#FridayReads, March 14–Jan Wong’s Memoir of Depression, “Out of the Blue”

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Out of the Blue


Triggered by a death threat targeting her for a story she wrote, Wong–a career reporter–does a superb job investigating and striving to understand her own illness.

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Toboggan Days with Noah

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The above picture with my dog Noah patiently waiting for me as I prepared to slide down a hill was taken during an outing for students of the School on Magnolia, the alternative high school I attended in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1970s. In those days, my hair was sort of like that of NBA star Anderson Varejao, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Anderson VarejaoThe second picture here was taken by my late brother Joel, in the living room of the home we grew up in, in the suburb of Shaker Heights, a few years after the wintry picture.  Noah

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#FridayReads, Feb 7–Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s Novel “All the Broken Things”

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Monday Feb 10 Update: Wow, I loved All the Broken Things, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s exquisite novel. Such a rich story of an orphaned boy, his sister, and the carny world of bears and barkers that both assaults them and supports them. They weather all that is arrayed against them. I give this extraordinary novel my highest personal recommendation.
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All the Broken Things #FridayReads, Feb 7–Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s novel All the Broken Things. This is an amazing and compelling novel set in Toronto in the early 1980s, about a Vietnamese immigrant family of three, former boat people–mother Rose, teenage son Bo, 4-year old daughter Orange Blossom, known as Orange, who was born with profound birth defects owing to Rose’s exposure to the Agent Orange that the US used to defoliate the countryside during the war. The killing chemical was manufactured in Ontario, a factual point that Kuitenbrouwer makes in an Author’s Note. I’ve found the writing in this so good, the sheer sentence-making and storytelling, that though I had read terrific reviews of the novel, prompting me to to order a copy, when it arrived I was expecting to only glance at the opening page and then put it aside until a moment when I thought I would have more time for it. Suffice to say, I didn’t put it aside at all, and now a day later, I’m on page 134. The book is commanding my attention, drawing me in, like the wrestling bear does Bo, the teenage boy of the tale, who willingly folds himself into the animal’s embrace.

Bo is the is fulcrum of the tale. He, far better than Rose, is able to handle Orange and comfort her. But he’s having a very hard time in middle school, picked on by a kid who yells ethnic slurs at him and wants to fight. Bo obliges this kid, and acquits himself well in their after-school battles. One of these scrums is observed by a carnival promoter who thinks Bo may be able to help out in his sideshow that features a bear, Loralei, who is trained to wrestle people. The Author’s Note also make the point that bear wrestling was at one time legal in Ontario, even common on the carny circuit. Just as Bo has an uncommonly intuitive way with his sister, he also has a gift with bears. Kuitenbrouwer’s descriptions of the tactile and empathic relationship between boy and bear could be outlandish, but instead are wholly believable. This is the book’s first paragraph:

“1984, BEAR
Look at the bear licking Bo’s toes up through the metal slats on the back porch. Bo is fourteen years old, and the bear not a year. The bear is named Bear. When the boy spreads his toes as wide as he can, Bear’s mottled tongue nudges in between them and this tickles. Bear craves the vanilla soft ice cream that drips down Bo’s cone and onto his feet. Bo imagines it must be glorious for Bear to huddle under the porch–her favourite spot–and lap and lick up the sweet cold treat. He imagines himself tucked in down there pretending to be a bear, and then how wonderful it might be, after a day alone, to have someone drip vanilla ice cream right into this mouth.” 

From Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business to Ellen Hunnicutt’s Suite for Calliope: A Novel of Music and the Circus, a book I edited and published, to W.C. Fields’ 1939 film “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” I have long had an affinity for carny stories, and All the Broken Things belongs in that good company. I want to know what happens next for Bo and his fragile family, and will be spending much of the next few days finding out. Writer Jonathan Bennet has also discovered the charms of this book, in a great appreciation here. 
[Cross-posted on my blog The Great Gray Bridge]
All the Broken Things

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A Belated #FridayReads–Peter Warner’s Smart Spy Novel “The Mole”

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In early November I’d been to the launch party for the spy novel The Mole: The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates, and am only now getting around to reading it. I’m really enjoying this heady thriller whose narrator and protagonist is a Canadian transplant to the U.S. that finds himself on the staff of the real-life senator from Georgia, Richard Russell. I tweeted about the book last Friday and neglected to share about it here until now. Highly recommended, the sort of book for which I’d like to put my work aside so I can burrow deeper in to the unfolding tale.

Note: This piece is cross-posted at my other blog, The Great Gray Bridge.

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Thinking of My Friend, Lt. General Roméo Dallaire

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Enduring PTSD Ten Years Later

Sunday Morning Update: Lt. General Roméo Dallaire, about whom I’ve been writing in recent days, was a guest for an excellent interview with Michael Enright on CBC Sunday Edition today. Please find the link here.

 

With Lt. General Roméo Dallaire’s flareup of PTSD this week, at the sister blog to this one, The Great Gray Bridge, I’ve written a full post about my experience publishing his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Here’s the last paragraph:

With the 20th anniversary of the genocide approaching next year, and four recent suicides of Canadian veterans of the Afghan War, Dallaire had a traffic accident this week due to severe insomnia and sleeplessness he’s been enduring as these events prey on him. He was uninjured but shaken by the crash. The same day he made a statement of apology to his colleagues in the Canadian Senate, ironic since so few others in that body have been anywhere near as forthright in admitting their own missteps.

I invite you to read the whole post.

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Enjoying Amity Beach’s “Bonfire Etiquette,” Ontario Pop Band’s New Album

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Bonfire EtiquetteGoing to a music festival with dozens of acts on the bill, and getting to hear and see personal favorites–maybe bands you’ve only heard on record, or bands you’re getting to see live for a second time–is a distinct pleasure, but another joy not to be overlooked is making serendipitous discoveries of new bands, new music you’d have never heard and enjoyed otherwise. In 2011, the first year I attended NXNE, that happened when I heard Winnipeg band Imaginary Cities for the first time, with dynamite lead singer Marti Sabit; in 2013, the same thing happened for me with Sudbury, Ontario group Almighty Rhombus, a brother band whose sound I found lots of fun; in 2012 one of my discoveries was Amity Beach, a band from Grand Bend, Ontario whose enthusiasm, energy, and hooky tunes I really enjoyed that June night. This was part of the post I wrote the next morning:

Last night’s musical performances were everything I had hoped they would be. Early in the evening, at 8 PM, I went to hear a set by a little-known band called Amity Beach. They were a young five-piece from Grand Bend, Ontario, 18-year olds who play their own songs and some great covers. Afterward, at the merch table I met the dad of the lead singer, who gave me their EP and told me of the band’s origins and how they’re writing and recording their own music. I enjoyed learning about their process. 

Amity BeachAmity Beach

I’ve enjoyed their EP, especially the opening track, “Jake’s Version of Paradise.” I didn’t like all the songs uniformly, but what was good on the disc was very likable. My first impression of them is affirmed now by their first full-length album. It’s called “Bonfire Etiquette” and it’s terrific. They’re definitely evolving as a band, with a fuller sound and a higher calibre set of compositions. I’m really enjoying the new batch of ten songs (nine original, one cover). I hear a bit of Arkells in their sound now, especially the punchy rhythm section that opens the first track “Sunday Nights to Infinity.” The feel and sound is all their own, though, with uptempo, slightly staccato arrangements. Their vocals, mostly by Geoff Baillie, are also getting better, with him singing his own lyrics about off-balance modern moments mixed with persistent striving. My faves are the opener; “Crown Victoria,” with a sort of car+relationship lyric (it’s not an ode to the automobile make & model that dominates the New York City yellow taxi fleet); “Born in the Daylight,” with female backing vocals, and “Comet Stop,” the album closer, with the rueful line, “All we have in common is we made the same mistakes.” The vocals and guitars guitars are stronger, with added accents from horns they play themselves, and bright keyboard sounds. Amity Beach may have a new hand or two on deck, as I think I see some unfamiliar faces on the photo that goes with their new album. At any rate, they’re continuing to grow, and very impressively here.

Band photoThis is a link to “Born in the Daylight” from their soundcloud.com page. I hope you like it, too. I recommend the whole album, which you can sample at their tumblr. Really gets better the more you listen to it.

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#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s “The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie”

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Lonely End of the Rink#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie. Very excited to begin reading my copy of the new book by my friend, Canadian broadcaster Grant Lawrence, which just landed in my mailbox this afternoon. The book, which chronicles his uneasy relationship with the Canadian national sport, was officially launched last night with an event in Vancouver, BC. Grant loves to meet with booksellers and readers and is one of the hardest working authors I’ve ever observed. On his website you can find details on the extensive book tour he’s taking, with stops in many Canadian cities between now and December 12.Lonely End back cover

I loved Grant’s first book Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other Stories from Desolation Sound, a memoir of the many summers he’s spent in the wilds of coastal British Columbia, in the environs of a family cabin on the vividly named Desolation Sound. It went to #1 on the BC Bestseller List, won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year, an award given by booksellers, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. I’m hoping for similar success for his new book, which I will begin reading this weekend.Adventures in SolitudeGrant at Radio 3 picnic
[cross-posted at my other blog The Great Gray Bridge]

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NYC Launch of Daniel Canty’s Playful “Wigrum: An Inventory Novel” at Mellow Pages

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Zine wallWednesday night at Brooklyn’s Mellow Pages Library and Reading Room francophone novelist from Quebec, Daniel Canty and his translator Oana Avasilichioaei, jointly read from his book, newly published in English, Wigrum, subtitled by publisher Talonbooks of Vancouver BC, An Inventory Novel. Canty and Avasilichioaei were joined by poets Brandon Downing and Michael Ruby.

It was my first time at Mellow Pages, and I found it a very genial place for presentations and literary appreciation. Located in the same loft building on Bogart Street in Bushwick that houses the art gallery Studio 10, very near the Morgan Street ‘L” train subway stop, Mellow Pages is a big square-ish room with a stamped-tin ceiling high overhead, wide windows of the sort with wire mesh threaded through the glass, and two walnut-paneled walls festooned with chapbooks, zines, monographs, and printed material of all kinds. Along the walls, bookcases and shelving combos were arranged, with books on vertical and horizontal axes. The chapbooks and zines, being so thin and hard to shelve, were hung, and in some places fastened to hangers on the walls.

Jacob, co-proprietor of Mellow Pages, kicked things off by describing how the library and reading room works–people can pay to be a member; as well, if you donate 10 books to the library’s inventory, you’re a member. Their tumblr includes this statement: “Mellow Pages is an independently-run library & reading room located in Brooklyn, NY focusing on providing limited-print fiction and poetry to the neighborhoods of Bushwick, East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. With a collection of over 1,200 titles and zines, come check out the space and have a coffee, crack into a new one.”

After Jacob finished his set-up, before the readings, Brandon Downing asked me to say something about Talonbooks, and I obliged, mentioning the Vancouver location, their extensive list of contemporary Canadian playwrights; They Called Me Number One, a memoir of surviving the punitive residential school system by Chief of the Soda Creek First Nation band Bev Sellars, #1 bestseller in British Columbia; and translated fiction, with such examples as Wigrum.

Brandon was then the first reader, presenting several multi-part poems from his current collection, coincidentally titled Mellow Actions (Fence Books, 2013). He said that unlike the truly mellow vibe of the library and reading room where we sat, he’d chosen his title a bit sardonically. In fact, several of Downing’s poems expressed honest anger, always a tonic to hear read aloud, with anger so often suppressed in polite company. He was followed by Michael Ruby, who in a nod to the evening’s Pacific Northwest motif, read three longish poems inspired by Seattle’s hometown rock heroes, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, from his American Songbook (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013).

Then Daniel and Oana moved to the front of the room and, trading off, they read alternating sections from Wigrum. I’ve been dipping in to the book all week in advance of the reading and have found it to be an ingenious creative enterprise. The novel is ostensibly the census of an idiosyncratic collection of objects, owned at one time by the elusive figure, Sebastian Wigrum. The printed book itself is beautifully presented with crisp typography and clean design on bright white paper. Precise drawings, each one well printed, depict each of the 149 objects in Wigrum’s mysterious collection. This imaginary world has also produced a novel with marginal notes and an index. Here’s a list of five of the objects catalogued and described herein:

  1. 1) a feather from the wings of Icarus;
  2. 2) Holden Caulfield’s “ear-flap hat”;
  3. 3) a handkerchief that William Faulkner had asked be tucked in his funeral suit, though it never was;
  4. 4) a set o keys called the “Come and Gone Keys”; and
  5. 5) a special egg that P.T. Barnum held in his museum of marvels. As the book reads on page 74, Barnum once had occasion to show it to Benjamin Franklin,: “On tiptoe, [Barnum] led the philosopher to his desk, extracted this egg from a drawer stuffed with banknotes, telling him the daughter of Cristobal Colon slumbered forever within, and that if he brought the egg close to his ear he would hear an endless refrain of all Native American nouns of animals and plants. Barnum dropped the egg while handing it to Franklin, spattering his forick coat. He apologized, profusely, but Franklin obviously thought the business was putting him on again. He makes no mention of the incident in his Autobiography.”  

Their reading was very well received, with everyone enjoying Wigrum‘s humor and philosophical play. Book sales and informal conversation followed. I took a few photographs during the readings and was pleased to see, blinking through the window behind the readers, the lights of the Chrysler Building. Barely a half-hour subway ride from Midtown Manhattan, this view typifies how easy it is to visit Mellow Pages. I’m sure I’ll be coming back for a return visit soon. Click here to see those pictures:

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