Review The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1-19
Here’s a link to review I wrote in today’s Vancouver Sun about Jocelyn Brown’s YA novel
Every now and then, a novel that is as solid as steel lands in readers’ hands. A novel needs the right proportion of its own hardening agents to deliver on the page. The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1-19 is such a book.
If you are a teacher, a crafter, or have a teen reader highly recommend this YA book. Splendid stuff.
We were listening to The Rest is Noise Alex Ross’ audiobook (and book) about music in the twentieth century last night, as myself and the Puffin engaged in our epic knitting response to recessionary Xmas. We began at CD 18. Previously we have listened to some of the early parts but in order to persuade the Puffin of its merits I had suggested it may mention the 80’s band Europe, knowing full well it was unlikely to, but the promise of it would be enough, since Puffin is muy interested in classical music once someone is blathering about it.
CD 18 (the chapter title escapes me) covers the period pretty much up to the present day with some hint of the seventies. It mentioned eight of the most well known contemporary composers by name and pointed out six of them are women. Small voice from sofa rose in astonishment. It’s something I’d never thought of, Puffin said. There are no women composers (by which he means Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart because that’s his current conception of composers. So I had to explain that there were women composers but at the time they weren’t acknowledged or may have written under male names and he should research it. But that the matter struck him in reverse when the narrative was explaining the present was worth noting.
I am particularly impressed by his generation: their questioning, their awareness of the political climate, has to come from the increased interactions with technology something that’s often damned and derided. Yet I see a sophisticated understanding of the world emerging, a questioning that previous generations would have been limited by virtue of the limited dissemination of information. I also can see an impressive bunch of citizen journalists and activists emerging!
word tree
I received a most marvellous creation from the not so small Puffin yesterday. He disappeared behind the couch, claiming he was going to wrap something for me, with a bunch of paper and the repeated clicking of a stapler provided an interesting rhythm. There was so much clicking I began to wonder if he could possible be wrapping. The insistent don’t look, don’t look … I continued to knit the uneven stripy burgundy and green Dr Who style tie (recession xmas in these parts) and he kept insisting are you looking?
Eventually after much anxious demanding for a cardboard box containing a years worth of tax receipts “I need THAT box!”
the creation emerged draped by a tea towel
It was a stunner. A bunch of cone like paper creations, different heights inside a box wrapped in two snowflakes. It’s called a word tree he explained pointing out the recycled paper (printed up discarded novel) he’d endlessly stapled into cones was full of words. The hugging of the two paper snowflakes also delicately created between the stapling around the box was also touching and thoughful.
I expired with joy. Some moments are mighty. (Especially on a day filled with dementing moments) A word tree, what a great concept.
bouncin’ left
The banjaxed left arm has bounced me into new territory: even more respect for left handed people, since anyone doing anything with the left arm raises me up, and armless gymnastics.
Just as the arm settles and I think yaboodle it’s back, the smallest amount of weight and it issues a whole new protest.
Hier soir at my gymnastics session I had to convene with the somersault obsessed males (mainly snowboarders I think and martial arts) on the epic trampoline. Stuck between two of them banging on about positive thinking (guck) I let out my stream of pessimism between bouncing up to front somersault off the end into a crash mat. The lads were tremendous assuring me between every bounce that i was wrong so much so I had to invoke Barbara Ehrenrich (of Nickel and Dimed).
Next bouncer took his place central tramp station and emitted a spout that it’s the easiest thing in the world for an author to write a “gimmicky” book (not a direct quote, but something of that sentiment). I protested Barbara as far from what he suggested as he was from upright as he turned a sideways peculiar move.
And when I followed and took my turn in a moment of severe injustice, my brain derailed between a pike jump and a front somersault and I landed flat on me head…. to a chorus of that’s what you get for ….
I went on … I went on to set up for backward somersaults rolling off a vault, with no burble to accompany it, the move closer to preparing to go into out of space. My move.
in the trenches, down the mine, labouring
Working hard to prevent traditional structure from overthrowing the episodic patchwork in my current work in progress.
The constant threat of invasion is clear.
Requires a certain amount of inoculation, insulation, the way any small emerging nation would have to plant their hedgerows against the wind.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBnAY426gaY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
This satire having all the more resonance when you consider Beckett had a habit (modelled on qui? It will come to me, the writer who obsessively journaled… gah) of noting such things in his journal.
Post note: Jules Renard Journal Intime (sp?)
Rhotic 15
Ding,
Conas is ceann chun maireachtáil in áit más rud é nach bhfuil aon mhaith a bheith adhlactha ann?
An gceapann tú tá sé ina fadhb?
Is féidir leat smaoineamh faoi thalamh a bheith ina gcónaíonn tú anois?
A man continues to delight me!
C’est toujours l’écrivain Monsieur Fraser.
Today I was on the very odd invention that I call a ski-ing machine, no one else calls it that, but it looks like elevated skis tramping through the air, and these two handles are inconveniently located and tend to clout me in the head if I am not careful. I am an ardent believer in the art of multi-tasking that I take to a sad and ridiculous level. Thus I was on the machine mostly to read and secondly, a very distant second, to puff.
The book precariously balanced, I held it rather than the flying handles and tried not to knock myself out before I’d covered the pages I intended to.
In the quest to put eyes on the page I somehow forgot to turn the machine on, which was perfect, since I’ve little intention of getting galvanized over those mounting digital blocks that are supposed to encourage progress but when I see them mounting I immediately want to dismount and take up a supine position in the nearest corridor.
So as I skied unheeded, unimpeded, I read DM Fraser’s story The Examination about a teacher (Prof?) planning to divorce his wife, amidst a treaty of text on how to write an examination.
The small trickyness with ski-ing midair and reading is the text becomes blurry. So the only thing was to read it aloud. The neighbouring ski-machines (they are not called ski machines, but sure never mind, name them at your leisure), with more intended for the purpose occupants make so much whirring — they actually make a noise if you use them properly — that it would drown out my bleating.
Until the puffing began. The point being the story had to compete with blurred vision, panting delivery, and the odd clout on the eyebrow from a flying pole. And still again it rose.
The final line:
At the end, proofread.
had me in stitches.
Two cinematic forays this week, both at the same cinema. At one, The Sweet and the Bitter, a discussion followed the film. A few moments stand out: sat in the middle of cinema a man described his excitement at living beside where the film was shot at age 11 (1962) and “waiting” for it to appear in the cinema (it didn’t til 1967). At the back of the cinema, a woman (who I think said her ma appeared in the film) described how the film was the beginning of what we call Hollywood North (bascially films being shot here in Vancouver), how the actors in the film got “their breaks” and other comments that related to context on the Japanese-Canadian content of the film. At the front of the cinema, a man described gentrification and uttered the words “we don’t want it” in relation to films being shot here (Hollywood North) and the Olympics.
So there we had it: waiting, beginning, we don’t want it. I appreciated how these points of view and voices could share the oxygen. As this is not always the case. Also there was a palpable appetite in the room for people to talk about their city, as though there is a dearth of opportunities.
I thought about many of these events I’ve been to where discussions take place and it struck me how we so rarely hear the voices of ordinary people in relation to whatever artistic event has taken place. I’ve actually been at events (one at the library) where some of the writers present were actively irate because a member of the public went off on a mad irrelevant tirade. Hello it’s a public venue! If you only want to hear people who speak your language and behave and view things on your terms organize a private party with the 35 people who agree with you and have read the books or watched the films you’ve watched.There’s a significant distance between talking at people and engaging with them.
Visual arts can be particularly intimidating and excluding in this way. Hermetically sealed, such events demand invasion by the populous. Go and be at them, in them, among them. Ask your questions loud and proud and confused.
The disappearence of what I’ll call the “lumpen” writer/artist has created a ditch between writers and readers.
Some of the more interesting encounters I’ve had are usually with seemingly mad people going off on a major tirade, but who in actual fact turn out to be very sane and articulate.