July 5, 2012
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.
July 4, 2012
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.
July 4, 2012
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.
July 1, 2012
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.
July 1, 2012
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?
June 28, 2012
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 )
June 23, 2012
Profile in today’s National Post
In today’s National Post Books there’s a profile on me: Thank you to Mark Medley who wrote such a lively piece.
Pluck of the Irish: Anakana Schofield’s debut is one of the season’s best reads
When Anakana Schofield was 24 years old, she got braces. A recent theatre school graduate, the aspiring actress coped with a mouthful of metal by picking up a video camera and recording the experience. The resulting half-hour documentary, Bracism, aired on RTE.
“It was like reality TV, way, way before there was actually a thing,” recalls Schofield, now 41, during an interview in a Toronto café last month. “For years afterwards, I’d be in the bank, or I’d be on the train, and somebody would say, ‘I saw your program on the telly! You’re the girl that made the one about the teeth!’
“I’m very interested in documentary,” she continues. “I’m interested in social anthropology as well. Fiction, for me, is [a] departure … I’m interested in making s–t up, basically, and this is the place to do it.”
RelatedMalarky, Schofield’s wonderfully deranged debut novel, marries her interests in realism and invention with great results. It tells the story of “Our Woman,” also known as Philomena, an aging farmer’s wife who is slowly coming apart at the seams. The simple life she leads in County Mayo, Ireland, is first threatened then shattered by myriad events: her son’s homosexuality, her husband’s philandering ways, her own sexual awakening, and, eventually, the deaths of both her son and husband.
“From a marketing department’s point of view, this is not a dream book,” she deadpans. Yet, “I have great faith in readers,” she adds. “I’m interested in what the novel can become. We know what it can be — the linear, chronological. As a reader I’m ambitious. And I want to see new things.”
June 23, 2012
Lost sneeze weather
Today a darkening series of rainclouds closed in on us over several hours until they finally conceded to burst their banks. But the waiting was like missing a sneeze that kept threatening return. Except there was no light to entice it with! (If you miss a sneeze, look at the light so the saying goes)
At the pet shop (guinea pig hay supplies) the woman behind the counter compared notes with me on how she had processed the darkness according to her working day. I looked out thought it must be 7pm, it wasn’t yet 3 she said.
June 21, 2012
Malarky Little Star miracle
What an incredible joy and privilege today to sit alongside the work of these extraordinary writers and poets featured on the website/blog of Little Star Journal, who have extracted a chunk of Malarky today and had this reckoning on it:
“Move over Molly Bloom, Anakana Schofield has mastered the hundreds of voices that make up one person, and the negotiations, confusions, and occasional consolations that transpire among them. Her story of an extraordinary/ordinary mother and how she lost her beloved son is a journey into the heart of love and the fragile bonds of the self.”
The gesture behind the establishment and ongoing work of Little Star is a firm nod to the importance of the continuum in literature and the moments behind us and ahead of us and hidden from us therein: especially the moments in translation that we so often foolishly ignore.
Malarky is a book concerned with moments. I think all writers and readers have their moments with a book. Sometimes they can be hard or disappointing or challenging. I certainly had many of those over the past decade. Today is one of my happiest moments.
To read click A miracle from Anakana Schofield
June 20, 2012
Walser
I have had a merry old time enjoying cross-country/international commiserations on the weather and reading Mr Robert Walser’s The Assistant. (Translated by Susan Bernofsky)
“…lets not allow ourselves to get too worked up over such a woman finding such a young man odd, but rather report on their conversation.”
I shall later offer a snip from Walser’s take on the weather that’s particularly dotey.