One thing I have slowly gotten better at is realizing that trying to get everyone to march to my drumbeat doesn't always pay off. If everyone is stressed out, then was it really worth going to X or Y? So I had very, very seriously considered going to Detroit next weekend, but either it means driving slightly over 4 hours each way (and an unknown wait at the border) or taking the train, then a cab to the Tunnel Bus, then the Tunnel Bus (which at least has the advantage of being a fairly predictable 15 minute wait at the border), then probably picking up a ZipCar in Detroit (unfortunately, there are no ZipCar locations in Windsor). My wife's family all live in the 'burbs of Detroit, and apparently they wouldn't even come into the city to see their niece and nephew. Fairly lame, I have to say.
The main reason I wanted to go was to see the Detroit Institute of Arts. While it probably wouldn't have the kind of crowds you see in New York or Chicago, this would be the last weekend of their Rivera/Kahlo show, and my daughter is not particularly forgiving of me dragging her through crowded museums. This is where being reasonable finally kicked in. I said that I've see a small Kahlo show (I believe at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago) and a quite large one at the Tate Modern. The Rivera murals aren't going anywhere, and we can try to make a more reasonable trip in the fall or early spring (particularly since the art at the DIA isn't going to be sold off due to Detroit's bankruptcy -- that was a small but non-zero threat I was factoring into my decision making).
So I called the whole thing off, and the money I "saved" will probably go to getting a hotel room most nights I am in Chicago, since I do think I'll be seeing quite a few plays after all on my very short visit. (I never said I was particularly reasonable if I was the only one being impacted.)
Then I was seriously considering getting tickets instead to the gymnastics competition at the Pan Am Games, but 1) the discount code couldn't actually be entered anywhere on the Ticketmaster site, 2) the times were awkward and 3) the venue is not easy for me to reach and I didn't want to stress out that my daughter would get motion sickness. I think instead of this we will enroll her in gymnastics class in the fall. There is a gym that is within walking distance. If she proves she can listen to and follow instructions, I probably will sign her up for skating lessons in the winter, as they have classes just over at Withrow Park.
Ok, I still have a few things to try to tackle today (including potentially installing a shelf in the office), so I had better attend to them. More later...
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
New house, New reading list
Technically, we have been in the new house for a bit over a week now, but I thought I would hold off updating the reading list until Canada Day, at least in part to mesh up with the time cycle of the 9th edition of the Canadian Book Challenge. For the 8th Challenge, I just managed to get up to 20 reviews, though that involved more than a few poetry collections (9 of my 20 reviews this cycle were of poetry collections!). I guess that's not exactly cheating. While it takes much less time to read a poetry collection than a novel, it can easily take more time to write a proper review.
It's a little hard to count precisely, but it seems that I read approximately 60 novels (and a dozen or so poetry collections) in the last 12 month span. This suggests that there is a reasonable chance I will be within striking distance of getting to Middlemarch by December 2015, and I won't have to distort my reading list too much to slot it in then (not that I am sure they will be doing the tackle Middlemarch in December blog again, but I can go forward on my own regardless). It also appears as though I will need to add a bit more Canadian fiction to the list to get to 13 by next June, though as usually is the case, I'll probably supplement the novels with some poetry collections. I think I'll aim to end the 9th Challenge with either Paul Quarrington's Whale Music or Steve Zipp's Yellowknife, depending on how I do with the rest of the list (and what else I am doing aside from reading fiction in my limited spare time). It's still somewhat depressing that I have my reading more or less mapped out through 2018 or so, though there are some incredible books on here that I probably won't get to unless I stick to the program. (On the flip side, we do think we'll be in this house for 10+ years, and I should be able to get through this particular list by then, providing I don't continually add to it...)
I would say overall there is a slightly reduced emphasis on getting through books on my TBRD pile (To-Be-Read-and-Discarded) and more emphasis on books that I think I will enjoy but that I have deferred for too long. There are even a small number of books in the list I will actually be rereading, but not very many.
Gabrielle Roy The Cashier
Albert Cossery Proud Beggars
Molly Keane Good Behaviour
Tomaso Matricide
Ivan Vladislavic The Exploded View
Qiu Miaojin Notes of a Crocodile (boring, whiny tract, full of self-pity)
Bruno Schulz The Street of Crocodiles
Gabrielle Roy Street of Riches
Bruno Schulz Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Elizabeth Taylor A View of the Harbour
Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat
Machado De Assis Epitaph of a Small Winner
{library hold mishap:
Barbara Comyns The Juniper Tree
Jane Urquhart The Night Stages
Bulawayo We Need New Names
Neil Smith Boo
Russell Smith Confidence
Stuart Dybek Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories
Saadat Manto Bombay Stories
Karan Mahajan Family Planning
Amit Chaudhuri The Immortals - didn't care for; decided to return unread}
Machado De Assis Philosopher or Dog?
Munro Who Do You Think You Are?
Fanny Howe Famous Questions
Michael Ondaatje The Cat's Table
Narayan Mr Sampath
Joyce Johnson In the Night Cafe
Gloria Naylor Bailey's Cafe
Kafka The Trial
Molly Keane Time After Time
Nabokov The Gift
P. Marshall Praisesong for the Widow
Mahfouz Thief and the Dogs
Nancy Lee The Age
Narayan The Financial Expert
Munro The Moons of Jupiter
Nabokov Invitation to a Beheading
Fanny Howe Indivisible
Clarice Lispector Água Viva
Faulkner Go Down, Moses
Narayan Waiting for Mahatma
Musil Young Torless
V. Woolf Jacob's Room
B. Mukherjee Darkness
Mahfouz Autumn Quail
Murakami After the Quake
Iris Owens After Claude
Elizabeth Hardwick Sleepless Nights
Spark A Far Cry from Kensington
Tess Slesinger The Unpossessed (probably for the second time)
B. Mukherjee Miss New India
Robert Coover Pricksongs & Descants
Lem Solaris
Strugatsky Roadside Picnic
Alice Denham Amo (cannot be acquired through ILL -- I read a bit sitting in the reference library and decided to pass for now)
Denham The Secrets of San Miguel (if I can figure out how to read Kindle books on PC)
Eve Babitz Slow Days, Fast Company
Earle I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
Urdang Lucha
Ama Ata Aidoo Our Sister Killjoy
Charles Johnson Oxherding Tale
Abdourahman Waberi In the United States of Africa
John Litweiler Snake Mojo Minuet
Brian Moore The Luck of Ginger Coffey
Naipaul Mr. Stone and the Knight Companions
Alain Mabanckou Broken Glass
George Eliot Middlemarch (aim to read in Dec 2015)
Smollett Roderick Random
Albert Cossery The Jokers
Faulkner Intruder in the Dust
Machado De Assis Dom Casmurro
Warner Mr. Fortune
Malamud God's Grace
Vonnegut Galápagos
Archibald Arvida
Dany Laferrière How to Make Love to A Negro (without Getting Tired)
Alain Mabanckou Blue White Red
Callaghan Such is My Beloved
Achebe No Longer at Ease
Molly Keane Loving and Giving (Queen Lear)
Bove Armand
Marie-Claire Blais Mad Shadows
Joseph Roth The Hotel Years
A. Chaudhuri Afternoon Raag
Naipaul The Enigma of Arrival
Dany Laferrière Heading South
Brigid Brophy In Transit
Waberi Passage of Tears
Smollett Peregrine Pickle (I agree with the reviews that say this goes downhill sharply after page 50 -- a minor novel about a very unpleasant man-child that should be ignored)
Anita Desai Diamond Dust
Adiga Last Man in Tower
Roth Sabbath's Theatre (not enjoyable - I should have bailed halfway through)
Highsmith The Price of Salt
Lem Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Sciascia One Way or Another
Bove A Man Who Knows
Bowering Burning Water
Han Kang The Vegetarian
Eileen Chang Love in a Fallen City
Lethem Chronic City
Tim Murphy Christodora
McInerney Bright Lights, Big City
Oscar Casares Brownsville
Bell Waiting for the End of the World
Mittelholzer A Morning at the Office
Edna O'Brien Night
Butler The Way of All Flesh
A. Igonibo Barrett Blackass
Smollett Humphrey Clinker
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird
Faulkner Absalom, Absalom!
Fontane On Tangled Paths
Irène Némirovsky David Golder
Gregor von Rezzori Memoirs of An Anti-Semite
Jacobson The Finkler Question
Malamud The Magic Barrel
Between C & D, eds. Rose and Texier
Vladislavic The Loss Library
Choi Kay's Lucky Coin Variety
Kundera The Festival of Insignificance
David Foster Wallace The Pale King
Camara Laye The Radiance of the King
Emmanuel Bove Henri Duchemin and His Shadows (NYRB)
Verjee In Between Dreams -- this novel involves a topic (incest) that I am simply not willing to read about
Paul Quarrington Whale Music
Howard Barker The Castle
Kafka The Castle
Liebrecht A Good Place for the Night (unpleasant and not recommended)
Yamashita I Hotel
Rick Moody Hotels of North America
Murakami 1Q84
Ivan Vladislavic 101 Detectives
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
Lahiri The Unaccustomed Earth
Mavis Gallant The Moslem Wife
Uzma Aslam Khan Trespassing
Graham Swift Ever After
Thackeray Vanity Fair
Fontane Irretrievable
Kingley Amis Lucky Jim
Lethem Men and Cartoons
Nosaka The Pornographers
Cendrars Moravagine
Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier
Roth The Great American Novel
Shashi Tharoor The Great Indian Novel
Lahiri The Lowland
Steven Sherrill The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time
Elmore Leonard Tishomingo Blues
J.L. Carr A Month in the Country
Isak Dinesen Out of Africa/Shadows on the Grass
Thrity Umrigar Bombay Time
Chetan Bhagat One Night at the Call Center
U.R. Ananthamurthy Samskara
Trollope The Way We Live Now (to be deferred until Dec. 2017, replace with Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories)
Malcolm Bradbury The History Man
Christopher Isherwood A Single Man
Bove A Singular Man
MacLennan The Watch That Ends the Night
Callaghan The Many Colored Coat
Findley Not Wanted on the Voyage
Samuel Johnson Rasselas
Borges Ficciones
Calvino Invisible Cities (third time through)
Narayan An Astrologer's Day/Lawley Road (stories)
Thomas McGuane To Skin a Cat (stories)
Dürrenmatt The Physicists
Gaskell North and South
Shields Unless
Steve Zipp Yellowknife
Suzette Field Curious Invitation - 40 Greatest Parties in Literature
Nancy Mitford Love in a Cold Climate/The Blessing (Don't Tell Alfred)
Elizabeth Jane Howard After JuliusCarrianne Leung That Time I Loved You
Zweig The Post Office Girl (& Journey into the Past?)
D.M. Thomas The White Hotel
Kristin McCloy Some Girls
Nina
Bennett The Old Wives' Tale
Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies
Spark Memento Mori
Singer Enemies
Malamud The Assistant
Fante The Wine of Youth (incl. Dago Red)
Atwood Payback
Clarice Lispector A Breath of Life
Munro The Progress of Love
Mitford The Pursuit of Love
Lessing The Habit of Loving
Faulkner Flags in the Dust & The Unvanquished
P. Roth - The Breast, The Professor of Desire, The Dying Animal
Bullins The Hungered One
Juan Rulfo Pedro Páramo
Gaskell Wives and Daughters
Pushkin The Captain's Daughter
Walser Jakob Von Gunten
Melville The Confidence Man
Mann Felix Krull ??
Kafka Amerika (the new translation)
Modiano In the Cafe of Lost Youth
Durrenmatt A Dangerous Game
Julio Ramón Ribeyro The Word of the Speechless
Max Apple The Propheteers
Pablo Vierci The Imposters
A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov
Katherine Porter Ship of Fools
Moacyr Scliar Max and the Cats
Carol Shields Dressing Up for the Carnival
Tony Parsons Departures -- (dialogue/plotting was so amateurish, I had to give up)
Khushwant Singh Train To Pakistan
Tayeb Salih Season of Migration to the North
al-Khamissi Taxi
Mahfouz Midaq Alley
Jez Butterworth Mojo
Anderson-Dargatz The Cure for Death by Lightning
Faulkner A Fable
Clarice Lispector The Hour of the Star
Paul Auster Moon Palace
Gregor von Rezzori Death of My Brother Abel
Buzzati Restless Nights (weak aside from a parable involving Einstein)
Kinsella Red Wolf, Red Wolf
DeLillo White Noise (I shouldn't jump so far out of order, but I think I shall anyway)
Updike The Rabbit Novels (and Rabbit Remembered from Licks of Love)
Jez Butterworth Parlour Song
Krzhizhanovsky The Letter Killers Club
David Lodge The British Museum is Falling Down
(a bit of interspersion with these shorter works and the Rabbit novels)
Bissoondath The Soul of All Great Designs
Atwood The Heart Goes Last
Rabindranath Maharaj Homer in Flight
Homer Iliad & Odyssey
Virgil The Aeneid
Ovid Metamorphoses
Apuleius The Golden Ass
Rulfo The Golden Cockerel
Montaigne (&Shakespeare's Montaigne - NYRB)
Achebe Arrow of God
Powers Morte d'Urban
Stone A Hall of Mirrors
David Lodge Home Truths
William Maxwell LOA novels (Bright Center of Heaven | They Came Like Swallows | The Folded Leaf | Time Will Darken It | The Château | So Long, See You Tomorrow)
Dawn Powell A Time To Be Born
Dawn Powell LOA novels 1944-62 (My Home Is Far Away | The Locusts Have No King | The Wicked Pavilion | The Golden Spur)
(intersperse Maxwell and Powell)
Thisby The Good People of New York
DeLillo Cosmopolis (also out of order)
Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky
Burroughs Naked Lunch
Levi The Periodic Table
Natalia Ginzburg Four Novellas (Valentino, Sagittarius, Family, Borghesia)
Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart
Lawrence Hill The Book of Negroes
Celine Journey to the End of the Night
Hardwick The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick (NYRB)
Susan Sontag I, Etcetera (stories)
Juan Rulfo The Plain in Flames (stories)
Beckett More Pricks Than Kicks & Echo's Bones
T.C. Boyle Drop City
Sinclair Lewis (Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth and It Can't Happen Here)
Maritta Wolff -- Whistle Stop, Night Shift, Sudden Rain, Buttonwood and The Big Nickelodeon
(intersperse Lewis with Wolff)
Tom Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities
Madeleine George The Zero Hour
Maugham The Razor's Edge
Aeschylus The Oresteia
Faulkner The Snopes Family (Hamlet, Town, Mansion)
Powers Wheat That Springeth Green
Mistry Family Matters
Mavis Gallant Home Truths
Natalia Ginzburg Family Lexicon
Malamud Pictures of Fidelman
Mary McCarthy The Group
Madeleine George The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence
Melville Pierre
Kierkegaard Either/Or &Fear and Trembling
Hugh MacLennan Voices in Time
PKDick The Man in the High Castle
Amis The Alteration
Mahfouz The Mirage
P. Roth -- Zuckerman Bound, Exit Ghost
Richard Yates Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
John O'Hara Waiting for Winter
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road
John O'Hara Appointment in Samarra
Fontane Effi Briest
Beckett Krapp's Last Tape & Three Novels
Waugh Decline & Fall and Vile Bodies
Victor Serge Conquered City
Fuentes Where the Air is Clear
Vargas Llosa The Time of the Hero
Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day
Fontane Before the Storm
Tolstoy War and Peace
Vasily Grossman Life and Fate
Victor Serge Midnight in the Century
Don DeLillo End Zone
Pym Some Tame Gazelle
Queneau Zazie in the Metro
Bissoondath Digging Up the Mountains
Skvorecky Miss Silver's Past
Roth The Counterlife
Richler The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Paul Valery Monsieur Teste
A. Barrett Ship Fever
Mahfouz The Search
Lowry Under the Volcano
Leon Forrest There is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden (frankly not my cup of tea -- not a novel, basically a long prose poem on racism in the U.S., as well as the contradictory impacts of religion on African-Americans)
Ghosh The Calcutta Chromosome
Narayan The Guide
Ahmed Ali Twilight in Delhi
Natalia Ginzburg The Road to the City (includes The Dry Heart)
Dickens Pictures from Italy & American Notes
Herzen Letters from France and Italy
Gogol Dead Souls
Conrad The Secret Agent
Bely Petersburg
Victor Serge Unforgiving Years
Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49 (and V???)
Kawabata Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Ratika Kapur The Private Life of Mrs. Sharma (agree w/ others the ending is a bit off)
Meera Syal Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Amit Chaudhuri Odysseus Abroad
Manu Joseph The Illicit Happiness of Other People
Laurie Colwin Happy All the Time
Russell Smith How Insensitive & Noise
Fitzgerald Flappers and Philosophers
Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
Fitzgerald The Beautiful and Damned
Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Dos Passos Adventures of a Young Man
Bronte Jane Eyre
Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea & Voyage in the Dark
Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night
Hemingway A Moveable Feast
Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon
Fitzgerald I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories (very disappointing)
Mahfouz Love in the Rain
Willa Cather My Antonia
Ross As For Me and My House
Ross The Lamp at Noon (stories)
Gloria Naylor Mama Day
Fuentes A Change of Skin
Findley You Went Away
Naipaul Miguel Street
Lethem Fortress of Solitude
Cohen Beautiful Losers
Bissoondath A Casual Brutality
Fuentes Aura
Karen Hill Café Babanussa
Russell Smith Muriella Pent
Laurie Colwin Family Happiness
David Bezmozgis Natasha and Other Stories
W.P. Kinsella Russian Dolls: Stories from the Breathing Castle
Bellow Seize the Day
Bove Quicksand
(after this more Pym and Doris Lessing** and a return to Mahfouz and Narayan)
Desani All About H. Hatterr
Bellow Adventures of Augie March
Andre Gide The Vatican Cellars
Garcia Marquez No One Writes to the Colonel
Guy Vanderhaeghe Daddy Lenin
Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
Conrad Under Western Eyes
Chekhov 7 Short Novels
Turgenev Smoke
Huxley Chrome Yellow
Turgenev Virgin Soil
Huxley Mortal Coils (stories, incl.The Gioconda Smile)
Sciascia Open Doors
Gissing New Grub Street
Neruda Isla Negra
Fuentes Terra Nostra
Steinbeck To a God Unknown
Cesare Pavese Selected Works
Mary McCarthy Birds of America
P. Roth American Pastoral
Kafu American Stories
Durrenmatt The Judge and His Hangman & The Quarry
I.B. Singer Enemies
J. Roth Radetzky March & The Emperor's Tomb
Walser The Tanners
Alfred Doblin Bright Magic: Stories
Pym Excellent Women
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
Bronte Wuthering Heights
McKay Home to Harlem
Don DeLillo Great Jones Street
Mordecai Richler The Street
Constance Beresford-Howe The Book of Eve
Helen Weinzweig Basic Black with Pearls
John Lavery Sandra Beck
Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Fisher The Conjure Man Dies
Greg Hollingshead The Roaring Girl
Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber
Welty The Robber Bridegroom
Taylor The Wedding Group
Durrenmatt The Pledge
Green Blindness
Saramago Blindness
Knut Hamsun Hunger
Fante The Bandini Quartet (Wait Until Spring, Bandini; The Road to Los Angeles; Ask the Dust and Dreams From Bunker Hill)
Perec A Void
Bellow Dangling Man
Camus The Plague (and perhaps reread/skim The Stranger)
Buzzati The Tartar Steppe & The Siren
Malraux Man's Fate
Koestler Darkness at Noon
Danilo Kis A Tomb for Boris Davidovitch
Victor Serge The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Thien Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Kim Thúy Ru
Malamud The Fixer
DeLillo Ratner's Star
P. Roth Nemeses (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis)
M. Thomas Man Gone Down
Green Living
Taylor Blaming
Levi The Sixth Day
Mann The Magic Mountain
Huysmans Against Nature
Austen Pride and Prejudice
Atwood Moral Disorder
GideThe Immoralist/Strait Is the Gate
Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
Scarlett Thomas PopCo
Pym Jane and Prudence
Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer
Gerard De Nerval Selected Writings (enjoyed "October Nights" the most)
Aragon Paris Peasant
Christopher Isherwood Berlin Stories
Joseph Roth The White Cities/Report from Paris
Oria New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 (ended up skimming this and skipped a couple of stories)
Fante West of Rome
Ghosh The Glass Palace
Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America - indefinitely suspended for cowardice
de Tocqueville Democracy in America
Trollope The Three Clerks
Vila-Matas Bartleby & Co.
Quartermain I, Bartleby
Achebe A Man of the People
Musil The Man Without Qualities (try to arrange to read Dec. 2018)
Cela The Hive
Achebe Anthills of the Savannah
Hoban Riddley Walker
Tunney Flan
Powys Wolf Soylent
Drew Hayden Taylor Take Us to Your Leader
Lem Tales of Pirx the Pilot
Lem More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (a lot of Lem worth reading, but I might circle back first to Pirx and then Ijon Tichy (The Star Diaries, Memoirs of a space traveler and The Futurological Congress))
Victor Pelevin Omon Ra
Hardy Return of the Native
Steinbeck Tortilla Flat
Álvaro Mutis Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
Murdoch The Sea The Sea (way out of sequence, maybe rethink this)
Pynchon Against the Day
DeLillo Players/Running Dog
Murakami Norwegian Wood
Jane Urquhart The Stone Carvers
Austen Sense and Sensibility
Guillaume Morissette New Tab
Gornick Louisa Meets Bear
Engel Bear (sort of skimmed the first time)
Narayan The Man-Eater of Malgudi
Sciascia The Day of the Owl & Equal Danger
DeLillo Amazons
Findley Dinner Along the Amazon
Churchill Cloud 9
Cortazar 62: A Model Kit
Lessing The Golden Notebook
Musil Five Women
Jean Rhys Quartet & After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
Munro Friend of My Youth
Guy Vanderhaeghe Homesick
Malamud The Tenants ?
Forrest Meteor in the Madhouse
Engel The Tattooed Woman (stories)
Trollope Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices
Vicki Baum Grand Hotel
William Trevor Nights at the Alexandra
Anna Seghers Transit (NYRB)
Bove Night Departure & No Place
D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (uncut version)
Faulkner Sanctuary & Requiem for a Nun
Green Party Going
WoolfMrs. Dalloway/Mrs. Dalloway's Party
Isak DinesenBabette's Feast & Ehrengard
Nabokov The Enchanter ?
Narayan The Vendor of Sweets
Chatterjee English, August: An Indian Story
Howells Indian Summer
Dickens Oliver Twist
Celine Death on the Installment Plan
Mahfouz The Beggar
Balzac The Human Comedy/Pere Goriot
Davies The Salterton Trilogy
Didion Play It As It Lays
Trollope He Knew He Was Right
Bissoondath Doing the Heart Good
Sciascia To Each His Own
Rhys Good Morning, Midnight
Engel Lunatic Villas
Mann Buddenbrooks
Angela Carter Wise Children
O'Connor Wise Blood
Welty Delta Wedding
Zola The Fortune of the Rougons
Faulkner The Sound and the Fury
Téa Obreht The Tiger's Wife
Chigozie Obioma The Fishermen
Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov
(I'll have to intersperse a bit more Canadian fiction† (I've already added a bit more Alice Munro), and probably some of the early DeLillo novels, a few more from Narayan and Mahfouz and perhaps Nabokov from their respective lists, maybe tackle Austen, maybe work in a bit more Doris Lessing, reread Barbara Pym and then perhaps tackle Dickens and Trollope. Still, this is a decent 2-3 year plan (or 4-5 if I throw in a lot of Trollope and Musil's The Man Without Qualities and maybe cycle back through Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa), so we'll just see how it goes. I'm sure unpacking and rearranging the books will cause me to promote others on the list higher. I think after I make it through this extended list, I will more or less work my way through the rest of the books on the shelves to make sure I have had a chance to read them all. I believe I have read roughly 35% of the fiction & poetry books on the shelves, which is actually not that shabby. That will obviously change radically if I add another bookcase of fiction, but I think I probably will have to break down and get more shelves.)
* Of course, this is yet another novel that the Toronto Public Library owns but has turned into a reference book, so it can only be read in the library; I probably won't bother.
** If I really do start in on Lessing's Children of Violence series, I will probably follow it up with Eric Kraft's tres amusant books about Peter Leroy. I got through 6 or so of the early short novellas but not the later, longer novels.
† Actually I had no problem adding a bit more Canadian fiction. (I had a considerably harder time finishing Middlemarch in Dec. 2015, but I just made it.) In terms of shaping the list, I am hoping to end the 9th Canadian Challenge with Whale Music in June. I'll probably more or less keep the list in this shape through Vanity Fair, which I am now targeting to tackle in Dec. 2016. After that, I think I will want to blow out the 10th Canadian Challenge with a bang, since it might be the last one. I'll already have gotten a couple of Munro story collections and presumably Mavis Gallant (for the first time) and probably Steve Zipp's Yellowknife. In terms of what I will promote or add, so that I can review them by June 2017, I am thinking about The Book of Negroes, The Stone Carvers, Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage, Bowering's Burning Water (though I might have reread it already), Skvorecky's Miss Silver's Past, at least something by Bissoondath and Vanderhaeghe (probably Daddy Lenin), and Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness (I'll leave All My Puny Sorrows for another year). I have a vague idea of ending with Atwood's dystopian trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). I doubt very much I can handle anything beyond that, but if there is time, I will consider Hugh MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night and Morley Callaghan's The Many Colored Coat and Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. That will almost certainly be shunted off to whatever takes the place of the Canadian Challenge, and I would also strongly consider rereading The Deptford Trilogy at that time.
After this, I will prioritize getting to Musil's The Man Without Qualities and Perec's Life A User's Manual, as they are two of the remaining masterworks I want to make sure I read before I shuffle off this mortal coil, but this is probably 3 years out (more likely 4-5 years, with the most recent changes)! While this is a pretty tremendous list (in my view), it is also more than a little odd to have committed myself to reading specific books that far in advance. Anyway, I think before the Doris Lessing/Eric Kraft combo, I should revisit Jose Saramago, even though some of this will be rereading. I'm thinking something sort of like this:
Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Saramago Blindness
Perec A Void
DeLillo The Names
Saramago All the Names
Cunningham The Hours
Plato The Republic (at least Book VII)
Saramago The Cave
Plato The Symposium
Muriel Spark Symposium
Saramago Seeing
Norfolk The Pope's Rhinoceros
Saramago The Elephant's Journey
Murakami The Elephant Vanishes
Pynchon Inherent Vice
Faulkner The Wild Palms (linked through the palm trees of Miami Vice)
(I've already moved just a few up to the tail end of the main list)
If I really do make it through this and have not gotten completely sick of this list, it will be time to really tackle Dickens and Trollope -- and for some variety the longer novels of Murakami -- and probably the Edmund White trilogy and Joyce Cary's First Trilogy.
I'm also thinking of tackling far more short stories in 2017. I've already been reading Alice Munro fairly regularly and will start adding in Mavis Gallant and Bernard Malamud in 2016. I might set aside a month or two in late 2017 where I work through a number of short story collections in a cyclical fashion -- perhaps John Cheever, T.C. Boyle, Angela Carter, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Updike, etc. Maybe even John O'Hara and J.F. Powers. That would certainly merit its own tracking post.
Undetermined position
(books that I purged (unread) but available in Toronto libraries)
Terry Darlington Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
Mulisch The Discovery of Heaven
Transferred from VPL lists
Husain Basti
Albert Cossery A Splendid Conspiracy (UT)
Albert Cossery Laziness in the Fertile Valley (UT)
Laura Lush Fault Line
Andrew Crumey Sputnik Caledonia
Amy Waldman The Submission
4 poets : Daniela Elza, Peter Morin, Al Rempel, Onjana Yawnghwe
Tash Aw Five Star Billionaire
Machado de Assis A Chapter of Hats: Stories
Machado de Assis The Devil's Church and Other Stories (UT)
Machado de Assis Esau and Jacob (UT)
Joseph Roth Right and Left (UT)
Fernando Pessoa The book of disquiet (look for Zenith translation from 2002/3)
Cesare Pavese The Political Prisoner (UT)
Trichter Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Stewart O'Nan Last Night at the Lobster
Ben Winters The Last Policeman
Terry Fallis The Best Laid Plans
Terry Fallis The High Road
Frederick Busch The Mutual Friend (UT)
Frederick Busch Closing Arguments
Ken Kalfus The Commissariat of Enlightenment
Ken Kalfus A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
Chloe Aridjis Book of Clouds
Sunjeev Sahota Ours Are the Streets (UT)
Rebecca Lee City Is A Rising Tide
Alex Shakar The Savage Girl
Jansson The True Deceiver
Guillermo Arriaga The Night Buffalo
M. John Harrison Nova Swing
Richard Ford The Sportswriter
Bishop-Stall Ghosted
John Connolly The Book of Lost Things
Rowan Somerville The End of Sleep
Kenny Fries The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory (UT)
Hisham Matar Anatomy of A Disappearance
Sergio de la Pava A Naked Singularity
Samuel Delany Babel-17
Samuel Delany Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Samuel Delany Nova ?
David Deutsch The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch The Beginning of Infinity Explanations That Transform the World
Stephen Graham Cities Under Siege The New Military Urbanism
Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot
Michael J. Meyer The Last Days of Old Beijing
Jennifer Egan The Invisible Circus
Joe LeSueur Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara
Will Clarke Lord Vishnu's Love Handles A Spy Novel
Clark Blaise The Meagre Tarmac Stories
Jorie Graham Swarm
Josephine Johnson Now in November (TPL - reference only...)
Martin Flavin Journey in the Dark (UT-Downsview)
Elias Canetti Memoirs (The Tongue Set Free/The Torch in My Ear/The Play of the Eye)
Lionel Trilling The Liberal Imagination Essays on Literature and Society (NYRB edition)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Edmund Wilson Memoirs of Hecate County
The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs By Bierce, Ambrose (UT)
Roald Nasgaard The Mystic North
Michael North Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (UT)
It's a little hard to count precisely, but it seems that I read approximately 60 novels (and a dozen or so poetry collections) in the last 12 month span. This suggests that there is a reasonable chance I will be within striking distance of getting to Middlemarch by December 2015, and I won't have to distort my reading list too much to slot it in then (not that I am sure they will be doing the tackle Middlemarch in December blog again, but I can go forward on my own regardless). It also appears as though I will need to add a bit more Canadian fiction to the list to get to 13 by next June, though as usually is the case, I'll probably supplement the novels with some poetry collections. I think I'll aim to end the 9th Challenge with either Paul Quarrington's Whale Music or Steve Zipp's Yellowknife, depending on how I do with the rest of the list (and what else I am doing aside from reading fiction in my limited spare time). It's still somewhat depressing that I have my reading more or less mapped out through 2018 or so, though there are some incredible books on here that I probably won't get to unless I stick to the program. (On the flip side, we do think we'll be in this house for 10+ years, and I should be able to get through this particular list by then, providing I don't continually add to it...)
I would say overall there is a slightly reduced emphasis on getting through books on my TBRD pile (To-Be-Read-and-Discarded) and more emphasis on books that I think I will enjoy but that I have deferred for too long. There are even a small number of books in the list I will actually be rereading, but not very many.
{library hold mishap:
Amit Chaudhuri The Immortals - didn't care for; decided to return unread}
Alice Denham Amo (cannot be acquired through ILL -- I read a bit sitting in the reference library and decided to pass for now)
Smollett Peregrine Pickle (I agree with the reviews that say this goes downhill sharply after page 50 -- a minor novel about a very unpleasant man-child that should be ignored)
Verjee In Between Dreams -- this novel involves a topic (incest) that I am simply not willing to read about
Bove A Singular Man
Spark Memento Mori
Faulkner Flags in the Dust & The Unvanquished
P. Roth - The Breast, The Professor of Desire, The Dying Animal
Pushkin The Captain's Daughter
Walser Jakob Von Gunten
Melville The Confidence Man
Mann Felix Krull ??
Pablo Vierci The Imposters
Tony Parsons Departures -- (dialogue/plotting was so amateurish, I had to give up)
Khushwant Singh Train To Pakistan
al-Khamissi Taxi
Mahfouz Midaq Alley
Gregor von Rezzori Death of My Brother Abel
Jez Butterworth Parlour Song
(a bit of interspersion with these shorter works and the Rabbit novels)
Montaigne (&
William Maxwell LOA novels (
Dawn Powell A Time To Be Born
(intersperse Maxwell and Powell)
T.C. Boyle Drop City
Sinclair Lewis (Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth and It Can't Happen Here)
Maritta Wolff -- Whistle Stop, Night Shift, Sudden Rain, Buttonwood and The Big Nickelodeon
(intersperse Lewis with Wolff)
Tom Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities
Maugham The Razor's Edge
Aeschylus The Oresteia
Faulkner The Snopes Family (Hamlet, Town, Mansion)
Powers Wheat That Springeth Green
Malamud Pictures of Fidelman
Melville Pierre
Kierkegaard Either/Or &
Mahfouz The Mirage
P. Roth -- Zuckerman Bound, Exit Ghost
Richard Yates Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
John O'Hara Waiting for Winter
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road
John O'Hara Appointment in Samarra
Waugh Decline & Fall and Vile Bodies
Victor Serge Conquered City
Fuentes Where the Air is Clear
Vargas Llosa The Time of the Hero
Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day
Fontane Before the Storm
Tolstoy War and Peace
Vasily Grossman Life and Fate
Victor Serge Midnight in the Century
Don DeLillo End Zone
Bissoondath Digging Up the Mountains
Skvorecky Miss Silver's Past
Roth The Counterlife
Ghosh The Calcutta Chromosome
Natalia Ginzburg The Road to the City (includes The Dry Heart)
Dickens Pictures from Italy & American Notes
Herzen Letters from France and Italy
Bely Petersburg
Victor Serge Unforgiving Years
Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49 (and V???)
Kawabata Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Meera Syal Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Russell Smith How Insensitive & Noise
Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
Fitzgerald The Beautiful and Damned
Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Dos Passos Adventures of a Young Man
Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night
Hemingway A Moveable Feast
Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon
Gloria Naylor Mama Day
Fuentes A Change of Skin
Naipaul Miguel Street
Fuentes Aura
Russell Smith Muriella Pent
Laurie Colwin Family Happiness
Bove Quicksand
(after this more Pym and Doris Lessing** and a return to Mahfouz and Narayan)
Chekhov 7 Short Novels
Turgenev Smoke
Huxley Chrome Yellow
Turgenev Virgin Soil
Huxley Mortal Coils (stories, incl.
Gissing New Grub Street
Neruda Isla Negra
Fuentes Terra Nostra
Steinbeck To a God Unknown
Cesare Pavese Selected Works
P. Roth American Pastoral
Kafu American Stories
J. Roth Radetzky March & The Emperor's Tomb
Walser The Tanners
Pym Excellent Women
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
McKay Home to Harlem
Don DeLillo Great Jones Street
Mordecai Richler The Street
John Lavery Sandra Beck
Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Fisher The Conjure Man Dies
Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber
Welty The Robber Bridegroom
Taylor The Wedding Group
Green Blindness
Perec A Void
Victor Serge The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Kim Thúy Ru
Malamud The Fixer
DeLillo Ratner's Star
P. Roth Nemeses (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis)
Green Living
Levi The Sixth Day
Huysmans Against Nature
Austen Pride and Prejudice
Gide
Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
Scarlett Thomas PopCo
Pym Jane and Prudence
Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer
Christopher Isherwood Berlin Stories
Joseph Roth The White Cities/Report from Paris
Ghosh The Glass Palace
Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America - indefinitely suspended for cowardice
de Tocqueville Democracy in America
Trollope The Three Clerks
Achebe A Man of the People
Achebe Anthills of the Savannah
Hoban Riddley Walker
Tunney Flan
Powys Wolf Soylent
Drew Hayden Taylor Take Us to Your Leader
Lem Tales of Pirx the Pilot
Lem More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (a lot of Lem worth reading, but I might circle back first to Pirx and then Ijon Tichy (The Star Diaries, Memoirs of a space traveler and The Futurological Congress))
Victor Pelevin Omon Ra
Hardy Return of the Native
Steinbeck Tortilla Flat
Murdoch The Sea The Sea (way out of sequence, maybe rethink this)
Pynchon Against the Day
DeLillo Players/Running Dog
Murakami Norwegian Wood
Austen Sense and Sensibility
Guillaume Morissette New Tab
Gornick Louisa Meets Bear
DeLillo Amazons
Findley Dinner Along the Amazon
Churchill Cloud 9
Cortazar 62: A Model Kit
Lessing The Golden Notebook
Musil Five Women
Jean Rhys Quartet & After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
Munro Friend of My Youth
Malamud The Tenants ?
Forrest Meteor in the Madhouse
Trollope Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices
Anna Seghers Transit (NYRB)
Bove Night Departure & No Place
D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (uncut version)
Faulkner Sanctuary & Requiem for a Nun
Green Party Going
Woolf
Isak Dinesen
Nabokov The Enchanter ?
Balzac The Human Comedy/Pere Goriot
Davies The Salterton Trilogy
Trollope He Knew He Was Right
Bissoondath Doing the Heart Good
Rhys Good Morning, Midnight
Engel Lunatic Villas
Mann Buddenbrooks
O'Connor Wise Blood
Welty Delta Wedding
Zola The Fortune of the Rougons
Téa Obreht The Tiger's Wife
Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov
(I'll have to intersperse a bit more Canadian fiction† (I've already added a bit more Alice Munro), and probably some of the early DeLillo novels, a few more from Narayan and Mahfouz and perhaps Nabokov from their respective lists, maybe tackle Austen, maybe work in a bit more Doris Lessing, reread Barbara Pym and then perhaps tackle Dickens and Trollope. Still, this is a decent 2-3 year plan (or 4-5 if I throw in a lot of Trollope and Musil's The Man Without Qualities and maybe cycle back through Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa), so we'll just see how it goes. I'm sure unpacking and rearranging the books will cause me to promote others on the list higher. I think after I make it through this extended list, I will more or less work my way through the rest of the books on the shelves to make sure I have had a chance to read them all. I believe I have read roughly 35% of the fiction & poetry books on the shelves, which is actually not that shabby. That will obviously change radically if I add another bookcase of fiction, but I think I probably will have to break down and get more shelves.)
* Of course, this is yet another novel that the Toronto Public Library owns but has turned into a reference book, so it can only be read in the library; I probably won't bother.
** If I really do start in on Lessing's Children of Violence series, I will probably follow it up with Eric Kraft's tres amusant books about Peter Leroy. I got through 6 or so of the early short novellas but not the later, longer novels.
† Actually I had no problem adding a bit more Canadian fiction. (I had a considerably harder time finishing Middlemarch in Dec. 2015, but I just made it.) In terms of shaping the list, I am hoping to end the 9th Canadian Challenge with Whale Music in June. I'll probably more or less keep the list in this shape through Vanity Fair, which I am now targeting to tackle in Dec. 2016. After that, I think I will want to blow out the 10th Canadian Challenge with a bang, since it might be the last one. I'll already have gotten a couple of Munro story collections and presumably Mavis Gallant (for the first time) and probably Steve Zipp's Yellowknife. In terms of what I will promote or add, so that I can review them by June 2017, I am thinking about The Book of Negroes, The Stone Carvers, Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage, Bowering's Burning Water (though I might have reread it already), Skvorecky's Miss Silver's Past, at least something by Bissoondath and Vanderhaeghe (probably Daddy Lenin), and Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness (I'll leave All My Puny Sorrows for another year). I have a vague idea of ending with Atwood's dystopian trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). I doubt very much I can handle anything beyond that, but if there is time, I will consider Hugh MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night and Morley Callaghan's The Many Colored Coat and Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. That will almost certainly be shunted off to whatever takes the place of the Canadian Challenge, and I would also strongly consider rereading The Deptford Trilogy at that time.
After this, I will prioritize getting to Musil's The Man Without Qualities and Perec's Life A User's Manual, as they are two of the remaining masterworks I want to make sure I read before I shuffle off this mortal coil, but this is probably 3 years out (more likely 4-5 years, with the most recent changes)! While this is a pretty tremendous list (in my view), it is also more than a little odd to have committed myself to reading specific books that far in advance. Anyway, I think before the Doris Lessing/Eric Kraft combo, I should revisit Jose Saramago, even though some of this will be rereading. I'm thinking something sort of like this:
Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Perec A Void
DeLillo The Names
Saramago All the Names
Cunningham The Hours
Plato The Republic (at least Book VII)
Saramago The Cave
Plato The Symposium
Saramago Seeing
Norfolk The Pope's Rhinoceros
Saramago The Elephant's Journey
Murakami The Elephant Vanishes
Pynchon Inherent Vice
Faulkner The Wild Palms (linked through the palm trees of Miami Vice)
(I've already moved just a few up to the tail end of the main list)
If I really do make it through this and have not gotten completely sick of this list, it will be time to really tackle Dickens and Trollope -- and for some variety the longer novels of Murakami -- and probably the Edmund White trilogy and Joyce Cary's First Trilogy.
I'm also thinking of tackling far more short stories in 2017. I've already been reading Alice Munro fairly regularly and will start adding in Mavis Gallant and Bernard Malamud in 2016. I might set aside a month or two in late 2017 where I work through a number of short story collections in a cyclical fashion -- perhaps John Cheever, T.C. Boyle, Angela Carter, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Updike, etc. Maybe even John O'Hara and J.F. Powers. That would certainly merit its own tracking post.
Undetermined position
(books that I purged (unread) but available in Toronto libraries)
Terry Darlington Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
Mulisch The Discovery of Heaven
Transferred from VPL lists
Husain Basti
Albert Cossery A Splendid Conspiracy (UT)
Albert Cossery Laziness in the Fertile Valley (UT)
Laura Lush Fault Line
Andrew Crumey Sputnik Caledonia
Amy Waldman The Submission
4 poets : Daniela Elza, Peter Morin, Al Rempel, Onjana Yawnghwe
Tash Aw Five Star Billionaire
Machado de Assis A Chapter of Hats: Stories
Machado de Assis The Devil's Church and Other Stories (UT)
Machado de Assis Esau and Jacob (UT)
Joseph Roth Right and Left (UT)
Cesare Pavese The Political Prisoner (UT)
Trichter Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Ben Winters The Last Policeman
Terry Fallis The Best Laid Plans
Terry Fallis The High Road
Frederick Busch The Mutual Friend (UT)
Frederick Busch Closing Arguments
Ken Kalfus The Commissariat of Enlightenment
Ken Kalfus A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
Chloe Aridjis Book of Clouds
Sunjeev Sahota Ours Are the Streets (UT)
Rebecca Lee City Is A Rising Tide
Alex Shakar The Savage Girl
Jansson The True Deceiver
M. John Harrison Nova Swing
Richard Ford The Sportswriter
Bishop-Stall Ghosted
John Connolly The Book of Lost Things
Rowan Somerville The End of Sleep
Kenny Fries The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory (UT)
Hisham Matar Anatomy of A Disappearance
Sergio de la Pava A Naked Singularity
Samuel Delany Babel-17
Samuel Delany Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Samuel Delany Nova ?
David Deutsch The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch The Beginning of Infinity Explanations That Transform the World
Stephen Graham Cities Under Siege The New Military Urbanism
Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot
Michael J. Meyer The Last Days of Old Beijing
Jennifer Egan The Invisible Circus
Joe LeSueur Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara
Clark Blaise The Meagre Tarmac Stories
Josephine Johnson Now in November (TPL - reference only...)
Martin Flavin Journey in the Dark (UT-Downsview)
Elias Canetti Memoirs (The Tongue Set Free/The Torch in My Ear/The Play of the Eye)
Lionel Trilling The Liberal Imagination Essays on Literature and Society (NYRB edition)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Edmund Wilson Memoirs of Hecate County
The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs By Bierce, Ambrose (UT)
Roald Nasgaard The Mystic North
Michael North Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (UT)
8th Canadian Challenge - 20th review - Brief History of the Short-Lived
This is an incredibly tardy review of Chris Hutchinson's A Brief History of the Short-Lived, which is his third collection of poetry. I actually had to go back to my own review of Other People's Lives to recall just what I had already said about Hutchinson and his poetry. I also saw that he has a newish book out called Jonas in Frames, which straddles the line between epic poem and novel, and I may get to that some day. However, I may no longer classify Hutchinson as a Canadian author for the purposes of the challenge.
Overall, I find myself reaching for the dictionary a bit more often in these poems than in the previous two collections. I generally find that I am less attached to these poems than those in his earlier collections. I either hang onto poems that still tell an interesting story (a relatively rare phenomenon in this collection) or the language is particularly arresting to me. As a rough guess, I think that means 10-12 poems kind of jump out at me from A Brief History, whereas that number was over 30 from Other People's Lives. (It is probably fair to say that the review itself sampled only a small number of poems (just as this one will), so it is not immediately apparent that I favour one over the other by such a large margin.)
A Brief History opens with the rain. One might even imagine that Hutchinson is back in Vancouver, where he lived for roughly a decade and where he set many of the poems in Unfamiliar Weather. From "The Gift": "The spring malingers. He is sick of it -- / This loose fabric of rain, all warp and no weft. / America, once predatory, has presumably fled. / ... / ... His own name / Blurring, drips onto the windowsill where it / Puddles, and puzzles him...".
"Crosstown Still Life" is a curious poem that rides the line between sense and nonsense. On the one hand, you have the image of a "thrift-store Poet Laureate" who rides "the M train to Brooklyn" while declaiming poetry or at least posing questions that are informed by a poetic sensibility. One such statement is "could is be that within all / Postures of stillness lurks a clandestine What's next?" On a side note, I don't imagine that Hutchinson is recalling Garrison Keillor's fantasy of preaching from Walden on the subway (from "Local Man Moves to the City"), but it may not be too much of a stretch to think that he is referring to Charles Simic's "Dime-Store Alchemy," which contains a number of prose poems inspired by Joseph Cornell. Incidentally, Simic was the U.S. Poet Laureate. Most of the time his poems feature much shorter lines, but those in "Dime-Store Alchemy" are longer and do tend to pile one image on top of another, much like the middle section of "Crosstown Still Life." For instance, this block of text is so dense, yet it has an alluring internal propulsion: "the morning becoming / Night by way of an afternoon everything's busy skyrocketing / Through: moorhens, Japanese paper, protractors, alphabets / Genome decoder rings and the missed phone calls from our dearly / Departed self-confidence. Never mind if our beliefs revolve / Around Calvary, the Smithsonian or National Geographic...". Just don't ask me to try to unpack it.
There is a similar feel to "Captain Nemo Resurfaces," though this one is a bit easier to place into context. The entire text can be taken as the slightly-unhinged rantings of Captain Nemo*, whereas the source of the lists in "Crosstown Still Life" is unclear; only a relatively small portion of the poem is placed directly in the mouth of that thrift-store poet.
To return to Nemo, the poem opens with him waking up: "Is it dawn already inside the world's / Subconscious, or is it still the postmodern / Age of aquatic mosaics where governments / Blur the edges of words?" The good mood doesn't endure: "... And though I awoke / Buoyant and smiling like the pufferfish in some / Marine biologist's float parade, you'll see / I am glancing now above the crannied murk / At the media squinched unhappily / Into those trilobite faces we all know / From the pages of American Scientist. Ha!" From here, Nemo's mood continues to darken, and soon we find ourselves faced with the outcast (dreamed up by Verne) who has turned his back on the land-dwellers: "I've come / To spit poisonous pearls into your earth / Which rejects me and all of my people."
Compared to these two quite dense poems, "Equinox" is centered around a much simpler metaphor of a city tree transformed into a kind of green streetlamp: "One tree grows in the gated city / Like a leafy bulb screwed into the ground / Drawing the earth's current. No one notices. / Its green luminescence lives only in the minds / Of its inhabitant birds, sparrows and jays whose / Throats convert the tree's energy into a thrum / Of hallelujahs."
Hutchinson draws on the legend of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca in "Poet in Middle America." Of course, Lorca famously visited New York, but the idea of him driving deep into the U.S. "into the creature-stew of the valley's smog" is somewhat ludicrous (and yet amusing due to its incongruity). I will say that the attention to the geometry of the Interstate system is impressive, and if I ever do publish my anthology on poems about transportation, this is a strong candidate for inclusion. The poem ends with Lorca still in flight: "Today the expressway is a flume of fire-/Reflecting steel. You say the twentieth century / Has been replaced and miles of earth skinned / Like ripened fruit. But let's recall the artist, alone / Yet not along, speeding towards his unborn / Admirers: those of us in this desert who know his heart / Was filled with butterflies and bullets."
It's a bit more difficult to place "East-West," but if I had to, I would argue that it records the wanderings of a location scout (for the movies) around the Mediterranean. It is not entirely clear if it is the scout or the poet who is aware that it is the near poverty of many of the places he visits that makes it possible to gain access to these sites by throwing hard currency around. A secondary theme is how many of the places mentioned in the poem had their glory days far in the ancient past. This seems particularly apt for Greece, which is currently undergoing severe economic contractions and is the first "advanced economy" to default on its payments to the IMF. But back to the poem: "Once the site of temporal displacement / Delphi has been retrofitted with a waterworks / And crowded with public officials ready to drag you / Through an umbra of gin and clove cigarettes. / These markets are unsafe...".
I'll end the review with one of the last poems in the collection "Flying Dream, Terminal City," which is essentially a poem about dreaming of flying. Sometimes the dreamer is falling, a bit out of control, but normally the dream-flight is controlled, and this isn't a nightmare per se. It is somewhat interesting that the poem is actually written in first-person plural, so "we" are flying or falling, along with the poet. The poem opens on a night-time vista: "Lawns and boulevards have been painted / With the glow of crushed stars. / Every green tendril and blade frosted over / Curls tightly and shines." Even though "we" are above the trouble and turmoil on the ground, this is not a placid dream: "Buses grunt and sigh and mimic / Our distress, knowing we are gone before / We arrive, knowing on waking we must try / To rephrase what yesterday we failed to express." Nonetheless, at times we are able to soar over barriers, only to confront other aspects of modern life that disappoint or otherwise diminish us: "We are falling through silence / And open like snowflakes unfolding / Insensible scripts. Anything is possible / Notwithstanding these barricades / And cavalcades of mounted police. / We escape to the rooftops where the sky / Is eclipsed by a billboard which would have us / Mortgage our lives to a humanoid duck. / There are rules to flying, even in dreams." This strikes me as somewhat similar in spirit to a Terry Gilliam film where there are moments of freedom, but generally it is transformed into something more sinister by the end. That's not to say this poem ends on a note anywhere near as melancholy as Brazil or The Zero Theorem (where the protagonists retreat completely from "reality").
I hope this review gives a hint of the rich language employed by Hutchinson and some of the ideas that he is grappling with throughout the collection, though, as I already noted, I tend to find the emphasis on language (often overwhelming meaning) to be too much sometimes. For my taste, Other People's Lives got the balance right, and A Brief History often goes a bit too far. Still, I would recommend giving it a go if one is attracted to cerebral poetry sprinkled throughout with unusual word choices.
* While I doubt Hutchinson had this in mind, I am reminded of several of Robert Browning's long poems that were essentially monologues, such as "Caliban upon Setebos" or "Fra Lippo Lippi."
Overall, I find myself reaching for the dictionary a bit more often in these poems than in the previous two collections. I generally find that I am less attached to these poems than those in his earlier collections. I either hang onto poems that still tell an interesting story (a relatively rare phenomenon in this collection) or the language is particularly arresting to me. As a rough guess, I think that means 10-12 poems kind of jump out at me from A Brief History, whereas that number was over 30 from Other People's Lives. (It is probably fair to say that the review itself sampled only a small number of poems (just as this one will), so it is not immediately apparent that I favour one over the other by such a large margin.)
A Brief History opens with the rain. One might even imagine that Hutchinson is back in Vancouver, where he lived for roughly a decade and where he set many of the poems in Unfamiliar Weather. From "The Gift": "The spring malingers. He is sick of it -- / This loose fabric of rain, all warp and no weft. / America, once predatory, has presumably fled. / ... / ... His own name / Blurring, drips onto the windowsill where it / Puddles, and puzzles him...".
"Crosstown Still Life" is a curious poem that rides the line between sense and nonsense. On the one hand, you have the image of a "thrift-store Poet Laureate" who rides "the M train to Brooklyn" while declaiming poetry or at least posing questions that are informed by a poetic sensibility. One such statement is "could is be that within all / Postures of stillness lurks a clandestine What's next?" On a side note, I don't imagine that Hutchinson is recalling Garrison Keillor's fantasy of preaching from Walden on the subway (from "Local Man Moves to the City"), but it may not be too much of a stretch to think that he is referring to Charles Simic's "Dime-Store Alchemy," which contains a number of prose poems inspired by Joseph Cornell. Incidentally, Simic was the U.S. Poet Laureate. Most of the time his poems feature much shorter lines, but those in "Dime-Store Alchemy" are longer and do tend to pile one image on top of another, much like the middle section of "Crosstown Still Life." For instance, this block of text is so dense, yet it has an alluring internal propulsion: "the morning becoming / Night by way of an afternoon everything's busy skyrocketing / Through: moorhens, Japanese paper, protractors, alphabets / Genome decoder rings and the missed phone calls from our dearly / Departed self-confidence. Never mind if our beliefs revolve / Around Calvary, the Smithsonian or National Geographic...". Just don't ask me to try to unpack it.
There is a similar feel to "Captain Nemo Resurfaces," though this one is a bit easier to place into context. The entire text can be taken as the slightly-unhinged rantings of Captain Nemo*, whereas the source of the lists in "Crosstown Still Life" is unclear; only a relatively small portion of the poem is placed directly in the mouth of that thrift-store poet.
To return to Nemo, the poem opens with him waking up: "Is it dawn already inside the world's / Subconscious, or is it still the postmodern / Age of aquatic mosaics where governments / Blur the edges of words?" The good mood doesn't endure: "... And though I awoke / Buoyant and smiling like the pufferfish in some / Marine biologist's float parade, you'll see / I am glancing now above the crannied murk / At the media squinched unhappily / Into those trilobite faces we all know / From the pages of American Scientist. Ha!" From here, Nemo's mood continues to darken, and soon we find ourselves faced with the outcast (dreamed up by Verne) who has turned his back on the land-dwellers: "I've come / To spit poisonous pearls into your earth / Which rejects me and all of my people."
Compared to these two quite dense poems, "Equinox" is centered around a much simpler metaphor of a city tree transformed into a kind of green streetlamp: "One tree grows in the gated city / Like a leafy bulb screwed into the ground / Drawing the earth's current. No one notices. / Its green luminescence lives only in the minds / Of its inhabitant birds, sparrows and jays whose / Throats convert the tree's energy into a thrum / Of hallelujahs."
Hutchinson draws on the legend of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca in "Poet in Middle America." Of course, Lorca famously visited New York, but the idea of him driving deep into the U.S. "into the creature-stew of the valley's smog" is somewhat ludicrous (and yet amusing due to its incongruity). I will say that the attention to the geometry of the Interstate system is impressive, and if I ever do publish my anthology on poems about transportation, this is a strong candidate for inclusion. The poem ends with Lorca still in flight: "Today the expressway is a flume of fire-/Reflecting steel. You say the twentieth century / Has been replaced and miles of earth skinned / Like ripened fruit. But let's recall the artist, alone / Yet not along, speeding towards his unborn / Admirers: those of us in this desert who know his heart / Was filled with butterflies and bullets."
It's a bit more difficult to place "East-West," but if I had to, I would argue that it records the wanderings of a location scout (for the movies) around the Mediterranean. It is not entirely clear if it is the scout or the poet who is aware that it is the near poverty of many of the places he visits that makes it possible to gain access to these sites by throwing hard currency around. A secondary theme is how many of the places mentioned in the poem had their glory days far in the ancient past. This seems particularly apt for Greece, which is currently undergoing severe economic contractions and is the first "advanced economy" to default on its payments to the IMF. But back to the poem: "Once the site of temporal displacement / Delphi has been retrofitted with a waterworks / And crowded with public officials ready to drag you / Through an umbra of gin and clove cigarettes. / These markets are unsafe...".
I'll end the review with one of the last poems in the collection "Flying Dream, Terminal City," which is essentially a poem about dreaming of flying. Sometimes the dreamer is falling, a bit out of control, but normally the dream-flight is controlled, and this isn't a nightmare per se. It is somewhat interesting that the poem is actually written in first-person plural, so "we" are flying or falling, along with the poet. The poem opens on a night-time vista: "Lawns and boulevards have been painted / With the glow of crushed stars. / Every green tendril and blade frosted over / Curls tightly and shines." Even though "we" are above the trouble and turmoil on the ground, this is not a placid dream: "Buses grunt and sigh and mimic / Our distress, knowing we are gone before / We arrive, knowing on waking we must try / To rephrase what yesterday we failed to express." Nonetheless, at times we are able to soar over barriers, only to confront other aspects of modern life that disappoint or otherwise diminish us: "We are falling through silence / And open like snowflakes unfolding / Insensible scripts. Anything is possible / Notwithstanding these barricades / And cavalcades of mounted police. / We escape to the rooftops where the sky / Is eclipsed by a billboard which would have us / Mortgage our lives to a humanoid duck. / There are rules to flying, even in dreams." This strikes me as somewhat similar in spirit to a Terry Gilliam film where there are moments of freedom, but generally it is transformed into something more sinister by the end. That's not to say this poem ends on a note anywhere near as melancholy as Brazil or The Zero Theorem (where the protagonists retreat completely from "reality").
I hope this review gives a hint of the rich language employed by Hutchinson and some of the ideas that he is grappling with throughout the collection, though, as I already noted, I tend to find the emphasis on language (often overwhelming meaning) to be too much sometimes. For my taste, Other People's Lives got the balance right, and A Brief History often goes a bit too far. Still, I would recommend giving it a go if one is attracted to cerebral poetry sprinkled throughout with unusual word choices.
* While I doubt Hutchinson had this in mind, I am reminded of several of Robert Browning's long poems that were essentially monologues, such as "Caliban upon Setebos" or "Fra Lippo Lippi."
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
8th Canadian Challenge - 19th review - Blue Sonoma
As mentioned in this post, Jane Munro's Blue Sonoma has won the Griffin Poetry prize. In some ways it now becomes more daunting in reviewing something that has such a stamp of critical appreciation on it. However, that hasn't really stopped me before. While it's only my opinion, I find Blue Sonoma to be two or even three smaller collections, and it is only the section ("Old Man Vacanas") devoted to her husband and his decline due to Alzheimer's that led to Blue Sonoma taking the prize. Nothing wrong with that, and the other sections have amusing poems as well, but it is worth noting there are only 11 of these vacanas, so it is only a relatively small portion of the book, and the rest of the collection is in a very different key.
I'll start with the other sections, many of which are clearly inspired by yoga and other "Eastern practices." I'm not sure whether I would call these representative samples or simply the ones that worked best for me...
In the poem "A small doll nested in hollow dolls," Munro writes "water knows to be water / a spruce grows into a spruce / in a crevice / buckling down, living on less".
The following poem "My mind is my grandchild" features the poet and her grandson on the beach, practicing stillness: "We sit on the beach, / my arms and legs about him. ... We watch light on the waves -- / its quick crowd, / passengers changing trains. / We listen." The poet recognizes that she still struggles with feelings of anxiety, but still she is hopeful that she can gain inner peace. While she doesn't presume that her grandson will follow in her path, she still hopes "he will absorb this beach. / I hope it will stay with him."
Towards the end of the collection, the poems seek to embrace the cosmos. This is particularly true of the poem "In the slow spin of stars, a dancer turns": "In the slow spin of stars, a tree grows. / Its branches curl up and are wrapped / by two vines. It's a pillar of greenery. // In the slow spin of stars, crystals form. / All the elemental glyphs. / Alphabets."
Whether it is a fair comparison or not, this strikes me as being in tune with Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. People who are open to that movie will probably be open to this section of Blue Sonoma, while others may find both the poems and the movie somewhat pretentious and too imbued with mysticism. I will say that, for me, a little mysticism goes a long way... Nonetheless, I do appreciate the fact that the humor in some of the poems partly compensates for this borrowing from (and/or leaning on) Indian cultural practices.*
One example of Munro's humor is in the poem "A poet is walking the platform," which appears to be recounting a dream of sorts. The poet, in the underground station, is "holding / a sign that says 'Germans lessons.' / She's wearing a blue dress. / Later, she's carrying a sign that says / 'Kissing lessons.' // Upstairs, the streets are flooded / and gas leaks bubble through the city's tailings. / Pavement is breaking up / the way sea ice melts..." (Well, like many dreams it combines the humorous with the terrible.)
I will turn now to "Old Man Vacanas," which really is the heart of the book. On the Griffin Poetry website, they have some discussion of the origin of a vacana as a kind of prayer-poem from South India. No question that Munro was hoping that her husband's condition would not worsen, as well as memorializing him in some sense while he was still alive (trying to capture his real essence and not merely the platitudes that one hears after a person dies). While in this case, the portraits are being drawn by another, I see parallels to the sad decline of William Utermohler, which he captured himself.
Most of the poems in this series are spare, almost stark. There are rare flashes of humor, mostly of the black sort, presumably employed as a kind of defense-mechanism.
From the second vacana: "[The old man] asks what day it is. / Hail falls. / ... / His calendar melts, / its pages slipping into soil. / ... / None of this matters to him / any more than greying hair."
From the fourth vacana: "The old man / losing his mind / registers / the weather systems / of intelligence. // Climate change, for all / its extinctions, / won't alter the planet's orbit." (This might be read as a kind of displacement, moving from intense personal pain to an Olympian perspective on how entire species will be wiped away before too long, so what's one more individual death?)
In the sixth vacana, Munro offers a plea for help, asking others to visit, so that she has some company (particularly company that can remember the thread of a conversation). She is in desperate straights, feeling as if she is boxed in by "Four windowless walls" and near despair: "Roar up the drive. Spit gravel. Blow your horn. // I am gnawing through myself." This strikes me as the most painful of the entire bunch.
By the next poem, Munro seems to have reached a kind of acceptance and is simply riding out the string.
By the eighth vacana, Munro almost seems to be experiencing a split-mind phenomenon, appreciating the small things in the present that she finds endearing about her husband, but obviously acutely aware of how much has been lost. At least this is how I interpret this poem. The subsequent poems all seem to ride this line. "My old man / oh, my old man, oh my / old man." While it doesn't actually rhyme (though there do seem to be some internal rhymes), the last stanza of the eighth vacana reminds me of a nursery rhyme:
He sleeps on his back,
straight as a broom.
He sleeps on his side,
curled like a cat.
He sleeps with the heater going
and a T-shirt on.
My old man likes
to catch some zzzzzzzs.
In the tenth vacana, Munro suggests that her husband's regression is actually taking him closer to his prehistoric ancestors, or at least a pre-verbal era: "The old man / feeding the fire / keeps up primitive." Or at least this is our view of our genetic ancestors -- that human evolution was somehow tied to the mastery of tools and perhaps even moreso the harnessing of fire. This article goes into some detail about how there is relatively solid evidence that humans have been using fire to cook food for 800,000 years, and there is more speculative evidence that this goes back as early as 1.5 million years. Intriguingly, in effect this earlier date for the intentional use of fire would push it much further back than the era when Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans diverged, so there might well have been a different reason for that particular split.
This linkage to pre-history is made more direct in the final vacana: "DNA from fossil bones / tells us we're siblings to Neanderthals -- // and the small arrangements / we make? Language, travel, art? Props // in a little, local, theatre of light." If taken too literally (rather than simply being the reaction of a person in deep anguish), this is in fact anti-humanist. Munro is saying that the greatest human achievements from the Renaissance onwards are all just window dressing and probably nothing more than diversions to keep us from thinking too deeply about the fact that someday we will die. I certainly can't go that far, particularly when thinking of the many advances that science has made over the past 400 or so years, though I understand where she is coming from, having gone through the loss of my mother. (Fortunately for the entire family, it was not such a drawn out process.) However, I do think it is an odd and particularly bleak note on which to end the series.
After some further reflection, it seems that Munro is probably drawing on Macbeth's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech, where an individual's life is dismissed as "signifying nothing." It is difficult to completely refute that viewpoint, particularly when it is expressed by someone in deep mourning, and yet society as we know it would not function if people were not able to put aside their grief, to say nothing of ignoring the abyss that lays before each and every one of us. I am surprised that she ended on this one, which strikes me as a poem empty of hope and empty even of celebration of the spirit of her husband. I would have probably swapped vacana 10 and 11 -- or added another poem that had slightly more closure than this particularly raw poem. I suppose I do tend to follow convention when it comes to these kind of deep losses. Now it is worth noting that the collection as a whole does end there. Quite a few of the yoga-inspired poems (discussed above) follow.
I don't really have anything else profound to say about the collection. I thought the Old Man Vacanas section was strong though extremely raw in places. I wasn't as moved by most of the other poems, but I enjoyed a few of them a fair bit. I'll keep my eyes out to see if she publishes another collection and what she writes about this time, particularly as she has relocated to the mainland after 20+ years on Vancouver Island.
* Cultural appropriation is always a touchy subject. I'm definitely less doctrinaire about this than I used to be. In my twenties I was always against Western artists borrowing from other cultures (including Paul Simon's Graceland), as it always seemed a one-way street. I now think the dynamics are far more complicated than that, and that putting too many barriers in the way of inspiration is a terrible idea. Nonetheless, there can certainly be situations that rub me the wrong way, such as the other day at the Toronto Jazz Fest at the concert by Ikebe Shakedown, which is a Brooklyn-based Afrobeat band composed entirely of white hipster types. While I am sure they are quite respectful and sincere in their love of this music, they played a note-for-note cover of Ebo Taylor's Heaven, and I didn't hear them credit him, though I may have just missed that.
I'll start with the other sections, many of which are clearly inspired by yoga and other "Eastern practices." I'm not sure whether I would call these representative samples or simply the ones that worked best for me...
In the poem "A small doll nested in hollow dolls," Munro writes "water knows to be water / a spruce grows into a spruce / in a crevice / buckling down, living on less".
The following poem "My mind is my grandchild" features the poet and her grandson on the beach, practicing stillness: "We sit on the beach, / my arms and legs about him. ... We watch light on the waves -- / its quick crowd, / passengers changing trains. / We listen." The poet recognizes that she still struggles with feelings of anxiety, but still she is hopeful that she can gain inner peace. While she doesn't presume that her grandson will follow in her path, she still hopes "he will absorb this beach. / I hope it will stay with him."
Towards the end of the collection, the poems seek to embrace the cosmos. This is particularly true of the poem "In the slow spin of stars, a dancer turns": "In the slow spin of stars, a tree grows. / Its branches curl up and are wrapped / by two vines. It's a pillar of greenery. // In the slow spin of stars, crystals form. / All the elemental glyphs. / Alphabets."
Whether it is a fair comparison or not, this strikes me as being in tune with Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. People who are open to that movie will probably be open to this section of Blue Sonoma, while others may find both the poems and the movie somewhat pretentious and too imbued with mysticism. I will say that, for me, a little mysticism goes a long way... Nonetheless, I do appreciate the fact that the humor in some of the poems partly compensates for this borrowing from (and/or leaning on) Indian cultural practices.*
One example of Munro's humor is in the poem "A poet is walking the platform," which appears to be recounting a dream of sorts. The poet, in the underground station, is "holding / a sign that says 'Germans lessons.' / She's wearing a blue dress. / Later, she's carrying a sign that says / 'Kissing lessons.' // Upstairs, the streets are flooded / and gas leaks bubble through the city's tailings. / Pavement is breaking up / the way sea ice melts..." (Well, like many dreams it combines the humorous with the terrible.)
I will turn now to "Old Man Vacanas," which really is the heart of the book. On the Griffin Poetry website, they have some discussion of the origin of a vacana as a kind of prayer-poem from South India. No question that Munro was hoping that her husband's condition would not worsen, as well as memorializing him in some sense while he was still alive (trying to capture his real essence and not merely the platitudes that one hears after a person dies). While in this case, the portraits are being drawn by another, I see parallels to the sad decline of William Utermohler, which he captured himself.
 |
| William Utermohlen, Blue Skies, 1995 |
Most of the poems in this series are spare, almost stark. There are rare flashes of humor, mostly of the black sort, presumably employed as a kind of defense-mechanism.
From the second vacana: "[The old man] asks what day it is. / Hail falls. / ... / His calendar melts, / its pages slipping into soil. / ... / None of this matters to him / any more than greying hair."
From the fourth vacana: "The old man / losing his mind / registers / the weather systems / of intelligence. // Climate change, for all / its extinctions, / won't alter the planet's orbit." (This might be read as a kind of displacement, moving from intense personal pain to an Olympian perspective on how entire species will be wiped away before too long, so what's one more individual death?)
In the sixth vacana, Munro offers a plea for help, asking others to visit, so that she has some company (particularly company that can remember the thread of a conversation). She is in desperate straights, feeling as if she is boxed in by "Four windowless walls" and near despair: "Roar up the drive. Spit gravel. Blow your horn. // I am gnawing through myself." This strikes me as the most painful of the entire bunch.
By the next poem, Munro seems to have reached a kind of acceptance and is simply riding out the string.
By the eighth vacana, Munro almost seems to be experiencing a split-mind phenomenon, appreciating the small things in the present that she finds endearing about her husband, but obviously acutely aware of how much has been lost. At least this is how I interpret this poem. The subsequent poems all seem to ride this line. "My old man / oh, my old man, oh my / old man." While it doesn't actually rhyme (though there do seem to be some internal rhymes), the last stanza of the eighth vacana reminds me of a nursery rhyme:
He sleeps on his back,
straight as a broom.
He sleeps on his side,
curled like a cat.
He sleeps with the heater going
and a T-shirt on.
My old man likes
to catch some zzzzzzzs.
In the tenth vacana, Munro suggests that her husband's regression is actually taking him closer to his prehistoric ancestors, or at least a pre-verbal era: "The old man / feeding the fire / keeps up primitive." Or at least this is our view of our genetic ancestors -- that human evolution was somehow tied to the mastery of tools and perhaps even moreso the harnessing of fire. This article goes into some detail about how there is relatively solid evidence that humans have been using fire to cook food for 800,000 years, and there is more speculative evidence that this goes back as early as 1.5 million years. Intriguingly, in effect this earlier date for the intentional use of fire would push it much further back than the era when Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans diverged, so there might well have been a different reason for that particular split.
This linkage to pre-history is made more direct in the final vacana: "DNA from fossil bones / tells us we're siblings to Neanderthals -- // and the small arrangements / we make? Language, travel, art? Props // in a little, local, theatre of light." If taken too literally (rather than simply being the reaction of a person in deep anguish), this is in fact anti-humanist. Munro is saying that the greatest human achievements from the Renaissance onwards are all just window dressing and probably nothing more than diversions to keep us from thinking too deeply about the fact that someday we will die. I certainly can't go that far, particularly when thinking of the many advances that science has made over the past 400 or so years, though I understand where she is coming from, having gone through the loss of my mother. (Fortunately for the entire family, it was not such a drawn out process.) However, I do think it is an odd and particularly bleak note on which to end the series.
After some further reflection, it seems that Munro is probably drawing on Macbeth's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech, where an individual's life is dismissed as "signifying nothing." It is difficult to completely refute that viewpoint, particularly when it is expressed by someone in deep mourning, and yet society as we know it would not function if people were not able to put aside their grief, to say nothing of ignoring the abyss that lays before each and every one of us. I am surprised that she ended on this one, which strikes me as a poem empty of hope and empty even of celebration of the spirit of her husband. I would have probably swapped vacana 10 and 11 -- or added another poem that had slightly more closure than this particularly raw poem. I suppose I do tend to follow convention when it comes to these kind of deep losses. Now it is worth noting that the collection as a whole does end there. Quite a few of the yoga-inspired poems (discussed above) follow.
I don't really have anything else profound to say about the collection. I thought the Old Man Vacanas section was strong though extremely raw in places. I wasn't as moved by most of the other poems, but I enjoyed a few of them a fair bit. I'll keep my eyes out to see if she publishes another collection and what she writes about this time, particularly as she has relocated to the mainland after 20+ years on Vancouver Island.
* Cultural appropriation is always a touchy subject. I'm definitely less doctrinaire about this than I used to be. In my twenties I was always against Western artists borrowing from other cultures (including Paul Simon's Graceland), as it always seemed a one-way street. I now think the dynamics are far more complicated than that, and that putting too many barriers in the way of inspiration is a terrible idea. Nonetheless, there can certainly be situations that rub me the wrong way, such as the other day at the Toronto Jazz Fest at the concert by Ikebe Shakedown, which is a Brooklyn-based Afrobeat band composed entirely of white hipster types. While I am sure they are quite respectful and sincere in their love of this music, they played a note-for-note cover of Ebo Taylor's Heaven, and I didn't hear them credit him, though I may have just missed that.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
The Move - one week on
We've actually made pretty good progress. I guess it helped that the weather was so terrible that we skipped the work picnic, and instead went down to get our addresses changed on the driver's licenses. Since this is a booth inside of Canadian Tire of all things, we went ahead and bought a replacement wardrobe. So that will be my Canada Day -- taking apart the old one and building a new one. If there is still time, and it isn't raining I'll put the outdoor table up as well. We never actually used that though we owned it for a year!
It kind of looks like the rain may finally be over for the weekend. That would be nice. I had the idea of stapling up a tarp on the underside of the deck so that there was some outdoor storage space for the chairs, the movers, the bikes, etc. During the winter it can come in, but it would be nice to leave it outside the rest of the time. In general, it seems to be working, but there are a few places where the water pooled and I wasn't able to channel the water out (so far). So the execution needs a bit more work. It would have been a lot better to test this on a day with a gentle rain, and not the near deluge we just had.
I've managed to put up 3 posters (and one other one is out of harm's way being framed professionally up the street). I got all the art books back up on their respective shelves, and things are much less chaotic. However, I need to get twine to tie down all the empty boxes, as at the moment, it does look like an episode of hoarders down in the basement. (That was my wife's contribution. On the other hand, she somewhat grudgingly admitted that if we had moved on the 27th, which was her original preferred date, then we would have been up a creek without a paddle.)
I actually did find La Dolce Vita in a box this morning, though Do the Right Thing is still proving elusive. I'd definitely like to get the majority of the fiction/drama/poetry up on the shelves tonight, but I may have just a bit too many other obligations. And then I need to work on the basement. I guess we'll see how it all goes.
Update (6/29): I spent about 3 hours at the old place and think I have gotten it in pretty good shape. Everything to be moved is on one floor (the main floor). It looks like about one last car trip to move over here. Everything has been swept up, though it probably wouldn't hurt to have a professional team go through the place. Far too much work for us to do that, however. My allergies have been acting up like crazy and I don't feel all that well. I wonder if it is a combination of really high levels of pollen plus inhaling dust while doing the cleaning/sorting at the old place. I didn't get quite as far as I wanted unpacking books here, but I got through two boxes. Nonetheless, all the main furniture is finally in place, and we have a pretty good sense of how things will look. It's very snug, but I think it will work out ok. I do need to find a place to sell off the CDs and DVDs that I have decided to part with.
Overall, the move is already starting to feel like it paid off, though I think I need my bike back to get back into the commuting groove to see how I feel about the new bike route. (There's quite a steep hill, and unfortunately it is downhill in the morning and uphill in the evening, when it would be far better if that were reversed.) I guess you can't have everything...
On a more serious note, I probably will be glad down the road that we are at a higher elevation, not that I am really expecting Lake Ontario to rise by several feet. What is of more interest is whether they actually do build a subway or GO Rail station right around Gerrard Square. While this might come to pass, it won't be soon enough to actually improve my work commute, as I will probably have retired by the time any such station opens.
Update 2 (6/30): After a somewhat frustrating evening (boo to Staples.ca and their incompetent employees with a special shout-out to my incredibly selfish, former neighbour), I have officially emptied out the old house, leaving only one broom. My wife will do one last pass tomorrow to ensure I didn't miss anything and bring the broom back. We'll drop off the keys in the evening. Hard to believe we are finally done...
It kind of looks like the rain may finally be over for the weekend. That would be nice. I had the idea of stapling up a tarp on the underside of the deck so that there was some outdoor storage space for the chairs, the movers, the bikes, etc. During the winter it can come in, but it would be nice to leave it outside the rest of the time. In general, it seems to be working, but there are a few places where the water pooled and I wasn't able to channel the water out (so far). So the execution needs a bit more work. It would have been a lot better to test this on a day with a gentle rain, and not the near deluge we just had.
I've managed to put up 3 posters (and one other one is out of harm's way being framed professionally up the street). I got all the art books back up on their respective shelves, and things are much less chaotic. However, I need to get twine to tie down all the empty boxes, as at the moment, it does look like an episode of hoarders down in the basement. (That was my wife's contribution. On the other hand, she somewhat grudgingly admitted that if we had moved on the 27th, which was her original preferred date, then we would have been up a creek without a paddle.)
I actually did find La Dolce Vita in a box this morning, though Do the Right Thing is still proving elusive. I'd definitely like to get the majority of the fiction/drama/poetry up on the shelves tonight, but I may have just a bit too many other obligations. And then I need to work on the basement. I guess we'll see how it all goes.
Update (6/29): I spent about 3 hours at the old place and think I have gotten it in pretty good shape. Everything to be moved is on one floor (the main floor). It looks like about one last car trip to move over here. Everything has been swept up, though it probably wouldn't hurt to have a professional team go through the place. Far too much work for us to do that, however. My allergies have been acting up like crazy and I don't feel all that well. I wonder if it is a combination of really high levels of pollen plus inhaling dust while doing the cleaning/sorting at the old place. I didn't get quite as far as I wanted unpacking books here, but I got through two boxes. Nonetheless, all the main furniture is finally in place, and we have a pretty good sense of how things will look. It's very snug, but I think it will work out ok. I do need to find a place to sell off the CDs and DVDs that I have decided to part with.
Overall, the move is already starting to feel like it paid off, though I think I need my bike back to get back into the commuting groove to see how I feel about the new bike route. (There's quite a steep hill, and unfortunately it is downhill in the morning and uphill in the evening, when it would be far better if that were reversed.) I guess you can't have everything...
On a more serious note, I probably will be glad down the road that we are at a higher elevation, not that I am really expecting Lake Ontario to rise by several feet. What is of more interest is whether they actually do build a subway or GO Rail station right around Gerrard Square. While this might come to pass, it won't be soon enough to actually improve my work commute, as I will probably have retired by the time any such station opens.
Update 2 (6/30): After a somewhat frustrating evening (boo to Staples.ca and their incompetent employees with a special shout-out to my incredibly selfish, former neighbour), I have officially emptied out the old house, leaving only one broom. My wife will do one last pass tomorrow to ensure I didn't miss anything and bring the broom back. We'll drop off the keys in the evening. Hard to believe we are finally done...
Saturday, June 27, 2015
The Move - Day 6
Work hasn't really let up (not that I expected it to) and I have found that I don't have much energy to unpack in the evenings. In fact, I came pretty close to collapsing from exhaustion on Thurs., and ultimately I slept in (just a bit) and worked from home. However, I really was working, not lazing around. I've been in almost non-stop phone calls over the past two days, all related to technical matters, which means that I couldn't zone out.
I have done a fair bit of straightening out of the old house, and today I think I will rent a bigger car and get the last of the stuff over here (the bikes, the paintings and a few last random boxes). I'll probably take the opportunity to drive over to Canadian Tire and get a replacement wardrobe (unless my wife decides she can live with one without doors!).
I really ought to see if I can staple up this tarp before it starts raining, but I think that window has passed, and I'll just have to work in the rain (after I return the car).
Anyway, I did take advantage of the fact that the books aren't up on the shelves to arrange the CDs and DVDs that lie behind them on the shelves. This is probably the most organized they have ever been. I actually took the time to generate a spreadsheet-based key to locating where certain things were. This may not actually inspire me to watch the silly things (rather than just hoard them), but it will probably help a bit. It looks like I have turned up all the key DVDs, aside from Fellini's La Dolce Vita (which I pulled after hearing of the death of Anita Ekberg back in January, but then never got around to watching!) and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
I will need to figure out what to do with the overflow CDs. I'm planning on putting up one more shelf in the back room, and anything that can't fit on that will have to be sold off (ideally) or go into deep storage in the basement (the more likely outcome).
I do think this evening I can make significant progress in unpacking the art books, but then I will need to spend at least some time Sunday catching up with work-related tasks. I think my biggest headache right now is that the people who said they would take the shed and the spare file cabinet are starting to flake out on me. Truly, I never had this much trouble giving things away (or just charging a nominal fee in the case of the shed) when I was in Chicago.
I have done a fair bit of straightening out of the old house, and today I think I will rent a bigger car and get the last of the stuff over here (the bikes, the paintings and a few last random boxes). I'll probably take the opportunity to drive over to Canadian Tire and get a replacement wardrobe (unless my wife decides she can live with one without doors!).
I really ought to see if I can staple up this tarp before it starts raining, but I think that window has passed, and I'll just have to work in the rain (after I return the car).
Anyway, I did take advantage of the fact that the books aren't up on the shelves to arrange the CDs and DVDs that lie behind them on the shelves. This is probably the most organized they have ever been. I actually took the time to generate a spreadsheet-based key to locating where certain things were. This may not actually inspire me to watch the silly things (rather than just hoard them), but it will probably help a bit. It looks like I have turned up all the key DVDs, aside from Fellini's La Dolce Vita (which I pulled after hearing of the death of Anita Ekberg back in January, but then never got around to watching!) and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
I will need to figure out what to do with the overflow CDs. I'm planning on putting up one more shelf in the back room, and anything that can't fit on that will have to be sold off (ideally) or go into deep storage in the basement (the more likely outcome).
I do think this evening I can make significant progress in unpacking the art books, but then I will need to spend at least some time Sunday catching up with work-related tasks. I think my biggest headache right now is that the people who said they would take the shed and the spare file cabinet are starting to flake out on me. Truly, I never had this much trouble giving things away (or just charging a nominal fee in the case of the shed) when I was in Chicago.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Medium-to-long term events: 2015-16 season and beyond
I've sort of let this slip, though most of the events are slated for the fall or after. While I could simply list the upcoming seasons of the various companies, as I already intimated I don't really think there is a single company where I feel so in tune with their season's offerings that I will be subscribing, compared to this past season where I subscribed to both Soulpepper and Tarragon. If I was going to subscribe at all, it would probably be to Remy Bummpo, which is a Chicago-based company! I actually came close to subscribing to Tafelmusik, but their exchange policy was stupid and unworkable for someone like me who sometimes has to travel for work on short notice. I will say the Amici Chamber Ensemble season looks good, though I am torn between seeing three shows where it might be worth subscribing or just two where it wouldn't. Given the shows are all Sunday matinees, I shouldn't be forced to have to skip one due to work. I think for now, I'll just list the two shows I am most likely to make.
Anyway, this is very much a work in progress, and I expect to add -- and occasionally subtract -- concerts and shows, as I get more information. It's more to keep this straight in my own head, though anyone else is welcome to join me on one of these outings.
June - Sept The Comedy of Errors Bard on the Beach (Vancouver) Apparently, this steampunk flavoured production has already opened, but it should still be running when I make a work trip out to Vancouver in September. I should be able to adjust the dates of my trip to make sure I see it. Now the bigger question is whether I really want to see it again, as I will have just seen it in High Park in July or August. I'm not sure of that, but I am leaning towards going again, since the concept seems intriguing. Still, I will scan the reviews a bit closer to the time I have to decide. Bard on the Beach is also doing Love's Labour's Lost, which I will see at Stratford this summer, but that one I will probably skip.
July-early August The Creation of the World by Arthur Miller 9th Hour Theatre (Ottawa) Now this is interesting, and might merit a trip to Ottawa, though I have to say the summer is already looking kind of booked up.
July-August A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally Eclipse (Chicago) I had actually kind of forgotten about this play running in the late summer, but I may make an effort to go see it. Of course, now if I add that and Lookingglass's Moby Dick, I probably can't make all the shows during my very short stay in Chicago. This is a show that had a relatively long run in Manhattan while I was just starting to explore the city and Greenwich Village in particular. I sometimes regret skipping the show at that time, though it's a relatively minor regret, as these things go.
Sept. Yours Forever Marie-Lou by Michel Tremblay Soulpepper (Toronto) I already have my tickets for this, though I may try to switch dates as it overlaps with Nuit Blanche. No idea what Soulpepper is thinking about doing in 2016, but I'll probably check out at least a show or two.
Sept. Antigone (adapted by Jean Anouilh) Alumnae Theatre (Toronto) I've been reading a bit of Anouilh recently and I might see about making this production. (Someone just pitched it at the SFYS and made it sound worth checking out.)
Sept-Oct We the Family by George F. Walker Hart House (Toronto) Somehow I missed that this was a brand new play by Walker. I'm definitely going. It turns out that Walker is going to be giving a talk at UT, though I suspect I won't be able to go -- it would require leaving work at 3:15 or so.
early Oct. Musik Mania concert by Tafelmusik
Oct Love and Information by Caryl Churchill Remy Bummpo (Chicago) (We came close to making this trip, but it just seemed too much money, particularly for a play that is more clever/cerebral than truly earth-shattering. There are hints that Canadian Stage will tackle it in the 2016-17 season. Fingers crossed.)
late Oct Beckett Trilogy at Canadian Stage (This replaces something that wasn't nearly as interesting to me. I'm sure I've seen these 3 all performed in various combinations, but I'll go again anyway. Tickets are getting scarce though, so I'll probably book tomorrow.)
late Oct-early Nov Wonder of the World by David Lindsay-Abaire East Side Players (Toronto)
Nov Hamlet by Shakespeare Hart House (Toronto) I will probably pass on this, expecting to be Hamletted-out by the fall. (I'll almost certainly see two productions this summer!)
Nov. Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde George Brown (@ Soulpepper's theatre). I've actually never seen this, and it's probably time I did.
Nov 25 Shostakovich Symphony 10 The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal takes over Roy Thompson Hall from the TSO and puts on perhaps the most rewarding show of the season. While I really do like Toronto and its art scene, I often wish we could swap symphonies with Montreal...
late Nov-Dec. The Castle by Howard Barker RedOne (Toronto) While RedOne has an extremely ambitious line-up for the fall, this is the first one that I am likely to go to, though perhaps if I get a bit more integrated back into their community through Sing-for-Your-Supper, I might go to a few more of the shows.
Dec. 4 Lowest of the Low - Horseshoe Tavern (Toronto). I guess this is one of those occasional reunion shows. I never saw them live in the 90s when they were reasonably big here in Toronto, so I might go. I work fairly close to the Horseshoe Tavern, which is also a positive factor.
Dec Incident at Vichy Redtwist (Chicago) I'm sure I won't make it, but I am keeping my eye out for future productions of this and A View from the Bridge, which will complete my goal of seeing all the major Arthur Miller plays live at least once. But as it turns out Soulpepper will do this.
Dec The Chasse Galerie RedOne (Toronto). Inspired by the legend of a flying canoe paddled by men who had made a deal with the devil, this is supposed to be a bit of an anti-holiday show to close out the year. Sounds intriguing.
mid Jan. Remount of 3 Men in a Boat Factory Theatre (Toronto). This is part of WinterFringe. I might see one or two others, since I work fairly close to Factory Theatre.
Jan. 24 2016 Ludwig concert by Amici (Toronto)
Feb 2016 Mustard by Kat Sandler Tarragon (Toronto) This actually sounds inspired by/lifted from Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade, so I am not entirely sure I will go, but I might if reviews are good.
Feb 2016 Les Belles Soeurs by Tremblay (Peterborough) I just found out about this show (which is the last major Tremblay play I am really itching to see), and it is more or less in my backyard, and there is not that much going on in February. So fingers crossed that the weather is cooperative and I can rent a car and drive out or worst case take the bus (there is apparently no commuter rail service from Toronto to Peterborough). Ideally, I will be able to go to a Sat. matinee (Feb. 7 or 13) and also check out the Art Gallery of Peterborough, which has apparently just returned to its main space after they made extensive repairs/renovations.
Feb 28 2016 Jazz concert by Amici (Toronto)
It turns out there is a conflict with Goodnight Desdemona playing at the same time. While I suspect that the production in Calgary is going to be more polished, it is just far more likely that I can get to this one (only takes a $20 Megabus return ticket to St. Catherine's). And while I am just trying to justify a decision I have basically already made, the main feature of this Amici concert is Darius Milhaud's La Création du Monde is a reduced version for piano and string quartet, and I think it would sound better with full orchestra. As it happens, however, there is an excellent opportunity to hear both versions, if you turn to March 31.
early March Boeing Boeing by Marc Camoletti Hart House (Toronto) A bit of a trifle, but I'd much rather see this at student production rates than the quite pricey tickets for the Vancouver production last year.
mid March-April The Crowd by George F. Walker (Studio 58 at Langara College, Vancouver). When does George Walker ever rest. He's had something like 4 new plays produced in the last 2 years. I've managed to catch 3 of them (and am now kicking myself for not going to see more of the Suburban Motel series when I had the chance). This is the 4th -- a world premiere at Langara College, just down the street from where we used to live. I suspect it will make it over to Toronto fairly soon, but I should be doing some work in Vancouver in 2016, and if there is travel involved, I'll see if I can arrange it so I fly out towards the end of March.
March 31, 2016 Esprit Orchestra, Koerner Hall (Toronto) Milhaud La Création du Monde. I just learned about this, and think I will go to it rather than the Amici version, though both will surely be interesting. I've probably heard Milhaud's piece live before, but it would take a lot of searching to confirm.
March-April 2016 The Life of Galileo by Brecht Remy Bummpo (Chicago) -- I've wanted to see this for a long time, and I'm sure I would find this a solid production, but is it really worth the time/cost of traveling to Chicago?
April 14, 2016 Steve Reich at 80 concert (Soundstreams @ Massey Hall, Toronto) This is one show I probably ought to book soon, as I do think it will sell out.
April The Beaux Stratagem by George Farquhar George Brown (@ Soulpepper's theatre). I did consider checking this out at Stratford in 2014, though that year I went to Lear and Lear only. It will be good to see a second time, particularly at the slightly lower rates of a student production. Though what I am really hoping to see (and George Brown is probably the most likely to put it on) is Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. The most recent time this has been fully staged in Toronto is 2009. I'm also hoping they do some of the Thomas Middleton plays I've not seen produced.
April 2016 August: Osage County by Tracy Letts Alumnae Theatre (Toronto) This is a production I will encourage others to see, but I will be skipping myself, as I saw the original Steppenwolf production and just don't want to get the two blurred, which occasionally happens to me.
April 2016 Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph Pacific Theatre (Vancouver) This is actually a remount of the production that was playing last summer, and I just could not make it due to packing woes (and the fact that my movers turned up a day late!). Unlikely that I will make it, but if it works out, then I'll try to go.
April 2016 Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar (Toronto) This is just about the only thing I am likely to see at Mirvish this next season. I'm just not a fan of the type of show they bring in to town. What is also somewhat interesting is that the same top tier of relatively new shows are playing in Chicago and Toronto and occasionally Vancouver. It happened with Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike and The Other Place, and now it is happening with Disgraced. I guess it's a good thing for audiences in each city, but it lends to the impression that the theatre world is a bit insular and always focused on the same authors and hot plays.
May 1-4 {Denver} I hope to be in Denver a few days at a TRB conference. I'll try to sneak back over to the Clyfford Still Museum and see if there are any plays or concerts going on at that time.
mid May Tales of Two Cities concert by Tafelmusik
May Instructions to any Future Socialist Government Proposing to Abolish Christmas, Coal Mine (Toronto) I'll have to see exactly what this is about, but it sounds at first glance like something I would like.
May The Summoned by Fabrizio Filippo Tarragon (Toronto) I will probably pass on this one, which is a SF fable about a man who puts his brain into a computer, unless the reviews are truly outstanding. This strikes me as something one could explore in a 10-15 minute skit and a full length play is just overkill.
May 2016 Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Ann-Marie MacDonald The Shakespeare Company (Calgary). I probably won't be able to make this performance, just as I just missed a strong production at Hart House in 2014 and a staged reading or something in New Westminster, but we do have an office in Calgary, so never say never. I'm sure I will eventually get to see this play. If it was a summer production, I would probably make 2016 the year that we visit Calgary and Drumheller and perhaps Banff, but I can't fit that much into the one or two days the kids are likely to have off from school next May.
late Spring 2016 Video Cabaret -- they have not totally settled on the show for next season but were leaning towards a remount of The Great War, which seems like it might have just a bit in common with the last season of Blackadder. The following season, they were hoping to have a blow-out bash of 5 to 7 shows, since 2017 is the sesquicentennial anniversary of Canada's Confederation in 1867. Expect lots of history shows on tv and so forth. Anyway, this will be quite an exciting opportunity to catch several of the shows in Hollingsworth's History of the Village of the Small Huts history cycle.
May-June Wasserstein - The Heidi Chronicles Soulpepper (Toronto)
May-June Arthur Miller Incident at Vichy Soulpepper (Toronto) -- finally!
July-August Lori-Parks Father Comes Home From the Wars Soulpepper (Toronto)
Update (8/7) It now looks as though the turmoil at TransLink is terminal, and I won't be going to Vancouver in September after all. Too bad, though I enjoyed the production of Comedy of Errors in High Park quite a bit (almost but not quite enough to go a second time).
I did make it to the Arthur Miller play in Ottawa. It was interesting, though not as good as Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, which is sort of the same thing -- a revisiting of Genesis with a particular focus on Cain and Abel. It also was not as professional a production as I expected. I don't regret going up to Ottawa, but it didn't quite match my expectations.
All of the Halcyon shows this season look at least a bit interesting, though I doubt I will be in Chicago to catch any of them. If I could only make one, it would probably be Dreams of the Penny Gods by Callie Kimball, which will be showing next March-April. (Well, that does line up with the Galileo play. Hmmm.)
Update (11/8) They have confirmed that Video Cabaret will be doing The Great War, but more exciting is that Soulpepper is doing Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy.
Anyway, this is very much a work in progress, and I expect to add -- and occasionally subtract -- concerts and shows, as I get more information. It's more to keep this straight in my own head, though anyone else is welcome to join me on one of these outings.
June - Sept The Comedy of Errors Bard on the Beach (Vancouver) Apparently, this steampunk flavoured production has already opened, but it should still be running when I make a work trip out to Vancouver in September. I should be able to adjust the dates of my trip to make sure I see it. Now the bigger question is whether I really want to see it again, as I will have just seen it in High Park in July or August. I'm not sure of that, but I am leaning towards going again, since the concept seems intriguing. Still, I will scan the reviews a bit closer to the time I have to decide. Bard on the Beach is also doing Love's Labour's Lost, which I will see at Stratford this summer, but that one I will probably skip.
July-early August The Creation of the World by Arthur Miller 9th Hour Theatre (Ottawa) Now this is interesting, and might merit a trip to Ottawa, though I have to say the summer is already looking kind of booked up.
July-August A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally Eclipse (Chicago) I had actually kind of forgotten about this play running in the late summer, but I may make an effort to go see it. Of course, now if I add that and Lookingglass's Moby Dick, I probably can't make all the shows during my very short stay in Chicago. This is a show that had a relatively long run in Manhattan while I was just starting to explore the city and Greenwich Village in particular. I sometimes regret skipping the show at that time, though it's a relatively minor regret, as these things go.
Sept. Yours Forever Marie-Lou by Michel Tremblay Soulpepper (Toronto) I already have my tickets for this, though I may try to switch dates as it overlaps with Nuit Blanche. No idea what Soulpepper is thinking about doing in 2016, but I'll probably check out at least a show or two.
Sept. Antigone (adapted by Jean Anouilh) Alumnae Theatre (Toronto) I've been reading a bit of Anouilh recently and I might see about making this production. (Someone just pitched it at the SFYS and made it sound worth checking out.)
Sept-Oct We the Family by George F. Walker Hart House (Toronto) Somehow I missed that this was a brand new play by Walker. I'm definitely going. It turns out that Walker is going to be giving a talk at UT, though I suspect I won't be able to go -- it would require leaving work at 3:15 or so.
early Oct. Musik Mania concert by Tafelmusik
Oct Love and Information by Caryl Churchill Remy Bummpo (Chicago) (We came close to making this trip, but it just seemed too much money, particularly for a play that is more clever/cerebral than truly earth-shattering. There are hints that Canadian Stage will tackle it in the 2016-17 season. Fingers crossed.)
late Oct Beckett Trilogy at Canadian Stage (This replaces something that wasn't nearly as interesting to me. I'm sure I've seen these 3 all performed in various combinations, but I'll go again anyway. Tickets are getting scarce though, so I'll probably book tomorrow.)
late Oct-early Nov Wonder of the World by David Lindsay-Abaire East Side Players (Toronto)
Nov Hamlet by Shakespeare Hart House (Toronto) I will probably pass on this, expecting to be Hamletted-out by the fall. (I'll almost certainly see two productions this summer!)
Nov. Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde George Brown (@ Soulpepper's theatre). I've actually never seen this, and it's probably time I did.
Nov 25 Shostakovich Symphony 10 The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal takes over Roy Thompson Hall from the TSO and puts on perhaps the most rewarding show of the season. While I really do like Toronto and its art scene, I often wish we could swap symphonies with Montreal...
late Nov-Dec. The Castle by Howard Barker RedOne (Toronto) While RedOne has an extremely ambitious line-up for the fall, this is the first one that I am likely to go to, though perhaps if I get a bit more integrated back into their community through Sing-for-Your-Supper, I might go to a few more of the shows.
Dec. 4 Lowest of the Low - Horseshoe Tavern (Toronto). I guess this is one of those occasional reunion shows. I never saw them live in the 90s when they were reasonably big here in Toronto, so I might go. I work fairly close to the Horseshoe Tavern, which is also a positive factor.
Dec Incident at Vichy Redtwist (Chicago) I'm sure I won't make it, but I am keeping my eye out for future productions of this and A View from the Bridge, which will complete my goal of seeing all the major Arthur Miller plays live at least once. But as it turns out Soulpepper will do this.
Dec The Chasse Galerie RedOne (Toronto). Inspired by the legend of a flying canoe paddled by men who had made a deal with the devil, this is supposed to be a bit of an anti-holiday show to close out the year. Sounds intriguing.
mid Jan. Remount of 3 Men in a Boat Factory Theatre (Toronto). This is part of WinterFringe. I might see one or two others, since I work fairly close to Factory Theatre.
Jan. 24 2016 Ludwig concert by Amici (Toronto)
Feb 2016 Mustard by Kat Sandler Tarragon (Toronto) This actually sounds inspired by/lifted from Noah Haidle's Mr. Marmalade, so I am not entirely sure I will go, but I might if reviews are good.
Feb 2016 Les Belles Soeurs by Tremblay (Peterborough) I just found out about this show (which is the last major Tremblay play I am really itching to see), and it is more or less in my backyard, and there is not that much going on in February. So fingers crossed that the weather is cooperative and I can rent a car and drive out or worst case take the bus (there is apparently no commuter rail service from Toronto to Peterborough). Ideally, I will be able to go to a Sat. matinee (Feb. 7 or 13) and also check out the Art Gallery of Peterborough, which has apparently just returned to its main space after they made extensive repairs/renovations.
Feb 28 2016 Jazz concert by Amici (Toronto)
It turns out there is a conflict with Goodnight Desdemona playing at the same time. While I suspect that the production in Calgary is going to be more polished, it is just far more likely that I can get to this one (only takes a $20 Megabus return ticket to St. Catherine's). And while I am just trying to justify a decision I have basically already made, the main feature of this Amici concert is Darius Milhaud's La Création du Monde is a reduced version for piano and string quartet, and I think it would sound better with full orchestra. As it happens, however, there is an excellent opportunity to hear both versions, if you turn to March 31.
early March Boeing Boeing by Marc Camoletti Hart House (Toronto) A bit of a trifle, but I'd much rather see this at student production rates than the quite pricey tickets for the Vancouver production last year.
mid March-April The Crowd by George F. Walker (Studio 58 at Langara College, Vancouver). When does George Walker ever rest. He's had something like 4 new plays produced in the last 2 years. I've managed to catch 3 of them (and am now kicking myself for not going to see more of the Suburban Motel series when I had the chance). This is the 4th -- a world premiere at Langara College, just down the street from where we used to live. I suspect it will make it over to Toronto fairly soon, but I should be doing some work in Vancouver in 2016, and if there is travel involved, I'll see if I can arrange it so I fly out towards the end of March.
March 31, 2016 Esprit Orchestra, Koerner Hall (Toronto) Milhaud La Création du Monde. I just learned about this, and think I will go to it rather than the Amici version, though both will surely be interesting. I've probably heard Milhaud's piece live before, but it would take a lot of searching to confirm.
March-April 2016 The Life of Galileo by Brecht Remy Bummpo (Chicago) -- I've wanted to see this for a long time, and I'm sure I would find this a solid production, but is it really worth the time/cost of traveling to Chicago?
April 14, 2016 Steve Reich at 80 concert (Soundstreams @ Massey Hall, Toronto) This is one show I probably ought to book soon, as I do think it will sell out.
April The Beaux Stratagem by George Farquhar George Brown (@ Soulpepper's theatre). I did consider checking this out at Stratford in 2014, though that year I went to Lear and Lear only. It will be good to see a second time, particularly at the slightly lower rates of a student production. Though what I am really hoping to see (and George Brown is probably the most likely to put it on) is Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. The most recent time this has been fully staged in Toronto is 2009. I'm also hoping they do some of the Thomas Middleton plays I've not seen produced.
April 2016 August: Osage County by Tracy Letts Alumnae Theatre (Toronto) This is a production I will encourage others to see, but I will be skipping myself, as I saw the original Steppenwolf production and just don't want to get the two blurred, which occasionally happens to me.
April 2016 Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph Pacific Theatre (Vancouver) This is actually a remount of the production that was playing last summer, and I just could not make it due to packing woes (and the fact that my movers turned up a day late!). Unlikely that I will make it, but if it works out, then I'll try to go.
April 2016 Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar (Toronto) This is just about the only thing I am likely to see at Mirvish this next season. I'm just not a fan of the type of show they bring in to town. What is also somewhat interesting is that the same top tier of relatively new shows are playing in Chicago and Toronto and occasionally Vancouver. It happened with Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike and The Other Place, and now it is happening with Disgraced. I guess it's a good thing for audiences in each city, but it lends to the impression that the theatre world is a bit insular and always focused on the same authors and hot plays.
May 1-4 {Denver} I hope to be in Denver a few days at a TRB conference. I'll try to sneak back over to the Clyfford Still Museum and see if there are any plays or concerts going on at that time.
mid May Tales of Two Cities concert by Tafelmusik
May Instructions to any Future Socialist Government Proposing to Abolish Christmas, Coal Mine (Toronto) I'll have to see exactly what this is about, but it sounds at first glance like something I would like.
May The Summoned by Fabrizio Filippo Tarragon (Toronto) I will probably pass on this one, which is a SF fable about a man who puts his brain into a computer, unless the reviews are truly outstanding. This strikes me as something one could explore in a 10-15 minute skit and a full length play is just overkill.
May 2016 Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by Ann-Marie MacDonald The Shakespeare Company (Calgary). I probably won't be able to make this performance, just as I just missed a strong production at Hart House in 2014 and a staged reading or something in New Westminster, but we do have an office in Calgary, so never say never. I'm sure I will eventually get to see this play. If it was a summer production, I would probably make 2016 the year that we visit Calgary and Drumheller and perhaps Banff, but I can't fit that much into the one or two days the kids are likely to have off from school next May.
late Spring 2016 Video Cabaret -- they have not totally settled on the show for next season but were leaning towards a remount of The Great War, which seems like it might have just a bit in common with the last season of Blackadder. The following season, they were hoping to have a blow-out bash of 5 to 7 shows, since 2017 is the sesquicentennial anniversary of Canada's Confederation in 1867. Expect lots of history shows on tv and so forth. Anyway, this will be quite an exciting opportunity to catch several of the shows in Hollingsworth's History of the Village of the Small Huts history cycle.
May-June Wasserstein - The Heidi Chronicles Soulpepper (Toronto)
May-June Arthur Miller Incident at Vichy Soulpepper (Toronto) -- finally!
July-August Lori-Parks Father Comes Home From the Wars Soulpepper (Toronto)
Update (8/7) It now looks as though the turmoil at TransLink is terminal, and I won't be going to Vancouver in September after all. Too bad, though I enjoyed the production of Comedy of Errors in High Park quite a bit (almost but not quite enough to go a second time).
I did make it to the Arthur Miller play in Ottawa. It was interesting, though not as good as Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, which is sort of the same thing -- a revisiting of Genesis with a particular focus on Cain and Abel. It also was not as professional a production as I expected. I don't regret going up to Ottawa, but it didn't quite match my expectations.
All of the Halcyon shows this season look at least a bit interesting, though I doubt I will be in Chicago to catch any of them. If I could only make one, it would probably be Dreams of the Penny Gods by Callie Kimball, which will be showing next March-April. (Well, that does line up with the Galileo play. Hmmm.)
Update (11/8) They have confirmed that Video Cabaret will be doing The Great War, but more exciting is that Soulpepper is doing Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy.
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