Contrary

I am a sometimes fan of The New Yorker’s lead literary critic James Wood.  A review of his put me on to Geoff Dyer’s “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi”,  a novel I enjoyed.  I also thought highly of Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Line of Beauty”.  But in The New Yorker of October 17th, 2011 Woods commends Hollinghurst for just the sort of prose that I complained about in my post here of September 17. 

“In his second novel, The Folding Star” (1994), Hollinghurst described the experience of watching the Wimbledon tennis tournament on television, on a warm summer’s day, with the windows open. Occasionally, a plane could be heard outside: “the sonic wallow of a plane distancing in slow gusts above.” Again, the power flows from nouns and adjectives placed in unusual combinations—the slight paradox of “slow gusts” (a gust is usually rapid) and the almost onomatopoeic “sonic wallow,” which truly slows the sentence down.”

Coming from this gale-punished place, “slow gusts” doesn’t work for me precisely because it doesn’t make sense.  And “sonic wallow” surely does “slow the sentence down”, but I believe it is because of the hiccup it induces in the normal process of comprehension.  It is to me a whole bunch of writing. It is also some of the most lauded prose of our time so my distaste puts me in a tiny minority.  And I’ve been guilty of being more overwrought and less precise myself. The construction “a plane distancing” I love.

Ed and Andrew in Venice

Something else now, some more grousing.  Readers today seem to love characters whose inner lives are in constant view, who are in an almost continual state of introspection and self reflection.  These characters study their own actions rather than responding, as I believe we mostly do, by reflex and rote.  I am up every night at 3 am for a good hour of painful and mostly fruitless rumination and never regard myself and revisit things to nearly the degree most characters I read these days do.  These characters don’t have enough “present” for me.

I have the sensation of being led, by hand, as one would a child when I’m told, rather than left to determine for myself, what motivates a character’s actions. And if that character is telling me what they think at least let me suspect they might be lying to themselves.  (One novel I read, and it was entirely interior, where the character possessed what I took for plausible self awareness was John Lanchester’s Mr. Phillips.)

Again I believe this puts me at odds with most readers out there.

It’s the same for wine, if I’m led by the hand, I don’t enjoy it so much.  I’ve learned that if a bottle gets rave reviews and high marks from one of the critics  that “score” wines it will be too obvious for me.

ADDENDUM: Woods piece in the November 7, 2011 New Yorker, concerning what personal libraries say and do not about their owners is terrific.

Dutch Waggoner and Patricia Franchini

They can’t properly be called “cameos”….  but in a form of homage I borrowed character names from movies (and to lesser degree other works of art) I’ve loved and salted them throughout “Easy to Like”.   I won’t list those characters, some of them small, some of them even off screen, from films like “Chinatown” and “Fargo”; that would spoil the fun.  I didn’t expect anyone to make much of the fact that Elliot changes his name to from Johnston to Jonson. Nobody mentioning the TVC-15 reference makes me feel old.

A couple of names from The Pat Hobby Stories do make proper, if anachronistic cameos, playing a writer and a director just as they did in Scott Fitzgerald’s taut and hilarious original.

I visited Fitzgerald’s last residence when I was in Los Angeles, researching some of my novel’s geography.  It is now completely obscured from view by a high hedge, likely because of gawkers like myself.  Yes, street addresses too, have walk-ons in the novel.  The home of Charlie Chaplin is there.  The sight of a drunken Herman Mankiewicz car crash got cut. It was a G.P.S.apalooza in the hills.

Jean Seberg

Okay … one clue … that’s Patricia Franchini above.

Steve Jobs Jobs Jobs

The Bookery, the only independent bookstore in St. John’s has closed its doors.  It was one of those terrific squat little shops where you always came away with titles other than those you’d sought. Now the downtown of this booming burgh is without a place to buy new literature.  There’s nowhere to see a film either.

first Marconi, now this

At the same time, against the odds, CBC television has produced and is airing a brilliant new show, “Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays”.  (It’s the sort of show “Easy to Like” said the CBC, with its middlebrow branding, could no longer make.) Nobody is watching it.

“Numbers” are down all over.  Neither noisy 3-D extravaganzas nor small pictures for grown-ups got the audiences the film biz expected this year.  With the exception of “events” in Chimpanzee telly (a new Chimp to lead “Two and a Half Men” for instance) fewer people are glaring at the box.

What are they doing instead?  Are they in the sylvan hills gathering mushrooms? Opting to stay in bed for a morning fuck?  Perhaps they’re whittling or teaching themselves to play the harmonica?

No, they are watching and playing with their smart phones.  Where people once carted a pulp novel or a magazine along to wait for their Toyota to be serviced, or their flight to depart, they now have their phone. They can sort of read stuff, tweet and update their status (shouldn’t their status always be “updating my status”).  They can look to see whether a cheque has cleared.  They can survey the menu of a restaurant they are considering visiting.  They can read fudged and planted online reviews of the fare there.  They can play a game with blinking lights.  That is what they are doing.

They already vibrate, once they come fitted with a fleshy socket, smart phones will pretty much do it all.

On several occasions I have heard people say, with conviction, “I love my IPhone.”

I’m beginning to bore myself with my middle-aged prefacing of things, like “ten years ago …”.  “Ten years ago there was that little traffic you could have played street hockey on Kings Bridge on a Saturday morning.”

But who could have imagined, ten years ago, that people would be so engaged with, and entranced by, their phones.

Addendum

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/10/14/lynn-coady-i-would-like-to-marry-my-smartphone/

Able Seaman Keith Chebucto

Elliot Jonson can’t catch a break. Edward Riche’s newest protagonist boasts a stagnant screenwriting career, an estranged son and newly-homosexual ex-wife, and a passion (but lack of skill) for wine-making. Bitter with his unaccommodating life, dodging debts and caught up in a burgeoning scandal, Elliot moves to escape to France but finds himself detained in Toronto—purgatory for showbiz minds—where he manages to bluff his way to the top of the CBC. Easy to Like is just that and more, Riche’s prose is astute and bitingly comic in its depictions of Canada and the average Canadian viewer. Although his lack of concern for plot points may alienate some readers, the real pleasure comes from his richness of characters, ridiculous situations, and surprisingly believable comedic timing. Elliot’s life is a comedy of errors that we applaud with one hand, the other patting ourselves on the back for being—as credit-loving Canadians—such great inspiration.

…

Author Edward Riche is coming to Halifax to host a wine dinner and read from his new book Easy to Like on Oct. 23 at Bistro Le Coq.

…

We’ll be tasting some of the delicious wines that featured in the novel so it should be terrific fun.

My Aunt Nance

My Aunt Nancy (Nance to family) Riche died Saturday, October 1, from complications of heart surgery.  She was 66.  We were close.  I can remember her babysitting and spoiling me (Academy Performance with Chicken and Chips from Marty’s).  She was overflowing with love of, and pride in, all her many nieces and nephews. My siblings and I saw her at least once a week, my father and she visited daily.  Maybe because she was always so ebullient and youthful in outlook (even as she pushed her body into early decline) she sometimes seemed more an older sister than an Aunt … but she liked being Aunt Nance.

Nance and Lech

Nance was a fearless and tireless fighter for working people and for the rights of women.  Nance believed that social democracy was the most humane and therefore the most sensible form of Government.

Nance held that rapacious capitalism, unrestricted free trade with countries whose labour standards were beneath our own, were inherently unfair and so wrong.  She believed that organized labour always made a mistake when it did not directly engage in the political process. She was right.

Lightning wit made Nance a media ace for her side of the argument.

Nance was selfless in her devotion to social justice and neglected her health.

I spoke with her just hours before her passing, she was on oxygen and in obvious discomfort.  Yet she lit up with delight when she saw my daughter and asked for news of the New Democrats continuing advance in the provincial election.

The former Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Danny Williams, a political foe, showed up at Carnell’s this afternoon to pay his respects.  He noted the passion and courage of her convictions and said she was a great Newfoundlander.  On that all agree.