a moment in Calgary

drove into Calgary for an excellent meeting with my editor extraordinaire, Rose Scollard, at Frontenac House, and wrapped up the day over BBQ, discussing the new Poet Laureate position that the City of Calgary has created.

how interesting: while Toronto's mayor is attacking libraries & literary culture, good ole' redneck Cowtown is funding a new literary position with pride.

The Mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi, says "I think that these things actually really do matter...It helps us think of better ways to tell our story. And telling our story has value in and of itself." A very articulate retort to the Fords' recent blathering.

am looking forward to hearing who becomes Calgary's official poet--the city has a surfeit of excellent contenders.

"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.

the medium, the message, the McLuhan

100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan's birth. the man who essentially invented the field of Communications grew up in Winnipeg. today i went by & photographed his very nice childhood home with my cellphone--seems a most appropriate anniversary nod to the man who said:

"When you are on the phone or on the air, you have no body." - Marshall McLuhan

Which makes us all the more disembodied today.

To tell you the truth... (the writer's equivalent of stage fright)

"To tell you the truth, though, I still haven't made up my mind whether I shall publish [Utopia] at all. Tastes differ so widely, and some people are so humourless, so uncharitable, and so absurdly wrong-headed, that one would probably do far better to relax and enjoy life than worry oneself to death trying to instruct or entertain a public which will only despise one's efforts, or at least feel no gratitude for them."

wrote Sir Thomas More in 1515 (translated by Paul Turner & quoted by Fay Weldon in her novel, Letters to Alice.)

Richler gazebo

SO impressed with Florence Richler's comments about the gazebo in Parc Mont Royal which is to be spruced up & dedicated to her late husband, Montreal's best-beloved literary curmudgeon, Mordecai Richler.

"Were the graffiti to be left, I think somehow that would have delighted Mordecai because...it would be critical and that was his nature." - Florence Richler

true, his critical nature didn't make this founder of the "Impure Wool Society" particularly popular with Quebec's powers-that-be. and some other powers-that-be feel the gazebo is simply too small a gesture for such an important writer. but i like the idea.

as soon as i'm back in Montreal, i'm taking myself over there with a small appropriate bottle & a copy of Solomon Gursky Was Here (my fave of his novels). the gazebo makes such a toast feasible...if they named a street after Richler, one would get run over.

Strangers in Paris

am so pleased to be part of a new Paris anthology, edited by Megan Fernandes & the illustrious, frequently top-hatted David Barnes.

Strangers in Paris is a museum of experience and objects that is anything but iconic; the collection establishes a new hunt for language worthy of a changing city. It is possible to find Paris in these pages, but it is just as possible to find everything else.

Launches have been happening in Canada & Paris & New York, and i've somehow managed to be in the wrong city at the wrong time to miss each & every one of them so far...but hey, it's amazing technology, this book thing, possible to experience even if one misses the launch.

in the official blurb about the anthology, Tightrope says: The stunning variety of writing in this volume addresses the city of Paris in all its complexity, while challenging the mythology of expatriate Parisian literature. The anthology contains entries as diverse and disparate as an excerpt from John Berger’s novel, Here is Where We Meet; Suzanne Allen’s ekphrastic poetry, a tongue-in-cheek take on the nineteenth-century novel by Helen Cusack O’Keeffe; Canadian writer Lisa Pasold’s story of a forced extended stay in Paris; and an interview with the celebrated American poet Alice Notley.

i'm so pleased to be part of the book...and i'm particularly sorry i missed the KGB event, as it was one of my favourite literary booze locations when i lived in New York back in the dark ages (ie. the Giuliani years). i wonder if KGB (above) still has the series of Stalin's official photographs--where Stalin's colleagues were mysteriously air-brushed out over the years, very creepily.

order info for the book here...or find it at Shakespeare & Co in Paris.

Montreal street corner

standing at the corner of Saint-Laurent & Laurier, i notice this plaque by Gilbert Boyer. i've only walked past this corner a thousand or so times since this was installed in 1988, to notice it for the first time on this appropriately hot lazy Montreal day. perhaps i've just never before waited for the light to change...

this corner is part of a larger project--the whole layout of the art piece is here, but i'm going to keep Boyer's words in reserve, to stumble across serendipitously when the weather's just right.

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