Canadian book challenge - 1st post

So I discovered this site fairly late, i.e. several months into the book challenge, which runs July 1 to July 1: 5th-annual-canadian-book-challenge.  However, it appears that any of the books I read to get myself back into a Canadian mind set will count, provided I read them after July 1 and I come back around and write up reviews of the books.  I honestly cannot remember if I read Hodgin's Innocent Cities before or after July 1 (and I didn't care for it that much and don't have that much to say about it), so the first one that I will count towards the 13 is Neil Bissoondath's Innocence of Age.

In general, most of my reviews will contain minor spoilers, as I find it hard to write about books without going into key aspects of the plot.  And indeed, most books aren't that "spoiled" by knowing the outcome, but some are, particularly murder mysteries and thrillers.  For major spoilers, I will use the convention of SPOILERS AHEAD to warn readers sensitive to this.

I really wanted to like this book, which apparently a bit of a departure for Bissoondath, who up until this point had mostly written about Caribbean immigrants living in Canada.  There is indeed a postal worker of Caribbean origins, and we are introduced to his family, though the focus is more on a father and son, while of Greek origin are not as defined by the immigrant experience.  The setting is Toronto, in the early 80s, if I remember correctly.  There is a generational clash, with the father, who owns a run-down diner, representing the older, more working class aspects of Toronto, and the son, who works for a property developer, representing the glitzier aspects of New Toronto.  Curiously, the developer seems to make much of his profit from being a slumlord, rather than the condos he builds for Yuppies, and the son actually takes on the duties of collecting rent and dealing with maintenance woes.  I didn't think about it much at the time, but this is one place where Bissoondath starts over-egging the pudding and setting up some very improbable plot twists.  In general, one would not expect the same developers to be directly involved in both kinds of property management, and indeed, condo developers are notorious for building quickly, then washing their hands of new construction, rather than sticking around and dealing with the much more tedious aspects of property management.  A minor flaw, but a telling one.  In general Bissoondath is playing with the idea of the Dual City (a city for the rich and a city for the poor), and Toronto certainly fit the mold in that inequality increased substantially throughout the 1980s and 90s.  So that was really well done.  I also liked the father struggling with his conflicted feelings about his son -- and about slowing going through the grieving process for his wife.  He seemed to be opening up to the possibility of romance with a neighbor.  That had the makings of a really good novel, but Bissoondath just didn't think that was sufficient -- he had to add some action to spice things up.

SPOILERS AHEAD

So on top of all this (and the son struggling to decide about the path he had chosen), the mail carrier's daughter ends up becoming a school drop out and runaway from home -- and in almost no time at all, a prostitute in the local park (where she propositions the son).  The mail carrier loses it, starting to drink heavily and is put on administrative leave.  He finally catches his daughter and beats her (since this is the way things are done back home) and ultimately is shot and killed by the police (in fact by a rookie assigned to a wiser, more seasoned policeman who is a friend of the diner owner).  But then even this isn't enough.  The son learns that his boss is keeping an undocumented immigrant worker as a sex slave in an old apartment (that was the boss's first home).  The son tries to get the immigrant her passport to free her, but can't find it, and in a few days later, she kills his boss (and the investigation is run by the seasoned cop, of course).

So far too many strands coming together in unbelievable ways a la Crash.  And was it really necessary to be so overbearing about New Toronto = bad?  For those reasons, I simply don't think the last quarter of the book works that well, which is a shame, since it started with a lot of promise, which it sustained most of the way through the book.

This is review #1.  I have 9 more books toward the challenge already read but not reviewed.

Family in Vancouver

So I flew down to Chicago for the holidays -- and to help with the last of the packing.  Right after Xmas, we had the movers come, and we really lucked out in how warm it was.  And the following day it rained all day, so we were fortunate to miss that.

After a few more days off, the whole family flew up to Vancouver.  Although there was some figiting on the 4+ hour flight, on the whole the kids behaved well.  Then we had to deal with customs, and that was about another 2 hours, but the family is now street legal in BC!

Surprisingly, it took quite a while to get the kids actually in the local school.  The paperwork took about a week to make its way from the district to the school office.  But they started yesterday.  My son seems to like his new school.  My daughter is painfully shy, but I think she'll adjust quickly.  Apparently, the kindergarten teacher is very warm.

So things are slowly coming together.  I've thrown myself back into work of course.  I have done one new thing, however.  I signed up for a playwriting course at Langara (just down the street from my house), and I think that will be sufficient motivation to finally finish off some of my unfinished projects.  That will be Wednesday evenings, for roughly 2 months.  I'm also about to enter the 5th Annual Canadian Book Challenge, where I will review books by Canadian authors on this very blog.  I've got quite a backlog of books that I read (since the official start date), and I'll try to work on that a bit over the weekend.

In Vancouver

It has been quite some time since I posted, in large part because I have taken a new job and moved to Vancouver.  This was sort of in the air around the time of my last post (Birthday Blues) but it hadn't been nailed down and I didn't want to jinx it.  My overall impressions are good, though I would say the cultural scene is thin compared to Chicago.  I am enjoying my job much more, despite the huge amount of work required to get the regional travel demand model up to snuff.

I've been alone these past two months, but my family joins me up here Jan. 3, which will be the acid test of whether I will be relocating here permanently.  For me, it was certainly the right move.  It remains to be seen for them, though my son is certainly excited about the move.

Birthday blues

So this is what 41 feels like -- eh.  It's hard to say how I would feel under normal circumstances but at the moment I am under extreme pressure.  I have been fixing up a condo to sell (in a difficult market) and am still trying to unpack from a move (and reduce the paper, books, CDs, etc. that I have in my life).  Work is marginally better than before, but my attention is focused on a job opportunity that seems incredible, but would require a move across the country -- and far more stress at the family level.  Just waiting to hear if I am getting a job offer is stressful.  Still, I do have more hopeful prospects in the medium term than an awful lot of people, and I should not forget that.

Not surprisingly I have not been writing much, but do have some notes here and there.  I still intend to wrap up the sestina project.  And hopefully the two plays that are competing for space in the back of my head.  More when I get a chance.

Last few days of 40

So I'm getting the midlife blahs.  I've definitely been "stuck" for quite some time, as are most of the people I know.  I did a lot more things earlier and just in general had more energy.  By my mid 20s, I had my own poetry chapbook (self-published) and edited a poetry anthology of subway poems (there was interest from publishers but sadly gaining the necessary permissions was simply too hard and it was not published).  I was also wrapping up a Masters Degree in English from University of Toronto.  By the time I was 28, I had a Masters in Transportation from Northwestern (which then gave me a very different career trajectory from any of the humanities majors I knew).

By my mid-30s, I finally wrapped up my Ph.D. in sociology and my son was born (indeed he was born during the revisions due after my defense!).  I'd had a pretty good career to that point and had assisted on some very innovative regional transportation models in New York and Columbus, OH.  And then things started to derail, particularly at work.  This is also when I started to gain weight, certainly in part because of needing my energy to help look after the baby.

Towards the end of my 30s, we moved to England, which was quite an experience and it did give me a temporary jolt, plus I was able to see many of the great cities of Europe and their museums.  But England was not for me nor for my wife.  However, my daughter was born there, and that sort of completed the picture.

I've been saying for a few years now that I would work on this book on infrastructure, but given the hiring freeze at most universities, I just can't see it makes any sense to complete that or to take the time to turn my dissertation into a book.  I've definitely been in a slump, particularly career-wise, since returning to Chicago, though my interest in the arts has grown.  Every so often I work on my desk-drawer novel.  But more seriously I wrote a full-length play (unproduced as of yet) and two shorter pieces.  I have two more partially completed plays and I am writing a bit more poetry.  Still, it is hard to shake the feeling that from my mid 30s on, I just haven't done enough (and certainly haven't exercised enough).  It's easy to blame the kids, but the truth is I could find the time if I really wanted.

So just a few more weeks and I turn 41.  Anyway, there may be a major change coming down the road and I am hopeful that the first part of my 40s finds me back on the right track.

Looking way ahead

Every so often I try to figure out what I will be following the next season.  There are always surprises of course, particularly from the smaller companies that don't get full press releases in the Trib. for example.  Or plays that get such great reviews, I rethink my initial decision to pass.

This year is a little different in that I expect to be leaving Chicago at the end of Sept. -- though with relatively frequent visits through Jan. or Feb.  So it isn't clear enough that I would get enough value to subscribe to anything, and indeed I just let my membership at the Art Institute lapse.  But I can at least think about what is coming down the road.

It looks like I will somehow be able to make the first plays in most 2011-2012 seasons:
Red -- combined Goodman/VG
Mourning Becomes Electra -- Remy Bumppo
Naomi Wallace's The Fever Chart -- Eclipse (actually the final play in their season!)
Hwang's Family Devotions -- Halcyon 
A Behanding in Spokane -- Profiles (not entirely sure I want to see this, but I may go under the right circumstances)

It is a lot less likely that I can make the following, but I'll see if I can arrange it so I can be in town for the following:
Penelope -- Steppenwolf (Dec-Jan)
Invisible Man -- Court (Jan-Feb)
What We're Up Against by Theresa Rebeck -- VG (Jan-Feb)
Camino Real -- Goodman (March-April)
Emperor of the Moon -- Halcyon (TBD)

Camino Real is probably the least realistic, but the one I want to see the most (and there is supposedly a Tennessee Williams fest, wrapped around that) so we'll just see how it goes.

Update:

I decided that since Red was playing in Vancouver, it would be sufficient to see it there (I'll go mid-January).  I am sure the level of professionalism won't be as high as at the Goodman, but I already saw it on Broadway with Alfred Molina and neither production will likely match that.  I did see Family Devotions, Fever Dream and Mourning Becomes Electra.  I skipped the others.  As far as the future productions, I have tickets for Penelope at Steppenwolf but will bag all the rest.  If Halcyon does Emperor of the Moon some day, then I might try to schedule a trip to Chicago.*  After reading Camino Real, I decided I definitely wasn't going to plan a special trip to Chicago to see it (and our travel plans changed to the point that I wasn't going to be in Chicago in January).  On the other hand, I decided to squeeze in Elizabeth Rex (by Timothy Findley) at Chicago Shakespeare in late Dec. and that might end up being my last Chicago play, so I hope it lives up to the hype.**

* I did end up seeing this.

** It was indeed very good.

David Foster Wallace

Very much in line with my famous last works entry, I found that they have retrieved hundreds of pages of an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace and his editor has done his best to piece it together into a novel called The Pale King.  His perspective here: pale-king in guardian

A slightly longer critical take on the novel as it stands (with perhaps too many spoilers for some people's taste) can be found in Slate: Pale King in Slate

I have to say, the Slate piece makes the novel sound like something worth reading, though I probably can hold off at least until this comes out in paperback or is in second-hand shops, whichever comes first.  I have a complicated relationship with DFW in that I knew his early work (esp. Broom of the System) before he broke big, and I think he works best at that scale.  Infinite Jest frankly seems the work of a writer who has lost his way and become far too self-important and self-indulgent.  I doubt I'll ever finish the entire book.  (Which is how I also feel about Bolano -- who may also be worth including in this overall list -- 2666 is a massive book he just barely completed under the wire before suddenly passing away.  I did not find The Savage Detectives at all worthy of the effort it took to read it, and I suspect strongly I would feel the same way about 2666.)  Anyway, for whatever reason, the set-up of The Pale King appeals to me.  I worked for a summer at a survey center where we processed completed surveys, a place nearly as boring as the IRS office that DFW is surveying in this novel.  For a short time, I knew many multiples of 52 by heart, since we would calculate annual earnings from their reported weekly salary.

On the whole, The Pale King sounds like it was close enough to being a solid piece of work that the average reader/casual fan of DFW will be glad it is available to read, not only academics writing dissertations and super fans who will read every scrap he ever wrote.

I don't think I have any other suicides on the list from before, but that does add a different twist.  Not to be too morbid, but the artist is actually the author of his or her own end, as well as having control over what will be their final work as well its level of completion.