LAS VEGAS PATKANYAI

RATS OF LAS VEGAS now exists in Hungarian, in real & virtual/e-book form. i wish i could read Hungarian, but maybe that's the mysterious beauty of the translator's art...the author will never know exactly what the book means in the new language. honestly, sometimes i think the author is the last person to understand what the book means, even in the original language.

so the Hungarian edition is now out in the world, with a cover that makes me feel like a Raymond Chandler-era pulp fiction writer...a great honour, as Chandler is one of my literary heroes.

at first, the Hungarian publishers considered a cover that seems closer to the Canadian concept for the book. the back image on this proposal delights me--the car, the flamingo neck--

but in the end, the Hungarian editors went with a more visceral look. and i admit, if i ever get a tattoo, it will probably be the upside-down Ace of Spades at the bottom of the current cover.

dare your next mistake

i saw this at Mark Folse's blog Toulouse Street. some days, it's nice to know Ira's on your side... i also think this 'phase' happens every time I start a new project & i always need to fight my way through it.

"Toward the end of the book, Otto and Sophie, the central couple, go to stay in their holiday home. Sophie opens the door to the house, and is immediately reminded of a friend, an artist who used to visit them there; she thinks about him for a page or so. The reason she's thinking about him is that she's staring at something he loved, a vinegar bottle shaped like a bunch of grapes. The reason she's staring a the bottle is because it's in pieces. And the reason it's in pieces is because someone has broken in and trashed the place, a fact we only discover when Sophie has snapped out of her reverie. At this point, I realized with some regret that not only could I never write a literary novel, but I couldn't even be a character in a literary novel. I can only imagine myself, or any character I created, saying"Shit! Some bastard has trashed the house!" No rumination about artist friends--just a lot of cursing..." -Nick Hornby, in his collection of reviews & essays, THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE.

Initially, I'm distracted less by the house-break-in & more by the idea that any artist would love a bottle shaped like bunch of grapes. But probably I'm a snob about grape-shaped bottles.

I'm reading this book in my friend Mari-Lou's fantastic garden, over various meals while I'm in Saskatoon. I'm going back to doing book reviews, and Nick Horby's musings about books are just right--cool and slightly fizzy, like really nice not-too-strong ginger beer on a summer afternoon. So I'm hoping he gets me into the right headspace to write intelligent book reviews.

eating & reading Savannah

The sidewalk in Savannah, Georgia, shines with mother-of-pearl from the old oyster shells buried in the concrete. Forget streets paved with gold...i'll take oyster shells any day. Mostly to eat (because there is no better town for food in the whole USofA). But the streets are also wonderful for book-browsing, as i discovered when i stumbled upon the marvellous indie bookshop E. Shaver Booksellers, which nestles beneath the Spanish moss of a live oak.

I expected a shop dedicated to tourist books & innumerable editions of Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil (which kicked off the historical district's relentless walking tours). But Esther Shaver's bookshop is much much more, a real resource for readers and writers. See what i mean by checking out their current recommended reading list--the kind of bookshop where you can throw a dart & know you'll hit something interesting. (no, don't actually DO this or you'll stab the bookseller.)

After Shaver's, i walked around wondering what Midnight author John Berendt is working on these days. His follow-up to Midnight was a book about Venice, which didn't suit him so well as the lazy hot streets of Savannah. I tried to be positive when i reviewed his City of Falling Angels for The Globe & Mail in 2005: 'Berendt's charm as a raconteur suits the narrow Venetian streets, but some of his stories lead straight into a dead-end calle.'

Later, i read an even more cutting review by Jan Morris, travel writer & Venice expert extraordinaire. Reviews are hard...should you always be honest? Well, yes... But i still love Midnight in the Garden. And wandering around Savannah as a tourist, it's hard to imagine the city without Berendt's book.

ps. here's a full list of bookshops in Savannah, including Shaver's address

inspired Orlando

a big thank you to everyone who made the 'Don't Just Sit There' workshop happen in Orlando! i had a wonderful time talking writing with people today. such a gorgeous day, too...i felt honoured that people spent their beautiful Saturday cloistered in a room with me, discussing the writing life. it was especially interesting talking about WHERE we write best...and it's not always the most beautiful and comfortable chair in the house...

Writing mountains

i'm in Banff, at the fabulous Arts Centre here, working on a new manuscript. and lo & behold, today it snowed. quite a bit...in fact, it's still snowing just a little, and maybe it's because i'm originally from Montreal, but really, i find snow is very good for writing.

the view from my window...today:

...and the evening i arrived:

'Are you absolutely, positively, and wholeheartedly ready to publish your novel?'

a rather funny dark poster by Anna Hurley (brought to my attention by the good folks of the Afterword)...click on the image to see a larger, more readable version on her site.

note the poster goes on sale April 13 to benefit 826 National

really it was a gorgeous day today & all i wanted to do was take pretty pictures of spring flowers, because i didn't feel absolutely, positively, and wholeheartedly like doing anything at all literary whatsoever...

on literary analysis

or, how not to take advice, as seen by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. she wrote the following as part of a brief preface to her famous long work 'Poem Without a Hero':

I have even been advised to make it more clear.
I will refrain from doing this.
The poem does not have any third, seventh, or twenty-ninth meanings.

...i feel as if i can almost hear her distinct St. Petersburg accent, annoyed, saying this. i wonder what she would think, to find her lines as they appear in my copy of her collected work--which has so many notes for every poem, the book is 947 pages long.

carrying this tome around with me, i really wish some of the scholars had taken Akhmatova a little more literally.

Canada Also Reads live

just finished a live chat...which scared the bejesus out of me but actually was fun (kind of hard to stay nerve-wracked in my pyjamas)

i got to talk about CanLit with a great panel of people--Jocelyne Allen, Steven Beattie, Cathy Marie Buchanan, Tish Cohen, Terry Fallis, Stacey May Fowles, Jessica Grant, Mark Anthony Jarman, Andy Maize Jacob McArthur Mooney,John Mutford, Neil Smith, Zoe Whittall, & Steve Zipp, moderated by Mark Medley & Brad Frenette for the Canada Also Reads contest at the National Post. Apparently some of it will reappear in the paper, at some point...but meanwhile, check it out online at the Afterword.


we talked writing, marketing, locations, language...and small verus big presses. i was defending Jocelyne Allen's book YOU AND THE PIRATES from the excellent small press The Workhorsery. there's still time to vote for the book (go to the Afterword.)

read the Afterword's chat here

the Owl & the Sparrow

had a great time in Montreal the other weekend...my olde home town & all, even rolled out a Nuit Blanche, February edition, so i could celebrate being in Montreal by going to galleries all night long. okay, some people like dancing in nightclubs, and i like watching conceptual art videos at 2 in the morning. followed by hotdogs with coleslaw at the Montreal Pool Room. i only wish i'd had time to go out to the biosphere, to watch the night birds...including, i suppose, this preternaturally-glowing blue owl...

i got to do two very different readings while in Montreal--a Friday lunchtime reading at the venerable Atwater Library, accompanied by the very fun & cool sax player Dave Turner, and the second at the Pilot Reading Series, which takes place every month or so at the Sparrow, a bar which is now on my all-time favourite top ten bar list for the planet earth. this, based on three essential facts: it has excellent Quebec beer; it has a beautiful staircase that goes nowhere; and it is conveniently close to an all-night bagel bakery. it also has some of the most beautiful wallpaper i have ever seen, in a bar or elsewhere.

a big giddy bisou to all who made the readings happen...

writerly vengeance

after a week of fidgeting with computer stuff, i find this voice mail recording especially satisfying: Hunter S. Thompson is, ahem, unimpressed with some new technology.

hang in through his routine curses to the last 30 seconds...ahhhh, much dreamed-of writer revenge! (note--it looks like a video but it's simply an answering machine recording)



(thanks to Bookninja for a perfect way to start my Saturday)

rob mclennan's 12 or 20 questions

rob mclennan runs this excellent question series on his blog & i was so pleased to be invited. my favourite question was #5...

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Essential part of the process—you can immediately see what’s going over, what’s not. Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? Readings are wonderful—a way to connect to readers, to hear what they think, listen to other people’s stories. I love doing readings, even though they make me so nervous I can barely remember what I’ve said.

which reminds me...must decide what to read from RATS OF LAS VEGAS tomorrow night in Ottawa.

Summertime and the livin' is...

Burgundy sun coming up on another gorgeous day with no internet & no telephone. just good company, a quiet writing room, and a lovely garden. aaahh...bliss.

the perfect how-to book promotion...

ouch, how true...especially the moment around 2.30 minutes.



oh yes, livin' the dream.

e-publishing

Sarah Sheard makes really interesting points about publishing, Kindle, and all that digital jazz in her article Brave new e-world in this past Saturday's Globe & Mail

on editors, again

oh, the terrible woes of cutting work down to fit...CBC's "As It Happens" played the audio of this Rowan Atkinson & Hugh Laurie sketch, in honour of Shakespeare's 445th birthday ("Shakey" was baptised on April 26th, 1564.)

fire for breakfast

another thing i love about Dawson: i wandered a few blocks over to filmmaker Lulu Keating's house this morning. a slew of people were sitting over breakfast, and within minutes i found myself with a cup of cloudberry tea, a toasted bagel, and a dog beside me, wanting to be petted (or maybe wanting my bagel, but she's a well-behaved mutt). conversation was fascinating--one of the women at breakfast used to work as a fire tower observer. made me think of Kerouac's Desolation Angels (which always incongruously reminds me of an apartment i had in Paris, next-door to where Picasso painted Guernica. art, around and around...)

(image from Flikr by Leesh)

sang-froid & copyediting

the inimitable Raymond Chandler:

By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.

In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Hiney, Tom; Frank MacShane (2000). The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. p. 77

the word in Paris

French writer Daniel Pennac is currently reading Herman Melville's Bartleby, nightly, on a little side-street not far from the Paris Opera. it's billed as a theatre piece, and it sort of is--the audience sits in the theatre, Pennac is on stage, he is beautifully lit, there is a backdrop of sorts (an elegantly evocative sail-cloth, hung from the wings). but really, Pennac simply reads the story to us.

story-telling isn't exactly trendy, but when it's well-done, a sold-out theatre of people hang on every word. i think Melville would be contented by Pennac's rendition of his story, assuming he could understand the French. the translation is elegant and sparse and forced me to focus on the story, the choice of words.

these photos are from last week's flash mob. it's rare in Paris to have a gathering that isn't patrolled by the rather frightening security police, but this event, organized largely through blogs & cellphones, swam under the police radar.


at noon exactly on February 18th, people gathered to read aloud for 5 minutes at Place St-Michel--a traditional mob gathering place, not far from the medieval origins of the Sorbonne. the flash-mob was organzied as a protest against cuts to funding for arts education. we need a similar protest in Canada...

first, imagine a great crowd of people, each of them holding a book. a whistle blows, and for five minutes, each of these people becomes deeply immersed in that book, reading aloud. imagine the muttering, declaiming, murmuring sound...

Las Vegas, 1951

see those military men in the lower part of this picture? they were standing 6 miles from the atomic epicenter of the "Dog shot" of the 1951 Buster Jangle bomb test in Nevada...which was less than 100 miles from the city of Las Vegas.

i've been watching some completely crazy film shorts made during these Nevada atomic tests. the US army posted hundreds of soldiers to Nevada's Camp Desert Rock during this period; during tests, soldiers were told to leap from their foxholes and run TOWARDS the bomb.

mostly what happened (according to the documentary film footage) is they struggled against the dust and wind and the birds falling out of the sky. when they finally got out of their foxholes, they walked, looking a little dubious, towards the bomb site. afterwards, the army dusted them off with brooms. no joke.

(yes, that's Vegas Vic, with a 1950's atomic cloud in the background. no, it's not photoshopped.)

why am i studying all this? because i'm working on the final draft of a novel, Rats of Las Vegas; the storyline finishes in 1951, during these tests, and i want to get it right. because a person just can't make this shit up.