Baile Atha Claith
I am having a splendid time navigating the weather in Dublin — patchy drizzles, intermittent downpours, essentially constant rain until this morning, when hark ye Sun! I hardly knew how to behave until by 8pm wandering past the GAA ground in Cabra big, fat raindrops recommenced and pounded my cardigan.
You cannot but admire the consistency.
Minutes ago there was a bout of howling wind. Actual howling wind. I am humbled by its appearance in July.
The weather is the top topic here and you can be assured of a discussion about it with anyone whose breathing. Hark it howls again. I am weathery made up. Yesterday though I was weathery dismal. The company exceeds all of the above. Warm beyond warm and so familiar.
Hot Spot!
The wave of heat has been with us for two days and we are delighted with it. Welcome heat. Welcome wave. It’s a particularly good combination because at night the temperate falls and it’s not unbearable.
Or it may be the case that we are simply defrosting from the past six months of chilly puddling and therefore cannot gain any actual sense of the temperature because we’ve been so frozen. Who would actually know at this point what’s unbearably hot as we’ve become fluent in unbearably overcast.
Yesterday (Sunday) it was scorching at 4pm. I gave thanks and scorched along with it.
My only concern now is that of thunderstorms and what they lead to — the dreadful forest fires.
Sources tell me there was an hour long discussion on BC Almanac on the weather today. I am ashamed to say I missed it. Such is the nature of my present life my weather forecasting or weather watching has been derailed.
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Malarky selected for Amazon Best Books of 2012 So Far list in 2 categories
This week or Friday gone, Amazon.ca announced it’s Best Books of the Year So Far list and Malarky was selected in 2 categories! Given there are only 10 spots in each category that was a coup.
It was happy days to be listed alongside Tamara Faith Berger’s novel Maidenhead (also in 2 categories) as our books speak to something in between them. Perhaps the assumptions made about women’s sexuality. I read with Tamara in March at VPL (along with Ben Wood whose novel is also listed) and enjoyed her company and our discussions greatly.
This week I have read some of the most unambitious meanderings in a long time on literature, I’ll save you from them. Except to say language is certainly the way to go! And I commit to going even further with language! We need to move beyond middle brow expectations of story and prescription in the novel. What century is this again?! Form needs to reflect the undulations of the ordinary, daily life, the mind, the moment, this moment not stand back from it safely framing and merely dabbing calculated light on the traffic and trees around it and getting the reader up the hill to the next set of traffic lights. Enough of the linear, enough of the expected. Ideas and interrogation please. A literary work needs to be considered within its context not co-opted sideways to that which is not its concern and that which is already to be found plentifully in the myriad of mystery novels and middle brow fiction.
I could have engaged more with the various debates, but was very caught up thinking about Robert Walser’s use of tone in The Assistant and have been so struck by the image of his own death in the field finish. I reread Coetzee’s essay on Walser and was particularly galvanized by this paragraph:
Also, Little Star Journal have blogged some considerings on Christopher Middleton’s Thirty Poems of Robert Walser. Read it here
Finally the other thing that’s consumed me this week are thoughts of creating small living spaces within small living spaces. I came across a wonderful structure in a coffee shop Moii on Cambie near Broadway. Go and visit it. It’s a tiny tiny room within the coffee shop that an artist/media artist with an interest in industrial design built for her final project at Emily Carr. I want to learn to build walls and try to up my output from the Japanese hand saw with the green handle. I am convinced that being short will help realize this small space creation because the walls do not need to be so high to house me.
Fennel-ville
I had good fortune yesterday. I went in search of plants on a whim and the place I went to was giving them away for free as they were on the turn, or certainly headed that way. They were also a motley crowd. Very odd plants that I will have to google or just wait to see if they survive.
I took my clogs to my sad plot at the community garden and heaved a few of my rambling strawberry plants, attacked the invasive buttercups and basically lashed the new friends into the ground. On account of being the single person in Canada who cannot grow fennel, I took as many fennel starts as I could fit into my tray.
If after this effort no fennel survives I will take to the podium as the lone person who cannot grow fennel. Heck I see people everyone trying not to grow fennel, growing it.
Why you may ask would you want to so desperately grow fennel? Because I have two hefty pudding sized guinea pigs who would eat an acre of it. I think fennel is catnip to a guinea pig. They nearly do a dance when I feed them it.
Guinea pigs if you’re wondering are a great source of consolation. Need some consoling? Adopt a guinea pig or two. Or learn the cello. Or knit.
San Francisco Chronicle publishes excellent, insightful review praising Malarky
A piece of criticism is required to be an engaging piece of writing in its own right. Increasingly reviews are devoid of ideas and the frames of reference have become painfully narrow, such engagement is only to be found in the longer form essay or critique.
The San Francisco Chronicle published a review in their Sunday edition (July 3, 2012) that not only strongly praises Malarky but more importantly considers it and considers it coherently. And even more significantly the review, even within the confines of today’s newspaper word counts, manages to contain ideas.
“Malarky” is very much a book about sexuality and sexual frustration, but it is more fundamentally about the blinkers life puts on a person. Smart and absurdly proactive as Our Woman can be, she remains unable to see certain parts of herself or push through the illusions that her marriage has taught her. Schofield brings in a clearly political element when these illusions pertain to her soldier son, yet, throughout, “Malarky” makes a more subtle critique: failing to see past the margins of one’s understandings invites a failure of the imagination that hurts those you love, or attempt to.
Potent and fresh as this is, “Malarky” becomes truly compelling when Our Woman embodies an existential strangeness. In certain moments, we are not so far from Beckett’s Molloy – Our Woman comes close to enlivening not only the political and the personal but also the human.
Click here to read Scott Esposito’s San Francisco Chronicle review.
Raining curtains
There was a major rain event at around 2am when the sensible people were asleep. It lasted several hours and I have titled it the curtain rain event. It was literally raining curtains out there. Thick and heavy curtain sized sheets of it pouring down from the sky. It was so loud I opened the window! I had to. I actually had to contemplate it.
The rain always wakes me up if it is of such a powerful consistency. I was reading the Blueberry Farmers are concerned the weather is going to do in the blueberry crop. The weather has become such a local talking point which naturally enough pleases me since I wish we’d contemplate it whether it’s good, bad or indifferent.
The rumour is that it’s going to brighten up tomorrow, but currently it’s resumed the rain sonata out there.
Malarky, CBC 10 Writers to Watch and ruminations on the dentist’s chaise
I continue to receive lovely messages and responses from readers about Malarky. Thank you very much for them. The poets have been very good to me as well, sending such strong, generous responses and engaging with my novel. Thank you. It is so heartening to read of this engagement.
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Thank you to the CBC who today included me in a list of 10 writers to watch. I did chuckle at the word watch since I am perpetually losing my glasses in what amounts to a very small living space and should certainly be watched for my demonstrated ability not to put the folded laundry away and tendency to topple over in public places.
Another thing that struck me was where are the lists of the writers who have stuck around? I may have to compile one.
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My dentist also put a “watch” on two of my teeth recently. I was at the dentist this week and had quite a knee wrapping experience. It was cold in the room, see my post on weather blues. The staff are so kind at my dentist, one woman asked: Would you like a blanket? I told her I’d love a blanket and she took off into a cupboard.
She came back and handed me the identical blanket that I had as a baby in 1971 and I happily wrapped it around myself and settled back for the drilling. I have to say, unrelated, but it was one of my better performances in the dentist’s chair. I am an awful, terrified patient, who is fortunate to have found the most patient dentist on this planet.
“Anaesthetic is our friend” he says quietly, talking me through what amounts to one of the most awful parts of dentistry for me that enormous needle powering into my gum. My dentist is so smart. He’s figured out if he talks and offers words I protest less. He literally could be speaking Russian it wouldn’t matter. My poor brain just needs to hear something to blot out the horrible images it manages to conjure in these situations. Very glad the CBC list of writers to watch does not take place in the dentist’s chair.
Weather diaries, George & planting
I’ve just discovered, thanks to my partner Jeremy, the Weather Diaries of film maker George Kuchar. Joy!
Not inconveniently I am enduring a period of immense challenge with our current West Coast weather. I saw the Flowerman on the road today and he conveyed his despair over the weather and his plans to usurp his current arrangement in his plot at the community garden. He generously reconfigured some of his great plants along the communal sides of our garden and I was struck by them as I left the garden the other day. He really is an extraordinary and generous gardener. I sometimes imagine all of the people who receive immense joy from his efforts. He gave me some advice on seeds… apparently I am planting them way too deep because everything should germinate in this weather and basically in my much neglected plot very little has germinated.
Mme Beespeaker gave me some bee friendly plants, but so far not much luck in them popping up, likely because I messed up some of the planting. Repeat! Repeat seeding will be required! Not too worry am wiser now.
One great aspect of this decling weather situation is the planning. When it’s pouring rain, a la aujourd ‘hui, my community garden plot can’t flourish beyond not having to water it, so I begin plotting how I’ll move the strawberry plants once the fruits are finished (And boyo they have been fantastic this year) to the sides and then plant some vegetable starts and hope we are lucky with some sun before September. The Flowerman and I shared our “plans” in the rain today.
As I type this I’ve been listening to a video interview with George Kuchar (RIP 1942-2011), right now he’s joking about his eyebrows, but earlier he talked about his fascination with twisters and how the internet more than provided for his weather watching needs in that regard.
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There has been some astonishing flooding as the Fraser River gave it up in Sicamouse (sp?) and some truly horrific forest fires in Colorado. I took a peek at the Fraser out in New West last week and it was high(er) and swirly. I would love some day to write a novel about or around that river. I have developed quite an affection for the small parts I’ve come to know of it.
There was also concurrent flooding epsiodes in Belfast and Cork. Cork has previously been hit very badly by flashfoods and this last round seemed to come on so fast. A weather forecast, yes, but bam! Floods like you wouldn’t believe. One spokesperson commented it was impossible to be prepared. The wonder of rain, ne c’est pas?
Largehearted Boy: Book Notes: a musical walk through Malarky
Here is one of the most unique and rewarding forays I have undertaken with Malarky. Thank you to David John Gutowski @ Largehearted Boy for inviting me to participate in his excellent cross-disciplinary Book Notes series:
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Anakana Schofield’s Malarky is a brilliant debut novel that depicts one woman’s descent into madness with dark humor and an intimate eye for grief and sorrow.
The Montreal Gazette wrote of the book:
“Toeing the delicate line between tragedy and comedy – the former inherent in the bare facts of Our Woman’s life, the latter in her irrepressible voice – Schofield starts at a pitch of inspiration most novels are lucky to reach at any point and remarkably sustains that level all the way through.”
In her own words, here is Anakana Schofield’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel, Malarky:
(The playlist has embedded youtube videos of the music )