Woke up this morning to the wonderful news that my short story "Snoop" has been accepted for publication in the March issue of the online literary journal Pithead Chapel, published out of Michigan. This marks my first acceptance from a journal in the United States, which I'm very excited about. I'm looking forward to seeing this piece out in the world, and I'll make sure to let you all know when it's online.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Another update on the Cohabitational Reading Challenge
So RR and I have pushed through to part 3 of Martin Amis' The Information and we're on the home stretch in our Cohabitational Reading Challenge. We had a discussion about it tonight over dinner and we're agreed that, on a sentence-by-sentence basis, the book is a work of genius. We're still waiting to see if Amis is able to pull it all together at the end, to make the complex cosmogony he's established for his characters to fit together; but I must admit that at this point, I've been enjoying myself so much that I don't care how it ends.
To recap thus far: Richard Tull is a failed, shambolic novelist and book reviewer who has published two obscure novels and has written three more that have failed to find a publisher. Meanwhile, his oldest and most obnoxious friend, Gywn Barry, has found success writing bestsellers of questionable merit, and this has driven Richard into a paroxysm of jealousy and self loathing. The first half of the book shows Richard devising various schemes to ruin Gywn's career, but nothing seems to work and Richard begins to mull upon the complex absurdity and unfairness of the universe.
By the time we reach part 3, Richard has finally found a publisher for his latest opus, entitled (ironically enough) Untitled: it gets picked up by a very small boutique publisher in the United States with no budget to even provide him with an advance. This coincides with Richard landing a job following Gywn around America on his latest book tour in order to write a lengthy feature article about him. This is, not surprisingly, a crushing humiliation for our poor protagonist, and Amis revels in showing just how different the receptions are for these two authors' books. There are wonderful descriptions of flying coach versus first class, of hotels, and of how the two authors are treated by interviewers and the general public.
Throughout, what we find is a treatise on professional avarice and a hilarious (and strangely touching) portrait of the Failed Male of the late 20th century. Amis has mastered an incredible narrative voice for this book, an almost amorphous "I" that watches Richard from a distance and yet can capture him so perfectly, gain access to his every thought so readily. Couple that with an enduring fascination of cosmogony as a way of grasping the midlife crisis, and what you've got is a book about squandered potential and revenge that gets out of control.
I'm definitely looking forward to finishing the book off and seeing if the ending will hold up, so stay tuned for one final post. And of course keep following along on RR's blog as she shares her own thoughts on this book.
M.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Published: My essay on The Tower of Babble, by Richard Stursberg, in CNQ 86
I was very pleased to come home last night to find the latest issue of Canadian Notes & Queries (CNQ) waiting for me in my mailbox. This issue contains a lengthy essay I wrote reviewing Richard Stursberg's memoir The Tower Of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes inside the CBC. While my essay is a thorough critique of Stursburg's text, it is also a cri de coeur for public broadcasting in general, a subject I am (usually quietly) passionate about.
For those of you who don't know, Stursberg was the head of English programming at CBC from 2004 to 2010 and ushered in the network's current era of populism. His memoir recounts his tumultuous years at the Ceeb and his struggle to turn our public broadcaster--which has a long, proud history and has contributed immeasurably to our sense of what it means to be Canadian--into a more business-friendly, ratings-oriented organization. I had read an article about this book in the Globe & Mail last spring and knew I wanted to write an expansive, wide-reaching examination of the Stursberg regime at CBC. Thankfully, CNQ's editor was more than happy to accommodate me.
No surprise, issue #86 also comes packed with lots of other great stuff. This issue's theme appears to be 'libraries' (another public institution worth writing about), with feature articles by Nicole Dixon, Nigel Beale, and Jeet Heer, among others. There's also some fiction by Caroline Adderson, poetry by Evan Jones, and lots of other great stuff I'm looking forward to tucking into. So visit your better literary newsstands (or library!) to check it out.
For those of you who don't know, Stursberg was the head of English programming at CBC from 2004 to 2010 and ushered in the network's current era of populism. His memoir recounts his tumultuous years at the Ceeb and his struggle to turn our public broadcaster--which has a long, proud history and has contributed immeasurably to our sense of what it means to be Canadian--into a more business-friendly, ratings-oriented organization. I had read an article about this book in the Globe & Mail last spring and knew I wanted to write an expansive, wide-reaching examination of the Stursberg regime at CBC. Thankfully, CNQ's editor was more than happy to accommodate me.
No surprise, issue #86 also comes packed with lots of other great stuff. This issue's theme appears to be 'libraries' (another public institution worth writing about), with feature articles by Nicole Dixon, Nigel Beale, and Jeet Heer, among others. There's also some fiction by Caroline Adderson, poetry by Evan Jones, and lots of other great stuff I'm looking forward to tucking into. So visit your better literary newsstands (or library!) to check it out.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Update on the 2013 Co-habitational Reading Challenge
So I finished part one of Martin Amis' The Information, the book RR and I chose for this year's Co-habitational Reading Challenge, so I thought this would be a good time to provide an update on how it's going. In a word: amazingly. We kicked things off on the weekend, with me reading aloud the opening scene (with that iconic first sentence, "Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing") and then reading together, silently--she on the couch and me in my reclining wingback. When one of us chortled, the other asked to have the line read aloud. Often, we were on the same paragraph anyway, and this made for a joyous and endearing literary experience.
Seeing how it has been nearly 15 years since I've read this novel, there were lots of things I had forgotten about it. Like how madly, compulsively readable it is. The Information achieves the summit of page turner despite its fragmented narration, loathsome protagonist, 10-dollar vocabulary and risky subject matter. It's about a failed novelist told from the perspective of amorphous "I." It has an elevated diction and is very conscious of its own cliches. And yet it works. Thus far, it all works.
Rereading The Information has reminded me of a great paradox about Martin Amis: while his style is one of the most inimitable in the business, he continues to breed a class of imitators. I sadly have been guilty of this: many of the stories I wrote as a younger man tried to mimic his approach to prose, and of course they all failed. Rereading this novel has helped me to accept that there can be only one Martin Amis--and really, that's for the best. I wouldn't want 10,000 men trying to write like him. We would all be lesser for it.
Of course, the real joy of this reading challenge is to partake in it with RR. She'll be putting up her own posts about it soon, but I can say that I've really enjoying hearing her insights across the couch and at the dinner table. And as I suspected, it's made me closer to her just as much as it has made me closer to the book itself.
Stay tuned for more updates. They'll be coming soon.
M.
Seeing how it has been nearly 15 years since I've read this novel, there were lots of things I had forgotten about it. Like how madly, compulsively readable it is. The Information achieves the summit of page turner despite its fragmented narration, loathsome protagonist, 10-dollar vocabulary and risky subject matter. It's about a failed novelist told from the perspective of amorphous "I." It has an elevated diction and is very conscious of its own cliches. And yet it works. Thus far, it all works.
Rereading The Information has reminded me of a great paradox about Martin Amis: while his style is one of the most inimitable in the business, he continues to breed a class of imitators. I sadly have been guilty of this: many of the stories I wrote as a younger man tried to mimic his approach to prose, and of course they all failed. Rereading this novel has helped me to accept that there can be only one Martin Amis--and really, that's for the best. I wouldn't want 10,000 men trying to write like him. We would all be lesser for it.
Of course, the real joy of this reading challenge is to partake in it with RR. She'll be putting up her own posts about it soon, but I can say that I've really enjoying hearing her insights across the couch and at the dinner table. And as I suspected, it's made me closer to her just as much as it has made me closer to the book itself.
Stay tuned for more updates. They'll be coming soon.
M.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Recording of me reading from Off Book now on YouTube
Neat - the 49th Shelf has posted to YouTube a recording I did for them about a year and a half ago from Off Book. (It was from this feature article that they did of RR and me shortly after we moved in together.) Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!
Thursday, January 3, 2013
My Q&Q review of The Lava in My Bones by Barry Webster ...
is now online on the Quill & Quire website. I was really glad to see that my review of this novel got such a prominent spot in Q&Q's December issue. While Webster's was by no means a perfect book (whose is?), I did feel it deserved a more flattering reception than it got in some other reviews. The Lava in My Bones impressed me on a number of levels, and there's so much zeal and joy packed into every paragraph. Definitely a book worth checking out.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
The Co-habitational Reading Challenge - 2013 Kickoff
Ah, is there anything more romantic than two lovebirds reading the same book at the same time? Probably, but RR and I have decided to do it again anyway. Yes indeed, we're rekindling our Co-habitational Reading Challenge, where we choose one book (two copies, natch), read it simultaneously, and write about it on our respective blogs.
As you may recall, our choice for the first time we did this, back in 2011, was John Iriving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, a book that we both read when we were younger and thus had an extra copy kicking around after we moved in together. This year we've picked a novel that we don't have two copies of, but RR has generously offered to acquire hers from our public library. We have both read this novel before, years ago, and are looking forward to tucking into it again to see if it's as good as we remember.
And so, without further ado, I'm pleased to announce that the novel we've chosen is The Information, by Martin Amis. This book was published in 1995 to much fanfare that, sadly, had little to do with the actual writing - something about dental surgery, a scorned literary agent, and an obscenely large advance for literary fiction, even for the nineties.
I remember exactly where I was when I first stumbled upon this tome. Picture it: Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1998 - a young recent journalism school graduate is trolling the shelves of the city's fabled Trident Booksellers and Cafe, the air pungent with freshly ground coffee beans and snobbery. There, he purchases a weighty hardcover and takes it back to his lonely one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the harbour. This book blows his little (but growing!) mind with its linguistic dexterity and impressive vocabulary, its humour and cutting-edge social satire. He becomes a Martin Amis fan overnight.
Actually, with the exception of its brilliant opening pages, there are very few specifics I remember about The Information. I know that it is a fantastic examination of avarice (is it just me, or does Amis explore at least one of the seven deadly sins in each novel?) and a wonderful send-up of our misconceptions about the literary life, but other than that I'll be coming back at this book with an open mind. Needless to say, I'm also anxious to read my wife's opinions upon rereading it.
And yes, we absolutely want all of you to play along if you can. Like last time, you and your life partner can either choose to read this book along with us or you and your life partner can choose to read another book together. Either way, make sure to come back here and share your thoughts with us - either with comments below or links pointing back to your own blog. Trust me, this is a lot of fun and a great way to learn even more about someone you already know pretty well.
Stay tuned for further updates as we work our way through this tome over the next couple of weeks.
M.
As you may recall, our choice for the first time we did this, back in 2011, was John Iriving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, a book that we both read when we were younger and thus had an extra copy kicking around after we moved in together. This year we've picked a novel that we don't have two copies of, but RR has generously offered to acquire hers from our public library. We have both read this novel before, years ago, and are looking forward to tucking into it again to see if it's as good as we remember.
And so, without further ado, I'm pleased to announce that the novel we've chosen is The Information, by Martin Amis. This book was published in 1995 to much fanfare that, sadly, had little to do with the actual writing - something about dental surgery, a scorned literary agent, and an obscenely large advance for literary fiction, even for the nineties.
I remember exactly where I was when I first stumbled upon this tome. Picture it: Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1998 - a young recent journalism school graduate is trolling the shelves of the city's fabled Trident Booksellers and Cafe, the air pungent with freshly ground coffee beans and snobbery. There, he purchases a weighty hardcover and takes it back to his lonely one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the harbour. This book blows his little (but growing!) mind with its linguistic dexterity and impressive vocabulary, its humour and cutting-edge social satire. He becomes a Martin Amis fan overnight.
Actually, with the exception of its brilliant opening pages, there are very few specifics I remember about The Information. I know that it is a fantastic examination of avarice (is it just me, or does Amis explore at least one of the seven deadly sins in each novel?) and a wonderful send-up of our misconceptions about the literary life, but other than that I'll be coming back at this book with an open mind. Needless to say, I'm also anxious to read my wife's opinions upon rereading it.
And yes, we absolutely want all of you to play along if you can. Like last time, you and your life partner can either choose to read this book along with us or you and your life partner can choose to read another book together. Either way, make sure to come back here and share your thoughts with us - either with comments below or links pointing back to your own blog. Trust me, this is a lot of fun and a great way to learn even more about someone you already know pretty well.
Stay tuned for further updates as we work our way through this tome over the next couple of weeks.
M.
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