11th Canadian Challenge - 3rd review - Seth's Dominion

This is a curious artifact put out by Drawn and Quarterly.  It is primarily a fancy slipcase for a DVD of the film Seth's Dominion by Luc Chamberland (from the National Film Board).  The movie is sort of a documentary about the Canadian cartoonist Seth, but it also includes animations of some of his work, as well as shots of the model town of Dominion that Seth has constructed over the years.  The DVD also includes as a bonus feature two short animations of Seth's work -- The Death of Kao-Kuk and The Great Machine -- and an hour-long talk Seth gave in Montreal at a Drawn and Quarterly store.  The copy I borrowed from the library had scratches on the DVD, so I could only watch the short features (and bits of the longer features before the DVD went on the fritz).  I'll have to see if I can borrow another copy, though I don't think I'll update this review, which is more about the book aspects of Seth's Dominion.  The front of the slipcase has several pages of photos of Seth, his family and his cartooning buddies.  I was not aware that he worked with Dean Motter on Mr. X (I have nearly a complete set of this comic book series), but I am not clear on what Seth actually did (perhaps the lettering), since the style seems quite different from his normal style, which draws a bit from Peanuts as well as Chris Ware's work.

The second part of the slipcase has about 40 pages of Seth's cartoon work, including a few pages from his books It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken, George Sprott, Wimbledon Green and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists. It's effectively a sampler of his work.

Like many modern cartoonists who are producing graphic novels, Seth's work has strong autobiographical components, although Seth also seems to be someone who isn't much interested in modern culture much past 1955, so sometimes he seems to be projecting himself back into an imagined past.  I have to be honest that his style is a bit too simple to really keep my attention, but based on the sampler, I'll probably read The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists* and possibly Wimbledon Green.  One interesting feature of Wimbledon Green is that Seth can make up comics and then have his collector (W. Green) go on about them without really having to create more than a short excerpt.  Stanislaw Lem went ahead and reviewed dozens of imaginary books (in A Perfect Vacuum and One Human Minute), and of course Borges played similar games.  I'm not sure what else Seth gets up to in this portrait of a committed comic book collector, but it's probably worth reading once.

As promised, I'll add a few of my own shots of Seth's town of Dominion (currently on display at the AGO):
 

It's definitely a strange and interesting world.   I'm still not sure if this city makes its way into any of his major works, though most likely Palookaville, so I'll probably check out one or two of those volumes (fortunately the library has a fairly complete set of Seth's works). This book/DVD combo is a fairly good introduction to Seth and his work, so it is worth checking out if you are at all curious about him.

* Kao-Kuk is an Inuit astronaut, apparently introduced in The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists.  It is fairly amusing seeing most of the space crew as First Nations in the short film.  I'd have to read the rest of the book to see what Seth does with this concept.  I'm not sure if cartoonists fly sufficiently under the radar to avoid the appropriation debate, but Seth may be attempting to sidestep the issue by claiming that the Kao-Kuk story was actually written by Bartley Munn, a mythical Canadian cartoonist.  Here is a solid review that unpacks what is real and what is imaginary in this collection. 

Resurrection buffet

I pushed it just a bit and went to an Indian buffet yesterday.  I should have held off another day at least. The food was excellent.  I did go back for seconds, though I didn't fill the entire plate and I basically skipped dessert (only one gulab jamun!).  But it was too much for my stomach, still dealing with the red meat from Friday.  I was kind of knocked out the rest of the afternoon and skipped dinner altogether.  I'd still go back, but probably not for another few weeks.

Anyway, I was seated next to two middle aged women who started off by talking about how Trump supporters viewed him as a kind of god, who would do for them what they couldn't do for themselves, but this was all a lie of course.  While I didn't really want to think about Trump over lunch, I was completely astonished where the conversation went next.  They started talking about the gnostic beliefs including how hell was just basically another purgatory (i.e. not truly eternal damnation) where one's sins were burned away.  They weren't sure about the gnostics, but they were both convinced that the soul was indeed immortal and that one returned to earth many times to take on an earthly body (in between times when one cavorted in the extra-dimensional ether) and chip away at the ego.  It was a bit strange to say the least, since they had just finished talking about Trump supporters as such dupes.

Coincidentally, I recently wrote a piece (the last that will be going up in my staged reading) about two members of a Scientology-like cult (the Sisterhood of Cosmic Understanding, Last Testament) and what happens when they try to find converts at the Last Chance Saloon.  (This was partly based on my temptation many, many years ago to try to corrupt a very cute Jehovah's Witness who came to the door (alone!) in Ann Arbor.  I decided that it wasn't really worth it, no matter how cute she was.)  Also, outside Union Station, there are Seventh Day Adventists or something, and I cross paths with them most days and wonder what might happen if their beliefs were truly challenged.  Hence this piece.

While my piece is probably already long enough, perhaps I should give the Sisters just a bit more time to explain their theology, perhaps inspired by what I heard over lunch yesterday.  That might balance the piece a bit more.  After I make the tweaks, I'll post a link.

Long Weekend (& July updates)

Due to my unfortunate lunch experience yesterday, I kind of crashed when I got home.  My stomach is a little better, but I don't think I should try anything too complex for the next few days.  It's most unfortunate, since I had wanted to head off to an Indian place for the buffet, but that is definitely out.  Maybe next week.

I then woke up after a few hours and finished my playlet for the 3Fest.  I was about to send it off when I realized they wanted it in a different format, which stretched the length from 4 to 6 pages!  (The limit was 4 pages.)  So I cut and cut, even some material I thought should have stayed in.  I guess it is good experience, given that I need to tighten some other scripts, but boy, it was annoying.  I sent it off to beat the deadline and went to bed, then woke up a bit late this morning.  I'm still sort of sluggish, but I think I'll head off to the Toronto Reference Library (it just stopped raining, so I can probably bike it) and probably catch Baby Driver after that.  I was thinking of seeing the Valerian movie, but the leads just seem so wooden that maybe I would be better off watching it on video whenever it does come out.

I don't have anything that I absolutely have to do, but I would like to get to the grocery store before it closes and probably get to the gym (I have been very bad about that this week), though if I bike downtown there is slightly less urgency to getting to the gym.  I recently found out that the cardio is paying off and my heart rate is in pretty good shape.  (I didn't check blood pressure, but it's probably normal.)  I'm still having trouble climbing lots of stairs and jogging is a problem, so maybe I will try to work that into the gym routine, but one thing at a time.

Before the family all took off for Chicago I was able to finish up the pajamas.  Even after I took in the waist more, they are still a bit baggy.

I should have cut out even more and shortened the elastic, but I didn't know.  Also, the length is just ridiculous, with probably six inches hemmed up inside each leg.  I guess maybe I'll be able to adjust and they'll fit my son in a couple of years.  It's probably not all that terrible for a first attempt, but I don't think I'll really get into the clothing line.  It's just too much work overall.

The quilt, on the other hand, is coming along fairly well.  I've actually cut out nearly all the pieces I need for the entire thing, and I have 11 rows pieced together, and then 6 of those stitched together lengthwise.  There's a reasonable chance I'll have all the rows (17 total) pieced by the end of August, and then the whole quilt top plus border by Sept.  So I'm definitely on track.  More pictures later when there is more progress.

I did get back to the AGO and took a few photos of the contemporary art exhibit on the 4th floor.  I was glad to see that the room was fairly packed, granted it was the free day at the AGO.

Camal Pirbhai and Camille Turner, Bell, 2017

The first photo was inspired by advertisements in Canadian newspapers looking for runaway slaves, in this case for a "Mulatto wench" named Bell.  The next exhibit was quite popular.  The first part was a ballroom gown/basketball jersey, which speaks to Esmaa's desire not to be forced into a particular gender category.  In the background, you can see the concrete basketballs of her installation Heavy Heavy (Hoop Dreams), which comments on the fact that so many Black youth spend their time chasing unrealistic dreams of making it in the NBA, when the odds are so heavily stacked against them.

Esmaa Mohamoud, One of the Boys, 2017

Seth, Dominion

The last part of the exhibit was a huge model city built by the cartoonist Seth.  I actually just missed out on seeing this in Regina, so it was cool to see it in Toronto.  He built this set to inspire him to work on a graphic novel, but the set sort of took on a life of its own.  I'm not even sure he finished the other project.  I'll be reviewing a book/DVD about the Dominion project shortly, and I'll include more photos in that post.

As promised, I did take a picture of the Rita Letendre paintings not in the catalogue.  Unfortunately, this picture is still quite off-centre, so I'll try again on the next visit.

Rita Letendre, Hurl into Space, 1998

There was another large painting (November Night Rain) outside the exhibit proper.  I'm not 100% sure it was there on my last trip.  Unfortunately, while I took three pictures, absolutely none of them turned out!  So again, next time.

I tried to take a few close-ups of Victoire, my favourite of the bunch, to show the way the paint does not lie flat on the canvas.

Rita Letendre, Victoire, 1968

Those are the main updates.  I'm still reading a fair number of classics this summer (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Voyage in the Dark, The Sound and the Fury, The Vatican Cellars, The Good Soldier, A Month in the Country) and never getting quite enough other writing* done, though I expect I'll be more productive Monday when nearly everything is closed.  At any rate, I should run now.

Coda: I did make it to the library and managed to get done 3 of 4 things I wanted to accomplish, but one of the books was not on the shelf.  Supposedly a copy is coming to me off the hold shelf, but I don't know how long that will take.  I didn't plan on it, but I picked up a few books at the used book store, including Ali Smith's Public Library and Other Stories (how appropriate!) and Engel's Lunatic Villas, which has been added to my to-read list.  I got to the movie theatre and ended up one person away from the cashier, when I realized that I wasn't happy that they had added a few extra dollars for a "prime" movie experience.  It's weird how that was the tipping point, and I decided I would just be better off at home either reading, writing or going to the gym.  So I split, and now I am home again.


* Big news.  It looks like I have landed a date in mid September for the staged reading, but until a contract is signed I don't want to get too excited or actually put out the date, but hopefully early next week all the details will be worked out.

Bad lunch

I was totally at my wit's end for lunch.  I just did not want the stuff in the food court, and I'd already had Thai a couple of times this week.  I really wish that 1) the Chinese place closest to me was better and 2) the Chinese place in Metro Hall didn't keep getting busted for health code violations.  That place was probably the best food court Chinese I've ever had.  Ultimately, I decided that I wanted something like mac and cheese, but the place I thought would have it didn't, and I was pretty far from work at that point.

I kept on and came to a Rabba's that I used to frequent before I changed jobs.  The falafel looked pretty good and they had vegetable samosas.  All I can really say is I wish I had looked over some reviews.  The falafel was truly foul, quite dry.  Then I realized after a couple of bites that the vegetable samosa had ground beef in it, so I had to throw it away.  (This same switcheroo happened to me at Robarts Library, and it still pisses me off.)  Not only did it taste disgusting, but I can't digest red meat any longer, and I will spend most of the evening not far from the toilet.  I stuck it out for another hour or so at work, but ended up leaving early.

What an unpleasant start to the long weekend.  All I can say is never again to Rabba's.  And I should really think more seriously about bringing my lunch to work, since I am so generally unhappy about the options near me.

Baker's Aliens and other fleeting visits

It snuck up on me, but Coal Mine has finally announced their season.  To be honest, it doesn't hold much attraction for me, aside from the lead-off play -- Annie Baker's The Aliens.  I'll likely end up going to the preview night in Sept., though I need some flexibility in terms of scheduling my own night of theatre.  In terms of the rest of their season, it's starting to look like Soulpepper East with a concert show where they recreate Fleetwood Mac's Rumours.  Not exactly cutting edge...

I'm a bit torn about Hart House's new season.  I don't really care for Miller's The Crucible, but I probably should take my son.  I'm not all that interested in Hedwig and the Angry Inch either, but it might be interesting to see what Hart House does with it.  I can pass on the rest, particularly Titus Andronicus, which I've never rated very highly (just too bloody and kind of shapeless).

George Brown has just announced its season.  I'm sure I'll see the shows in rep (Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich and Vanburgh's The Provoked Wife).  I haven't seen either of them.*  I would say it is an odd pairing.  In the past season, they paired a comedy (A Flea in Her Ear) with a dramatic piece (The Penelopiad), but there are moments of humour in Atwood's piece.  My understanding is that the Brecht is pretty grim.  I'm likely to go see the updated version of Candide by Mark Ravenhill, particularly because getting 3 tickets means it's a subscription, and then you can switch tickets if necessary.  That reminds me that while there isn't a lot going on in Chicago on my upcoming trip, I'll probably go see Ives's The School for Lies, which is an update of Moliere's Misanthrope.  I don't know that I've ever seen the original Candide.  I'm fairly sure that I saw The Misanthrope in Chicago a few years ago.

Somewhat unfortunate for me, the late fall looks very good for theatre in Chicago with the most interesting plays being Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw, Ayad Akhtar's The Invisible Hand and Wallace Shawn's Evening at the Talk House all playing.  While it is unlikely I would travel just to see these plays, if I have to be in Chicago for some other reason...  Actually, I poked around, and The Invisible Hand is playing in Hamilton next March, so I'll try to go (and perhaps even round up a few actors/friends to see if they want to go down on the bus).

I still have a long running list of plays I want to see, and I am sad to say that there still are no productions of American Hero or Yankee Tavern on the horizon anywhere near me.  I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled.

* Actually I saw half of Erin Shields's The Millennial Malcontent, which was based off of The Provoked Wife, but I hated what the author had done and left at intermission.  I expect that I'll enjoy the original more.

11th Canadian Challenge - 2nd review - The Tattooed Woman

This collection of short stories was the last work that Marian Engel completed.  She was deeply involved in the selection of the stories, though she passed away before its publication. (Timothy Findley describes her working on The Tattooed Woman from her hospital bed.)  For those that track last works (and in particular unfinished last works), that honor goes to Engel’s Elizabeth and the Golden City, a fragment of a novel she was working on that was finally published in 2010 in Marian and the Major, edited by Christl Verduyn.  I have to be honest, Elizabeth and the Golden City appears to be so embryonic that it is more of a curiosity than something one would truly read for pleasure.  Thus, I can safely recommend The Tattooed Woman as the last thing Engel sent out into the world.  (I have to admit that I really have not delved deeply into Engel's work much beyond Bear.  Reading these short stories was a start, and I will try to get to The Honeyman Festival and Lunatic Villas in 2018 or so.)

The Tattooed Woman contains Engel's selection of her stories published between 1975 and 1985.  A few of them were actually written for radio (the CBC program called Anthology).  This is actually Engel's second short story collection.  Inside the Easter Egg came out in 1975 and collected her first stories.

Many of the stories on the same wavelength as Atwood's The Edible Woman, i.e. giving voice to women's interests and inner thoughts, even if those woman were "troublesome" or slightly off-kilter.  And Engel doesn't completely romanticize women's interactions with each other.  Mothers and daughters still have fraught relationships, and she also paints a picture of a dreary, selfish "friend" in "Share and Share Alike." What's interesting to me is that roughly the first half of the stories are slightly eerie (perhaps even channeling a bit of Angela Carter), but the second half tended to be more on the realist side.  Occasionally, there seem to be echoes of Carol Shields, though it is more likely that Engel served as an inspiration to Shields.  I don't think I am imaging the strong connection between Engel's "Could I Have Found a Better Love Than You?" and The Stone Diaries, for instance.  There were a few interesting stories in the first half, but on the whole, I preferred the second half of the collection.

I won't be able to go into all the stories at a great level of detail, but I'll highlight a few I found particularly worthy.  There may be minor SPOILERS hereafter.

"The Tattooed Woman" is a fairly sad tale, about a woman who starts cutting herself as a coping mechanism when her husband takes up with a young employee.  She does seem to making steps towards recovery by the end.  While I may never actually finish my novel, it has a character who scars herself as a sort of notching of the bedpost but on her own body (I suppose to try to cope with the whole madonna/whore thing that plays out in Western culture).  It's not the same motivation at all, but anyway, I just want to note that I had thought up this character well over a decade before I read this short story.

"Madame Hortensia, Equilibriste" is sort of creepy, precisely because Engel is so vague about the narrator's disability.  From the context, it seems as if she had no legs and eventually became a circus freak, then got married a few times (to admirers who fetishized her) and had a brood of children.  It's more of a character study than a full-fledged story.

"The Life of Bernard Orge" was fairly amusing.  It's about a woman who creates an entire alter ego after donning a pair of novelty glasses.  And indeed her life is mundane and unfulfilling, so almost any change is good.  Perhaps there are slight hints of Gogol (in reverse) in this story.

Interestingly, there are a few stories about middle-aged love (and second-chances) actually working out, such as "Feet," "The Confession Tree," "Could I Have Found a Better Love Than You?" and "Share and Share Alike," though it should be noted this isn't the main thrust of the last three stories, as there are other things going on.  There is a certain generosity of spirit in these stories, though it should be said that the only time couples seem happy is when men and women of approximately the same age pair up.  The man going through a middle-aged crisis and shacking up with a younger woman doesn't end up all that happy in Engel's world.

One of the last stories -- "Two Rosemary Road, Toronto" -- is an interesting and somewhat sad piece.  The story is structured as a letter that a widower is writing to someone he knew from his early adulthood.  She had apparently written a letter of condolences that mingled in some statements that he felt were unfair, and he is taking the chance to set the record straight about his wife's death from cancer.  He explicitly writes that if she is angling to catch him as her second husband, she should think again.  However, he doesn't send the letter, and tears it apart in the morning, apparently changing his mind and thinking that maybe life goes on after all, and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to be the pursued one for once.  (Perhaps some slight echo of Benedick here: "The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married." Though of course the letter writer already was married and it is highly unlikely that this second union, if it even comes about, would lead to children.)  Still, it's a bit of a downer to imagine being in Engel's shoes, writing about the necessity for the world to go on, even when she was aware that cancer was catching up to her.

On the whole I enjoyed this collection.  It will satisfy readers who are admirers of Atwood's early novels as well as Carol Shields' devotees.  There was variety in the stories (even a ghost story) and even a few happy endings sprinkled here and there and only one or two duds.

Busy Weekend with whale

I already riffed on the video for In the Belly of the Whale, so I'll forebear from using it a second time.  However, we did get to the ROM on Sat. to see the blue whale exhibit.  The skeleton is indeed quite impressive, and they also had some booths showing you how many people (of your weight) would it take to make up a blue whale or how much blood a whale has in comparison to a human.  Perhaps the whale brain was the most impressive, though if the whales have the intelligence of humans (clearly debatable), I think they would have found a way to communicate with us better.  Probably the centerpiece of the exhibit is the blue whale heart, as the ROM is the only museum in the world (apparently) with an intact, preserved whale heart.

We wandered around the museum and had lunch, though we were in a bit of a rush, since we needed to get back and stop by the library.  Also, my daughter really wanted to check out an open house on the street.  So this time around, we actually skipped the dinosaurs (though in the exhibit there were some ancestors of the whales that looked a lot like water-based dinosaurs).

Ambelocetus

We also skipped over the gem room.  I wasn't entirely sure it was open, since they are preparing to reopen the Queen's Park entrance.  I told the kids that the next time we visited (probably on the next AGO-ROM membership swap), that entrance should be open.  Best of all, we skipped the gift shop, since I didn't really want to be telling them no to everything...

I had actually intended to go off to work and pick up something, but it wasn't ready, so we went back home, with a stop at the library first.  The open house showed that they had done a lot of work on the place and it looked nice, but the footprint was still small.  We have quite a bit more space than that house offers, though I did wish we had the deeper basement.

After the kids were settled, I worked a bit in the backyard, trimming back the plants so that it was possible to get to the back deck.  It actually looked pretty nice for once.

Then I still had to go back to work (though I took the opportunity to bike it).  I made it back by 6:30, and by 7, I went over to Withrow Park with my son to catch Othello.  It would have been better had we made it a bit earlier, since the best spaces were already gone -- and they had run out of chairs to rent.  We were nowhere near as cramped and uncomfortable as at High Park, but still, sometimes we had raise ourselves off of the blanket to see anything.  I do wish they had thought a bit more about the sight lines, since quite a bit of the time the actors were on the floor, making it all but impossible to see.  It was a good performance, though I would have preferred to see it indoors in a setting with proper seats.  I haven't really changed my mind that things go far too well for Iago, and in particular Emilia could intervene much sooner in the matter of the handkerchief.  I find the play really falls apart in that moment, since she has no problem ratting out her husband later on.  My son was fairly blown away by it, so I'm glad I exposed him to it.  I'm sure in the next few years I should be able to take him to Macbeth and Hamlet.  I'll probably hold off a bit longer with Lear.

Today was also a fairly cramped day.  I spent the morning cleaning the study (at least getting the clutter off of the floor).  Then I took my daughter to the Ontario Science Centre and we explored for about two hours.  I've gotten most of the items crossed off the list for the summer, though I would still like to take them canoeing on the Humber and ideally take them to Ottawa so that they can see the Parliament Buildings.  Now it seems like the main Parliament Building (Centre Block) will be open for tours at least through the end of the year (before it shuts down for a long rehabilitation period), the East Block is only open through early Sept.  That timing may not work to squeeze in a trip, but I'll see what I can do.  I'm also starting to think seriously about a trip to Quebec City, but I don't think there is any specific time restriction on that, and it might be nicer to visit in the late fall or even early winter, assuming it isn't too cold.

I got back in plenty of time for the actors for the table read.  I think it went quite well, though it was interesting that the pieces I thought were more or less settled needed a bit more conflict and they didn't see any real reason to chance the Meeting Mr. Mouse, whereas I had heard from another reviewer that one needed quite an overhaul.  At any rate, they seemed pretty enthusiastic and really liked a couple of them, so I just need to get a date settled for Sept. and then we'll do one more table read to make sure they are ready.  I almost wish we went back to the original plan for a full staging, but honestly, this will be better, and I can then focus on my more serious pieces.

I had thought pretty seriously about catching Burn This tonight, but in the end, I decided I was done leaving the neighbourhood for the time being.  As you can imagine, it was a very busy weekend, and I could use some rest (and perhaps work just a bit more on the quilt).