Kathleen Molloy

As Canadians reading CanLit, it is a pleasure seeing ourselves on the page. Now, with the help of Project Bookmark Canada we can see the page on the street. Huh?

Project Bookmark Canada is crossing the country to place plaques with CanLit excerpts in specific geographic locations related to those works. Toronto’s inaugural plaque remembers a passage from Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion and the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct.

From the Project Bookmark Canada website it isn’t clear which blurbs will be featured next or where. Shall we send the founder, Miranda Hill, a wish list?

I’ll compile your suggestions and send the Wish List to Hill care of Project Bookmark Canada. I’ll also give away a copy of Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion that I have ready to book cross.

Here’s how to do it:

1)      Suggest locations for a CanLit-plaques, provide titles and authors

2)      Post them as a comment here by May 30.

Leafing through this month’s Chatelaine, I stumbled upon an article on Slash Fiction. I expected to read about the newly popular Flash Fiction where writers cram an entire story into less than 1000 words.  

Boy was I wrong!  

Chatelaine introduced me to an entirely new form of fan fiction called Slash Fiction.  Lets step back a bit and start with fan fiction. Fan fiction, is a story written by a fan of a fictional piece, be it a book, a tv show, a cmic book, a mythology etc. With fan fiction, writers tend to stay close to the script  – using established plots and characters. The writing is posted on fan fiction blogs and shared freely, sometimes added to by other fans.  

Slash Fiction messes with this premis. It takes two wildly loved characters and puts them in bed. In the original work these characters would never have fallen in love but in Slash Fiction they are naked. And they are gay. Think Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. 

Readers of Fan Fiction will be able to identify a newly told gay coupling of traditionally straight male characters by the / in the title: Kirk/Spock. The slash is supposed to represent their fictional liaison.

Think Ernie/Bert.  

My first question is “Who wants to imagine Kirk on Spock????” 

According to Chatelaine, it turns out PLENTY of straight women do. In fact, straight Canadian women are not only reading Slash Fiction but writing it! The article featured an eighteen-year-old blogger from Quebec who is making a name for herself in Slash Fiction circles. Charlotte Rainville is one of many young Canadian writers that are encouraging straight male characters to experiment with their gayness through Slash Fiction. 

Let me see… if I were to try my hand at fan fiction, under the Slash Fiction genre, and apply it to CanLit …  I would start with Mordecai Richler’s Duddy Kravitz. We know that Duddy idoilized tough-guy Jerry Dingleman — was it a crush? Kravitz/Dingleman.

But what if a Slash Fiction character could jump from one man in one book to another man in a different book? What if Kravitz could leap over to MacLennan’s Two Solitudes and stick it to Paul Tallard? Tallard is an honourable fuddy duddy while Duddy is, well Duddy is Duddy. Kravitz/Tallard

For readers that were unable to stomach, er follow the 2009 Canada Reads showdown don’t miss Steven W. Beattie’s annual post-comp wrap-up on his That Shakespeherian Rag blog.

It is cheating; I know. I snapped up three cassettes of Canadian short stories and intended to include them in the 2^nd Canadian Book Challenge.  Books on tape should count, so why not short stories on tape?

The collection is:“Emergent Voices: CBC Canadian Literary Awards Stories 1979-1999″.

When does an emergent voice cease to be emerging? The works in this collection were created between ‘79-99 and the collected assembled in 1999. A trade paperback version was produced by Goose Lane Editions. Have these authors graduated from emergent to made-it?

Let’s look at the line up:

-          Janice Kulyk Keefer

-          Shauna Singh Baldwin

-          Carol Windley

-          Gwendolyn MacEwen

-          W.D. Valgardson-          Bill Gaston

-          Gail Anderson-Dardatz

-          Gayla Reid

-          Ernest Havemann

-          Irena Freidman Karafilly

-          Michael Ondaatje

Many names are familiar.

In 2001 writer/critic Raywat Deonanda prepared a review of the collection for Prairie Fire and reprinted it on his site The Podium. It is worth a look; Deonanda speaks to many of the stereotypes deployed in CanLit, deployed and exploited.

It is a lovely collection with Gaston’s piece standing out.

But I ask the question again – at what point does a Canadian writer graduate from emergent to made-it?

In the interviews following Nino Ricci’s win of the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Fiction, Ricci spoke about the research he did in preparation of The Origin of Species. Ricci had the opportunity to travel to the Galapagos to devour the region first hand.

Andrea Warner asked writer Karen X Tulchinsky if she is judgemental. In Room’s volume 31.3 Glass Houses, Tulchinsky acknowledges that many of her works have protagonists that have to deal with being judged. It got me thinking about how easy it is for us to judge an author by their work and a reader on their reaction to that work. Judging books by their titles ring a bell?I visited Tulchinsky’s self-named website and scrolled her titles. A fun title is Friday the Rabbi Wore Lace. It is a collection of Jewish lesbian passions. Can you just hear the naysayers cranking up the Negative Judgement machine?And that’s the shame of it all. We all judge. As readers it comes naturally.

But what of writers? I don’t know Tulchinsky. I haven’t dove into her work. My first introduction is through Warner’s interview. But I am going to end up judging her because she’s a writer. I’m going to wonder what drove her to create her work. I’m going to question her choices. I may even check out what she throws on when she attends her next awards ceremony…because she’s a writer, and because as a writer, she has put herself out there to be judged – by readers and writers alike.  

As I have.

In December , Alexis and Melanie posted opposing opinions of Stephen Leacock’s work on their blog  Roughing it in the Book.  Alexis reminded me why I adore Leacock.  

I dug out my copy of No. 43 from the New Canadian Library and dove into Leacock’s Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy .

First published in 1916, Leacock portrays the hand selling traits of a seasoned book seller. The narrator is a professor hiding among the shelves as he spies on the bookseller  raving over only two titles that turn out to be remainders from a publishing house. In the short story The Reading Public: A book-store Study Leacock reminds us that fiction sells in Canada when it becomes popular and popular books drive the Canadian book industry. Have times changed all that much?

From Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy:

“Have you any good light reading for vacation time?”
called out the next customer in a loud, breezy voice–he
had the air of a stock broker starting on a holiday.

“Yes,” said Mr. Sellyer, and his face almost broke into
a laugh as he answered, “here’s an excellent thing–Golden
Dreams–quite the most humorous book of the season–simply
screaming–my wife was reading it aloud only yesterday.
She could hardly read for laughing.”

“What’s the price, one dollar? One-fifty. All right,
wrap it up.” There was a clink of money on the counter,
and the customer was gone. I began to see exactly where
professors and college people who want copies of Epictetus
at 18 cents and sections of World Reprints of Literature
at 12 cents a section come in, in the book trade. ©2009 Google

Ever think about holding a tea party for Canlit superstars in your living room? Check this out… on the Globe and Mail’s website you can open the podcasts of all 2008 Giller finalists at the same time. I clicked the first one and moved to the second one thinking the first would automatically close but alas the author prattled. At one point I had all 5 celebrated authors reading their works at the same time. Listen to them one at a time or all at once. The best part about this virtual CanLit tea party is that there are no teacups to wash once the readings are over!Anthony De SaMarina EndicottRawi HageMary SwanJoseph Boyden

“Milagros and Migdalia sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-ing…”

Who pray, are the arboreal lovers?

Milagros Gaines and Migdalia Moore are computer generated pseudonyms from the spam software that renders my WordPress “comment” in-box constipated.

Each day I get upwards to 70 false comments from fake readers suggesting “I like you blog. Mist investigate issues” and “7serg234usxxx593” and “jello, cats, liposuction” and the usual offers to reduce my mortgage and increase my penis size.

George Murray at Bookninja has taught me that if you include links in the comment box on a blog, it will set the anti-spam software off.

Here’s the thing, the random generator of spam names could be a lazy Canadian writer’s dream!

Need a name for that banker in chapter five, the guy with the dandruff who wipes his nose on his sleeve? How about Milagros Gaines?

What about the hunk at the coffee shop who gives your protagonist two shots of organic milk in her fair trade coffee and leaves his copy of Urban Recycler on the counter Tuesday morning just before ten when he knows she’ll walk in thirsty? Sound like a Milagros Gaines?

Milagros Gaines, also known as ‘Milo’ by his former piano teacher, could be sent off to kill the assassin with legs up to here. “You’ll know Migdalia when you see her,” his secret agent boss would say “Migdalia always wears a flower in her hair – a petunia.”

On behalf of all of my fellow lazy writers, I say bring on the false comments from fake readers. I can always use a Harris Hart somewhere.

When a title grabs my imagination, I’m inclined to stretch on tiptoe to grab the spine off the shelf. If the title is a little off, (offside that is, not offensive) I tend to put a lot of faith in the book as a presumed good read. A title is sort of like a round of speed dating; just a glimpse of what’s in store.

 I like that someone thought long and hard about the story and baptised it perfectly.

 The title doesn’t have to be a complex; it just has to stick. I guess I just like the idea of an author attempting to tell an entire story on a 1 inch spine.

I can forgive a good book with a bad cover. And I can forgive a good book with a bad title too. But if the title is a stinker – forget it, I won’t crack the spine.

On my To-be-read-before-the-kids-are-old-enough-to-drive-themselves-to-the-library List I’ve reserved 5 Canadian works with wonky titles.  

Eric McCormack’s First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

D. R. MacDonald’s Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s The Cure for Death by Lightening

M.G. Vassanji’s The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

Robertson Davies’ What’s Bred in the Bone

But this makes me wonder…if I loved a title but hated the story would I still love the title when I’m done the story? Probably. I’m sort of sentimental that way.