The Thomas Morton Prize

Hey writers: The deadline for The Puritan's Thomas Morton Prize for Literary Excellence is looming. To mark the occasion, the journal asked if I'd write up a little something for its blog, the Town Crier, about winning the poetry category last year. Check my piece out here: http://town-crier.ca/author-notes/the-thomas-morton-prize/.

The Puritan has also extended the deadline for this year's contest to October 10, so get those submissions in. I know I will!

M. 

My Q&Q review of Extraordinary, by David Gilmour ...

 ... is now online at the Quill & Quire website. Gilmour's new novel found its way onto the Giller longlist last week, which I think speaks volumes about how much sway his reputation continues to have over tastemakers here in Canada. I was a bit surprised myself, since I felt the contrivance at the heart of this book (about a woman who narrates her life story to a half-brother she hardly knows on the night she's asked him to help her commit suicide) was a bit of a stretch, as was the nature of the head injury that have led to her being disabled. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if Extraordinary makes it to the next round when the shortlist is announced next month.

And for those who are interested, I also reviewed Gilmour's 2011 book The Perfect Order of Things here on the blog.

Review: Day of the Oprichnik, by Vladimir Sorokin

I’ve always suspected that Russian is an aphoristic language. I don’t know what is it about sloganeering, maxim-making, and other lapidary bon mots that speak to Russia’s national mentality, but I see it all over that country’s literature. My long-held suspicions have once again been confirmed, this time by Jamey Gambrell’s translation of Vladimir Sorokin’s infamous dystopian romp, Day of the Oprichnik. With lines that echo back to Bulgokov (oh, that great zinger about burning manuscripts) and Dostoyevsky, Sorokin’s novel is very much aware of the traditions in which it is ensconced.

The year is 2028 and the setting is Moscow. Russia has morphed into a devilish hybrid of monarchy, hyper-capitalism and brutal totalitarian state. The men in charge of keeping order and crushing sedition are called the Oprichniks. At the height of their vicious acts, these men will yell out phrases like “Work and Word!” and “Hail Hail Hail!” They murder, rape and destroy—all in the service of His Majesty, looking to breed absolute obedience and loyalty from the Russian population. Our protagonist, the hard-drinking Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, is at once brainwashed by the Oprichnik fraternity and capable of glimpsing the world that exists beyond, the consequences of  violence and unwavering order. His is not a story of slowly revealed revelation—a la Fahrenheit 451 or Nineteen Eighty Four. It is rather his own distanced description of a world that he knows on some level is immoral and yet cannot control or find a way out of.

This all sounds promising, but unfortunately Day of the Oprichnik just doesn’t hold together. Sorokin—perhaps in the interest of appearing original—relies too heavily on elision: we never get a sense of the broader machinations of the society he creates or how Russia arrived in the state that it’s in. Komiaga’s inner world comes off as rather hollow. He doesn’t really change or evolve over the course of the novel, doesn’t ever build upon his sense of the magnitude of his actions or the role he plays in this horrific society.

In the end, Day of the Oprichnik feels somewhat half-assed and derivative. It’s sort of a cross between A Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies, only without the heart or the moral background. This is a highly touted novel, but probably worth skipping.

Sad Peninsula update: novel and author added to Dundurn site

I was pleased to discover earlier today that my forthcoming novel, Sad Peninsula, now has an ISBN number and has been added to Dundurn Press's website. You can check out the book's listing here and my author page here. As you may notice, the release date is still an entire year away (almost to the day!) but it's still nice to see things moving along. More updates to follow as they unfold over the coming weeks and months.

M.

Review: We Others – New and Selected Stories, by Steven Millhauser

Steven Millhauser does something curious with this, his 2011 collection of new and selected short stories: he puts the newest pieces first. Perhaps this is a nod to his still-growing stature within the firmament of American fiction, a way of bypassing the presumption of familiarity. Despite having published numerous books since his debut in the early 1970s, getting his later stories regularly printed in The New Yorker and Harper’s, and winning a Pulitzer Prize, there are still many readers—extremely well-read readers—who have no idea who he is.

We Others aims to alleviate this by providing a deep dive into Millhauser’s oeuvre. The book, which clocks in at nearly 400 pages, is nothing if not thorough in its exploration of the author’s themes and preoccupations. Clear patterns emerge, story after story: tales about the disruption of normality, the lure and tyranny of progress, the odious effects of commerce on creativity. The pieces show a range of versatility, moving from a realist mode to an almost surrealist one, displaying an adeptness at traditional allegory as well as the ability to subvert narrative convention.

The collection opens with “The Slap,” a piece about an ordinary bedroom community to a large metropolis that becomes terrorized by a shadowy figure who goes around slapping people at random. This was actually one of my favourite pieces in the book. Despite being a rather obvious allegory for senseless 911-style terrorism, “The Slap” possesses a off-kilter compulsion that keeps the pages turning. I not only wanted to know how the story would end, but also how far Millhauser could stretch his parable without breaking it.

One of Millhauser’s great talents is his ability to marry the strange and the tender in a single story. Examples of this from the selection of newer pieces include “Tales of Darkness and the Unknown, Vol. XIV: The White Glove” and the title story “We Others.” In the former piece, we see a touching relationship between a teenage boy and girl disrupted when the girl develops a mysterious illness that requires her to wear a white glove on her hand. In the latter, we bear witness to a devastating love triangle between two women and a ghost. In each case, Millhauser is able to infuse his story with a great gentleness even as he undermines our sense of reality.

There are numerous standouts from the selection of older pieces as well. The novella “August Eschenburg” is an expansive and gripping tale about a young boy living in the 19th century who is a wizard at building automatons, and how  competition, commerce, and changes in public taste affect his chosen art form. This is Millhauser at his realist best. By contrast, “The Eighth Voyages of Sinbad” is a sort of postmodern metafiction—as much about the history of the story of that famous sailor as it is about the sailor himself. Yet Millhauser is equally strong in this mode, showing his ability to stray from narrative’s beaten track when he wants to.

There are, inevitably, a few missteps that pepper We Others. “A Visit”, for example, is the story of a man who goes to visit an old acquaintance he hasn’t seen in nine years, only to discover the man is living in a “remote upstate town” and married to a frog. The story never really does much in the way of building a plausible world for these characters to inhabit, and thus falls flat. Similarly, “Flying Carpets” is a magical story that doesn’t really do much with its magic. The writing is strong and lyrical, but it just doesn’t engage enough with its own premise. Consequently, this story—like a few others—starts to drag, and thus makes the collection as a whole more daunting than it should be.

Millhauser has many tools in his writerly toolbox, and this anthology gives the reader and excellent taste of what he is capable of. Whether We Others will bring him a wider audience remains to be seen, but this book is definitely worth slogging through: there are many gems and only a few dull stones.

Reprinting of my poem "The Papier Mache Milton Acorn"

Just wanted to let y'all know that my poem "The Papier Mache Milton Acorn", originally published in a Halifax literary journal back in 2010 and included in my as-yet unpublished poetry manuscript, has been reprinted on this Acorn tribute blog. Many thanks to editor Chris Faiers for taking such an interest in it.

My Q&Q review of The Hundred Hearts by William Kowalski ...

is now up on the Quill and Quire website. Kowalski's novel is fiercely entertaining and definitely worth checking out.

Also: I know it has been quiet here on the blog but that's because I've been on vacation for the last two weeks and am only now just back. RR and I drove out to the Maritimes to visit my family and spent quite a bit of time touring around the region--including spending our anniversary on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton. I also took her to the closest thing I have to an ancestral village, a place called L'Ardoise (located on Cape Breton's southern coast), and we spent a pleasant evening there with some relatives of mine. Anyway, I'm back in Toronto now and looking forward to a busy fall.

M.