February 25, 2013
Mrs Dalloway Loves Dick
Be not alarmed at the title of this post I do not infer smutty tones o’er Mrs D rather I have been on something of a reading adventure during these past 48 hours in tandem with a suspected kidney stone adventure.
I commenced yesterday morning with Mrs Dalloway and paired her with I Love Dick by Chris Kraus and have been fluttering between the two since. On my way back from loving Dick, which is very funny indeed, I began to note some parallels strangely in Mrs Dalloway namely: (This may only make sense if you’ve read I Love Dick if not you can listen to Ira Glass interview Chris & Sylvere here and gather the gist)
“… But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed..” (Mrs Dalloway, Woolf)
And
“She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.” (Mrs Dalloway, Woolf)
Both of the above I cite relate to the autopsy that Kraus performs on her and Sylvere’s imagination or imaginings in relation to Dick. An autopsy of the possible perhaps? An autopsy of the exhaustible and inexhaustible? And a disciplined deconstruction on the dust passing the pair of them in the air in between. Whatever it is, the point of view in I Love Dick is fascinating, even if the tone of it reminds me occasionally of a BBC Wildlife program on penguin migration. It’s a microscopic interrogation of a moment that could have been fleeting but becomes its own landscape. And remarkably I am beginning to conclude it’s not about Dick at all.
And now a speculative riposte to Dick from Woolf in the form of this line from Mrs Dalloway.
“His letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered…” or to remix it a tad belatedly for Ms Woolf “His letters were non-existant, it was his sofa bed they remembered”
And Dick’s riposte to Chris Kraus and Sylvere Loringer via the words Mrs Dalloway (ok this one will require some Tardis time travel)
“..cared not a straw for either of them.”
Now I interrupt this post and return to Mrs Dalloway.
February 19, 2013
Bridget condos
The other night I walked across the Granville Street bridge and it occurred to me that bridges could soon be locations pounced upon by real estate speculators and that custom slimmed condo towers may soon be plonked in the middle of them and determined to be the ultimate place to live. As I pondered this I could imagine the advertising slogans and what they’d promise. The property would naturally be called “Bridget”
This just caught my eye about the speculated upon BIG tower: “If approved for construction it would rise 52 storeys from a narrow base next to the Granville Bridge and curve up to the top.”
Not much of a hop or a slight misread of the plans (curve around and over onti the top) til my premonition could be realized.
February 19, 2013
Tripping into collage
At 1:10:00 Jim O’Rourke’s new composition for the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra can be heard. O’Rourke submitted his score via a double pack of playing cards. Each one containing an instruction to various instruments in the orchestra. I find the compact nature — small rectangles — of the record of his composition fascinating. And how it transforms in the hand/eye of the musicians. The title of the piece: Some I Know, Some I Don’t has a rectangular equality to it: precisely the same number of letters on either side of the comma.
While I listened to the piece I was researching Jeanne Randolph’s ficto-criticism and reading in FUSE her piece Interpreting Water.
This was co-incidental because I tripped over Jim O’Rourke, but went hunting for Jeanne Randolph.
I would love Jim O’Rourke to interpret my novel Malarky through a series of musical instructions to the French horn written on a packet of recipe cards.
February 18, 2013
LRB piece on the Walkers
Thank you to Rachel Kawapit, Matthew and Chief Stan all of whom helped me with my research to write this piece about the Walkers — the Journey of the Nishiyuu for the London Review of Books blog.
This photograph was taken on 16 January by Rachel Kawapit, a member of the Whapmagoostui First Nation, who live in Northern Quebec on the shores of Hudson Bay. It shows David Kawapit, Stanley George Jr, Geordie Rupert, Travis George, Johnny Abraham and Raymond Kawapit, aged between 16 and 19, with their guide Isaac Kawapit (47), setting off to walk 1000 miles from Whapmagoostui-Kuujjuaraapik to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, through temperatures lower than -30ºC, as part of the Idle No More movement, protesting against the violation of Aboriginal Treaty Rights.
To read the entire piece please click here
please share this LRB blog post. The Walkers deserve much more international attention for their extraordinary undertaking. They are walking in temperatures that have been between -30 and -50. They now number 43 young women and men in total, with more youth joining them along the way. I send them my deep respect and admiration.
There is also a Facebook group to follow the Walkers here
February 12, 2013
Malarky hanging with the mighty Jamaica Kincaid
I would be thrilled to be on an overdue library book list beside Jamaica Kincaid, so was very happy to find Malarky invoked in a Winnipeg Free Press review of Jamaica’s new novel See Now Then.
Here’s the mention:
“Kincaid draws readers into the couple’s deepest thoughts and feelings as they ponder, as the novel’s title suggests, their past, present and future. In this way, the narrative is reminiscent of Canadian Anakana Schofield’s 2012 novel Malarky, a very different story about mismatched spouses, unhappiness and longing that focuses heavily on the inner dialogue of its characters. That one too was lyrically written, but too peculiar in style to enjoy wide appeal.”
I’ve just started reading See Now Then and ponder it’s curly, exhaling sentences. They perfectly fit the the image of the roots of a plant or shrub that wraps itself under the soil and around and on and on … very much the way a marriage does. The way peoples lives entwine into and out of and away from, in parallel and back towards. There could be no better form for such a book. It’s a novel to ponder on the sentence level and to meet in the same way its’ sentences greet the reader. They are railway tracks. She manages to create undulating railway tracks where the train (from my reading) does not derail. As I said I’ve only begun the novel, but there’s also an assumptive quality to the text, that has an oration feel to it and such assumptive tone and lift are again the domain, the domicile of marriage. Versions within versions. Chorus. Back to the version.
I default to Blanchot when I talk about this work. Forget the writer’s intention, (who cares whether it is or is not from her life I can find no consideration more tedious) forget the reader’s response, interrogate the text and what’s it offers. What’s there in those words alone, how they sit, why they sit how they do. It’s plenty enough. Even the title gives us this instruction.
February 6, 2013
épuisé
“Exhausted is a whole lot more than tired. ‘It’s not just tiredness it’s not just I’m exhausted in spite of the climb. The tired no longer prepares for any possibility (subjective): she therefore cannot realize the smallest possiblity (objective): But possibility remains because you never realize all of the possible, you even bring it into being as you realize some of it. The tired has only exhausted realization, while the exhausted exhausts all of the possible. The tired can no longer realize but the exhausted can no longer possibilitate’…”
The Exhausted Gilles Deleuze and Anthony Uhlmann (with Beckett exhausted into it)
February 5, 2013
“The Arcades of Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of Cities”
Glad to see Frank Cunningham is coming back to SFU next Tuesday (Room 7000, SFU Harbour Ctr. 7pm) to give this talk. I heard him speak last year on philosophy of the city. The Institute for Humanites organize some fine events & talks in Vancouver, some of my favourites and there’s no old bullshit about them, which is uplifting. Anyone can ask questions without being made to feel like a dimwit. The Institute welcome public attendence and engagement in my experience.
“The Arcades of Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of Cities”
Abstract: In the 1920’s and 30’s the German philosopher Walter Benjamin began a philosophical study of urban life inspired by the Paris arcades (passages). This paper revisits the still existing arcades referred to by Benjamin to explicate his urban-philosophical methodology and conclusions and to take account of continuities and changes in the arcades, their uses, and environs between his time and that of present-day Paris.
February 5, 2013
Welcome Cinnamon Sally
We are back to neither here nor there weather. Rain on the road weather. It was so chilly inside I left the apt with two cardigans and a down jacket to discover it was a balmy 8.9 degrees outside.
*
Today there was significant family news. I met the new family addition in Dublin. Alfie Cyril has a four legged cousin and a great, mighty woman she is too. My sister introduced me by Skype to her new dog Sally Cinnamon, a rescue greyhound.
I am not a dog person, but am certainly, as of today, a Sally Cinnamon person. She lumbered over to greet me, laid her chin on my sister’s knee (“it’s a greyhound thing” said her mother) and then did a delightful yogic downward dog stretch. She is massive. Huge. In my opinion. Horsey! Well compared to Alfie Cyril, a very podgy, hen shaped guinea pig. I had imagined more of Whippet type of dog. They sleep in a very remarkable manner greyhounds, like lounging queens from another century. Do all dogs sleep like that? My sister says she looks like Scooby Doo when she is asleep. I found her very regal, except she stuck half her back legs in her paw print furry basket while the rest of her (and there’s plenty of her) poured out across the rug. Apparently greyhounds are somnolent creatures and can sleep up to 18 hrs per day.
I am going to be knitting for Lady Sally since I think she could use some insulation on her hind humps from the ferocious Cabra wind. Really forget Downton Abbey — Sally Cinnamon in her snood slinking about Cabra will topple Lady Grantham’s mother.
February 5, 2013
Hot! Hot! Hot! Crew, shoe and Malarky
Possibly by far the hottest place to cover Malarky is Crew Magazine. Crew is a gay magazine for everyone. Sometimes their chesty males flash up in my Facebook feed, along with very fine furniture and the current homepage features some rather ravishing shoes.
I just learned of a piece they generously wrote about Malarky in November of all months. When we were all feeling especially chesty because of that grim weather.
Thank you to Bruce Michael for placing Our Woman right where she belongs between the specimans and the furniture.
Read the piece by clicking the quote here (not entirely sure where I was heading with the chillies…): “Thinking back, she’s eroticizing what she witnesses in a way,” Schofield adds. “It awakens something within her. It’s a bit like foreign food. You either don’t like it or you stuff your mouth with hot chilies or whatever.”
Or click here to see the ravishing shoe if you prefer.
You can hunt for the chesties on your steam.