Library Matters

Well, a return to blogging as promised to Em over at Em Types.

I had decided that between 9pm and 10pm I would work on a cover letter and I'd write a 500 word essay on the topic of Why My Library is Important to Me for the contest of the same name. (Our current Toronto mayor is trying to cut 10% from every municipal program's budget and the Toronto Public Library workers' union is fighting back and holding a contest. Winners can win lunch with authors like Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje.)

I stared at a blank page for a while and decided it would be easier to riff on why my library is important to me if I blogged it first.

So what is my library to me? It's not as if I don't own enough unread books.

It is, corny as it sounds, a sanctuary.

• A place to be surrounded by books without having people ask you if you need help.
• A place to read books without having to buy a coffee.
• A place that reminds me of all the things I have yet to learn. This sets it apart from the internet which constantly reminds me of all the things I wish I did not know.
• A place to research and study, and to cheaply photocopy pages to mark-up later.
• A place to be inspired by books that people leave on tables.

A public library (as opposed to a school library - though, those are important too) is place where a nerdy girl can sit and learn about the world without having to deal with peer pressure or fend off questions about 'how far she's gone with a boy'?

• A place to be around people without being really having to interact with them.
• A place that provides me with unending optimism for the human race. Every opportunity that a child does not discover at home or at school, they can still discover at their public library for free. Classical music, opera, films, novels, graphic novels, short stories, poetry, plays, magazines - a wealth of specific information that's been edited and peer-reviewed available for free!

The library is critical to my idea of a functioning society. It is like an intellectual safety net and vitally important to new immigrants learning English - and Toronto is mostly immigrants (including me). Is it naive and hopeful to think that at least Toronto's homeless can find something to read when they wake up from their nap at the Reference Library? Sure. But once the homeless or low-income are at the library, isn't it a relief to know that if they need to look up a shelter or go to a seminar on fighting bedbugs that help is available?

I believe in libraries because I believe in self-improvement and knowledge being power, or at least, that the withholding of knowledge leads to powerlessness. In the library I didn't have to call my mother constantly to quell her worrying, it was, in a way, the place I could be most free as a 13-year-old. I didn't have to divulge what I chose to look at or read. I grew up in a fairly well-read, liberal household, but if I'd grown up in a more closed-minded atmosphere, the library would be the place where I could safely explore beyond the limits that others set up. The library was an important part of my childhood and adolescence. And if I end up old and alone, the library (whether in building form, or mobile, with large-print and audio books) is where I will find the solace and comfort and company of books.

I guess Edward P. Morgan (in Clearing the Air, 1963) already said it better:

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.

Suzan-Lori Parks - Interview

Please click the jpegs to enlarge! (This is from The Play That Changed My Life: America's Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them)

Suzan-Lori Parks - Interview

Suzan-Lori Parks Extras

To anyone still reading this... I'll be back. Meanwhile, I'm posting the following for my Discussion Group, as we discuss Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks.
COPYRIGHT REMAINS WITH AUTHOR ON EVERYTHING POSTED. I will be pulling these jpegs once the discussion is over.

So first, some pages of Topdog/Underdog, Parks' Pulitzer-winning stage play:
I've posted Park's notes about inspiration and style.



And here are the first three pages of the play:

The Days Grow Short

So, it's September. Sorry for the silence all of August. August took some unexpected turns and vanished.

I'm re-reading "Disgrace" by Coetzee for school. It's not fun, but it's forcing me to read it with a more analytical eye, which is great.

Have been writing lots. Reading lots of Lorrie Moore short stories. Am going to go see her read at this year's International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront.

Gearing up for some self-reflection leading up to Yom Kippur, so I might not post again till after September 27th.

See you soon...

Zoetrope Contest

The 13th Annual Zoetrope All-Story Short Fiction Contest is accepting entries. Deadline is October 1st. Entries from outside U.S. accepted. All the details are at that link.

Sorry for the patchy blogging. Life's been fascinating lately and in a good way. And when life gets like that, sometimes you don't want to stop and blog it, you just want to live it.

*

If you're in Toronto, I'll be at the Old Mill Inn this evening to catch a performance of Much Ado About Nothing in the Wedding Garden.

Curated Shelving

Wait, wait, that post below, with the shelf?

The designers are Mike and Maaike, and you can learn more about this shelf at their site. It is first in a series of "curated shelves". This one is called "Religion" and is created to hold "the world's most influential religious texts together".

I'm more in love with the design than the idea of someone else curating my books. (I'm picky.)

The idea of my books sitting snugly in their own little cubbies, or aligned from the tops rather than the bottom kinda thrills me.

Come upstairs/I'll force-feed you/book covers

Book Covers
Can I ever get enough gorgeous, startling book cover design? No. Delicious book covers with credits and notes are at this blog, Covers. It is updated by a design firm called Fwis, who design, you guessed it, book covers. Yum! And here's another book cover blog, because you've been good, Book Covers Anonymous. Some of the posts highlight different covers used for US/UK editions. I could look at these all day.

Want to design your own now? You can buy these naked Penguins and go wild. I bought The Waves and I intend to harass an artist friend until he designs the cover.

And from the Covers blog, this shelf, this shelf,
I WANT IT. I want many many like it, all custom-carved to fit my books. Giant puzzles on my walls. Imagine?

*
Force-feeding

I have been trying to use the word gavage in my story. It means force-feed. It can be used regarding the feeding of infants who cannot suck, or people who need super-alimentation. It can also refer to force-feeding as torture, and the way geese are fed to create foie gras.

I can't use it in my story. It's the right image, but the wrong word. I've checked all my dictionaries (I have a collection) and thesauruses, and most do not have the word. My French and my medical dictionaries have it though, as it is a French word and medical term.

Sometimes english feels so limiting.

*
Come Upstairs

Now I am trying to decide if my character would say:

Come upstairs, I have to show you the shoes I bought.
or
Come upstairs, you need to see the shoes I bought.

She's a small-n narcissist, a sophisticated drama queen, generous and selfish at once. I can't decide if she'd stick with the pronoun "I" - "I" have to show you, or whether she'd prefer to tell her friend what to do - "you need to see". The "come upstairs" is already imperative. Maybe I should follow Gordon Lish's idea of letting the beginning of a sentence dictate where it should end.

Come upstairs and see the shoes I bought.
Come upstairs. Come see the shoes I bought.

I'll work on it.

Civil Elegies

On Friday, July 10th, I went to hear Canadian poet Dennis Lee read his 1972 work, Civil Elegies, as part of The Scream Literary Festival.

At the event, If Hope Disorders Words, Lee read Civil Elegies in its entirety (and it was the first time he had publicly done so - or maybe the first time since its original publication - I'm not sure).

The poet Jacob McArthur Mooney did a wonderful introduction of Lee, and has also written an essay for Open Book about Civil Elegies where he calls it "the saddest book in the history of Canadian letters". (You can also read an excerpt of the essay on poet Paul Vermeersch's blog.)

Before the event I read some of Lee's work - mostly from Un and YesNo, and it was powerfully musical and energetic. There was an intensity - even a violence to some of the lines, yet Lee read them with a much slower, quieter voice (than I had) which gave them a more lyrical quality and tone. It was lovely. Check his books out if you like your language twisted and wrenched, and moving.

As a bonus, here are some poems by Paul Vermeersch and some poems by McArthur Mooney.

Control A Cat

Don't ask how I find these things at 3:00am. That is the magic of the interwebz + the fascinating fluctuation of serotonin!

Et voila, Control-A-Cat. A remote control for your cat.


Feel like the boss of your own home again!

Kitty will cut a bitch.

(Actually, I wrap presents on my floor. I leave scissors on my floor. Kitty comes over and lies down on scissors and looks up at me pretending she has opposable thumbs.)

Writing for Mentor

I went over my first draft of the newest story today. We'll call it Garbage Strike.

It was definitely in need of tailoring. Some parts need taking in and some need letting out. My focus was intensified however, by knowing that this story will soon go out to (the) Mentor who will be looking closely at every word. It affected the demand I put on myself. It is a lot like working out with a trainer rather than working out by yourself. You can be just about ready to drop, but with a take-no-whining trainer, you will put in that extra set of reps.

Previously, I wanted to write well enough to sell, and now I am trying to write the best I possibly can. Hopefully that will still sell.

I want to make writing to the best of my abilities a habit, make it stick - 'cause when this MFA is over, who will I be writing for?

Scream 2009

What kind of blogger am I, that I completely neglected to blog or thus attend this year's The Scream Literary Festival?!
The theme this year is "The Book is Dead". Go check out the wake-like Day of the Dead-ish atmosphere.

I aim to be at Wednesday's event, but tonight's is cool too. If you're in T.O. and want to go to the Dennis Lee Reading and dinner on Friday with me, leave a note in the comments.

Tomorrow I'm Fringe-ing. Toronto, you have too many festivals in the summer and it is delicious and frustrating.

16 Fake Rules Worth Reading

Pete Tarslaw's 16 Rules of Novel Writing (as posted by The Ragbag*) is hilarious.

The list of rules is from How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely, which drops July 8th.

Hat tip Mich, who always alerts me to cool things.


*sorry Tammy, but that's the name of the blog!

Sometimes I Post a Picture

'cause I'm not sure you'll ever return if all I post is text!

Venice Beach boardwalk, Los Angeles, California ~ June 30, 2009

I stopped to take this photo because when I glanced at this table I immediately saw Ma Salt and Pa Pepper defending Baby Sugar from the Ketchup Giant - and winning!

You're welcome.

Harping (Happily) on Harpers

FREE stories from HarperCollins editor Cal Morgan, one per week, at FiftyTwoStories.com. Yippee!

HarperPerennial, imprint of the way awesome covers, has its own blog, The Olive Reader. Add some vodka and vermouth and I'm all set.

What is this "new book publishing model" thing, HarperStudio? I don't know yet, but I aim to find out. I know, I ought to read before I blog, but that would delay the posts even further. I'll come back to this. I think I need to blog the ongoing debate amongst friends as to whether to e-book or not to e-book.

That Old Time Anxiety

I'm actually caught up on my reading. Had to read A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor and Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson.

I'm caught in that spot between "inspired" and "give up". I have to keep reminding myself that the simplest stories can be breathtakingly beautiful, and the most painful and profound stories can be simply written.

I've written a new story. I'm afraid to look at it. I have to keep polishing an older one too, since I have to send them both in to my mentor (let's just call him Mentor, ok?) in ten days. I have already censored one story by clothing a half-naked character. Why do I do this?!

The anxiety I'm feeling is somewhat wonderful in that I haven't felt this sense of direction and ambition in a long long time. However, the odd manifestation of night-time (almost-)panic attacks is not cool. I've been a bit weird since I got home though what with 3-hour sleep intervals and jaw-clenching and a strange relationship to food. By strange, I mean I entirely forget certain food groups until I feel faint and then need to eat MEAT!!! or KALE!!! urgently. Interesting. Stay tuned for scurvy-watch 2009.

When it's all too much, I just resort to ZooBorns.com, because baby animals make everything better as long as you don't focus on their captivity, endangered status, and dwindling natural habitat!

Sweet Tweets

I'm following a variety of literary twitterers and wanted to post a round-up of interesting links people have recently posted:

Type: Claudia Dey & Rex Harrington in conversation

A new story, "Childcare", by Lorrie Moore in The New Yorker

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses her new short story collection

Also, my friend Ian sent me the following Marge Piercy poem, For The Young Who Want To, and I'm sharing it with you.

More soon!

Blogging

One of the seminars I attended during this residency was a brown bag lunch panel discussion on the role of blogging in media with Dana Goodyear, Mark Sarvas, and Veronique de Turenne, moderated by Kate Gale of Red Hen Press.

I was embarrassed that I had never heard of Maud Newton's litblog or Mark Sarvas' "The Elegant Variation". I will add links to both their blogs on the side.

They discussed the pros & cons of blogging; the time commitment, the danger of procrastinating. I will remember more when I check my notes, but I need to check out of this hotel room shortly.

I asked the panelists about blogging under a pseudonym, and they agreed that there was no "should" or "shouldn't" about it, just whatever one is comfortable with and what one wants out of the blog.

The question for me is whether this will eventually be my "author" site, or whether this will remain a personal blog that I'd prefer hidden from googling family members.

To those of you who blog under your real name: Has having your life out on your blog ever had any negative effects?

A Letter to America

Dear America,

I love your "service with a smile". I love your twang... most of the time. I love your artists, your bluster, your swagger, your grand buildings with the names of philanthropists on the front. Your optimism, even when your economy sucks.

I love your absurd portion sizes, your ridiculous menu creations (donut french toast? whipped cream on everything?), your retro diners, your retro grocery packaging, the way you say "uh-huh" instead of "you're welcome". I love your opinionated self. I love your free refills, and the fact that you still have dollar bills, so that holding three of them feels like money and not change.

I (have grown to) love (even though it drives me CRAZY) the perverse dedicated way that ALL the gardeners in LA absolutely refuse to dead-head their roses, leaving overblown, blousy roses outside all the buildings, like aging starlets in faded summer dresses (scheming to hide the new blooms).

I love Broadway, and paying the U.S. price on things, even though there's the exchange rate to factor in. I love that I can justify this blog entry by pretending that it's an assignment for "The List as Post-Narrative Structure". I love that your sale prices are actually a bargain and not just marked-down mark-ups.

I know we don't agree on everything, and that I could make a list just as long with negative things, but I won't, 'cause that's not what love is about.

Beginnings!

Things I managed to do today (by "today" I mean since 12am):

Finished reading Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. It was terrific and I should have read it years ago.

Started re-reading The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

Had lunch with a friend-of-a-friend who is more-or-less where I was at for the last six months, and I was able to confidently say to her, "don't worry, you'll figure it out".

Remembered to put sunscreen on my shins and the tops of my feet, but did not remember to sunscreen my thighs. Wore a short-ish skirt. Have the dumbest looking tan EVER. Half my thighs are pasty white, half are tanned and my knees are slightly burned. Picture it - you could use a good laugh.

Got spaghetti sauce on my shirt. Naturally. (I can make spaghetti here because it's an "apartment-style" hotel with a kitchenette.)

Went to the two-hour orientation seminar for the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program I have just started. It was terrific. Tomorrow the actual seminars and lectures and introductions to software (for the online portion) begin. I'm really excited. I have a ton of reading to do. I will also have a ton of writing to do, but that part is more intimidating than exciting, so I'm going to ignore it till the next ten days are over.

I dreamt of David Bowie again. I do occasionally dream of David Bowie and Madonna. In the last dream, David showed me his art collection* and then David and my cousin and I played a practical joke on my other cousin. It involved David wearing a fake rubber nose. It was hilarious. In the dream.

I wrote this blog entry. I thought of you and you and you and you.

* I have no idea what kind of art David Bowie actually collects.