around. Also, I like how in Drabble's novel The Gates of Ivory, a character from The Needle's Eye appears out of nowhere, and how these novels are seemingly unconnected otherwise, the character is minor in both novels (which were written nearly two decades apart), but how this connection gives impression of a Drabbleverse, and that I am privy to it.

I think all of this is now old-fashioned, though it was once so modern they made an "-ism" of it. For I think Mrs. Dalloway was that kind of book, and so was To The Lighthouse. Whose characters stood for things, and knew things they didn't even know they knew (though Mrs. Ramsey did). I think Zadie Smith's fictional worlds are like this too (though I don't this has to do with Wood's "hysterical realism", but I could well be wrong. I often am about things like that).

By chance (or for some deeper reason as determined by a guiding force, who knows?), I read Wood's review as I was reading Penelope Lively's novel Cleopatra's Sister. Lively (who won the Booker Prize in 1987 for her extraordinary novel Moon Tiger) is a critically-underrated writer (which doesn't mean she doesn't get good reviews, but that is something different). Her novels-- and this one in particular-- deal with ordinary lives intersecting with history, the trajectory of destiny, teleology. Her recent novel Consequences is about what it sounds like; her pseudo-memoir Making It Up is a fictionalized autobiography, supposing different paths she might have taken in her life.

Cleopatra's Sister is about history as random or inevitable, and Lively shows that it is both or n/either as she brings her two main characters together through a series of events that begins with Gondwana (and rapidly does proceed to the present day, do not fear; Clan of the Cave Bear this book is not). "These events are chronological; they take place in sequence and are in some senses contingent upon one another. Remove one-- extract a decade, or a century-- and the whole historical ediface will shift on its foundations. But that ediface itself is a chimera, a construct of human intellect. It has no bricks and stones-- it is words, words, words. The events are myths and fables distortions and elaborations of something that may or may not have happened; they are the rainbow survivors of some vanished grey moment of reality."

Which has a double-meaning, of course, in that this is fiction, but reality as we make sense of it is only "words, words, words" too. Which makes the concept of realist fiction sort of absurd to consider.

Achieving reality itself as the goal of fiction is one thing, but I think the construction of a fictional self-contained universe (like the Drabbleverse, the Livelyverse) is just as noble a fictional pursuit. However, not so much in the realm of the fantastic (excuse me, my bias is showing), where in order to be authentic, you just make everyone sound a little bit Welsh. But rather, universes that so resemble this one, but which are consciously constructed. Because what marvelous constructions these are, I always think. The details required in such creation (which is exactly why Byatt would get both, and receipts). It's like rebuilding the whole world again, brick by brick, and guiding its people up and down the streets. Controlling traffic. And setting in play a chain of circumstances, like say, the New Years Eve during which Archie Jones tries to kill himself, fails, and then meets Clara, the Jamaican daughter of a devout Jehovah's Witness, and then we're off! for a few hundred pages.

Of course, all this, like everything, is a matter of taste. I was discussing Amy Jones' story collection What Boys Like with a friend the other day, and she told me that her least favourite story was "The Church of the Latter-Day Peaches"-- which had been one of the ones I liked best. (Note: We agreed our mutual favourite was "All We Will Ever Be", but I digress. Again.) My friend felt "Church of..." wasn't as strong as the rest of the collection due to its storiedness--its cuteness, its beginning, middle and end, such a tidy shape, the patterns, how it contained its own lore, how parts of it meant something other than what they were. That it didn't stand for life itself. And when all of that had been what I'd enjoyed so much about it-- there really is no accounting for other people, is there?

What I'm slowly getting around to then is questioning the assumption that fiction has to be real. Which is hardly original, I know, but I wish to point out what a feat still is an excellent novel without realism as its intention. That such a novel can be excellent, even, and The Children's Book-- while not flawless, and Wood had a point about the problem of its history-- is a tremendous book, even with its author pulling strings. That string-pulling is no small feat sometimes. That a book can be a book, and that can be wonderful in itself. And that it's still baffling that literature is supposed to be or achieve any one thing, because like a whitman, or the universe itself, literature (and fiction, and the novel) contains multitudes.

Justification

Well, I have limited myself to purchasing only one book a month. But. We're off to England on Friday, and therefore it only makes sense to order Howards End is On The Landing and Wolf Hall from there, as they'll be either more widely available and/or a wee bit cheaper. And by the time I get back, What Boys Like will be out, and as I've been planning to buy that for ages, it doesn't quite seem like my monthly allotment (which should be more spontaneous, you know). And that copy of Birds of America that arrived last week doesn't count either, because I only bought it to get free postage on an amazon.ca order of CDs. So basically, we're halfway into October and I haven't even bought one book yet. I am very proud of my restraint.

All of this is a little less ridiculous, because I've been reading like a madwoman lately. Harriet's naps have turned out to be much longer when taken on me, which means that I can read a lot and nap as well. So that's what we've been up to lately, which leads to a Mommy who is better-read and less exhausted.

Now reading nothing! Or rather little bits of lots of things-- I've been rereading Jennica Harper's poetry, the LRB (I'm caught up to late July now), and the ROM magazine. Because I'm saving Birds of America for my holiday, and am too superstitious to start it before it's time.

Why I love the LRB

As a person who loves driving but hates cars, I found Andrew O'Hagan's "A Car of One's Own" the very best thing I read today. From the London Review of Books, 11 June 2009. Read the whole thing. Excerpt as follows:

"I could easily say I loved my car – I missed it when I went to bed at night. On that first long drive from London to Wales and thence to Inverness – which took 14 hours – I believe I discovered my autonomy. As with all illusions, I didn’t care that others found the enchantment funny: the feeling was new, and its newness is something that millions of people express rarely but understand fully. In American fiction, a great number of epiphanies – especially male epiphanies – occur while the protagonist is alone and driving his car. There are reasons for that. One may not have a direction but one has a means of getting there. One may not be in control of life but one can progress in a straight line. When your youth is over and definitions become fixed, even if they are wrong, it might turn out that the arrival of a car suddenly feels like the commuting of a sentence. It may seem to give you back your existential mojo. That is the beauty of learning to drive late and learning to drive often: it gives you a sense that life turned out to be freer than it was in your childhood, that time agrees with you, that your own sensitivities found their domain in the end, and that deep in the shell of your inexpensive car you came to know your subjectivity. Of course, one may find these things in the marriage bed or in a gentleman’s club, but those places have rules and your car is your own bed, your own club. Music? Yes. Tears? Yes. Singing? Yes. Stopping under the stars? OK, if you must. And here is Tintern Abbey. And there is Hadrian’s Wall. And should I stop in Glasgow for a drink? If you read the novels of Joan Didion, you will see there can come a time in anybody’s life, women’s as much as men’s, when they climb into their car and feel that they are driving away from an entire kingdom of dependency. The motorways don’t offer a solution: they offer a welcome straitjacket. Your car will get all the credit for bringing you home to yourself, for showing you the only person you can truly depend on is not merely yourself, but yourself-in-your-car, a somatic unity. Those who spend most of their lives being alert to the demands of others – and that’s most employees, most husbands, wives, parents, most believers – will know the rhythmic, sedative pull of the motorways as the road performs its magic, pulling you back by degrees to some forgotten individualism that the joys and vexations of community always threatened to turn into an upholstered void. Virginia Woolf was almost right: all one really needs is a car of one’s own, the funds to keep it on the road and the will to encounter oneself within. Though most of those men aren’t listening to Virginia Woolf – they’re listening to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited."

Eden Mills in the Sunshine

If you ever want to appreciate being out in the world, do have a baby. Though this means being out in the world requires a remarkable amount of luggage, but no matter. We had a wonderful time at Eden Mills on Sunday on such a gorgeous sunny day. The drive was beautiful, with splendid autumn colours (already!). We saw our good friends the Rosenblum/ Sampsons, which was splendid (though we really only saw them in passing-- our readings schedules were quite different). On Publishers' Way, we checked out The New Quarterly, where I bought a t-shirt that might fit once I stop breastfeeding, and Biblioasis next door, where I bought The English Stories by Cynthia Flood and said hello to the excellent Dan Wells. We listened to readings by Marina Endicott, Ian Brown (who was amazing-- pictured here) and Miram Toews (who we knew would be amazing already. She was the reason we were there and she did not disappoint). And then Terry Griggs, and Julie Wilson, and I enjoyed it all thoroughly. Also enjoyed was the organic ice cream, cones of which we each had two. Perfect all around, until we got stuck in traffic out by the airport and the baby screamed until home, but alas. These are the chances we take.

Thinking is not a performance

I've just started reading The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens, whose novel The Girls I loved so very much a while back. And I'm starting Amy Jones' fiction in The New Quarterly, which makes me look forward to her forthcoming book What Boys Like. Online, Lawrence Hill discusses his problem with the overuse of To Kill a Mockingbird in schools. Writer Laurel Snyder on overcoming her Twitter addiction: " It’s the idea that thinking is not a performance, hard as that can be for someone like me to accept."

Breaking up is never easy, I know.

Now reading Swimming by Nicola Keegan, which wasn't at all what I expected, which is probably a fine thing. I'm also reading the latest issue of The New Quarterly, which is more than I expected, which is an amazing thing. Its contents are so diverse, surprising, current and consistently excellent. I'm not sure if it's wrong of me to say it's more "magazine" than "journal". And not because it's less high-brow, but just because it's interesting. I also just broke up with a trashy novel I was expecting to love and tell you all about, but it was crap, or at least its first 124 pages were, and life is just too short to find out if the rest of it is better.

CNQ

Canadian Notes & Queries is one of my favourite magazines, and now you can check out their brilliant new website. In particular, may I refer you to my review of Libby Creelman's novel The Darren Effect which I enjoyed very much.

Magazine as Muse

My friend Rebecca Rosenblum (you know her, with a book just nominated for the Danuta Gleed Award, and she's off to Japan this very day) has a wonderful piece in the current issue of The New Quarterly. "Stuff They Wrote" is part of TNQ's "Magazine as Muse" feature, in which writers credit magazines that inspired them to start writing down words, and even sharing them. Rebecca has written an ode to edgy teen magazine Sassy, and its "staffers" in particular. She writes, "Sassy was like a novel in a fundamental way. It had characters. Sassy brought that always-lurking I-perspective of journalism to the centre. The writers didn't take over the stories (usually) but they didn't elide themselves, either."

Sassy was a world in which Rebecca could imagine herself, the writers bridging that gap between her life and theirs, suggesting limitless possibilities for the kind of woman girls could grow up to be. And when Sassy became swallowed up by a corporate behemoth, and a strange zombie Sassy emerged, Rebecca knew enough to know the difference, and had confidence enough to put pen to letter-to-editor to say so. It wasn't too long after that Rebecca had her first story published, and she wouldn't dismiss the idea of some connection there.

Confession: I didn't like Sassy. Sassy scared me. Their rules were too loose, they went too far, they used questionable language, and were touting something I found close to anarchy (ie SEX!). As a young teenager, I thought the wide world was generally terrifying, and was convinced that drugs, drinks and dyed hair were signs of slips towards hell. Beware of scruffy boys with cigarettes who might dare to sport an earring. (And tuck your shirt in, young man). Mine was a puritanism born of fear of the unknown, as most puritanisms usually are.

So I had a subscription to Seventeen. Writes Rebecca, "Seventeen was imperative-voiced: columns and service pieces about how often you should brush your hair and how you might get into a bad crowd if you didn't listen to your real feelings. Seventeen wasn't like a story; it was like a textbook, only there were Eye Makeup and French-Kissing classes instead of Math and Geography."

Oh, but some of us were in dire need of schooling. In a world so incredibly chaotic (with dances, and lockers, and gym class-- oh my!), a textbook offered some assurance, and I followed mine quite dutifully. Back to School must-haves, awesome locker organizers, lipstick colours, and the best kind of Caboodle. I learned that it was okay to like Evan Dando (which was something upon which Sassy and Seventeen concurred). Sassy preached that you could be whoever you wanted, but I didn't know who that was yet. I preferred the message of Seventeen instead-- play the game right, and I just might fit in.

Not that I did fit in. I had oily hair and pulled my pants up to my armpits, but one issue of Seventeen in particular suggested that I might have half a chance. It was the issue from April 1993, whose date I only remember because I had it with me on a family vacation to Florida when I was in grade eight. It was the one single issue that I even remember, as not so much a muse as a re-framing of my world view, or at least of my place in it.

This was a new re-formatted Seventeen. A significant departure-- I've found a record of old covers on line, and March 1993 was neon-hued, Andrew Shue playing volleyball. And then came April, with its muted-toned Earth Day theme. Shouting, Save the Earth, Girl! Which was cool. I don't remember noticing the model's hideous eyebrows then, but I liked her funky rings and hat. Inside, I remember a feature on slam-poetry (though it might well have been slam-poetry-inspired Bohemian fashions, but alas...) headlined, "Poetry/ is such a thing now." Groovy, man. I wanted a beret. Someone wrote a piece about how amazing were the Beatles lyrics (citing, "She's the kind of girl you want so much she makes you sorry...") in comparison with whatever hit of the day was out then, and it was the first time I'd ever seen The Beatles (to whom I was obsessively devoted, so much that I was forbidden to speak of them at the dinner table because I was so incredibly boring) noted in contemporary pop culture. Poetry too, which I fancied myself a writer of. Book recommendations included one called Mrs. Dalloway-- something like "the cool story of a single day in the life of a woman getting ready for a party!" I tried to read it, didn't get it, but began to have it fixed in my mind that one day I would.

I probably just should have read Sassy, but I wasn't ready to leave my shelter. The granola-y "reuse, recycle, renew, respect" Seventeen, however, provided a glimpse of an alternative culture that might provide me some space within it. Books were cool, The Beatles were cool, and poetry was cool, all of which I'd known already, but now somebody else knew it too. It was 1993, and I was inspired. En route to Florida I bought a flannel shirt at a Kentucky outlet mall-- this was counter-culture. Naturally, I tucked it into my tapered jeans that were still pulled up to my armpits, but it was something, nonetheless. I was on my way.

Further excitement

My new issue of The New Quarterly has finally arrived! Honestly, never has there ever been an issue of a lit. journal I've so wanted to devour-- Elizabeth Hay interviewed, Rebecca Rosenblum on Sassy, even Kim Jernigan's Editor's Letter is delightful. And speaking of Rosenblums, this particular one has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for her story "Linh Lai" (published in TNQ). I was also excited to see my favourite poet Jennica Harper up for a poetry award. Further excitement: Margaret Atwood's Adopt a Word to Create a Story story has been revealed. It's called "Persiflage in the Library" and it's very cute (read it here).

Small magazine. Big roar.

Over at the Descant blog, I've written about the importance of small literary magazines in Canada. This in the wake of federal budget cuts that would eliminate Heritage Canada funding to magazines with a subscription base under 5000. Which, in the words of Bookninja, "is essentially every lit mag out there." Read my piece, and be sure to join The Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines. At the bottom of the link, find addresses to which you should address your carefully worded letters of protest and support.

Thanks to Stuart Lawler for the image.

Women's bylines

One measly sentence in a massive article, but... "At the same time, Ambrose hopes to see more women's bylines." Which reads conspicuously on its own-- I do wonder what kind of discussion surrounded this point. I wonder too why she thinks it's a matter of mere wishful thinking. Still, as one who hopes to see more women's bylines too, I'll interpret this as a positive sign.

The dearth of female names

7 February 2009

Dear ***, Editor, **** Magazine

This letter is not intended for publication, and no doubt it will read as such, being neither particularly witty or erudite, or especially timely. But I do think it is fair to write to you and explain why I will not be renewing my subscription to **** after three years.

It has been nearly a year since I began counting the number of women writers amongst your contributors. Initially the dearth of female names was more peculiar than troubling. I was unsure of how a general interest/current affairs magazine could be very general or current while (very nearly) only publishing pieces written by men. But when each subsequent issue appeared, usually with less women than the one before it (and when the women did appear, it was rarely for any feature of significant length), I began to be disturbed.

Either you're not interested in commissioning women writers, or you haven't noticed the imbalance in your issues, and I'm really not sure which of these possibilities is the worst.

Do know that I'm not counting for counting's sake. I am not convinced that there is such a thing as "women's writing", but I am sure that the lack of women's voices in your pages has made your magazine less interesting. I used to make a point of reading every issue in its entirety, regardless of my interest, because the writing was good, and there was always something for me to learn. But lately this has felt like a chore, and I don't feel I get the payoff.

Please take a look at even your cover designs over the past year, take a look at your features. I am sure the lack of diversity amongst your contributors is the reason **** has come to resemble a Men's Magazine proper. And I know this is the reason that I, as a female subscriber, no longer feel like it's a magazine for me. I must not be the only one.

Thank you for your time,

Kerry Clare

Babies and reading

A few weeks back I was happy to discover that Kate Christensen has a new novel coming out in early June. I'll be reading it, naturally, though when, I cannot say. If I do happen to be 41 weeks pregnant in early June, then perhaps a good book will be welcome company, though it's just as likely I'll be a brand new mother with just a week's experience, so I probably won't be reading much of anything.

There are mothers who read, of course-- mothers of babies and mothers of toddlers. I know this mostly because I read their blogs, and these mothers provide me with a great deal of reassurance. That having my baby won't require handing my brain in (or if it does, at least I get it back in a little while). I've been planning my summer rereading project already, as I always do, and it's mainly consisting of easy, well-loved novels that won't require a great deal of concentration-- I'm thinking Good in Bed, Saturday, Happy All the Time, and, if I'm feeling brave, A Novel About My Wife. It would be nice to read maybe one a week? (At the moment I read about three, but then I also work full time.)

I was going to cancel my subscription to The London Review of Books, but I've since decided otherwise. I hope motherhood won't be an excuse to just give up being challenged, and I certainly won't have to read the whole of every issue. But the articles that interest me are just so interesting, and I learn so much from them. I will be cutting down on the number of periodicals that come into our house though, which probably would be a good idea anyway.

Anyone who has ever had a baby is probably by now hysterical with laughter at my naivete, but let me tell you that whenever I'm told something isn't possible, I tend to get it done. My mother says that babies sleep a lot. If I remember correctly, Alice Munro has said something much the same, so I believe it. I am also determined to master nursing and reading, which can't be impossible as I've already taught myself to floss and read, and knit and read, so this is just another challenge. But I will try to keep an open mind and my expectations only moderately high.

If by the end of the summer, I've read Kate Christensen's new novel at all, I'll consider myself not too far off track.

Indeed walrusy

"I spend a lot of my time thinking about it and a lot of time counting, counting how many men are mentioned, say, on the front page of a newspaper as against how many women, counting men in photographs of some new committee, counting members of Parliament. We all know that the number of women has slipped downward. So I seem to be bean counting all the time. It's a great burden. It's an irritation. I wish I didn't have to do it, but I'm too conscious of it not to think about it." --Carol Shields interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel in "Ideas of Goodness" from Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields

I quote because there is not one woman contributor listed in The Walrus' table of contents for October/November. Which has happened before (when Heather Mallick was "struck by the Aspergian social inadequacy of this indeed walrusy magazine.") As a subscriber, as well as someone who's recommended this magazine to others, I am becoming disappointed and embarrassed. And bothered, that the best spin I can put on this is just that perhaps they haven't noticed. The worst being their content criteria is excellence only, and perhaps women writers are excluded from that? But I don't believe it.

I've found the magazine suffering lately from its dearth of women writers, not just in principle but in content. I maintain that women and men write differently, that literature and letters are richer for that, but The Walrus seems to have forgotten. A magazine in which I read every article every month, even what doesn't interest me, because I suppose that I will learn something, that the piece is there for a reason. But lately I'm not so sure that I should bother. Because if the women aren't there because no one has noticed, perhaps there's not so much reason after all. Because if the women aren't there and nobody cares, this isn't the magazine for me.

Though I do fear becoming one of those frenzied "Canceling My Subscription" people. Must not do that.

Summer Fiction

One of my favourite events of summer: The Atlantic Fiction Issue is now out and about.

Worthwhile

You'll have to buy the magazine, but do check out Guy Gavriel Kay's "Summertime When the Visigoths Go Pillaging" in the July/August issue of The Walrus. I'd quote the whole thing, it's that lovely, but I'll settle for, "...I suspect we all have inward links between some books and where we were when we escaped into them. Everyone knows the memory links to scents or the pop songs of teenage summers, but I suspect if we reach back and in, we'll find many of the books of our lives to be vividly time and place specific too." Indeed.

My friend Lauren Kirshner has started blogging, and her posts demonstrate her immense talents. (She's got a book Where We Have to Go being published by McClelland and Stewart in the spring). Kate Sutherland's post post on Anne of Green Gables at 100 (to the day) is fabulous, quoting from Montgomery's journal entry the day her book came: "There in my hand lay the material realization of all the dreams and hopes and ambitions and struggles of my whole conscious existence—my first book!" Fine Lines (my favourite diversion) is going to become a book! And a profile of Jhumpa Lahiri.

I also went to the ROM this weekend. Their exhibit "Out from Under: Disability, History, and Things to Remember" is extraordinary (and on until July 13).

The whole thing

We went to Ottawa this weekend, which was brilliant all around (cousins, markets, barbeques), but I was particularly appreciative of a good ten hours spent train journeying, which of course makes for good reading. I did Fever and Prodigal Summer, and also CNQ. This is my second issue of the magazine-- I raved about Issue 72 back in December. This issue lived right on up to my heightened expections: so much learning in one package seems a miracle. So much to challenge me, whether to understand, to be enlightened, or even to disagree. If you've got an interest in Canadian literary matters and you're not reading CNQ, you're missing out on something extraordinary. Serves as an example of what a magazine can truly be. It sounds like I'm overstating, but I'm really not. Robyn Sarah's "Delivered to Chance" and David A. Kent on Margaret Avison were my favourite bits, but really (shhh...) I liked the whole thing.

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.

Unless

This past weekend has ruined me, and I remain in a coma. Or perhaps I just can't stop reading Rebecca long enough to focus on anything else. And I have a stack of books-to-be-read up to my elbows, so thankfully this weekend is a long one and I can fill it well.

Last evening I attended the Fiery First Fiction event, and it did not disappoint. I particularly enjoyed hearing Nathan Whitlock read from A Week of This (which I read last month), Shari Lapeña read from her book (which I've got upcoming), and then there was Claudia Dey who must have sold her book a thousand times. Personally I'm not sure how I'd live long without it-- her reading was unbelievable. Coach House is publishing wonderful books these days; remember Pulpy and Midge? And I also want to read Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig.

Read Claudia Dey profiled in The Toronto Star. Watch "the list of books that make the best use of their type" at Baby Got Books. Lorrie Moore's Collected Stories reviewed. Margaret Drabble is characteristically excellent in "The beginning of life should not be a subject for a crude polemic".

Today whilst reading The Danforth Review on A Week of This, I was surprised to see my own review referenced. Bryson's points are interesting, and I found quite illuminating his assertion that novels "are fictional inventions of imagined worlds. They are performances of language, and the references they make to each other-- explicitly or implicitly-- are of greater interest than a novel's photo realism." True enough, perhaps, but then isn't the novel quite a multitudinous thing? And don't we all approach it differently?

And like Heather Mallick, I've noticed this month's issue of The Walrus is decidedly short on women writers. "Apparently you can't have a good magazine unless women are writing it," writes one of Mallick's avid readers. But you sort of can't, actually, in this day and age. Not if you're writing a general interest/current events magazine, and women are writing practically none of it-- is this really surprising? The only pieces written by women are two of four "field notes", one of four book reviews, a poem by P.K. Page, and one of nine letters to the editor. (Perhaps the whole issue is the answer to Austin Clarke's story title, "Where Are the Men?") What all this signifies exactly, I cannot venture to say. But then to me the facts appear as such, I don't actually need to say anything.

In related news, I'm looking forward to reading Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers. Check out coverage at The Savvy Reader.

Dancing about Literature

My short essay "Dancing About Literature" appears in Descant 140: Improvisations, which is in stores now. The piece is about the joys of literary blogging, which I'm so pleased to experience here and elsewhere. The issue also contains work by such notables as P.K. Page, Alberto Manguel, and Anthony De Sa.