Chick Lit, Revisited

In the November 4th edition of the Globe and Mail, before the Giller prize was awarded to Vincent Lam for Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, there was a “Giller Debate” between Andrew Gorham, Sandra Martin and James Adams. They discussed the merits of the shortlisted books and debated which one might win the largest annual prize awarded for fiction in Canada.

Out of all the books on the shortlist (De Niro’s Game, The Immaculate Conception, Home Schooling and The Perfect Circle all lost out), The Perfect Circle appealed to me the most (see "I'm Reading..." in the sidebar of this blog). What was interesting in the Globe article though, was the fact that the two men didn’t see the book as a contender:

“Andrew: Now, let’s talk about Quiviger’s The Perfect Circle. First off, and maybe this is sexist, I feel that half the reading population is removed because it’s very much a female love story.

James: You mean, it’s chick lit.

Sandra: It’s not chick lit.

Andrew: It’s great chick lit.

Sandra: It is definitely not chick lit. It’s not chick lit.

Andrew: It’s a love story and, as a man, I prefer something with a little bit more…

Sandra: Action.

Andrew: Contention.”

Mr. Gorham implies that a book dealing with relationships does not have enough substance to qualify for literary recognition.

Really?

In a previous post, I tried to delineate the dismissive term “chick lit” and decide why Sophie Kinsella is stamped with the label but Margaret Atwood is not. The difference, I found, was the inclusion of “weightier” topics within the female experience of love.

But can we really discount love as a trifling subject? Women and men have written about it through the ages – it is the most popular topic in poetry and song. Humans make their living arrangements and reproductive choices (usually) based on love. And when love is taken away, we plumb the depths of emotion.

Michael Ondaatje, widely considered a “serious” author and also the winner of the 2000 Giller Prize (for Anil’s Ghost), writes the most unbelievably amazing prose describing romantic love in the chapter entitled “Katherine” in his novel The English Patient – which won him the Booker Prize. (If you haven’t read it, go read it right now. If you have, re-read it.) The English Patient is thick with the nuances of demarcation and national identity, but it would have won on the merits of its prose alone. So why does Gorham discount The Perfect Circle based only on its subject matter?

The truth is, it is only one man’s opinion. The Perfect Circle made it to the shortlist for the Giller on its literary merits, regardless of subject matter. Quiviger’s words are evocative; her style both languorous and obsessive, like those first heady weeks of a love affair. And what is great literature, but the containing of human experience into a few well-chosen words that make the reader think, ah yes; that IS how it feels…

Proof That Someone Other Than My Mother Reads This Blog...

I have acheived the first step in my quest for Web (and eventually Literary) domination thanks to PubStumpers, who have posted my Pub Quiz post.

Guess the Occupation

For those of you who made guesses for the Surreal Sea Nymphs, they were actually a bunch of Australian school girls celebrating the end of exams. Now put your brains to this test: what is the man in the picture's occupation?

Ward’s Island, November 3rd

Lyla snuggles her face into her scarf as she puts her mittens back on after taking a picture of Max. His body is still, sturdy legs planted among the browning leaves, watching birds through his binoculars. His coat is undone and Lyla hasn’t seen his mittens on his hands yet. Amazing, thinks Lyla. Children never seem to feel the cold like adults. Her hands took only a few seconds to become cold and stiff on this unseasonably cold day in November.

“Aren’t you cold, love?” she asks Max.

Max twists his body, led by the over-sized black apparatus he holds at his eyes, following something aloft that she can’t see. He then brings the binoculars down and looks at her.

“Nope,” he says, then steps out of his stance and heads for the trail.

“Ironman,” says Justin, smiling. “Must be a Palmer.”

Lyla smiles and falls in line behind her brother, following the well-worn path through the trees.

When they get to the clearing, Max stops and turns around.

“Here, Dad?” he says, eyebrows raised.

Justin reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a plastic bag of birdseed. He empties a small amount into Max’s outstretched palm, then offers Lyla some. Justin takes some for himself, then replaces the plastic bag.

“Now remember, stand by a tree and be very still,” he instructs Max.

The three of them stand in a haphazard line just off the clearing, arms outstretched with the proffered gift. Within a few seconds, the first chickadee, small and grey with its little black head, lands on a branch close to Justin. It hesitates momentarily, then swoops into his palm, nabs a seed, and flies away.

“Awww!” says Max. “How come it won’t come to me?”

“You have to be very still and very quiet,” says Justin.

We stand in silence for several seconds until another chickadee lands on a branch near Justin.

“Here we go,” he murmurs, moving his palm slowly toward Max’s.

The bird hops from branch to branch, trying to determine the best approach. As he gets closer and closer to the outstretched hands, Justin curls up his fingers, making a fist around the birdseed. The chickadee darts closer to Max, swoops down, and lands on Max’s hand.

Max’s eyelids flutter in surprise, but he remains still. Lyla watches a smile break across his face as he feels the light tickle of the chickadee’s feet on his fingers.

After it pecks at a few seeds, the chickadee zooms away, becoming camouflaged in the grey branches of the surrounding trees.

“Did you see that, Auntie Lyla?” asks Max. “The chickadee came to me!”

Surreal Sea Nymphs

Any guesses about what's going on here?

57 Channels and Nothing On

I lived for the first 12 years of my life without cable (on a black and white television). When my family finally got hooked up (we were cable subscribers in the generation after the tan box with the push buttons), I developed a nasty habit of starting at channel 2 and clicking upwards to the last channel that the cable provider would allow. Finding nothing interesting on (as in the words of the Bruce Springsteen song, referenced in the title of this post), I keyed in channel 2 again and repeated the whole process. I could easily spend an hour with the TV on, but not actually watching anything.

When I moved in by myself, I brought with me my grandparents’ 13-inch TV and accompanying bunny ears, partly out of impecuniousness, but partly out of a desire to not spend hours not actually watching television.

But the other week, my old TV blew a picture tube and it was time to buy a new TV. Which did not come equipped with bunny ears attachments. So I buckled and signed up for Rogers Digital Cable.

I don’t think I could even estimate how many channels I get with the basic cable package – partly because I haven’t found them all. I’ve only made it up to the hundreds. And in those hundreds are a lot of Simpsons, Friends and Seinfeld reruns. Often the same episode running on several different channels. And then an hour later, you can watch the same episode again, but from a Manitoba channel.

And the home renovation and decorating shows – my god, is there no end to them? I thought we’d been oversaturated with reality shows. Obviously I hadn’t been watching daytime television. Soap operas and talk shows have been taken over by a plethora of shows hosted by women in overalls and men toting around swaths of fabric to make into curtains.

So those are the drawbacks. What about the positives?

Well, I can watch Oprah now (on a Manitoba channel). I have a vast selection of sitcom reruns to watch as I make dinner. The TV doesn’t go fuzzy on rainy days.

And my knowledge of home renovations has never been better…

Who I Love and Must Attend To

I wrote a previous post about Who I Hate But Must Attend To. Upon reflection, I feel that I need to balance my disapproval and criticism with some glowing praise and support of some people in the radio and print industries who I love:

Doug Saunders

I don’t know how this man keeps all his knowledge of current world politics and the histories of what seems like three-quarters of the countries in the world in his head and available for easy retrieval. His weekly column “Reckoning” in the Focus section of Saturday’s Globe and Mail dissects the current political climate of various countries, his writing infused or contrasted with the histories of various nations. Saunders takes current events from around the world and analyses them with a critical, and often Canadian, eye (despite the fact he has been transplanted in London, England). His writing often makes me think and always causes me to learn. Saunders’s column this week asks the question if the well-intentioned architecture and design of the suburbs of cities such as Paris contributed in some way to the unrest among its young, foreign-born inhabitants.

Barry Taylor

My favourite thing to do on the weekend (after sleeping in, of course) is to have a coffee, read the paper, and listen to Barry Taylor on 102.1 from noon onwards. Taylor has a relaxed attitude and a keen understanding of the brevity of wit. His show entails a series of spots, including the Barry Funny Joke and the 4:20 Thought, along with the music that the Edge is known for. He also has all sorts of random sound bites that follow the spots, which fans come to anticipate. On the Edge website, Taylor lists his hobbies as video games, drinking and making out.

And so my obsession with photographs of abandoned bicycles continues...

This one was taken on one of the Toronto Islands.

Other pictures of abandoned bicycles I have found: Amsterdam Bicycle * Une Autre Bicyclette * Bicyclette Quebecois