“Emerging” by Prost
January 31, 2009
“Emerging,” the single studio recording from the band Prost (c. 2004), can be downloaded by clicking on the link.
Prost was:
Jonathan Ball — Vocals/Lyrics
Dean Gamvrelis — Bass
Adam Rossi — Guitar
Jeff Roy — Guitar
Alex Sotiriadis — Drums
Lyrics:
All snakes, at some time, shed their skin. Even I.
When I reach the mainline, I will take back all my words of wisdom. And when I read the headlines, I will regret all the money given. And when I breathe in once again, I will taste and savour. When I move in for the kill, I will trust my instincts.
If I ever break I want you to pick up and keep the pieces, so if I should ever die you will still have something to remember me by. I bite in, the poison from the past emerging. When I move in for the kill, I will trust your instincts to fail.
All snakes, at some time, shed their skin. Even I.
I, who will not trade any of my dreams for their realization.
Žižek!
January 31, 2009
Reading a lot of theory lately, including a few books by Slavoj Žižek. Found a great clip on YouTube of the man himself. But even better than this clip is one of the user comments, by “pixiecherries”:
At first I didn’t understand him. Then I listened to him over and over. I still don’t understand him but I think I am now addicted to him.
The 95 Challenge
January 29, 2009
I have devised a challenge to myself, something of a late New Year’s resolution. After reading that George W. Bush read 95 books in 2006, I’ve decided that I am going to make it my goal to read 95 books this year. And watch 95 movies. So far I’m off to a good start. This will also help me spur forth thesis-related reading as I enter the final stretch of my too-massive project. So far, this is my tally:
9 books
Slavoj Zizek – Looking Awry
Sylvia Legris – circuitry of Veins
Sylvia Legris – iridium seeds
Brian Joseph Davis – I, Tania
Julia Kristeva – Powers of Horror
Alan Moore – The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Vols. I & II
Sylvia Legris – Nerve Squall
Michel Foucault – This is Not a Pipe
Slavoj Zizek – The Sublime Object of Ideology
8 movies
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
Top of the Food Chain (John Paizs)
Highway 61 (Bruce McDonald)
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)
Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Others (Alejandro Amenábar)
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
It would be pretty sad if idiot-boy Bush was a more avid reader than a guy getting his PhD in English.
A Mild Controversy…
January 19, 2009
… has broken out over my “review of a review.” See this mean-spirited but brilliant “review of my review of a review” by Zachariah Wells.
Recent Reading (& Viewing)
January 19, 2009
I’ve been a hermit lately, reading and writing and watching a few films. Trying to post on this blog at least weekly, and with no real developments in life I thought I’d just give you an overview of what I’ve been imbibing.
circuitry of veins and iridium seeds by Sylvia Legris
Sylvia Legris contacted me over the holidays to accept some poems, being the new Managing Editor of Grain. This brought to mind the fact that I own all of her books, but have read none. So I read her first two books. Both books are strong but iridium seeds is a vast improvement on circuitry of veins, and sees Legris branching further out from otherwise fairly conventional work. I haven’t read her Griffin-winning book Nerve Squall yet but it is next on the list. These two books meditate on the loss of a mother (but in a rather unconventional and sometimes irreverant way) and female body issues. I am partial to the poetic suite “hungergraphs” in circuitry of veins, which has a real narrative drive, it almost reads like a fractured short story. The thing that reading these two books in quick succession brings to mind is the fact that very few poets these days seem to develop. A lot of people put out first books and follow them with second books that are identical. Or even tenth books that are identical. The thing that impresses me most about these books is that you get the sense Legris has actually read some other books in the time between writing each of her own books, and moreover has read broadly, not just more books by people writing like her. I don’t get that sense from a lot of writers, and I wish I did. Curious to read Nerve Squall, due to how far apart it was published from iridium seeds I expect it to be almost the work of a different poet.
The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Vols. I & II by Alan Moore
Alan Moore is Odin’s gift to the world of comics, a literate and stunningly imaginative writer who stands out even among the best writers of the genre, let alone the hacks who fill out the ranks. Pilfering characters from the world of public domain literature to put together a superhero team of Mina Harker, Allan Quartermain, Jekyll/Hyde, The Invisible Man, and Captain Nemo is just downright brilliant. Then having them fight against first Moriarty and second the aliens from The War of the Worlds is genius. Guest appearances by Doctor Moreau and others in a sort of boy’s adventure story. What this series made me really appreciate was how awesome H. G. Wells was. This guy wrote The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, AND The Time Machine. He thought up Morlocks. I would be happy just to think up the word “Morlocks.”
I, Tania by Brian Joseph Davis
I loved Portable Altamont and thought this book was also quite fun, although as a novel it’s fairly sparse, not a lot to sink one’s teeth into. A comical look at the Symbionese Liberation Army, with all the silly song parodies and fun nonsense you’d expect after reading Portable Altamont. The book is slim and pretty and fits nicely into the pocket of your army fatigues. The passage where Katie Couric interviews the Tania/Hearst character reminded me of the ending of How to Make Love to a Negro by Dany Lafferierre, although in the Lafferierre book the scene is more substantial and has a more complicated relationship to the text as a whole.
Powers of Darkness by Julia Kristeva
I am reading, reading, reading these days, have to get through all this theory before I turn in my thesis. Although I find parts of this book impenetrable, not knowing Celine’s work, and disliking Kristeva’s writing style (or, maybe, the translation) . . . but only in parts. In other parts, the writing sparkles. It’s a very uneven book in this regard. I am fascinated and struck by this notion of an “abject” — a class of things not properly “subjects” or “objects” but somewhere in-between, blurring the boundaries between subject and object and therefore threatening their borders and producing revulsion in the subject.
Eastern Promises (dir. David Cronenberg)
I missed this film in the theatres and am sad to have done so. A stunning film with great performances, not as cold and machinic as Cronenberg’s other work. I am ambivalent towards Cronenberg although I ultimately thinks he’s great. My only real complaints about this film are that I think Naomi Watts was underutilized (if you’ve seen Mulholland Dr. then you know she is capable of much more compelling characters than the rather bland woman she plays here) and also I could see the end coming a mile away. Mortensen is fantastic and the supporting cast is great, especially Vincent Cassel.
Highway 61 (dir. Bruce McDonald)
Re-watched this, I still love this film, great Canadian weirdness married to affecting realism. As road trip movies go, this is one of the best. Mr Skin (aka Satan) is one of my favourite characters in Canadian cinema, if only because of how his presence buoys this movie up above the saccharin waters it might otherwise get dragged under. And you can’t be a Canadian if you don’t harbour a soft spot for Don McKellar.
Top of the Food Chain (dir. John Paizs)
It’s no Crime Wave (my favourite film), but I’ll take it. A great spoof of Hollywood horror that pushes the formulaic vapidity of the genre to its absolute, hyperreal extreme, for one of the most underrated comedies this country has ever produced.
Otherwise….
Been working on The Crow Murders (my thesis) and trying to prepare to enter the job market, which is looking dismal at the moment. Also working on The Politics of Knives, a poetry collection I should complete soon (mostly it collects already published chapbooks, so not a ton of work to be done, I am just writing the title poem and the rest is minor editing work). After I complete this poetry collection then I will be sitting on a total of five poetry collections, including the one coming out this year with BookThug, so with four to flog to publishers I feel good taking a break from poetry to focus on fiction, specifically the short story collection The Lightning of Possible Storms that (as previous posts will confirm) I have been working on for far too long.
My Letter to Geist
January 18, 2009
Sina Queyras has republished a letter I sent to Geist some time ago, which they published, being the good sports they are. It is essentially an extended complaint about what I see as the poor quality of book reviewing in Canada (but I must say it’s not just a Canadian problem). You can read the letter and some responses here.
Rejected — a tale of two grants
January 14, 2009
My luck had to end sometime, a string of recent acceptances just broke with a rejection from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (I’d applied for a grant to complete my novel Kanada). This is the second time they have rejected that same project, and I must say the problem is not my application, which is stellar and features a reference letter claiming that I am “a truly talented writer with tremendous potential” (I’m not saying this is true, just saying it’s a strong application with a glowing reference).
So the AFA hates my project. I can’t complain too much, because they funded another project in the past (Clockfire, which is done and sitting with publishers who will decide its immediate fate). But it is disappointing, and although I could reapply a third time this Feb., it seems pointless. I can’t write a better application and it has been before two different juries. So I guess that I will have to apply with a new project, probably the aforementioned (on this blog) short story collection, The Lightning of Possible Storms.
I must say though, “literary rejection” is a special kind of rejection. I know people who fear it and take it personally, it wounds them. I find it more of a nuisance than anything else, although grants sting a bit more due to the prospect of “real” money (as opposed to the “honorariums” that literary journals pay, if they pay at all). Many rejections actually make me smile. I received one recently, a form letter, on which the editor had scrawled a handwritten note saying she loved the story I sent but her editorial board vetoed her, and asking for more work. A rejection, sure, but it’s hard to take this personally. I’ve had harsher and occasionally mean rejections, but again, I don’t take these things personally. And I don’t believe other writers should take them personally either. Having been an editor now and again, and having doled out my fair share of rejections to other writers, I can honestly say that there’s nothing wrong with rejection. It’s just a fact of the writer’s life, like snow in the winter, something that you can complain about but should always expect and not allow to derail your plans.
What bothers me is non-response (in cases where response is expected). Dandelion can get away with not responding, because it says we don’t respond right in the guidelines. Other publications can’t get away with it. I will never submit again to a press or publication that refuses to respond, especially if I contact them and ask for a response. Take The Mercury Press. I sent them a book manuscript on May 1, 2007, and asked for a rejection at least five times since then. They have not responded to me for almost two straight years.
Rejection is not a personal attack, it is a professional courtesy. I sent the same manuscript to Coach House, which rejected it within two months, in a detailed, personalized letter — much more than I expected. Around the same time, I was playing scrabble with the editors of the press over facebook — including Alana Wilcox, who actually was the one writing the rejection letter — and when I got the rejection I was disappointed but not heartbroken. I kept playing scrabble and still think Coach House is great. I have never taken the rejection of my work as an attack on my person, and don’t understand people who do. So if a friend or acquaintance rejects my work, it in no way bothers me. People who get upset and who end friendships over similar rejections are unprofessional at best and horrible people at worst (and believe me, this happens in the publishing world). But I do take Mercury’s non-response, in the face of numerous polite and concise requests for a response, spaced over two years, as a personal affront. Not that I think Mercury has anything against me, but I think it is indicative of a general lack of respect for writers. And so I wasn’t surprised when a minor controversy regarding Mercury broke out amongst some of my friends associated with that press, which I won’t go into (I’m not one for gossip… okay, I am, but this blog isn’t the place for such things).
So AFA, I forgive you. But you’re wrong! And Coach House, you still rock. Mercury… still waiting for that rejection.
Still Under Construction
January 13, 2009
I am returned from my holidays, will try to get this website completed this month. At the very least will try to take down the placeholder photos. This is my promise to you, my imaginary audience.
Put up a list of forthcoming publications, at least, so don’t say I don’t do anything for you.
My Writing Process
January 8, 2009
Congratulations to Saleema (who gets a lot of “congratulations” on this blog) for posting the first comment that I have approved and not deleted. A few self-congratulations to get out of the way as well, insofar as the New Year good writing news is still coming in… some poems accepted in NōD magazine and my first refereed article, “The Archive and the Future of the Novel,” accepted by The International Journal of the Book.
Anyway, in her comment Saleema asked “I’m intrigued by this lightning novella. How often do you set out to write something with a theme already clearly in mind before you’ve started?” I was going to bang out a reply but then I realized how utterly strange my writing process truly is, and thought it might be worth a post.
This is how I came up with the idea for the novella “The Lightning of Possible Storms”: in 2006, I was walking down Kensington Road on a summer day when there was a lot of dandelion fluff in the air, and I wished I had a video camera and a movie script so that I could record a regular scene with dandelion fluff everywhere. Then I started thinking about what kind of scene I might record. Around that time I was reading a book on digital filmmaking by Mike Figgis, who directed Leaving Las Vegas. It occurred to me that I might write a very character-based story one day rather than all of my idea-heavy stories, and then adapt this story to film. But I didn’t have a character. I wanted a female character, because I don’t feel that I write female characters enough. So I started to think about who the character might be and what they might do. The story would need a level of melancholy because of the dandelion fluff, which would seem too fanciful unless balanced with some melancholy. For the next few months I thought about where I might shoot scenes of a woman looking melancholy if I had a melancholy woman and a digital video camera. I brought in a lot of ideas and then threw them out. I fleshed her character out a little in my head, but came up with no real ideas, not even a name. I learned that somebody I know is a silversmith, which seems like a cool gig and something very hands-on, so I could write or film her actually manipulating physical items, and so decided that this character would be a silversmith. I also decided she’d work in a tea shop, since I like to drink tea, and since tea has a fascinating history, and I would have an excuse to hang out in this Kensington tea shop that I like. Tea and silversmithing together seems almost alchemical, I don’t know why I feel this, but suddenly my nameless female character is sounding interesting to me.
Then later on I start learning about string theory, and am particularly drawn by this notion of multiple universes, which might be infinite in number. This would mean, possibly, in theory, that any fiction I might imagine has already actually occurred or will someday occur in another universe. So that my nameless female protagonist is already out there, in a very real world, shuffling around, serving tea, and smithing silver. All of which is fantastical, yet potentially literally true, depending on whether or not the theory is valid and if it can be interpreted in this manner (it’s all very speculative). By this point it’s almost 2007, and I write a short story called “George and Gracie” based on characters from an explanation of relativity in Brian Greene’s book on string theory, The Elegant Universe. Now I think I can also use this idea in the short story about the woman, which now has a name, but I don’t know how.
Then I get a title for the story, from reading an interview with Michel Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher.” At one point in the interview, Foucault says:
“I dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes — all the better.”
“Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms.”
What Foucault fails to realize is that this kind of “criticism” already exists: as literature itself, which (in the postmodernist view) already always refers to other literature. So now I have a great phrase, “the lightning of possible storms,” that I decide would be a good title for a collection of short stories. At the same time, for no reason, I decide it should be the title of this short story with a female protagonist that I am trying to write.
I have to emphasize the fact that I decided this for no reason. An important part of my writing process involves making random decisions, posing writing problems for myself, and then attempting to think my way around these problems. For example, during this time I have also decided that my main character will take the C-train everywhere and that she will see the fake dinosaurs at the zoo from the C-train, which I noticed is possible while I was taking the C-train one day. Like the decision to make her a silversmith and a tea server, I have decided this for no reason, or rather, because so far I have no story. My theory of writing is that if you just keep throwing elements together, eventually you figure out how these elements can combine into a story. So now I have: a story with a female protagonist, a silversmith tea server, who rides the C-train and sees fake dinosaurs, and at one point notices dandelion fluff falling everywhere. And it’s called “The Lightning of Possible Storms” and may involve string theory as a metaphor. I already like it more than most stories I read, and it is absolutely NOT a story.
I keep throwing ideas around in my idle time, mostly while riding the C-train, not really keeping any or adding anything significant. Too many of the ideas involve her being victimized somehow by a man, a too-easy way to introduce conflict, so I decide definitively AGAINST this. Maybe she’ll be a lesbian, in any case if a man is involved he will be neither an aggressor nor a typical love interest. I want to keep the story focused on her, and avoid the temptation to play it “safe” and get into a man’s head.
I also decide that, if I am going to have a book collection of stories including this title story, the title story has to somehow connect to or tie together or at least thematically inflect the other stories, which need a reason to be in a book together. So riffing on the word “possible,” I notice that I spend a lot of time writing stories where something impossible occurs, or where the realm of the possible is larger than in a normal story (although I’m not really writing anything too strange or magic realist, often just one odd and bizarre element, or maybe just an odd approach to an otherwise normal story). So I look at what stories fit this vague notion and which I might include. And I start thinking of ways that my title story might relate to these other, unconnected stories. I read a great story collection by Paul Glennon (The Dodecahedron) which has a strange, Oulipian constraint where elements have to be repeated from one story to another in a complicated fashion, which I enjoy but decide not to copy. Although maybe the basic notion of repeating elements in small ways?
By now it is almost New Year’s Day, 2009. I am almost done the short story collection. The stories I haven’t written are pretty well planned out, EXCEPT for my title story, which I have to write if I want to have a collection of stories and not abandon my awesome title, etc. It’s been almost 2 years and I still haven’t written a single word of “The Lightning of Possible Storms.” And yet, I can’t give up on my nameless protagonist (maybe Aleya?) and I still have a driving desire to write this story, and even believe, again, for no reason, that it will be a great story that will hang everything together. At this point I feel almost like I have fallen in love with this character and this story, so irrational are my feelings towards the story and my unwillingness to give it up, even though it is only causing me pain.
And THEN I hit upon the idea: in fact, this is precisely the story. Aleya (or whoever) is serving tea, someone fitting my description keeps coming in, is always trying to write, but never does. They don’t talk to one another, but one week she notices he is writing furiously, head down, on a yellow pad. He has a book with him, like always, it changes every visit. One day he forgets his book. She picks it off the table … The Robber by Robert Walser (subject of one of the other short stories in the collection, “Walser in Winnipeg”) … thinking maybe, like some books, his name or contact info is inside so she can return it. Lo and behold, the book is inscribed as a gift to her, complete with name, although they haven’t spoken and he shouldn’t know her name. He does not return, and she reads the book, and slowly the world becomes less real… books inscribed to her appear in the oddest places, all over the city, a secret benefactor (the author) is slowly reshaping the world in a bid to please her. It’s as if thousands of different universes are converging, and she is stepping from one to another, looking for one she likes. And, well, we’ll have to see how the rest turns out, in the actual writing of it.
So, in short, my writing process is haphazard and bizarre, shot through with random decisions. I get odd notions or make suspect decisions and then obsess over ideas and characters or just thoughts for scenes until things gel organically or I otherwise figure out a way to make them work on paper. When I am actually writing, I simply write so many words per day and if I don’t know what to write I make a similar random decision, simply to have something to write, even if I just end up deleting it later. But usually I have been obsessing over ideas for a long time before I begin writing, I have a big backlog of ideas so I am able to write while thinking ahead to other projects, even though I may be thinking ahead for years.
A long answer to a short question, but strange enough to warrant a long note, I think. And now, Saleema, how do YOU approach things? You mentioned this a little once on your blog, but I’m curious to know about your process in more detail… is the “white rabbit” road your typical way to work? I would have to say this convoluted nonsense that is my approach to “The Lightning of Possible Storms” is fairly typical of how I work.
And anybody else reading this blog (I know Peter Norman is still out there, if no one else)… what’s the deal with you?
So This is the New Year
January 7, 2009
I’m starting off the year well, writing-wise, with two recent acceptances in journals I have been trying (for many years) to break into: The Capilano Review and Grain (under the new editorship of Sylvia Legris). And I am still riding the wave of “stuff I’d almost completed before, and am completing now” with work on a poem (“The Politics of Knives”) which will complete a book collection (The Politics of Knives). Then I’m done with poetry for a while, at least until my book The Words of The Book comes out with BookThug (co-written by kevin mcpherson eckhoff).
2008 was the year of finishing poetry projects that had been 80% completed in the years before, and 2009 will be the year of completing fiction projects I already started some time ago. I will finish The Crow Murders, my experimental horror novel, so that I can defend it as my PhD thesis. And I am not too far off from completing a collection of short stories, finally, called The Lightning of Possible Storms. Although there is still a lot of work to do on the Lightning front. Mainly, I have to write the novella “The Lightning of Possible Storms,” that will (in an odd way) pull together the other stories, which are otherwise not connected, except by this notion of “possibility” as both a literary value and a theme that can drive stories. After I write “Lightning” I will have to rewrite all the other stories, so that they then respond to the presence of the novella within the collection, in invisible ways.
One of my resolutions this year is to get this website finally completed in its redesign. Obviously it is functional, but it is still using the placeholder images and a lot of the content is lacking or just test pages. But I hereby announce the “blog” portion of the site now fully operational, and will be posting on here on a semi-regular basis, so that I don’t look bad by comparison with my friend Saleema, who is a more prolific and meaty blogger (meaty in the sense of her posts being meatier, she is otherwise much, much slimmer and trimmer than I).
I am also going to focus more plainly in this blog on writing, as opposed to other parts of my life. Mainly because I see this site as a professional space, and in my professional capacity, I am mostly a writer. Although my “job” is teaching, I consider this part of my “job” as a writer (community service for the benefit of the next generation, let’s say). And really, most of my money comes to me from or for writing, in the form of grants and scholarships to support work on various projects, like The Crow Murders.
I also think it would be useful to newer writers to hear from someone who is semi-successful, but not that successful. In other words, just ahead of them, but not by too much… successful in the sense of getting a bit of money for writing, and getting stuff published on a semi-regular basis, and with a book on the horizon, but unsuccessful in that I am relatively poor and unknown, don’t have people hammering on my door for my writing, no big agent, no big advances, etc.
When I was a younger writer, I always wished I knew someone just a little ahead of me, who could map out the territory a bit better. Many writers have a somewhat justified fear of “talking shop” with newer writers, but I think it’s useful to make this otherwise opaque industry as transparent as possible, if only by making my actually “writing work” transparent through this blog. I know I had a lot of illusions about writing and the publishing industry, and the sooner I had those illusions taken away, the better it was for me. So let me disillusion you with my blog. I also think it’s useful to emphasize, for younger writers especially, potentially my students who may read this blog, the role of “actual real work” in writing. Versus inspiration, or some other airy concept that has NOTHING to do with writing.
A blog about writing, the work of writing, by a writer with very limited yet palpable success (this is my day job right now, after all, with teaching on the sideline), seems like it would be useful to emerging writers. And it would be useful to me, to have to post about such things on a regular basis, to guarantee that I don’t get lazy, like I usually get in the winter. (Maybe a mild case of SAD?)
And if people actually come to this website on a semi-regular basis, I will be forced to finish its redesign, if only to stop feeling so embarassed. And I need to do that to get myself a job, the other great goal of 2009. Might I add that it’s a great time to enter the job market (just great)? I need all the help and pretty websites I can get.
