15th Canadian Challenge - 13th Review - Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven has gotten a lot of attention during the pandemic for obvious reasons.  I knew I wouldn't have been able to read Station Eleven early on in the pandemic, particularly in those first 9 months where little was known about coronavirus and vaccines were still another 6 months or so away (and it took quite a while after that for people in my age bracket to qualify!).  It was easier to read Camus's The Plague as it was about a very different disease with different (and better known) vectors.

At any rate, now that life is gradually returning to something closer to normal, I was able to better appreciate the book.  One striking features is that only a chapter or two in, she casually drops that the "Georgian flu" is so deadly that approximately 99% of humanity dies and society essentially collapses.  This is basically the same territory as Corman McCarthy's The Road, though her vision isn't quite as apocalyptical.  For the most part people retreat into small communities of survivors rather than becoming marauding bands, though there is one "prophet" who does violently impose his vision and rules.  And of course one of the most notable aspects of the book is that there is a travelling group of musicians and actors that travel across the Midwest.  There are some clear parallels to Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn, which did play in NYC in 2012 so Mandel might have come across it and been somewhat inspired by it, though most likely she had been well along in her own writing and this is just another case of parallel evolution.  I actually passed on a chance to see Mr. Burns in Toronto and sometimes I regret not going, though it isn't a very deep regret.  One of the core conceits is that they are putting on an old Simpson episode and the episode keeps getting distorted over the years, given that it isn't possible to watch the original.  At least with Shakespeare (and Beethoven) there are texts to refer to, so the interpretations don't stray too far from the source, and it also helps that Station Eleven takes place only 20 years after the collapse and not 100 or even 500 years.

I will say that the book's structure fooled me a bit.  I thought that the entire book took place post-pandemic, but in fact there are quite a few flashbacks that explain how Arthur (a movie star) is linked to the other characters, most but not all who are among the "lucky" 1% of survivors.  I'd say by the end of the book a few of the coincidences were a bit strained, particularly the several ways that Jeevan keeps intersecting with Arthur.  I'd also say that the sheer number of people connected to Arthur who survive is a bit implausible.  I'd assume that, at minimum, Arthur's 2nd wife, would have been carried off long before.

I'm intrigued to find out that Station Eleven was turned into a miniseries for HBO Max (and that David Cross is one of the travelling actor-musicians!).  I'm not at all sure I will watch it, but I might someday.  I would definitely be interested just how much of the Station Eleven artwork they showed (and just how close it would come to Waterson's Spaceman Spiff!).  Presumably they would need to show Miranda at work with her sketches and some of the finished pages.  Also, given the way television tends to make a sequel of everything (and I am particularly thinking of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale where the tv sequel largely paved the way for Atwood to return to Gilead (figuratively speaking) and write The Testaments), I would not be at all surprised if they wanted to explore one of the major dropped threads in Station Eleven, namely that some 20 years after this devastating pandemic, some community had found a way to restore electricity!  This interview in MacLean's touches very briefly on the filming of the miniseries but doesn't discuss any changes they made to the material, so it remains a bit of a mystery.  However, Mandel does reveal that a pandemic also appears in her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility.

I don't really consider myself a survivalist, and I can't imagine what I would do under those circumstances where society had essentially collapsed, starting with whether I would eat rabbit and deer or would I try to stick to a vegetarian diet. I certainly hope it isn't something I really have to consider down the road.  Despite a few too many coincidences and a somewhat stagey final conflict, Station Eleven was very entertaining and a fairly quick read, though I'm very glad I read this after the worst aspects of our real-world pandemic have started to fade (and that our pandemic was less than a tenth as deadly as the one Mandel cooked up)!

15th Canadian Challenge - 12th Review - Midnight Stroll

Janice Keefer's Midnight Stroll is essentially three completely separate poetry sequences in one book.  To further emphasize the differences, each section is illustrated by three different artists with radically different styles.  

The first section was inspired by the paintings of Natalka Husar, who mostly painted domestic scenes of a middle-aged man and a much younger mistress or domestic scenes of a possibly discarded mistress caring for her brood.  Most of these poems are about a kind of looking-glass domesticity with a strong undercurrent of anger that it is (almost) always men who are in the position to exploit younger women in this way.

The second section is illustrated by Claire Wilks, the Toronto artist who had two exhibits in Yorkville in June, as I reported a bit over a week ago.*  The poems are inspired by the diary of Etty Hillesum, a Jewish woman from Amsterdam who was killed in the Holocaust.  As one might expect, this is a very heavy set of poems.

The final section is called The Waste Zone, which is basically a reworking of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, but in this case explicitly commenting on (and condemning) the police action at the Summit of the Americas held in Quebec City in 2001 where the neoliberal order was further expanded.  This section (and he accompanying footnote section!) are illustrated with Goran Petkovski's photographs of the event.  I would say for better or worse, most of the outrage that probably motivated these poems is drained by the overt pastiche and the fairly dry footnotes.

All three sections offered up something a bit different.  Despite the somewhat pervy topic, I think the first section was the one I appreciated the most.  Some of the poems had flashes of irony, and while the content was disturbing, it stayed at the level of domestic tragedy and wasn't crushed by the weight of the Holocaust (as articulated by Adorno and others).like the second section.  

One somewhat interesting angle is that the paintings themselves have a bit of a Lolita-vibe to them, as if the mistresses are underage, but that isn't the impression I got from the poems.  Given that some of the women advertise themselves in "Ukrainian Girls International," this is a path more typically followed by young women and not underaged girls.

That said there are plenty of cues that the women are focused on material gains and/or securing a visa and romance is far from their minds.

"Imitation Marriage" is written in the form of a personal ad.  "No strings attached, / no promises necessary, just / the goods, on demand."  It ends "Imitation divorce / guaranteed."

In "Cinderella After Midnight," it is again a Ukrainian ingenue who is an interloper: "the wife's off at the cottage with the kids / and there's no one left to make trouble here."  She is enjoying herself, essentially playing dress-up in someone else's nest: "If they could all / just see you, swaddled in mink / on a red velvet pillow."

Not that this life doesn't have plenty of pitfalls and drawbacks.  In "Beloved Enemy" not only is there "the cancelled boyfriend back in Zhytomyr" that may still cause some anguish, but more ominously "the teenaged daughter / she'll be saddled with in fifteen years."

As I alluded to above, the tone shifts substantially when Keefer develops poems drawing from Etty Hillesum's writing.  In "Our Common Fate," she writes about her decision to not take a "safe" job while her fellow Jews were being deported: "I will not hide myself / like a rat in a wall.  I refuse / a job's short safety, / selling my people in job lots."

While it is certainly admirable, Hillesum found grace and even beauty in the most tragic of circumstances, it was quite difficult for me to read most of these poems.

I did find "Bicycle Thieves" moving and tragic.  "Yellowstars [Jews] are now forbidden bicycles / as well as trams."  She recalls the freedom that her bicycle brought her, but due to the gratuitous cruelty of the Nazis "I consign you to rust / and quiet."

Wilks's illustrations complement these poems but are not as directly and explicitly tied to the poems as in the first section.

As mentioned, the final section is somewhere between a parody and reworking of Eliot's The Waste Land.  Given that Eliot was a fairly arch traditionalist, it is highly unlikely he would have appreciated this appropriation.  Here is how it opens: "April is the cruelest month, breeding / protest in the lulled land, mixing / tear gas and champagne..."  Later on Keeler substitutes "O O O O that Noam Chomskyan Rag" for Shakespearean Rag.  It is a clever if somewhat exhausting performance.  I'd say the major failing is that Keeler's poem really can't exist in the absence of The Waste Land, and it doesn't really work without a very, very thorough grounding in Eliot.

The other two sections are interesting and quite strong but do require a willingness to read about the victims of the Holocaust or, probably less emotionally exhausting, to put oneself in the shoes of a Russian -- or Ukrainian! -- mail order bride and/or mistress.

* And in fact I only heard about Midnight Stroll through the Wilks' connection. 

15th Canadian Challenge - 11th Review - Could Be

I read George Bowering's newest poetry collection, Could Be, while it was hot of the press, and in fact I pre-ordered it, which is fairly unusual (for me), but I didn't want to wait for the library to get it in stock, though it is there now.  (The review itself has been significantly delayed as I got my thoughts together.)

The cover is a detail from Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. You can just see Icarus splash down in the right-hand margin of the cover (if you know what you are looking for).  The painting is of course the inspiration for Auden's poem "Musée des Beaux Arts," as well as a W.C. Williams' poem on the same theme.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, ca. 1560

Bowering's take is embedded in "Bruegel's Idiots," which is one of the first poems in the collection.  In common with Auden and Williams, Bowering focuses on the inattention on display: "They all could have taken a tip / from any father who said pay attention..."  Bowering goes a bit further than the others in saying all the characters are a bit dim.  "[O]ne guy lets his sheep / walk on stone all the way down to the water / where there's nothing to graze."

Could Be in divided into five sections.  The first section, which contains "Bruegel's Idiots," are mostly casual, free-verse poems.  Many of them focus on growing old and Bowering's dread of death.  In "Running with Luck," he writes "when I wake / I begin to learn what parts of my mortal body / will go on hurting this day."  This is immediately followed by "Straws": "Every time I read a book it reminds me / that I'm going to die." 

The poems in the second section are quite short with short lines.  Here is "The Stars" in its entirety: "The stars / fell  from the sky // like similies /on a sheet of paper."  These mostly strike me as quick journal entries, though Bowering may have been going for trying to emulate Robert Creeley. 

The poems in the third section are quite similar to those in the first section, so I am not quite sure why they weren't just combined.

In the fourth section, Bowering is writing poems about poetry and he writing life.  He name checks Frank O'Hara.  Then the first two poems in this section explore rhythm.  "George & Kevin" is based around a bad pun on serial poetry,* and then a follow-up poem "All True Alphabet" is a sort of serial poem with one line focused on a place name for each letter of the alphabet.  In "When I Was," he jokingly explores his "origin story" as a poet: "When I was a kid big guys / were always beating me up / so ... / I mailed a form to a poetry academy / and learned scansion and so on, /... / and my life has been a lot better ever since."  While it supposed to be a funny riff on Charles Atlas and his ads, I felt that Bowering, if pressed, would say that pursuing poetry had been a fulfilling career. 

The fifth and final section is a long, journal-like poem "Sitting in Jalisco," which records a 2016 trip to Mexico.  It reminds me of George Stanley's work, and indeed Bowering name checks Stanley at one point.  I didn't think this was entirely successful, but that is mostly because I have a very strong preference for poems that stay within a 1-3 page limit.

Aside from the fairly dark turn of the first section, where the spectre of death hovers over most of the poems, these are generally casual poems.  Many are supposed to be funny and most are short.  It doesn't feel like Bowering is making some major statement with this book, and he might even argue that, given his short time left on Earth, he didn't want to undertake a specific writing challenge like he did in My Darling Nellie Grey.  Could Be is definitely not the best place to start with Bowering, and this post provides some guidance, useful or not, on Bowering's career.  The most "important" Bowering is Kerrisdale Elegies, though my personal favourite books are Delayed Mercy and Vermeer's Light.  Could Be is a slight book in comparison to those earlier works, but anyone who is a fan of Bowering will want to check out this late-career entry.

* Bowering has written a lot of serial poems over his career, and this generous volume, Taking Measures, collects all the "important" ones.

Recharging

Another weekend gone.  I had thought I was going to see the K.S.O. perform at the Glenn Gould studio downtown.  However, that concert was scrubbed from their website.  I don't have the inside scoop, but I suspect one or more of the orchestra members haven't been vaccinated and thus were not allowed to perform due to lingering safety protocols.  I mean I don't know that for certain, but it was very strange how I couldn't find any information about this concert at all, but they are still planning on making a trip to Toronto a year from now!  I decided to just stay home for the day (and not go to any of the Toronto Jazz Fest shows either).  One interesting side effect of being in one place for so long was that in the afternoon, I expected to see the Sunday papers.

While I had visions of straightening up the back room, I didn't do much of that and mostly worked on getting books from the front room out into the Little Free Library.  I finally dragged myself across the line and finished Beckett's The Unnamable, which I absolutely loathed.  I didn't much care for the 2nd half of Molloy or Malone Dies, but they had some internal coherence, despite being tedious beyond belief.  But The Unnamable is just a big FU aimed at the reader.  Quite possibly the biggest let down of my reading life, even more than Faulkner's A Fable, which I certainly hated.  However, Faulkner still has a plot of sorts and characters, even if he sometimes obscures which character he is writing about in any given paragraph.  I had thought Faulkner was more or less the king of long paragraphs and run-on sentences, but The Unnamable is 145 pages long with no or essentially no breaks.  Just one long interior monologue that resolutely refuses to cohere.  At one point we are led to believe all the narrator's limbs are missing and he is outdoors in a jar or vase, which is horrific enough, but then it seems this is not true but some sort of perverse fantasy perhaps.  Anyway, completely pointless.  I think every reader is well aware of the existence of unreliable narrators, but this was far too long and boring and frustrating.  Beckett made his point in 10 pages or so and then just wouldn't go away (perhaps a bit like my non-review).  What slays me is that he covers the same general territory more effectively in a few pages in so many of his plays, so why did he feel the need to drone on and on and on here?  Maybe what annoys me even more is the dozen or more reviewers on Goodreads giving this "novel" 5 stars.  Pretentious bastards...

While nowhere at the same level of unhappiness with the author, I am finding Isak Dinesen is much more miss than hit for me.  I only really liked one or two stories from Winter's Tales. I'm close to halfway through Seven Gothic Tales and am not that gripped by any of the stories, plus I strongly disliked "The Monkey," as it is largely written in a realist mode but then throws in a fairy tale twist ending from left-field.  Someone on Amazon noted that most of the stories in Seven Gothic Tales end with an untranslated sentence (in the case of The Monkey," a misquote from Virgil), which is more pretentious than enlightening. I don't recall if she did this in Winter's Tales, but I don't think so.

I've certainly fallen far behind in my reviewing duties, though I suspect I will make a last push and get to 14 or 15 reviews in the next few days.  I've read the books but just need to write down my thoughts.  There actually was a month where the Canadian challenge host was down, and I was wondering if this was a sign I should just drop the whole reviewing business, but then it came back online, and I finished a book (Station Eleven) that I would actually like to review, so I guess I'll go on for now.  If I do review books for one more cycle, I'll probably mostly try to get through this huge stack of poetry books, mostly from Brick Books, and possibly Atwood's MaddAdam trilogy, though I suspect this would be tackled 8 or 9 months from now.

Sunday was a more typical weekend day in that I had a specific agenda.  I headed out early with my son for Union Station where we caught the bus to Hamilton.  (Fortunately, the strike that messed up GO Bus service is over!)  There was some accidental that snarled traffic just outside of Hamilton but overall the ride was fairly smooth.  Also the bus was maybe half full, unlike our previous trip where it  was uncomfortably packed.  I was reading Station Eleven and listening to my iPod, which passed the time.

We were there to go to the Art Gallery of Hamilton to see the Margaret Watkins exhibit, which was extended to August 14, so roughly 6 weeks left to go.  It was quite nice.  I'd seen quite a few of these photographs in two books covering her career, though there were a few photos from London and Scotland that I don't recall seeing in either book.  

We ran outside to see the sculpture garden, only to be told it was off-limits for a bridal reception, which was in the indoor space next to the garden.  I'm all for the Gallery renting out space to keep afloat, but it seems a dereliction of duty to make the whole sculpture garden unavailable to the public.  I managed to sneak in a shot of this Sorel Etrog piece anyway.

A bit miffed, we headed upstairs after that.  It had been reorganized quite a bit with less emphasis on the Group of Seven and Painters Eleven, though they still had several Lawren Harris paintings up on the walls.  I don't recall this Riopelle panel, though I might have just overlooked it on a previous visit.

Jean-Paul Riopelle, Atlas du Nord, 1973

Stopping at the bookstore on the way out, I decided the Watkins catalogue, Black Light, was a bit too pricey, but there were some publications from the Hidden Lane Gallery in Glasgow covering many of the London and Glasgow images new to me, so I grabbed two of them.

Then we went across the street to Jackson Square for lunch.  We went to an Indian street food place, which was fine, but I'll have to remember to tell them no onions the next time (if there is a next time).  I was sad that the farmers' market was completely closed on Sunday.  I don't know if that means on my pre-pandemic visits I usually came over on Saturday or if the hours are just much shorter post-COVID.  Hard to tell.

We hustled over to the GO Bus station and made it with just under ten minutes to spare, so we didn't have to wait too long.  There were a few passengers who were dressed up for the Pride parade.  It was supposed to rain in the early afternoon, but the weather changed and the rain held off until 8 pm or so, which was nice that the Pride Parade wasn't spoiled.

There are still a lot of facadectomies going on in Hamilton, though I suppose overall it's good there is any investment happening. 

As we headed out of downtown Hamilton, we passed this big pile of bricks.  No idea what was originally there or what will be built there next.

Back in Toronto, we saw some people coming back from Pride.  I continued reading Station Eleven and got down to the last chapter.  I had been thinking of going to the gym anyway (twice in one weekend!), and this was a good excuse.  Indeed, I finished the book just as my cardio session wrapped up.  I liked it quite a bit, probably the most entertaining book I've read in a while, though I found Celine and Arlt to be interesting, even if on the bleak side.  I suppose Lodge's Therapy was more of a comedy overall.  At any rate, I will do my best to get a review in over the next few days.  In general, my timing for the day was quite good as I didn't get rained on in Hamilton and all the rain (that we had been promised) fell in a ten minute span while I was still at the gym.  Just lucky, I guess.

Father's Day Weekend

I didn't do all that much with the kids this past weekend.  In fact, I was scheduled to take my son to see Hamlet at Stratford on Sunday, but he saw it a few weeks ago with his high school class (and I wasn't dragged in to be a chaperone, which is probably just as well).  So I returned his ticket (for a tax credit no less!).  Anyway he has been quite stressed with his final school projects, so we haven't watched any films at all lately, though we should be able to resume this next week..

I did a fair bit of biking around on Saturday.  I almost never hit the art galleries in Yorkville, but there had been a short article in the Star about Claire Wilks at Gallery Gevik, so I though I should check it out.  I wouldn't say that she is one of my favourite artists, but I'm glad I dropped in.  They are even giving away a nice free booklet covering the exhibit. Just a few doors down at the Heliconian Club they had their own exhibit featuring Claire Wilks and a different free booklet!  The schedule is kind of quirky, but their show will be open next Sat. from 1-4 and a few additional afternoons.  The exhibit at Gallery Gevikn basically runs one more week as well, so don't delay if you want to see it.

I stopped in at Bau-Xi and then made a quick stop at the AGO.  I didn't have time to check out the new exhibit on art and artifacts from the Spanish empire, but I'll browse through it on my next visit.  I then biked over to 401 Richmond.  Some of the galleries I usually check out like Yumart hadn't rotated their exhibits, but Red Head Gallery had something new.  I tried to stop in at this Indian place on the way over to work, but the line was moving too slowly, so I gave up.

After I got home I did a bit of weeding in the front yard and then some reading on the back porch.  I read a few short chapters from Station Eleven, and it is quite gripping.  I do appreciate Mandel throwing quite a curveball in that she doesn't want a long drawn-out exploration of who survived and who died of this new plague (a la Camus) and she just kills almost everybody off immediately, though there are then some flashbacks covering the early days of the pandemic.  It's quite an effective launch, though I know there is no way I could have read this in 2020 or even 2021, as it was just too close to the bone.  Timing is everything, however, and I can read it now...  (Interestingly, this was one of the books that my son was assigned in his English class!)  I'm also reading Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales, in part because this appears to have been one of the inspirations behind Angela Carter's short stories.

Sunday was spent almost entirely in Stratford.  I decided to risk the bus.  (Last summer I rented a car!)  The trip there was fairly smooth, though I had to move up towards the front to get away from some chatty students, who were making it quite hard to focus on my reading.  I wouldn't say that it helped that I was reading Beckett's Molloy!  We got there just a bit early, and I went to the Thai place that is one of my go-to restaurants in Stratford.  I ran into a couple of vinyl shops and just laughed at the prices.  Same thing with the bookstore on the main drag.  Usually the only shopping I do is at the church thrift shop, but that is only open on Saturdays not Sundays.

The weather was still great so I walked up the river past the new Tom Patterson Theatre.  No question it is a nicer space, but  it does seem perhaps a bit too lavish and grand.  I saw some nice work at Art in the Park, and then beyond that were rows and rows of classic cars for some kind of meet.  

I had just enough time to run over to Gallery Stratford before the show started.  The art there was cute, but I wasn't blown away by it.  Probably the more interesting thing was a series of outdoor banners for a different spin on art in the park.  

Then I ran over to the Festival Theatre building.  This must have been my first time inside since 2019.  The attendance was really sparse (perhaps because Hamlet is so tough on step-dads and unconventional families generally).  They let us sit almost anywhere we wanted in the balcony, which was cool.  I don't have time to do a full review of Hamlet, but basically I didn't care for it.  I don't mind modern dress versions of Shakespeare, but I don't like modernizing the play to rely heavily on modern technology.  (Ophelia even wore a wire at one point!)  There are a number of cuts (in fact Fortinbras is completely cut from the cast!) -- and Claudius confessed to Polonius, which makes no real sense.  Slotkin outlines a lot of issues with this production, and I wholly concur with her that this director (Peter Pasik) has treated the play shoddily.  I am very unlikely to see his next effort after this.  Where I part ways with Slotkin is that she thought the actor playing Hamlet, Amaka Umeh, made up for this, and I didn't.  I think Umeh is probably only the fourth or fifth best Hamlet I have seen.  Basically I liked the actors playing Claudius and Ophelia, and that was about it.  Sadly.  I'd go so far as to say that I regret wasting my time with this production, and that is extremely rare for me.  It definitely drastically reduces the chances that I come back to see pretty much the same actors in Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman in September.  

The bus ride back was not nearly as pleasant as coming.  The bus was delayed.  Then the bathroom door kept sliding open whenever the bus made a turn, which was often because we were stuck on back roads for a very long time for some reason.  It didn't help that I really didn't care for Beckett's Malone Dies, which I was trying to finish on the way back.

My powers of perseverance are being sorely tested by Beckett's novels.  I do understand what he is trying to do, but they are just so unpleasant to read (pages and pages of unbroken interior monologue).  I think I will push through The Unnamable, but I'm going to discard the books after this.  Now that I know how little I enjoy Beckett's novels (his short stories aren't nearly as bad) I no longer feel regret at having taken so long to get around to reading them.*  So it felt like a fairly long ride back to Toronto.  I'll try to be a bit more strategic on my next long bus ride and not sit so far back and pick a novel that isn't quite so demanding.

* The first half of Molloy wasn't too bad, but was certainly too drawn out.  I saw some parallels to Endgame and Happy Days.  I've heard that one of his early, slightly more approachable novels, Mercier and Camier, is a bit of a dry run for Waiting for Godot, so I may read that, but generally I think I will stick with his dramatic works and leave the rest behind.

Playlists

This is probably only of interest to me, but I listen to Youtube on two different devices (my laptop and a phone) and there are subtle differences in the playlists.  Also, I guess I listen more on the laptop and the playlist has evolved more with some things having dropped off almost entirely, even things that were earworms a few months back.  Rather than spending too much time trying to sort them out, I may just list what is in heavy rotation now and some of the songs in the "long tail."  While the core of my listening habits are grounded in the New Wave 1980s and the alternative wave of the early 90s, there are certainly songs from later eras that have made the cut, so to speak.  I might colour code them by decade later on just for my own amusement.

Heavy Rotation (daily or more):

Robert Plant Ship of Fools
Olivia Rodrigo Good for You
Cowboy Junkies Sweet Jane
Weird Al Yankovic All About the Pentiums
Robert Palmer Johnny and Mary & Sneaking Sally Down the Alley
Ned's Atomic Dustbin Not Sleeping Around
Blondie For Your Eyes Only
Skye Wallace Dead Things Pt II & Everything is Fine
The Who Eminence Front (Live in Toronto 1982)
Leonard Cohen Closing Time
The Traveling Wilburys Handle with Care & End of the Line
Pink Floyd Learning to Fly
Wang Chung To Live and Die in L.A.
Sarah McLachlan Building a Mystery
Fiona Apple Criminal
Barenaked Ladies One Week, The Old Apartment & New Disaster
Talk Talk It's My Life & Life's What You Make It
Cage the Elephant Cigarette Daydreams
INXS Suicide Blonde
Beastie Boys Sabotage
Harvey Danger Flagpole Sitta
Soundgarden Spoonman
Local H All The Kids are Right & Bound for the Floor
Nick Cave Higgs Boson Blues
The Smiths How Soon is Now?
Katy Perry Never Really Over
Peter Murphy Cuts You Up
James Laid
The Tragically Hip The Darkest One
The Ramones Bonzo Goes to Bitburg
Everclear Santa Monica
Dua Lipa New Rules
Jadagrace My Rules
New Order True Faith
The Killers All These Things That I've Done
They Might Be Giants Ana Ng & Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

Weekly Rotation:

Robbie Robertson Somewhere Down the Crazy River
Weird Al Yankovic Word Crimes, White and Nerdy & Party in the CIA
Robert Palmer Looking for Clues & Simply Irresistible 
Bleachers I Wanna Get Better
Lady Gaga Poker Face
The DiVinyls I Touch Myself
Elle King Ex's and Oh's
Carly Rae Jepsen Call Me Maybe
Supertramp Take the Long Way Home
The Church Under the Milky Way
Mabel Don't Call Me Up
Katy Perry Hot N Cold
Leonard Cohen First We Take Manhattan
REM What's the Frequency, Kenneth?
Portugal the Man Feel It Still
INXS The Devil Inside
Barenaked Ladies Brian Wilson & Blame It On Me 
Morrissey The More You Ignore Me
Indigo Girls Closer to Fine & Galileo
The Kinks Come Dancing
Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me with Science
They Might Be Giants Birdhouse in Your Soul
Warren Zevon Werewolves of London
David Bowie I'm Afraid of Americans
Spoon Can I Sit Next to You
The Offspring Self-Esteem
Animotion Obsession
Young MC Bust a Move
Love & Rockets So Alive
Jane's Addiction Jane Says & Been Caught Stealing
The Psychedelic Furs The Ghost in You & Love My Way
The Tragically Hip Bobcaygeon & New Orleans is Sinking
The Ramones I Wanna Be Sedated
Madonna Beautiful Stranger
Depeche Mode Never Let Me Down Again & Enjoy the Silence
Elvis Costello Pump It Up & Watching the Detectives
The Rolling Stones Living in a Ghost Town
Beck Loser
Wheatus Teenage Dirtbag
Too Much Joy Donna Everywhere
Electric Six Down at McDonaldz
Skye Wallace Body Lights the Way & Scarlet Fever
Ava Max Sweet But Psycho
Fountains of Wayne Stacy's Mom
Bronski Beat Smalltown Boy
Big Country In a Big Country
Concrete Blonde Joey
The Killers Mr. Brightside
Roy Orbison I Drove All Night
School of Fish Three Strange Days
Natalie Imbruglia Torn 
George Harrison When We Was Fab
Foster the People Pumped Up Kicks & Houdini
Miley Cyrus Heart of Glass (Live)
Our Lady Peace Starseed
Tears for Fears Woman in Chains & Sowing the Seeds of Love
Toad the Wet Sprocket Something's Always Wrong & Good Intentions
The Cranberries Zombie
Nick Cave Push the Sky Away
Tom Waits Downtown Train

Long Tail:

Tones on Tail Go!
Robert Plant Big Log
Robert Palmer I Didn't Mean to Turn You On
Skye Wallace Not Ready for This to Start, Death of Me & Coal in Your Window
Bleachers Stop Making This Hurt & Don`t Take the Money
The Tragically Hip Nautical Disaster, Ouch & Not Necessary
The The Dogs of Lust
Lady Gaga & Beyoncé Telephone
Miley Cyrus Jolene (Backyard Sessions)
David Bowie The Heart's Filthy Lesson & Jump They Say
Bowie & Queen Under Pressure
Supertramp It's Raining Again
A-Ha Take On Me
Wall of Voodoo Mexican Radio
Romeo Void Never Say Never
Missing Persons Walking in L.A.
Tom Petty Learning to Fly
The Lowest of the Low Powerlines
Exid Up & Down
Sistar Shake It, I Swear & Lonely (during my KPop obsession)
Taylor Swift Look What You Made Me Do
Hall & Oates Private Eyes & Out of Touch
The Smithereens A Girl Like You & This is the House We Used to Live In
Billy Joel We Didn't Start the Fire
Squeeze Cool for Cats, Up the Junction & Hourglass
T'Pau Heart and Soul
The Head and the Heart Missed Connection
Primus Wynona's Big Brown Beaver
Tom Waits Big in Japan
The Vapors Turning Japanese
Alice in Chains Jar of Flies
The Tubes She's a Beauty
The Offspring Pretty Fly for a White Guy
Lorde Royals
Adele Rolling in the Deep
Sheryl Crow Everyday is a Winding Road
Faith No More Epic
Nirvana The Man Who Sold the World
Peter Gabriel Biko & Sledgehammer
Fine Young Cannibals She Drives Me Crazy, Good Thing & Suspicious Minds
Doves There Goes the Fear
The Pixies Where Is My Mind?
They Might Be Giants Why Does the Sun Really Shine?
Toad the Wet Sprocket Walk On the Ocean
Madness Our House
The English Beat Save It for Later & Mirror in the Bathroom
Sigala Just Got Paid
EMF Unbelievable
Jesus Jones Right Here Right Now
The Stone Roses She Bangs the Drums & Fools Gold
Dream Academy Life in a Northern Town
The Fall Hit the North
Everclear AM Radio, Everything to Everyone & When It All Goes Wrong Again
Flock of Seagulls I Ran
Oingo Boingo Dead Man's Party
DJ Ryson Feel the Party Bass Remix
David Newberry Coyote
Sheryl Crow My Favorite Mistake
Garbage Stupid Girl & I'm Only Happy When It Rains
No Doubt Spiderwebs & I'm Just a Girl
Roy Orbison You Got It
Johnny Cash Hurt
Glen Campbell I'm Not Gonna Miss You
Steve Earle Satellite Radio
Echo & The Bunnymen The Killing Moon
U2 Stuck in a Moment & I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Train Drops of Jupiter & Cab
The Killers The Man
Billie Ellish Bad Guy
Chris Isaak Don't Make Me Dream About You
Lustra Scottie Doesn't Know
Ava Max Torn
The Clash London Calling
The Cure Just Like Heaven & Pictures of You
Eurythmics Sweet Dreams, Would I Lie to You & Here Comes the Rain Again
Barns Courtney '99
Chumbawamba Tubthumping
Iggy Pop Lust for Life
Imagine Dragons Zero
C+C Music Factory Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
Deee-Lite Groove Is in the Heart
Gotye Somebody That I Used To Know (also WOTE cover)
The Ting Tings That's Not My Name
Sophie B. Hawkins Damn I Wish I was Your Lover
Delacey The Subway Song, My Man & Black Coffee
Placebo Pure Morning, Special Needs & Meds
Was (Not Was) Walk the Dinosaur

Parallel Evolution

Perhaps I am thinking a bit in evolutionary terms due to recently wrapping up Barrett's Ship Fever, where almost all the main characters are men or women of science, including a handful of doctors from the early days of medicine where so much was still being discovered about the origins of various diseases.  At any rate, I am midway through Beckett's Molloy (the first novel in Three Novels), and I noticed some interesting parallels.  Both are permeated by thoughts of death, but also the characters are flustered and flummoxed when forced by the police to answer questions about their activities.  Furthermore bicycles seem omnipresent in both books.  I had assumed that The Third Policeman was inspired by Beckett, but this isn't the case at all.  The Third Policeman was actually written much earlier (1939-40) but then went unpublished until 1967, after Brian O'Nowlan's death.  Given that Molloy was published in French in 1951 and then translated into English in 1955, it seems that the two were conceived completely independently of each other!  I suppose one might simply say that the Ireland of their formative years was rife (if not to say overrun) with both policemen and bicycles.

It is a bit harder to credit that independently both would mention that the narrators had forgotten their name when asked by the policemen, with only Molloy recovering it later.  And both had trouble with their legs: Molloy having one stiff leg (later two), necessitating crutches, and the unnamed narrator of The Third Policeman has a wooden leg.  Naturally both authors are quite playful with language.

I used to have a running tally of "ten-dollar" words, but I wasn't able to keep it up.  However, I am going to list just a small number of the words that Beckett throws into his novel, most of which don't appear to have direct French translations, so that is a bit odd in itself.  Much to my surprise ratiocination was a "ten-dollar" word that I included in my second post and simply forgot all about it!  It basically means the process of logical reasoning.

Here are a few others that he sprinkles through Molloy (with definitions):

Stultification - to have a dulling or inhibiting effect or to cause to appear or be stupid, foolish, or absurdly illogical.

Otiose - serving no practical purpose or result.

Factitious - artificially created or developed.

Supererogation - the performance of more work than duty requires.

And a twenty-dollar word - floccillate - to pluck at the bedclothes occurring especially in the delirium of a fever.  It is quite hard for me to believe this is an actual word, as it is so absurdly specific.  From the context in Molloy, I thought it meant something more like an aimless flopping of the limb(s).  At any rate, I don't think I can top that, so I'll just stop here before this post descends into "fatuous clamour" which the agent in Molloy warned against.

Back to Bleakness

I had intentionally slotted in a more light-hearted book (The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis) between Celine's Journey to the End of Night and Beckett's Three Novels.  However, within a few chapters I could tell that The Best Laid Plans was just not for me.  It's a little hard to tell what didn't go right for me but probably the over-writing and general pompousness of the characters (including a grammar Nazi) which cut against the need for implausible situations running at top speed that are characteristic of a farce.  Once you slow down and think (as some Goodreads reviewers pointed out) that there is simply no way the narrator would get a tenure-track job in the manner described (at least in any era past 1985...) and that he would be a lecturer at best, then the rest of the plot wouldn't work and the whole house of cards collapses.  I also really dislike bathroom humour and reviewers pointed out how reliant Fallis was on fart jokes, and indeed the book opens with the narrator landing in an enormous pile of dog crap for really no good reason at all.  I decided this book just wasn't for me with that many strikes against it, and I dropped it off in the frontyard library this morning.

I also gave up on Helen Oyeyemi's Gingerbread after 100 pages.  It just didn't work on any level for me after the first chapter, but I had hoped it would get better.  Instead, the novel shifted to the mother's "origin story" which was a mash-up of a bunch of legends and fairy tales, and indeed she started hanging out with Gretel (yes, of the gingerbread house) and I had no interest in following Oyeyemi on this journey.  I really do have to work at dropping novels rather than forcing myself to finish them.  I mean it shouldn't be this hard, as I can think of almost no novels that I disliked from the start that then got better as I got deeper into them.  There are a few I am glad I endured but none that I enjoyed more by the end...

On the plus side, I've gotten through a fair number of books -- and gotten them out of the house.  I also finished David Lodge's Therapy (and left it in the Asheville airport) and Richard Ford's Canada (which I left in Reagan National).  Both were better books that I don't regret reading, even if the ending of Therapy is just a bit too pat, and I didn't think Ford needed to use quite so much foreshadowing in Canada.  But I also don't expect to ever read them again.

Anyway, Journey to the End of Night was quite bleak and misanthropic, which fits my current mood quite well.  It probably would slightly overtake Malamud's The Assistant for position #5 on this list, but I may as well expand the list to 10 and include Arlt's The Seven Madmen/The Flamethrowers as well, plus leave an extra space for Beckett and Celine's Death on the Installment Plan.  One of the few positives about these early Celine novels is that they actually aren't tainted by his deep anti-Semitism; Celine is an equal-opportunity hater in these works, so I'll go ahead and read them but almost certainly stop with Death on the Installment Plan.

I really am converging a few lists, but this is currently what's on deck:

Beckett Three Novels
Barrett Ship Fever
Welty The Robber Bridegroom
Dinesen Seven Gothic Tales
Maugham The Razor's Edge
Carter Fireworks & The Bloody Chamber
Pym Some Tame Gazelle
Joy Williams Breaking and Entering
Celine Death on the Installment Plan
Kingsley Amis The Alteration & Girl, 20 
Roy The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Bissoondath A Casual Brutality
Rushdie The Satanic Verses
Vanderhaege Homesick
Gallant Home Truths
Gogol Dead Souls
Bellow The Adventures of Augie March
Desani All About H. Hatterr
Narayan The Man-Eater of Malgudi
Baker A Fine Madness
Gaiman American Gods
Waugh Decline and Fall
Maugham Cakes & Ale
Carter Wise Children
E. Taylor Blaming
Knut Hamsun Mysteries 
Munro Open Secrets
Conrad The Secret Agent & Under Western Eyes
Auster Man in the Dark
Saramago Blindness
DeLillo Cosmopolis
Mandel Station Eleven
Perec Life, A User's Manual
Martin Amis Time's Arrow
Brewer The Red Arrow
Malraux Man's Fate
Nabokov Pnin
Steinbeck East of Eden
Fante West of Rome
Ali Smith Companion Piece & Public Library and Other Stories
Dupont The American Fiancée
Skorvecky Two Murders in My Double Life

On the whole, this is fairly balanced between short and long novels and generally not too bleak, though the Carter short story collections should be darkly comic.

Crashing Disappointments

Last weekend was pretty busy and I generally had an ok time.  I held off from posting when I was deep into depression and was so angry about the state of politics in the US and how the Supreme Court is dragging the country back into a theocracy (when it isn't striking down any gun control laws in comes across).  It does help a bit that I only tune in to CNN once a week or so.  Despite all that I saw a few churches as part of Doors Open Toronto and saw a pretty decent exhibit at the Red Head Gallery over at 401 Richmond.  

Ian Mackay, Parade, 2022

The artist was actually in the gallery, so I spoke to him briefly.  He does seem to drift back and forth between abstract and figurative art.  I mentioned that was a bit like Philip Guston,* and he seemed to take that as a compliment, though the piece above actually reminds me more of the background detail in one of George Herriman's Krazy Kat cartons.

I was quite glad to find out that Video Cabaret has started up again, and glad that I found out in time!  They did The Cold War, Part One this summer.  Next year they'll do Part Two (and perhaps Part One in repertoire).  

Certainly I have been staying quite busy with theatre outings and some concerts.  Tonight I went to see Tapestry Opera do a piece about robotics called RUR.  The set was great, and I enjoyed the music (the pit band sometimes played musical saws and one even typed on an old-fashioned typewriter!), though the book was a bit thin and I still don't really like operatic conventions.  At intermission, someone asked me what I was reading, and I answered Celine's Journey to the End of Night, and how appropriate it was, given that he hated pretty much everyone, and that's how I was going to feel at the end of the night.

And that is exactly how I feel after I learned the Conservatives won a solid majority and even picked up seats (mostly from the NDP).  What a tragedy for Ontario!  I thought Del Duca was a terrible, uninspiring candidate, but I still thought they would do a bit better.  I'm very glad Horwarth is finally, finally stepping down as leader of the NDP.  But this is going to cast a huge pall over everything for the next 4 years, making it very difficult to stomach living in Ontario and frankly making me accelerate my plans to leave my current position, as I am frankly embarrassed to be a government employee under Ford (with absolutely no hope on the horizon).

I'll just wrap there, as I'm too likely to descend into pointless ranting when I need to be working on my resume and cover letter.  It might be a while before I write again, but I suppose I may have a better day here and there amidst all the gloom.  One can only hope.

* I probably have Guston on the brain because in just under a month, I am flying to Boston for a day to check out the Guston exhibit at their Fine Arts Museum, as well as a major JMW Turner exhibit, though I do need to book a hotel before the prices go up even more...