A Perfect Day to Go to Gilmour

I like good writing. I read lots of books. I have enjoyed the splendid fiction written by these women: Colette, Pat Barker, Jane Gardham, Mavis Gallant, Gertrude Stein, George Eliot, Rosemary Aubert, Beryl Bainbridge, Nina Berberova, Edith Wharton, Esi Edugyan, Anne Tyler, Muriel Spark, P.D. James, Kay Boyle, Simone de Beauvoir, Ethel Lina White and Jean Rhys. There are others and there will be more. If I didn't think women could write as well as men I wouldn't buy or borrow their books.

That said, I find myself defending David Gilmour's decision to exclude women writers from the undergrad course he teaches at U of T. He has to be passionate about an author's writing or he can't teach it, says the G-G award winner. Gilmour has explained that he's not saying that women don't write well, but that hasn't placated those who live to be outraged or think he's engaging in rank sexism. They've taken to social media with a vengeance and given Gilmour the proverbial raking over the coals. Even Jared Bland, the Globe and Mail's newish Books Editor, opened up on the tall, raffish man about Hogtown. In today's paper Bland - when he wasn't banging on needlessly about his undergrad years at U of T - urged Gilmour to open up to new reading experiences. Excellent advice as far as it goes, but beside the point. What Gilmour has done is display his deep commitment to a certain type of writing by a certain type of writer. Those who take Gilmour's course will certainly profit from that commitment. Would that all lecturers were so committed, so candid.      

Gatsby Remains Great, says Levin - No, not that Levin

A short time ago the Globe and Mail's new Books Editor, Jared Bland, took a roundhouse swing at The Great Gatsby, the novel not the new movie from Baz Luhrmann - which may turn out to be the Australian director's Heaven's Gate judging from the reviews I've seen. Anyhow, back to Bland. Among other matters, he deplored Gatsby's flabby phrasing and nebulous imagery, and cited several instances where F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose was fat and fatuous. This, I suppose, he considers insight. Has Bland read anything else Fitzgerald wrote? Tender is the Night? A Diamond as Big as the Ritz? Babylon Revisited? Absolution? In everything he ever put on paper - including his letters to Zelda, his first love Ginevra King, his daughter Scottie, as well as editors and creditors - there is flabby and nebulous phrase-making, but in most cases, certainly in his fiction, it is counterbalanced by some of the most exquisite and compactly written sentences I have ever read or expect to read. Reason enough, then, to read Gatsby and the rest.

That's a point Bob Levin, a Globe editor, makes in his May 10 rebuttal of Bland's assertions.  Good for him. And the fact that his name is Levin adds just so much welcome vinegar to the exchange. We all know, of course, that the Globe dumped long time Books Editor Martin Levin a month or so ago, and sought someone with a "robust constitution" and talents rather like those ad agencies hire. Where this little episode of literary contention may lead is anyone's guess. But it augurs well for the Books Section; one may say - and forgive me because I did resist the urge to crack wise until the last sentence - its future won't be bland.             

Can Jeeves Explain the Disappearing Globe Ad?

I don't believe in extra-terrestrials, worldwide conspiracies, El Dorado or that Hogtown's own Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup in my lifetime. And I'm similarly dismissive of coincidences (Sigmund Freud would argue I shouldn't be). So I'm sure that the disappearance of the job ad for a Books Editor at the Globe and Mail that was posted on the Media Job Search Canada website amounts to nothing more than an advertiser's time limit being up.

I can hardly believe that this puny blog of mine would prod the Globe into removing the advertisement, posted January 30th, because I speculated here yesterday about why the paper had dumped Books Editor Martin Levin, and was on the lookout for someone with a "robust metabolism" and who had the sorts of skills more usually found in ad agencies than in the Book Sections of newspapers. I mean, Canada's National Newspaper couldn't be that sensitive to an outsider's comments, could it?                

Levin Out: What Would Plum Say?

The rumour mill had it that Martin Levin was out as Books Editor at the Globe and Mail. The rumour mill was right. The Globe posted a Books Editor job vacancy at the Media Job Search Canada website January 30. Why the paper dumped Levin I don't know. I've never met him,  although he does pass through my neighbourhood occasionally and I've seen him at one or two literary nights here in Hogtown. Perhaps he was more book maven than gladhander. Consider the job specs: The Globe wants someone with a "robust metabolism". Code for getting out and chatting up advertisers at endless industry events? "Creative packaging instincts" and "display-writing chops" are also required. Hmmm. Sounds more like the talents advertising agencies hire.

Perhaps, if you believe David Allan Stein (DAS the  Toronto Star columnist and sometime author? That DAS?) that the Globe is being "run into the ground" by its "dim bulb" publisher - see his post at www.straight.com - then it could be Levin was just too bookish to hold the job any longer. Or, as I like to think, he was just too whimsical for a paper that continues a rightward drift into the waters of incredulity. After all, and to his everlasting credit, Levin is a huge fan of P.G. Wodehouse.

Star and Globe Love Their Country

Here's the deal: For Canada Day round up a group of writers and have them say what part of the country appeals to them most. So far, so utterly predictable. The Sunday Star found what it called "11 of Canada's top fiction writers" to answer that question. The Globe and Mail, in the weekend Travel section, no less, asked four writers, all born abroad, "which corner of the country speaks loudest to their hearts." 

I'm sure all 15 writers were sincere, but what confounds me was that only three of the places they chose were urban. Writing in the Star, Heather O'Neil said St.Louis Square in Montreal was her favourite place, and Vincent Lam, in the same paper, said his favourite spot was Withrow Park in Hogtown's Riverdale district. In the Globe, Rabindranath Maharaj chose Toronto's Union Station.

I know mountains and lakes and the wide open prairie (cue the violins) can be seductive - Ontario's Victoria County and the Margaree Valley in Nova Scotia are two of my favourite places on the planet - but Canadians are urban folk and I'd have thought editors at both papers would have considered this rather obvious fact before they went to print. So next time let's give writers who have favoured places in our cities at least half the ink.        

Rick Groen Saves the Globe and Mail

When the Globe and Mail dropped its separate Books section on weekends and rolled it into a hybrid called Focus & Books I concluded all was lost: the weekend edition might just as well be called shopping for dummies. Now I'm just slightly less certain - not hopeful, mind - but slightly less certain that the weekend paper is the sinkhole of vacuity I once supposed.

Why? Rick Groen. Long one of the best writers and reviewers at the Globe - and among Toronto media generally - Groen's intelligent, well-written front page piece in the Saturday, March 20 Review section, "Are we throwing complexity in the trash?" on novels, the justification for novels, reality and much more was a fine read. One might quibble with his view that Zadie Smith is an "established novelist", but beyond that there'll be no complaint from this section of the cheap seats. Let's hope Groen, his editor and the Front Street brains trust keep this tiny bit of momentum going.