Speaking of Grove Press titles I was saddened to read of the death of Barney Rosset yesterday. Rosset was the former owner of Grove Press.

Malarky reading @ Incite (VPL) March 21, 2012

I am looking forward very much to reading from Malarky, along with Tamara Faith Berger (Maidenhead) and Ben Wood (The Bellwhether Revivals), at the Vancouver International Writers Festival’s reading series Incite.

The reading will take place on March 21, 2012 at 7.30pm in the Alice McKay room at the Vancouver Public Library. Admission is free.

Malarky will be for sale and I will be happy to sign copies.

Thanks a million to VIWF for inviting me. I’m glad to be returning to the Alice McKay room, where we had our Taxi! and Crossings events, of which I still have such strong, warm memories and am excited to meet both authors and learn about their work.

My condo post yesterday if actually read is clearly something of anti-developer position and certainly anti-the-city being beholden to and essentially run by developers, thus it was amusing to see it being scooped up by condo blogs and essentially lifted as content! Do these peeps cease at nothing? What are they drinking? It’s a delusional blend right down to the google alert.

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I have thought more about the Zadie Smith’s quote included in my other post On reading better and at 5.30 am I was struck by a reservation around this (in bold) part of it

“…When I write about books I’m trying to honor reading as a creative act: as far as I’m
concerned the job is not simply to describe an end product but to
delineate a process, an intimate experience with a book which the
general reader understands just as well as the professional critic.”

It’s the choice of the word honor, a tad precious, a tad careful. I was struck instead by an image of the reader at the coalface mining and how we enter an engagement with reading that should be perhaps mucky and challenging and muscular. That said the raw material must be at that coalface for us to dig in and dig at and dig out.

I’ve noticed this preciousness also creeping in around the aesthetics of the physical book amid the yawning insistence that the physical book, by virtue of being tactile and rectangular, (in contrast to a zillion pixels) is therefore an art object. Speaking as someone who co-habits with a visual artist, I find this notion bunkish and dislike this cloying romanticism that’s creeping in with the advanced pre-bemoaning the death of the book.  Hang on a minute there with the funeral garlands and elevation… Books aren’t all beautiful objects far from it. There’s also a long history of them being dog eared and abandoned and lifted (in my case) from the side of the road. I don’t want my books to become reverred, sacred icons. They are as practical to me as a set of buckets. We have a working relationship. Yes there are some I am a bit soft hearted at the sight or lift of them, but they are mostly late 1960’s Grove Press (typographical cover) ones and they certainly possess a utlilitarian look to them.

I would be keen to acknowledge reading as a muscular act, one that takes places in all kinds of conditions and circumstances. Nor is it a singular act. One reading bleeds to and from and back to another.

Condos rise along with daft name quota

There’s a building that’s risen below Main and 2nd Avenue that entirely changes a view I’ve been familiar with since I landed in Vancouver. Yesterday the building that has been promising to rise up there has finally risen and reminded me of a filing cabinet. It has these odd slitty windows up and down the side facing you as you pass it (going North on foot or on wheels.)

Beside it, more such condo buildings are promised changing the corridor there from fast food outlets and so on. The one outlet I’d be glad to see removed because of its garish dominance remains and looks likely to. Strange that.

As you drive the other direction along Kingsway you have the sense that we may need to do visits to Kingsway to be reminded of the City say 12 years ago. Then you keep going up Kingsway and bam! Sure enough a similiar building, with surely one of the worst names so far, promises to rise: Charm, she’s called this one.

Last week around Main & 30th my son and I were laughing at yet another condo building which was decorated with hanging pictures that read “ACTUAL VIEW” and showed a mountain range and what have you. Except the side of the building were they hung actually looks out on a hoover shop and a faded travel agents. There’s absolutely no sign of a mountain at all. The building also promised itself as “the highest point” on Main Street, which again, seemed a little lavish, since generally Main Street is not exactly the Kilamanjaroo of heights.

We are living now in the time of buildings with ridiculous names and embellished features. Charm takes the biscuit but OnQue is a close second. But it’s not even the names, it’s what they promise, it’s what they suggest might be waiting in store for you when you move into these places. (I am reminded of the building with the Churchill quote on the side and the people who were (accidentally) floating above the pavement in one advert for example). They also now include the terms “living and retail experience” on their holdings.

And finally in my housing reflections I was out for a light run yesterday and marvelling at the sky and general shape of the weather (crisp about the fingers, but oh so fresh) when hark disappointment ladled as I noticed they’ve torn down one of the last few interesting houses in our neighbourhood. OK I admit it was a hoarding enclave, but it fascinated me because of what was piled in the windows and the back garden. Now the land is bald with a plywood hut emerging and the only defiant gesture is a binner, who has used the new space to park his shopping trolley. Fair play to him/her on their initiative!

On reading better

This weekend I was thinking and writing about reading. (and technology) I just came across this quote from Zadie Smith in relation to critical reading with which I concur. One of the exciting things about publishing a novel is the opportunity to talk about reading, which actually interests me a great deal more than talking about the business and act of writing.

“I think a good book review is a place to meet a book on its own
terms,” said Smith, “not as an ideological vehicle or an academic
plaything. Often people think of writing as primary and reading as the
lesser art; in my life it’s the other way around. When I write about
books I’m trying to honor reading as a creative act: as far as I’m
concerned the job is not simply to describe an end product but to
delineate a process, an intimate experience with a book which the
general reader understands just as well as the professional critic.”

 

source NY Observer

Ha! Just pounced upon another treat: an ebook that may prove very useful and full of treasure

A bibliographical list of the works that have been published or are known to exist in ms that are illustrative of the various dialects in English. Compiled by Members of The English Dialect Society Edited by Rev Skeat and J H Nodal.

I have to confess I quite expired with excitement on discovering this title was included: The Handbook of Weather Folklore being a collection of proverbial sayings in various languages etc… (The description included the term: weather fiction)

In hummingbird state I depart in search of it.

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Post script

Alas I return a pigeon, it wasn’t to be found. I’ll try to find it through the library instead.

Malarky mentioned in today’s Irish Times book column

So touched to see Malarky mentioned in the Loose Leaves column in today’s Irish Times. Thank you so much to the journalists who work in the book section there and to everyone who has responded warmly and with an open mind to my novel. It has been a very long 10 years, so am deeply appreciative.

Happy Days!

London the health resort

Here it is as promised a few days ago another snip from William Macrie’s The Diary of a London Explorer (1934)

From the section entitled What is London?

“London’s master problem is gambling. There is no drink problem.

London is a health resort. According to Dr. Saleeby London’s water is the finest in the world. See Naples and die. See London and live.

London’s greatest glory is its port.”

I should explain that Macrie founded The London Explorers Club and this book documents his walks and various engagements with his city and its surrounding areas.

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I have to confess the entire time I lived in London I did not detect any noticeable health benefits from the experience. Maybe I needed to spend more time at the port to acquire them!

Major treat I just tripped over… The Pothole Gardener! Lovely idea.

The reread of DH Lawrence’s The Rainbow sends me back strangely to consider another read of Irene Baird’s pastoral Vancouver Island set novel John. (1937)

I think I left it too soon. Something in Lawrence’s early invocation of place in The Rainbow (1915) made me think of how Baird sets up her novel initially and now I must go back and read, the early part again to see where it sits.