Direction & NW review in National Post
Saturday gone I reviewed Zadie Smith’s new novel NW in the National Post.
You can read my review here. I have plenty more to say on this book, but the review is a start.
I noticed in Adam Mars-Jones Observer review of NW how he reads the novel backwards out from, against and back to the modernists. Whilst he offers other insights early in his review worth heeding and considering this reading the book backwards seems odd to me. Why didn’t he consider what the book might be writing toward? What and where it might be writing into? I really do not understand reviewers who apply such rigid reasonings to literature. I am all for examining the continuum, but one doesn’t have to chronically only look over the shoulder you can also look left and right, step off the kerb and sail through the present traffic lights .. unanchored.
The Three Rs: Anakana Schofield
Slightly Bookist blogger and literary critic JC Sutcliffe interviewed me for her fun and contemplative Three R’s feature.
Here’s a snip with the link to the full interview questions below.
“I think of literature on a continuum, a line, I want to add to it, to reread, to dart here and there. I can appreciate a book for a single paragraph if I contemplate where that paragraph led from or leads too in another parallel work or where else it might lead me. I am not always reading for the “whole”.”
Edmonton Journal: Another big shout out for Malarky
In a column called Let’s Celebrate Great Writing in Saturday’s Edmonton Journal Michael Hingston, the paper’s new book columnist, gave this uplifting and generous shout out to Malarky:
“The annual season of CanLit second-guessing spoke to an urge that’s near and dear to my heart: the urge to make fun of dumb things. But then I started thinking about the best Canadian novel I’ve read this year, Anakana Schofield’s Malarky — and which, if left to some inattentive marketing person, could’ve easily been lost in a pile of books marked drab and introspective. What a mistake that would’ve been.”
Little My
Little My (Swedish: Lilla My – literally: “little mu”) is a character in the Moomin series of books by Tove Jansson. She first appears in the fourth book, The Exploits of Moominpappa (1950). She is a small, determined and fiercely independent Mymble. When she wants something done, she does it straight away. She is very aggressive, mischievous to a fault and totally disrespectful, but can be a good friend when she wants to. She has a brash personality. She is the Mymble’s Daughter’s younger sister. She is eventually adopted by the Moomin family.
The name Little My originated from the twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet: μ (Mu) – transliterated as my and pronounced [my] in Swedish. In the metric system, lowercase mu μ, meaning “one-millionth”, represents the prefix “micro-“, from the Greek μικρός (mikrós), meaning “small”.
The popularity of the character has led to the personal name My being borne by more than 7600 women and girls in Sweden.
Personality
Little My is a very abrasive person, and she almost always succeeds in persuading her listener or discussion partner. She’s a nonconventional debater, as she does not put much emphasis on logic and reason, instead she uses the emotions of herself and others to convince them of her argument. She has four ways she mostly uses to win. She makes a personal attack on the person she is having the discussion with or about, she state her own nonducumented conclusions she exaggerate the argument of her opponents to ridicule them, and she uses nonverbal effects to show the inferiority of her opponent.
Snuffkin
Snufkin (original Swedish and Norwegian: Snusmumriken, Finnish: Nuuskamuikkunen, Spanish: Manrico, Estonian: Nuuskmõmmik, Danish: Mumrikken, Polish: Włóczykij) is a character in the Moomin series of books authored by Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson, appearing in six of the nine books. He is the best friend of the series’ protagonist, Moomintroll, and lives a nomadic lifestyle, only staying in Moominvalley in the spring and summer, but leaving for warmer climates down south every winter. He is the son of the elder Mymble and the Joxter, and is half-brother to the Mymble’s daughter and Little My.
Snufkin wears old green clothes and a wide brimmed hat he has had since birth. He lives in a tent, smokes a pipe and plays the harmonica. Snufkin also has a great dislike for authority figures such as the Park Keeper, and the many regulation signs and fences he erects. At one point he sabotages the Park Keeper by planting Hattifatteners in his garden, causing them to grow and drive him out. He has a great hatred for all symbols of private property, even losing his temper with the Hemulen after the latter attempts to put up a sign declaring “Moominvalley”.
Snufkin prefers freely-growing foliage to fenced-in lawns. Snufkin keeps as few worldly possessions as possible, seeing them as a burden, and being happier keeping the memory of a thing than the thing itself. This aspect of his personality is contrasted in the character of Sniff.
Tove Jansson based the character of Snufkin on her friend and one-time fiancé, Atos Wirtanen.
Distance
In recent days I was thinking about the concept of distance. Today I listened to an interview with Philip Glass in which he remarked that an opera usually is 8 to 10 years behind in terms of its first staging. So there will be a staging of an opera and then 8-10 years may pass before it’s restaged or picked up upon. I found this lag or distance curious and wondered which other art forms the same might be applied or uncovered? Also where does this put the composer in relation to the work if the world’s catching up after the fact. Is she/he essentially chronically dystopic? (or peri-lunar?)
“The Scotiabank Giller longlist: fine, but Malarky is missing” Montreal Gazette
Oh my. This is a very sweet sentiment. Thank you to Ian McGillis of the Montreal Gazette. Book Prize shortlists however are akin to the likelihood of nabbing a seat on the Space Shuttle, hence I have/had/will always have zero expectations.
Also, Book Prize culture usually insists on single conversations about single books. I am more concerned with the continuum and Malarky being in conversation with other books (as she is within her text) and/or art forms for that matter. The poets are reading her, I hope some day maybe Malarky will be taught and new understandings and interrogations can emerge.
I commend Mr McGillis for his column though because I have felt similiarly impassioned about the lack of people reading Helen Potrebenko’s novel Taxi! I think his column could be the heartiest defence I receive in this lifetime!
Now, though, for my big beef: Where on earth is Anakana Schofield’s Malarky? The reception this years-in-gestation debut novel got last spring, both word-of-mouth and in the media, seemed to mark a rare case of a small-press literary novel getting widespread attention purely on the basis of its merits. There was no particular “hook” to this Ireland-set story of a (maybe) mad housewife other than its being so plainly, inarguably good; on a sentence-by-sentence level, and in its flawlessly sustained voice, it grabbed me as few novels have in recent years. Yes, I know, these things are subjective, but I’m frankly baffled by its exclusion. If it doesn’t make the GG list I’ll start to wonder if there’s something in the water, either mine or everyone else’s.
Interview in Celtic Life International
Celtic Life International, a magazine about which I know virtually nothing, kindly interviewed me recently and the interview is up on their site now. It will appear along with a review of Malarky in the Fall edition of their magazine.
I’ll excerpt two questions from the interview here and you can read the entire thing in a link at the end should you wish.
What was the most challenging aspect of the process?
Finding the right form. My form. Breaking with the conventional forms of linear, chronological or and past/present shifts in narrative. I wanted to write a novel that challenged. I am ambitious for the novel as a reader and I want to contribute to that as a writer. I created a rotating point of view that would give the reader a whole woman and I employed devices such as the use of Our Woman, so the reader would feel some possession over her. I also wanted a singular focus on Philomena that would be unremitting in its attention to one ordinary woman. It was very demanding. In the novel I also address the effect that grief has on time and memory; in order to replicate this it was necessary to a fragmented approach. But the hardest part in some ways was the sadness of her situation. I became very attached to Philomena. I still feel weepy if I think of her at that moment in the shop when she breaks down or even stuck out on the mountain when she falls over. Though that part of the narrative is fairly ripe with humour.
What are your thoughts on Canadian literature today?
We are living in an exciting time for Canadian literature. But we need to be mindful to push the boundaries of the novel and not just settle for the middle-brow. We also need to pay much more attention as readers to our poetry. Some of the most dynamic work in the country is taking place in poetic forms. Likewise critical writing needs our attention both as writers and readers.
The Quarterly Conversation review recursive Malarky
Wonderful, interrogative critique of Malarky in lastest edition of The Quarterly Conversation. Thanks to Christiane Craig for going a few rounds and octaves with Malarky.
“Perhaps the most surprising moment of Anakana Schofield’s Malarky: “Our Woman’s brain ached as though fingers were separating it inside her head.” Indeed, Malarky is nothing if not a very difficult, albeit remarkable, little “brain” and to read it is to separate it with fingers. The novel is composed of twenty “episodes,” the muddled recollections of “Our Woman,” an Irish farmer’s wife on the threshold of old age, with two featureless daughters and a very dear gay son, Jimmy, who is her favorite person. ”
The Massive Cabbage Visit
Yesterday a friend emailed with the words “I will bring you a cabbage…”
It was an offer way too tempting to resist, despite the slight John the Baptist vibe to it. Do not fear JTB. And If you want to get the world talking: mention Cabbage. (Henceforth capitalized due to its powerful camaraderie) Before the Cabbage arrived I had seven different ideas from social medja of what to do with it. At 3.30pm it landed. On my blue kitchen table. It is a massive Cabbage. At 6pm we ate some of it, very tasty. It remains a massive Cabbage There’s so much left it could make another 45 dinners.
If anyone ever says I will bring you a Cabbage, encourage them to do so. This Cabbage was grown in Burnaby. Thank you Helen for the Cabbage.