I Like to Write

Now I am over there

2007-12-01T15:07:00.000-08:00

I have had a blog for a short while over here:

http://lmiall.wordpress.com

Initially started for my studies, it increasingly seems the best place to go on talking about writing.

As for more psychogeography-related stuff, there is another new site that I've been maintaining in collaboration with others over here:

http://montrealrevolt.wordpress.com

Theory, beauty, prose

2007-11-26T18:08:00.000-08:00

Rem Koolhaas, an architect, published an essay called Junkspace a few years ago. Some of it is just stunningly beautiful prose. You don't expect this much prettiness and daring in theory these days.

Inspired again!

Junk-Space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet… Junkspace is what remains after modernization has run its course, or, more precisely, what coagulates while modernization is in progress, its fallout. Modernization had a rational program: to share the blessings of science, universally. Junkspace is its apotheosis, or meltdown...

Architecture disappeared in the twentieth century; we have been reading a footnote under a microscope hoping it would turn into a novel ...

The shiniest surfaces in the history of mankind reflect humanity at its most casual. The more we inhabit the palatial, the more we seem to dress down...

I will stop quoting there. A simple Google suffices to find more of this. It is great stuff. It is the most accurate depiction of the world we line in that I have yet found.

Language wars

2007-11-17T10:19:00.000-08:00

In the rest of Canada, people are not generally aware of the daily language wars going on in Quebec. I certainly wasn't before coming here. But now it is becoming very clear to me that language is front and centre of politics every day of every week.

For example, Saku Koivu -- Montreal Canadiens captain -- was taken to task for not speaking French after having lived here, what is it now, a decade? In a superbly gentlemanly gesture, Koivu apologized for his rusty French, then at the next Canadiens game, recorded an introduction to the team in French, and the entire stadium was on its feet, applauding.

Some stories don't have such happy endings. Many people get discouraged from learning French in Montreal. A lot of people aren't very patient with Anglos or other linguistic groups struggling to order a coffee or a sandwich. I am very, very glad that I had so much French practice in France before coming here. I have yet to experience the hostility that other folks have.

But language is maybe the distraction from the real issue. It is not that some Quebeckers want to protect the language per se. They want to protect Quebec identity along ethnic terms. For those Quebeckers, being fluent in French will never be enough.

It must be the right kind of French. It must be Quebecois French.

This, to me, is absolutely absurd. Why should my French-speaking Acadian classmate get attitude for speaking with a different accent? Even French people from France get the cold treatment sometimes!

And to think that the Quebecois are themselves from France! It is as if they are drawing a line somewhere that says, "immigrants arriving after this time are no longer Quebecois. They are something else."

How did the terms "Quebecois de souche" and "pure laine" ever become acceptable in everyday conversation? In multicultural Canada? Scary.

I must admit though to a certain excitment to find that language -- something I am deeply in love with -- is a big, big deal here, perhaps the biggest deal of all. It will offer me, I am sure, plenty of fuel for excitement and debate for a long time to come.

It also provides me with an enemy. The racist elements of the Parti-Quebecois can be combatted with a positive vision for Quebec (and indeed, Canada) where inclusivity is the answer. The way I see it, people should be encouraged to come here and learn French and play a full part in this society and economy. They should be rewarded for their efforts. You cannot force them to assimilate. Passing a blatantly racist code of conduct laws like Herouxville did, or seeking to deny immigrants the right to vote until their French reaches some as-yet undefined level of competency -- or even casually dropping slurs like "You Mexicans might not always show up on time but here in Quebec we do" as a cafe employee that I know had to endure -- that is going to drive OUT the immigrants. Is that what the Quebecois want? An ever-shrinking population of "pure laine" speaking "pure" Quebecois while most of the world ignores them?

I think not. Me, I want this to be a flourishing, thriving and happy place. And for that to happen, the Parti-Quebecois must lose. The racists must lose. The tolerant and inclusive must win.

I'm always up for a battle.

Coming into focus

2007-11-11T10:50:00.000-08:00

Maybe life is about slowly pulling things into focus, being able to see your surroundings and your own self more clearly. I feel often like I am in pursuit of the person I want to be. That person would understand these inexplicable rages that beset him from time to time, these feelings of doubt, self-loathing, and paranoia. Some of this week was lived that way. But a lot of it was not. I test out one hypothesis after another for why I am the way I am. Probably none of them explain anything completely.

But at the same time as we are trying to see things clearly, we are still asked to navigate about the world anyway. So we often do so blindly, hurting ourselves and others.

But we must DO things. Self-understanding cannot always precede action. We must act anyway.

I had some guests at my apartment yesterday. It was nice to see my neighbourhood and my home, assisted by the perception of others. It made me appreciative for what I have. My room-mates are generally such pleasant people. My kitchen is well-equipped and the balcony is a great place to relax. Verdun is calm and utterly unpretentious. Ebene the cat keeps me company and sometimes sleeps in the bed where once my girlfriend would have been. Not exactly a replacement, but it helps!

I made some food and we ate it, drank some wine, listened to music. These things are perhaps more important than anything. If we don't make the effort every day to make ourselves happy and to make others happy, everything else unravels.

This doesn't have a whole lot to do with writing, does it. But I am trying to get there.

I am now at the point in the semester where I can count off on one hand the assignments that remain. So things are coming into focus. I can make a plan for these next four weeks. How do I plan to balance school work, maybe some freelance work, my own writing, volunteering with Oxfam-Quebec, plus the very necessary act of socializing?

It is exactly that word "balance" I am after. When I achieve some sort of equilibrium, that is when I feel the best.

I can sit down at the page and pour out my rage, and that is the act of creation. But I need a balanced temperament to make sense of it all... to polish it afterwards.

I am realizing that I am a good year or more away from starting any large new writing project. Maybe that's what I'm getting at here. I just don't have the balanced temperament required for it right now. I am a man of extremes. I am wholly in love with Montreal, and totally at odds with my memories of Edmonton. I am trying to understanding why I am so consumed with hatred for things that happened in the past. I want to cleanse myself of that and free myself to fully appreciate the present. And I want to plan for the future.

I re-read most of Blind Spot yesterday, in preparation to be able to pitch it in New York. And I realized that this really is my "Edmonton" book. It is tough, angstful, and encompasses so much of what I wanted to say at that time.

That time is over. But the consequences are not. So for now, I will not attempt a "Montreal" book. I just can't do it. Nor do I even want to do it. For now, I've just got to soak it all up.

I've got to focus.

No mistaking a word addict

2007-10-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

It was an inspiring morning. I went down to the job centre and worked with a Quebecker counsellor on my French resume. My first draft was there on the table, waiting for his red pen. I was quite nervous. It is not easy figuring out how or why formal French is written the way it is. Even harder to appraise the skills of the person correcting you. I had tried this exercise the previous night with a non-professional. It was torturous. But with today's counsellor, it was enormously encouraging.

He wore a grey shirt and numerous silver chains on his arms. He had longish grey hair and the overall demeanour of an aging poet. I'd place him at 45 or so. He took great pleasure in finding the right word. He would find a particularly challenging expression in my original, say, "That's not quite right," lean back in his chair, clasp his hands behind his head, close his eyes, and ponder.

Then, having found a sentence that seemed appropriate, he would read it out. He would always check with me first, "Do you like that?"

Some of the sentences we agreed upon were better than the English originals. This was becoming fun. The counsellor smiled when the rights words came and I expressed my admiration. He seemed to be relishing the challenge.

He said jokingly, "Tu me fais travailler."

Now that the corrections have been made, the counsellor will personally type them into the original and give it back to me next week.

I am paying nothing for this service. Thanks Government of Quebec! And thank you, new-found word addict. When you see someone in love with their language, it is a pleasure.

How much is enough?

2007-10-10T13:56:00.000-07:00

I have posted a new story to my Storyshop blog. I was in class yesterday, looking at a picture by Jeff Wall called "The Destroyed Room." A story idea came into my head -- the whole story from beginning to end -- in about three minutes. That does not often happen. So yesterday I began the story and today I finished it.

As with all stories executed quickly, I cannot judge it yet. It is indeed short, which I am pleased about, because for the last year I have been exceeding 4,000 words every time I try to write a short story.

As with all writing, the question surfaces, "How much is enough?"

The main character, Mervin, is there enough of him?

Is there enough setting?

Character?

It could be argued that what I've offered is just the skeleton of a story. I dunno. Well, that's enough handwringing. My fictional impulse satiated for now, I must go back to other tasks.

Research

2007-10-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

I am immersed in one of the biggest research projects of my academic career. The most immediate end of all this work is a presentation for political communications class. However, I am hopeful that it might make a good article for the Edmonton Journal too.

The subject of my research is South Edmonton Common. I realize that I've wanted to do something about SEC for years now. The more I find out, the more incredible the story is to me. I really hope the Journal will take the story.

To be continued, I hope.

B minus

2007-10-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is the grade I received on my first written assignment at Concordia. Not an impressive grade, especially since grad students are supposed to maintain a B average to pass the program.

But at least there is room for improvement.

I must admit that I have picked up some bad habits during my six years in the working world, and these will have to be rectified. While working with the Opposition, the pace was generally fast, so I developed the habit of banging out press releases and the like as quickly as possible. Speed became my forte. "Wow Laurence, you banged this out in 9 minutes!" people would cheer.

To my detriment, I have applied this ethic ever since. It has almost never let me down. But I am realizing that I have become a very shallow writer in the process. And I have realized that this mindset is a terrible one to bring to the Ivory Tower of Academia. This mindset has brought me to a B minus today.

Another of my problems is one of motivation. I have become goal oriented instead of journey oriented. I have been rushing through my course work, trying to check off all the boxes, as it were, so that I can free up time for other things -- such as volunteer work, researching the job market, preparing another Edmonton Journal article, not to mention drinking free booze. I run the risk of doing too much and doing none of it very well.

In government -- which really was the coup de grace for my Edmonton career -- I learned another poisonous lesson: EFFORT DOES NOT PAY OFF. This was a very sad lesson to learn and I don't want to waste too many pixels bemoaning what a cynic this has made me. Suffice it to say, during my 16 months with the Alberta Government, I discovered -- to my dismay -- that any extra effort on my behalf would have absolutely no benefit, either for me directly, or for the organization as a whole. In fact, extra effort was punished because nobody liked to see an overly ambitious youngster on the make. It was the most demoralizing experience of my working life to date, and quite the reverse of what had heretofore been a very positive working life at the Opposition and the Alberta Teachers' Association.

Now I must deprogram myself. I am thankfully back in a world where, yes, effort does pay off. I know that if I try harder and channel my energies better, I can do better than B-.

I can and I will!

It is encouraging, at least, that when it comes to fiction, I have learned the reverse lessons to those I learned at work. That is, time, effort, deliberation, contemplation -- they really do pay off. Prose that is the result of long labour and reflection is better than prose which is executed hurriedly.

So to conclude this navel-gazing exercise, it's time for me to enjoy the journey of academia, the same way I enjoy the journey of telling a story. As I am often told by friends: it's time to relax. Be patient. Slow down.

NYC

2007-09-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

I have been accepted into a writing conference in New York City this December. It is called the Pitch and Shop conference. Over four days you do intensive work on how to market your manuscript to agents and editors. During that time, you also actually do real pitches to agents and editors. There is a chance, albeit a small one, that some conference participants will get signed to a publisher there and then.

I know, it sounds like a way to separate a fool and his money easily. But it is totally legit. I've discussed this with two Americans in my classes who both have experience in the American publishing industry. (One has been published herself.) They say go for it. So I'm going to pony up the cash and complete the numerous assignments they are going to send between now and December 13. I must admit, I am excited.

My current mindset is "go for broke." This is my dream. I will do anything and everything to make it happen. Within the bounds of ethics and reason.

About to write an essay

2007-09-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

I am currently doing something I haven't done since the spring of 2001. I am writing an essay. Over the next few weeks, I will have to write many essays. It's an odd feeling. I feel rather presumptuous doing this because regardless of how humble one might try to be, in writing an essay you're supposed to make some kind of argument, and to make an argument you're supposed to have reached some conclusion about the world. Not to mention the fact that in writing essays, one is expected to name drop... like plug in a quote from Susan Sontag or Roland Barthes, as if they were pals of yours and you overheard them say something at a cocktail party. It's like you're saying, "Hey, these super smart people agree with me, so I must be right!"

While I've quoted famous people before, I've tried to do so in a fumbling spirit of reverence. It is to say that Sontag, for example, has expressed the purpose of narrative so brilliantly that it is futile for me to put it in my own words, so I just quote her.

Clearly, essay writing must go beyond this. It's not enough just to quote people because they are so much brighter than you are. You actually are supposed to think of something worthwhile yourself. Oftentimes on a subject that you know almost nothing about.

Right now, I'm writing an essay about photography. I know almost nothing about photography. What a charade!

New project going out

2007-09-05T07:46:00.000-07:00

After a month's holiday, I am now in courses at Concordia and also back to the old Ministry of Misinformation shenanigans. I've started emailing out my new "Celebrity Encounters" project. I hope this 100-page work will make people chuckle.

I think I'll soon have new ways to share my writing thanks to courses at Concordia. Indeed, the very existence of this blog (and its brothers) is imperiled. And that is a good thing. I will be learning how to make a suitable platform for sharing my work. So by year's end, maybe I'll have a new address where I can centralize the writing blog, the M.o.M., the psychogeography and the stories. That is, if I'm not too much of a luddite!

New Story: "The Day Trader"

2007-08-01T09:05:00.001-07:00

I've posted a new story called "The Day Trader" to my Storyshop blog. Long ago, I had a brief summer job selling knives like Ron in this story. Most of the rest, however, is made up.

Susan Sontag on writing

2007-07-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

The second and last of my articles about the Reality Rally came out today in the Edmonton Journal. Given my departure from Edmonton for holidays in under a week, this is a good time for a breather from writing.

Susan Sontag, feminist and literary theorist, died recently, and among the online tributes to her, I found one of her own essays about literature and the act of writing. It is one of the most inspiring pieces I've ever read.

Literature, I would argue, is knowledge - albeit, even at its greatest, imperfect knowledge. Like all knowledge. Serious fiction writers think about moral problems practically.
Susan Sontag. At the Same Time, 2007.

Sontag goes on to argue that in the novel, the author makes moral choices in what she chooses to tell us and not to tell us. The act of addition and omission are by necessity, moral. By including something, the author is saying "This is important." By leaving something out, she is saying, "This is not important." In a broader sense, this is what the author is saying about life.

This is important. This is not important.

Homelessness in Edmonton is important. Paris Hilton's purchase of a new dog is not important. The media makes moral choices all the time.

Back to Sontag:

There is an old riff I've always imagined to have been invented by some graduate student of philosophy (as I was once myself), late one night, who had been struggling through Kant's abstruse account in his Critique of Pure Reason of the barely comprehensible categories of time and space, and decided that all of this could be put much more simply.

It goes as follows:

"Time exists in order that everything doesn't happen all at once ... and space exists so that it doesn't all happen to you."

By this standard, the novel is an ideal vehicle both of space and of time. The novel shows us time: that is, everything doesn't happen at once. (It is a sequence, it is a line.) It shows us space: that is, what happens doesn't happen to one person only.
In other words, a novel is the creation not simply of a voice but of a world. It mimics the essential structures by which we experience ourselves as living in time, and inhabiting a world, and attempting to make sense of our experience. But it does what lives (the lives that are lived) cannot offer, except after they are over. It confers - and withdraws - meaning or sense upon a life.

I love this idea of the novel conveying meaning on life. When I think of having been most in need of guidance -- and at my most lonely -- it is always in the novel that I have found my solace. Great writers take you by the shoulder and say, "Go here. Pay attention to this. In life, this is what is important."

Thanks in part to Sontag's essay, which I've re-read several times since its release, and thanks to guidance from other writers, I've come to feel increasingly self-assured about writing as a useful occupation. This helps, especially in moments of doubt -- when you consider, for example, the immmediate and practical necessity of solving problems such as climate change. With such dire dangers, one is tempted to abandon "soft" pastimes such as sitting at a desk writing all day. But abandoning this task would be wrong. Indeed, it could be argued that people have a need of novels now, more than ever... to help guide us all through the complex moral choices of life.

Morever, in practical terms, Sontag has steeled my belief that it can almost be scientfically proven why some writing fails. Let me argue that in the positive. When you read a good writer, you can be sure that he or she could defend almost any sentence -- down to the last word -- that she wrote. Things were told a certain way out of necessity. The story "needed" this description of a valley. The story needed character x to speak in this particular way. The writer very consciously made these choices, which were moral choices about what is important and what is not important.

In the book, Wonderboys, later made into a film, the young writer castigates the old one -- whose life's opus has mushroomed into a 2,000 page monster, "It's as if you didn't make any choices."

And this is where all bad writing falls down. It's not so much a matter of making mistakes. It's a matter of not consciously making decisions. And not making decisions is like sleepwalking into environmental collapse or nuclear argmageddon or an illegal war (albeit on a much less serious scale).

Sontag's essay concludes with some words about the particular task for writers living now, in 2007.

The lesson of the hegemony of the mass media - television, MTV, the internet - is that there is only one culture, that what lies beyond borders everywhere is - or one day will be - just more of the same, with everyone on the planet feeding at the same trough of standardized entertainments and fantasies of eros and violence manufactured in the United States, Japan, wherever; with everyone enlightened by the same open-ended flow of bits of unfiltered (if, in fact, often censored) information and opinion.

That some pleasure, and some enlightenment, may be derived from these media is not to be denied. But I would argue that the mindset they foster and the appetites they feed are entirely inimical to the writing (production) and reading (consumption) of serious literature...

It is the novelist's job to keep in mind the spurious cultural geography that is being installed at the beginning of the 21st century.

On the one hand, we have, through translation and through recycling in the media, the possibility of a greater and greater diffusion of our work. On the other hand, the ideology behind these unprecedented opportunities for diffusion, for translation - the ideology now dominant in what passes for culture in modern societies - is designed to render obsolete the novelist's prophetic and critical, even subversive, task, and that is to deepen and sometimes, as needed, to oppose the common understandings of our fate.

Long live the novelist's task.

Two articles today

2007-07-27T09:16:00.001-07:00

It is pure coincidence that I have two articles that both came out today. One is for the Edmonton Journal and is about the Reality Rally, a giant picnic happening this Sunday in Rundle Park for users of Facebook. The other is for Inside AADAC, and covers an addictions recovery program for youth in the mountains. This is where I spent some of last week. As a reporter, not a client!

Journalistic writing of this kind is still rather new for me. I did a little bit for the ATA News a couple of years ago, but it's really only in the last 6 months or so that I have had real practice. I am still learning.

Writing in different mediums requires different skills. This might sound obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me back when I was a whipper-snapper of only 25! I remember when I was hired with the Official Opposition, I tried my hand at writing a press release, thinking, "I'm a good writer. How hard can this be?"

Boy, was it ever humbling going from receiving good marks on essays in university to being told that my press releases were unusable. I had to adjust to a whole different set of requirements. In time, I really came to enjoy press releases. I particularly loved taking a complicated issue like electricity deregulation, putting it in layman's terms, then making an anti-government argument out of it.

Freelance journalism has proven to require a different set of skills. In these stories, none of the information is provided to me in advance. I have the pleasure of going out and finding it myself. Taking the photos, doing the interviews, looking up stuff online. (The Internet has sure made research a lot easier, begad!)

Whenever the research process ends, and I'm about to start writing, I feel a bit panicky. Every time. Because at this point, the article is a mess. Well, the article doesn't exist. What does exist is a disorderly array of scribbled notes, a dictaphone recording, and whatever else I used.

Then... something happens. Writing happens. Several hours later, I print out the draft article and I think... Maybe I have something here. The process appears to me a little miraculous.

The most instructive process for me was writing the article about psychogeography. When I sent my first draft to the Journal, the editor thought it needed a lot of work. I was initially a bit crestfallen. But she had carefully provided all the directions I needed. I went out, got an interview, included more contextual information, and by the time it was done, the revised article was much better.

It is a joy and delight this process. I think if I didn't feel the panic and the expectation, I wouldn't enjoy it nearly so much.

Finished!

2007-07-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finished my new project. It is called “My Encounters With Famous Celebrities: A Semi-Autobiographical Tale of Life with the Jet-Set, From Angelina Jolie to Zinedine Zidane, Plus Bonus Celebrity.”

This project follows the exploits of my alter ego, Laurence, who is the spoilt and dim-witted child of an investment banker, and who bumps into celebrities almost everywhere he goes.

During his exploits, Laurence is helped by none other than Jude Law in losing his virginity, plays a game of Jenga with Nelly Furtado, gets photographed with a black swan by Peter O’Toole, is inspired by the no-nonsense attitude of Conrad Black to break up with his girlfriend.

This is also a tale of redemption, because as the plot hurtles towards its climax, Laurence learns the amazing truth about his past. This truth ultimately saves him from self-destruction. He ends the book as a truly moral person. He even starts a charity for children suffering from juvenile arthritis.

Hostage taking, drugs, orgies, a killer whale – My Encounters With Famous Celebrities has it all.

I am going to leave this book well alone now for over a month and see what the hell I’ve done once September rolls around.

***

To celebrate finishing my project, I relaxed in front of the TV, something I treat myself to for about 45 minutes every six months or so. The reason I don’t do this more often readily became apparent again yesterday. There I am, enjoying the Sopranos, then suddenly there is a break in the proceedings to allow advertisers to come on and mock me and insult me without even apologizing afterwards. This, friends, I will not take. Within seconds, I am reduced to a state of spitting rage, and I am shouting at the TV and wanting to kick my foot through its glass screen. Why is it that television advertising must depict almost all men as STUPID, INCOMPETENT, FAT, LAZY, BEER-DRINKING, OVERSEXED, DOLTS – SUBSERVIENT OF COURSE TO THEIR VASTLY SUPERIOR FEMALE BETTERS????

I really can’t figure out why we tolerate this. I mean, there you are, sitting in your home, and it’s like people are breaking in and raping your sense of self. It’s intolerable.

Of course, women have plenty to get enraged about themselves, with TV exposing their brethren as self-hating, anorexic, gyrating, shoe-grasping, materialistic, weight-obsessed, shallow bitches.

So where’s the backlash? This is monstrous. I don’t understand how people can watch TV anymore. It makes no sense. It’s an absolute affront to human decency. Some of the programming – i.e. the Sopranos – is great, but the vast amount of airtime is like voluntarily submitting to psychological abuse.

With a cultural influence of this power, is it any wonder that large numbers of people shuffle through their lives like neutered cats, looking only for the solace of comfortable furniture and the next feed?

Dispatch from Harry Potter Land

2007-07-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

Quite perplexed to have walked into an alternate reality this morning. Over the weekend, I was in a world where people partake of diverse pastimes, such as soccer, walking, meeting for drinks, reading, and going to movies. Here at work, it seems I have entered Harry Potter Land. Every female over 40 has spent the last 48 hours attempting to race to the end of the latest voluminous tome in this epic series, and I’m hearing stories about Dumbledore and muggles and a whole host of other people who are utterly unfamiliar to me.

In less disconcerting news, after last post’s rant about the hopelessness of publishing… I submitted to a publisher. I took the first chapter of my latest project and sent it to McSweeney’s. Here is one of the very few literary markets who make submitting a joy and delight. Their submission guidelines are amusing, while at the same time, telling you exactly what and what not to do.

For example:
IF YOU ARE MAILING FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY. You might want to submit via email. This is up to you, but the postage on the return envelope can present problems. Some people, especially Canadians, have sent us some sort of international postage coupons. Our track record regarding Canadians is beyond reproach, but we do not like these coupons and do not know what to do with them. Please make things easy for us.

After sending to McSweeney’s, I got rip-roaring drunk at my girlfriend’s house party. Then I spent most of Saturday in recovery. By the time Sunday came around, I was ready to finally get to work on the penultimate chapter of the new project. Today I hope to finish the very last chapter and wrap up the entirety of this exceedingly silly series.

Occasionally, in a sombre mood, I look at a chapter and I think, “Oh no, what have I wasted the last month doing?” Then I tell myself to shut up, turn off the critical faculties, and just keep roaring ahead, because the critical faculty often impedes the creative faculty, and I will need both to thrive in order to make this project work.

Out into the void they go!

2007-07-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

I am currently enthused about writing. So I consider this update an aside. Generally, progress with the new project is good, and I am more encouraged than usual with what I'm reading from Canadian authors. I recently finished Wayne Tefs' 4 x4 and am currently reading Todd Babiak's Choke Hold and really enjoying it.

However. I came across this today in Quill and Quire:

David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, who has had difficulty finding a publisher for a novel he has written, wondered what kind of reception Austen’s novels might get from publishers these days… Lassman did a cheeky experiment – submitting chapters of some of Austen’s novels with minor changes to names and places to disguise them.

Lassman expected his plagiarism would be quickly spotted, but was amazed and dismayed when only one of the 18 U.K. publishers he sent submissions to called him on it. The rest, he says, merely sent “polite but firm ‘no-thank-yous.’”

Lassman began his experiment with Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, but when those novels were not identified, he sent the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice. And he did not change the opening line, one of the most famous in world literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Still the deception was not spotted and the rejection letters thudded on to Mr Lassman’s doormat, most notably one from Penguin. Its letter read: “Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book First Impressions. It seems like a really original and interesting read.”

Quillblog finds Penguin’s defence interesting. How would anyone know if it even “seemed” original and interesting, if no one read it? It also sadly makes you wonder how many masterpieces might languish in a slush pile and be returned without anyone so much as looking at them.

I think that speak volumes about the world of publishing today.

The following sums up my own thoughts about sending out fiction to publishers:

1. Send out your work with no hope in your heart. There is about as much chance as getting published as winning the lotto 649 $50 million jackpot. In fact, before sending anything, it's good to say something depressing like "Well, that's $20 worth of postage that would've been better spent on beer!"

2. If it is a literary magazine, there will be no rejection letter. You will, however, get renewal notices for your subscription to that magazine, which is nice, because it's a sign that the magazine did at least consider your subscription application and money very seriously, if not the story itself.

3. Almost all publishers will be as discouraging as possible in explaining their submission guidelines. There will be draconian rules imposed. One rule I really like is the prohibition of submitting the same manuscript to several publishers at the same time. This is like saying to an unemployed person that they may not pursue more than one job at a time. What really grates on the nerves here is the thought that the publisher you are submitting to is almost definitely going to say no, but take anywhere from one week to one year to do so. So effectively, it could take three years to collect about half a dozen rejections.

4. You will never find out what happened to your manuscript. In essence, once it leaves your hands at the post office, it has disappeared. It has entered a great mystery world called Publishingland, the existence of which has been verified to me, but of which I have, alas, no first-hand reports.

5. The line that publishers receive more great manuscripts than they can possibly publish seems increasingly dubious to me. If there were thousands of great manuscripts, there would be thousands of great published novels. Which there are not!

In short, I can think of no other industry which is so actively hostile to newcomers. You know those signs around Edmonton that recruit tradesmen, saying "WE WANT YOU!" The publishing industry equivalent would be, "HEY YOU, WITH YOUR DREAMS! FUCK OFF!!!"

The fiction industry is also unique in that there are no gradations on the road to success. What I mean to say is, success for a writer is very black and white. You either publish a book, or you don't. There is no inbetween. This is quite unlike, say, music, where you play a free gig at a small venue, then a bigger venue, then you play warm up for a bigger band, then become headliner, and so on and so on.

Also, you will notice that people treat writing very differently than they do music or gallery art. Even if you are just a small local musician, all your friends and family will show up to your gigs and even pay for the privilege. However, as a writer, even if you actually get something published, approximately two people will pay for that publication in order to read what you wrote. And one of them will be your father!

In short, when it comes to publishing, you've either published a book and become a somebody, or, alternatively, you are like me. A nobody.

Did I mention that I love this and can't think of anything else I would rather do? And they wonder why so many writers are insane!!!

I've got a 12 inch squawk omelet

2007-07-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

Somebody called Alisa Hain just wrote to my email account informing me of this news. She made me very jealous. A 12 inch squawk omelet? At current, I don't even have eggs, let alone an omelet.

I think somebody has done this before: take all the garbled spam emails and turn them into poems. It would be hard to conjure up such amazing imagery even if you tried.

Angst, self-loathing

2007-07-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

When at 17, I discovered Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and read of Raskolnikov hatching his murderous plans in a state of seemingly constant delerium and feverishness, it was as if I'd fallen into a dream. It was horrible yet addictive. I sought out more of the same, and for over a decade, satisfied this need for tales of angst and self-loathing with more Dostoyevsky, then newer writers, such as Coetzee (Youth, especially), Bellow (Seize the Day) and Houllebecq (anything).

Bouts of angst and self-loathing used to afflict me quite often. They seem to have subsided with time. Turning 30 seemed a major milestone in this regard. I have never hated myself quite as much post 30 as I did beforehand.

And yet sometimes those old feelings return. I now wonder if they are inseperable from my own identity, and indeed, vital to my sense of being a writer. Graham Greene said that every writer needs a "splinter of ice" inside of him -- a part of him that can stay detached from whatever is going on in his life or in the world and say, "Well, this would at least make a good story."

That is often how I feel. As I get older, I feel I've got more to lose in this world -- simply because with time, I've accumulated more experience, more friends, closer connections to my family -- there is simply more that I love that I would hate to lose. And yet, at my very lowest, I think, even if I lose things, "Well, the desire to write -- no one can take that from me!"

The other merit -- if you can call it that -- of angst and self-loathing, is that it separates you from the world you are in. At least, it does in my case. And feeling separate from the world is what helps in observing it and writing about it.

However, turning this very same angst and self-loathing into the subject for the work itself doesn't work that well for me. I've spent years trying to plumb the depths of a given character -- who is a poorly concealed version of myself -- only to produce hundreds of pages of tiresome dreck. The main character spends a lot of time wanting to kill himself or others, or brooding over past pain. At the end, you feel like you've been to the dentist for several hours, but that he didn't even remove your rotten tooth.

I must never lose sight of the need to entertain people in whatever work is produced.

The Last King of Scotland

2007-07-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

I watched Forest Whitaker take on the role of Uganda’s Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland last night. I was apprehensive. Some recent films about Africa, while impressive in some respects, ultimately stuck me as too heavy-handed and too eager to prey on “white guilt.” I’m thinking here of The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamond. At the outset, The Last King of Scotland looked like it might go down the very same road. Take a naïve but handsome young Scottish doctor, send him to Africa looking to do good but also have an adventure, throw in a few epiphanies, and – ta-da! Westerners get to learn that we are just as culpable in Africa’s problems as Africans themselves. Now proceed to next moral lesson!

But from the second Forest Whitaker takes the screen, the movie becomes something far more interesting than that. It becomes a brilliant character study, and almost never dull or sermonizing. You are never sure what Idi Amin (Whitaker) is going to do next, and this drives a lot of the tension… even though at the same time, you feel that you are getting to know the man himself, even if just a little.

As the film gets into the last act, it also becomes something else… An unapologetic, straight-out thriller. It is very tense indeed watching to see if our Scottish “hero” – Dr. Carrigan – is going to escape Idi Amin or not. There is not an inch of fat in the last half hour or so.

The one significant problem I had was that Dr. Carrigan was not entirely believable all of the time – which is surprising, because it is this fictional westerner who is acting as a stand-in for viewers themselves. Carrigan comes across as a pretty boy and a womanizer, but does not come across as tough enough to do some of the things he does. For example, the scene in which he grabs Amin’s gun in order to shoot to death a suffering ox – it didn’t work for me. Also, I didn’t believe that someone so slender and effete would ever get up the nerve to go to bed with Idi Amin’s wife. The kind of westerner who would do such things would be someone thinking he might be tougher and/or smarter than the tough guy leader himself. And this Dr. Carrigan was not that kind of guy.

The rest of the ensemble cast was very good, including X-Files’ Gillian Anderson in a small part. The DVD extras were also good, including historical footage of Amin that shows just what a good job Forest Whitaker did.

Half way

2007-07-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

There comes a point in every project where the initial excitement and euphoria wears off and a few significant questions arise, such as “Does this really make sense?” “Does the plot have any design flaws?” “Have I gone off the rails at any point?”

This weekend was when I reached that moment with the new project. I read chapters six and seven to my girlfriend. Six went down well. Seven did not. I thought to myself, well, seven is a little more dry and political in its humour… She’ll probably like chapter eight better. But then I read chapter eight to myself privately and I thought… uh oh. Maybe I’m trying too hard to make people laugh now. It simply didn’t seem that funny.

So early this morning I read chapter one and eight back to back, just to see if the spirit with which I started this project remains alive and to check that I’ve stayed consistent in voice. And I think I have. I think chapter seven might be the only digression. I’ll have to go back and check later when the entire draft is out.

It is not really possible to be objective about your own work, but I do find that any sort of detached appraisal isn’t possible until at least a month after a piece has been written. Six months is ideal. So I have to remember that currently, I’m still very much in the creation phase, not the revision or evaluation phase. It’s time now to get back in the saddle and ride on, without spending too much time looking at the scenery. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.

A great week

2007-07-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

This has been a great week for writing. I've got to remember weeks like these because even though I write a lot, I don't always have times when I'm enjoying it quite so much.

I think the decision to embark on a project involving humour and satire was a good one. I've written stuff like this before, like the Ministry of Misinformation, but I've never extended it to a longer piece. This piece is the kind of thing that still has me so excited, I just can't wait until I can share it with everyone. It's probably silly even writing about it given my reluctance to share details, but whatever. Part of this blog was intended to explore how I feel when I write -- not necessarily always discuss the content. And I feel pretty good right now.

In this new work, Conrad Black appears charging along an airport corridor in chapter three. A fried fritter becomes the subject of considerable excitement during a visit to the devastated city of New Orleans in chapter seven. A manic-depressive uncle gives his shoes to a famous actor in chapter four. And let's not even talk about the strange rash right now!

The final pieces appeared to fall into place for the work's finale as I was walking to work. The ideas fell into line in my head and I think the plot all makes sense. Now all I need is another three weeks like this one, and I'll be there.

You never know what to expect

2007-07-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

Five down and ten to go in my series of stories around a theme. Suddenly the stories are developing an over-arching narrative, leading into the unexpected territories of psychological derangement and family scandal. I didn't expect this. But I never know what to expect when it comes to writing. All art seems to involve this kind of alchemy -- be it photography, film-making, painting... whatever. It's why I wish I could do this full time.

The unpredictibility of writing seems to make it the opposite of what you're expected to do in other professions. In business or government, success is largely contingent on setting a goal and meeting it. If the destination, once you reach it, is too distant from the destination predicted, it's a failure. Whereas in writing, even if you end up somewhere entirely unexpected, the project might still be a huge success.

Strategy of silliness

2007-06-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

For my new writing project, which is a series of stories around a theme, I’ve followed a strategy that is new to me. It seems a bit random, but the results are interesting. It seems like the kind of exercise you’d be given in a writing class. Perhaps such an exercise already exists.

I start with a narrator, who is always the same, and must always act consistently. Add another character, then add some random object or thing. Then you figure out how to integrate both the narrator and the second character into a story about that object or thing.

Currently, I’m trying to figure out a story to connect my narrator to the character of a newspaper tycoon and a carton of cigarettes. It seems each time I’ve tried this exercise, I get to the point where I want to give up. I think to myself, I’ll just pick an object that’s easier, more relevant. But then I think, no! Make it work. That’s your duty. Even if it’s a self-imposed one.

New project

2007-06-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I started a new writing project that had me so excited that last night I was awake in bed for quite a while thinking of it before finally succumbing to sleep. This project, which is fairly modest in length, could best be described as stupid, goofy and strange. I read some to my girlfriend. She laughed a lot.

I never feel more alive than when I've got ideas in my head.

La Haine

2007-06-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

I rented the 1995 French film, La Haine, yesterday. It will be impossible to get it out of my head. It’s in the tradition of Menace 2 Society and Boyz ‘n the Hood, but is arguably superior to any film of the genre. Set in a banlieue (which in this case means ghetto) 25 kms outside of Paris, it follows Vincent, Said and Hubert through 24 hours of their lives. During a riot, a police officer loses his gun, and we find out fairly quickly that it’s the hot-headed Vincent who found it. It’s a simple set-up, but effective. From there in, you just know that something terrible is probably going to happen.

The Criterion DVD release of La Haine includes an introduction by the actress Jodie Foster, who championed the film to American distributors. There is also a long documentary about the making of La Haine, which in many respects, is critical to the overall experience of watching it.

La Haine was based on the reality of life in the banlieues – poor neighbourhoods on the periphery of practically every town in France. The riot in La Haine is modeled directly after an actual riot that occurred in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, provoked by a police officer shooting dead a Zairean youth in custody.

It’s often said that before La Haine, few French people knew what was going on among the immigrant communities who’d entered the country in large number since the 1960’s. La Haine was prescient, which is sad, because it should’ve been a wake-up call. Instead, France sleepwalked right into its current crisis, where riots have become frequent.

I have visited the Paris banlieues of Nanterre and Saint Denis, and much like this film, both experiences are ones I’ll never forget. In both cases, I was accompanied by Algerians who had become friends of mine through a factory I was temporarily employed at in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. In both cases, this escort felt pretty crucial. As a touristy-type stranger to these places, I don’t know how I would have fared solo.

My visits were brief and I witnessed nothing terrible. It was simply the feeling that was unforgettable. Especially in Saint Denis, I found almost everyone on the street looking at me with hostility… and yes, even apparent hatred.

Even a smaller town like Dijon (250,000 approx) has its banlieues. I was taking a bus through that neighbourhood once and a few youth got on, went to the back, and shouted repeatedly at everybody “Fuck you.” Nobody dared do anything about it and the youth stayed on the bus until their stop.

I was travelling through the Dijon banlieues a year later with a French girl I was seeing, Sophie, who was white. She accidentally reversed her car into a light post. We stopped and got out of the car to survey the damage. I could immediately sense her fear. She hoped to high heaven that the car would still work. She said, “If we get stuck in this neighbourhood, we might not make it out.”

But we did make it out.

For the making of La Haine, the actors (who share the same names as their actual on-film characters) Vincent, Said, and Hubert, moved into the banlieue of Chanteloup for two months prior to starting the film. This was not only “research.” It was a practical necessity for winning the trust and protection of the banlieue authorities, which in this case, included the council as well as the local gangsters and enforcers.

Early in their stay, local residents were throwing stones at their window at midnight, asking, “Who are you? The military? The police?” But slowly, the actors integrated themselves into the community, sharing the daily lives of the types of people that they would be depicting on screen. They never pretended to be anything they weren’t. They made it clear that this was a short-term stay and that it was exclusively for the benefit of the movie. The residents respected that. Many ended up as the biggest champions of the film upon its eventual release.

This kind of filmmaking fascinates me. Much like the book Nickel and Dimed (June 12 post), it shows a genuine commitment to trying to understand the lives of others. And based on the reaction, it seems to have succeeded. This gives me a huge amount of hope. I’ve always had a problem with the “splintering” of literature: this idea that you can only write realistically from your own community, be it white middle class, homosexual, immigrant… whatever. I reject the notion that it’s presumptuous for a writer to portray the every day reality of someone utterly different from himself. Not only do I think this kind of borrowed experience is possible, I think it’s crucial. It’s what writing is all about. It’s imagination.

I'm sorry

2007-06-18T11:57:00.001-07:00

I was pleased overall with how my article turned out this weekend. But I'm feeling increasingly guilty about having bad-mouthed a book by Margaret Laurence. Who am I to do that? I do think I should have emphasized that it was Stone Angel - the CD, and not necessarily Stone Angel - the book, that I found "sleep-inducing."

But this isn't Margaret Laurence's fault. At least, I don't think it is.

Anyway, I'm sorry. Sorry to any Margaret Laurence fan out there who would object to such a casual dismissal of their hero.

What really made the guilt settle in was the discovery that the Stone Angel is one of my girlfriend's favourite books.

I really don't ever want to get put on the record again as having said something negative about any piece of writing. Not for me, the life of a critic.

Publication of road trip article

2007-06-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

I believe my article about my cross-Canada road trip will appear in tomorrow's Edmonton Journal.

Meanwhile, I continue, for the most part, to not write. Except for in blogs.

Contrary to the spirit of this blog's title, I like to NOT write. Sometimes. I think it's so important to charge up the batteries again after several years of labour on a given project. Also, by not writing, I free up more time for reading.

I am almost finished the first installment of His Dark Materials. I love the breathless energy of this epic fantasy. I also greatly admire the author's decision to never talk down to his audience -- young adults. He uses words like "intercision." I just had to look that one up.

Nickel and Dimed

2007-06-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

While I was in Montreal, I borrowed a book from my friends: Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich. In this extended piece of investigative reporting, the author temporarily abandons her usual home and profession to see what life is like for America's working poor. From waitressing to maid service to Wal-Mart clerk, we soon discover that life is pretty grim. What is depressing is how reluctant wage slaves are to changing anything about their situations. They accept their lot, even in one particular case, carrying on with working a physical job despite enormous pain.

Ehrenreich's writing is powerful, precise and very honest. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's exactly the kind of non-fiction I would like to write. I think the first person experiential writing assignment offers so many opportunities, not only for enlightening readers, but also enlightening oneself.

It's so true that the best way to understand another person's experience is to try walking in their shoes for a while.

A very short story

2007-05-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following very short story. It is so silly and slight that I didn't really think it merited a place on my story blog. It's more of an exercise in style than anything else.

Falling Trousers

It was many decades ago that people wore their trousers at their waists. Incredible to think of it now, but underwear was a private matter back then. Nobody but you or your sexual partner could see your black lace panties or your navy blue boxers. No one was afforded so much as even a glimpse!

In the 1990’s, this prudish state of affairs changed, and changed quickly. Trousers fell to the level of the hip, thus affording a view of the upper buttocks and – yes! – even the silky undergarments. It is quite a chuckle to read the cries of outrage and horror this change provoked at the time. Hip-huggers, as they were called, seemed to herald the end morality altogether.

One correspondent in 1999 wrote to her local newspaper, the Periwinkle Times, this angry missive:

Our town needs a ban on the “hip huggers.” It’s a free world, ladies, so if you choose to wear an inch-wide thong that is one pulled thread away from unravelling completely, then that’s your business. But it is NOT my business, so I shouldn’t have to see it. Have some modesty, please!
Juliette Stedelbauer

Now, of course, we revel in our freedom to wear our trousers at our ankles. Undergarments have rightly assumed their place as the most important article of clothing of all, and even grannies like to show off their frilly finest. To be sure, having to shuffle around all day isn’t easy. Indeed, it’s still quite a spectacle watching a young hipster fall flat on his face. But fashion sometimes asks for sacrifices of dignity, does it not?

Percolating

2007-05-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

I did not write a word during the weekend. I have several projects on the horizon -- some nearer, some further away. For now, they are percolating. Some of them had better percolate pretty quickly, because one project in particular is a paying freelance gig, and if I don't figure out an angle, I'll lose it.

There were three interruptions of my ability to focus on writing. First and foremost was the sheer delight of a May long weekend, with weather far better than had been forecast. It seemed silly to spend time indoors when I could be outdoors, playing soccer or taking a stroll with my girlfriend. Also, there were the ongoing temptations of my new camera, to which I seem to have developed an addiction. I got a real guilty thrill from walking up Whyte Avenue and furtively firing off shots at random passersby. I'm not sure what the rules are around this. To my mind, this process is simply a more direct version of what I do for writing, anyway. Stealing images and impressions of real people then turning them into fiction. Maybe it's a little more threatening when you actually use a camera for this purpose. My girlfriend's little sister called what I was doing "creepy."

The final interruption of my concentration was a major Life Decision that must be made. Oh boy. Career and education at stake here. I have until June 4 to make a decision. More percolating in progress!

Encouraging

2007-05-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Rejections are the norm and so it seems best to develop a proper coping mechanism for them. To not do so is like moving to Vancouver in November and not having an umbrella. So I have hereby resolved that within a month of any given rejection, I will send out another story or longer manuscript to another publisher, and that I will ensure that at all times, a piece of work is out there – somewhere, anywhere! – offering to me at least a glimmer of hope.

Yesterday I sent a story to the Danforth Review. Their submission process is wonderful. Simple, encouraging, and welcoming.

This weekend, my article about the EcoHouse garden was published in the Edmonton Journal. I think it looked very nice indeed. I would like to sell the Journal on another idea – this time some travel writing of sorts. It would also give me a chance to try out some photography.

Meanwhile, my reading habits have taken a significant leap into usually unexplored fields. I’ve finished The Wars, by Timothy Findley. The battle scenes are wonderful – simply superb writing. The rest I found a bit lacklustre. But overall, a good book, and deservedly a war classic. Now I’m embarking on the first volume in Phillip Pullman’s series, His Dark Materials, which is called The Golden Compass. I’ve been introduced to Lyra and her daemon, and Lord Asriel, and a mysterious child-kidnapping conspiracy, and the possibility of a new world lingering in the northern Polar region. This seems like the kind of story you can really sink your teeth into and stay satisfied for weeks to come.

I’m preparing to hopefully one day embark on my own longer young-adult fantasy novel. But I don’t expect to start for another year or so. I’m looking at Japanese anime to help inspire me. Saw Princess Mononoke the other day. This is from the same director that created Spirited Away. I think Spirited Away was better. The imagery in that film appears to have stuck with me. Something akin to it has shown up in “The Kid Who Had It All.” Princess Mononoke is also impressive visually, sometimes exceptionally so, but overall, the plot is a bit laborious. I disliked the way in which major characters have to stop and explain what they’re doing all the time.

Saw a Swedish film last week, Show me Love, originally entitled Fucking Amal. It is great. Great. Delicate, subtle, honest, and one-hundred percent believable. It is a lot like the Danish dogma films.

I really do not know why Canada does not make films as good as these. Or if such films do exist, why they are not promoted well enough for me to be at least aware of their existence.

Yesterday, I saw last year’s Canadian hit, Bon Cop, Bad Cop and it was disappointing. In some parts, even embarrassingly bad. It wanted to be a comedy. I didn’t laugh once. The Alberta-made classic, FUBAR, could teach those people a few things about how to laugh. Isn’t it interesting how FUBAR did not receive a solitary nickel from any arts council in the nation but went on to become a cult classic?

Now that’s an inspiration!

A Week of Writing

2007-05-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

I've just had the pleasure of spending a considerable part of the past week writing. And not the kind of writing I do at work, no!

I have worked on an article for the Edmonton Journal about all the exciting goings on at the University of Alberta's EcoHouse. That should be published later this month.

Also, I've finished my story, "The Kid Who Had it All." You'll find it at the Storyshop link from this blog. The story is fairly long, but it was a lot of fun to write. I tried it out on my girlfriend last night, reading it aloud. It received a good reception.

Free Paris Hilton

2007-05-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

Paris Hilton has started an online petition in which thousands of her fans will ask the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, "to commute her 45-day sentence for driving while disqualified," -- a punishment Paris calls "cruel and unwarranted." Paris tells her fans to "please help and sihn [sic] it [the petition] i LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!"

Why should you go to all this effort on behalf of a multi-millionaire heiress?

Because, as it is argued in a letter to Arnold, "she [Paris] provides hope for young people all over the US and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives."

Good thing Paris provides hope, beauty and excitement, because -- as evidenced in her petition above -- she certainly doesn't offer much help with the basics of spelling, the use of punctuation marks, or the correct differentiation of upper and lower case letters.

Meanwhile, do not feel too bad for Paris, because she will at least be able to cash in on her recent misfortunes, thanks to an upcoming cover shoot for Harper's Magazine, in which she will be "wearing a zebra-print prison outfit while running away from models dressed as policemen."

[All quotes taken from The Guardian.]

You can see why some people with fragile psyches might be driven to madness and despair by a world such as this. I don't want to repeat what most people know already: that Paris Hilton is a nauseating spectacle and a role model only to millions of self-loathing little girls. I am trying to grasp how on earth a sane and rational human being sucessfully balances a) the need to know what's going on in the world with b) the imperative to refrain from self-righteous murderous rage.

I am sure that a good number of the rich and powerful throughout history have always conducted themselves as shameless rogues and have gotten away with it. What is different these days is that so much of this behaviour occurs under the full glare of the media spotlight. And moreover, many of these celebrities actually want the full flare of the media spotlight shining on their nefarious activities. Fame at any cost, even dignity, that's their motto!

In any event, I fear that there is little that can be done to change this sorry state of affairs.

I find writing so liberating. It is, for me, one of the few forms of moral empowerment I feel on a regular basis. Creating a world, creating moral conflicts in that world, and resolving them -- for better or for worse.

Free Paris Hilton? I don't think I'll be signing that petition. But writing? Yes. That is what frees me from Paris Hilton.

The Kid Who Had it All

2007-05-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I started writing a story called "The Kid Who Had it All." I got the idea while I was reading the Guardian Review. There was a long article about Alan Fournier, who wrote Le Grande Meaulnes. That book is about a child's extraordinary adventure in an imaginary world. It made me think about writing something in the same vein.

Ideas sometimes take a while to percolate. By yesterday, this particular idea had been percolating long enough that some of it was ready to be poured out. I've now got the structure of the plot worked out. I've got the two main characters established. One of my major remaining tasks is figuring out exactly the nature of this imaginary world that my protagonist enters.

As I was tapping away the first 1,000 words or so, I noticed that I had my computer screen settings such that the words appeared about three times bigger than they would usually. I was about to alter this, then I decided not to. It seemed to make sense to keep the font really big, given that this story is looking very much like a children's story.

The appearence of words on a page is increasingly important to me. When I look back at my fiction efforts of, say, six years ago, even without reading the prose, I can tell that the overall content is inferior to what I might write today because it simply doesn't look as good on the page. You can tell a book's rhythm from its visual structure. A very dense book has long paragraphs and very little dialogue. A fast-paced page-turner tends to have shorter paragraphs and more dialogue. But what I most admire is balance. The ratio of dialogue to description, of short paragraphs to long.

I am currently reading The Wars by Timothy Findley, which is a very balanced book indeed.

Another Rejection!

2007-05-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

I sent part of my manuscript to Cormorant Books on April 9, 2007. I just received a letter dated April 16, declining to read the rest.

A gloomy day like this is fitting for such an occasion.

The Best of the Jokes

2007-04-30T10:00:00.001-07:00

This weekend, I heard several good jokes at the George Spady Centre, a homeless shelter where I am a volunteer. The warm weather had made everyone especially ebullient and jovial. Here is the best of the jokes (in my opinion), which, in keeping with the tradition of joke telling, I will remember as best I can, adding my own inventions where memory fails me.

The $50 Prize

A man walks into a bar where he finds a goldfish bowl with a $50 bill inside it.

“What’s this?” he asks.

“That’s the prize money,” replies the bartender.

“What’s the contest?” asks the man.

The bartender explains.

“To win the $50 prize, you first have to go over there and take down the 300 pound bouncer. Then you have to go up the stairs and enter the room where there is a pitbull with an abscessed tooth, and make it out alive. Then you have to go into the room with the old lady and give her multiple orgasms. After achieving all that, my son, this $50 can be yours.”

“OK,” the man replied, rising to the challenge.

He proceeded to walk over to the 300-pound bouncer, who he took completely unawares. He delivered him a roundhouse punch to the chops and dropped him like a sack of potatoes. Then he disappeared up the stairs.

A little later, the bartender went to see how the man was faring. He ascended the stairs and arrived on the landing just in time to see the man emerging from his entanglement with the pitbull. The man was pulling up his pants, which had been at his ankles. His brow was sweaty and his whole body was covered with scrapes and bite marks.

“What in hell’s name happened here?” asked the bartender.

The man replied, “I’m finished with the pitbull. Now where’s that old lady with the abscessed tooth?”

I particularly liked this joke because of the demands it makes on memory. The peculiar detail of the abscessed tooth turns out to be crucial. I also like the extent to which this joke could be recreated time and time again, with whatever details the narrator chooses. The confrontation with the bouncer lends itself to all sorts of gratuitously violent detail, depending on the tastes of the audience and the personality of the teller. Not to mention the entanglement with the angry pitbull, which offers opportunities for a sordid details a-plenty, some of which entered my mind, but were omitted from this version. I elected to keep it clean for the kids!

Joke telling is probably one of the strongest examples of the continuation of the oral storytelling tradition. Long live the joke!

Francoise Sagan and Michel Houellebecq

2007-04-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

I finished Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse several days ago. At its core is a sense of amorality that is disturbing. In brief, Cecile, the narrator and also the seventeen year-old female protagonist, conspires to break up the engagement of her middle-aged father to Anne Larson, a woman of his own age. Why does Cecile do this? Because Anne Larson represents an end to the hedonistic and irresponsible life Cecile and her father have heretofore enjoyed. Anne represents the family, the household, work, discipline, and all that. This means giving up the life of the individualized pursuit of pleasure.

Sagan published Bonjour Tristesse in 1954 when she was eighteen years old. Eighteen years old… Good grief. There is almost nothing about this book I do not like. Granted, Cecile’s plot against her own father is a little rickety and contrived. It actually seems like a set-up more suited to a Shakespearean comedy, whereas this book is most certainly tragic in nature. But this bothered me only for ten pages or so. It’s a plot device, nothing more, that merely sets into motion a series of events, whose implications are unsettling.

Cecile says, towards the novel’s end, that she and her father need no one, either “living or dead.” The last words of the novel, “Bonjour Tristesse” (hello sadness) serve to reinforce the impression that the only enduring effect of the tragedy that has unfolded is simply the discovery of a new sensation by this precocious young woman. Sadness, to add to, of course, happiness, sexual pleasure, and all the other pleasures afforded her by the privileged life she leads.

This is a book devoid of ideology, or any other organizing principle for living life. At the time, it must have seemed to herald a new era: an era of unbridled selfish pleasure-seeking. How angry critics must have been to see Cecile’s awful conduct go unpunished.

The French have a knack for producing novels that are very nasty indeed. L’etranger, by Albert Camus, predates Bonjour Tristesse by only 12 years. It is almost surprising that it took so long for France to produce a new enfant terrible –Michel Houllebecq.

I find it a little discomforting that Houellebecq, who continues to dissect the era of consumerism better than anyone, continues to go so unnoticed here in North America. Ian McEwan trots out pretty but rather slight books about whatever he likes and ends up front and centre of the new releases section in Chapters and Indigo, meanwhile Houllebecq languishes in relative obscurity.

It’s odd. Because Houllebecq is arguably the most important writer living today. Not since Rushdie has a writer caused such scandals. Many in France would like to see Houellebecq dead. He sells hundreds of thousands of books in Europe. Yet here in North America, where the process of social disintegration that he describes is further advanced than anywhere, everyone says, “Michel Houllebecq? Who’s she?”

I only bang on about this because I feel that sexual liberalization, consumerism, technology, science, and the cult of the individual, are subjects far too important to go untreated by fiction. There should be dozens of writers focussed on these subjects. And yet, we have only Houllebecq, Jonathan Franzen, and who else…?

Some say that reading about these issues is depressing. Houellebecq is depressing. But Houellebecq is also, at times, incredibly funny. So is Franzen. Surely that helps the medicine go down?

Francoise Sagan died in 2004. Apparently the character of Margot Tenenbaum in the film, The Royal Tenenbaums, is partly based on her. If she got the chance to see this film, I wonder if she found it funny?

Greed

2007-04-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Edmonton Journal ran my letter about the Alberta government’s failure to bring in rent controls. Publication! Hot on the heels of a rejection. Hope springs eternal.

Here is the letter:

It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall during budget deliberations when rural MLAs shot down a proposal by urban MLAs to introduce rent controls. I can hear it now.

Urban MLA: “We’ve got to do something to stop hard-working city dwellers getting gouged by rent increases of $200, $300, $400. It’s literally pricing people out of their own homes."

Rural MLA: “Do I look like I care? I paid off my farm decades ago!”

The Alberta government had an opportunity to protect Albertans against the rampant greed of property owners. They sided with greed.

Laurence Miall, Edmonton

I like this word, “greed.” In my opinion, it is not used nearly often enough. How many elaborate justifications do individuals/companies/governments conjure up for their behaviour, when really, the truth is, they are simply being greedy?

When I was at the Remedy Café this weekend, I inquired about the hummus. I was told it wasn’t up to its usual standard. I asked for a sample. I tested it, and indeed, found it rather wanting. The staff member asked if there was anything else I wanted. I answered, “No, I was just being greedy.” He laughed.

Maybe greed sounds antiquated nowadays. It’s like the word “naughty.” That used to be a pretty severe rebuke, but now makes people titter.

As I contemplate greed, I move slowly but surely through Bonjour Tristesse, and find myself at the halfway mark. I am reading an awful lot into this book, and I hope I won’t crush the slender volume under the weight of my expectations.

Because of the influence of Michel Houellebecq, I get the impression that France went through some pretty major changes after the last world war. Many current trends in that country, and others, seem to have their origins in this era:
--more leisure time
--more consumerism
--more individualization
--democratization of greed
--democratization of education

Bonjour Tristesse seems to show these social changes in their earlier stages.

Just one example:

Cecile and her father have just been delivered a stern lecture by Anne Larson, who appears set to become the “mother” of the family. Anne says Cecile needs to focus on her education. Cecile’s father says, don’t worry, there will be no problem finding a man who can provide for my pretty daughter’s needs.

Harder to see this conflict occurring nowadays. Everyone would agree, pretty or not, Cecile better study and work hard!

For different reasons, this conflict would also not have occurred several decades earlier. At that time, everyone would have agreed, Cecile needn’t bother getting educated – a man will indeed take care of everything.

These changes are for best. But others, like Cecile’s own preference for the amoral philandering of her father over the sturdy structure of a nuclear family, might not be for the best.

Rejection

2007-04-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered by email that my book, Blind Spot, has been rejected by Edmonton's publisher, NeWest Press. Actually, according to the subject heading of the email, the book they rejected was "Blid Spot."

Ah well, I better take my lumps and just shut up. Chin up, stiff upper lip. Pip pip. That's what they say!

Tonight I might get good and gunned. Haven't done that in a while. I must announce my intentions to my drinking buddy so he's not alarmed.

Life Lived in Two Places at Once

2007-04-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Currently, I am in Edmonton, Alberta. But a smaller part of me is in France, on the coast of the Mediterranean, where the characters of Bonjour Tristesse are on holiday. Here it is wet and cold. There it is hot and dry.

The characters, mood and intrigue have all been established lightning fast, but not so fast as to forego pleasure. I think it must take years to learn how to assemble the necessary components of a novel in a way that appears effortless. I must look up the age of Francoise Sagan when she wrote this. It's brilliant.

Truly good books have an inevitability about them. The stories appear in such a way that it seems impossible that they could have been told by anyone else in any other voice except this one.

I've been thinking a lot this week about that fortuitous week when I discovered Saul Bellow. It was the summer of 2005 and I was staying in a hostel on Jericho Beach in Vancouver. Ostensibly, I was there to look for a job. But looking back now, as trite as it sounds, I think I was looking for myself.

A depression descended on me the likes of which I've almost never experienced before. I tried everything I could think of to lift it. I had previously resolved to not smoke, but decided to start again, just a little, just to see if that might help. It didn't. I tried drinking -- just a little -- every day in the evening. I would sit on the beach itself with some whisky and coke in a pop bottle. This is strictly speaking, illegal. But I did not suffer any consequences except this one: the realization of how sad it is to be drinking by yourself on a beach. I tried vigorous exercise. I jogged. I did the infamous Grouse Grind three times. (A gruelling trek up Grouse Mountain.) That worked the best. But at the end of every day, the depression would return. It was the kind of thing I could tangibly feel, like a descending weight.

Then, one day, even though I had little cash to spare, I permitted myself the luxury of walking into a book store and buying a book. I didn't know what book to buy. I ended up selecting Philip Roth's The Human Stain. I read it in a few days. I enjoyed it greatly. The depression was slowly lifting. I told myself that books are the one vice I should never deny myself.

Then, on a trip to a village whose name I've now forgotten, I came across a used copy of Seize the Day. I had heard that Bellow was a mentor to Roth. That was enough to convince me to make another purchase.

By the end of that very same day, I had finished Seize the Day. Afterwards, I sat there on a couch in the hostel, and felt slightly stunned. I had just been released from the grip of a master. In approx 130 pages, Bellow had chronicled the journey of a mind unravelling. Of a life falling apart.

Seize the Day is about a failed actor in a midlife crisis. It is about the pursuit of money. It is about great expectations placed upon us -- by ourselves and others. I suppose if I were to pinpoint the one unifying idea of the novel, I'd say it is about the "fear of failure."

And there I was, in one of Canada's most beautiful cities during a beautiful summer, walking around feeling like a failure.

It wasn't until several months later, long after I'd retreated to Edmonton with my tail between my legs, that the experience of that pain translated into anything. But when it did become something, the book spilled out of me very quickly.

Since then I've had enormous faith in the ability of books to save souls. Not lives. But souls.

At least this soul.

First Post & an Explanation

2007-04-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

I do not merit four separate blogs, but there we go, I now have four. This is partly due to the fact that I know nothing about web design. If I knew something about web design, I'd design a website for myself, and facilitate keeping these separate strands apart, yet together, you know? Just like a well designed site should. But until then, I feel obligated to persist with four blogs, because I don't want to assume that a reader's interest in one necessarily means interest in the others, let alone all.

Today I intend to start reading a book that I first had to read as part of my minor in French sometime around 2000. It's called Bonjour Tristesse and the author is Francoise Sagan.

All I can remember about the book is that the protagonist is a girl of 17 or so. She is on holiday with her father and her father's mistress. And something tragic happens. There is a car crash. Oh, and the protagonist has sex with a boy her age. And all of this rather offended French post-war sensibilities. It was described as amoral.

I really enjoyed it then, and I hope to do so again now.

Bonjour Tristesse is one of the books that come to mind when I think of what I've tried to model myself after in writing my own short book, Blind Spot. The other books are Seize the Day by Saul Bellow, and to a lesser extent, l'Extension de la domaine de la lutte, by Michel Houellebecq.

These books all show what is possible within the confines of 200 pages or less. Sometimes considerably less (Seize the Day). A book of this length simply feels different from the more traditional 300-400 page tome.

The main difference is pacing. A short novel can sustain considerable tension for its entirety. War and Peace or Brothers Karamazov cannot do that. Not even shorter works like, say, The Great Gatsby can do that. In those other novels, there is more of a sense that you are going to "live" with these characters for a while, and, like them, take a bit of a break every now and then. Between one episode and another there will be a pause, a chance to enjoy the scenery, before the next round of action commences. In a short novel, there isn't time for long pauses. A few paragraphs are all you get, at most.

The challenge is to sustain a single idea over the duration of 4-6 hours of reading time. Not two ideas, or three ideas. But one. I guess the idea can have "sub" ideas, but simplicity really is key. It would be literally impossible to distill the complexity of the plot of Brothers Karamazov into the length of Bonjour Tristesse. In fact, Brothers Karamazov is so long and so complex, that it lends itself to being picked apart and having certain episodes simply stand on their own. Someone could read The Grand Inquisitor and nothing else, and still have gotten something out of Brothers Karamazov. But a short novel either stands as a satisfying unity, or fails entirely.

Or at least this is how it all seems to me. I'm still fumbling to understand how books work (or don't work).