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MJ Cates’ debut novel is an absorbing historical study, an important chapter in the history of psychiatry, and a devastating love story — and, unusually, it was written by a noted Canadian author under a pen name. Find out more here.
My new course for health practitioners interested in improving their writing will shortly be open for registration via the Centre for Faculty Development.
Deepening Narrative Competence
I'm finally reading the Dutch writer Harry Mulisch. I first came across "The Assault" - a short novel, careful and dextrous and subtle, describing a man's search for (and avoidance of) his family origins in WWII Holland (a la Modiano?). “The Discovery of Heaven,” on the other hand, is enormous, intellectual and comically talky. It's profound and profoundly entertaining, and different from "The Assault" to the point that it’s hard to believe it’s by the same author. (I like it when writers refuse to follow a single style or mode.) Now I'm trying to find "The Call."
Congratulations to Chris Gilmore, winner of the University of Toronto Short Story Contest for his gentle and perceptive story "Fanny and Keats." (I was on the panel of judges that selected his piece.)
The 49th Shelf included my recommendation in their great anniversary list of 150 Canadian books selected by 150 Canadian writers, 150 for 150. It's not what it looks like. Well, not exactly.
I'll be teaching a new course, Fostering Narrative Competence: Reflective and Creative Writing for Clinicians and Educators, at the University of Toronto medical school's Centre for Faculty Development in the new year. Registration available October 9th.
Photo by Abigail Keenan on Unsplash
Visit the newly updated Toronto Review of Books for my slightly wistful article on football books and football.
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
My review of Joel Thomas Hynes' rough-edged, roaring novel We'll All Be Burnt In our Beds Some Night just appeared in Atlantic Books Today.
"I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck."
In the absence of both, here are some Goodreads widgets.
The Toronto Review of Books' spring party!
Felix threw his fag-end into the water, it made a tiny hiss. In the harsh sea-light the whites of his eyes were soiled, and the skin around his eyes was taut, as if from a scorching, and scored with tiny wrinkles like cracks in a china glaze. The breeze brought me a waft of his breath, laden with the smell of smoke and the metallic tang of his bad teeth. I could smell his clothes too, with the sun on them, the shiny, pinstriped jacket with its prolapsed pockets and wilting lapels, the concertina trousers, the shoes like boats.
- from John Banville's novel Mefisto.
Describing characters is hard; this short sketch is brilliant. The details are precise and unusual - the whites of Felix's eyes are soiled, the skin around them taut - and a springboard for a leap into a doubling, somersaulting figurative comparison. When Banville moves from sight into another sense, smell, he does so in an active manner ("the breeze brought me a waft of his breath"), where saying it passively might be duller (*"I could smell his breath," say). Another reason this is so rich is that every line in the description takes on more than one job (it's Felix's breath that smells, but presenting it via the breeze reminds us that we're outside, on this walk by the sea). The word choices for Felix's clothes towards the end are vivid, odd, dreamlike and nightmarish too -- Felix's pockets are "prolapsed"? He's wearing "concertina" trousers? Figurative language takes us into other worlds. The whole thing, without saying a word about Felix's character, tells us everything about his personality.
Wallace Shawn's 1996 play The Designated Mourner is a complex and troubling series of monologues --spoken by the eponymous Jack, his wife Judy, and her erudite father, Howard -- about the highs and brutal lows of life under an unnamed authoritarian regime. It's the perfect thing to read today, but not because it's "prescient" - in fact, one reason it's so disturbing is that it refuses to be simplistic about the roots of savagery. You can listen to a production here, in which Shawn himself plays Jack.
My review of Barbara Hardy's book Ivy Compton-Burnett is published in the latest issue of English: The Journal of the English Association.
From the Australian National Maritime Museum. Photographer: Samuel J. Hood Studio Collection.
"The two old men couldn't help smiling, but whereas Farder Coram's smile was a hesitant, rich, complicated expression that trembled across his face like sunlight chasing shadows on a windy March day, John Faa's smile was slow, human, plain, and kindly." - Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Beyond the wonderfully precise simile, note the way that the sentence itself instances the comparison it's making. Look at how much weight is allotted to setting out Farder Coram's smile: It takes longer, it's more complex, many of the words are latinate, polysyllabic, abstract ("hesitant," "complicated," "expression") compared to those for John Faa, whose simpler smile is set out more plainly in shorter, simpler words. So that the sentence makes its comparison acoustically, almost tangibly, as well as visually, and intellectually, and gains force. (It's true that Farder Coram's smile is compared to something you might see and John Faa's is not, which troubles the point a little - but what you might see is hardly concrete. It's ephemeral, passing: light and dark.)
My review of Russell Wangersky's new book The Path of Most Resistance just appeared in Atlantic Books Today.
What I was doing in stubbornly pursuing my work as a writer for thirty years was simply forcing myself to assert a possible human path, a way, an attitude, a delicacy, a subtlety, a gentleness, a dignity.
- Football, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, p.64 (photo: Anna Toussaint).
The Toronto Review of Books invites you to its first Seasonal Affective Party!
Please join us on December 6th for a very bright night of winterish commiseration and cheer, featuring five-minute readings of new and unpublished work by some of our city’s most talented writers, including Kerry Clare, Andrew Pyper, Trevor Corkum, and Catherine Graham. TRB Managing Editor and novelist Damian Tarnopolsky will be reading too, along with TRB Senior Editor and writer Kelli Deeth.
Stay on after the readings for drinks, music, and glorious TRB community hubbub.
We look forward to seeing you!
December 6, 7pm
Poetry Jazz Café, 224 Augusta Avenue, in Kensington Market
PWYC
