Review in Word

The July/August 2006 issue of Word: Canada’s Magazine for Readers + Writers is now available online. It includes my review of Stolen by Annette Lapointe, a first novel which is one of the best books that I’ve read so far this year. To read what I wrote about it, click here. Note that you have to download the magazine in pdf format in order to read it.

Toronto Book Bloggers

A social gathering of Toronto litbloggers is in the works. If you're interested in attending such an event, contact Heather at The Library Ladder to get yourself added to her mailing list. I think that it will be good fun to get to meet one another and share a bit of book talk in person.

Russell Banks on Research and the Novelist

Russell Banks on research and the novelist:

Let me try to wrap this up more or less neatly by returning to my claim that I don’t do research. I can’t. I mustn’t. Not in the way that people who don’t write novels do research. For a novelist, research must always and exclusively serve the purposes of one’s characters, one’s narrative forms, story, theme, plot, and style. Not vice-versa. From my point of view, scholars and journalists have got it all backward.

From Russell Banks, “On Research” in Constance Rooke, ed., Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life (McClelland & Stewart, 2006).

Cynthia Ozick on Freedom of Imagination

Cynthia Ozick on freedom of imagination:

[N]o writer of stories should be expected to be a moral champion or a representative of “identity.” That way lies tract and sermon and polemic. When a thesis or a framework—any kind of prescriptiveness or tendentiousness—is imposed on the writing of fiction, imagination flies out the door, and with it the freedom and volatility and irresponsibility that imagination both confers and demands. I have never set out to be anything other than a writer of stories.

From “Cynthia Ozick” in Diane Osen, ed., The Book That Changed My Life: Interviews with National Book Award Winners and Finalists (2002).

Just One Book?

Sylvia has tagged me to participate in the one book meme. I’m a promiscuous reader and so find it rather difficult to restrict myself to just one book in any category. But, never one to pass up an opportunity for introspection on my reading habits, I'll give it a go.

1. One book that changed your life:

Man Descending by Guy Vanderhaeghe. I read this brilliant book of short stories when I was sixteen. I’d read short stories in anthologies before then but this was the first collection by an individual author that I read cover to cover. Man Descending awakened me to the power of the short story form. The fact that Vanderhaeghe is from my home province of Saskatchewan and set many of his stories there had a huge impact as well. This was world-class writing emanating not from New York or London or Paris, but from right there at home. I credit Vanderhaeghe’s book with setting me on the path to becoming not just an avid reader of short stories but also a writer of them.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. This is my favourite of Spark’s novels and I get something more from it on each rereading.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:

I have few outdoor survival skills so I should opt for a non-fiction title full of the sort of information that I’d need to stay alive on a desert island. Sticking to the literary theme though, if pressed to restrict myself to a single book I think I’d get the most mileage out of a short story anthology. Something along the lines of The Art of the Short Story which contains stories by fifty-two great writers together with some of their musings on the craft of writing. Lots of different voices to sustain me through my lonely vigil!

4. One book that made you laugh:

Mean Boy by Lynn Coady.

5. One book that made you cry:

If I had remembered how bleak L.M. Montgomery's Mistress Pat gets toward the end, I wouldn’t have chosen it for my airplane book en route to the Montgomery conference that I attended recently. I wept right there on the airplane, no doubt much to the consternation of the passenger sitting next to me.

6. One book that you wish had been written:

Betsy’s Bettina by Maud Hart Lovelace, the never-written eleventh book in the Betsy-Tacy series. I concede that Lovelace made a sound artistic decision in ending the series at the moment of the U.S. entry into WWI, before the experience of that war irrevocably changed the lives of Betsy and her crowd. But I would still like to know if Joe survived the war, and how Betsy’s writing career proceeded during and afterwards, and whether she ever had the daughter that she planned to name Bettina. Not that I want someone other than Lovelace to write that book now mind you. I abhor sequels written by someone other than the original author.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

I could name a few books that I wish I hadn’t read but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I wish they had never been written. Just because I didn’t like them doesn’t mean that others who did or would should be deprived of their enjoyment. I’m not sure that I would wish out of existence even those books full of political ideas that appal me. I struggle with this issue, but I’m inclined toward the view that it’s better to have the ideas out in the open where they can be combated as opposed to leaving them to fester beneath the surface.

8. One book you’re currently reading:

This All Happened by Michael Winter.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:

Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino.

10. Now tag five people:

Oh sure, now I get to pick five. If they’re inclined to participate, I’d be curious to hear from Jennifer, Heather, Patricia, satyridae, and Melissa on this one, and also from any other readers who are interested.

Dawn Powell on Writing New York

Dawn Powell in a diary entry dated February 12, 1934, as she embarked on the novel that became Turn, Magic Wheel:

I want this new novel to be delicate and cutting—nothing will cut New York but a diamond. Probably should do a night job on it as on Tenth Moon—it should not be a daylight book but intense and brilliant and fine like night thoughts. No wandering but each detail should point to the one far-off star and be keyed by Lila’s own waiting excitement and preserved youth. It should be crystal in quality, sharp as the skyline and relentlessly true. No external details beyond the swift eager glance over the shoulder.

From The Diaries of Dawn Powell 1931-1965 (Steerforth Press, 1995).

Terry Teachout on Dawn Powell

I’ve finally acquired a copy of A Terry Teachout Reader. Having already become a fan of Teachout’s writing through About Last Night, I’d have picked it up in any event. But what a marvellous extra lure to find, when I cracked it open, that the first essay in the book is about Dawn Powell, one of my favourite writers. Teachout’s essay originally appeared in The New York Times Book Review in 1995 when The Diaries of Dawn Powell 1931-1965 were first published. In it, he beautifully sums up why you may not be familiar with Dawn Powell’s work and, if so, why you will want to rectify that immediately:

Reading My Home is Far Away, one inevitably wonders why Powell never found an audience. The most likely reason is that her books are devoid of the earnestness that has always been for most Americans the only sure sign of true art. Like all satirists, Powell was in deadly earnest, but she never saw any reason to be tiresome about it. Her touch was light, her tone whip-smart, a pair of attributes that confused even so shrewd a critic as Diana Trilling, who gave The Locusts Have No King a mixed review to which Powell replied in her diary, “Gist of criticisms (Diana Trilling, etc.) of my novel is if they had my automobile they wouldn’t visit my folks, they’d visit theirs.” Trilling is nobody’s fool, but she went to see the wrong family. Dawn Powell was one of America’s best novelists, and if there is any justice—a proposition at which she would doubtless have laughed wildly—she will soon receive her due.

I don’t think that Powell has yet received her due, but the release of her diaries in 1995 and the subsequent return to print of many of her novels certainly broadened her audience. I was among the readers who found their way to her fiction through the diaries. I read them along with several of her New York novels round about the time of my first visit to New York, and they became thoroughly bound up in my love affair with the place. The Golden Spur, set mostly in Greenwich Village, is a particular favourite. After I read it I bought several copies and for a long time pressed them upon friends and acquaintances whenever a birthday or some such occasion provided me with an opportunity for Powell proselytising.

I’m plotting now to revisit my favourite Powell novels and to search out those that I haven’t yet encountered. I’m also looking forward to reading more of A Terry Teachout Reader. Clearly it’s going to be one of those dangerous books that propels me towards many other books, not to mention CDs, films and various other art forms…

Chekhov’s Six Principles for Story Writing

Anton Chekhov’s six principles for story writing, as articulated in a letter to his brother Alexander dated May 10, 1886:

1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature;
2. total objectivity;
3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects;
4. extreme brevity;
5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype;
6. compassion.

Quoted in Richard Pevear’s introduction to Anton Chekhov, Stories (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000).

Criteria for Culling the Collection

I have a great deal of trouble getting rid of books, any books. It even makes me anxious to read of other people divesting themselves of portions of their personal libraries. During my recent book reorganization, I agonized for some time and managed to come up with only one modest cardboard box full of books that I was willing to relinquish: outdated computer manuals and exercise books, cookbooks I’d never used, mystery novels that I'm unlikely to reread now that I know the identity of the murderer, and the odd duplicate fiction or poetry title that I’d inadvertently acquired.

But post-reorganization, for the first time in my life, all of my books are out of storage and on display. I’d like to keep it this way, yet the likelihood of my book collection ceasing to grow at this point is nil. Clearly, I’m going to have to buck up and come up with criteria that I can live with for the occasional culling of my collection.

I’ve found some inspiration in Lewis Buzbee’s The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop. Here’s a man who is as nuts about books as I am; more so if that’s possible. Yet he’s managed to come to terms with the need to let go of once-cherished volumes along the way:

As a bookseller and a rep, I’ve had many more thousands of books in my possession than my shelves at home would indicate. At one time, I tried to keep them all, but that quest soon became impossible; I now only keep the ones I’m sure I’m going to reread, the ones I’m definitely going to read before I die, and the ones I can’t bear to part with because of an aesthetic or emotional attachment.

This strikes me as a plausible blueprint for deciding which books stay and which go. The first category, the ones I’m sure I’m going to reread, is fairly easy to determine. I can see myself running into a bit of trouble with the second category though as I realize that I’m wildly over-optimistic about the number of books I’m capable of reading in my lifetime. And the third, well, my emotional attachment to many of my books runs deep, particularly the childhood favourites. I’m glad that Buzbee gives weight to emotional and aesthetic attachment though; it’s a nice change from the television organization gurus who lose me every time they force a tearful packrat to winnow his or her book collection down to a shelf or two.

Buzbee is also inspiring when he writes about the fate of the books he relinquishes, the majority of which are destined for used-book stores:

For me, one of the great things about selling my books is that I know the ones I’ve sold can now begin an entire new existence. No longer relegated to my shelf or worse, a box in the garage, these books can go to a new home, possibly staying forever, possibly being traded in once again.

“Used bookstores,” he concludes, “represent recycling at its best, a powerful and useful endeavor that’s important to both our cultural and material lives.”

One of the reasons that I find it so difficult to get rid of books is the spectre of them languishing in landfill. The idea of sending them back into circulation instead is very appealing to me. I know that no one else wants those outdated computer manuals and exercise books that I’ve consigned to the cardboard box. But there are some other fine books in my collection that I could bear to donate to Goodwill in the hope that they’ll wind up in the hands of another happy reader. Giving away books and throwing away books are two entirely different matters.

Lisa Moore on Writing from the Midst of Domestic Life

Lisa Moore on writing from the midst of domestic life:

Virginia Woolf needed a room of her own. I need this house with its creaking staircase and the dryer tumbling and the lingering smell of cooking. The very faint sound of my husband practising guitar on the third floor. I need the chaos children bring to a life, the sensuality they bring and the imagination. I need the street outside too.

Lisa Moore (with Eva Crocker), “Yolk” in Constance Rooke, ed., Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life (McClelland & Stewart, 2006).