15th Canadian Challenge - 10th Review - The Box Garden

It appears that I have read this novel out of order.  The Box Garden was Carol Shields's 2nd novel, but shares several characters with Small Ceremonies, her first novel.  As far as I can tell, Small Ceremonies is a somewhat lighter affair and occurs a bit earlier in Judith's life.  It seems Shields decided to round out the family by introducing Charleen, Judith's wayward sister (who lives out in Vancouver) and came up with an interesting wrinkle to bring the sisters back together, namely to attend the 2nd wedding of their mother!  (As their mother is a fairly cantankerous woman who complains endlessly about the state of the world and her neighbours,* it is more than a little surprising that, Louis, her intended puts up with her.)  At any rate, while The Box Garden isn't exactly a darkly comic novel, it does seem a bit weightier than Small Ceremonies, and I probably should have read them in the correct sequence.  

In general, I enjoyed the novel though I found the sisters' mother totally exasperating.  I think rather than going into spoiler warnings, I'll just keep things vague.  There was one plot twist that I found pretty unconvincing and another plot point sort of played for laughs in the end that reads very differently now (over 40 years later).  I also wasn't completely sold on the last few pages which were essentially overheard dialogue at the wedding (rather than reporting events from Charleen's perspective, which is how the vast majority of the novel is written).  It was just a bit jarring. 

What I did like were some of Charleen's thoughts on the difficulty of being kind when that wasn't how one was raised, as well as how sometimes people (like her mother) get another chance at life (and love) even if they aren't particularly open to either.  Charleen takes a generous view of most people's actions rather than always thinking the worst of others (like her mother), which is something I am ok at on my (rare) good days and struggle with the rest of the time.  I found it a bit wry that the box garden of the title is for growing grass and not flowers or anything more decorative.  This novel isn't as good as The Stone Diaries or Unless, but it is a early example of her style.  I'm sort of still processing that Small Ceremonies and The Box Garden were written in her very early 40s, so she had a reasonably late start as a novelist.

* One thing that probably does deserve mention is that Charleen's mother was quite contemptuous of her neighbours even when they were mostly Scottish and Irish families (like herself), but they almost all moved away and non-white neighbours moved in (the sort that Catherine Hernandez writes about), and her mother keeps to herself even more.  If this was a feel-good story then one of the new neighbours would have broken through the shell of her reserve, but that did not happen, though I would not be surprised if her new husband ends up being a bit more outgoing and friendly with the neighbours.

Bucket List Books

I think there are essentially two ways of generating a bucket list of books, both equally valid.  First, what are the books I would really like to make sure I read at least once before I shuffle off this mortal coil?  Second, if I knew or merely thought I only had six months left to live, which books would I choose to read?  There is some but only a relatively small amount of overlap between the two, as with the second list, I would probably mostly focus on rereading some of my favourites, including likely all of the books on these lists here and here (possibly dropping Crime and Punishment and Fathers and Sons, which I've reread recently).  Though I suspect I might end up doing more travel to Europe (depending just how sick I really was in the meantime) and watching a lot of 80s flicks and binge-watching Red Dwarf and Futurama, and reading might fall relatively low on my list of priorities.  It's hard to say.

Anyway, while this is definitely only a very partial list, subject to vast changes as the mood takes me, here are the books (as of today) that would be on the first list, and I will add a star if they would also be on the second list.  Of course, if I get through all or most of these books, I will likely wrap up this list from 2016.

* Jane Austen Mansfield Park ✓
Jane Austen Emma (I actually knew a professor who was holding off on reading this to have one 'perfect' Austen book to save for his retirement, which seems more than a little pretentious)
* Angela Carter everything save for Nights at the Circus which I have read
Celine Death on the Installment Plan ✓
Desani All About H. Hatterr ✓
Dickens David Copperfield
Doblin Berlin Alexanderplatz
Fante The Bandini Quartet ✓
Fontane Effi Briest ✓
Fuentes Terra Nostra
Grossman Stalingrad & Life and Fate †
Hardy Jude the Obscure
* Koestler Darkness at Noon
* Lucretius On the Nature of Things
Mann Buddenbrooks
Murakami Kafka on the Shore
Narayan The Vendor of Sweets & The Painter of Signs
* Flannery O'Connor everything save for Wise Blood, which I recently read
* Perec Life A User's Manual ✓
Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
Trollope He Knew He Was Right
Waugh Vile Bodies & Brideshead Revisited
Eudora Welty everything save for The Golden Apples, which I read in university
Maritta Wolff Whistle Stop & Night Shift

In terms of the six month list, I might lean a bit towards shorter books that reflect on mortality, including Waugh's The Loved One and rereading Ford's The Good Soldier and Platonov's Happy Moscow.  I would certainly try to reread all of Donald Barthelme's short stories and most of Raymond Carver's and Kafka's, plus Borges and the core Calvino.  I suspect I would reread Joyce's Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  I might have to pass on a third time through Ulysses, as well as rereading Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, just because they are both a bit too long.  I probably would reread The Great Gatsby, Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, Morrison's Song of Solomon and maybe Zelazny's Roadmarks, all of which are reasonably short.  I'd like to squeeze in another pass through Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, though I don't know that I would find the time.  In any remaining time, I would be squeezing in the core poets: Ted Berrigan, John Berryman, Paul Blackburn, Jim Harrison, Jane Kenyon, Faye Kicknosway, August Kleinzahler, Philip Levine, Audre Lorde, W. S. Merwin, Frank O'Hara, Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Charles Reznikoff, Anne Sexton, Karl Shapiro, Charles Simic and as many others as I possibly could.

I'm not going to completely distort my reading list(s) to accommodate all these books (though maybe I will move Perec up several slots), but the lists are slowly converging, and I can at least try to focus on books that I really want to read and less on books I just want out of the house.  There are a couple above that I should get to in the next month with a few more set to be crossed off by the fall.  I guess more than anything, I just need to keep plugging away and not get too morbid about it... 

† While I do hope to someday get to Tolstoy's War and Peace, the Grossman strikes me as generally more essential than War and Peace.  Anna Karenina, however, was definitely a bucket-list book, but I read that in 2013, right alongside with Madame Bovary.  I would consider rereading them both, though practically speaking Madame Bovary is a bit more realistic, perhaps pairing it with my first time through Effi Briest.

Think Twice, Post Once

Given that I am not in the business of hawking controversy to get views (not that I don't have a few posts that are pretty controversial, and perhaps one day I'll write a few posts that will really get the Twitter crowd going), I can take an extra day or two to decide if I really do want to post a quick-take on a topic, and the answer is generally no.  That said, I haven't really changed my opinion about how terrible things are going south of the border with an out-of-control, illegitimate Supreme Court.  It's more a question of what can progressives or even moderates do about it in a system that is deeply rigged against them.  My answer was to leave the game, though I am still waiting on my Canadian citizenship, and I happen to think that first-past-the-post is a terrible, terrible voting system, particularly in Canada or the UK where there are multiple parties though few that are actually that viable.  So I still haven't found the perfect place to live, that really reflects my values on a consistent basis, but Toronto is closer than most other places.

Anyway, I was going to go much further than that, basically name-checking all the people and groups that let me down, but decided it was childish and pointless.  I'm not in a much better mood right now, but I can try to focus on some of the better things that did happen this weekend (and ignore how frustrating dealing with Expedia was).

More or less at the last minute I decided to go see Among Men at Factory Theatre on Friday evening, as the reviews were quite good.  It is all about Milton Acorn and Al Purdy building an A-frame cabin north of Belleville and occasionally slagging off other poets.  Indeed, Acorn is the more skilled of the two when it comes to carpentry (he had a much more true working-class background) and Purdy indeed makes a mess of things when Acorn is away (at a poetry conference in Kingston) and neglects to measure twice before cutting -- which I am riffing on obviously...

On Saturday, I made it to the gym fairly early and then headed over to the AGO to see the new exhibit I Am Here.  While a lot of the exhibit focuses on home movies and photos, the second half mixes in several established artists working generally in the realm of "home."  I'm actually a bit surprised they didn't include anything by Carrie Mae Weems, as I think her images would have fit in quite well while shaking things up a bit.  It was a bit odd to see Mary Pratt's moose carcass painting, when they really should have put that on view in 2018 when she passed away.  I guess better late than never.  In any case, the second part of the exhibit had fairly established artists, though the connection to the larger show was a bit unclear.

I liked the Keith Haring subway drawing, and I don't think the Basquiats made it into the big Basquiat show in 2015, though I may be wrong.

Keith Haring, Untitled (subway drawing), 1982-5

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Open 24 Hours), 1986

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Goldtooth), 1986

I definitely have not seen this mammoth David Hockney painting previously.

David Hockney, Santa Monica Boulevard, 1978-80

Overall it was a pretty interesting exhibit, and I imagine I'll swing by another time to check it out more leisurely.

Anyway, it has finally warmed up, and I spend some time outside reading.

Sunday, I did the groceries and then headed back downtown.  I ended up spending the rest of the morning struggling to rearrange my fairly complex travel arrangements.  I wonder if Expedia will end up blocking me for a while, given that I cancelled and rebooked so many flights and hotels.  It certainly wasn't the way I wanted to spend the day, that's for sure.

I saw a classical concert at 3 over at Koerner Hall, which was nice but a little too soothing (all the pieces were piano/cello duets) and I came very close to falling asleep at several points, though the last piece by Shostakovich was a bit more lively.

In the evening, I was finally able to wrap up Arlt's The Flamethrowers.  It is pretty bleak and maybe not quite as polished as The Seven Madmen, but it's definitely a continuation of the first book, so I don't quite get why it was so hard to translate the second half of the book.  I doubt very much I'll ever read it again, but there is enough water damage that a used bookstore won't take it.  I guess it will go out in front fairly soon.

I also managed to watch the rest of Almodovar's Labyrinth of Passion, which is a very early, fairly trashy film in his oeuvre.  It was interesting.  The plot was quite convoluted but entertaining.

I probably could have forced myself to get over to the gym, but decided that was just too much.  I'll go swimming on Monday and then probably hit the gym on Tuesday.  But there will come a time fairly soon that I'll have to hold off from the gym so that I test negative before our trip to the States.  I'll write about that at a later date, as I really should get back to catching up on work now...

Reading in April

I just wrapped up Edmund White's short story collection Skinned Alive.  I'd say there is a distinct disadvantage in being a bit of a pioneer in that he spent so much time explaining the gay milieu to straights that I wasn't sure if I was reading fiction or essays by Margaret Mead.  I kid...  But there is definitely something very sad about the fact that the relatively few (privileged) homosexuals who made it to New York or SF (or possibly France) in the late 70s or early 80s and could live relatively open lives had their special society crushed by AIDS.  White almost never uses the term AIDS but uses other terms, mostly just indicating his characters had tested positive or negative.  While he is clear about the unfairness of it all (though still acknowledging some people continued having risky sex), he is much less angry (and political) than gay writers of  the next generation, such as Tony Kushner and certainly Larry Kramer. 

I have about 200 pages to go in Arlt's The Flamethrowers. I'm still annoyed that it got water-damaged but it is still readable.  I'm also a bit surprised that the two separate translators that tackled The Seven Madmen passed on The Flamethrowers!  So strange.  I should wrap this up in a few more days, esp. as I'll probably be taking the train a couple more times this week. 

I did reread Lamming's The Emigrants.  I had forgotten that over a third of the book was set on the voyage from the West Indies to England, and indeed the structure has some similarities with Ondaatje's The Cat's Table.  I didn't really understand why there was an unnamed first-person narrator who vanished for huge stretches of the book and seems to be absent from the 2nd and 3rd parts of the novel.  I generally found the characters pretty interchangeable, though maybe that was sort of the point to have a Greek chorus of sorts.  Anyway, I would say Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin is the stronger of the two.  I also managed to read Selvon's The Housing Lark, mostly on my phone!  I'll pause my reading of both for a while, but maybe over the summer I'll read Moses Migrating and Lamming's The Pleasures of Exile.

And I reread Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.  There were certainly several sections that made me laugh, especially the bit about the policeman warning the narrator about people becoming more like bicycles the more they ride them.  There was actually a Fringe comedy act called The Bicycle Men that must have been partially inspired by this, as they have a character who becomes part bicycle.  Incidentally, the best song from that show is on-line here.

I generally am pretty open to new poets, but I didn't care for Mary Jo Salter's Zoom Rooms, probably because so many of the poems rhymed, and specifically she seemed to be trying to channel Lord Byron's Don Juan over-the-top rhymes.  I really do need to work my way through a huge stack of new publications from Brick Books but that will have to wait.

My new reading list is shaping up, and after Arlt I think I'll read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (a classic I've never cracked), Celine's Journey to the End of Night, Fallis's Best Laid Plans (to lighten the mood), Beckett's Three Novels, David Lodge's Therapy (though apparently I should read Kierkegaard first, which I've been meaning to do but would be a really significant diversion).  Things get a little blurry after that but probably All About Hatterr, rereading Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy, Ford's Canada and Welty's The Robber Bridegroom (which is fairly short, which is a real selling point these days!).

Lots of Ups and Downs

It's somewhat odd that the past two Mondays have been so dreadful, weather-wise.  Two weeks ago, it was starting to rain and the temperature was dropping.  In addition, there was a massive snarl up on GO Rail (due to a strike at Union Station!) and the TTC was having a melt down as well.  Fortunately, I had biked in but wasn't sure whether I would bike home or not.  I decided to risk it, but got pretty wet.  Then the last 10 minutes or so it started snowing!  I was so disheartened.  I was supposed to go swimming or maybe to the gym, but in the end I could only drag myself out to buy some snacks, and then I went back home.

Last week, I had planned to just bike in and leave the bike and come back for it Tuesday.  But then the weather looked like the rain was going to hold off for another hour and be a gradual rain, so I risked it.  I was only a few blocks from the office when it just started pouring.  I got completely soaked, and what made it exceptionally bad was the rain was so heavy it got into my bike bag and damaged the corner of Arlt's The Flamethrowers, which indeed I only had with me in the first place as I thought I was taking the TTC home!  I was simply in no mood to go swimming after that!  It definitely didn't help that if I had waited another 40 minutes, the rain had calmed down to a Vancouver drizzle.  I mostly just sulked the rest of the night.

Those were probably the two low points, though I certainly didn't enjoy doing taxes as they were extremely complicated and I owed the US quite a bit.  I was able to use this to largely offset my Canadian taxes, however, and according to my figures the CRA owes me this year.  Now I am quite sure I'll be audited, as I am every year.  Anyway, I found out too late that I didn't fill in Schedule 2 for the IRS, not that this would have changed anything, but I'll see if they ask me to send it in.  I fortunately caught my Canadian return before I mailed it without Schedule 7, as that would have caused a lot of complications.  Anyway, tax season is over for me.

One other bummer is that one of my credit cards seems to be on the blink.  I guess if you use it too much, the chip can actually wear out!  Anyway, I've got a replacement being sent, but it's still annoying.

I was able to drop my bike off for repairs after the parts finally came in, but I had to hustle to make it in time, and I had no idea that Broadview was such an uphill obstacle course.  It took a long time for me to catch my breath and not feel like I was having a panic attack...

I've actually been out and about a fair bit.  Two weeks ago I saw a play* at Assembly Theatre and then Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba at Buddies in Bad Times.  Buddies was still doing the contract tracing program on top of vaccine passport, and unfortunately the staff were very inefficient, so that was a drag. The play itself has tragic moments, but I just don't think it counts as a classic tragedy, as the central character's flaws don't bring her down and indeed her iron grip on her household is just as tight at the end as it was in the beginning.

On Friday, I saw a great jazz show.  Joshua Redman came through with Christian McBride and Brian Blade!  Brad Mehldau was supposed to be there but was sick.  They found a very good replacement though: Gerald Clayton.  I've seen Redman two or three other times, including in Toronto just as he was beginning to break.  I've probably seen Christian McBride before but don't have any proof.  I do remember I thought the ticket price was too high to see him play at the Toronto Jazz Fest in a covered tent at City Hall so I passed.  Probably I should have gone.  This was the same night that Bruce Cockburn was playing Massey, and I do wish that one of these shows had been moved by a few days.  Oh well.

That Sunday I took my son to the TSO where they were doing an all-Russian program!  Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 performed by Jan Lisiecki, followed by Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.  It was very well done.

I didn't have nearly as much planned for this week, though I did switch a TSO concert from Thurs. to Wed. so I could see the early pre-concert concert.  They did Martinu's Revue du Cuisine, which was quite interesting (in my mind more satisfying than Martinu's The Rock, which was on the main stage).  I was mostly there to see Dvorak's New World Symphony, which I've seen many times and generally try not to miss when it is playing.

Anyway, somewhat at the last minute, I decided to go see a jazz set at Crow's Theatre.  Since there wasn't a show running at the theatre, they moved the time up to 9, though I think I would have preferred 8:30.  I read through one report during the first set, and then I stuck around for the 2nd set.  This decision was made easier because the band took a very, very short break.  During the 2nd set, I reread pages from my workplace comedy and eventually added another 2-3 pages.  I don't really have an outlet now that SFYS folded, but I should try to keep writing anyway.  I then went to the gym afterward!  I didn't get home under 1 am.  That is definitely the last I've worked out, though sometimes I start pretty early.

Sat. also at the last minute I decided to go see the Toronto Youth Orchestra because they were doing Prokofiev Symphony 5 (and the tickets were cheap).  I tried to convince my son to come, but he had too much homework.  I was also able to swing by a few art galleries: Bau-Xi and some tucked away in 401 Richmond.  The main downside was that someone stole my bike light while I was at the concert.  Grrr.  People suck.

Christine Dewancker, Material Flow, 2022

Suzanne Morrissette, granny, 2022

It was raining today, but I decided to bike over to Beach Cinema, as it is so close.  I ended up seeing The Lost City, which was pretty amusing.  It felt almost like a remake of Romancing the Stone.

Now I had planned on getting out to Hamilton today, but the strike is really disrupting GO Bus service, and it is very unclear if buses are going to run, or you have to get out to Port Credit first.  I find the whole situation upsetting, and I can't believe that Metrolinx doesn't seem to have a strategy in place to deal with this.  Even getting a court injunction saying that the strikers cannot block the bus terminal would be some kind of action.  Anyway, the exhibit I wanted to see at AGH has been extended through mid-August, so I should be able to figure out another time to go, hopefully after the strike has been settled or the strikers tossed in jail, whichever comes first.  And while it wasn't my major consideration, the Toronto marathon would also have messed up the buses, so it was just as well that I avoided downtown.

It's looking like a fair bit of rain in the forecast for this week, so that's not such a great start to the week, but I guess we'll see.

* I guess I shouldn't be too shocked, but I saw two actors I know reasonably well in two different plays.  Both had picked up quite a bit of weight.  I'd say I'm back to my pre-COVID weight, though around the time COVID hit, I had picked up some winter weight and I haven't lost that yet, but one battle at a time.

Edit (5/2) And I suppose nothing quite represented the up and down nature of the last two weeks like the Raptors.  They performed poorly in Game 1 and were decent but overmatched in Game 2.  They really should have won Game 3 but got unlucky.  Then they stormed back and were great in Games 4 and 5 and the first half of Game 6, but then the basketball gods turned on them and the Sixers just couldn't miss any 3 they jacked up and it all went downhill from there.  Apparently the Raptors totally wore out the Sixers center who will miss at least the first few games of the next round.  Indeed, if the Raptors had held it together and won Game 6, they very likely would have taken Game 7 as well.  But it was not to be, and now I won't have to spend any more mental energy on following the playoffs...