interweb

naked cranberry neighbour oatcakes

/ jlevack / 5 Comments

Okay. What is it with nekkid neighbours? On any given day, without fail, somebody out there searches for “naked neighbour” and comes to my site.

The only thing on my site that’s searched for more often is “cranberry oatcakes”.

The reason that “naked neighbours” brings searchers to my blog is that I have neighbours who, when the weather is warm, live largely outside in direct eye view of my desk. They’re loud, and apparently unaware of the fact that other people can see and hear them. I even designed a header just for them! I kinda stopped writing about them though, it felt kinda icky.

Recently, my exceedingly handsome and handy husband put a new outlet into the south wall of my office, which allowed me to move my desk. I don’t have to look at the Next-to-Naked-Neighbours now. I try not to, I really do. They still don’t seem to grasp  the idea of window treatments, and I can tell you with a fairly high degree of accuracy what kind of orange juice he takes out of the fridge at night… when he opens it and the room is bathed in fridge-light, I can’t help but be able to see, if chance puts me in view of it. I love my sun room/office, but I avoid it at night so I don’t have to see them, and I avoid it on warm days because  I may hear their overly-loud cell phone conversations, smell their cigarette smoke, or (no, pleeeeease no!) hear those immortal words screeched from husband to wife in the driveway: “HEY?!  YOU ON THE TOY-LET?”

Actually, I kind of ignore that side of the house, now, to be honest. They recently cut down a lot of the foliage and trees in-between our houses, so in order to feel private, I have to look the other way. They built a giant addition that lacks symmetry; it’s not my business.

I understand them, sort of. They’re really involved in improving their property, and their house. They’re building, and really industrious. They probably don’t really think about my house, and the fact that they’ve made it almost impossible for me to not see into theirs. Maybe they’re bitching about me too, who knows? I want them to have some privacy, so I can have some. That requires that I not look over there, and that maybe I’ll have to just not look in that direction. It’s what we do, when we live in close proximity, right?

My blind eye is turned.

But really, I digress.

As interesting as they are, they aren’t the point. What I want to know is this:

Why, in the name of all that’s in a birthday suit, do so many people Google “naked neighbours” so often? Even more to the point: why, when there are about 2,270,000 results in 0.27 seconds (I checked) for that phrase, do they click-through to little ‘ole Box 761? I’m not even on the first page of searches!!

It’s very strange, and I spend just a little time each day musing about it. The only thing that really gives me hope is that Google has 271,000 hits for cranberry oatcakes.  It’s not 2

maybe I should be aiming for that intersection between the two?

million, but it’s a respectable number. I’m not sure what the demographic is of my readership, such as it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s more the oatcake crowd than the naked neighbour group.

Just FYI, here’s the post about oatcakes. They’re good. Really good. And FYI, I’m not at all anti-naked. I like naked. Just not in the adjoining yard, whilst smoking and arguing on the phone with power tools in hand. Or, like, without window treatments and getting an early evening OJ from the fridge.

It’s all about choices, really.

I killed my cat, and other stories: Box 761 Death Edition.

/ jlevack / 11 Comments

Okay. I’m using that title to shock you.

Doesn’t mean I didn’t do it, but the preferred term is “euthanize“. Sounds much nicer, right?

Bo 1996-2011

Bo was my cat, but before he was mine he was my mother’s. He was a 24-toed (normal cats have 18), black-and-white puppy-like cat who was the charismatic and goofy reminder to me, daily, of my sweet, complicated, and sometimes troubled mother.

Shortly after Mom was diagnosed with the lung cancer that would eventually kill her  she and I had a chat about chats… they were great company, and therapeutic. I lived a 4 hour drive away and worried about her through the week – lonely, ill, alone. I told her they could help lower one’s blood pressure, etc. It was a short conversation, nothing really meaningful.

The next weekend  when I arrived at her house, there they were: two kitties. Oh I wish I could find their kitty pictures; they were so very cute. Bo was awkward – how many awkward kittens do you know? From the start he was  such a character.

She was delighted with her tiny charges (too young to be away from their mother, I always thought). She bought them in Perth, maybe Smith’s Falls (?) – towns I for some reason always get confused.  Whatever. She got them from a pet store (kitten farm, I always figured) in one of those places, anyway. I guess it doesn’t matter much, though not having that small detail bothers me, a bit.

Mr. Bojangles (because he’s polydactyl and tap danced when he walked) and his sister Shirley Temple brought a lot of delight to my mother. Shirley was the brains of the operation, you could see her try to herd Bo towards the food when it was time to eat (otherwise, we weren’t sure he’d find it, to be honest). They were delightful and sweet and really a completely ill-conceived purchase, but who cares, right?

my beautiful mother, 1935 - 1996

Three  too-short/too-long months later my mother was dead, and we were exhausted.  It was a hard death, and a painful three months leading up to it.

I was so out of it that the day we were supposed to finalize things with the funeral home I parked my car downtown and locked the keys in it – still running – and I didn’t notice. It ran out of gas in downtown Brockville while we tried to kill time before my long-suffering big sister had to go take care of business. That’s one of those stories that you never actually look back on and laugh at (I’m sorry again, Nancy, I really am).

It’s just kind of sad.

I can barely remember anything because of the weird white-noise in my head at that time, the hyper-surreality of it all. To this day, there are things I am not sure I’m remembering correctly; I just can’t get a grasp on them entirely.

It wasn’t easy, and it never is, losing someone.

What it is though, is weird. It’s weird getting used to someone taking medicine, or being in hospital not to get better but to fight death, to prolong the time before the inevitable. It’s weird feeling some relief when your loved one dies, but it’s better than watching them suffer.

That was an awful time. A time of confusing emotions and fear and pre-emptive loss. We had a complicated relationship, my mother and I, so it follows that her death was not simple for me. I loved her fiercely, but was often just confused by her otherness to me. I think she felt the same way. She once told me that I was too much like my father, perhaps that’s it.

She was in a lot of pain, and drugged, and often loopy; she was angry and vindictive and scared and sweet and confused and funny. She got paranoid, and plain nasty sometimes – I remember after a particularly obnoxious statement to me I hissed to her that I hoped it wasn’t the last thing she ever said to me, because she’d regret it. For both of us, I am thankful that it wasn’t.

Oh, the pain we cause those we love, right?

Don’t worry, there was sweetness too – many goodbyes and late night talks beside her bed – not about anything important, just talking and trying to be normal in a decidedly abnormal twilit hospital room. We talked a lot about her lost babies – too many, miscarried and lost, so many babies and so many lost dreams. We talked about whether she would see her babies in heaven, whether they would be grown or not. We decided that heaven is whatever you want it to be. I hope she met them there, and is having coffee and figuring crossword puzzles with them all right now.

But by then end of it, I was wrung out, and had stepped back from it a bit. You can’t sustain the emotional rollercoaster that someone’s  death creates without stepping back, sometimes. I couldn’t anyway.

So, she died. It wasn’t like on tv, people – it’s hard work to die, to take that last breath, to allow yourself to give up your ghost.  She laboured at it, and it was awful, even with the help of (a lot of) morphine to ease her way.

And yesterday, a coddled and comfortable fifteen years and 5 months later, Mr. Bojangles was stroked and whispered-to while our lovely vet Bruce reverently and gently sent him to sleep in my arms.

huh.

I’m not going to belabour the point here – you know what I’m getting at, right? I will be able to remember Bo’s death in a way that I cannot do my mother’s, and it’s not only because well, he’s just a cat. Those last too-short months of my mother’s life were so crazy, so full of fear and anger and love and loss and confusion over her care, her pain, her struggle. We did what we could, but it’s hard to have meaningful, pure memories of a time so full of conflicting emotions. With Bo, I had time to prepare, to love him extra-hard, to let him go before it all got too hard and it was muddied with pain and fear.

The choice to euthanize Bo was not one I took lightly, and it caused me pain. I cried about it – I’m not ashamed to say. He was senile, and still didn’t always know where his food was; he meowed and mewled and howled and caterwauled through the night; he was becoming incontinent. He’d lost weight, and his heart murmur was getting worse…. He still had some quality of life:  quiet moments, sleeping on the guest bed, cuddling on my lap at night, playing sometimes with the other cat.

The arithmetic of it was that Bo’s quality of life was declining and there were more bad times than good. He was not going to get better.

So I did what I needed to do, for him and for me. We will all miss him very much; he was one of our family. I am easeful, though, in my mind that he had a good life, and a good death.

Rest in Peace, my Boo Boo Kitty, and say hi to Mom for me, okay?

Box 761: Special Needs Edition

/ jlevack / 13 Comments

One of three most precious to me, and the centre of my biggest silence

More interesting than what people write about, sometimes, is what they don’t write about. All sorts of things can inhabit those silences.There have been whole months when I’ve written nothing, and there’s usually a reason for that. And when I do write, there are some things that I don’t mention.

The yawning silences in Box 761 have been largely constructed to obscure disability: my (step)daughter’s disability and how we all work together to accommodate it, and our reactions to a world that doesn’t always accommodate itself to her needs….

One reason I didn’t write about it was that it didn’t really feel like my story to tell — it’s hers, right? And I kind of wanted to make “Box 761” a place where that particular issue wasn’t always at the forefront – a place where my story lived.  So, when I started writing here I was just coming off a long period of working in the disability community, volunteering in the disability community, and mothering in the disability community of Box 761, and I wanted to write about all the other things that are me.

Disability has a way of taking over if you let it.

I  was also uneasy – worried about falling into a “mommy blog” pigeon-hole. Or into the even smaller, deeper “special needs mommy blog” hole. It was important I carve out a spot for myself, somehow.

I forgot, though, that mothering has become who I am, not only what I do. It’s not all of me of course, but it’s a big lovely rewarding frustrating boring challenging awe-inspiring part of what I do every day. It’s a privilege to do, especially since these gorgeous women who I mother aren’t my biological children, but are instead a gift given to me first by Mr. 761 and second by those amazing children themselves.

Jeez. add the husband in Kandahar and you’ve got a Lifetime Movie of the Week!

(Daughter Number Two will warrant her own post later — she’s leaving us to go away to school soon and no doubt I’ll be in a teary empty-nest mood one day and write a sappy love post to embarrass and secretly please her. Plus, we need to discuss how much of her I can, you know, discuss.)

Here’s the thing, though. Being a (step)mother has completely altered my life. Vicky’s disability has completely altered my life, altered how I see the world, how the world sees me. So it is also my story,  and I guess it’s time to talk about it a bit.

Vicky and I talked about it the other day, and she told me that she didn’t care what I wrote about, and that she’s fine with it all. She just started her own blog, too, so if you’re interested click here to meet my fine (step)daughter in person…. Today she wrote an especially fabulous, funny poignant and strong blog. It made me run back here to this  draft and start working again. I’ve started this more than once, and it’s tough slogging for some reason.

When I read specialneedsmommyblogs I tend to think they fall into a few different categories: the ones that make mommy seem like a Saint (and while my halo is a bit shiny, I’m definitely no Saint, lemme tell ya); the ones that are all about how Inspirational and Special their child is; the ones that have an overt religious message (like, “Billy’s being born with his eyes turned inward and flippers instead of knees is a Gift from God”… um, yeah, some gift, Thanks a lot God. Did you keep the receipt?). There’s also AngryBlog (with a lot of “why’s?” and not enough “how’s), the SappyBlog, the CheeryBlog….

You get my point. I know I’m not being entirely fair here, and I think that what I mean is that none of those felt to me like blogshoes I could fit into. I’m just not sure how to be authentic, how to fit all of these different sides into one blog space. I  knew that writing was therapeutic for me, and wanted to explore that first. What’s funny is that writing about her is probably the best therapy in many ways. Wonder what took me so long to get to that point?

So, as much as I may not want to be a “mommy blogger” (whatever that is – and many  heartfelt apologies to all those women out there who want the label), there are days when I want to write about this very important part of my life. It is important, and it is worth talking about. And let me tell you – “stepmother” is not always an easy role. And while I’ve been  so utterly fortunate in that – there was a hole to fill, and I stepped  right into it, into their arms – there’s a whole book in that, I can assure you.

All that said, “Special-needs-step-mommy-blogger” seemed just a little too unwieldy, yeah?

some days, it's just there - it is what it is and it's part of the normal routine.

Vicky’s disability is both straightforward and very very complicated.  She was born with cerebral palsy, which is a sort of catch-all phrase for “we’ve ruled out everything else but see motor skills issues, etc.”. Her CP affects all four of her limbs, so they call her a “quadriplegic”. That does not mean she can’t move or feel — she’s not paralysed. It’s just that the messages she tries to send her muscles are often slow to get there, or get crossed somehow. She cannot walk, nor can she hold a pen or get herself in or out of her wheelchair without help.  There’s a whole long list of stuff that she can’t do.

There’s also a long list of what she can do of course, but in our culture, we often really focus on what people can’t do. We do this for a variety of reasons – in V’s world, doctors, teachers, waitresses, passersby… all of them tend to focus on what she can’t do. This is a convenient way to pigeon-hole her, to classify her. Certainly I do it myself sometimes – there are shortcut terms that we use when talking to doctors or nurse managers or social workers – she  “needs help with almost all of her ADL’s” we’ll say. (That’s “Activities of Daily Living” to you uninitiated.)

She also has a pretty severe learning disorder – called non-verbal learning disorder (NLD). I find this the most challenging part of her disability, largely because it means that her brain isn’t wired to “read” non-verbal communication. She is very literal

image courtesy of ClipartOf.comsometimes, and social/cultural idiom can be difficult for her to understand. She has had to learn her world in a way that would be challenging to anyone. Luckily, she was born with a really big brain and a sense of humour. I have learned to try harder to say what I mean, to rely less on lazy language, and to keep an eye out for potentially confusing situations that we’ll need to discuss later. These are useful tools for anyone, so yeah, it’s not all bad.

Vicky would, though, prefer very much not to have NLD, if given the choice. Navigating the world in that chair is hard enough, without not understanding all the signs along the way while she’s at it.

Some days, it's ALL there is.

Lately we’ve had trouble with the people who are contracted to do her care. She and I have been talking about this frustrating situation, and this morning she wrote about it (see above link). She understands very clearly, the primal link between herself and me, her caregiver. Probably in a way that I don’t always even register, she’s twigged to the concept that her very survival depends on there being someone around who will – reliably and safely – be able to do those things for her that she needs to do.

I’m just a nice lady whose kid has a disability. I’m trying as hard as I can to help her and the world naturalize this disability. I want her to leave my house and be a full citizen. I want her to be unafraid of saying “this care is not adequate”. Hell, there’s a LOT of things I want for her, same as I want for my other daughter — I want them to be citizens of the world, with all the rights and obligations that entails. I want them both to be pain free, as much as can be arranged. I want them to have safe places to live. I want them to have friends and secrets from their parents (not big ones, though, okay guys?). I want them to live in a world that is free of their feeling guilt or panic because they want to, say, get out of bed in the morning. Or, I dunno, not sit in their own filth because their care is unreliable.

See? Simple.

But I digress. I do that often when Vicky’s care is concerned. It’s pretty complicated. And it’s not just her, you know? It’s stories like this in today’s paper. It’s worrying about everyone else on that missing Aide’s roster — who went without food? Who slept in their chair that night? Who couldn’t get in touch with their emergency contact? Who didn’t want to complain for fear of reprisal of some sort?

This is the kind of stuff that literally keeps me up at night. Every time I start to bitch about something in Vicky’s life I start to think about other people less fortunate than Vicky, people who don’t have enough money or any family support. I’ve basically made her quality of life my full time job at present and I still can’t guarantee she’ll have it. It’s enough to make one weep. It’s what makes me keep doing this grinding, frustrating, agonizingly angry-making daily struggle to make the world see.

It’s why I was on anti-depressants for a while and felt like I wasn’t good enough. It’s why I often felt guilt that brought me to my knees – I wasn’t doing enough, doing it well enough, doing it nicely or politely or in a way that wouldn’t make me crazy. I’ve become a kind of weirdly earnest,  annoying zealot. Did you read what I wrote earlier? “I’m just a nice lady whose kid has a disability. I’m trying as hard as I can to help her and the world naturalize this disability.”

Who the hell write that they just want to help the world naturalize disability? hee hee. Only the parent of a child with a disabilty could write that with a straight face. Why don’t I just try to cure world hunger and bring about world peace while I’m at it, eh?

I’m working on that.

How? Well, this blog today, for one thing. There were days when I wanted to write – felt positively itchy with the need to write something, but didn’t. I didn’t write because I was afraid: afraid that I couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand because I was dealing with day-to-day life for Vicky; afraid that writing about it would seem whiny, or that it would make me angrier, or weepier, or make her feel bad.

How is it that I live in a world where my daughter feels bad because of a condition that none of us had any control over creating?

So. Everybody has that something that is their cross to bear, you know? What writing and reading about this does is put it all in perspective. All those blogs I mentioned earlier? They may not be “me” but you can bet that I read as many as I can find. I may not always agree with them, but they sure as hell made me realize that I’m not alone in this ridiculously complicated world of parenting a child with special needs.  Writing one adds my  voice to the mix.

Vicky is empowered by the internet and is finding her voice, there and out in the “real world”. I’m trying to do the same, and the only way I can do that comfortably is to turn up the volume a bit, make those silences disappear. What I can tell you is that the daily work of making the world see and hear my daughter is more accessible all of a sudden. And I’m not alone in it, because I’m following her lead now.

So You Think You Can Talk Bookies? or, the gameshowification of the CBC Books

/ jlevack / 11 Comments

I’m back from New Orleans, and in some ways I wish that I were still there. There’s something so great about vacations — that mindset that allows you to concentrate on vital choices such as “drinking or shopping?” or “garden district or french quarter?” (the correct answer to those questions is “both“, btw).

It was lovely.

And boy did I need it after all of that Canada Reads nonsense. I tell ya, I’m not even sure image lifted from cbc websitethat I want to go to that website any more. I can’t help it though — it lures me, like the brown muddy bayou waters I toured last week — and I keep going back. What do I find there but alligator-infested oily murk more junky pseudo literary stuff like The Bookies? This ill-timed and ill-conceived idea happened while the Canada Reads contest was playing out, and was weirdly complicated. Readers had to make up genres and categories, then they had to offer up suggestions for books to fit in those categories, and then they had to go online and vote…. there was very little real information set out, and it got lost in the shuffle.

That’s too bad, because the books that eventually won were all pretty great, and congratulations to them all, by the way. It’s clear, though, that the whole purpose really is to get people clicking through to the CBC books portal. It has nothing much to do with the books or the authors — I mean, did you see the press release they put out about the winners? Of course you didn’t — there wasn’t one. Did you hear about the prize they sent each author? Of course you didn’t — there wasn’t one.

Readers, however, got the chance to win prizes — prize packs from The King’s Speech, and a Sony Reader. In fact, I clicked a link called “Bookies Contest Winners” thinking I would get to the books that won, and instead found the list of prize pack winners. Sigh.

Hm. Too bad quite a few of those books aren’t even available as e-books. I’m sure, though, that the certificate that the CBC bookclubbers printed off of their MS Word templates will be greatly appreciated by each author.

See, it’s this kind of stuff that I keep coming back to — since when is the author and the book the least important part of this process? It’s just kind of weird to me that they would offer so little to the authors. They thank Penguin for god’s sake, for giving them prizes to give to people who click on their site, but they have nothing for the authors? I don’t mean that each author needs a cheque (though that would be nice), nor do I mean that they have to buy a page of Quill & Quire to advertise (though that would be nice)….  An attempt on their part to even pretend that the works of art were important would be nice. These books’ value does not lie in how well people guess who will win; they represent time and effort and craft. They represent people creating art, right? Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but this tacky approach demeans it all.

Their chirpy-chirp inanity also demeans it. One of the books that won this “prize” was Billie Livingston’s incandescent short story collection Greedy Little Eyes. To announce her win, the bright lights at CBC Bookclub wrote this:

“Billie Livingston’s Greedy Little Eyes should no longer feel greedy for attention! This insightful collection exploring the concepts of normalcy and isolation defeated two Giller-nominated heavyweights to win the Bookie for Best Short Story Collection. What will Billie have her eyes on next?”

Really? What will she have her eyes on next? Do you think they even read the book?

Okay. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but it just feels so… thrown-together. Like an un-thoughtful, buckshee blurb because they needed to write something peppy with the word “eyes” in it. I think I’m going to go read Billie Livingston’s book again, and then I’m going to read a few of her other books, and then I’m going to write about them here in Box 761. She deserves at least that.

However, that’s all sooo last month. Now we have So You Think You Can Talk Books with Shelagh Rogers.

This is, of course, in keeping with the Game-Show-ification of the CBC books portal. This current game show relies on the conceit that a lucky listener will write in and pitch their ability to go on CBC and talk books with Shelagh.

In 200 words you have to make a pitch — a book you love, why you’re the best person to talk about it, and why other Canadians would want to hear about it. A jury goes through the applications, then there’s an audition process, and then they pick the winners. The deadline is 07 March, here’s the link if you’re interested.

I don’t know why, but this depresses me. Maybe they just didn’t sex it up enough — they could have paired each civilian with a writer, and they could compete by talking about books while dancing. Or maybe each writer can be asked to compose a new novel while they’re discussing their work? Do you think they can get the authors to maybe write some more holiday gift guides? Those were great. Maybe they could do a live show online, and the authors of each book being pitched could give their champions piggy back rides while they talk to Shelagh? What do you think?

I really like Shelagh Rogers, and I have always admired her committment to Canadian writing, and her very clearly articulated respect for and love of Canadian writers. I don’t even actually have a problem with the idea of a panel of civilians talking about books. Somehow, though, the marketing campaign for this just smacks of tacky — it feels very much like the same junky game-showy stunt-radio that Canada Reads became.

Ah… is this just post-holiday bitchiness?

Nah. This really looks to me like yet another (albeit slightly classier) attempt to disguise getting the audience to create their own entertainment as some sort of democratic interactivity. I will watch with interest.

761 Words about Canada Reads

/ jlevack / 10 Comments

2011 winner

Hm.

Days Two and Three of Canada Reads have come and gone. Terry Fallis’ book The Best Laid Plans is the winner. That is just about all I’m going to say about that.

I have been heartened in the past days to see so much insightful, funny and honest commentary on Canada Reads… it makes my job that much easier. It felt, for a while, as if were the only one writing about this stuff; I wondered, sometimes, if it wasn’t easier for me to do it because I don’t have a place within the established literary circles, or publishing, or radio… I’m just a blogger, you know? I have no real vested interest except for that which is concerned with being able to live in a culture that respects books and writing, that privileges writers and well… takes this stuff seriously.

I’ll read just about anything and give it a chance. I’m pretty omnivorous when it comes to reading and there’s almost nothing I won’t try to read. Like Debbie Travis, there are some books I just haven’t been able to finish, just couldn’t do it. I only have so much time in

Random shelf in downstairs hallway. No order, definitely no dewey decimal system. They’re arranged whimsically, and I read ’em all. Cherry Ames Dude Ranch Nurse,  please meet Louis Althusser.

my life, and like Nancy Pearl and her Rule of 50, I don’t feel guilty about it. That said, there are very few. Confession: never, ever, was able to finish Old Man and the Sea (10th grade reading assignment). Nor have I managed to finish Eat, Pray, Love (Gah! so bad). I say I’ve read The Brothers Karamazov, but now I can’t actually remember if I finished it. There’s nothing wrong with any of that.

We’re all allowed our personal opinions. That’s cool and I want to keep it that way.

In a contest, though, such as this they have set rules. Criteria that they need to take into account when they judge a piece of writing. Sara Quin said it during the post-game show — that in the end “it’s a job” — they had criteria and she had to work within those rules. I can’t, and won’t, say I agree with her choice, but I like that she worked within the rules of the game and that she took her job seriously. That everyone had a different idea of what those rules were is clear, though, and problematic.

I’ve been getting really caught up in this, so want to take a step back. I don’t want to nit-pick every little bit of this, because (thank god) other people are offering up reportage and play-by-play of what happened yesterday and today. There are some really great blogs out there talking about the competition now, and about the books, and giving their really smart comments and  analysis. Do a tag search, and you’ll find tens of sites, all with interesting fresh things to say about this show.

I’m more interested in a comment that Debbie Travis made in the post-game show, about a conversation she had with Ami McKay. I’m paraphrasing, but she said that Ami told her there’s a “code” of conduct — that authors don’t talk down other author’s books. Jason McBride wrote a great article about this in the December 2010 Quill & Quire. His question was “Is honest criticism possible in the tight-knit world of CanLit, where everybody knows everybody else?” and it’s a good question to ask. It’s pertinent to this space, here, because I know the whole Canada Reads gameplay thing has made it very difficult for people in the literary community. That difficulty trickles down to little wee blogs like Box761 — I can get 300 hits on a posting, and not a single comment. People don’t want to talk about it, not out loud, anyway, and certainly not in public.

Debbie Travis said it herself — that her job was to say what the writers can’t. That said, though, did Debbie or any of the other panelists do that? I think not. It was an exercise in diplomacy, all around. Even when one of the panelists didn’t like a book (or even finish it), their stock phrase was “it didn’t move me” or “it’s not my thing”.  Not a single person there said “the writing wasn’t great, and I wonder how it got into this contest” …. something I’ve wondered about a couple of these books (and no, I’m not going to tell you which ones).

Instead, they latched on to these ridiculous arguments about how x book is better because it will help teenagers read more, or it will encourage more people to go into trades… wtf? Since when is Canada Reads about making teenagers and “semi-illiterates” interested in reading? Since when does that mean we dumb down the entire canon of great literature in Canada? That we privilege “easy reads” over great writing? Argh.

What has bothered me from the very beginning is this sense I get that all of this is just so much filler… something to drive hits to their site.  Someone, somewhere, in the bowels of CBC decided that hits to the site and tweets with the #canadareads hashtag were the indicators of success for this process. The part of this competition that got the least amount of air time was the books themselves. I know what each author thinks is a great gift for christmas, and I know more about what some random Canada Reads “team” thinks of the books than I care to know. I read about the Canada Reads Dinner Party Contest, and what five select bloggers think about Canada Reads blah blah blah. It was incessant, the noise coming from the Canada Reads portal.

What I didn’t see, until day two or three of the actual competition, was anyone really talking about the books. And before you think I’m just snarky for the fun of it, I want to go on record here –it wasn’t all that bad.  On Days 2 and 3 I wasn’t able to listen to it in real time (life intruded), so I was able to have a leisurely stroll through the replays, and it felt almost-kinda-maybe like they were sorta-almost getting to the point where there was some interesting commentary on the books themselves. Jian Ghomeshi was really great (though seems ambitious — is he bucking for a tv show?) and he moderated it ably. He wasn’t great at hiding his biases, but that’s okay. The debaters were — by the end of the competition — doing better at actually discussing the books themselves. In fact, during the post-game show, I found them all to be very appealing and smart. During Day 3’s pre-show live audio feed, they were delightful and real. I liked them by the end of it all.

I am swayed, against my will almost, by the comments in the live chat — people wrote things like “I could barely sleep last night because of anticipation” (weird), and “love the talk about canlit, this is great!” and “I’m going to go out and buy these books”… these are things that I cannot deny. Canada Reads does have a strong influence. All the more reason, though, to take seriously their responsibility toward keeping the tone of it respectful, of not selling out to the lowest common denominator, and of not making a spectacle of themselves just to get hits.

Things like this drive me crazy (from Facebook today):

Just like all 10-year old children, Canada Reads needs to understand that any attention is not good attention.  They could take all of that frenetic social media energy and use it for good. Respectful, author-empowering, calm, informative “edutainment” (shudder. I couldn’t think of another way to say it. Forgive me) that will by its very nature help Canada read more.

This has been a difficult post to write. I despise the frantic, empty,  exclamation mark-happy prattle that they’re serving up. I abhor the Hunger Games-ishness of it all, and find myself wanting to tell the grown ups over at CBC what their kids are doing while they aren’t looking. I find it impossibly frustrating that by all accounts this has been the most “successful” Canada Reads ever — largely because they are gauging that success by counting hits and click-throughs and memberships in the CBC Book Club, etc. I am torn, because while I complain about all of this, I also bought all five books and read them and found myself delighted by a few of them. I saw the chat scrolling down, full of people emailing from all over Canada and beyond… I saw that it was really something that people loved. I don’t really get it, but I’m willing to concede it.

I haven’t been slagging on Canada Reads for all these months for no reason. It’s because I really thought — and still do — that they could be doing it better. That whether they like it or not, the CBC is in the position of great power to shape culture, to further appreciation of writing, and to model respectful behaviour toward those who create that culture that CBC is disseminating.

Next up? The Bookies. Sigh.

Oooh! the anticipation…

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Can’t wait to see what those scamps at CBC have up their sleeves for the CBC Canada Reads extravaganza next week. Read a great article in Walrus Magazine the other day, by one Jeet Heer. Aside from my blog (of course), you should read this in preparation for the Games. Good to do some homework.

My homework is to finish reading The Bone Cage — I think it’s a strong contender for a number of reasons, and I’ve thought this since before reading the book… it’s just that Angie Abdou seems to have the most coordinated PR effort. She’s genial and enthusiastic and is everywhere on social media. She is, I think, this year’s Katniss.

My last post garnered some fascinating comments (offline). These comments suggested that my gripes should not be limited to what I’ve been discussing lately, but that I need to “go higher”. I thought about that, and realize that there is some merit —  that while what I’ve been talking about is all valid, it is merely a symptom of a more systemic issue. That said, it’s the books coverage, and more specifically the Canada Reads contest, that really get my goat. And, really, it was almost too easy. Who can resist that?

Other than that, nothing much going on here at present. Just trying to dig ourselves out of the omnipresent snow.

Graphic scenes

/ jlevack / 4 Comments

Oh, dear readers, Box 761 has been busy these past weeks.

Crazy busy.

Work crews in and on my house, Mr. 761 home from KAF, etc.  The work crews are great — I love the idea of having a sound roof without holes, and I love the idea of having walls that do not house wet insulation. Love it. I was willing to move out of my bedroom to facilitate the work, and International Student 761 had to vacate her room as well. Necessary chaos. Acceptable chaos, even.

Chaos, nonetheless.

Even sleeping in my office is okay. If I want to send a midnight fax, all I have to do is roll over and it’s done. Fast Eddie, my contractor, is funny and talks more than I do, but still manages to get the work done. I like him.

But I haven’t actually read a book in a week. I’m getting itchy. I’ve read bits and pieces, but haven’t had a the opportunity to string some moments together and have a nice long read. I miss it. I got my copy of Jeff Lemire’s Essex County in the mail a while ago and after reading about 10 engrossing pages, I put it somewhere so it wouldn’t get covered in drywall dust. Now it’s lost. I’m reduced to re-reading Dean Koontz novels I find stuck on random shelves in my office (within rolling distance, of course).

Lemire’s book is on the Canada Reads Hunger Games Top 5, in case you’ve forgotten. My mentioning it here isn’t favoritism (though I have no problem with that, really);  it’s just that it’s so… pretty.  As an object, it delights me, and I haven’t even read it yet. The heft of it is just right, the trim size, perfect. I love the cover and the card stock the cover is printed on. I love the thing, I really do, and I’ll admit that I smoothed my cheek lovingly on said satiny-slubby cover when I unwrapped the book. I love my e-books, but some things are just meant to be held in hard copy. Graphic novels may be one of those things. I’m new to graphic novels (this month, though, I’ve read one Angel  and 5 Buffy Season 8 graphic novels, and have secreted Essex County into a safe and as yet undisclosed location (after fondling it, yes).

We’ll see how I feel once I read it, but right now, it’s one of my favorite things. I wish I could find where I put it.

So. My inner geeky fangirl is showing herself today. I know a couple of things: I love Buffy Season 8, and Jeff Lemire’s book fascinates me. I don’t remember the last time that I ordered a book with so much curiosity and anticipation. I’m really looking forward to reading that book.

I’m looking forward to figuring out how and where it fits in the literary canon. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this book is defended and attacked by the Hunger Games judges. I’m curious about how they will, in fact, judge. Are they going to be talking about why it’s an “essential” book? Is it the “best” one? Is it “lit-er-ah-ture“? The Games begin 7-9 February, with a new wrinkle: live stream/chat.

I foresee all sorts of mayhem on those three days, and many offenses to my sensibilities in the days leading up to it. I will offer more on that another day, but Box 761 has some work to do offline at present.

I was, um, double-booked

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Life can get really busy, really fast. Or  it can be slow, but still somehow not have any room in it, you  know? Box 761 is full these days, but operating in slowtime.

Since I last I wrote, I have somehow become a “book blogger”. I didn’t realize I was one, but a few people referred to me thusly, and I guess it’s what I am. In part, anyway. I’m working on a separate site for stuff that’s not about books or related to book bloggery in some way. That will appear some time soon, though I’m not sure when…. stay tuned. I have the domain name, but haven’t done the work around it.

Sometimes when life gets that slow-but-no-room feel to it, I find that I can with some effort actually get a monstrous amount of work done. Other times, well, I have to take a month off (like I just did). Today, though, a reporter from Canadian Press interviewed me about e-books. I figured I might as well discuss it here, now that I’m being interviewed and all.

So. Where was I? Ah yes. When last I wrote, I could feel a long treatise coming on. It was called “What is a Book?” and I started crafting long sentences in my head while in the shower, and finding all sorts of fabulous bricolage from my daily life that made its way into the shower-monologue.  Then it got kind of old — in the way things go these days, the Giller seems a long time ago and all the issues seem old, and solved. My problem was that nothing got down onto, er, paper (for lack of a better word).

And there’s the rub. What I was thinking of writing wasn’t dependent on the medium. What I was thinking needed to be articulated, but I wasn’t even fussy about the delivery method, as long as it was eventually articulated. It seems to me that much of the angsty teeth gnashing of the past month or so is built around this question, “what is a book?“.  At first blush, though, it seems, I dunno, too obvious somehow. I mean, duh, we all know what a book is, right?

Well, my dictionary (the kind in a book, not one online) tells me that a book is

n 1.a number of printed or written pages bound together align one edge and usually protected by covers. 2. a written work or composition, such as a novel, technical manual, or dictionary.

In order to find that definition from my Collins Concise English Dictionary 3/e, (c)1992 I had to scan the shelves in my hallway for a few minutes. It has been a while since I used that book. The covers are on it, but the hard spine has been detached (though for some reason I kept it, and placed it right at the end of “L”). There’s one of those sticky arrows pointing to “serendipity” on page 1226. You get the idea — it’s a well-used book. If I recall correctly, I took it from the stacks at HarperCollins the year this edition was published — I think it was intended for a client, but ended up on my shelves instead; such is the way of publishing….

What I like about the snippet of definition above is that it describes both the physical object “book”, and the idea of “book”. I think those two things conflate in our minds when we think of it, and it’s hard to separate them, but often when we use the term “book”, we are actually talking about only one or the other of those definitions — not both.

Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had half the kerfuffle with Gaspereau and The Sentimentalists, right?

Since the time when that lovely dog eared and downy dictionary mysteriously found its way into my possession, the word “book” has expanded and contracted. Even then, though (way back in the mists of the early ’90s), we were talking about digital books — they weren’t in any way useful or accessible yet, but they were already in the discussion, and (tiresomely) feared. The internet was barely extant, and that was, I think, the year that I finally decided that I needed a computer monitor that had color.

Now, in the second decade of the 21st Century, “book” is the word we use for a digitally delivered document. It’s what we call anything that has a discrete beginning and end and is written by someone, right? I liken it to how we all of us, of a certain age, still call a group of songs an “album” ….

I say I wanted to “get it on paper” when, of course, what I really  mean is that I wanted to put it on my blog and sent it out into the ether. I say wanted to “write” it, when really I was typing — a much different process, and one that I find almost mystically rhythmic — like playing some sort of weird piano that puts out words instead of notes. If punctuation is score (thank you John Metcalf), then my keyboard is my instrument.

(c) J. Langevin Levack

So then, what would the product of this activity be?

A book.

Do I care if it’s electronic? No.

Do I care if it’s artisanal? No.

Do I care if it’s written in crayon on cardboard shirt-bards? No.

I do, however, care if  it’s well written.  I care that it delights me and makes me think and makes me want to tell people about it.  If it isn’t something that delights me, then I’m… uh, up the boohai (see photo, above). If I like it, I might buy both the e-book and the hard copy, who knows?

I know that all the brouhaha around The Sentimentalists is probably old hat now, but this has been bugging me a little bit. This is the truncated box761 version of my “What is a Book?” treatise. I’m kind of over it, but want to make sure that’s it’s clear. Ebooks are not the end of literature. They aren’t even the end of physical books (see M. Wente’s ridiculous fluff piece, here). There’s room for everything as long as there are people with abstract thoughts.

Now all I need to figure out is “What is a Book Blogger?” and I’ll be all set.

A little green around the, er, Gillers

/ jlevack / 6 Comments

I went on a little vacation to New England last week, and when I got home it felt like all hell had broken loose in the Canadian literary scene. Incidentally, I was in a great bookstore in Portland ME called Longfellow Books and was very happy to see quite a few Canadian-authored books there. Beautiful store that bills itself as “a fiercely independent community bookstore”. Too bad most of the Canadian books were second-hand — I’d love to see the authors get recompensed for their work, but am happy at least that they are leaking over the border and perhaps gaining audience in the States.

It has been an interesting time for Canadian literature — the Canada Reads thingy ended and the Top Ten were chosen. All great books, I’m sure (still have to read a few) but I still harbor some serious reservations about the way the whole thing happened. I was on the CBC Canada Reads blog today, reading the most recent prattling from the producer and I just can’t get past some of the commentary. She came up with a Top Ten list of “Goodies” that came out of Canada Reads 2011, and number 10 was

Goodie #10: Friendships!

The Canada Reads Top 40 authors are adorable. They’ve forged friendships on Twitter, have retweeted each other, recommended each other’s books. It’s a fantastic, vibrant and unexpected conversation that popped up, and we’re thrilled by it. Canada Reads brings people together. They shared headstand tips, baking tips, and invited each other to lobster boils. It makes me sad that on Tuesday, there will only be 10.

Yeah.

Adorable.

That’s what they’re all aiming for. When they sat, alone with their thoughts and were deep in the process of birthing a novel, they were hoping that someday the producer of Canada Reads 2011 would call them adorable because they tweeted-for-their-lives while simultaneously trying to keep their dignity during the Canada Reads Hunger Games. I have no doubt that some of what she writes is true — it did bring some people together. I made quite a few new Twitter-friends in part because of my commentary on this, and am very happy about that. This has certainly opened up some dialogue about the state of the written word in Canada.

What it didn’t do, though, is offer those authors any real dignity. Thank goodness, as a group, they rose to this ridiculous challenge and all managed to retain the dignity they came to it with. One blogger cited a comment from the Canada Reads website, which said:

“I’m usually not one to eat crow, but I was wrong when I snarked at the “self-promoters”. I’ve had a chance over many hours to follow their tweets and visit their websites and I’ve discovered a whole lot of grace and creativity, as well as support for their fellow artists (from Angie Abdou’s video in support of Steven Heighton’s Every Lost Country to Leo McKay’s reason #17 for voting for his book). I hang my head and say I am sorry.”

My only issue here is that the grace exhibited was not because of the circumstances, but in spite of them.

So, congratulations to those Ten who made the short list (a special holla to Ami McKay, who lives close by).

And congratulations to those Top 40-ers too. I have a plan, and will be (re)reading all 40 of those long-listed, but it might take a while. I gave up reading them in order — just too structured for me. Next up for me is Leo McJay Jr.’s book, Twenty-Six. Thank you for your videos Leo, and thank you for your wit.

I’m also planning on not listening in to the Canada Reads Battle in February. I’m going to try to stay away, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it. Right now, just reading their frigging blog is making me feel kind of queasy.

Speaking of feeling queasy, how about that Giller prize?

I have to say, I’m a bit bemused by the controversy. It has been fascinating to watch the past few days. Johanna Skibsrud’s first novel The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press) has made a splash for a few reasons — it won the Giller Prize, and her publisher will not be able to provide a large print run for that post-prize frenzy of book buying Canadians generally indulge in. And it’s a big frenzy — when a “bestseller” in Canada generally means 5000 copies, the Giller win can boost those sales up to 70- or 75,000 copies. That’s a big boost.

There are a lot of reasons for this whole situation being problematic. Gaspereau is known for crafting objects of beauty; objects that take time and care to create. They are hand-produced, and lovely. There was an original print run of 800 copies, and they are very scarce now. You cannot expect to find many hard copies around, and while they are taking orders, they can produce (at best) a 1000 copies a week. Even that seems ambitious, frankly. Gaspereau Press plans to concentrate on fulfilling the orders of independent bookstores first, rather than those of “big box” stores.

I bought an e-book version on Kobo. I was happy to see it, hadn’t really expected to find it in e-version, but on a whim typed it in on my iPad and 30 seconds and $9.99 later, I owned the book.

The artisanal copy costs $27.95 and you can order it online, but only through paypal or a personal cheque. There’s a fairly complicated procedure where you email them the information — which book you want, etc., and then the email connected to your Paypal. you can’t pay from Paypal directly. You cannot use a credit card. Their online retail page is here. There is no information on their site regarding how long it will take to receive a copy of this book. I would imagine that they are in a bit of a shock.

I want to make it clear that I respect Gaspereau Press very much. I have visited the press before, and own several of their very lovely books. I get that their commitment is to creating a piece of art. Jack Illingworth, in an excellent article in the National Post, wrote

“This may seem like willful eccentricity on the part of Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield, Gaspereau’s co-publishers. It’s actually something much more interesting: a commitment to a thoughtful, rigorous, refined mode of publishing. While publishing is usually discussed as a business, or an industry, all of the finest small press publishers practice it as an art form. The books that they choose to publish aren’t chosen to fill out a season with a handful of products that stand a reasonable chance of selling. Their lists are cultural projects, embodying a few individuals’ ideas of what literature can be.”

He goes on to say that “Gaspereau, and the handful of other companies that operate in a similar way, take this conceit to its logical extreme: both the process through which their books are made, and the physical objects that result, are inextricable from their editorial objectives.”

“Conceit” is a fun word here, because I think we can use it both ways. I get that they do things a certain way and that they have a Philosophy here. I wonder, though, what the Author thinks of this? I know authors. It’s hard to be one. It’s often lonely, and it’s not exactly well-paying, right? So here’s this young woman — a success artistically with poetry and short stories under her belt and now a novel that wins the freaking Giller and they can’t meet demand. Not only that, they won’t meet demand. The refuse to create anything other than an artisanal product. And when they do make more, they’ll service Independent bookstores first. And if you order it online you have to write a cheque and mail it to them?

I’d bet that to the Author this book is a book regardless of its form. It’s her book and she’s been awarded a very prestigious award for it, but now her publishers can’t/won’t produce the things, not in any way that would get this book, her creation, into the hands of people who will exchange money for the pleasure of reading it.

I’m kind of shocked that I could get an electronic version of this book. I don’t know how that stuff works really — I left publishing before electronic/digital rights were involved in any contracts I worked with. One of my peeves is that I can’t find e-books of Canadian authors — not half as often as I would like. I read books, all kinds of books — hard copy, e-book, sometimes both versions of the same title. Whatever.

It feels like Gaspereau (who I really like, really I do) is confusing their role here with hers. They are bookmakers. They make books and they are artists at it. She writes books. While the form and the function may be inextricably linked within the rarified air of Gaspereau, we here in the cheap seats still think it’s a work of art, even if it’s printed off my HP inkjet. Even if it’s written in crayon on a paper bag. Even if it’s an ebook. 

All of those things are the art, at least the art that matters at this point, to the author who created it. It is her publisher’s job to make sure that this art is disseminated.

Over the past two days since she won, there has been a lot of commentary on this. I’ve been surfing it, and it feels like it’s getting bigger. It feels like it’s turning a bit icky in some ways… I’ve read some very derisive blogs about Gaspereau Press (hey,  they can do what they want, right? I might not agree, but they are ideologues, and I love idealogues — you always know where they stand), and even a few comments about how it doesn’t really “matter” if Skibsrud loses some sales because she’s won that big prize and has a fat advance from a UK publisher (um, prizes are taxable — I think — and advances are just that – an advance, like, a loan). That she’d be “fine” regardless.

I’m not going to get into that debate. I’m just speaking now about my initial impressions. I haven’t even finished the book, and at the moment I’m not entirely sure I like it. I think that it needed more editing. More on that later, I guess, but here’s a review that says  pretty well how I feel about it right now. When I finish the book, maybe I’ll feel differently, I dunno. None of that matters. If I’d been able to go out and buy the artisanal copy, I probably would   have bought two copies on spec (one for me, one for a gift). As it is, I bought an e-book for around ten bucks and saved myself $45.91.

How many other people did the same, or can’t buy the e-book because they don’t have the technology? How many people do you think will buy this book later, in an independent bookstore when it finally becomes available? How many people are going to mail a cheque or send an email with Paypal info? Ugh.

I think quite a few people just won’t buy either version, and it seems that the “conceit” mentioned earlier might be one that costs the author more than she bargained for. Gaspereau Press can live with the concessions they’ve made to their Art, but did Johanna Skibsrud choose to make those same concessions?

My congratulations to Ms. Skibsrud on her win.