Literary "gentlemen"

A while ago (Is it already a month? Ack!) I attended a reading as part of Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. The event was to feature 3 "literary gentlemen."

As should be obvious from the amount of time I allowed to lapse before filing this report, I felt no pressing need to tell the world about what I'd seen and heard. Still, it was nice to get out.

Tim Parks
I wondered why the name was so familiar. Of course, I'd seen the name splashed across his novels but was never tempted to pick one up. It turns out that I know his name because he has translated the work of Italo Calvino.

Tim Parks is an odd little man. He seemed friendly enough, cracking jokes about the coffee and chocolates some of the audience carried in with them. After about 50 of us have taken our places, he is introduced. In response to the host's remarks, he mutters audibly and with a wink that there's "no such thing as an important literary prize."

He chats briefly about the book tour circuit (something to the effect of: People read! They come to these things!), and manages to disparage the quality of Harry Potter and The DaVinci Code while implying he is more worthy of their rankings.

Parks will read from Rapids. He provides some context, warns about the use of kayaking terminology, for example "stopper" — "not a word you're familiar with, but we'll see." He reads from a paperback, well-worn and dog-eared. I can see he has marked passages, scribbled notes in the margins.

He's nervous. His eyes dart. His hands are shaking. I'm sitting quite close and am distracted by the rustling of the cloth over the authors' table; I realize he's kicking.

The reading is animated, expressive. He does voices, accents. The story is boring.

There's time for only 2 questions: One had something to do with age or experience and elucidated the audience as to how the questioner spent his morning and his delayed reaction to an art exhibition he saw last week. The other question, posed by the moderator, pointed out that Tim Parks, living in Italy, is essentially cut off from the evolving Enlgish language. He responds vaguely but wisely that when you know something is going to be one way, you'd better decided early on it was an advantage.

Later, as I'm leaving, I overhear someone asking Parks about translating Calvino. Parks seems modest, clarifies that he's only translated a couple works (interestingly, I find these to be among the very least engrossing of Calvino's oeuvre); then, looking over his shoulder as if to ensure he's overheard by only the right people, "Most of them are translated by William Weaver, and not very well."

Gentleman? Not so much.

José Carlos Somoza
Somoza looks serious and suspicious. There's no doubt he is taking in everything.

This is only the second time, he says, that he's given a reading in English. He mispronounces (for example, "you-nexpected" for "unexpected" — quite charming really after the initial moment of deciphering), stammers and repeats, but he is very composed. The story speaks for itself.

From the book jacket of The Art of Murder:

In 2006, the art world has moved far beyond sheep in formaldehyde and the most avant-garde movement is to use living people as artwork. Undergoing weeks of preparation to become 'canvases', the models are required to stay in their pose for ten to twelve hours a day and, as art pieces, they are also for sale. After being exhibited, the 'canvases' can be bought and taken to the purchaser's home, where they are rented for weeks or months.

Many beautiful young men and women long to become a 'canvas' — knowing they are a masterpiece and worth millions seems to make all the sacrifices worthwhile...

Excerpt.

Somoza pauses to give us some context for the various snippets he reads. He clarifies that artists work not only on the canvas bodies, but on their minds, to prepare them to be art.

It's worth noting that Somoza gave up a career in psychiatry to pursue writing. His training is put to obvious use in developing symbols, themes, character psychologies — attics hold the secrets of childhood, the attraction of the forbidden. Some of the writing comes off as cliché, but it's gripping nonetheless.

I will be reading this novel.

Gentleman? I think yes.

David Bezmozgis
The reason for which I purchased a ticket. Cancelled. His father ill.

Perhaps he's too young to be seriously considered a gentleman. His writing: decidedly ungentlemanly, if at times gentle.

Ironically, Bezmozgis's casual style, his material, family stories, short stories — the idea of his writing — appeals to me least (compared with the other authors at this event). But his book was undeniably touching and entertaining, and it's what drew me there. Parks is the self-proclaimed literary one, boring in his book and a bit of an asshole in person. Somoza strikes me as a happy medium, his novel like literary pulp (maybe a little like Arturo Perez-Reverte), and I'm glad to have discovered him.

(More readings should be multiauthor events! How better to be introduced to work that is vaguely similar to that by an admired author but new!)

Bonus gentleman: José Saramago
No, I did not see him that weekend. However, while wondering around the festival venue and perusing various flyers it came to my attention that, at long last, the transcript of his conversation with Adrienne Clarkson, to which I was witness last summer in Ottawa, is allegedly now available in English (though I am unable to find it among the archives).

His latest novel, Seeing, is recently released. (No, I haven't read it yet.)

Ursula K LeGuin: "It's hard not to gallop through prose that uses commas instead of full stops, but once I learned to slow down, the rewards piled up: his sound, sweet humour, his startling imagination, his admirable dogs and lovers, the subtle, honest workings of his mind. Here indeed was a novelist worthy of a reader's trust."

On my television

Edward R Murrow, speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, 1958:

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

*****

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.

Forty-eight years later...

Good night, and good luck.

The new Number 6

This news is the most exciting thing I've had to be excited about in a long time! Kind of like the excitement of last year's Dr Who revival and the excitement of getting The Prisoner DVD boxset for my birthday a couple years ago combined!

(Thanks for the news, Ed!)

(Oh, I'm so excited!)

It's a girl!

I remember the horrid experience of the ultrasound. I was overwhelmed, scared, tense. Alone (J-F couldn't make the appointment), in an unfamiliar setting (having just moved to a new city), grappling poorly in a second language for any hope of communication with the staff, waiting with an overfull bladder, and generally worried, confused, emotional. Everything was OK, normal, no reason not to be, just fine; but a little voice niggled: Are you sure? How can they be sure? I won't let my guard down. I have every reason to be concerned, tense.

Then she told me, It's a girl, and for the first time in days, I smiled. That smile imprinted itself on my heart, I think — my heart melted a little and I could no longer control the muscles in my face.

Of course, I'm pretty sure I'd've had the exact same reaction if she'd told me I was having a boy. Pretty sure.

I'd never envisioned a baby girl in pink or daydreamed about doing mother–daughter stuff. But then I'd never been dreamy-eyed over motherhood at all or had any vision of that future except as a vague, blurry Someday. I was relieved to have a girl, because I know nothing about boys. But it turns out it's not so simple.

It's a Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters is the latest anthology edited by Andrea J Buchanan. As it's so succintly and accurately stated at Parent Hacks, "Andi's books are a central part of the growing conversation (in print and online) about the realities of middle-class, American motherhood." (The review there has sparked a great discussion on gender identity.)

Read the Introduction.

Mothering a girl, according to these writers, makes a woman face herself anew, reliving her own experiences growing up as a girl. The mother of a girl must plumb the depths of the girlhood she'd thought she had safely escaped — but this time through the eyes of her daughter, whose experience is necessarily different. The pain and joy of this reliving, the merging of mother and daughter experience, and the bittersweet, inevitable separation between the two, is at the core of mothering a girl — and at the heart of the essays that make up this book.

That's it, really. This collection is less about daughters than it is about mothers coming to terms with themselves, their own sense of girlness and womanhood, the awareness of how that sense grew out their relationships with their mothers. Emulate our mothers, or distance ourselves from their legacy?

I'm sure many readers will find it reassuring, but I find it troubling that so many (were there really that many, or did my reaction to them exaggerate their number in my mind?) of these essays centred on body-image. (Maybe I'm too much in denial, my vehemence in eschewing the latest fashion trends and resistance to dieting betrays an overcompensation, an armour of words I've built up around a less-than-perfect body.) I'd hoped we were past that.

No essay reflects my experience closely, but every one of them has a little something I relate to.

See Mothershock this week for Andi's take on specific essays.

Follow the blog book tour:
Arch Words
Left-handed Trees and Other Lies: Keeping It All Honest
Mom Brain
The Mommy Blog
Mommy Needs Coffee
Mom Writes
MUBAR
Parent Hacks
Phantom Scribbler
Scribbling Woman
Wet Feet
Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Related books also edited by Andi:
Literary Mama: Reading for the Maternally Inclined, my review of.
It's A Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons, a few words about.

When I first wrote to Andi to express my interest in It's A Girl, I mentioned some of the issues I'd been grappling with.

The way J-F rolls his eyes and mutters "Women..." when Helena has a tantrum. Even little girls are emotionally complex, he says. When a boy has a tantrum you know exactly why. Is it because I'm female that I'm quicker to figure her tantrums out, because I'm her mother, because I spend more time with her — which of these is behind my knowing her better? Is it true that boys are simpler, easier?

His surprise at my sister's choice of a trainset as a birthday gift for a little girl.

That Helena for a while seemed to be far more girly than I thought possible as the daughter of someone who's never cared for clothes, makeup, etc. Where does she get it from? And what do I do about it (nurture, suppress, ignore)? (The girliness has waned somewhat in recent months, or maybe I don't notice anymore.)

As a counterbalance to the girliness, Helena's bossy and even bully-ish, decidedly "unfeminine," in her daycare group (she's physically larger than most of them).

Just yesterday Helena asked for a new toothbrush, her Winnie-the-Pooh brush at daycare is getting old. She wants a Power Rangers toothbrush, or maybe Batman. J-F is uncomfortable with the un-girliness of it all, and I'm uncomfortable with the fact that he's uncomfortable about it.

How much control do I really have over any of this? Does any of it matter?

The essays in It's A Girl don't have any answers. But they're honest about it.

Pamuk, PEN World Voices

Orhan Pamuk on April 25 delivered the inaugural Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Memorial Lecture at the PEN World Voices festival:

I always have difficulty expressing my political judgments in a clear, emphatic, and strong way — I feel pretentious, as if I'm saying things that are not quite true. This is because I know I cannot reduce my thoughts about life to the music of a single voice and a single point of view — I am, after all, a novelist, the kind of novelist who makes it his business to identify with all of his characters, especially the bad ones. Living as I do in a world where, in a very short time, someone who has been a victim of tyranny and oppression can suddenly become one of the oppressors, I know also that holding strong beliefs about the nature of things and people is itself a difficult enterprise. I do also believe that most of us entertain these contradictory thoughts simultaneously, in a spirit of good will and with the best of intentions. The pleasure of writing novels comes from exploring this peculiarly modern condition whereby people are forever contradicting their own minds. It is because our modern minds are so slippery that freedom of expression becomes so important: we need it to understand ourselves, our shady, contradictory, inner thoughts, and the pride and shame that I mentioned earlier.

I don't know that it's a peculiarly modern condition, but it's one Pamuk explores superbly in Snow.

Choosing a book

Trying to decide what to read next.

I want something light, something without politics. I read a chapter of China Miéville's Iron Council and decide the language is too rich for me to digest right now, and it is far too political, even if this revolution brews in a wholly imagined world.

I go through the stack (there's another stack downstairs, but that's far too far away to be relevant) and methodically eliminate the possiblities. I'm left with two books for closer inspection and begin to compare blurbs.

One book:
"Ingenious... Sparkling with erudition."

The other book:
"I admire this ingenious, erudite book."

What kind of choice is that? Who wants erudition?

Snow

Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, is wonderfully evocative and extremely complex.

Snow is the most recent selection of the Reading Matters book group. I'd previously read Pamuk's My Name is Red (set in 16th-century Istanbul) — I particularly enjoyed the philosophical discussion of the nature of art and how Eastern and Western attitudes toward art differ, although the novel's structure felt contrived. Snow, set in modern times, touches on similar themes but goes well beyond them, to touch on pretty much everything.

Snow is quite obviously the prevailing motif of Snow. It works to isolate the city of Kars (roads are closed), while something dark metaphorically falls over it. Snow makes it picturesque, temporarily obliterating its squalor (which makes itself felt otherwise). Our hero in snow recaptures childhood, innocence, God, peace. Snow's crystalline structure is the inspiration for a series of poems Ka writes; the novel has its own geometry. While the snow falls Kars is suspended from reality; the first half of the novel itself freezes time, relating events that occur over about a day. Then the thaw, the ugliness, the hidden workings; time becomes fluid again.

Excerpt.

For a plot summary, see the reviews:

Margaret Atwood's review.
(Some comments on that review.)

The Literary Saloon has its own review along with a comprehensive list of others.

For my thoughts on more specific aspects of the book, see Reading Matters.

I particularly like the characterizations of Snow's minor players. They're complicated products of circumstance and ideals, sometimes weird, riddled with contradictions and failures, larger than life, but all still sympathetic and believable.

Turgenev's Father and Sons is mentioned a few times in Snow. I think I actually read it for school but remember nothing of it. I suspect these two novels have a closer relationship than anyone has yet discussed: the struggle with tradition and national identity, revolution in the air.

See also:

Discussion at Bookninja Magazine.

The NY Times Reading Group discussion includes some informative points (and links to other sources) on the following:
-Turkish history, Turkey's relationship to Europe and specifically Germany.
-The issue of headscarves, both in relation to Turkey and to Islam.
-The metafictional aspects of the novel, how the narrator's intrusion works to complement the tensions of the novel and underscore the theme of the significance, impact, and place of art.

What all these reviews and discussions highlight for me is just how big Snow is. While they raise fascinating points on Turkish history, Islam, religious state vs secularism, tradition vs modernity, East vs West, the nature art, art & politics, women in Islam, women vs men (in how both events and emotions are processed), love, God, betrayal, revolution, national identity, memory, failure, shame, metafiction, and purity, I still come away with the feeling the surface of this novel has been barely scratched.

What I've been up to

My eyeballs!

In tax crap. The paperwork is mostly over now, with some more organizing and filing away still to do. I don't even mind the number-crunching and paperwork so much. It's the stinging slap of reality that lingers and weighs on me. Sigh.

In work. A new project I desperately want to not fuck up. Must not procrastinate. Must discipline myself.

In rain. I love rain. But I could do without the fuzzy sinuses and migraines.

In Snow. Discussion ongoing, if lacking in participants. Read it! It's... important. Somehow.

In the sunshine of my life:

I have the distinct impression Helena is practicing her English. Since she started daycare, she's favoured speaking French. I've asked her about this in the past and she's shrugged her shoulders — I speak to her primarily in English, there's no doubt she understands everything I say, and her exposure to books and television is also generally via English; but French is easier for her, it's the language of her daily activities and her peers. From Dora she hears Spanish. From my mother, Polish. We also have books in Polish, songs, and I sprinkle phrases here and there. Suddenly this weekend, she is aware of different languages. After one motherly admonition in Polish slips out, she asks, "Pourquoi tu parles comme Babcia?" She knows there are multilingual seeds planted in her. For now, she practices English, looking to me for confirmation, even asking me about particular words.

We took Helena for a haircut on the weekend. While awaiting our turn, we stop into the pet store next door. The resident big blue parrot says "buh-bye" while lifting one foot and flexing his talons in a makeshift wave. Helena hasn't stopped talking about this amazing bird.

Family portrait

That's me in red. Helena's green. The yellow is sometimes the cat (who is in real life black as night), but usually the light is such that it's not visible at all. The blue folk keep changing identities, but include J-F, all the grandparents, and others.

Weird cute things

Playing at the park or schoolyard, we often interrupt "regular" play for imaginary picnics and pretend naps. Recently Helena's begun to watch imaginary TV.

Playing hide/chase, this time the menace being an unseen lion, Helena announces she's going to kill it. I bite my lip at this — I'm not keen on banning any kind of play outright, particularly since exposure to this kind of play is pretty much inevitable, but it does make me uncomfortable; for the timebeing, I let myself watch how she herself incorporates such outside influences. Her hand turns into something like a phaser (she definitely does not call it a gun). And so she goes lion-hunting. She shoots. Then (and I loosely translate/paraphrase her toddler French): "Oh, no! The poor lion! I think he's hurt! We have to take him to the doctor!" So we take him to the doctor.

Some mornings she gets out of bed and happily proclaims, "J'ai grandie!" (I've grown!)

At the mall last week: "Look! Il y a deux soleils!" I have no idea what she's talking about. The lights? "Deux soleils! Look! Un juste a coté l'éléphant." Still, no idea. "Puis un avion and a raccoon, avec le soleil!" (Yes, that's a pretty accurate transcript of her language switching.) Soleil, éléphant, avion, raccoon, soleil. S. E. A. R. S.

Some evenings, Helena asks me to sing her to sleep. Sometimes she has a specific song in mind. Last night, she stopped me midtune. Because her teddybear was crying. Because her teddybear didn't want to hear this song. OK. But she begged me to continue. So I did, but the damn teddybear started crying again. Finally, Helena buried him under her blankets, making sure his ears were plugged and he wouldn't hear.

The other morning, while looking for her magic sandal (that would be the weird part of the anecdote), she tells me (and this part is hopelessly cute), "Tu es la plus belle des princesses!"

Back to work

How I spent Easter and the week that followed

Trips to the park: Approximately 15.

Chocolate consumed: Countless.

Smingus dingus antics: None. Completely overlooked. I'm devastated by this realization.

Bottles of wine consumed: Not nearly enough.

Shopping expeditions: Mostly pointless, overly long, and unfair to small child.

Number of televisions playing at excessively loud volumes for excessively long periods of time and setting my whole body, not to mention my temper, on edge: Two.

Tempers lost: Mine, for reasons I don't yet have the perspective to wholly define. I won't count the little girl's episodes of frustration as they were hardly meltdowns, and none of them her fault but clearly attributable to boredom, glitches in routine meals and disrupted bedtime rituals, and not being paid attention (!). I have much griping to do actually, and am still waiting for my temper to fully settle before venturing an exposition of multigenerational family female dynamics.

Migraines suffered: Two, one of which is ongoing.

Despondent Leafs fan in a days-long funk: My brother.
Exuberant (perhaps overly so) Habs fan: That would be J-F.

Books acquired (at bargain prices):
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women — to correct the oversight in my reading education.
Miéville, China: Iron Council — because I've been dying waiting for the mass market paperback, and this remaindered hardcover was super cheap.
Pinker, Steven: The Language Instinct — because my old copy was never returned to me.
Pearl, Matthew: The Dante Club — just because.
Wallace, David Foster: Infinite Jest — because some people think it's a big deal.
Walsh, Bill: The Elephants of Style — because I've been meaning to.

Books recovered from my mother's basement:
Boston, Lucy M: The River at Green Knowe
Clifton, N Roy: The City Beyond the Gates — both of which I have no recollection of, and I'm curious to rediscover why I thought them worth saving.
Collodi, Carlos: The Adventures of Pinocchio

DVDs acquired:
Watership Down
Middlemarch — Yay! With Rufus Sewell. Yum! Am deliberating how best to watch it: In one late-night 7-hour marathon? In daytime lunch-hour snippets? Daytime viewing should be postponed till after I've delivered a batch of work this week, and till after I've done my effing taxes. Consecutive evening showings would have to wait till the Habs are eliminated from the playoffs. Should I dispose of the child for a weekend? Do I make J-F watch it with me? Salty snacks or sweet? How many bottles of wine for 7 hours?

Movies watched:
The Adventures of Pinocchio
Saw II
Miami Rhapsody
History of Violence
Domino
Creep — which is excellently creepy!

Books read:
Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
I did not read it as a young girl and thought I should. Frankly, I'm glad I didn't read it as a young girl, as I'm afraid to think what effect all the moralizing and godliness might've had on me. Ugh. The last few chapters were just awful. Still, I suppose there are some worthwhile lessons to take from these women regarding formation of character, so long as one has the ability to identify the timeless from the hopelessly dated. Weird, too, to read it on the tail of Middlemarch, to see the contrast between American and English sensibilities at a similar time period, although holding it against the mature and complex workings of Middlemarch also highlighted how juvenile Little Women is, not only in that its intended audience is young, but in how simple (and I mean that derogatorily) its construction and messaging is. I did enjoy its soapiness, however, and I suspect it's probably better read while not under the influence of PMS.

Buchanan, Andrea J, ed: It's A Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters
Blog book tour alights here May 5.

Glennon, Paul: The Dodecahedron
That is, I finally finished it. I have much (good) to say about it.

Walsh, Bill: The Elephants of Style
I love this guy, and trust him. He's funny; his points are well reasoned, and the reasoning is consistent and common-sensical.

The denouement
Bouts of car-sickness: Helena, just once, on the return trip, about 3 blocks from home.
First thing on arriving home: birthday party for 11-year-old cat, complete with hats and cake.
Hiding under the bed from excessive displays of toddler affection: one 11-year-old cat.

Later, gators

I've actually been wanting to share quasi-interesting things with you — the reading I attended last weekend, cute weird things the kid is doing — but all week I've been plagued with work deadlines and a sick child (why must those things always coincide?). But that'll have to wait. We leave in the morning to visit with family. No Internet (gasp!). Back in 10—12 days, haven't decided yet. Miss me. (I miss you terribly already.)

ABCs

(Because it's a quick and pleasant diversion from all else. Well, it's something.)

Shelly's Booked by Three for April (via Pages Turned):

Name 3 books you liked, titles which start with A, B, C (one per letter).

All the Names, José Saramago
Balthasar's Odyssey, Amin Maalouf
Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold (Please write another book.)

Name 3 authors you like whose names (given or surname) start with A, B, C (one per letter).

Auster, Paul
Byatt, A.S.
Calvino, Italo

Name 3 books on your To Read list with titles starting with A, B, C (one per letter).

The Art of Murder, José Carlos Somoza (from which I heard the author read this past weekend — more on this later)
Beyond Black, Hilary Mantel
Captain Alatriste, Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Brought to you by the letter "H"

Helena is home today with a nasty cough, runny nose, and slight fever, but with a mostly sweet disposition. She's home today to fulfill the law that demands she prey on my guilt and mothering instincts on the day that's the worst possible day for her to be encroaching on my time, what with my having a work project due in a couple days.

She's napping now, and I've decided to go ahead and blog cuz, hey, the day's pretty much a write-off workwise anyway.

What makes it worthwhile: she sits beside me at my desk, picks up a pen and writes "I" on the legal pad. "Mama, c'est 'I.' C'est pour toi: Isabella." Then "H," a recognizable capital "H," "pour moi, Helena." She writes a thousand "H"'s, half of them on my arm. Then "X" — I don't know why, other than that she can, but she writes "X" and calls it "X" likes she means it.

Recent lightbulbs
Noted here for posterity before I forget and because I don't think I'll ever get 'round to writing something clever and meaningful about any of these points individually:

She operates the CD player with ease, although despite my best efforts her taste in music leaves something to be desired. (I try to listen as a 3-year-old, and remind myself how normal it is for children, such naive creatures, to like children's music. Why should I hurry her to have "sophisticated" tastes?)

She is almost as proficient with the DVD player, inserting her program of choice. I used to cringe at her handling DVDs (and CDs) and did what I could to dissuade her, but we're past that now. She knows triangle is for "play," square for "stop."

Back in February she figured out the computer mouse, or her hand was finally big enough, coordinated enough, to make it do what she wanted. The lightbulb that correlated mouse movement with cursor position had already been illuminated. She favours matching and memory games.

Friday she drew a spider that looked like a spider and a mouse (of the mammalian variety) that looked like a mouse. Sadly, these pictures have not been preserved as they were drawn on the palms of my hands.

Marching on

I finished reading Middlemarch, because I hate reading more than one book at a time and also I'm not very good at it. I find myself unable to focus on anything properly, too much going on, too many loose ends, and the distraction spills into my nonreading life, on top of which there's the feeling of lack of accomplishment, leaving things unfinished, delaying that peculiar sense of satisfaction in being able to cram a read book into its alphabetized position on the shelf.

So I finished reading Middlemarch, because I could, and because I couldn't help myself, schedule be damned, it's that engrossing. And I'm brimming with things to say about it, most particularly in agreement with Virginia Woolf's comment that it "is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people," but on this point I will restrain myself, because there's a schedule after all. But I'm glad I didn't read it 15 years ago, because while I'm sure it would've made some impact, served as a warning of sorts even, I most definitely was not a grown-up.

Would it be premature for me to say this may be the best book ever?! Really, it's that good. You should read it.

I'm loving reading it this way though (aside from not being able to read much of anything else alongside it), rereading sections as they come up for discussion, and again as other people's comments point me to specific passages. I could've read it in a matter of days, enjoyed it and been done with it, but now I'm absorbing it, which leads me to realize how flawed my usual reading experience can be, how much missed potential I've let drift by, which is fine, usually, but some books are worthy of more attention than I give them — the trick is to know which ones.

So I'm already wondering, what next — I mean, aside from the stuff on my nightstand — what else would be suited to this kind of group reading? Dare I say, it's more like school than a bookclub, in a good way, as discussion happens along the way, not in one sitting at the end (though, come to think of it, even at school, books were assigned and often not discussed till they were finished). Still, there are books I did read a dozen years ago from which I might benefit rereading as a grown-up (eg, The Master and Margarita, The Sheltering Sky), and there are classics that to appreciate fully one should take time and companions. But how to know which ones? So what next?

Science writing

For my daily bread and butter I read, and try to fix, an awful lot of less than elegant science.

In the Guardian, Ian McEwan, in an expanded version of a talk given at the London School of Economics to mark the 30th anniversary of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, explains why the writing is as important as the science:

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. There has never been a science book quite like it. Drawing on the work of a handful of scientists, it bound together genetics and Darwinian natural selection in a creative synthesis that amazed even those few who were already familiar with the concepts. It hastened a sea change in evolutionary theory, it affected profoundly the teaching of biology, it enticed an enthusiastic younger generation into the subject, and spawned a huge literature, and eventually a new discipline — memetics. At the same time, and this is the measure of its achievement, it addressed itself without condescension to the layman. It did so provocatively, and with style.

"Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose, we are cast aside. But genes are the denizens of geological time: genes are forever."

It is a lovely phrase, "shuffled into oblivion", and the analogy with cards — the hand being the information, the cards themselves the genes — is apt, economical and informative: true eloquence. In the years since then, Dawkins' work might be seen as one extended invitation addressed to us non-scientists to enjoy science, to indulge ourselves at a feast of human ingenuity. Just as we can sit around the kitchen table and discuss operas, movies or novels without being composers, directors or novelists, so we can engage with this subject, one more sublime achievement of accumulated creativity. We can make it "ours" just as we might the music of Bach or Bill Evans.

Ian McEwan further proposes a canon of science literature; accuracy is not the most important criterion.

We need to remember the various discarded toys of science — the humours, the four elements, phlogiston, the ether and, more recently, protoplasm. Modern chemistry was born out of the futile ambitions of alchemy. Scientists who hurl themselves down blind alleys perform a service — they save everyone a great deal of trouble. They may also refine techniques along the way, and offer points of resistance, intellectual cantilevers, to their contemporaries.

I say all this somewhat dutifully, because there actually is a special pleasure to be shared, when a scientist or science writer leads us towards the light of a powerful idea which in turn opens avenues of exploration and discovery leading far into the future, binding many different phenomena in many different fields of study. Some might call this truth.

Immigrant stories

I've never been a big fan of short stories. Their length makes them hard to do right — develop the characters adequately, tell exactly all that's required for whatever there is of a plot to work. And when they are done right, you're left wanting more.

Natasha and Other Stories, by David Bezmozgis, is utterly right: charming, poignant, honest. All the stories share the same context.

I found myself wondering how many people would relate to, or at least enjoy, stories of the Russian-Jewish immigrant experience, circa 1980s Toronto. But obviously, this collection has already been widely acclaimed be people other than me. In these stories I recognized little bits of my own past — not strictly "immigrant" and no longer confined or defined by but still, then, firmly within that community, of another Slavic heritage, over the same time period not so far from Toronto. Silly, I know, to be grasping for similarities; but there are insights still into how my family acts and thinks:

My mother noted the size of the house. Maybe three thousand square feet with a big yard. Also, it was fully detached. This was two substantial steps beyond our means. Between our apartment and a fully detached house loomed the intermediate town house and the semidetached house. A fully detached house was the ultimate accomplishment.

I don't know what others will find in these characters' lives. Humour, compassion, suburban reality.

My favourite line:

The sun was neither bright nor hot and the outdoors felt conveniently like the indoors: God's thermostat set to suburban basement.

Stories:
Tapka
The Russian Riviera

Excerpts:
The Second Strongest Man
A New Gravestone for an Old Grave

Dispatch:
Dubbing, Italian-Style

Reviews:
London Review of Books
The National Post

About:
Quill & Quire: profile
The Atlantic Monthly: interview

Reading group guide.

Women, writing, etc

Highlights from an interview with Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying, which I've never read:

• If I were running a political movement today, I would focus on children and how parents are being screwed.
  
  
• It's possible to be a writer, a mother and a wife, without necessarily killing yourself.

Anniversary

Fifty years ago today my parents were wed.

My father lived to see but 21 years of marriage. I marvel at my mother's continued devotion to him.