The Canterbury Trail Mountains

The Canterbury Trail Mountains, originally uploaded by The River Thief.

Since the WiFi at the Fernie Alpine Resort is rather spotty (at least for me and my iPod it is), I wasn’t able to live tweet the panel session of the Fernie Writers’ Conference I attended this afternoon and thought I’d blog about it instead.

Because there’s another event this evening and I have an assignment due tomorrow morning at 11AM, this is going to be a quick and dirty blog post, with hyperlinks added later.

Panel topic was, Can Creative Writing Be Taught? Panel consisted of Alison Calder (AC), Aritha Van Herk (AVH), and Andreas Schroeder (AS), with Peter Oliva (PO) moderating.

PO began the session by quoting Michael Ondaatje, who apparently once said that he’d heard a writer’s research was like panniers. He didn’t know what a pannier was, so looked it up and learned it was either containers in which you could put things or the framework that held up a Victorian woman’s dress. But by the time he’d learned this he was at least a third of the way through writing The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and it didn’t really matter much.

PO posed the first question to the panel: are creative writing programs and workshops therefore designed to create the framework for the pannier contents.

Marina Endicott piped up, ‘What about the student with nothing in their panniers – or, alternatively – with bloated panniers?’

AC said to some extent creative writing programs involve a redistribution of the wealth of the pannier contents, involving a certain amount of trading. (This immediately put me in mind of the quilter’s stash and the trading of not only small quantities of fabric but of the peer learning process that goes on when you quilt with others – the solutions proffered by other quilters are often both far more creative and far more practical than anything you’ve been able to come up with yourself. You’ll see a minor panel theme is textile-based.)

AVH said Michael Ondaatje can use anything and make it work, but that the gathering process teaches you both constraint and restraint.

PO then asked whether the panel had any teaching creative writing horror stories and told one himself. He’d had a student in his class whose work was very promising and he encouraged him to pursue a career as a writer. He subsequently discovered his student was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who could play the most musical instruments – 115 in all. He was horrified to learn that to fund his writing career his student had begun selling off his instruments, saying he was tired of playing in smoky bars anyway. This happened just as smoking bans in bars started to go into effect. We didn’t learn whether the student became anywhere near as successful as a writer as he had been a musician.

AS told the story of a female student who – like those people who have as many surgeries as possible (I couldn’t help but think of Elizabeth Taylor) – had workshopped the same manuscript for more than 20 years, attending workshops and classes with some of Canada’s most distinguished writers. It was in great shape after 20 years of editing, but when he had the presumption to make a suggestion about how it could be improved, she said, ‘Well! Mordecai Richler didn’t say that was necessary.’

AVH said she’d a female student who submitted three 500-page manuscripts, which she diligently read and commented on, providing feedback on all three. ‘Huh,’ replied the student, ‘that’s what last year’s writer-in-residence said too.’ But of course she hadn’t made a single change to any of her submissions in the intervening year.

Dave Margoshes began the audience participation portion, saying that you don’t teach talent or imagination in a creative writing course, but you do teach craft and an appreciation of the revision process. While Jack Kerouac talked disdainfully of rejecting everything that smacked of being ‘crafty or revised’ he was really talking about the contrived.

PO said you don’t hear about Kerouac’s notebooks, and implied that the notion that his final published was written as a single long stream-of-consciousness teletype was a myth and that there was a process, which undoubtedly involved rereading, selection and editing, whether self-editing or by an actual editor prior to publication.

AS said he doesn’t believe in one-draft wonders, and that they’re the exception, not the rule.

Marina Endicott talked about private tutors and learning from reading, which isn’t a part of creative writing course work. She also said that actors don’t expect to be successful based solely on their talent or skill without undergoing training, and asked why anyone would think it would – or should – be different for writers.

AS said there’s a notion that taking a creative writing degree program or workshop has, to some extent, the same taint as athletes on steroids, but in fact plays are usually written then workshopped, making them collaborative endeavours involving feedback from directors, producers, and actors. He also talked about the story that circulated about Jerzy Kozinski’s first novel, The Painted Bird: some say Max Perkins’ (Kozinski’s editor) contributed 95 per cent of that novel with his extensive rewrites of what amounted to a first draft.

AC said all writing is essentially a collaborative process involving friends, family, first readers, and editors.

AVH said even though some people can stand on their toes they don’t become ballerinas without training, training, training, and more training. Creative writing programs teach ways of using language, and, more important, teach people to get out of their comfort zones so they can make use of ‘all the muscles we use when writing – not just one’s biceps.’

She then asked if there was a book in all of us.

AC said, there may be a story in all of us, but not necessarily a book. Let’s face it – some people are boring.

PO told the story of Margaret Atwood on a cruise ship. She encountered a doctor who told her he was thinking of becoming a writer. Yes, she said, I’m thinking of becoming a brain surgeon myself. Angie Abdou suggested this story was somewhat apocryphal and that she’d heard the writer was Margaret Laurence. Someone else said they’d once been asked, ‘So are all Canadian authors named Margaret?’

AC said that in order to get out of her own comfort zone and get away from the well-worn paths she usually travels as a poet, she’d started working collaboratively. This forces her to – if she finds herself writing about elephants yet again – ask herself the question, ‘would this work better if it was about a turtle rather than an elephant?’

AVH said you have, as a writer, to look for what will discomfit you most.

AS said that while creative writing programs aren’t therapy sessions, they can indeed force people out of their comfort zones (the implication being that this a good thing in terms of creativity).

AC said that it was always a good idea to work outside your genre and try something new – if you’re a poet, take a prose workshop; if you write non-fiction, try taking a poetry course.

AS said in UBC’s MFA creative writing program you have to take classes/workshops in a minimum of three different genres.

PO talked about the vast increase in the number of MA programs in creative writing that currently exist.

AVH said this was especially true in the US, where the number of creative writing programs - many of them online - has increased from about 300 to 1200 in the last 30 years or so. Of course, she said, a fair bit of this amounts to nothing more than ‘tuition harvesting’ on the part of post-secondary institutions. (I found this a refreshing cynical admission.)

Angie Abdou asked a question of her own, followed by another posed to her on Twitter. Angie’s question was, ‘If you’re thinking of taking a creative writing program, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give a potential student?’ And then passed on the question from Twitter, which was, ‘why are students being pushed into MFA programs in creative writing – which primarily teach you how to teach, when there are no jobs available teaching creative writing, rather than MA programs which would teach you how to write?’

AVH said you need to look closely at every program and think about what your goals are. It isn’t easy to get the information you need, but you need to look long and hard at the faculty, and not just who’s listed on the masthead, since they may well not be doing any of the teaching. She cited the example of an author named Malcolm who’s listed as being one of the instructors in a UK creative writing degree program – and he’s basically window dressing. Marina Endicott knew who she was talking about but we’ll have to fill in the blanks re the writer’s last name (and that of the university) when we remember who it is (if you know, please let me know via a comment – it might save one of us waking up at 3AM shouting the guy’s name).

AS said the lack of positions available for teachers of creative writing was directly related to lifting age of retirement requirements for profs, and that Baby Boomers can now continue to work till they’re 90 at universities. The point of the UBC program is to prepare students for a career as a writer, not to prepare people to teach creative writing. And UBC’s program is unique among creative writing programs in Canada in that there are no course work requirements, it’s all workshops. He also said that UBC used to hire on CVs only, but that degrees held have assumed greater importance and that a recent dean wanted everyone teaching in the creative writing to have PhDs. There’s been a temporary reprieve on this issue, but degree requirements to teach creative writing continue to edge up and an MFA is the rock-bottom requirement.

He also said fact finding was a difficult process and that the one thing every student contemplating taking a creative writing degree program should avoid was a program where the teachers were intent on creating disciples.

AC said she’d finally remembered a student horror story. She said every year, when she asks if there are any questions, someone will ask ‘how do I get an agent?’ As a poet, she says, she wouldn’t have the faintest idea. And that as a beginning writer, this is putting the cart before the horse (ok I’m editorializing a bit there, she didn’t actually say that, but it’s what she meant). ‘You don’t need an agent,’ she said, ‘you need to learn how to write!’

AVH said creative writing programs always focus on working on craft, never on the business aspects of a writing career. (From my perspective as someone who tries to help authors market their work, and that of many agents, publishers, and booksellers, I’m betting this is something we’d like to see addressed in creative writing programs taken by adults, but never mind….)

PO quoted Roberto Bolano, who said, ‘short story writers should be brave’ and Mark Twain, who said, ‘a tale should accomplish something and arrive somewhere.’

AVH said her one rule in her creative writing classes is, ‘no guns, no killing – let your characters live’ – you don’t just to get them kill them off by shooting them or having them killed by a bus when stepping off a curve.

A workshop participant asked what was the one thing students should bring to a creative writing program.

AVH said her favourite students are those who know how to celebrate the local, and said Andrew Wedderburn had been in her class. One of the other students told Andrew he couldn’t write a book set in and about Airdrie, AB, ‘because no one’s ever heard of Airdrie.’ His novel The Milk Chicken Mom is now being published. And it’s set in Airdrie. (Obviously no one said this to Dianne Warren before she wrote Cool Water, or Angie Abdou before writing The Canterbury Trail.)

AS said that when he’s reading manuscript submissions for admission to the UBC program, he doesn’t give a damn how good the writing is – what he looks for is a lively imagination, because this is something he can’t teach or transmit, and without it good writing doesn’t really matter.

AC said she looks for what’s produced as a result of assigned exercises, that the students she gets excited about are those whose imagery is striking and original and that direct her to look at things in new ways.

I then asked my devil’s advocate question regarding training and academic qualifications for those who teach creative writing. Surely, I said, there’s some merit in having someone teaching actually know how to teach (although an MA, an MFA and/or a PhD are certainly no guarantee of a good teacher). Writing workshops 30 years ago were often treated by authors hired on the basis of their CVs (i.e. the work they’d produced as writers) as paid vacations, and that I’d taken two, taught by well known Canadian authors, who had absolutely no plan at all. At the second one two of us had read and I had happened to bring with me a copy of John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, and to compensate for the instructor’s lack of a plan, we’d done several of the group and individual exercises he’d provided.

PO said he likes to teach using the Socratic dialogue model, teaching his students how to critique and how to learn distance – that teaching creative writing involves direction given by a good teacher.

AS said that teaching creative writing can be done very badly and that there’s often a closed loop system in play, where classes are highly scripted and there are no surprises and no challenges. This doesn’t work for everyone, and when it doesn’t, sometimes a one:one tutorial system works. He also said they can’t always make an exception for the students who aren’t benefiting from the workshop approach, which was a shame because young writers are very vulnerable.

PO then quoted some (highly questionable) statistics on writers’ lifespans. Poets and fiction writers tend to live much shorter lives than non-fiction writers. We’d all like to see the source of those stats, I think.

At this point we were a good half hour over our allotted time, so I didn’t get to ask my final question: If you were choosing a creative writing program, which would you rather take, the one John Gardner taught at SUNY Binghamton (taught by an obviously very dedicated instructor at an institution that doesn’t have an amazing reputation for creating successful writers), or one taught by Raymond Carver (who seemed to have been, one way or the other, barely there) at the Iowa Writers Workshop, which has an astonishing track record of producing successful writers?

On the Outside, Looking Like a Writer in Desperate Need of an Editor

This week I took a detour from my usual reading after seeing a rather surprising Tweetstorm regarding Walrus Magazine's review of Rupinder Gill's memoir, On the Outside Looking Indian.

The Tweetstorm centred on Emily Landau's audacity in writing a negative review and the question was asked, 'couldn't they have found a brown girl to review it?' I didn't get into it. My question would have been, Why should they have? And my snarkier comment would have been, Here we go again with yet another version of the appropriation of voice argument. Frankly I'm fed up with this nonsense when attempting to evaluate writing. I doubt very much Rupinder Gill's intended audience is other 'brown girls' in the same way I doubt very much that Joseph Boyden writes for other people of aboriginal ancestry (he's certainly not sufficiently First Nations to make it in that category, and in fact, like Louise Erdrich, suffers from some pretty ugly reverse racism from First Nations folks).

Wary as I am of Walrus Magazine's lit crit and reviews, based as they are on a desire to be provocative rather than fair and reflecting a sensibility that is peculiarly 416-Toronto while thumbing its nose at the 905 area code and the majority of Canadians, and having found another, diametrically opposed review of OtOLI, I decided I was going to have to read it for myself and make up my own mind.

Luckily the library had it and it was a quick read. It was also a bewildering read on many levels.

Gill is the second child in a family of four girls and one boy (the youngest). Growing up in Kitchener Waterloo, she was isolated within her own family, as there isn't a significant IndoCanadian presence in the area. (Take a look at the demographics - IndoCanadians aren't even listed - there are barely any Italians in K-W!) And the book is both a memoir of her childhood spent in front of a television set and of her 31st year, in which she attempts not so much to recreate her childhood, but to overcome its legacy by finally doing some of the things she wished she'd done as a child. To some extent this book should really be compared with Eat, Pray, Love I think - except for the fact that Gill's year of living goal-mindedly was self-funded and - well - I refuse to finish reading Eat, Pray, Love.

Among the many things Gill's childhood lacked: summer camp, sleepovers, dating, and dog ownership. The child of first-generation Punjabi immigrants, Gill's parents wouldn't let her - or her sisters - do many of the things we think of as classically Canadian. As a WASP who's old enough to be Gill's mother, I have to begin my quibbling here though. Yes I had a dog. Yes I went to summer camp for four years in a row. Yes I learned to swim there. Yes I've been to a grand total of two sleepovers and I remember one of them. Yes I was allowed to date in high school - although I didn't do it much (nor did many of the other kids who attended my academic high school - we were busy with music lessons, student council, demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and nuclear testing, orchestra, theatre, sports, etc.). What I wasn't allowed to do was watch unlimited quantities of television - au contraire. I wasn't even allowed to read for pleasure until and unless my homework was done. And I certainly had household chores - by the time I was in high school I was responsible for doing all the dishes, cleaning the bathroom once a week and both vacuuming the living room and sponging down all the furniture (the pets, a cat and a dog were officially mine, therefore the responsibility for feeding them and for cleaning up after them was also mine).

And so, the year she turns 30, Gill takes tap dancing lessons, investigates dog ownership and decides she's better off as a dog aunt (after one of her sisters does eventually acquire a dog), quits her job as a TV publicist, attends a week-long summer day camp as a counsellor, spends two months in New York where she takes some swimming lessons, and goes to Disney World. More important, she comes to some sort of understanding of and reconciliation with her childhood and her parents, whose strictness regarding appropriate activities for a good Sikh girl chafed so much when she was growing up.

So this book's premise is just fine. Whether you accept Julian Barnes' character's dictum in England, England that over the age of 25 you're no longer allowed to blame your parents for anything or not, Gill's desire to live purposefully rather than whinily is to be applauded.

But then there's the book itself, and Gill's writing skills. For someone who in high school was voted 'most likely to become a stand-up comic,' Gill's writing indicates she needs either one hell of a good editor or a writing partner. From the book's first page: 'In Indian adolescence you never break free of the rules. You cook, clean, babysit, clean, get good grades, clean, be silent, clean, and don't challenge your parents in any way -- especially while cleaning.' That paragraph could work vocally, but timing's everything in comedy, and with the flat delivery of print, it doesn't quite cut it. There are repeated 'jokes' about IndoCanadian facial hair - from the 'hibernating slug' that is her eyebrows (have you ever seen a photo or a self portrait of Frida Kahlo, Rupinder?) to the 'sideburns' she artfully arranges her hair to hide.

Then there are the earnest segments, as when Gill's asked for - and been denied - a three-month leave of absence from her job and decides to quit instead.

'On Monday morning I walked into my boss's office and said the two words I have been agonizing over for the past week: "I quit." As they came out of my mouth it was as if I was having an out-of-body-experience. I couldn't believe it, but it was done. I offered more than a month's notice. I would stay until the end of August and then I would be cast out into the world, jobless, clueless, and full of hope and excitement. I was. In fact, I could not wait.'

There are myriad examples of Gill's awkward prose similar to the one above, but for me the failure to use contractions ('I could not wait' as opposed to 'I couldn't wait') is indicative of someone who's neither a naturally good writer nor someone who's been properly edited. During her swimming lessons she stays 'under the water' rather than 'under water.' 'The second I would extend an arm' - 'Zoe splashed a downpour onto my face' - 'I needed to get everything in line for a chance to return to NYC once again, and not just as a visitor.' This is prose written not in dialect but just badly.

The issues Gill raises are important ones. I've been fascinated by the immigrant experience and by the pressures on first-generation Canadians, caught between two worlds and two cultures, for decades now. The whole 'vertical mosaic vs melting pot' (Canada's approach to multiculturalism vs the US's) notion was first articulated just as I was entering university and embracing my own young adult freedom. She's not unthoughtful, and she's not silly. But oh did this book need to be sent back for a rewrite and very very carefully line edited. I'm very glad her 'second childhood' changed her life. I hope she succeeds in her goal of writing for television. However, since my taste runs more to gritty, dark, cerebral television dramas (or so Netflix tells me), I won't be salivating at the prospect of watching a show written by someone who grew up on a steady diet of Welcome Back Kotter and Three's Company without gagging. I'll be sticking with The Wire and Mad Men, thank you very much, and continuing to give Hot in Cleveland a miss.

Oh and by the way - for an absolutely phenomenal interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, and someone who's committed to pushing the boundaries of television - take a look at this.

Music Mondays for an ESL class - Alberta

Ian Tyson Four Strong Winds lyrics

Valentines, feminists and fathers

You make me laugh, originally uploaded by The River Thief.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since my father died. This photo was taken when he was about the same age I am now, so I suppose it's an appropriate one to use for this post.

This version of the photo (which was, I believe, taken by cousin Douglas Ward), is cropped. In the photo my father is standing, looking down at my mother.

They had recently moved from Ottawa, my mother's home town, to Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, a village of about 3000 people 40 miles from Halifax.

My dad had been working for the federal government for quite some time, and despite a year-long French immersion course, it seemed unlikely he would ever be certified bilingual. Without that certification it was unlikely he'd ever get another promotion. I'm not so sure he really cared about that, but my mother certainly did. So when a unilingual English job came up in Halifax, he applied for and got it.

My parents rented an apartment in Dartmouth for the first year they were in Nova Scotia. It was the first time in a very long time they'd been tenants, and they couldn't seem to grasp the idea of paying rent or of sharing a building. They were on an emergency route, and were frequently awakened in the middle of the night by ambulances howling as they tore past the apartment building. Then there was the woman upstairs, who came home long after they'd gone to bed and would drop one of her shoes on the floor of her bedroom, waking them up. They'd wait in vain for her to drop the other shoe so they could go back to sleep.

After just over a year of this, they decided they'd had enough, and started looking for a place in the country, a little hobby farm from which they could commute. After looking at only three houses, they decided to buy an old, unrenovated Victorian full of antiques in Shubenacadie. It came with close to an acre of land, but in a long narrow strip that included a railroad right of way, and was next door to one of the remaining farms in the village.

I'll spare you the saga of the renovations and of the foolishness of the purchase, except to say that the house (while boasting some truly lovely Douglas fir woodwork, particularly a cathedral-ceilinged living/dining room and some primary coloured stained glass windows), had absolutely no insulation, was heated by an oil stove in the kitchen - and that the commute to Halifax took close to an hour. Oh, and that their purchase coincided with the OPEC oil crisis. All of a sudden the house didn't seem like quite the bargain they'd initially thought.

None of this matters, though. I'm musing about the irony of a tweet from Alain de Botton that I saw shortly after logging on to Twitter this morning, which is so singularly a propos I have to wonder if he's reading my mind.

'Perhaps the most unambiguous victory of feminism has been to ensure that fathers properly nurture their children.'

When I try to explain to people that my father was my primary caregiver, I'm often met with blank stares and certainly with a profound lack of understanding. It's not just that he - born in 1926 - pitched in on diaper changing (although one of his favourite stories to tell was how he'd changed my diaper on the glass counter of a Buffalo department store display case and how helpful the sales girl had been in this endeavour - hard to imagine this happening now, isn't it? 'We have washrooms for this purpose, SIR.')

My earliest memories are of my father singing me to sleep when I was still in my cot. I was diagnosed as hyperactive as a child, although it may just have been the result of a gluten intolerance I outgrew by the time I was seven. Certainly I had trouble getting to sleep and terrible insomnia until I was close to 30. My dad's repertoire consisted of Baptist hymns and the occasional popular song. 'Little White Church in the Vale' was one of his specialities, as were 'You Are My Sunshine" and 'Beautiful Beautiful Blue Eyes.' If you don't recognize the latter or are having trouble Googling it, look up 'Beautiful Beautiful Brown Eyes' instead - my father changed the title of the song and its lyrics since I was a very blue-eyed, blonde haired child at the time. One night he forgot to change the lyrics (he must have been tired) and I was inconsolable. He never made that mistake again.

Having taken a year's maternity leave when I was first born, my mother had returned to work. Initially we lived in an eccentric flat on the top floor of my grandmother's house, and she looked after me during the day. My father would often come home for lunch even then. After we bought our own house, there was no daycare, and my mother stayed home for a couple of years to look after me. I have almost no memories of this time at all (which I find a little odd, since I was almost five), except for one fierce argument in the kitchen of our new house in the Ottawa suburb of Alta Vista. My mother was determined that I wear my winter coat to school. I was determined that I would not. (It was January - in Ottawa - what was I thinking? Probably, 'you're not the boss of me!'). I believe my mother won that round.

According to her, I drove her back to work. Certainly if there were more arguments as ferocious as the one about the winter coat, I see her point. But in truth, she had always considered herself a feminist and a career woman. Domesticity wasn't her thing. Neither was motherhood, although she tried, in her own way.

My mother's return to work just as I started Grade Two posed numerous problems relating to child care. Day cares didn't exist at the time. We lived only two blocks from my elementary school. School didn't start till 9AM - but both my parents had to be at work by 8:30. That problem was easily enough solved - I'd just stay at home for half an hour or so after they both left for work. I got home from school by four o'clock. My cousin Marsha, in high school at the time, was hired to babysit me after school. Getting dinner started was also part of her job. There were a couple of times Marsha had something she had to do after school. In those instances, my Aunt Pearl swung into action and took us all - my cousin Sandy and her houseful of foster children - to the movies (I'm still not so sure Lawrence of Arabia or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea were appropriate viewing for an eight year old, but never mind).

But because we lived so close to the school, they wouldn't let me take my lunch - I had to go home, and the school was adamant at the time - they were educators, not babysitters. So be it.

Eventually my parents came up with a solution. My father would come home to make me lunch every day. He'd already started making breakfast every day when my mother went back to work. He seemed to love the problem solving inherent in the timing of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee, and within a few weeks he had the whole thing sorted out. Lunch wasn't anywhere near as difficult a challenge - soup and sandwich doesn't require the same kind of precise timing as bacon and eggs.

When I got sick - and I had most of the usual childhood illnesses, perhaps more until I had my tonsils out the summer I was eight - my maternal grandmother was always there for us. 'Bring the baby over here, I'll look after her,' she'd say. When I got scarlet fever, her house had to be quarantined. I was isolated in the apartment upstairs, and everyone had to take penicillin. This was, I thought, suitably exciting and exotic.

I'm not sure why he first got involved with the bicycle safety workshops - whether that was preceded by his joining the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) or not. I know there'd been a child from my public school who'd been killed by a car because the Elmo the Safety Elephant flag was permanently lowered at my public school. But the bicycle safety workshops became an annual spring event, and my dad was always both the behind-the-scenes organizer and front and centre in delivering the workshops.

He initially got involved with the PTA because I was having trouble in school - not my grades, but with my grade two teacher. I'm not sure what the first warning sign was, but I do remember a fuss at the Christmas party over the teacher not believing something I'd said and demanding a letter from my parents to confirm I was telling the truth. When my father started digging into what was going on in the classroom, he was told by the principal that yes, they realized she was a bad teacher, but that she had so much seniority no one could touch her. Yes, I could be transferred to another class, but it would mean my leaving the accelerated program, which was the alternative to skipping a grade - we spent about seven months in each of grades one through four rather than 10, and sped through four years of school in three.

My father was enraged on my behalf. And he started digging into the issue. He joined the PTA. And he discovered at least half a dozen other children who were having trouble with our grade two teacher. Some of them had started bedwetting. Others had broken out in stress rashes. Some were having nightmares. A few were suddenly getting average or poor marks, even though they'd done significantly better in kindergarten and grade one.

Eventually grade two ended (although it was the beginning of grade three for me part-way through the year). My father stayed on the PTA. Eventually he became its president. Other than the bike safety workshops and reassuring other parents that their children weren't mentally ill, I'm not sure what he did there.

What I do know though is that the effort my father made during those five or six years was extraordinary. I don't know many men who'd be willing to step up to the plate to the extent he did. Between the breakfast and the lunch making (and supervision), the PTA meetings and driving my babysitter cousin home, he must have put in at least four hours a day devoted solely to my welfare and nurturing. Somehow he never made any of it seem like a chore. He never made me feel that he resented doing any of the things he did, that he'd rather be having lunch with a colleague or even just having a sandwich at his desk, just as he never made me feel he'd rather be watching TV, reading a book, or even enjoying adult companionship with my mother those nights he'd sing me to sleep. Most important, he never made my mother or me feel that what he was doing was 'women's work' or in any way unnatural - even though my mother was one of a grand total of only two 'working' mothers among my classmates.

After a series of cerebral hemorrhages in his early 60s, my father had severe anomia and became an expert at circumlocution. My mother and I would ask him what he'd had for lunch, and he'd say, 'A round thing on another one of those round things.' We were puzzled by this, but confident he'd eaten something. I decided to spend some time with him before he died, and moved back in with my parents when I was in my early thirties. It was difficult for all of us, but in some ways it was worth it. I'd taught myself how to cook after leaving home, and the brain damage my father had sustained had made him a lot less resistant to vegetarian cooking (his attitude when I'd cooked meatless meals before he got sick was, 'It's good, but there isn't any meat in it.'). I made him a curry once and he ate it with relish, saying, 'Oh, I like this - it has those little round animals we never used to eat before you came to stay with us.' I never open a can of chick peas to this day without thinking of their alternate name.

With only spotty occupational therapy, he wasn't comfortable using the phone after he got sick and never initiated calls. My mother would call me and put him on the phone. He'd forgotten the conventions of telephone conversation, and no longer knew he was supposed to say hello at the start of conversations and goodbye at the end. Instead he'd say, 'I love you.' I never minded.

There's something fitting about the fact that he died on Valentine's Day. If I'd ever needed an excuse to celebrate a made-up holiday that I find intensely hypocritical in an alternative way, his death gave me a permanent out. What I learned from my dad is that there's nothing passive or commercial about love. It's a noun, but it's also an active verb. It's something you show people 365 days a year, whether it's making the tea or shining someone's shoes for them or just being there for them, letting them know you're on their side and that they're not alone in the world. It's not about roses and diamonds and champagne.

Thank you for teaching me that, Dad.

Allan Frederick Seeley
May 21, 1926 to February 14, 1991

Canada Reads 2011 - Day Three, Final Round

As part of the Canada Reads format changes this year (again, more to come on the whole subject of Canada Reads itself and how it differed from previous years later), the debates were compressed into a three-day span, with a vote to eliminate the third book of the five happening early in the third show and then the final elimination vote happening towards the end of the hour.

Here's the recap:

After the surprising revelation that Debbie Travis had been unable to finish Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans on Tuesday's show, she came in for a lot of heat on Twitter. Frankly I felt sorry for her. If you dislike a book enough to not easily be able to finish it, you must really dislike it a lot. And if you've given 100 pages or more of it a try, even judging duties shouldn't mean you have to finish it. There were some really ugly tweets about Debbie. I found them rather sad. (Is now the time to mention that I'm still 13 pages from the end of Madame Bovary and have been since 1973? I tried to reread it recently because it was one of the books on the Kobo reader I'd bought and I just couldn't do it. I still hate that book, and I don't have to finish it to know why I hate it.) Anyway, like the conscientious new Canadian she is, Debbie got off Twitter fairly early yesterday afternoon, vowing to finish reading The Best Laid Plans (I could hear her thinking, 'even though it might kill me').

Ghomeshi introduced the final round of this year's Canada Reads as 'Canada's Annual Title Fight.' (There's a reason I'm emphasizing the way the show bills itself which won't become obvious till I do my 'What's Canada Reads All About?' post - which may not bear that exact title.) To save myself a little typing and italicization time, I'm going to use abbreviations this time around for both the panelists/host and the books themselves.

JG - Jian Ghomeshi
GL - Georges Laraque
DT - Debbie Travis
SQ - Sara Quin
AV - Ali Velshi
LC - Lorne Cardinal

TBLP - The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
TBC - The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
Unless is short enough to type and italicize
EC - Essex County by Jeff Lemire
TBH - The Birth House by Ami McKay


JG asked GL how he felt about the elimination of TBC on Tuesday's show. GL responded that he takes everything personally, plays to win and that he thought he'd finish third at the worst. He also said he'd a deal with Debbie (this apparently had been revealed on yesterday's show - somehow I missed that). That's ok though, said GL, 'I know her, I know where she works.'

DT said, 'It's not Survivor .... This is not about us. And this is not about the authors.... What we're looking for is the most gripping novel.'

GL pointed out that DT's having named Digger as her favourite character in a nominated book other than the one she was championing, her voting against it was surprising.

JG said GL's announcement Tuesday that he was going to throw his weight behind TBLP had never been done before on Canada Reads.

GL asked why it was so surprising/shocking that he'd support a book that might help with the electoral process. (Since he's the deputy leader of the Green Party, that does make sense.) And was it more shocking than the news Debbie hadn't finished the book?

DT said she wasn't an athlete, a politician, or a singer. She described herself as, 'An ordinary person who likes a good read. That's all I care about. It's not about us. These authors are fabulous. What's important about this competition is getting Canadians to read...and getting them talking about books.'

DT described the reaction to her confession about not having finished TBLP as 'furious.' JG implied she should have realized people would be furious with her, because 'people are invested in these books. The Q is: if you didn't finish TBLP, why did you vote against EC and TBC?'

DT said she'd finished TBLP last night. She obviously hadn't changed her mind about it, saying that she didn't feel '... connected to the characters, found it confusing.' She said TBH is very similar to TBLP – people are fed up with politics but it's a good book to get people interested in politics. TBH isn't about politics, it's about democracy, and that democracy starts at our kitchen tables and it starts with women.

JG then told SQ she'd gone from loser on day one to king maker on day two, as a result of her having to break a tie - her vote against TBC meant the book was eliminated. SQ said mom called her to fill her in on the Twitter response and that she'd asked her mom, 'Do I look mean on TV?' She said she 'has a hard time being completely honest about these books. It's tough.' (Which I found quite an odd statement, but I think it goes to the point I made previously about her not quite getting what strategy is, which means she can't come up with a good one.)

JG asked SG, 'Do you have a strategy going into this?' To which she replied that she was impressed by Debbie and Ali and just genuinely loves Unless.

JG then asked AV about the fact that GL had crossed the floor in political fashion after AV and TBLP had taken some beatings during Tuesday's show.

AV said TBLLP was a call to action, that he'd run into Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi in the CBC building and that there was an example of, 'It's pie in the sky, it's not going to happen.' thinking being wrong. "Naheed Nenshi is a brown Angus McClintock,' said AV. JG pointed out that Nenshi was a willing candidate, then described TBLP as a satirical take on Ottawa politics and asked AV, 'You're at one of your CNN dinner parties. Austin Cooper asks you about TBLP. What do you say?'

AV said he'd talk about the fact that it's a book whose subject is the fact that 'all people want is fairness in democracy ... people don't think they're heard by their elected officials. You have to vote and you have to be involved.'

JG asked LC what he thought about all the Canada Reads drama. LC replied, 'I think it's exciting' and said his girl set him up with Twitter two days ago so she's tweeting on his behalf. (I presume he meant his daughter, not his wife/girlfriend/significant other.) 'The authors are top notch all the way around.'

JG quoted the first sentence of Unless. 'It happens that I'm going through a period of great unhappiness and loss right now.' LC pointed out that Shields 'also writes with very dry humour and depth and complexity ... you're taken out of yourself ....' (Finally someone mentions the humour in Unless! Because those letters Reta wrote but didn't send to various members of parliament were some of the funniest things I've ever read.)

JG said there'd be two debates today – after the first there'd be a vote to eliminate one book. After the second debate another book would be eliminated, leaving us with the winner.

JG pointed out that panellists had barely mentioned TBH except for DT defending and asked, 'Why is that?'

LC replied, 'we should talk about it. It is just a regional novel and folklore just being retold. It's about a very specific group of people ... there's been a lot of talk about it being about the Halifax explosion but that's actually a very brief section of the book - we spend more time in Boston than in Halifax.'

JG asked, 'It's too east coast for you?'

LC replied that it's not a life he's ever lived – he's never had to fish for cod – 'it's hard for me, being a prairie boy, to identify with this, except for the isolation.'

GL said, 'It is a good story, but we're talking about the essential book ... this book empowers women .... (not, presumably, men). He also said if he hadn't had to read it, he would have stopped. JG asked if GL was saying TBH didn't speak to men. GL replied that TBH shows how men were 100 years ago – you know men were bad then – it's empowering to read that book (for women).

DT said, 'This is ridiculous – you're both completely wrong. It's not just about women – not all the men [in TBH} are pigs.' (Which is something GL had said in earlier debates - rapists and pigs.)

SQ pointed out that Hart Bigelow is good. (No one mentioned Dora's brother Charlie.)

DT said she'd spoken to Ami McKay and that as a result of reading TBH, women are going into the medical profession, becoming nurses and midwives because of it. 'It's a book about community and we learn from this book. It's about a 19-year-old woman who's inspirational.' Women will read it and say, 'Well she did it.' DT also said it's important, given the shortage of trained medical professionals we're currently experiencing, and SQ agreed with her.

JG then said to AV, 'You and I are men. I found this book very powerful.'

AV replied that he'd first enjoyed TBH because it was great storytelling and that he'd like to see it made into a movie. 'Dora Rare is everyman – this remarkable strong woman – not respected for her youth, her gender, or her profession ... but wins her race.'

JG then asked the panellists what didn't work for them.

SQ said she didn't feel invested, that she liked the story and that the book should be read by men and women, although she didn't feel as moved by it as by some of the other books.

JG said, 'We spoke about TBLP. When it comes to Unless – it was written in the early part of the decade - times have changed.' He asked if Unless wasn't a bit of a feminist polemic that no longer resonates.

LC replied that he didn't think times have changed for women, women still aren't included in our day to day lives or in Parliament, the voice of women is not being heard. 'This book contains that voice – she whispers in your ear.' (Have to say, I have a whole new appreciation of Lorne Cardinal as feminist male after listening to these debates - go Lorne!)

JG asked if Shields' voice wasn't too heavy handed?

LC disagreed.

SQ mentioned that all the remaining books could be considered feminist and said that no one had touched on the fact that TBLP has a very strong feminist storyline – Angus'd dead wife was a prominent feminist - and said, 'that's the most inspiring thing about what's left of the books.'

JG revealed the results of the online voting, which indicated TBLP should be eliminated, then TBC (which would have left Unless as the winner). Now it's time to point out one of the flaws of the online voting process - which LC said on Tuesday he didn't trust. Just for fun I thought I'd see how the online voting process worked. To my dismay, I was able to 'vote off' TBLP three times on Tuesday - for no particular reason. After three votes I figure I'd proved my point, that the online voting process was totally skewed and its only real value was its potential psych-out factor when the panellists were told of the results.

GL voted to eliminate Unless (now this was odd really, given what he'd said about TBH throughout the entire contest and about the way DT had voted to eliminate TBC the day before).

LC voted to eliminate TBH.

AV voted to eliminate Unless

SQ voted to eliminate TBH.

DT voted to eliminate TBLP (which she should perhaps have done yesterday?).

Since this produced a tie, JG turned to the Canada Reads rules, which states that the panellist who hasn't helped to create the tie has the deciding vote. At which point DT recast her vote to eliminate Unless rather than TBLP, thus leaving only TBLP and TBH in contention.

JG then talked about the publication history of TBLP. When Terry Fallis first wrote TBLP, the literary agents and publishers all ignored him – this book was initially self published. Fallis submitted it for the Stephen Leacock award and it won. A week later he had a publisher. This 'sets up a bit of a David and Goliath situation. TBH is the best known book that's on the table – it's already a bestseller – should it be taken into consideration that one of these books has become an indie publishing sensation?'

SQ said it was important to note, but how a book's sold in the past doesn't and shouldn't matter – we're not being told to pick a book that hasn't done well – we're picking something we think is essential.

JG reminded people that when Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage was up against Paul Quarrington's King Leary, there was a feeling that the Findley had had its due while King Leary (which was out of print at the time it was in contention) had won partly because it was felt it was a book that hadn't been appreciated sufficiently when it was first published.

DT said TBH and TBLP 'should be the last two books in the running. It's the same story. An essential book has to grip you. Both of them are talking to Canadians about "we want change and how do we do change?”' She said TBH is a democratic book about grass roots' which once meant sitting around your backyard fence or the kitchen table and now means Twitter and blogging. 'Women talk – we're losing that – we're losing our communities. There's no difference in being around a kitchen on the East Coast than in downtown Toronto. If either book wins, it's great because it's created talk.' (Thus obliquely attacking LC's point about TBH being too regional a story, which sadly seemed to end up being the fatal blow.)

JG asked again, 'The self published story – does it mean something at this point?'

AV said, 'Only insofar as it relates to the story. Both books are about aspirations – about becoming empowered – both are essential. TBH is about the issues that women face ... but this book is about the current thing that affects us most in the world – the context is different but that context swings things in favour of TBLP.'

GL asked what would change if everyone read both books? If they read TBH, people would learn that things have changed. But in Canada people don't vote. If people read TBLP this will change Canada. 'That's my job, to encourage people to vote more. Not voting is a bigger problem.'

SQ said, 'That's very hopeful – to think these books would be read by young people today.' And admitted she made the graphic novel debate about youth vs age. And seemed to regret having done so. (Good move, since she gets her MOTHER to read Twitter reactions to her.)

AV said surveys show that of the young people who don't vote, their biggest issue is they don't know enough about the system. He said he was almost as interested in finding the Angus McClintocks in this country as in having TBLP win the Canada Reads contest - he'd like to find five people who say 'that's interesting.'

SQ said she liked TBLP, thought it was great.

AV asked her if she might run for office. SQ said no.

DT picked up on the 'find five people them' and suggested she'd be happy if her championing TBH lead to finding five people who'd go into nursing, midwifery or become doctors.

SQ agreed both books were inspiring – but not to high school students. (Another mysteriously irrelevant remark, I thought. Takes a while to get a book onto a high school syllabus and personally I'd prefer folks keep reading their Shakespeare, but that's just me.)

DT then asked AV, 'How's your book doing in the book clubs? TBH is one of the top books in the book clubs.'

GL replied, 'Yes but mostly it's women reading.'

AV mentioned that both TBLP's protagonists were surrounded by strong women. And that there was a third strong woman in the book

JG then mentioned that Valentine's Day was approaching and asked the panellists which of the two remaining books they'd recommend to someone they loved.

LC said he'd give TBLP to his brother who's running in the next federal election because its descriptions of political machinations were humourous and you need a sense of humour when you get into the House of Commons.

SQ said she'd give TBLP to her dad, who reads newspapers rather than books, but would probably like TBLP.

GL said he'd give TBLP as a Valentine's gift, because of Angus's letters to his dead wife.

AV and DT were then given a few moments to make the final pitches for the books they were championing.

AV said TBLP 'made people laugh, it made me laugh, it made people cry at the same time. It can inspire you. This can help you understand more about it [the political process]. People can effect change. People can change things for women, for immigrants, for themselves.'

DT said, 'I think change begins at home. [TBH is] about a young woman – our young people are very lost today – this is a book that says, you can make it, you can have a voice – TBH is a bestseller – this is a book you cannot put down, male, female and young people as well.'

JG announced the final vote 'to make a book a bestseller.'

AV: voted to eliminate TBH

DT: voted to eliminate TBLP

GL: voted to eliminate TBH

SQ: voted to eliminate TBH

TBLP wins Canada Reads 2011

LC: voted to eliminate TBH

JG said this was 'kind of a remarkable turnaround.'

AV said, 'I hope it moves the needle a little bit to get people involved in the democratic process. Everybody really got behind this – we really accomplished something this week.'

DT said, 'the idea of this is fantastic – everybody should go out and get both books – if a book can inspire us – if we get a new nurse out of TBH, if we get a new politician out of TBLP - we all win.'

SQ said both arguments were very strong – she went back and forth re both books and stopped thinking of the debate as in terms of what she herself would read – 'this turned almost into a job' - but that since the most essential book of the last decade criteria had been given, TBLP fit that criteria.

LC said Terry Fallis is a fantastic author, TBLP a fantastic book, that he has a penchant for humour (everyone laughed at this, although Corner Gas has never succeeded in making me laugh), that he thinks Canada has a penchant for humour as well – 'look at all the talent we've exported to the US!'

JG said he had Terry Fallis on the phone.

Fallis said, 'If I'm sounding a bit muffled it's because I'm curled on floor of my third-floor library in the fetal position breathing into a paper bag. I haven't touched down yet. I'm amazed and truly grateful.' Then he told AV he might just write his biography now, that he thought AV had done an amazing job defending TBLP, and was passionate but polite. He said AV had really presented the merits of the novel effectively, which was tough to do given it was up against such wonderful books.

AV said, 'you and the other authors did the heavy lifting. To you and the other authors – thank you for giving us such great stuff to work with.'

Terry Fallis will be interviewed by JG on Q tomorrow.

And that's it for Canada Reads 2011. Sort of. Except for the fact that it's provided all of us with a great deal of food for thought. Now excuse me, I'm just off to pick up my copy of TBLP before everyone else gets there ahead of me. Of course I'm middle aged and I do vote. But never mind - I want to read those love letters of Angus McClintock to his dead wife.

Canada Reads 2011 - Day Two, Round Two

After the reminder from Jian Ghomeshi that 'We're looking for the essential Canadian novel of the last decade,' he referred to Canada Reads as 'Canada's annual title fight.' I mention this because I think a lot of people are taking Canada Reads waaay too seriously (although more on this subject in subsequent posts, after the 2011 competition is over. But then I gather some folks watch those Idol shows too, as well as other televised abominations like So You Think You Can Dance? - you may think you can dance but it's quite obvious to me that you're deluded.).

Defenders of the four remaining nominated titles (The Best Laid Plans, The Birth House, The Bone Cage, and Unless) discussed the contest at the top of the show. 'This,' said Ali Velshi, is serious business.... I want to make the best case that I can, and the most relevant case that I can.'

Reflecting on the fact that Essex County was eliminated yesterday, Lorne Cardinal said, 'I was the heel, I just happened to be sitting in the number three [voting] spot.'

Ghomeshi mentioned again that Unless was trailing in the online poll on the first day of the contest. Lorne Cardinal said he was surprised, since Carol Shields is one of our premiere authors, and Unless is a literary gem. At this point Ghomeshi pointed out that Unless did not win the Pulitzer Prize, but that The Stone Diaries did. It was unclear from the conversation whether Lorne Cardinal had actually been confused about this or not, but it was nice to get it cleared up. 'She's still a Pulitzer-prize winning novelist though,' said Cardinal, which nicely covered his factual error – whether inadvertent or deliberate.

Georges Laraque appeared on the show wearing a T-shirt made by Angie Abdou with a photo of the two of them on it. He pointed out that she has the least funding support of all the books in the contest (presumably because The Bone Cage was published by NewWest Press, a small Western Canadian publisher, while the other books have the marketing muscle of Random House Canada, Harper Collins, and McClelland and Stewart behind them).

Today's show featured author descriptions of the novels, which was a pleasant change of pace, followed by 30-second defenses of the books. Terry Fallis said that The Best Laid Plans, which won the 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, was 'the story of an accidental MP.' Ali Velshi declared the book is essential because we're all fed up with politics. 'This book is about making democracy work ... and it's as current today as it was when it was written.'

Ami McKay's clip described The Birth House as being about science at the turn of the 20th Century. 'Dora Rare...is destined to become the midwife for her community, but she's reluctant.' Debbie Travis went on to say, 'It's about a changing world ... it's about holding onto our traditions and embracing our future,' and about 'using our past for the benefits of today.'

Angie Abdou summed up The Bone Cage very succinctly by saying, 'The Olympics leaves its athletes' broken souls. The Bone Cage shows why.' Georges Laraque amplified this theme by saying it's a novel about 'what happens when a body fails' and that 'we all face failure.' He also reminded listeners that it's a 'story about love' (the love Sadie has for her grandmother).

A 2002 Carol Shields recording described Unless as 'The voice of a woman, a 44 year old mother with three daughters,' one of whom has become a derelict who lives on the street with a sign saying 'goodness' hung around her neck. 'This is the great loss that I'm speaking about.' Lorne Cardinal said Unless is a novel within a novel within a novel, written in the 'language of love, loss, laughter and hope,' full of 'transcending moments' and 'stellar' writing.

Ghomeshi's opening question for this round was, 'Which of these four remaining books is the best written?'

Velshi pointed out that, 'Well written can mean many different things to many different people' and said that to him, well written meant accessible. While Shields is the most accomplished writer, The Best Laid Plans is the most accessible of the four remaining novels in the competition. 'It's satire ...a little bit of humour and a little bit of sarcasm.... It's not a dark book, but it's about a very serious issue. It makes you laugh every two seconds.'

Debbie Travis pointed out that there's a big difference between an accessible book and an essential book. 'We're here for the essential book.' But she continued by saying The Birth House was the best written. 'A book is a fantasy, it's a world ... it's like watching a movie.... You're involved in this story, you look up from the book and say, 'oh, I'm not in 1917.''' She found Unless predictable. 'My book has a beginning, a middle and an end, and it draws you in.' (See below for more of Debbie Travis's thoughts on Unless – and for her confession re The Best Laid Plans.)

Georges Laraque came out swinging by stating, 'This contest is not about picking your favourite book.' 'Everybody has to relate to that story.' 'If you go with your personal choice, that's being very selfish.' 'Everybody knows people who are into sports.' He then said Shields' Larry's Party should have been the Canada Reads contender, not Unless. 'Unless was hard to get into ... the wording.' 'Our role is to get Canada to read more.' If Unless is selected ... 'they'll never read again.'

Sara Quin responded with, 'I totally disagree' and picked Unless as the best written of the four remaining books, describing the story as beautiful and moving. (Which of course has nothing to do with the way it's written, story being plot, not style, but never mind.) She also liked The Best Laid Plans for its entertainment value. 'You could pick up this book in an airport ... it's easy to read, it's a great story ... it's the quickest story ... it's the easiest read.' She then said, 'It's a bigger idea, a more universal issue,' a remark that didn't really become clear until later in the debate.

Lorne Cardinal of course stuck with Unless as the best written of the four novels, saying, 'Structure is key to understanding content.' He then immediately undercut the argument he may or may not have been trying to make re the structure of Unless by actually talking about how well the book is written: 'You can flip it open at any page and read it out of context, pick any page and read and it will jump out at you.'

Debbie Travis said Unless is 'beautifully written, but it's two books in one.' 'She writes about writing a book' and felt the 'story that's going on within the story is too introspective.' Which may have been a response to the red herring regarding structure introduced by Cardinal.

Cardinal responded by saying Unless is 'a novel that promotes thought and debate and that's the point of literature.'

Velshi then said Unless is 'not as easy a book to read' as The Best Laid Plans and if accessibility is what you're going for, it's not the most accessible but it 'does cause you to fire different synapses.'

Cardinal responded to Velshi's claim that Unless is not easy to read by saying, 'woman's voice is under-represented in our literature [sic] canon today,' that Shields was a victim of her own success and that her work is currently suffering from 'The Munro Principle' – she's already won a lot of awards. He then startled everyone by saying if Unless were taken off the table, he'd pick The Birth House (as best written? As most essential read? That wasn't quite clear).

Ghomeshi summarized this year's nominees as all being about loss: loss of a daughter (Unless), loss of career hope (Essex County), loss of mobility (The Bone Cage), 'The Birth House has all sorts of calamities, ' Angus in The Best Laid Plans loses his wife and writes to her after her death, then asked the panelists, 'Which book deals with loss most memorably?

Sara Quin said Unless, and talked about the scene where Reta drives around the block looking for her daughter, who's living on the streets, finally spots her and is happy because she sees her daughter's wearing gloves on a cold day.

Georges Laraque talked about Sadie losing her grandmother in The Bone Cage. 'She takes time to see her grandmother and it's killing her inside ... but she still needs to focus ... when she loses her mobility that totally kills you – it's heartbreaking – what is she going to do, how will it affect her spirit?' 'Nothing is guaranteed.'

Ghomeshi interjected, 'I found it an incredibly powerful meditation on loss when she loses her mobility.'

Sara Quin then talked about The Best Laid Plans' Angus writing letters to his wife after she was dead and how touching she found them. She then spoke about focus and drive and the parallel between being an athlete and being a musician. 'I hurt my finger and I can't even wash my hair properly,' she said, immediately followed by 'that was silly.' Since I'm already being accused in this blog of being anti Sara Quin, I'll just let that one go, shall I?

Cardinal spoke about Unless again. Shields, 'writes about loss, but she also writes about hope .... she writes about the fragility of our lives' and about '... a child discovering the world and their place in it.'

Debbie Travis pointed out loss was a theme in all five of the books. But, 'I don't think the writing of The Bone Cage and The Best Laid Plans can hold a candle to Unless.' And then, having answered the previous question about which book was the best written and having reluctantly named Unless this time, she said, 'What I hated about the book [Unless] ... was I was so not interested in her writing journey...' The real corker in today's debate came next, when Travis confessed she hadn't been able to get through The Best Laid Plans. She got angry with it – felt her time was worth more than this – didn't find it funny at all. In fact, she said, it was 'so unfunny I wanted to throw it away. I liked the Scottish guy. I'm not interested in Canadian politics.'

Velshi then pointed out that, 'Debbie is very very stuck on this idea, like many people, that they don't like politics.' His alternative interpretation is that The Best Laid Plans is a, 'a story about inspiration for change.' To which Debbie Travis replied that the inclusion of Angus' letters to his dead wife were an excuse for bad writing. 'You said be truthful.'

Ghomeshi returned to the conversation, saying that 'Unlike most CBC game shows – winning Canada Reads can actually be pretty lucrative' and claiming that it fuels book sales in the same way (although not to quite the same extent) as The Giller Prize. (Note: I'm working on another post on this subject for next week.) After winning Canada Reads, Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes sold half a million copies, said Ghomeshi.

The four remaining authors were asked what they'd do for their books' defenders if the book won the Canada Reads contest. Terry Fallis said he'd not only owe Ali Velshi big, he'd write him in as a character in his next novel. Ami McKay announced Debbie Travis would have to renovate her kitchen if she doesn't win. Angie Abdou vowed not only to do an Ironman contest, but to peel oranges for her defender. Anne Giardini, Carol Shields' daughter, said she'd buy Lorne Cardinal some Haida artist earrings.

'You can't talk about Canada any more without talking about how Canada has changed in the last few decades – it's incredibly diverse,' said Ghomeshi, then asked, 'Which of these books best speaks to Canadian society today?'

Cardinal said he wasn't sure, that each appeals to a cross section and some are very specific to certain audiences. The Bone Cage, he said, is about athletes – and then went on to describe the structure of the writing as 'a bit convenient.'

'If someone were to say, these are all "white books" what would you say?' Ghomeshi asked. To which Cardinal replied, 'Well, obviously they are.' He went on to talk about the appeal of Unless to women and the fact that it was written by a woman. 'It's ridiculous to think women haven't contributed to the literary form.' (I didn't quite follow this line of reasoning, as three of the five books nominated this year were written by women and focus on female protagonists, but never mind.)

Sara Quin agreed the novels weren't very diverse, but then explained her previous airport remark by saying there was 'a celebrity nature' to The Best Laid Plans and that there was something universal about it, as with all big best sellers – 'it's paced in a way that we've become used to expecting in books and films.'

Laraque defended The Bone Cage by saying, 'This is not just about sports. The Olympics aren't the point – it's the journey.' And then attacked Unless by saying it was hard to read. Velshi repeated that The Best Laid Plans is a call to action.

Ghomeshi updated listeners on the online polling and stated that while yesterday Unless was the book chosen for elimination, today it was The Bone Cage, with Unless following closely.

Debbie Travis said The Birth House is about community and 'the forever-changing roles of women and men.' It's 'so relevant today' and 'it's a novel you'll never forget.' (Presumably also one that doesn't inspire rage for its sheer unfunniness either.)

Cardinal said he didn't trust polls, that 'I can't apologize for excellent writing,' and that while The Best Laid Plans is 'great brain candy, it doesn't delve deeply.'

Laraque got the final word before voting began, saying, 'We have to talk about the book ... that inspires people to read.'

Voting results

Debbie Travis voted to eliminate The Bone Cage.
Georges Laraque voted to eliminate Unless.
Lorne Cardinal voted to eliminate The Bone Cage.
Ali Velshi voted to eliminate Unless.
Sarah Quin voted to eliminate The Bone Cage, breaking the tie.

Laraque's reaction was spontaneous but controlled: 'I'm so mad right now.' 'I'm speechless.' 'I'm in shock. That was not supposed to happen.' 'I don't understand it ... when I picked this book ... I picked a book that would make a difference.'

Ghomeshi described The Bone Cage as 'an outstanding, moving novel.'

Cardinal said, 'it's just about the writing' and that 'structurally Carol Shields is head and shoulders the best writer at this table.'

Travis said, 'I really looked at the writing of The Bone Cage ... this is an important book ... this is a book that should be read in schools ... but I don't think the writing is as good as Carol Shields'.'

Sara Quin said she 'thought it was the weakest of the books ... I felt like I needed to be consistent.'

It is interesting that The Best Laid Plans and The Birth House haven't had any votes against them to date. It's even more interesting to me that after confessing she found The Best Laid Plans too infuriating to finish, Debbie Travis voted to eliminate The Bone Cage. In the meantime, The Bone Cage defender Georges Laraque indicated he'd be supporting The Best Laid Plans until/unless it was eliminated.

Tomorrow: another book will be eliminated at the beginning of the show.

Canada Reads 2011 - Day One, Round One

I'm just going to assume, for the purposes of this post, that everyone reading it already knows about Canada Reads, that everyone knows it's the 10th anniversary of this annual Survivor crossed with American Idol contest, and that the format has changed slightly this year, with far more reader/general public involvement via social media, and that the task this year was to select the 'must-read novel of the first decade of the new millennium.'

This year's nominees are:

Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans, defended by Ali Velshi

Ami McKay's The Birth House, defended by Debbie Travis

Angie Abdou's The Bone Cage, defended by Georges Laraque

Jeff Lemire's Essex County, defended by Sara Quin

Carol Shields' Unless, defended by Lorne Cardinal

Here's my synopsis of what happened during the first round – when the defenders got to vote to eliminate one of the five books nominated.

Velshi mounted a spirited one-minute pitch for The Best Laid Plans, talking very quickly while mentioning the fact that it's a 'fast-moving political satire set in the Ottawa area' and as such, was an important book for all Canadians to read (since politics affects all of us, whether we vote or not). His pitch was serious but also humourous, and he got a big laugh when he said 'if you choose another book, it's like choosing the radish as a national vegetable.' Touching briefly on voter apathy (on the rise in inverse proportion to voters' ages), he described the novel as 'not only a call to action' but something that 'can actually work' to combat voter apathy.

Debbie Travis was no less eloquent in her advocacy of The Birth House, and she scored some real points for taking the novel out of its 'historical' context and placing it in a broader human and contemporary setting. 'It's about what really shapes society,' she said, set at a time when modern medicine, the emancipation of women, and the first of our two 'world' wars were all factors in Canadian society. Cleverly pre-empting potential attacks on The Birth House as a 'likely to appeal to women only' novel, she said it was about men's role in society and that it represents an examination of 'the best of tradition, the best of the future.' She nicely wrapped up her pitch by saying it's a particularly appropriate novel to read at a time when we're struggling to cope with the fact that any 'new technology changes us' as a society.

Georges Laraque came out swinging in the nicest possible way when he talked about The Bone Cage. It's a novel for 'kids, teens, adults, men and women' he said. (The only people left out were pre- and elementary schoolers and the multi-gendered.) Without alluding to the fact that Canada had recently hosted the winter Olympics, he focused on the book's universal themes and appeal. While it's a novel that does explain why Olympic athletes are so driven, he said, it's a really about the very human struggle to 'beat the odds.' 'Life is a battle – this is what this book is all about.'

Knowing that she was defending the contest's one graphic novel, Sara Quin made a fatal strategic error by choosing to tackle the subject of graphic novels head on, instead of talking about the book she was actually supposed to be promoting/defending. While she did mention that she'd chosen the book because of its 'haunting connection between characters' and said that the illustrations made you 'feel like you're in the book,' she also spent far too much of her initial one minute talking about how Essex County 'transcends the genre' of the graphic novel.

Last up was Lorne Cardinal, whose pitch for Carol Shields' Unless began with a mention of her Pulitzer Prize (which an earlier Shields' novel, The Stone Diaries, had won, but never mind). Cardinal focused on the universality of the book's theme – loss – and described it as 'a symphony for the eyes,' a novel that 'transcends words' through the multi-dimensionality of its characters. He implied the novel was a haunting work of fiction that lingers 'in our minds.'

At the end of this round, Jian Ghomeshi summed up the five novels' appeal, saying that going into day one of the Canada Reads live event, The Birth House and Unless had been categorized as novels primarily appealing to women, The Best Laid Plans as interesting to political junkies only, and Essex County to indie hipsters.

Laraque's response to this statement was to say, 'we want people to read more ... if we pick the wrong book, they'll never read again.' He then took a shot at The Birth House, saying most of the men in the book were 'pigs, rapists and warriors' (who wants to read about that?). Velshi attacked Essex County, saying it was like the iPad of books – to which Sara Quin hastily responded, 'we need young people to start reading books' and 'the iPad saved Apple.' Lorne Cardinal was more of an equal-opportunity attacker, saying that The Best Laid Plans 'could turn people off voting and reading' and describing Essex County as a book that represented 'the gateway to reading' rather than reading itself. Unless, he said, is a book that 'gets people thinking about things rather than things.' Oddly this actually made sense – what he was trying to say was that Unless gets people thinking about life and issues rather than material goods. Laraque returned to the attack on Essex County, asking whether it could be considered 'the essential novel' of the last decade. Quin said something, but Laraque trounced her soundly by saying, 'you say it's a novel, but Jeff calls it a cartoon.' Even though I'd already gathered from tweets that Essex County was going to be the first book eliminated, for me it was at this point in the program that I knew it was going down – and why. Poor offense on Quin's part and an even poorer defense? I knew Essex Country was history.

Ghomeshi then asked the panelists, 'Aside from the characters in your own book, which character resonated the most for you?'

For Velshi it was The Birth House's Dora, a character who embodied the contrast between 'modernity and tradition' and who had 'one foot in the old world, one foot in the new world.' Lorne Cardinal chose Jimmy LeBeuf from Essex County, a character whose 'best moment' – his one game in the NHL before a career-ending slam into the boards - had shaped and transformed the rest of his life. Oddly, at this point, Sara Quin piped up to deny there was a character named Jimmy in Essex County, and talked briefly about two other characters, Lou and Vince, before remembering Jimmy. Georges Laraque chose Angus from The Best Laid Plans, saying 'he has kind of my personality' – described by one reviewer as 'witty and charming.' Sara Quin picked Reta Winters from Unless, because she was a writer and a mother, and because she was moved to tears by the grief and longing in the book's passages that described Reta's missing her daughter. Debbie Travis chose Digger from The Bone Cage, saying 'it's a book about striving...and failure.' She said that as someone who wasn't a sports fan, she hadn't expected to like The Bone Cage, but that she was fascinated by Digger the wrestler. Knowing that failure 'is crippling in the end,' she was 'interested in the journey people take to be the best they can be.'

Ghomeshi then said that the least popular novel to date from the voting public was Unless, but that 'the nation awaits' the first panelist vote. And here are the results:

Georges Laraque
Voted to eliminate Essex County

Sara Quin
Voted to eliminate The Bone Cage

Debbie Travis
Voted to eliminate Essex County on the grounds that it did not meet the 'essential' reading criteria.

Lorne Cardinal
Voted to eliminate Essex County on the grounds that it isn't actually a novel, but is, rather, a collection of short stories.

Ali Velshi
Voted to eliminate Essex County.

At this point Sara Quin went on a bit of a subdued rant, saying the other panelists 'represent a demographic that isn't going to read this book' and that Essex County 'will capture a younger viewership' [sic] while the other novels represented choices that were 'more traditional and safe.' Which was a little odd and not terribly gracious.

Tomorrow: round two of Canada Reads.

For all the information you could want about Canada Reads, here's the official page. And if you don't mind hearing the news before you've had a chance to listen to the show yourself, follow the #CanadaReads hashtag on Twitter.

Update: See this review of Essex County if you want to get some sense of what the book's actually about - something that none of the Canada Reads panellists managed to convey during the three days of debates. Spelling of characters' names have been silently corrected in this post after reading the review. (February 9, 2011)

Here's the Canada Reads Day Two roundup. And here's the roundup for the third and final day.

Continual Christmas and all the best for 2011

Just came across this again (had found it via flickr a couple of years ago). Whether one celebrates Christmas or not, the sentiment expressed here is bang on.

Let
No Pleasure tempt thee,
No Profit allure thee,
No Ambition corrupt thee,
No Example sway thee,
No Persuasion move thee,
to do any thing which thou
knowest to be evil;
so shalt thou always live jollily;
for a good Conscience
is a continual Christmas.

Benjamin Franklin,Ben Franklin's Wit and Wisdom, Peter Pauper Press

The Last Summer (of You & Me): Hemingway on estrogen

If Hemingway had decided to write a Harlequin romance, The Last Summer (of You & Me) would probably have been the result. Not having read The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants or any of Ann Brashares' other work (and not having realized this was her first foray into supposedly adult rather than young adult fiction), I was curious about this novel, and recently picked it up in a secondhand bookstore.

While some reviewers find Brashares a 'beautiful writer' I'm afraid I'm going to have to beg to differ. It's bad enough that she treads on territory so well worn as to be dangerously slippery (both the coming of age novel and the most fundamental of plots: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back). She creates characters who manage to be simultaneously 'thin' in the E.M. Forster sense and unlikeable (unless you really have a penchant for young men and women who prefer to passively brood rather than, you know, get the therapy they so obviously need).

Alice and Riley are sisters; Paul is Riley's best friend. They've evolved a Fire Island code as children who spend their summers living next door to each other, vowing that nothing will ever change between them. Inevitably, change does happen, and these characters are singularly ill-suited to coping with it. One thing that doesn't change, however, is their passion for Rice Krispies. I was tempted to calculate the number of bowls of cereal poured and consumed in the course of this novel, but it's the kind of detail no one really needs to know. Someone must have told Ms Brashares that in order to develop characters you must know what they eat for breakfast. Her creative writing instructor must have left out the second half of that idea, which is that while the writer must know this, it is not necessary to communicate it. In fact, it's rarely a good idea to do so. Since I'm hoping those of you reading this review won't be reading the novel, I'll fill you in: the second most popular breakfast food in which these characters indulge (you know, when the cereal box is empty or they're feeling extremely daring) is bacon and egg sandwiches from the local store. All righty then - you needed to know that, didn't you?

Now for some passages for The Last Summer (of You & Me) to give you some idea of the quality of the writing, which I consider mesmerizingly bad.

'She was only twenty-one. A virgin until two weeks ago, and he wanted to attach himself to her physically, mentally, emotionally every minute of every day, for now and ever. Of course it was too much. He was right to be suspicious of himself. He'd know that when he finally opened up to her, he would blast out like a fire hose, destroying everything in his path: every spark, every tender thing.'

Is it just me, or did you too burst out laughing when you got to the phrase 'blast out like a fire hose'? (I'm sparing you the sex scenes which precede this passage - you're welcome.)

'And though she rarely saw Paul wearing layers and walking in winter light, she began to suspect that the similarity between this man and Paul did not stop with his walk. She looked at the man's hand, the one that wasn't involved with the blond woman's arm, and she knew the hand. She knew the fingers. Her body, badly attached as it was, would have whimpered if she hadn't caught it in time. Her breath shuddered. Her heart mismanaged its work of beating.'

Hmmm. Women are blonde, men are blond. What was it to which her body was badly attached - I seem to have missed that. Oh yes - because it's not there. Body whimpering - there's an indelible image. Isn't there a TV series called The Ghost Whimperer?

'He wished he hadn't let himself have that thought. He knew it was a trick. He knew it at the time, but he'd done it anyway. He'd spent his life girding himself against that very trick, and he'd gone right ahead and fallen for it.... A part of him wanted her to call on the phone just so he could tell her off properly. He imagined she would try that emasculating strategy of wanting to be friends again. She'd already ripped him apart; he wasn't going to let her pick through the bits to see which ones she still wanted. He wouldn't give her the opportunity to assuage her guilt by being friends with him. But anyway, he didn't get to tell her off because she didn't call.'

Ahem. Fiction editor asleep at the wheel here? At this point I've completely forgotten what the tricky thought (outlined in the paragraph immediately preceding this one) was: oh yes, that rather than sell his Fire Island summer home, he should keep it for Alice. But wait, the house has only recently been signed over to Paul. And yet he's been thinking he should keep it for Alice his entire life? Now I'm confused.

'There was a familiar feeling he knew he could feel right now. It opened in front of him like a hallway, beckoning him to walk down it. He could resent her for her beauty. He could feel threatened by her again. He could be threatened by the fact that Alice had already won the adoration of two little girls who now lived in his house. His path in life was not exactly original. Who could live next to Alice and not fall in love with her? And she, being so easily loved, did she really need his, too? What could she want with it? What did he have to offer?'

His hot bod, obviously, as we learn a few pages later:

'He looked impatient for her return. He grabbed her up as soon as she'd tiptoed back into the room and with ardent determination, he finished the job of undressing her. He lay her on the couch and made love to her with a solemn face and a joyful body.'

I'm pretty sure he laid her on the couch and then got laid, but why quibble about grammar when you have phrases like 'ardent determination' and 'a solemn face and a joyful body' to savage?

Apparently Warner Bros. has bought the movie rights to this novel and it looks like it's scheduled for release sometime in 2011. I'm not surprised the script has already had to be rewritten twice. Making silk purses out of sow's ears isn't an easy task. Still, the movie might be worth watching just for the sake of the soundtrack. Personally I'm dying to hear the score that'll accompany those solemn face/joyful body sex scenes.

Words of wisdom from Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal

What a fabulous first novel Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal is - pushing the boundaries of fiction in a way few have done. I think The Guardian's review sums it up far more insightfully than I ever could, but this passage made my blood run cold.

The saxophone teacher, in whom many of the girls from the private school at which the 'sex scandal' takes place confide, must, of course, deal with the girls' parents as well as she decides which pupils to accept or reject. It's the least favourite part of her job. But this scathing and deadly assessment of the mothers' aspirations was one of the best passages in the novel:

'"I am never quite sure," the saxophone teacher says, "what is truly meant when the mothers ay, I want my daughter to experience what was denied to me.

'"In my experience the most forceful and aggressive mothers are always the least inspired, the most unmusical of souls, all of them profoundly unsuccessful women who wear their daughter's image on their breast like a medal, like a bright deflection from their own unshining selves. When these mothers say, I want her to fully experience everything that was denied to me, what they rightly mean is, I want her to fully appreciate everything that was denied to me. What they rightly mean is, The paucity of my life will only be thrown into relief if my daughter has everything. On its own, my life is ordinary and worthless and nothing. But if my daughter is rich in experience and rich in opportunity, then people will come to pity me: the smallness of my life and my options will not be incapacity; it will be sacrifice. I will be pitied more, and respected more, if I raise a daughter who is everything that I am not."

'The saxophone teacher runs her tongue over her teeth. She says, "The successful mothers--musical women, literate women, content and brimful women, women who were denied nothing, women whose parents paid for lessons when they were girls--the successful mothers are the least forceful, always. They do not need to oversee, or wield, or pick a fight on their daughter's behalf. They are complete in themselves. They are complete, and so they demand completeness in everyone else. They can stand back and see their daughters as something set apart, as something whole and therefore untouchable."'

The Rehearsal is published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. Buy, beg, or borrow a copy - it's well worth the read. If Catton can produce this kind of work at age 25 (before she even graduates from the Iowa Writers' Workshop MFA program), what will she be doing at 30? 40? 50? Stand aside, Yann Martel - you ain't seen or produced nothin' yet that can hold a candle to this young woman.

Quotable women - Fay Weldon and Mary Gaitskill

No time for a full-length review of Fay Weldon's 2005 novel She May Not Leave (Atlantic Monthly Press). Pick up a copy of the remaindered hardcover for a song while you can. At first I thought it wasn't as delightfully acerbic as her previous work, but I changed my mind about that as got closer to the novel's climax and Weldon's trademark (at least I hope she's trademarked it) denouement, in which she gives a plot twist so definitive you're completely bowled over. I think one of the things I like best about Weldon's writing - in addition, of course, to the fact that she is the most pragmatic and realistic feminist I've ever encountered via the printed page - is that she really doesn't telegraph what's to come. She's sly. There are hints. But the story has sufficient propulsion that you note significant details without pondering them too much.

Anyway, two great passages/lines from She May Not Leave:

'"It's in the nature of women to report the bad behaviour of men to other women: he did this, then he said that, I can't stand it a minute longer. They don't expect to be taken seriously."

Serena agrees that it is certainly safer to report one's wrongs to other women than to men. She tells me how recently she was sounding off about Cranmer to a male friend and months later when she saw him again he said "thank God, you two are still together - I thought you were splitting up", and she couldn't even remember what the quarrel had been about, except that she had been very angry at the time. What woman ever can remember?'

And then there's the priceless (and oh so true) line: 'Anger is a great cure for fear.'

I started out well with Mary Gaitskill, reading (and loving) her first two books, Bad Behaviour and Two Girls, Fat and Thin. And then I don't know what happened - somehow I missed Because They Wanted To and Veronica. I'll have to catch up, because I believe she's one of the most important contemporary writers around. Don't Cry, her 2009 collection of short stories, leapt out at me from the library shelves though, and I snapped it up immediately. In some ways Gaitskill could be viewed as Fay Weldon's American granddaughter (I wonder what they'd both think of that notion?). 'Mirror Ball' is one of the more fanciful stories in this collection, but it deals with a subject that has long preoccupied Weldon: the soul-stealing effects of trying to be a heterosexual woman in a world that demands you be a feminist. 'The Agonized Face' tackles some of the issues of female solidarity, ground Weldon's trod many times, especially in her amazing story "Alopecia" (from Watching Me, Watching You).

The passage that really struck me from this collection was from another story though, 'Folk Song' - perhaps because I've got to know so many scientists recently on Twitter, and have watched the skeptic movement in the UK in particular adopt a very hostile and divisive stance - to homeopathy, to alternative medicine, and to those who still have faith - guaranteed to polarize opinion, couched in terms of ridicule I think is ultimately counter-productive. The scientists and skeptics for whom I have the most respect are those who admit that scientific research has an amoral aspect at its very heart - and this passage sums up that notion so very neatly:

'Yet with science, anything is possible. With science, rats have been tortured by electroshock each time they press a lever to get a food pellet. Rabbits have been injected with cancerous cells and then divided into control groups, one of which was petted and the other not, in order to investigate the role of affection in healing. Scientists do these experiments because they want to help. They want to alleviate physical suffering; they want to eradicate depression. To achieve their goal, they will take everything apart and put it back together a different way. They want heaven and they will go to hell to get there.'