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The Anthologist. Nicholson Baker. Reviewed. In the Argo Catalog.

Mr. Baker has written several books and this one has ensured that I will read at least a few more of them. At the heart of this charming book is a poet named Paul Chowder. Paul has had a modicum of success getting his poems published over the years. We meet him after he has compiled an anthology of poetry that, crime of crimes, rhymes. While his own poetry does not rhyme he perceives an importance to rhyming and fears that it has been abandoned for far too long. The narrative drive of the book is that he has to compose a suitable introduction to the volume, but he just can’t. Read the rest of this entry »

This All Happened. Michael Winter reviewed. In the Argo Catalog.

The buzz around Michael Winter has been growing over the past few years. I was given a free copy of his year 2000 effort This All Happened and thought I would give it a go. Some people argue there is nothing interesting happening in the Canadian fiction and I constantly argue with them because I think there is lots happening. Reading Mr. Winter has given me a new name to add to my list of Canlit writers that are young and doing intriguing things, even if his name seems the quintessential one for a boring Canadian writer that focuses on how cold it is here.

The story follows a group of people in St. John’s Newfoundland. All the regular tropes are present. The characters drink rum and drive around, they make fun of the people in Corner Brook, they talk about each other and everyone knows everyone’s business. True to Atlantic writing they talk about fish and how much they have had to eat, they play pool at bars (there seem to only be 2 or 3 in town), and they encounter more than one moose. On the surface this is exactly what  the anti-Canlit folks despise. Without debating the value of writing about actual life, and places where we actually live (things I am for), I would like to argue that the Canlit haters ought to read this book.

Winter is a clever writer. In the book he plays with the line between fiction and non-fiction. The story is told through the diary of a writer that is working on a novel. From his view we watch relationships of a group of people in St John’s Newfoundland. You cannot help but wonder if all this happened. The writing is short, fast, to the point and moves. You piece together what is going on, but you also have to wonder if the narrators perspective on the events is fair/accurate. The probing into the psyche of the characters is deep and compelling. Why the author thinks people are doing what they are doing remains absorbing throughout the book. The blurring of lines requires all the previously mentioned clichés found in the book, it also makes the book terribly interesting.

In employing a perspective other than straight forward chronological fiction with an omniscient narrator Winter is only being a product of his times. He does it well. His times are interesting ones for readers and writers. He demonstrates that even in “backwards Canada’s backwoods” great writing can appear that deserves our attention. Winter has written several other books, including a very new one. I plan to read, I hope you will give him a chance.

Eaarth. Bill McKibben. Reviewed. In the Argo catalog.

Bill McKibben blew me away years ago with his book The End of Nature. I read several other books by him and have long thought that he is among the five people I would most like to have coffee with. His book Deep Economy gave me a hope for the future that I had lost, I gave the book to several friends, they all thanked me for it. In his most recent book Bill changes the name of the planet we live on, like Gary Snyder who offered us Turtle Island, Bill wants us to realize that the planet is very important, it is literally our number one asset. I suspect he would agree that in a sense it even trumps our health, because a healthy man can do little in the face of a hurricane. He changed the name because, as he has been saying for 20 years, we have seriously changed the planet for the worse. But as he suggested in Deep Economy all is not lost. Read the rest of this entry »

Avi Friedman. A Place In Mind. In the Argo catalog.

Avi Friedman is a very smart man. He is a renowned professor of architecture at McGill in Montreal and the mind behind the grow home. His most recent book is probably worth reading despite what I say below because he is an important person in architecture and urban planning, however if you are familiar with these fields in the North American context than this book will have little new or noteworthy for you.

In his most recent book Avi Friedman thought it would be interesting to study places that seem to be conspicuous in their conduciveness to thought. I agree that this could be a fascinating topic and could answer questions about what is so special about the places authors choose as their writing haunts or painters choose as their studios. While Friedman brushes on these topics he does little more than lip service to the initial idea. Perhaps it is a matter of scale, in an early essay in the book he discusses a café in Turkey, but later he discuss the lay out of the suburbs. It’s not that I think the suburbs are an especially good place to think it’s that it is so obvious that they aren’t I can’t believe a serious architect with an interest in urban planning still feels that the topic needs discussing.

In the essays Friedman is constantly re-hashing old ideas. He discusses the role of play and the detrimental aspects of the suburbs and the car culture/organized activity culture that they sprout as negative to children, he tells us vibrant squares and colorful small scale local markets are good, he argues for higher densities in living conditions and many other aspects of living that most people interested in the topic are already familiar with. He offers little that is new. If you are new to the topics urbanites love to discuss (and blow their own horns about) than this is certainly a book worth reading.

The re-hashing would not be so bad if it was not so blatant or if he had a very special editor. The sentences are often very poorly constructed and show a lack of care and an impatience to get the book written. This is especially obvious when one considers that his driving argument in the book is that we all need to slow down. The book has a staggering amount of typos in it and the language leaves loads to be desired. A little more time and care ought to have been put into this project, as it surely is in what Mr. Friedman may consider his more important work, architecture. In short, Friedman’s writing is not as bouncy and contagious as someone like Jane Jacobs or what I expect from Bill Bryson’s next book.

Mr. Friedman largely ignore his own city of Montreal which is unfortunate because we have some great spaces that I am sure he knows very well. Using such spaces would have saved him the time of getting to know places and given his ideas and interpretations of the spaces more validity and power than the slap-dash jobs he does in the places of the book. Perhaps someone ought to study the places Mr. Friedman dis his best work, then we might get to know little something of places of the mind.

Combat Camera. A. J. Somerset. In the Argo Catalog.

The title of this book is a lie. The novel purports to be about a retired war photographer and his life after a liquor fueled failed assignment. Perhaps lie is to strong a word, the main character is such a man. I expected him to have trouble adjusting to society and everyday living, perhaps some PTSD, in short a novel wherein the main character’s past pervades the work. Instead I got a drunkard that is photographing cheap pornos in Toronto. The novel does not hinge on the war past, but rather on the fact that the guy is a loser. I read this book all the way to the end in order to give the author the benefit of the doubt. I was hoping he had a point, a purpose or was going somewhere. The book rambled on and on about nothing in particular, it was repetitive, the voice changed in inane ways that felt terribly intrusive and ineffective. Written as though the drunk camera man had taken up a pen this book wasted my time. Read the rest of this entry »