Some Book (Buying) Notes

I am trying, generally successfully, to not buy nearly as many books as I used to (and use the libraries more).  I did see a short while back that Jhumpa Lahiri has a new, short novel out called Whereabouts.  I found a fairly cheap copy on-line (with free shipping!) and ordered it.  I'm still waiting on that.  Of course, then a week later I dropped into BMV and found a copy that would have been a buck or two cheaper.  Not quite cheap enough to buy and put in my Little Free Library, however.  I guess if my copy is lost in the mail, I can go back soon and see if it is still there.

I did pick up a copy of Ralph Gustafson's Winter Prophecies, one of his last books.  I also found a signed edition of a different poetry collection, Configurations at Midnight, but with the shipping it was just better to have it sent to the States.

I tried to order a signed copy of one of Joy Williams's short story collections, but the bookseller asked for an extra $20 for shipping to Canada, which I thought was absurd.  Anyway, I may weaken at some point and order it but have it shipped to the States.  (I think what is holding me back is I am still smarting from the idea that I could have picked it up in person if I had made that trip to SF to see the Kronos Quartet...)

There was a bit of a mix-up with my recent order of P.K. Page's The Hidden Room where I had asked for signed copies.  This seemed pretty clear to me from the order, but apparently I should have been clearer with the bookseller.  Now he is going to send the correct order.  At the moment, he isn't asking for the original books back.  I feel badly though and will see if there is some way to return them* (that doesn't cost me too much).

Finally, the last book in this reading list is Koestler's Darkness at Noon.  I'm not entirely sure I have even owned a copy, though probably I did at some point.  Anyway, as I was investigating this, I saw that, quite amazingly, the original German version of Darkness at Noon had been discovered.  There were even a very few edits to the manuscript that hadn't made their way into the translation that Koestler's partner had made at that time, so the entire thing is now available in a updated translation.  Perhaps less incredible but still amusing, the cheapest version I could find was from an English-language bookstore in Tokyo, and this is now winging its way to me across the Pacific.  I'm blanking on it a bit, but there are a few other cases where the late translators can benefit from recent discoveries and generally late adopters (or rather readers) are better off.  I think the argument could be made for the recent Grossman translation of Don Quixote, the new Womack translation of Cela's The Hive (NYRB) and perhaps the Donougher translation of Hugo's Les Miserables.  On the other hand, I wasn't blown away with the more recent Kafka translations and will stick with the ones I grew up with.

* If the weather cooperates, we've agreed to meet up at Word on the Street at the end of the month, and I'll hand over the unsigned copies.

Edit (05/10): I haven't decided if I will update this page or maybe even pin it, but it is starting to feel a little long in the tooth.  I saw 5 upcoming books from NYRB that caught my eye, though I will try pretty hard just to borrow them and not buy them:
Stronghold by Dino Buzzati - a new translation of The Tartar Steppe apparently already out
Ariane, A Russian Girl by Claude Anet
The Limit by Rosalind Belben
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov
The Skin of Dreams by Raymond Queneau

I already read the Buzzati though in the earlier translation.  Still, I would probably consider reading it again.  I'm probably the most interested in the Platonov and the Queneau, though they won't be coming out until Jan. 2024.

Edit (05/18): I have been keeping Saba Sams's Send Nudes in my Amazon wishlist, but then not actually pulling the trigger.  I saw that I could get a fairly reasonably-priced copy from Blackwells.  I then went and did some digging into the reviews.  It is getting decent reviews but not that many raves.  Many of the stories are about young women craving sex, mostly from older men.  This storyline completely icks me out.  Recently, I barely forced myself to finish Mavis Gallant's "In the Tunnel," which was on these same lines.  I think I would still probably read it if it ever turns up in a library over here, but there is no point in buying it, as I would just be too frustrated over the foolish choices of these young women and girls.

TCAF 2023

I can't tell for certain, but I'm pretty sure I skipped TCAF last year when it was largely back to an in-person event though with some virtual components.  But I went this year on Sat. April 29.

I didn't have a lot of time to spend, as I had this sandwiched between My Neighbor Toroto (up at Yonge & Eglinton) and then the TSYO concert at Roy Thompson Hall.  Still, I had time to go around the lower level a couple of times and the upper level once.  I took one look at the line to get into the special room on the 2nd floor and decided to bail on that.  There wasn't anything particularly new or gripping at the NYRB Comics or Fantagraphics booths.

In the end, I only picked up a couple of short comics by OCAD students.  I didn't think the deals were all that great compared to previous years.  In most cases, the comics were selling at face value, and only in rare occasions was the artist around for signings.  In one case, that probably worked to my advantage.  Nick Maandag was supposed to be at his booth but was out wandering the floor when I dropped in.  I likely would have purchased The Follies of Richard Wadsworth or Harvey Knight's Odyssey and gotten them signed.  In the end, both were available from the library, and I borrowed them. As it turns out, neither is really my cup of tea.

I was also able to borrow Sean Ford's Only Skin: New Tales of the Slow Apocalypse.

In the end, I did order The Marchenoir Library by Alex Degen, which is a high-concept thing where the book consists of all the book covers of the adventures of Marchenoir, but then the actual plot of these books, i.e. the filling, is missing.  Some people like this sort of thing.  I may just find it exasperating.

I was able to borrow Degen's previous work: Soft X-Ray Mindhunters, which is similar in not really explaining what is going on and relying fairly heavily on the visual element.

It was a reasonably successful visit to TCAF, and I'll likely go next year to see what else is new in the world of comics.

Short Story Notes

I mentioned before that I now have read Mansfield's Selected Stories.  It turns out that by reading another 5 stories, I will also have read the entirety of The Garden Party, so I'll plan on getting to that soon.

I feel badly about having paused Alice Munro after I got roughly to the midpoint of her story collections.  The next one up is Open Secrets, but I don't think I will actually manage to crack it until the summer.  Still, I will see if I can elevate her back to one collection per season.  That would suggest I will have read everything of her by the end of 2024.

I've read a few individual stories by Mavis Gallant, but I don't think I've made it all the way through a collection.*  That will change soon.  Nonetheless, I find there is so much overlap between the various collections that it is really hard to know where to begin.  I probably should have started with The Cost of Living, which I incidentally do own, but I decided to start with the stories with more of a Canadian focus.

So the order in which I will attempt to read Gallant is:
Home Truths & Varieties of Exile** (there is a lot of overlap between the two)
The Cost of Living
Across the Bridge & The Pegnitz Junction
The Moslem Wife & Overhead in a Balloon
From the Fifteenth District & Paris Stories & The Other Paris
The End of the World & In Transit
Going Ashore (drawn almost entirely from uncollected stories)

And then her two novels - A Fairly Good Time & Green Water, Green Sky

While this certainly looks like a lot, there is quite a bit of overlap, as I mentioned.  After going through these various books, this completely covers The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant, though it may ultimately make more sense to read most of the stories in Collected Stories, since I do have this in hard copy. 

After I make good headway on this, I will plan on tackling Edna O'Brien and William Trevor.

* I blush to admit that not only have I already read The Moslem Wife, but I reviewed it!  No idea how that slipped my mind, but it does mean one book down already!

** Incidentally, Montreal Stories is just Varieties of Exile but with a different title!

Ghibli Fest

I've known about Studio Ghibli films for what seems like forever, but I've never actually seen any of them (until now)!  I am not sure if this was because they generally weren't coming out in the late 2010s, when I was starting to take my kids to the movies.  So instead I took them to Pixar movies like Wall-E and Up and then later Inside Out and The Incredibles 2.*  I am a little sorry that my daughter missed out on the classic era of Studio Ghibli.  Right now she is far too mature to go see kids' movies, but maybe she will give them another chance some day.

At any rate, I saw that Cineplex was doing a Family Favourites event where the movie price was quite low ($3.50), and they were showing My Neighbor Totoro, which seemed like as good a starting point as any.  There were indeed many children at the screening and probably not all that many childless adults.  But it was emotionally pretty complex, and I thought it was worth seeing (and better in the cinema than just streaming it).

Cineplex was promoting a Studio Ghibli fest.  I think a couple of the films have already been shown, but it is a strong line up, running from this weekend to late Oct.  In terms of this summer, I would probably check out Kiki's Delivery Service running June 11-14.  If I'm around, I'd look into Castle in the Sky on July 10-12.  There are a few more I might check out in the fall, but it is also possible that they will turn up in other venues.  For instance, this summer Tiff is showing 4 animated films directed by Hayao Miyazaki.  One of them is My Neighbor Totoro on May 30, and I think I can safely pass on seeing that a second time.  But they are showing Spirited Away on June 4 and then The Wind Rises on June 17, and I'll see if I can make it to both of those.  If I do manage to make it to most of these screenings and a few in the fall, I would just need to supplement with Grave of the Fireflies and Whisper of the Heart, so I'll see if either of those turn up at one of the few remaining second-run theatres in Toronto.

* I think the most obnoxious thing about Disney taking over Pixar is that the rule against sequels has been completely demolished.  While Toy Story 2 (and maybe 3) and Incredibles 2 can certainly be justified, they are pretty far down the rabbit hole at this point.  I've heard that there will likely be Incredibles 3, which will at least be action-packed and probably Inside Out 2, which I don't think anyone was calling for...  Sigh.

March-April Reading

I think these were all the books I read in March and April.  It's a blur sometimes, particularly as I was really pressed for time, doing taxes and a slightly overdue book review and then pulling together two presentations for a conference!  Anyway, I started off with Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, which was good, though not quite as good as Troubles.

I found Percy's The Moviegoer to be somewhat flat, particularly the last third of so of the book.  I really didn't like Baker's A Fine Madness.  While it is nowhere near as prominent a theme as in Cary's The Horse's Mouth, this novel is about another irresponsible artist who often took swings at his partner, though only actually hitting her when she moved too much.  Charming.  I'm sure I should have dropped it much sooner, but I had been carrying this novel around for so many years, I kind of felt I had to get through it.  I did drop Nutshell by Ian McEwan after only a few pages, however.  Generally, I find him grossly overrated as a novelist.  Nutshell is basically Hamlet but with the Hamlet-figure a near-term baby that can hear everything around him and comments on it liberally.  This is the same basic idea as in Christopher Unborn by Carlos Fuentes.  I thought it was interesting in that novel, but maybe if I reread it today, I would just find it gimmicky and annoying.  Apparently, this is also the conceit of Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which I have not read.*  (I was tipped off to this by a one-star review of Nutshell that I think is the most accurate.)

Inspired by Girl, 20, I did read Tom Wolfe's Maumau-ing the Flak Catchers.  I probably did read all or most of Radical Chic, which is about Leonard Bernstein and the party he gave in support of the Black Panthers, and how this got him in trouble with the Beautiful People, and at some point the Bernsteins had to lay low.  Incidentally, I was supposed to see Bernstein conducting in Ann Arbor.  If I recall, he actually did some rehearsals with the UM orchestra but died right before the performance.  Maybe I actually would have regretted this even more had he conducted but I wasn't able to score any tickets.  Still I think I would have managed to slip in one way or another.  But I don't believe I had read Maumau-ing the Flak Catchers, which is basically about the symbiosis of social workers, hired as part of LBJ's Great Society, and militant youth.  There is a great passage on the secret heart of the bureaucrat that I will add tonight.

This lacerated the soul of every lifer, every line bureaucrat, every flak catcher in the municipal  government . . . There are those who may think that the bureaucrats and functionaries of City Hall  are merely time servers, with no other lookout than filling out their forms, drawing their pay, keeping  the boat from rocking and dreaming of their pension like the lid on an orderly life. But bureaucrats, especially in City Halls, have a hidden heart, a hidden well of joy, a low-dosage euphoria that courses  through their bodies like thyroxin . . . Because they have a secret: each, in his own way, is hooked  into The Power. The Government is The Power, and they are the Government, and the symbol of the  Government is the golden dome of City Hall, and the greatest glory of City Hall is the gold-and-marble lobby, gleaming and serene, cool and massive, studded with the glistening busts of bald-headed men  now as anonymous as themselves but touched and blessed forever by The Power ...  Who else is left  to understand the secret bliss of the coffee break at 10:30 a.m., the walk with one’s fellows through  the majesty of the gold-and-marble lobby and out across the grass and the great white walkways of  City Hall Plaza, past the Ionic columns and Italian Renaissance facade of the Public Library on the  opposite side and down McAllister Street a few steps to the cafeteria ... 

Then I read Nathaniel West's The Day of the Locust, in part because I was supposed to see the movie version of this over at the Paradise, but it didn't work out.  So I read it (again) and then borrowed the DVD from Robarts.  It was interesting, though I didn't love it.  (I did like it more than Miss Lonelyhearts, however.)  I guess I found the movie a bit more fulfilling, mostly because they showed more of the art and artifice of Hollywood.  There are a few scenes where you see characters moving between different movie sets.  I assume this was a partial inspiration for the ending of Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles.

I enjoyed Coupland's Hey, Nostradamus!, which is about the aftermath of a mass shooting in a North Vancouver school.  Obviously, this is much more likely to occur in the States, but there is still far too much gun violence in Canada.  I don't know if I will feel compelled to write a longer review.  Probably not at this point.

I mentioned that I read almost all of Katherine Mansfield's Selected Stories on the train to and from Ottawa.  I found some of them interesting and some very dated.  While I know she was generally critiquing the very classist and racist views of some of her characters, that still doesn't make it much easier to read...  I wrapped the last of the stories up the day after our return.  I really wanted to pass this along to a friend I was meeting last Saturday.

I finally finished Farrell's The Singapore Grip as well.  I'd say it may have been a bit too ambitious for Farrell, mixing the business doings of one group of characters with a bunch of military types.  And then there is even a chapter or two from the perspective of the victorious Japanese troops!  There are quite a few characters that one would expect to see more of, but who are suddenly shuffled out of the picture.  Most of the women are shipped out of Singapore as the Japanese threat grows more imminent.  Two characters are even married offscreen as it were, which felt a bit anti-climatic.  What I found unsatisfying is that the ultimate fate of several characters who were present in the final moments before Singapore's surrender is simply skipped over completely.  Presumably the majority of them survived and then moved elsewhere, either Australia or India, but it would have been nice to tie up those loose ends.  As it stands, it's an interesting novel but my least favourite of the trilogy.

I also got 1/3 of the way through Guy Vanderhaeghe's Homesick.  It's a bit hard to say what May will bring, but some short stories for sure and most likely Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and Desani's All About H. Hatterr.  I've also been reading a great deal of poetry and even writing some (mostly while at the Rex), and I expect that will continue throughout May.  As I have been reading these poems with half an eye out for a transportation-related anthology, I was really struck by Boxing the Compass by Richard Green.  Not only is there a promising poem about a sea voyage, there is a long (20+ page) poem about his epic trek across America by Amtrak and Greyhound in search of Graham Greene's letters in various archives.  While I generally want to avoid excerpting poems in this putative anthology, I would probably make an exception here.

* I suppose it is worth noting in this hyper-polarized world that I simply refuse to be on Team Fetus, which is to say any narratives, such as Atkinson's in particular, that stake out a claim for personhood from the moment of conception are going to get a big thumbs down for me.  I suspect this means I won't enjoy Christopher Unborn this time around, whereas I thought it was pretty great in my 20s.  I may get back around to it someday, but that won't be anytime soon.

Last Minute Pitches - Vierge and The New Alphabet

I had meant to write about these events sooner, but I'm barely keeping my head above water when it comes to this blog...

Anyway, last night we saw Vierge at Factory.  This is an exciting, mostly fun, play that looks into the lives of 4 Canadian teens with Congolese backgrounds.  Two have been in Canada for most their lives, while the other two are fairly recent immigrants who speak English, but also pepper their speech with a fair bit of French and some Lingala as well.  The play covers the typical teenage drama of teenagers becoming adults with all the confusion that brings.  There is less emphasis on social media than is probably the case for Gen Z today, though sexting becomes a significant plot point.  What is quite different is how seriously the young women all take religion, as they are all members of a church youth group, which is a somewhat different perspective than most plays about young people these days.  Anyway, there is a single show left - today's 2 o'clock matinee.  More info and to book tickets here.

The other thing that I had meant to post about was the current show at MOCA: Athena Papadopoulos's The New Alphabet.  This is the most interesting thing I've seen at MOCA in a while.  It calls to mind a mash-up of 90's-era David Cronenberg (Naked Lunch/eXistenZ) and Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock.  It closes today, however.  MOCA is open until 6, though they note there is limited street parking.  I typically bike there, but it's going to rain all afternoon, so even though I am a bit tempted, I don't think I'll go back for a second viewing.  Here are a few of the pieces I liked from the show.  (I'll go back and clean up the labels later...)

Athena Papadopoulos, Raft of Medusa?, ca. 2021

Athena Papadopoulos, Sisters of Mercy, ca. 2021

Athena Papadopoulos, White Oleander & Angel's Trumpet, ca. 2021

Athena Papadopoulos, Rosemary's Baby?, ca. 2021

Athena Papadopoulos, Elephant Man, ca. 2021

Athena Papadopoulos, Skirt of Snakes & Manzanilla de la Muerte, ca. 2021

Again, apologies for the extreme tardiness in getting this posted.

A Long, Strange Trip (to Ottawa)

I guess it wasn't all that strange a trip, but it was a bit exhausting.  Unlike dropping my son off at Carleton last fall, he was able to consolidate what was coming back with him to the point that I was able to take the train up yesterday, and we took the train back today.  Though VIA had a lot of trouble just a few weeks back, the train there was on time and coming back we were delayed at most by 10 minutes.  When things go well, VIA is probably the best way to get to Ottawa.  It's far less stressful for me than driving at any rate.

It's still quite a long train ride, however.  I was able to charge up my iPod and listened to music all the way there and most of the way back.  I didn't quite make it through Katherine Mansfield's Selected Stories (Oxford), but I got pretty close.  I have to admit that her stories generally don't do a lot for me, which is probably why I wasn't able to get through the whole book.  I had even brought an additional(!) book -- Guy Vanderhaeghe's Homesick, but I barely cracked it.  Given that I'll be on transit a lot next week, since there is so much rain in the forecast, I should be able to finish the final 100 pages of The Singapore Grip and then start in on Homesick.  

I got into Ottawa around 10:30 pm on Wed., made it to Rideau Station on the LRT (at least this was working after that ice storm that knocked it out).  I got through one quick work assignment and then crashed.

In the morning, I thought I would stop in at a Tim Horton's on the way to the National Gallery, but it was packed, so I just went straight to the National Gallery.  There's a small coffee shop right there at the Gallery, so I went there and grabbed a muffin.  Then I went straight into the museum at 10 am.  There was some trouble with their system, so they just waved me in.  I had seen the main exhibit, Uninvited, several years back when it was up at the McMichael.  I went through it again but very quickly.  

I liked this series of small sketches by Marion Long.  They were probably on view at the McMichael, but I'd have to go check to be sure.

Marion Long, Morning Sun, ca. 1925

Marion Long, Lower Bay Street, the Mystic City, 1930-5

This time around I spent more time on the main floor with the Group of Seven to contemporary Canadian artists, and I spent a bit less time on the upper floor, mostly just looking at the Impressionists to contemporary art.  I stayed just over an hour.  It was a decent if somewhat compressed visit.

Georgia O'Keefe, Lake George with Crows, 1921

Joseph Cornell, The Hotel Eden, 1945

I then caught a cab to Carleton to help my son finish cleaning his room (he had done most of it last night, completely abandoned by his roommate) and packing up the rest of his stuff.  We dropped about half of his stuff off at the off-campus place where he'll be living next year.  While I would have preferred that he live on-campus at UT, it is also true that he will have developed a lot more independence by living that far away from home.  And he's starting to think he'd come back to Toronto to go to the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy for his Master's, though that's a bit far ahead at this point.

My main complaint was that there are no small shops or restaurants around the Carleton campus, which seems like a clear market failure.  It wouldn't have mattered as much, but essentially all the on-campus dining options were also shut down as classes were over.  We finally found a coffee shop in the Minto Centre, though they had sold out of all their sandwiches, so we just had the yogurt parfaits.

It took another half an hour to check the room to make sure nothing had been left behind, and then he ordered an Uber to get to the VIA train station.  (I'm still holding out on putting the app on my phone!)  We were able to order a couple of sandwiches at the small restaurant in the station.  Then we only had a few minutes to wait before it was time to line up for the train.  The ride back was pretty smooth and, as I mentioned already, only a few minutes late.  So mission accomplished!

I'm assuming I'll take him back by train either at the end of August or very early September.  (Maybe I'll take ✓ Dickens' Dombey and Son on that trip...)  In terms of long rides, I am thinking of going out to Montreal in October or November to see the Marisol exhibit.  I'll probably train it rather than flying, but I'll decide closer to the time.  I'm also thinking it might be time to get out to Detroit.  I haven't been there in many years.  Probably not since my mother died, though I did make it back to Ann Arbor in 2008.  For a long time I had thought I would take the train to Windsor and then get over to Detroit on my own.  However, we now have 2 options to get to Detroit directly by bus, and that is a bit more appealing to me.  I missed the Van Gogh show, waiting on my passport, but if I make it over between mid-August and mid-October, there are two exhibits that look worth checking out, including one called After Cubism.  So this is something I'll look into; the bus prices are a lot more stable than plane fares, so I don't think I'll need to plan quite so far in advance.