Uncategorized

Hope you’re having a safe summer. It’s hard not to be anxious with these unprecedented fires in Yellowknife, Kelowna and Maui. In May, I was telling just about anyone who would listen to read John Valliant’s Fire Weather. I’ll repeat myself here. Please read this book! Please cooperate with any emergency directives. Read about Britt Wray of Gen Dread further on.

A Busy Six Months

This is my excuse for the extended gap in posting. In mid-July, I wrapped up a virtual manuscript completion course, led by Aislinn Hunter through The Writers Studio at SFU. Along with five other students, we met bi-weekly to review our writing, encourage each other and incorporate teaching points into our revisions.

The group was six professional women—three memoirists and three fiction writers. Ann’s working on the story of a female conductor, Jac, who is balancing the demands of a punishing career in a misogynist environment against the demands of family life. Cate is writing a collection of stories based on the letters and published writings of the late novelist, essayist, and LGBTQ activist Jane Rule.

Alaa is writing a creative non-fiction tribute to mothers in war zones by telling a mother’s story in the context of the Iraqi-Iranian War and subsequent Gulf War.  Dani’s memoir recounts the challenges of raising an autistic child in the setting of her own loss of her mother at age ten. Laura’s memoir is a braided story of her life caring and advocating for her handicapped child and her pilgrimage to The Island Walk on PEI to reflect on her experience.

I entered the course with a collection of related short stories of varying quality that I’d written over the last four years. I’d worked on four of them previously with the guidance of Traci Skuce, a Comox Valley writer. (“The Road Trip”, “The Hummingbird” and early versions of “Untethered” and “Saving Things”)

With Aislinn’s inciteful comments and frame working of the craft. We discussed the optimum POV, clear and adequate signposting, and the balance between the backstory and the front story. I improved specificity and character arcs—even the dog needs a character arc! The deadlines motivated me to revisit the stories that were waiting patiently for a refreshed and more experienced writer to revise them. Every story was improved.

They say (I don’t know who said this originally but it was recently repeated to me by Anosh Irani at last year’s DIRWF) a short story is like a place on a river, there is an upstream and a downstream to it, the time before the story and the time after it. The creative challenge is to know when to start and stop your short story. I’ve spent the last four years hanging out with this family and I think I’m ready to let them go. Three of my stories have already gone out into the world and with a little more perseverance and luck I’m hoping the collection will find a publisher. My current step is learning how to find an editor.

I haven’t chosen a book title. Surfacing is already taken! An author recommended that I try ChatGPT. Well, there’s an adventure. I signed up and gave the bot some keywords or asked a question. “Is the Rules of Flotation a good book title?” I tried water and adversity and so on but the whole thing was very uninspiring.

I’m looking forward to seeing this collection published and sharing it with you. In the meantime, you can read early versions or excerpts of some stories here.

Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival

In July, I attended the excellent Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival. I met Britt Wray, the Author of Generation Dread—Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety. Her Substack Gen Dread is aimed at finding “community, comfort and practical coping and acting strategies.”

Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies gave a revision workshop. I learned about the American Korean writer, Matthew Salesses’ book, Craft in the Real World. He challenges the structure of traditional workshopping structure and the implicit and explicit cultural expectations of these encounters. He describes alternate formats where the dynamic remains writer focused instead of reviewer-focused. His book should be mandatory reading for anyone supervising or participating in the workshopping process. I’m hoping to incorporate some of his suggestions in the writing circle I’m leading this fall with the Federation of BC Writers. Check out the groups that are offered here. Registration opens on Sept 13^th.

What am I reading?

I’ve been reading a selected collection of autobiographical short stories, This Time, That Place by Clark Blaise. “Most novels are watery, diluted, and bloated. They do not have anything like the richness of a short story.” “I’ve always favoured the short story for its energy, a result of its confinement, and for the fact that its length reflects the author’s ability to hold it entirely in his/her head like a musical note.” There is a wonderful forward by Margaret Atwood.

So good-bye for now and I apologize for no photos in the post.

It’s been an interesting few months here and I’ve been recovering from the unexpected loss of a friend. My footing’s been unsure and I needed weeks to reflect on the situation. I’ve decided to share with you my thoughts from September.

The piece is titled “All My Puny Sorrows” inspired by Miriam Toews’s novel from 2014. And the movie, from 2021 directed by Michael McGowan which I watched on the plane back from Halifax as I was digesting the news is also great. And I nearly always cry on airplanes. This time for sure. And the novel’s title was inspired by a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I too a Sister had, an only Sister——
She lov’d me dearly, and I doted on her!
To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows,

So we meander on in life, loving and losing and enduring the joy and grief that comes with both.

All My Puny Sorrows

The golden October morning light reflects off the water of the estuary here in Comox. Overhead, chevrons of honking Canada geese prepare for their winter migration. A few weeks ago, in less than half a day, I learned about the natural and expected death of Queen Elizabeth II, the safe and expected birth of a granddaughter and the completely unexpected suicide of a friend. It was a lot.

I’d like to talk about my friend and friendship. Those of you who knew her, know her true name but for this reflection, I’ll call her Emily. She was a proud Yorkshire Lass.

The suicide of a friend, an acquaintance or even an unknown person is upsetting. The disturbance of the natural order of things from birth to death alarms us. We feel an uneasiness, even a horror.

Some manage their distress with indignant curiosity and speculation. There is an imperative to know Why and How. There is hope that by knowing more details, by knowing the facts there will be more understanding. There is hope that more understanding might ease the confusion and pain for the survivors of such a loss, the loss of a loved one. The How may become more evident. But the reality is that only Emily knew her Why and the rest of us can only guess.

But who was this extraordinary person? Emily had an energetic glow that she cast on all who associated with her. It was typical for anyone who met her to develop a crush on her and to want to be with her. She was capable, funny, tolerant, kind, thoughtful and generous. Her enthusiasm and playfulness made people happy. And when she laughed, her halo of strawberry blond hair shook about her head.

I remember her beaming face when I eventually pedalled into the parking lot at the top of Mount Washington where she had been waiting for at least an hour. And I remember basking in her belief of my ability to complete the ride (and many others). I remember Emily in the backcountry bounding ahead through the powder like a winter rabbit infinitely fitter than the rest of us older folk. I remember her sharing the remaining mangled power bar in the bug-spit motel on Cortez Island after a long ride, knowing we’d be hungry for the rest of the night. I remember her love of strongly brewed Yorkshire Tea. Other relics of our adventures together–the empty wet suit hanging in the garage, the crumpled tennis skirt in the dresser drawer and her blue pottery mug rest on Denman Island.

But the reality is for the most recent years, I’d seen very little of her. I’d moved away from Vancouver. We still texted occasionally, especially on her birthday which she shared with my partner. I’d heard she was happy with her new job and enjoying the Vancouver lifestyle. I believed that she’d call if she needed me and that she knew she was always welcome here on the island.

Most of my recent visits to Vancouver have been death related–celebrations of life or end-of-life care. That’s normal in your sixties. When I did see Emily on these visits, it was usually by chance in the locker room at the tennis club. I’d be getting out of the pool, or the ocean and she’d be on her way in. We’d hug and laugh and promise to get together soon. She’d found new friends who were better companions–proper athletes, younger, fitter and like her excellent at tennis, biking, skiing, swimming–just about any sport she touched. I was proud of her and certain that she was happy.

The last time I saw her was about eight months ago in that same locker room at the tennis club we both loved. She was with a friend I did not know and was crying. It seemed so intensely private, something that I was not meant to see. But I did. She saw me and we talked. We tried to make a time to meet to talk further but she had to go and I had to go. We slipped past each other. My heart is broken, sorrow, sorrow.

The pillars of friendship are kindness, generosity, and respect. And hindsight requires me to ask what did I give back to Emily? Did I take more than I gave? Was I kind enough, generous enough and respectful enough?

And what if I’d asked more questions? What if I’d insisted that we talk more? What if I’d called? What if I’d been a better friend, kinder, more generous, and more respectful? What if I’d properly understood the enormity of what I’d witnessed?

We all fumble about, tiptoeing along the tightrope of wellness– a combination of the physical, mental and spiritual. It is the combination of luck, fate, and determination that keeps each of us from falling off the tightrope. I’ll never know what was truly going on for Emily, I can only feel a deep sorrow that there was no intervention acceptable to her other than suicide. I wander through the brume of my own pain and my failure as a friend. I’m sorry that I wasn’t paying enough attention. There may be answers to some of the questions but there will never be answers to the most painful ones. What more could I have done to shine some hope into the fog of her despair?

I can’t indulge in the self-deception of closure. There is no closure to suicide. The well of grief is eternal. It waits patiently until something forgotten reminds you of your loved one and then it flows. And my heart is broken my friend, for you and for all your loved ones.

So especially on these darker, shorter days please take care of yourselves and those around you. We all need more love.

With the clarion beauty of Julie Andrew’s voice ringing my brain, I don’t want to talk about “Raindrops on Roses” or “Whiskers on Kittens” but rather Wes Anderson, The New Yorker, Substack and Mavis Gallant and the recent pleasant convergence of all these things.

Wes Anderson and The French Dispatch

Director Wes Anderson’s recent film, The French Dispatch is a self-described “love letter to journalism.” Many of you will be familiar or like myself, besotted with his works including The Budapest Hotel, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonlight Kingdom. I enjoy the zany, pastel, intricate sets and his penchant for working with physically atypical actors. His affectionate and humorous studies of human foibles are heartbreaking. Wes Anderson’s films are densely packed with scene and character details and demand re-watching. Check out the soundtrack of David Bowie covers in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou performed by the Brazilian musician, Seu Jorge.

The French Dispatch is a collection of vignettes that are un homage to journalism, The New Yorker in particular. The film is set in the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé (I know, so good) and filmed in Angoulême, France. His typical eclectic cast includes Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton along with over thirty other actors.

The vignette, “Revisions on a Manifesto” is based on the student riots in Paris 1968 and inspired by Mavis Gallant‘s two-part article “The Events in May: A Paris Notebook” which was published in The New Yorker.

In the “My Favourite Things” department, France McDormand plays the Mavis Gallant-inspired character and mentors the student revolutionary, Timotheé Chalamet, editing his manifesto and sleeping with him.

The New Yorker’s Susan Morrison’s interview with Wes Anderson here.

But what I was most interested in were the short stories, because back then I thought that was what I wanted to do—fiction. Write stories and novels and so on. When I went to the University of Texas in Austin, I used to look at old bound volumes of The New Yorker in the library, because you could find things like a J. D. Salinger story that had never been collected.

Wes Anderson, 2021

  I’m with you, Wes. The New Yorker is a cerebral drip-feed of contemporary short stories by writers such as Miranda July, Lauren Groff, Tessa Hedley, Kevin Barry, Mary Gaitskill, Jennifer Egan, Miriam Toews, Zadie Smith and so on presented weekly with author interviews and currently a podcast of the author reading their work. And then there are the archives…Cheever, O’Connor, Munro, Bradbury, Barthelme and so on. Give up your day job now so that you can stay home and read!

Mavis Gallant (MG) and The New Yorker

MG published the first of her over one hundred short stories, “Madeline’s Birthday” in The New Yorker in August 1951.

“Without finding words for it, Paul knew that her untidiness had something to do with her attitude toward him and the entire household. He wished she would employ a less troublesome method of showing it.”

Mavis Gallant 1951

In 1995, she published her last, “Scarves, Beads and Sandals”. 

“There was a vogue for bright scarves, around the straw hats, around the hair, wound around the neck along with strings of brights beads, loosely coiled–sand-coloured or coral or a hard kind of blue. The beads cast reflections on the skin of the throat or on a scarf of a different shade, like a bead dilluted in water.”

“Scarfless, shoeless, unbound, delivered, they waited for the last wine bottle to be emptied and the last of the coffee to be drunk or spilled before they decided what they specifically wanted or exactly refused.”

Mavis Gallant 1995

MG was a Montrealer, trained and worked as a journalist and in her twenties embarked on a life as an ex-patriate writer in Paris. She was a master of the short story. She died at age ninety-one in February 2014.

From the Deborah Treisman post-script.

“There’s an unapologetic tone to most of Gallant’s stories, as well as to the stories about her. She didn’t apologize for wanting to write at a time when women, Canadian women, as Alice Munro has documented, were not expected to put themselves forward or to speak out. She didn’t apologize for leaving Canada—and leaving her homeland forever in a quandary about the extent to which it could claim her. She lived most of her life as a perpetual foreigner, in France, childless and husbandless (an early marriage ended when she was twenty-five). Had she lived some other way, she would not have been the writer that she was. But it’s easy to underestimate how difficult these decisions may have been for her, or her vulnerability, when she made them.”

D Treisman 2014

Substack and Bill Richardson

Substack is a subscription newsletter app that allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers with or without a paywall. My current subscriptions include Story Club with George Saunders and The Line, an irreverent independent Canadian current affairs column featuring Jen Gerson, Andrew Potter and Matt Gurney.

And if it wasn’t for Bill Richardson’s Substack, Oh MG: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diaries, I wouldn’t know that it is the Centenary of Mavis Gallant’s birthday this August 11^th or considered writing this piece.

Bill Richardson is a Canadian Broadcaster and Writer who has most recently published a groundbreaking children’s book, Last Week illustrated by Emilie Leduc about a grandparent who chooses Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Come to think of it, access to MAiD is another one of “My Favourite Things.” I digress but if you are interested consider Stephanie Green’s recent book, This is Assisted Dying: A Doctor’s Story of Empowering Patients at the End of Life.”

Bill is writing a daily journal honouring MG, her world and her works. It is funny, clever, insightful and informative. Bravo Bill!

Mavis Gallant (MG)

And now down the MG rabbit hole. MG occupies a large stall in my stable of Canadian female writers–MG, MA and AM. Mavis, Margaret and Alice. (all sporting an M somewhere and contemporaries after a fashion!)  Readers not familiar with MG could refer to the excellent introduction by Francine Prose (nominative determinism, she’s an author of over twenty novels and the excellent How to Read Like a Writer) in the 2016 Everyman Edition of The Collected (but by no means Complete) Stories of Mavis Gallant.

“Her trademarks: the specificity, the density of detail and incident, the control of language and tone and her gift for creating a deceptively comfortable distance between the characters and the reader, then suddenly and without warning narrowing that distance…the equivalent of whiplash…not the neck, but the heart”

 Francine Prose 2016

Prose quotes MG from the preface to her Selected Stories and the afterward of her collection Paris Stories:

“Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.”

Mavis Gallant 1996

Yes. The best-written and then closely read short stories leave an “afterburn” in the reader. They incite a reflection and contemplation, perhaps even a reappraisal of the reader’s situation.

From Alberto Manguel in the forward of the 2009 collection Going Ashore:

“The stories of Mavis Gallant are masterpieces of rhetorical stinginesss, of words saved for the right moment, of parsimonious descriptions and strict accounting.”

Alberto Manguel 2009

Truth-seeking characters, often outsiders with understandable, ordinary character flaws drive the plots of MG stories.

“The first flash of fiction arrives without words. It consists of a fixed image, like a slide or (closer still) a freeze frame, showing characters in a simple situation.

Mavis Gallant 1996

Where to begin with or to return to her works?

For an introduction to MG perhaps start with the 1981 Home Truths, a collection of selected Canadian Stories which includes the 1963 ex-patriot love story, “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street”

“Agnes is the only secret Pete has from his wife, the only puzzle he pieces together without her help.”

Mavis Gallant 1963

Or perhaps the five-story Linnet Muir series which MG described as the most autobiographical of her works? The New Yorker in its monthly Podcast Fiction Series with Deborah Treisman offers Atwood reading “Voices Lost in Snow,” which appeared in the magazine in 1976. and can also be found in the short-story collection Varieties of Exile. This story, from the Linnet series, is a first-person recounting of an obedient, silenced child cataloguing the failings of neglectful parents.

Also featured in New Yorker’s Podcast Fiction Series series are Karen Russell reading “From the Fifteenth District,” Ann Beattie reading “Dédé” and Antonya Nelson reading “When We Were Nearly Young”.

And further down the podcast rabbit hole, The Spoken Web (Kate Moffatt, Kandice Sharren, and Michelle Levy) presents an archival audio-recording of MG.  In 1984, MG read her story, “Grippes and Poche” at the Images Theatre at Simon Fraser University. MG reads from an editorial proof and peppers her presentation with wonderful asides and explanations deviating as necessary from the text. As a bilingual Canadian, living in Paris, she comments on drifting into French or the difficulty of pronouncing French words with an English pronunciation to English audiences.

In the companion episode, the producers speculate that the recording was made on reel-reel tape and then transferred to cassette tape for archiving purposes. For some of us, these technologies were ordinary.

The CBC Compass program archives have an interview with MG in Paris in 1965 around the time of the release of My Heart is Broken. where you can watch her mannerisms and appreciate her wit as she tries to be patient with the interviewer as she describes the essential ingredient of independence being economic freedom.

I read some of these MG stories decades ago with the lens and attitude of a younger, impatient person. The MG 100^th Anniversary is a great excuse to re-visit her works. I have a lot to learn from her writing. I missed the 2017 publication of her remaining diaries so that is also on my list of readings. I’ll be keeping up with Bill Richardson’s highlights and suggestions on his Substack and wonder(and wander) along with him.

“As near as I’m aware, there are no plans to put her face on a stamp. There hasn’t been a run on the bunting market to accommodate all the parades and grandstands and so forth.”

Bill Richardson 2022

Maybe Wes Anderson will make a movie?

In the meantime, there’s lots of reading to do!

In the setting of the insane ex-KGB dictator’s invasion of a neighbouring democratic country, there have plenty of both disturbing and inspiring stories. But among the images of armoured vehicles and camouflage-clad combatants brandishing weapons, this was the one that took me out this morning–ordinary Polish citizens, mothers, sisters and grandmothers donated supplies to help the arriving Ukranian refugee families care for their children.

Polish mothers left baby strollers at the train station for Ukrainian mothers traveling with their children.
Heart-warming photo ❤️#StandWithUkraine️
🇵🇱🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/Ui5lfkxGmq

— State of Poland 🇵🇱 (@StateOfPoland) March 6, 2022

I’ve been brushing up on my Eastern European history, politics and geography. I lay awake thinking of other Soviet and Russian-inspired invasions–Czechoslovakia, Hungary and more recently Syria. I found this article, Stay Calm, America in the Atlantic detailing the very history I needed. I needed to understand more about what NATO should and shouldn’t do. And as we are overwhelmed with opinions from various sources it’s important to know who wrote what and why. And for a little lighter reading, here is a satire from McSweeney’s about that who is that guy on the internet?

Meanwhile, it turns out that Chrystia Freeland, our Deputy Prime Minister is of Ukrainian heritage and speaks Ukrainian and Russian in addition to English, French and Italian. After launching her career in journalism as a Ukraine-based freelance correspondent for the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist, 

Ms. Freeland has written two books: Sale of the Century: The Inside Story of the Second Russian Revolution (2000); and Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (2012).  More reading for me.

And why didn’t I know any of that before? That’s my inattention to civics and the operations of our Democracy in Canada.

This could lead me to a rant about the “Freedom Convoy” and their trespasses on fellow citizens’ liberties. Did you know the average air horn produces at least 125 dB of sound which is much higher than the 85 dB associated with acoustic nerve injury? And how about the inadequate understanding of how our Canadian democracy works? Is that a failure of our primary and secondary education system or an effect of amplification of un-democratic activities of our neighbours to the south? But I digress. If you want to read more check out this article in The Walrus.

What Happened in Ottawa? Separating the Discontent from the Darker Elements

We are all tired and morally injured. I now flinch when I hear an air horn or see a vehicle displaying a Canadian flag.

But instead, without forgetting the Syrians, it is time to think about the Ukrainians and our Canadian Ukrainians. In the spirit of creativity and the sounds of words, I offer this word cloud of my thoughts while I find something more concrete and effective to do. And did you know that the yellow in the Ukrainian flag represent wheat and the blue, the sky?