October 6, 2015
Martin John SHORTLISTED for Giller Prize
I was not asleep.
I was awake and walking about trying to get a flu shot. That’s an early flu shot because I very much need to get vaccinated because I am travelling about so much on little sleep until November.
I had decided not to watch any live stream of any book prize announcement since it feels a bit too much like going to the Stocks. I had instructed the teen to take it up with Google and report as needs be.
As I was failing to find an early flu shot at this early hour, the Teen gallantly phoned me to emit a tirade of complaint against the poor web functionality of various literary media sources. He was expounding on how technologically useless such outfits were and was much more interested in assessing the web technicalities of how they were conducting themselves than paying any heed to the matter in question. He concluded his tirade with “if you are wondering why I have no update or information whatsoever that is the reason why”. I joined him by fermenting on my failure to secure a flu shot at one outlet but that I was now marching on in search of other possibilities.
I was precisely by the VGH ER dept when I learned by phone from a friend that my book had been selected for the Giller Prize shortlist. Where are you? She asked. I am trying and failing to get a flu shot.
Today really was some day for a single day and I am deeply grateful for the extraordinary messages of support and kindness that have been flying my way all day long. I don’t quite know what I have done to deserve such outpourings of kindness and celebration and may well be undeserving, but I’ll take it.
What a great longlist, what a great shortlist. You’re only as good as those you nest beside. And that for me includes a long continuum of writers, some of whom may be forgotten, some of whom were insufficiently acknowledged, but all of whom were read by someone, somewhere, including me. And that’s the entire point of literature. That it’s be read and contemplated. So thank you to anyone who reads and contemplates my work or any writer’s work for that matter. Books give way to books the way sentences give way or respond to sentences.
In that spirit, I took to the bed a la Proust with a glass of hot port to help my husky voice and books by Lisa Robertson and Vivian Gornick along with the telephone, which rang and rang and all was well. By night to celebrate, my son and I took a walk by the sea, ate Thai rice & looked at pictures of cats on Reddit who poke their tongues out.
Happy Days.
September 11, 2015
Martin John nominated for Giller Prize long list –
I was asleep.
Even though it was 8.30 I was asleep.
I was asleep because in the middle of the night I awoke to, what I understood was, an attempted robbery of a sewer pipe from the repair taking place outside my apartment building. Since I’ve been anticipating the ground opening and getting a confirmed peek at precisely how our sewer system looks (I’d notions of a giant Dickensian/Victorian type series of tunnels. Alas, no. Closer to IKEA than Dickens) I had a certain investment in the pipes not being robbed. Leapt from the bed, barefooted it to the balcony, ready to bellow at the robber. I could hear a noisy, ceramic dragging sound. My defence of the lack of an attempted robbery on the sewer pipe at 4am explains why I was fast asleep when apparently it seems the rest of literary Canada was wide awake.
A text arrived from a friend that read
YES!
What?
Longlist.
What longlist?
Giller.
There followed a great deal of donging type notifications on my phone and before I could really comprehend anything my teenage son sent a series of frantic texts about his forgotten school timetable on the kitchen table and urged me to take a picture of it. Take a picture and text it to me. I could not figure out the camera but took a picture. More texts. Where’s the picture? There was some technical interference as though Pluto was lowering a giraffe between our phone signals and this took some time before I could figure out the 83 notification messages.
The gist of the story is
“Scotiabank Giller Prize jury delivers surprising longlist”
The reason my phone was hopping is because by some strange stroke of a miracle, Martin John is on it. Summarized very well here by Steven Beattie.
“The big winner here, among publishers, is Biblioasis, with three titles represented. The press has been longlisted before, but never quite so robustly, and always for story collections – Kathy Page’s Paradise & Elsewhere in 2014; Clark Blaise’s The Meagre Tarmac in 2011, and Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting in 2010. Light Lifting went on to make the shortlist that year; MacLeod is on the jury for this year’s prize.
Schofield’s nomination is a bit of a coup for the Windsor, Ontario, press: not only is it the first time they have had a work of long-form fiction appear on a Giller list, they managed it with a novel that is highly stylized, narrated from the disturbed, fractured perspective of a sexual deviant. The book is a bold departure from Schofield’s debut, 2012’s Amazon.ca First Novel Award winner, Malarky.”
The official announcement including all 12 longlisted titles from a diverse and bold and funny bunch of writers that include Patrick deWitt, Heather O’Neill, Alix Hawley, André Alexis, Marina Endicott and others is found here.
My son and I went to the hairdressers to celebrate. I bought a Vivian Gornick book to celebrate and he scored $9 of pistachios.
I have decided that my spot on this list will be the unofficial universal shared spot, which means it’s shared symbolically by any writer who ever wrote a challenging literary work that they assumed would be the undoing of them and basically had no hope of ever getting on any such list. So there’s a field full of writers sharing it with me. It’s the wireless spot if you like. Maybe you are one of them. Happy Days.
Thank you for all the lovely messages and the warm support. It was a very tough novel to write.
Merci beaucoup. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
See you on the road over the coming months.
July 28, 2015
Martin John on Globe & Mail 20 Most Anticipated Books you’ll be reading and talking about for the rest of the year list
Merciful hour! What a surprising thing to see Martin John, my impending novel (Sept 15), on this list, in the mighty company of such remarkable writers, especially women writers, like Elena Ferrante, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Atwood, Kate Beaton and rock star almighty Patti Smith. On a list with Patti Smith!
Many books will be published this Fall/Autumn in many languages, in many countries and likewise I share anticipation as a reader who’ll discover new work and engage with it and add to my ever increasing cabbage of reading.
July 28, 2015
Drought
We counted every hour of every day that it did not rain. We had moved to Stage 3 Water Restrictions last Monday. I heard this Niveau Trois news on Radio-Canada French news, while in a ferry queue. Never in all the time I’ve lived here, have I been so acutely aware of the lack of rain, need for rain, and the drought, that was also accompanied by a mad volume of forest fires that torched our province and Saskatchewan during June and July. (More fires in June alone than the entire fire season of 2014)
So, not unlike Kennedy’s death for Americans, I know exactly where I was when this much desired rain started. I was here. 5 paces from this sea, indoors.
And this what what I was doing when the rain fell.
July 28, 2015
Dancers Dancing
Last week, Vancouver enjoyed one of my favourite annual festivals in the city Indian Summer Fest. Look at all these splendid human beings dancing. These photos snapped by this very weak photographer on a dying, ancient cellphone testify to two different events. The opening gala, with an electro tabla (sp?) and bhangra DJ set, and the closing event, which celebrated Bombay’s Jazz History through the entry point of Naresh Fernandes book on this history titled Taj Mahal Foxtrot. For the party, DJ Anjali busted out the bhangra tunes.
At the closing event, the young fella in blue had the most extraordinary dance moves, straight out of a Bollywood film. We were very taken with him. Aradhana Seth (who conducted a very fun photography project/ installation as part of the festival) alerted me to his greatness. He told me he was from Lahore, Pakistan and I told him I ate the best eggs of my life in Karachi and his friend of 20 years said things that I now forget because I was so busy telling both of them about those poached eggs. The man in the red or pink coat is our pal Anil, who has the best outfits at Indian Summer Fest each year without fail.
Indian Summer Fest also had a unique event which saw Helen Potrebenko’s novel Taxi! brought home to the city, which was remarkable. More on that to come.
June 27, 2015
Muggy drought
We are in, not a weather episode or event, but perhaps have entered a whole new weather dimension. It’s a bit early to tell, but warmer sea temperatures in the Eastern Pacific are, apparently, from what I have read, creating it. We are living what I am calling Muggy Drought. In June we had 14 drops of rain and the temperature was and is hot. Hot by our standards.
For the first two weeks of the month, it was that reassuring azure blue sky that hints at itself each spring and firms her presence and stakes the overhead canopy for summer. For me, it’s an annual demarcation. There she is. That absolute azure. Welcome home! This is our weather. But this June, weeks later, with no sign of any typical moisture, you cannot help but marvel at this protracted azure, yet she’s not the absolute azure. Because the absolute azure takes the odd nap up there and allows for more intermission and mingle. I recall this from my time at the community garden, where your day would be measured by the need and pressure to water the seeds. A day with rain due would mean, phew, I don’t have to water this once.
I’ve been meaning to track this particular system, which has now become, in my mind, perhaps prematurely, a worrying way of weather life we may have to adjust to. It certainly does look that way this summer. The evenings have been quite lovely with very exciting cloud activity, perhaps to meander around staring up at.
Two days ago a detectable change. Humidity. Worse. Humidity is so uncomfortable. Humidity does not suit us. We are not and do not have air conditioning. Air conditioning is such a drain on electrical resources. We do have forest fires. Already fires are burning in Prince George. There have been 123 fires since April 1 in the Yukon. Last year throughout the entire year there were only 23. There are presently 80 fires burning.
While we have the privilege of pondering the possible implications or hints at what this new hot, humid, moisture-less weather may mean for us if it continues, Pakistan has been suffering the most oppressive and vicious heat wave that has taken the lives of 1200 people. The descriptions of the temperatures are horrific, 43 degrees celsius.
The BBC report contained the following: “They say low air pressure, high humidity and an unusually absent wind played key roles in making the heat unbearable but they do not know why such conditions prevailed at this time of the year.”
You can read the whole report, which notes 2000-3000 deaths in India also, here
May 27, 2015
Olga Grjasnowa: All Russians Love Birch Trees
My lovely pal Greg sent me Olga Grjasnowa’s novel All Russians Love Birch Trees (Other Press) this week. The novel is translated by Eva Bacon & I greatly admire Ms Bacon’s translation of the original German text and Olga’s novel. The novel is funny and crisp and an insightful, subtle social commentary.
Here are a few snips I enjoyed while walking and reading in the sunshine today:
“The patient died yesterday, we’re finishing off his last cigarettes”
*
“But my professor was my professor. He sponsored foster children in Africa and India. His multiculturalism took place in congress halls, convention centres and expensive hotels. To him integration meant demanding fewer hijabs and more skin, hunting for exclusive wines and exotic travel destinations.”
*
“On my third day in Germany I went to school and was promptly demoted two grades. Instead of practicing Algebra I was supposed to colour mandalas with crayons.”
May 15, 2015
O’Hagan on Bellow’s biography
Over at the LRB, Andrew O’Hagan has written a review on The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-64 by Zachary Leader.
“Bellow had a dark talent for making relationships disagreeable. He disported himself with friends the way one might with enemies, and often, in these years, he appears riddled with enmity, paranoid, full of doubts about loyalty and fears of rivalry.”
“If he hadn’t possessed such a sublime way with metaphor, one might struggle to ignore the fact that he was probably the biggest pain in the arse in the history of American letters
“‘What matters,’ Bellow wrote to Peltz when he complained of being used, is that good things get written …”
I’d like to take issue with Bellow’s assertion to his friend Peltz as it’s such a complete crock of shite and sadly very much the excuse many asshole artists (& beyond) employ to be similarly indulged and excused for being plate glass arses.
Beckett wrote “good things” certainly far superior things to anything Bellow wrote. He did not behave like a total asshole in the process. His letters and biography attest to this fact. Far more important than “good things get written” is treating your fellow human being with some modicum of respect and dignity. For that will follow you just as deeply into the grave as any stack of books you leave behind you.
I think it’s safe to say that Bellow has present day successors and current, active competition vying for the position of “biggest pain in the arse in letters”.
May 15, 2015
Eduardo Galeano
“Many political writers don’t seem to understand that everything is possible as a subject: a fly buzzing in the air, a lighter, a window, the sound of footsteps. The most important thing is a point of view: Where are you placed? From which point of view are your eyes seeing? From which point of view will you tell us what you are feeling, or what you think? In some ways, Upside Down is a political book; in other ways, it’s not. But one must be careful when discussing these matters. It’s easy to disqualify a writer or an artist, by saying, “Oh, but he’s political.” It’s like saying it’s shit.”
“Open Veins is now considered a classic in Latin America. How many copies have been sold?
I don’t care about that.
Writers tend to care about the sales of their books.
It’s enough that I earn a living as a writer. It’s honest work. I don’t do it to get rich. There are certain things I need to say. But I don’t care about how many books I sell, or where they are on the bestseller lists. I don’t give a damn.”
An old interview in The Atlantic from 2000 with the late Eduardo Galeano read the rest here
May 12, 2015
This is what happens after you die
MOSAIC publishes weekly features on science and medicine. I particularly appreciated this one by Moheb Costandi.
WARNING: This is not for the faint of heart who don’t have an active, interrogative interest in this subject!
“Most of us would rather not think about what happens to our bodies after death. But that breakdown gives birth to new life in unexpected ways, writes Moheb Costandi. ”
Click here to read entire piece.