Fog recall, peace be among the pigeons
I thought I caught a much welcome smell of fog earlier, however it did not build at the volume I had hoped and create actual fog. We are clamped beneath the worst grey sky, practically being erased with gloom. Bring back the rolling, bowling fog. Come home foggy. We suit fog. We don’t suit grey.
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Week II at Sometimes I think, I can see you (PuSh Festival) was more challenging than our blast off week. The pigeon wars have commenced at VPL, which added to the challenge. Also, physically the act of sitting and writing non stop for two hours under the public gaze — the performative demands therein are exhausting. However it is never uninteresting (except perhaps during the last 20 mins when I am desperate for a cup of tea and my brain has written itself inside out) and I continue to be glad of this opportunity and somewhat Oulipian encounter.
What will the third week reveal?
I certainly have even more respect for anybody who works with or within the public relentlessly and would appeal for patience and respect toward such folk rather than swollen entitlement and footstamping. Likewise I’d urge the same appreciation of public art and public writers! Interrogate the interruption, bounce along the ropes that the boundary of having somebody writing in public space creates for you and please find some place else to chase your pigeons rather than into our fatigued eyes.
Generally though the public engagement has been very good spirited and warmly receptive and people seem genuinely intrigued by the boundaries we are blurring and narratives we
are creating.
On Sunday a most wonderful thing happened during our piece at the VAG, a woman/artist watching/reading my stories on the screen handed me this sketch she had drawn of me writing. It was a lovely response, a looping in and out of the text. I was most touched. Thank you Erin.
Sometimes I think, I can see you
I have now undertaken my first week in Mariano Pensotti’s installation piece Sometimes I think, I can see you as part of the PuSh Festival 2013.
I am enjoying and appreciating this opportunity enormously. Physically, it can be a challenge, but reminds of gymnastics. More a lexicon gymnastics. So far I’ve only done in one of my knees. Mentally it’s invigorating. Socially energizing. And I love the interactions afterwards with the public and staff. I’ve learnt so much talking to the staff about their ongoing interactions and observations of the public within the space they work. On Saturday I had a good ole chat with three young folk who were part of a narrative on-and -off for the whole time I wrote that day. They were keen to explain their actual story, which was curiously close to what I’d invented.
When you sit in public space and observe and record and fictionalize you also draw fleeting conclusions about where we live and speculate on how people may feel about it. They pass through one’s mind like a subway train. Sometimes they recycle themselves back into whatever replaces them. But some persist. I wonder if each week that we perform this project whether new conclusions or realizations will arrive. I wonder how the weather may influence this. Or exhaustion. Will immunity set in? On va voir.
It’s quite strange for me to be Downtown. I only tend to frequent it in the quest for books, socks, films/talks, and popped rib relocation. Otherwise I mainly visit the Downtown Eastside where I like to admire the Army & Navy camping equipment or stare at peculiar items in restaurant supply shops in Chinatown. To make 5 journeys Downtown in 7 days is odd. I have had to reacclimatize somewhat to the rampant shopping culture. The other evening after the performance/installation I visited The Bay and stared at crockery and glasses perplexed that people really do shell out $49 for two of them. Of course a survey of the Dyson vacuum cleaners is compulsory. One happy addition to Downtown are the food carts. Very fun to sample them and chat with the chefs inside them.
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Obviously the major news is: ice fog. We have had several episodes of it and I confirmed the definition of it on Twitter with the extraordinary seismologist and meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe.
exactly! suspended tiny ice crystals in the air.. had it again this morning for a few hours
Follow @JWagstaffe on Twitter especially if there’s an earthquake. She was marvellous tweeting live at 1am during the recent Tsunami watch and warning.
We have become an enclave for fog and it sits well with me. Fog-alicious Foggy town. Except it’s v hard to sleep when it is foggy, not because of the horns which I never hear but because it’s too comforting looking out there.
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Continued thanks to Malarky readers for all the kind words popping up on social media about Malarky. Glad you have enjoyed Our Woman.
Eileen Myles on class in language, language and class & on moolah
Myles on moolah and more over at Full Stop. Smart, incisive, and pragmatic.
“I do think it’s possible to make a living doing my writing but you have to be willing to live badly which I frequently do. There’s lots of blogs to write for instance and oddly even if they “pay” you you have to wait longer than ever before. While everything’s electronic pay checks are moving slower than ever before. You could blame the post office but I blame politics for that too. Increasingly though the belief is that you must be an academic or a publishing heavy if you are writing about books and you are obviously making your income elsewhere or else you are new or young or wealthy already and are just now climbing into prominence and need the “exposure.” So there’s less respect than ever for the idea that a writer or even a aloud reader of her work needs to get paid. There’s much shame about $ and that during an economic downturn. I find this trend to be deeply immoral. So the desire to make a living as a writer is a true perversion in this culture but I think we need our perverts more than ever.”
Myles on class and language, class in language and more over at Trop
and from the same Trop interview:
“There’s a kind of anywhere-ness and an anyone-ness that’s really exciting and important to me in language—that language not be of a particular privileged class. All class is a privilege, even the lowliest have a vernacular that is all their own that they use to keep people in and keep people out.”
Salty Ink Dazzling Debuts includes Malarky
On December 20, Salty Ink, a Newfoundland based literary blog, announced its list of Most Dazzling Debuts 2012 and Malarky was among them.
On January 20, 2013, the same Salty Ink posted it’s (Probably) The Best Novels of 2012 list and Malarky was included again.
Thank you to Salty Ink for this double listing and for bringing Malarky to the attention of readers in Atlantic Canada.
Although I remain slightly underwhelmed by the much lauded by my Atlantic Canadian friends “King Cole tea” — I would very much love to read in Atlantic Canada, as I am most keen to visit the other side of Canada and discover lobster. I am quite an expert in the weather forecasts for those regions. They have some serious storm action going on in them there parts!
Newfoundland yahoy!
Malarky on Montreal Gazette’s Top Shelf
“Anakana Schofield’s Malarky (Biblioasis, 225 pages, $19.95) introduced an indelible heroine into our national literature, no less so for the fact that she’s Irish. Inhabiting the sometimes confused but always indomitable mind of the grieving and randy Dublin housewife Our Woman, Schofield has created a note-perfect literary joyride, a “voice novel” in the best sense. An unaccountable collective oversight saw Malarky left off all the major prize short lists, but Amazon and other Internet indicators show that Irish-Canadian Schofield is finding readers regardless, and that’s as heartening a story as 2012 has provided.”
Thank you to Ian McGillis of the Montreal Gazette for including Malarky in his year of reading list. I am delighted that my novel is included in our national literature here. I hope she’ll be taught as Canadian Literature and World Literature and Irish Literature. I owe a great deal to this country and Vancouver, the community where I live and its many kind people who have encouraged and inspired me, especially during difficult times. Malarky was Made In Canada. I hope to contribute more to our literature, as I am keen to write into, out of and in response to the where I live. On va voir!
Pride: Malarky makes Pickle Me This 2012 Books of the Year
I am so topsy turvy in my reportage I have failed to register the most significant Book of the Year nod. Pickle Me This! This inclusion makes Malarky therefore a Pickler! I have ambitions to be a pickler. Only thus far managing to be a disastrous canner. A lovely list indeed filled with thoughtful, talented women’s work. Yes! Thank you Kerry Clare.
“According to everybody that matters, this was one of the best books of the year, and when it comes out in the UK next year, the whole world is going to know it.” Discover all the best (potential) picklers here
Toronto Star The Best Reading of 2012 includes Malarky
Malarky by Anakana Schofield (Biblioasis, $19.95, 222 pages)
Unaccountably overlooked by this year’s prize juries, Anakana Schofield’s ribald story of an Irish farmwife’s descent into late-life cougardom and mental breakdown is a standout debut and one of the best Canadian novels of the year: the sort of book that forces you to read it over again as soon as you finish. AG
Thank you Alex Good and The Toronto Star for such a spirited inclusion and description of Malarky.
Delighted to sit beside intriguing works like A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava, Rawi Hage’s Carnival and my ole favourite buoyant Leanne Shapton! Not to mention a sister Biblioasis author Alice Petersen (All the Voices Cry).
Salon.com What To Read Awards
And there’s Malarky at Number 9 in David Gutowski’s Salon list. (A musical number if my recollection of that Beatles album, or perhaps it was Lennon alone that had the recursive number 9, number 9 refrain in it.). Thank you David.
1. “Building Stories” by Chris Ware
2. “Arcadia” by Lauren Groff
3. “The Devil in Silver” by Victor LaValle
4. “Battleborn” by Claire Vaye Watkins
5. “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed
6. “Birds of a Lesser Paradise” by Megan Mayhew Bergman
7. “Gods Without Men” by Hari Kunzru
8. “Girlchild” by Tupelo Hassman
9. “Malarky” by Anakana Schofield
10. “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid” by Shani Boianjiu
And in the spirit of Large Hearted Boy I offer:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVf5Cr4M-F8&w=420&h=315]
Splash! A swarm of year end nods & warmth for Malarky
I am behind. Forgive me. 2013 is upon us and it’s a lively January with rehearsals commencing this week for PuSh Festival. I am participating in Mariano Pensotti’s installation piece Sometimes I think, I can see you at VPL and the Vancouver Art Gallery along with 7 other writers. Viva la collaboracion! Thank you to PuSh and the curators for inviting me to participate.
In the meantime the following posts will be a round up of all the warmth I missed recording as December scampered by a toute vitesse.
Thank you to the CBC The year-in-review panel, most especially Brian Francis (Natural Order) who when asked the following question … Touched especially by the association of splash and being a non-to-struggling swimmer.
3. Which Canadian author made the biggest splash this year?
“I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve heard lots of positive chatter about Tanis Rideout’s Above All Things,” Francis said. “Same goes for Anakana Schofield’s Malarky. And both debut novelists! Also, I’ve heard very good things about Lynn Crosbie’s Life is About Losing Everything.
Read the whole year-in-review panel here
Also, a shout out to Ben McNally and especially Lynn, who has been indefatiguable at selling Malarky in Toronto at their beauty Bookshop. Thanks also to Pulp Fiction, who’ve consistently stocked it since it came out & shifted a box of Malarkys & Book Warehouse here in Vancouver, The Bookshelf in Guelph, Tradewinds in the Sunshine Coast, Johnny Pigeau of Backbeat Books & Music — and many more booksellers in Canada & US. Add yourself or your bookshops to the comments pls.
Malarky selected as Chatelaine: Top Five Books Picks of 2012
There’s something rather post-Blanchot about this one I quite enjoyed. Blanchot maintained (correct me if I am wrong) that the writers intention should not be considered, nor the readers response, but the text alone. Hence this one leans toward a pre-digestion of the text! The conjuring of an appetite. Thanks to Laurie Grassi for this nod. I am glad to know thinking women on Twitter are thinking about Our Woman.
“Everybody’s come up with a list of their fave books of 2012, but I thought I’d try something a little different: My picks of my top unread books of 2012.”
Click here to discover the other 4 books along with Malarky, (including Rebecca Lee’s Bobcat and Other Stories.)