Literature

“Friday Reads,” if you’re not familiar with the phrase, is a phenomenon on Twitter where folks use the #FridayReads hashtag to talk about, and usually recommend, the books they happen to be reading (you know, on Friday). It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s kind of fun and cute and whatever, the way Twitter hashtags are. I’m making this one a blog post because I found myself, only 136 pages into this book, wanting to post a really long string of tweets about it. You know how every Philip K. Dick book blows your mind? If you watch some of the filmed version of his work, like Minority Report or that trippy rotoscoped take on A Scanner Darkly you would be forgiven for imagining Dick’s work as pulpy and unrefined, accompanied by the slightly paranoid low-rent philosophy that comes with its own sour-smelling cloud of smoke and a really bad… Continue Reading →

Godblog wasn’t a bad book, but there were some structural problems that kept it from being a really good one. Most of the first hundred pages could have been cut without damaging the plot, and it would have given the book a tighter, more focused feel. It would have also eliminated a number of tertiary characters who did almost nothing but take up space, and may have allowed some of the bigger supporting characters to fade into the background just the tiniest bit and actually be supporting characters, rather than constantly jockeying for the lead role. The jumping back and forth in the narrative, while not frequent, heightened the suspense in one sense, but killed it for any number of smaller, but more interesting, mysteries, and as the timelines began to converge and characters were discovering startling truths, Channer seemed to forget more than once that she had given a… Continue Reading →

So here’s the deal: The Complete Lockpick Pornography is actually two short novels, Lockpick Pornography and We All Got It Coming, which has been described as its “thematic sequel.” I picked it up at Indie Lit Night at the Starlight Lounge this past Tuesday, where Joey gave a hilarious reading, and we had a great chat. (We hate all the same people, and all the same sports-related cultural touchstones!) There are some great, whaddayacall, blurbs on the back of the book that cover a lot of what I’d like to say, but I’ll see what I can do to add to them. The unnamed narrator of Lockpick is a pretty intense guy. Like all of us, he’s got expectations about the world, about what he thinks it is and what it should be, but none of them match up to what it really is, in ways that are both good… Continue Reading →

This paper was researched and written over the course of almost a year, starting in May 2002 and ending in April 2003, under the direction of the amazing Dr. Sarah Tolmie, at the University of Waterloo. Many things have changed since then, and I would not come to all the same conclusions today. In particular, my understanding of feminism, and Byatt’s relationship to it, have both improved dramatically since writing this paper. I leave it as it stands, however, a) so as to not do disservice to who I was when I wrote it, and b) because rewriting it would be a crapload of work that I have no interest in doing. Section 1.0: Introduction In this essay I will explore the role of biographemes in A.S. Byatt’s novel The Biographer’s Tale. The novel is narrated by a frustrated graduate student, named Phineas G. Nanson, who gives up the study… Continue Reading →

This piece originally appeared in issue 83 of Canadian Notes & Queries under the title “Half In Love With Death.” Viktor Frankl, founder of the Viennese school of existential psychotherapy called “logotherapy,” wrote that happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation. There is just such an existential void at the core of Exit (Paradis, clef en main, 2009, ably translated by David Scott Hamilton), Nelly Arcan’s final novel. Antoinette Beauchamp, who narrates from her hospital bed—left paraplegic after a failed suicide attempt involving a guillotine—has spent her entire life unhappy, dominated by a… Continue Reading →

Full disclosure: I consider Rob a friend, though I by no means claim membership in the Circle, and Rob knows that I have enough respect for him to be unflinchingly honest in my assessment of this book—indeed, because I respect him, I could not behave otherwise. (Besides, he knows enough of my secrets to be dangerous…) As I said recently in my post on Nick Tosches’ Country, one of the great joys of good music writing is that you can enjoy it without necessarily being a fan of the subject matter. As Rob would be the first to tell you, if you were to draw a Venn diagram of our tastes, outside of the literary world there would be very little overlap. (The Grateful Dead, Rob? Really?) I can’t claim to be a Tramp, or even a particular fan of Bruce Springsteen, though I don’t dislike his music by any… Continue Reading →

One of the things I like about good music writing is, somewhat surprisingly, something it has in common with good sports writing: you don’t have to be a fan of the subject matter to enjoy it. For the most part, I don’t care for country music. I like Johnny Cash, two or three bluegrass acts, and a handful of early country performers who would just as easily be classified as “roots” or even blues musicians (Tosches takes a few not-very-convincing steps towards explaining this in Country, but the truth is that for a long time the only significant difference between country and blues was the race of the performer), but for the most part it’s not a genre I connect with. I did, however, get a lot of satisfaction out of reading Country. Country covers, or claims to cover, the darker, stranger bits of country music’s history, but given that… Continue Reading →

Appropriately titled, the common denominator across nearly all of the stories in Toronto-based author Derek Hayes’ first collection is a character who is so wrapped up in themselves, has internalized their neuroses to such a degree, that they have become unable to see the reality of their position in the world and the truth of their relationships to others. Many are merely oblivious (see Steven W. Beattie’s recent blog post on “Green Jerseys” for an excellent in-depth look at a particular example), while others have deeper issues. Anxiety is a constant companion to nearly all of Hayes’ characters. In “Maybe You Should Get Back There,” Max lives with his girlfriend Nadia, and Chris, an old friend from school, and can’t stop imagining that they are having, or want to have, an affair. He obsesses over the dynamics of their relationship, giving undue weight to casual conversations and comments, leading to… Continue Reading →