It’s Raining In Paris Right Now

We have a fabulously low-key apartment in Bastille right around the corner from the Marais where we shopped like crazy on Sunday. Saturday was spent hanging out with Tina, getting into the apartment, napping and then having a really nice lunch and dinner. Yesterday we went to the Louvre, which was madness. Absolute insanity. A whole whack of people who should probably learn to appreciate art in their every day lives and not jam up lines and ask the only ticket taker where the farking Mona Lisa sits. In the end, I meandered slowly around the Flemish and French sections, and came upon Holbein’s Anne of Cleves, which made my day. The two Vermeer’s in the gallery are also spectacular, but the more popular paintings are often crowded by pushy people and tours.

Then we took the Metro to the start of the “Bookworm” walk in our Lonely Planet guide. From Hemingway’s apartment to Shakespeare and Company to the pub where Kerouac and Ginsberg drank (I had two half pints). We saw one of the oldest churches in Paris, the remains of St Genvieve and Ici Repose le Coeur, which is the heart of someone named Voisine. I just like the translation: Here Lies the Heart. Perhaps a good title for a novel.

I’ve bought a sweater, a couple funky shirts and a super-cute skirt and today we might walk the Champs Elysses and walk up the Arc and, of course, do more shopping. We had thought about going to Brussels but the train tickets are expensive, the weather less than exeptional and we have our apartment here for the whole week. I only wish that it would stop raining. It’s not Ireland for heaven’s sake.

I’m a little homesick, especially at night, for my RRHB, my cats, my own bed, but we’re managing. The food is unbelievable.

One More Sleep

This time tomorrow night Sam and I will be on a plane and will by flying somewhere near the ocean. We are headed to Paris for Tina’s wedding. So far, I’m all packed (as much as I think I’m packed) and hideously behind in everything else. Our house is in a complete tip: there’s dust everywhere; my clothes are in piles all over the bedroom; and there’s a hairball on the cat’s bed that I’ve ignored for, um, three days now.

Today is my RRHB’s birthday too. We celebrated on the weekend with dinner at this amazing restaurant down the street from us called Foxley. The meal was honestly spectacular. So much so that he was still raving about it the next day when we were wandering around the antique shop near Aberfoyle (I definitely should have bought the lamp) on Saturday. Then we stopped by my parents house for dinner. My ridiculously generous stepmother was cleaning our her closet and decided to loan me her gorgeous Louis V. for the foreseeable future (poorly lit and pictured above). How delicious!

Now almost a whole other week has passed and I can’t believe this time tomorrow I’ll be on my way to another continent. Thank goodness the dress I ordered online to wear to the wedding a) arrived and b) fits. Whew.

Okay! Back to packing and I’ll be back in 10 days. If we find an internet cafe, I’ll try to update, but chances are I’ll be offline and unable to understand a French keyboard.

Oh Gawker, Yawn

Loving to hate remains one of the most entertaining reasons for reading Gawker. But sometimes, sometimes you need to roll your eyes. They’ve had a hate-on for James Frey ever since the story broke, which means that this latest barrage of “investigative” journalism around his novel should come as no surprise. But my only question is when should people just start burying the hatchet and letting it all go? There’s a disclaimer at the beginning of the book that reads simply: “Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable.” So I know it’s an easy potshot to take then, muddling about in what I’d consider to be the lesser aspects of the novel, the multiple lists and “fun facts.”

Although the Gawker piece is tongue-in-cheek, it must get tiring to be writing and reporting the same old story again and again. But in the same sense, you’d think Frey would learn the lesson, and maybe double check whether or not actual facts are correct. In the end, though, I guess it’ll continue to be an easy criticism to make and to level against him, regardless of how many books he manages to sell in his lifetime.


#36 – The Secret History

Donna Tartt’s epic The Secret History feels at times over-wrought, over-written and perhaps many, many pages too long. That said, holy crap did this novel grab me by the toes and pull me in from beginning to end. To summarize: it’s the story of a young, unhappy man from Plano, California who finds himself embroiled in a murderous plot at an exclusive college (called Hampden) in Vermont. But the book is also so much more than that — it’s the dramatic coming of age for a young man who searches for something exciting and finds himself deeply embroiled in events that will change his life forever.

The narrator, Richard Papen, has had an ugly childhood: his parents are typically unhappy, he’s poor, an only child, and longs for a world far different from the one he grew up within. Enter Hampden College. And even better, enter his acceptance into a small fraternity of students, six including Richard, that study Greek under an epic teacher named Julian Morrow.

The group’s leader, Henry, a wickedly smart (he speaks six languages or something crazy like that), embarrassingly rich fellow who controls the group. Besides Richard and Henry, there’s Charles and Camilla (twins), Francis, and Bunny (real name Edmund). All five were reared at prep or private school, and all five both accept and reject Richard at the same time. The secret history of the novel’s title revolves around the events that fall out of a weekend where the core five, Richard excluded, attempt to create a true bacchanal in the woods around Francis’s property. It’s impossible for any of them to move forward beyond the events that happened over those few days and the book meditates on those moments in your life that impact where you’ll end up, the idea of a ruinous youth, and the consequences to thoughtless actions.

Tartt unravels the novel like a mystery with masterful suspense. Richard slowly goes through the motions of telling the story, which has become ‘the only one he’ll ever be able to tell,’ to the reader and in part finally letting the history consume him once again if only to finally let it all go. Elements of Highsmith and other solid British writers (Tartt’s an American) sneak into her prose and characterization (Henry is a solid Ripley-esque fellow, right down to his glasses), and I found the most frustrating part of the narrative never knowing exactly when the novel is set. But in the end, it’s a terrific book that sucks you right in and would be perfect for summer reading up at the cottage when it’s cold (like today) and raining (like today) and all you’re looking to do is curl up by the fire with a good, hair-raising story.

READING CHALLENGES: Believe it or not, The Secret History is on the 1001 Books list, and so it was on my particular challenge list for this year. I think I might be slightly behind the whole 1001 Books challenge for now, having given up Huck for the present time.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Saints of Big Harbour, a nonfiction book that I started while waiting for the osteopath this afternoon called High Crimes, and whatever I’m going to take to Paris (probably the two IMPAC books I actually have and anything else that’ll fit in my suitcase and, of course, a Jane Austen because I always love to read her on a plane).

A Not-Quite There Poem

I’ve been going through old writing today and picking up threads of stories that I had always meant to finish. Just typed an email to a friend saying that now that I’ve finished one book I honestly think that I’ll be able to finish another and another. But perhaps the sunshine and free time are making me a bit euphoric. Here’s an old poem that I’ve been rewriting this afternoon.

Churchill

He pulls me away, with
a voice that equals your own,
strips you clean,
and leaves me knowing
incomparable middle class suffering.

Stands there with a strength
that comes from foreign places,
with names I can’t countdown,
places in the mine, places
where I have not yet spent time.

The next one had a reedy voice,
shiny shoes, short tie, lively banjo.
I couldn’t get that song out
of my head, enduring
train ride, a long walk, a whistle.

The fitness in his hands,
cracked, scared, calloused,
that when they touched me,
bear me to run away, a place
by the river, sweater that wasn’t mine.

Another Saturday

My RRHB is working again today. And I was going to spend today making a list of all the things I wanted to bring to Paris, but I was going to try to pack lightly, a couple of good skirts, a cute dress or two, and that’s about it. That leaves more room in the suitcase for items to bring home. But I haven’t written a stitch since I gave the book to my friend in editorial and I’ve been missing it. Missing the book. Missing the process. But knowing that it’s such a mess and needs some outside help. I think she’s going to try to get it back to me when we’re back from Paris, and then I’ll start rewriting like a mad woman until the end of the summer. That gives me three good months before my next internal deadline: September 1st. Now the question is: what do I write until then?

#35 – See the Child

David Bergen’s lyrical, gut-wrenching and tragic novel surprised me. I picked it up on a whim, trying to satisfy my Manitoba requirement for The Canadian Book Challenge, from a pile of books that were about to be sent back to the warehouse. Am I ever glad that I did.

The story of a middle-aged man who lives in small-town Manitoba, See the Child begins with a tragedy, as do so many good, Canadian literary novels. A knock on the door wakes protagonist Paul. He comes downstairs and expects to see his missing son at the door; instead, Harry, the local police officer, stands in front of him to say that Stephen’s dead. The rest of the novel deals with Paul dealing with the loss of his son. Stephen’s girlfriend, Nicole, was pregnant at the time of his death and when she and his young grandson come to live with him at his apiary, the young boy, named Sky, becomes his lifeline.

A couple of years ago, I read Bergen’s The Time in Between, and it took me months to finish. The book just didn’t capture my attention, so I was reticent to try more Bergen. However, this novel had me from the first few pages, I read the book up until the last moment of having to babysit, walked with it home down Lansdowne, and went to bed early so I could finish it after I got home from my cousin’s. The narrative stays close to Paul. And it’s not that we feel his suffering, we see it, in his actions, in his conversations, in how he almost abandons his life from before when his son was alive. It’s a novel about small town life, and has strong resonances of Margaret Laurence, which is probably why I liked it so much.

READING CHALLENGES & WHAT’S UP NEXT: As I mentioned, this is Manitoba for The Canadian Book Challenge. That’s 10 out of the 13 to make my cross-country reading adventure. I’m still a bit stumped by Nunavut, but I’ve got Nova Scotia (Saints of Big Harbour) at the ready to dive into after I finish Donna Tartt’s exceptional (so far) The Secret History.

#34 – Bright Shiny Morning

I’m going to start off my review by confessing a number of things:

1. I work for the company that published Bright Shiny Morning.
2. I came down hard on the side of Frey over the whole Oprah debacle.
3. I did not read My Friend Leonard, but loved A Million Little Pieces.
4. I believe Frey to be an extremely talented writer.

Now with all of that out of the way, I think it’s important also to note that it’s impossible to read Bright Shiny Morning outside of the context of what happened to its author. The characters are all deeply scarred by life, by their own actions and by the harsh nature of the world in general. That’s as far as I’ll go in terms of imprinting an author’s psyche onto his work.

When I started the novel on Friday evening on the subway ride home, I wanted to ignore the world and simply read it until I was finished. Lucky for me, my RRHB had to work on Saturday so I did not leave my room until I had read all 501 pages. And the thank yous. And my first thoughts upon finishing the book was not unlike what Thom Geier over at Entertainment Weekly opined. Once done, I said to myself, “Huh, where’s the story?”

I got out of bed, pulled the covers up, tidied the pillows, sat back down and decided I was all wrong in my thinking. It’s not so much where’s the story but what’s the story. And the city is the story. The book is Los Angeles. From its beginnings (told in chronological order in parallel to the various stories that have physical characters in them) to its current state: polluted, prolific, rich, brilliant, troubled, lost, found and a whole host of other descriptors pregnant with meaning. Throughout the novel, there are 4 key storylines that thread the book together, that break through the setting (which includes many, many other characters, which go beyond their usual narrative importance and simply become setting themselves) and hold the book together: a young couple that leave abusive homes to find their fortune in LA; an American-born Mexican girl struggling to find her way; a closeted superstar with a functional marriage and dysfunctional obsessions; and a homeless man who lives near Venice Beach in a bathroom.

Frey’s unique writing style, his lack of punctuation, his driving, aching prose, reaches out off the page and right into your emotional core. When life collapses all around the characters, as it does, Frey’s ability to convey the events that cause their downfalls is matter of fact. Not without emotion, but with a driving honesty that enables one to come to grips with the sheer force of unhappiness in all its glory. That’s not to say there aren’t happy parts to the book, but there’s a lot of realistic unhappiness too, as if he’s taking the Hollywood dream and showing it from every angle the cameras won’t capture. It’s as if he’s taken the idea of honesty and pulled it apart, driven it to new heights, and then broken it all apart again just to make sure we get it.

And we do, get it.

By the end of the book, I felt despite the cliches (and there are some, they are unavoidable), despite the slightly frustrating epic-like lists, and despite my own craving for more about the 4 main stories, I closed the cover extremely satisfied. Satisfied in the sense that there are many writers trying to push the boundaries of fiction and the form of the novel, but none who can do it so publicly as Frey. His name will push the novel onto the bestseller list, but his work will show everyone what he’s got in him: a tenacious ability to tell a good tale and a need to drive the form of the novel itself in a new direction.

I got up off the bed again, stripped off my pajamas, had a shower, and decided that yes, it’s a freaking good book. My thoughts now far more in line with what the NY Times had to say. And I’d highly recommend it to anyone who asks, and I still think Oprah was a fool over it all.

#33 – The Ravine

A few years back, I read Paul Quarrington’s Galveston. It was a swift read, from what I can remember, with some rather blush-worthy sex scenes and a grand old sense of humour. And other than seeing Whale Music about sixteen times, I haven’t read much else by Quarrington, despite him being a mainstay of Canadian literature and having won Canada Reads this year.

[Note: I am blogging while under the influence of exhaustion so pardon my rambling review].

[And isn’t that an AWESOME cover?].

Quarrington’s latest novel, The Ravine, is his most semi-autobiographical (In his own words the only difference between he and the main character is the guy’s name is Phil. Heh.) book to date. The down-on-his-luck protagonist, freshly separated and eagerly co-parenting, attempts to change his life by writing a novel. Up until now, Phil McQuigge, seduced by the blue glow of the television from a young, impressionable age, has grown into a writer/producer managing to stay on the air in “teevee”-land by running a show called Padre. All his life he’s wanted to reach his full potential. All his life he’s stopped himself short by the bottle, by male stupidity (he loves his wife; he cheats on his wife) and one tragic event from childhood. In a way, I kind of felt like this was Quarrington’s Cat’s Eye, only funnier. And kind of goofier. And really self-referential and kind of trippy.

The narrative follows the narrator writing the book that the reader is reading.

Yeah.

At 4 AM it was kind of confusing but it’s sure as hell good company. Quarrington’s narrative barrels along in its own kind of drunken stupor, tangential, argumentative, full of love and great dialogue. The characters are real. Broken. Amazingly complex, but also brittle and ultimately redemptive.

I know I’m not making much sense tonight. But in a way, it’s kind of appropriate. How very Phil of me. Now, I am going to go eat dinner. Tonight I might start David Bergen’s See the Child or I might try to finish Huckleberry Finn. Let me just say that when I told my RRHB that I was finding Finn a little boring, he sat up in bed and said, “That’s because you have no sense of adventure or imagination.” Aw. He really does love me.