One Every Two Weeks: A 2016 Reading List

Tis the season to be jolly. Or at least it's the season to compile lists of one sort or another. Just lately the papers here in Hogtown have selected what they call the top 100 books of the year. Last Sunday I read through the New York Times's list of the most highly regarded 100. No doubt many of the books on those and other lists are worth your time and money. Some, it's equally certain, are a waste of both. Of course, that grave, infallible judge - time - will determine if the books thought to have merit today will still be considered worthy ten or twenty or fifty years from now.

I have no idea what history will do to these books, but here's a list of those I read or reread in 2016. Some I raced through and didn't want to put down; some I put down almost as soon as I picked them up. Which is which doesn't matter because our responses to books, like music or art or film or architecture and the rest are so personal, so wholly subjective that asserting Book A is better than Book B is fatuous.  

Here they are, in no particular order, listed by title and author:

The Scheme for Full Employment, Magnus Mills; Guided Tours of Hell, Francine Prose; Henry & June, Anaïs Nin; The Chalk Circle Man, Fred Vargas; The Literary Use of the Psychoanalytic Process, Meredith Anne Skura; Stranglehold, Robert Rotenberg; Mount Pleasant, Don Gillmor; Davy the Punk, Bob Bossin; Shoot the Dog, Brad Smith; A Moment on the Edge 100 Years of Crime Stories by Women, Elizabeth George, editor; Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad; To Have and Have Another A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, Philip Greene; The White Hotel, D. M. Thomas; Terminal, Rosemary Aubert; Golden Earrings, Yolanda Foldes; The Massey Murder, Charlotte Gray; To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee; Strange Loyalties, William McIlvanney; The Secret History of MI6, Keith Jeffery; This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin; Kinky Friedman, Road Kill; Murder in Memoriam, Didier Daeninckx; Seeking Whom He May Devour, Fred Vargas; The High Window, Raymond Chandler; The Vanished Landscape A 1930s Childhood in the Potteries, Paul Johnson; Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster.

That's 26 listed - those that I remember, of course -- or a book every other week, on average. Not bad considering I also spent time reading the novel-length manuscripts of some Hogtown writer friends. Let's see how 2017 turns out.

  

WOTS and IFOA Getting Hitched: Who Pays Tab?

Welcome to the world of literary mashup. No, spoken word artist Dave Silverberg and novelist Lisa Moore aren't writing a book together (but they should). What is happening, however, is a hookup between Word on the Street and the International Festival of Authors starting in 2015. From then on WOTS will be held at Harbourfront rather than Queen's Park Circle where it's held now. I read some bumf today, I think from someone at WOTS, that the arrangement will help two great Canadian literary "brands" to become bigger, stronger, more virtuous, more likely to avoid fattening foods, more likely do their laundry every week...Really?

Brands? Brands! Put me down as dubious. Dubious about brands unless it's a Lazy S mark seared into the flank of a heifer, or some shrill new ad campaign for a product we don't need to be told to buy. It's far more likely that once WOTS relocates - literally and figuratively packing its tents and leaving for Harbourfront - admission will cease to be free. At the moment all events at WOTS are just a matter of showing up on time and taking a pew. But, as the WOTS spokesthingy said, there are two good theatres at Harbourfront so it's a no-brainer that for popular presentations the public can expect to be charged a few bucks to get in. What a terrible idea. WOTS should insist that as part of this new love match IFOA must eliminate its admission fees. After all, WOTS has the heft. It attracts two-and-a-half times the audience of IFOA in a single day. I've blogged before that there are lots of people, myself included, who can't afford to attend IFOA - when I brought my impecuniousness to IFOA's attention I got nowhere, just a dismissive "good luck" from some uncomprehending PR flack. I repeat: at least working writers should be admitted to IFOA events free of charge.

Still with literature - in a roundabout sort of way - them book-lovin' bros, Rob and Doug Ford, now have their own show on You Tube. That doesn't bother me at all. If they want to share broadcast space with farting frat boys and dogs playing the piano, good luck to them. No, what's interesting is that the day after the show was posted, that is today, I listened to Hogtown radio station CFRB-AM's 9:00am newscast. The lead item was about the Fords and RoFo's always unreliable claims about lowering taxes, creating jobs and so on. CFRB refuted each of the in-name-only mayor's boasts with some actual if inconvenient statistics. That's a level of detail you don't often hear on the morning news. Hmmmm. John Tory works for CFRB. John Tory may or may not declare for mayor. I wonder if, perchance, the two could be related. Nah. I'm being paranoid. Still, I wonder about what he thinks of the arts generally and what his arts policies would look like.

   

          

Yet Another Year End Books List

There are few more hackneyed ideas than the year-end list. The "best" are the worst: The Best Books. The Best Films. The Best Live Theatre. The Best Political Scandal - Canada wins hands down for the dead heat between the Senate expenses dustup and the Rob Ford Follies. So how about a slightly less threadbare list of the books I have enjoyed reading the most this year, even if all of them have flaws small or large but none that are inexcusable.

In no particular order, they are Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edyugan. It won the Giller Prize in 2011 and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize that year, too. It's a tour de force. The writer has given us a story that is deeply felt and a Black/Baltimore/German-inflected language that dips and soars like the best jazz. Occasionally, even with the best musicians, a note comes out flat - in this case when dialogue switches codes from swerving improvisation to the strictly formal. And making the female jazz singer a native of Montreal seems like a bit of unnecessary CanCon. Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions is also on my list. The first part of the book comes from Being and Nothingness, and the rest was written independent of that. It's a defence of his philosophy against criticism, particularly that of Catholics and communists. It's as compelling today as it must have been in the 1950s, and both parts are written in admirably translated English.

Paris also features in the next two books on the list. They are Published in Paris, by Hugh Ford, and Death in the City of Light, by David King. The former is an excellent compendium of who was who among the writers and publishers of the Lost Generation, and the section on Edward Titus (husband of Helena Rubenstein and beneficiary of his wife's uncomprehending largesse) and his Black Manikin Press and "librarie" and bookstore At the Sign of the Black Manikin is very good. The latter is a tale of gore, madness, greed, anti-Semitism, indifference and official incompetence. Like so much about occupied France in WWII, it was a case of "sauve qui peut" - every man for himself. Dr. Marcel Petiot was a serial killer who disposed of his victims - many of them Jewish and desperate to flee the Nazis - with stupefying abandon. Not a book for the faint-hearted.

The other favourites on my list are Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran, by Gohar Homayounpour and The Mind in Conflict, by the great Freudian analyst Charles Brenner. After a long time away Dr. Homayounpour, a clinical psychologist who did her undergrad at Queen's University in Kingston, decided to return to Iran to practice there. Well, it's clear she's conflicted about her move and her conflict is reflected in the book. I expected far more about her analysands - patients to you and me - and can only remember one, a cultured, self-important woman. What I got was plenty about the psychologist herself, and I couldn't help but think from what she wrote and how she wrote it that Dr. Homayounpor could use some more time on an analyst's couch. Last but certainly not least is The Mind in Conflict. It's not a book for the lay reader - I think - but for those who ply the psychology trade in private practice or in universities. I highlighted passage after passage. There's plenty in there that I understand, but some I don't and don't think I ever will.  

TV Filler Shows Thriller Winning Giller

This year's televised Giller Prize has come and gone. And not a moment too soon. I watched the broadcast fitfully, but switched channels for good when Kim Cattrall came on and read from a teleprompter  some script that I didn't believe for one minute. In case anyone missed it, Will Ferguson won for 419, a novel centred on Nigerian Internet ripoffs. You know the kind: some banking official has millions of dollars waiting for you, but only if you pony up a few thousand and send it to him as a show of good faith. 

I can't comment on Ferguson's book, of course, because I haven't read it. I can comment, though, on Ferguson's get up for the evening. It was the Full Monty Scottish-style: kilt, sporran, dirk (dagger), knee socks, and so on. Good for him. If the Giller is going to remain a fixture on TV, whether I like it or not, then the CBC must inject some colour into the proceedings. Ferguson's dress was a good start, although Farley Mowat got there first with the Scottish outfit. Next, how about placing at the same table a handful of writers who genuinely dislike each other? Ply 'em with drinks and then stand back and watch what happens. Or let's have the presenters for the evening read excerpts from the finalists' worst reviews - likely written by someone just a few tables away. In other words, CBC and the Giller organizers should try to make the event rather more like those ill-tempered British awards that sow the seeds of literary feuds that last and last and which are hugely entertaining - and sell loads of books.         

Giller Smackdown! Doyle vs. CBC

I'm a sometime fan of the Globe and Mail's TV writer, John Doyle. His columns featuring "the brother" can be ridiculously, howlingly funny. At other times, Doyle can be peevish or incomprehensible - or both - depending on the program(s) he's reviewing. And then there's his hot and cold war with the CBC. Today's column is a doozy, taking on the Giller Prize (CBC 9:00pm) and the claptrap that comes with it - it's on television! the Hogtown natterati will be out in force! don't anyone dare make fun of an Important Event in Canadian Publishing!

I've blogged already that last year's televised Giller, lead by Jian Ghomeshi, was a lame-o snoozefest, and that I don't think the Giller or any other literary prize should be awarded for a single book, but rather a body of work. Of course, good for the writers because every one of them can use the dough, but enough with the pomposity and pretention. Why not use the money being spent tonight on developing new drama or a CBC-sponsored playwriting contest? Something. Anything. It won't happen, naturally. So long may Doyle continue to take the piss. Here's a link to his column, unless the Globe's firewall gets you first.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/

Banking on Books

My good friend Josh, the bibliophile and cricket aficionado, has spoken to me on occasion about Hogtown bookseller Nicholas Hoare's hour-long talks on, what else? books. So last night I went along to hear him for myself. I'm pleased I did. Mr. Hoare, who comes from a long, long line of English merchant bankers - it's 11 generations back to 16something - was entertaining, witty and well informed about such new titles as Londoners, by Canadian Craig Taylor (a rave), Lives of the Novelists by John Sutherland (a rave), and William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise (yes, a rave); among the other books also earning Mr. Hoare's enthusiastic favour were Honey & Preserves, one in  series from Fortnum & Mason, the food emporium in London (who knew marmalade could be cut in so many thicknesses? Not this pleb.), The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore, and a beautifully produced work, originally commissioned by Britain's Royal Society, on the art of David Hockney, and a book Mr. Hoare himself agreed was "ridiculously" priced. 

Ridiculous prices for books are nothing new, of course. When the talk was over I browsed the shelves in Mr. Hoare's bookshop - calling it a bookstore seems a bit undignified, and anyway there's a sign on the door that says, "No sacs, please. We're British" - and came across a new edition of collected Atget photographs. That little number came in at $79.99 before tax. I took a pass.

Still, high prices or not, it's well worth the trip down to the airy, roomy space on Front Street East to hear Mr. Hoare who, if he can write as well as he speaks, should spend some time in front of a keyboard. His family's story is just begging for it, banker's reticence be damned.    

     

Super Service from Toronto Public Library

I've flicked a wet towel at the Toronto Public Library more than once in this blog. And every time I've snapped the piece of damp fabric TPL has deserved it. But credit where credit is due: Last week I placed holds on four books, a pair of Hemingway biographies, the late, great Art Buchwald's romp I'll Always Have Paris and U of Lethbridge prof Craig Monk's Writing the Lost Generation, which, I assure you, will not be a romp.

I expected to wait at least a few weeks or longer. So imagine my surprise when I got a metallic robocall less than a week later saying my local library - the very good Davenport branch - had "one or more books on hold" for me. There they were, all four books. Well done, TPL.

A public TPL: The best source of esoterica

I've said over and over in this blog that I love the Toronto Public Library. It's the best public system I've ever used even if some of its circulation rules rub me the wrong way. And even if it can take an age to deliver a book: I've been waiting an eternity for Hugh Ford's Four Lives in Paris.

So it is with some alarm that I read Mayor Rob Ford is apparently considering the privatization of our libraries. That can't be good. Cultural property such as libraries are best "owned" and operated by the public sector. Why? For purely selfish reasons I worry that the scope of a privatized system will be reduced. Will Private Libraries Inc. find me such as esoterica as Hugh Ford's book? How about the writing of Vichy apologist Sisley Huddleston who wrote about the the Lost Generation in real time when he lived in Paris in the 1920s? Kay Boyle? Wambly Bald? What about inter-branch loans? Private Libraries Inc. might not deal with other public systems. After all, TPL found and delivered a book located in the archives at Royal Military College. At no charge. Can't see a privateer doing that.

TPL should remain public property. I might even sign a petition to that effect.

The Arts of an Election

There's a federal election tomorrow and I'm going out early to vote in Hogtown-St. Paul's so I can spend the rest of the day sulking. Why? Because not one of the parties has said a word about arts and culture. Oh, there's money for fighter planes (or not); the need for new prisons (or not); the imperative of ever closer union with the U.S. (or not); but not so much as one thin dime or one short policy paper - if I haven't missed something - for books and art and the rest. Perhaps Harper has an excuse, after all he's a philistine. And perhaps Layton would rather wait until he's in or near power to unleash a wave of patriotic neo-socialist realism. But Ignatieff? He's as much an author as an academic so why the silence? Is he afraid of appearing soft in an election that has been no more than an exercise in elbows out macho nastiness? Fearful of being called a spendthrift? That he's disconnected from What Really Matters? Boy, I wish I knew. Then I wouldn't feel quite so bad about having to hold my nose May 2.

At Last the Obelisk

A round of half-hearted applause, please, for the Toronto Public Library. After just nine or ten months it's come through with Neil Pearson's Obelisk. I picked it up today and from what I've read so far it was worth the wait. (Try as I might, I couldn't find a copy to buy, hardback or paper, anywhere in Hogtown.)

It's the history of Englishman Jack Kahane and his publishing house Obelisk Press in Paris in the late 1920s and 1930s. Pearson writes that Kahane has been unjustifiably overlooked and I couldn't agree more. Kahane published early works by Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Lawrence Durrell and others and books by James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Cyril Connolly, Radclyffe Hall, Frank Harris and many more. He also published piles of money-spinning porn, employing the likes of literary writers such as Kay Boyle to churn it out.

Now then, if I can only persuade the TPL to release from its steely, steely stacks-only grip Boyle's Monday Night or Mon Ami Maigret by Georges Simenon or Bernard Poli's Ford Madox Ford and the Transatlantic Review or FMF's memoir Return to Yesterday or Ronald Weber's News of Paris or Lethbridge U prof Craig Monk's Writing the Lost Generation or.......

The Toronto Small Press Book Fair is upon us. Since you enquire it's Saturday June 19 from 11: 00 am to 5:00 pm at The Great Hall, 1087 Queen Street West. So far so good. After all, the TSPBF (an acronym that could double as a writer's sobriety test) has been around for years and will, I'm guessing, see off its imitators and detractors. But...but I can't shake the notion that some aspects of the Fair could be better. It needs a permanent home. Traipsing from the JCC to the Tranzac Club to the Reference Library to The Great Hall is no way to build its reputation among the yet-to-be-converted. I know circumstances - cost, availability, pointless G-8 summit meetings - will necessitate the occasional change of venue, but with such long lead times disruptions can be worked around.

And since the summer event is the more anticipated of the two TSPBFs (the other is in the fall) and its timing dovetails with Luminato, which has gone from 0 to 60 in no time flat, why not attach the Fair someway somehow to what has become a splashy arts affair. The profile and the media coverage of the TSPBF would soar - OK, go up some - and small presses may well discover another stream of new, enthusiastic readers which is, surely, the point of the Fair. I realize some elderly hippies will object to the vulgarity of such an idea, but so what? Let them read their work to each other and remain pure. Oh, and since we're being heretical, here's something else to ponder: it's time to dump arts & crafts and anything else at the Fair that's not strictly literary.

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.

I Love the Toronto Public Libraries

Yes, it's true, I absolutely love TPL. But I'm beginning to think TPL doesn't love me back. Is waiting months for a copy of Obelisk, Neil Pearson's book about the groundbreaking Paris-based publisher of the early work of some of the great modernists - and reams of pornography some of them wrote - a sign that TPL doesn't care? Why won't TPL circulate such important-to-literary-history works as Samuel Putnam's Paris Was Our Mistress? Why can't I check out Lethbridge U prof Craig Monk's still new book on American writers of the Lost Generation? Why can't I get my hands on The Expatriates by Ishbel Ross unless I sit in the Reference Library and read it? Why can't I check out Ford Madox Ford's Return to Yesterday?

I understand that some books are just too valuable to place in circulation since, for one thing, it's unlikely they will be reprinted. But a book (Craig Monk's) from the U of Iowa Press published in 2008? Or what about British historian Simon Kitson's excellently reviewed The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France? It's just been published! But can't leave the Reference Library.

There are few things sadder than unrequited love. TPL, please don't break my heart.

WOTS this then?

I've always considered Word on the Street an event for the bookish, so I felt clammy dismay creeping up on me trawling through Eye Weekly's guide to this Sunday's festival. Surely there are other venues for a "Money Matters" tent and a "Cooks 'n' Books" stage pushing tomes about French recipes and cooking with beer. And of course, much of WOTS will be accompanied by tuneless and wholly unnecessary amplified dirges passed off as music.

I can only hope those of us who take the "word" seriously - like, y'know, fiction and lengthy, serious stuff in serious magazines - that Austin Clarke, Ray Robertson, Camilla Gibb and others will come to our rescue. We'll see.