Martel gets faint signal...

Wow, imagine this... after two years of sending PM Stephen Harper books and dvds and fascinating essays, Yann Martel has received three replies! Not from the Great Man himself of course, but from various 'assistants'. The first book, The Death of Ivan Illyich, had a reply, but nothing since... until now.

For all of us following along with the Martel-Harper Challenge, you'll be glad to learn that Martel's essays will be collated into a book this fall, by Vintage Canada. Interesting! It will be entitled What is Stephen Harper Reading? Yann Martel's Recommended Reading for a Prime Minister (and Book Lovers of All Stripes). We're already all ahead on the reading list. :)

Martel-Harper Challenge

Another challenge to continue in 2009!
I'm so delighted to hear that Rebecca from Rebecca Reads is adopting Dewey's challenge to read books recommended by Yann Martel to Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. This challenge is dear to me, as I've been following along with Martel's list from the start, considering it is my Prime Minister we are talking about! (unfortunately...)



The rules are this:


To join for first quarter 2009, commit to read and review two books from the Martel-Harper challenge list between January 1, 2009 and March 31, 2009. You can choose the books now or as you go.


Because Martel chooses a book every 2 weeks I am sure I will end up reading more than two, but you never know.... The ones I have on tap presently are:

Metamorphosis / Kafka
Kreutzer Sonata / Tolstoy
Meditations / Marcus Aurelius

I may read these or may choose others. But I will be reading both the books and the wonderful letters Martel encloses with each.

Rez Sisters

The Rez Sisters / Tomson Highway

Fifth House, c1992.

This is one of the books I've just read for Yann Martel's "What is Stephen Harper Reading?" campaign. Although I've been following along since the beginning, I've been falling behind a bit, so thanks to Dewey's challenge I had a bit of a kick in the butt to start reading from this list again. I started with this play; I find it a bit difficult reading plays, as it is not my usual habit. I have to slow myself down and really try to hear the voices of all the different characters, to try to picture the stage. I didn't find that very difficult with this play, however.

It is the story of seven women from "Wasy", a Northern Ontario reservation, who hear about The World's Biggest Bingo being held in Toronto and determine that they will all go. They have their own reasons for wanting to win: for example, to be able to buy a stove big enough to cook for all the children on the reserve, or to afford a fancy new bathroom (including shiny white toilet). Each woman is a separate individual with her own set of quirky habits and deeply hidden motivations. They are all very, very real, and anybody with a large group of loud, talkative female relatives or close friends will relate. This play sharply illuminates the conditions of native women in Canada, but I am nowhere near well informed enough to draw parallels with real situations or to point out subtleties that I am sure I am missing. There is also the magical presence of Nanabush appearing and disappearing throughout; he is the Trickster character in native culture and added a spiritual element which I found to be quite moving. This was written in the 80's and perhaps it is because of this that I find certain elements familiar. I was a teenager in the 80's and lived in a town set between a few reserves; I went to school with girls who were just as sharp tongued and powerful and funny, although as a naive teen I had no idea of most of the social issues they faced.

I found the story disturbing and yet moving, funny and melancholy, and not afraid of talking frankly of real life. While we don't see instances of these things, it includes references to violent rape, to spousal abuse, to awful heartbreak, and more simply, to characters using the toilet with the door open. (and actually we do see an instance of that last one!).

It is a play I wish I could see in performance. I always find many more layers when a talented director and cast interpret a script and help me out just a little!

Election returns and an endless Challenge

Warning: I don't follow politics much and don't like arguing about them, but this is a post with political content. Sorry.

I am feeling a little down today, even if it is my birthday. Thanks, Canada, for the great gift of another Conservative government and more of Stephen Harper. I suppose counting small mercies I can take some comfort in the fact that it's a minority government, and really, the other choices weren't so great either.
The only person more downcast today must be Yann Martel, that is if he intends to continue his project of sending Harper a book every 2 weeks. (bet he wishes he had decided on one a month, now). Martel seems stubborn enough to continue with this project, and if so, we will have a ready made reading challenge ahead for us for the next 4 years. (4 years because I'm sure now that Harper's got back in he won't bend the election laws again to hold another unnecessary election). Guess I'd better hurry up with that list o' books I haven't read yet. Last night while listening to election returns on CBC radio I began to read Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters, realizing that the list was only going to keep growing. I wonder if Martel is taking suggestions?

Martel-Harper Challenge

Dewey has set up another challenge just as she has threatened....and I have to join it! She has organized a quarterly challenge based on the booklist which Yann Martel has been sending to PM Harper, and which you know I am following. The set up is as follows:

You may know that Yann Martel sends books to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper every two weeks. He’s sent 38 so far, and you can read the letters he sends along with them at that site. For our challenge, I propose that we also read those books. I’ll ask people to sign up quarterly, committing to three books each time they sign up.

Ok, so this should help me catch up on this list a little! My 3 books for Oct-Nov-Dec:

Metamorphosis / Frank Kafka

Kreutzer Sonata / Leo Tolstoy

The Rez Sisters / Thompson Highway

The Indefatigable Yann Martel

And the list just keeps going....!!!!
Yann Martel's latest pick for our (soon to be former?) Prime Minister Harper:

Anthem by Ayn Rand

You've got to read his letter accompanying the book for a wonderfully sarcastic summary of Rand's one small book - here, I'll give you a taste:

The main problem with Rand’s libertarianism, this uber-Nietzschean cult of the heroic individual standing on a mountaintop, is that it makes not only society unworkable, but even simple relations. An example jumps out in Rand’s own novel. Equality 7-2521, now drunk with his own uniqueness, has naturally tired of his name. He says to the Golden One:

“I have read of a man who lived many thousands of years ago, and of all the names in these books, his is the one I wish to bear. He took the light of the gods and he brought it to men, and he taught men to be gods. And he suffered for his deed as all bearers of light must suffer. His name was Prometheus.”

Prometheus, the nice guy formerly known as Equality 7-2521, goes on:

“And I have read of a goddess who was the mother of the earth and of all the gods. Her name was Gaea. Let this be your name, my Golden One, for you are to be the mother of a new kind of gods.”

What if Golden One rather fancied herself as a Lynette or a Bobbie-Jean? Who is this Prometheus to tell her what her name should be? And what if she doesn’t want to be the mother of a screaming gaggle of kids? What if one child will do, and a girl if possible, thank you very much? But as headstrong as Liberty 5-3000 seemed to be in the City, so she is passive and submissive as Gaea, doing as she is told, because nothing and no one should get in the way of Ayn Rand’s romantic Superman, especially not his woman.

There is also a suggestion that, perhaps, there should be a Prime Ministerial reading list, to make the imaginative assets of a leader accountable to the public. While tongue-in-cheek, it is a very thought-provoking questioning of just what should go into the makeup of a visionary leader. But do take a look for yourself.

What is Stephen Harper Reading Now?

There's just been an election called here in Canada. We have just over a month until election day, none of this US style, year long drawn out campaigning! There are many people in the arts community who will be happy about a chance to boot out the arts phobic slash-happy Harper conservatives, but I'd imagine none so happy as Yann Martel. And perhaps me.

I've been following along with the recommended books Martel been sending to our PM, since April 2007. He has stated:

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written.

Martel must be fervently praying, for many reasons, that Harper will be booted. I know I am, and just one of those reasons is that I may finally get a chance to catch up with this *&#%@! never-ending book list! I've fallen far, far behind; my last book read was #20, Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination, and we are now at #37, Swift's A Modest Proposal. Counting the ones I've already read from his latest suggestions that still leaves me about 15 books behind, sigh.

These are the books from #20 to #37 which I've read in the past, with my comments on them:

To the Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf
A gorgeous read, even if not one of my favourite Woolf books. The story of the Ramsays and their summer retreat in the Hebrides is a book which slows you down, makes you see things differently. It's a good entrée into Woolf's work.

Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi
A graphic novel which I read when it first came out, it's a fascinating look at life for a young woman growing up in Iran. Now I really must see the acclaimed film.

A Modest Proposal / Jonathan Swift
A tiny piece I read back in university, this satirical suggestion for the relief of poverty in Ireland is still a shockingly funny and dark read.

That leaves me with 15 books. Whew.

Frye's Educated Imagination

The Educated Imagination / Northrop Frye
Toronto : Anansi, 1997, c1963.

Another volume chosen by Yann Martel; somehow I don't think the Prime Minister will be getting to it, even though this book carries Martel's message most clearly - how literature is valuable in all areas of life, by virtue of its training of the imagination. This is the collected 1963 Massey Lectures, by the brilliant Northrop Frye. Even though it originates in the 60's it is still relevant in many ways. This is the same reaction I had to my recent reading of A Voice from the Attic by Robertson Davies; so much has NOT changed in the last 40 years! Davies' book discusses the art of reading literature, while this one discusses the art of teaching it. They both contain a few things that forty years have made passé, but in their theories of literature they are bang on.

Many of the reviews of The Educated Imagination point out that it is the most accessible entry into Frye's work. I found it very easy reading, not overly academic, and full of thought-provoking commentary on why we even bother with literature. Karen over at U Krakovianka has providentially also just been reading this aged Canadian work, and has made some very good points about it. It's a set of six essays, and each has something to say about elements of literature. Since I've been reading quite a bit of science writing lately as well, I was struck by Frye's comparison of literature and science in his first essay, The Motive for Metaphor. Speaking of language, he says there are 3 levels inherent in a language; the level of consciousness and self-awareness, the level of social participation, and the level of the imagination. He continues:

On this basis, perhaps, we can distinguish the arts from the sciences. Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves towards the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. ... Art, on the other hand, begins with the world we construct, not with the world we see. It starts with the imagination, and then works toward ordinary experience: that is, it tries to make itself as convincing and recognizable as it can.... Still, the fact that they start at opposite ends, even if they do meet in the middle, makes for one important difference between them. Science learns more and more about the world as it goes on: it evolves and improves. A physicist today knows more physics than Newton did, even if he's not as great a scientist. But literature begins with the possible model of experience, and what it produces is the literary model we call the classic. Literature doesn't evolve or improve or progress. We may have dramatists in the future who will write plays as good as King Lear, though they'll be very different ones, but drama as a whole will never get better than King Lear. King Lear is it, as far as drama is concerned; so is Oedipus Rex, written two thousand years earlier than that, and both will be models of dramatic writing as long as the human race endures.

I think I absorbed the first essay most thoroughly, but there are shining bits of brilliance scattered through the book like morning dew; ie: pretty much everywhere! This is a book that is so perfectly expressed in its form that to explain it would be just to quote page after page. So, I will just recommend that you read it and enjoy Frye's unique mind for yourself. Just one more quote which may be of particular import to us book bloggers, as it has to do with lit crit - with one caveat, "he" and "his" and "mankind" are assumed mean all of us, this was written in the 60's after all:

The critic has always been called a judge of literature, which means, not that he's in a superior position to the poet, but that he ought to know something about literature, just as a judge's right to be on a bench depends upon his knowledge of law. If he's up against something the size of Shakespeare, he's the one being judged. The critic's function is to interpret every work of literature in the light of all the literature he knows, to keep constantly struggling to understand what literature as a whole is about. Literature as a whole is not an aggregate of exhibits with red and blue ribbons attached to them, like a cat show, but the range of articulate human imagination as it extends from the height of imaginative heaven to the depth of imaginative hell. Literature is a human apocalypse, man's revelation to man, and criticism is not a body of adjudications, but the awareness of that revelation, the last judgement of mankind.

If only I could be so articulate! This has been one of my favourites of the books Yann Martel has recommended so far; every essay made me think. Enthusiastically recommended!

Picture Books with Yann Martel

For Christmas week, Martel suggested three picture books to our Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his reading list. He suggests that these books may be shared among families.

I've read the picture books; Imagine A Day written by Sarah L. Thomson and illustrated by Rob Gonsalves, and The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg. They share a common denominator of mystery and imagination -the image here is from the gorgeous Imagine a Day, a book well worth looking through. If you are amazed by the detailed and whimsical illustrations you can also look for his corresponding picture book, Imagine a Night. And the Harris Burdick faintly reminds me of those "Uncolouring Books" which were popular in my 70's childhood, the ones with a few lines sketched out and a written prompt suggesting a picture that you would then create yourself. In this case, you are encouraged to write your own story to explain the images. As usual, Van Allsburg's pictures are extraordinary and a wonderful spur to the imagination.

Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart is the third suggestion, a slightly longer book for older readers, and I recall looking at it some years ago, though all I remember is a story about two dying brothers, war/freedom fighters, and suicide. Hmm. Perhaps I'd better take another look and figure out why this is a suggested read.

Acorn's Island

The Island means Minago / Milton Acorn

New Canada Press, c1975.

I've been so busy making reading plans for the new year, I haven't been looking back enough -- and I have a slew of reviews to catch up on. I'll call this my week of reviews and try to talk a bit about some of the books I read as the year was turning over.

First off, there's this book of poetry and essays, by Milton Acorn. I would not have read this one if it hadn't been chosen by Yann Martel in his quest to get our Prime Minister to read. But it was, and I thought it might also be an interesting book about PEI for the Canadian Book Challenge; I will of course be reading lots of LM Montgomery in this 100th year since the publication of Anne of Green Gables, but something PEI and not Montgomery sounded interesting. And interesting was what I got with this one.

Acorn was a poet and an activist, commonly known in his time as "The People's Poet". This book is published by NC Press, and is very seventies. On the copyright page, it reads "NC Press publishes books and pamphlets that will be of assistance in the Canadian People's struggle for national liberation." The poetry and especially the essay on the revolutionary history of Prince Edward Island gives me the impression that if Milton Acorn hadn't been a poet and a part of the literary community he'd have been just another of the nutty conspiracy theorists accosting everyone in the public library. This collection reflects its time as well as Acorn's strong political opinions.

Still, some of the poetry is quite striking, and the essay on PEI points out some fascinating items I hadn't considered, notwithstanding my BA in Canadian History. One of these things is how the fact that PEI was settled by tenant farmers of absentee landlords reflected itself in the landscape. The curving roads, the screening bluffs of trees, all assisted in the resistance to tax collectors approaching for their take. As he says when people remark how pretty PEI is, 'it was formed by revolution'. There is a feeling of dusty idealism to the poetry and the historical rants; still, it is somehow charming. In Yann Martel's essay to the Prime Minister about this book, he states :

The Island Means Minago represents yet another thing a book can be: a time capsule, a snapshot, a museum shelf of old dreams—that is, a reminder of a past future that never became (but is perhaps still worth dreaming about).

I concur. Here is one of the (non-political) poems I most enjoyed:

Trout Pond

The woods, spruce twisted

into spooky shapes

echo the trickle of water

from raised oars.

Above pale ripples

a redwing blackbird fastens

legs crooked and beak alert,

to a springing reed.

My father's whiteheaded now,

but oars whose tug

used to start my tendons

pull easily these years.

His line curls, his troutfly drops

as if on its own wings,

marks a vee on the mirrored

ragged spruceheads, and

a crane flapping past clouds.

(once again Blogger has no poetic soul and will not let me space the verse correctly. It is written in 4 stanzas, the first 3 with 4 lines and the final stanza holding 5. Argh.)

Reading with Rilke (and Martel)

This week's pick on the Prime Ministerial Reading List is Rilke's Letters to a young poet.

Yann Martel has most thoughtfully been choosing books I've already read during the past few weeks, so I'm easily able to keep up! But I think I want to revisit Rilke. I read this book some years ago (I think as a young university student) so it's time to read the letters again. Does anyone have any memories of this one? I read it for a class and liked it, then for a few years found it too over-used and clichéd, and then I seemed to have grown past that and liked it again. Strange; I'm going to reread it more carefully now, and see where I stand currently!

Oranges are not the only Fruit

In my quest to read along with Yann Martel's bookish suggestions to our Prime Minister, I'm always delighted to find I've read the book under consideration. That's especially true this week, as he's recommended Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are not the only fruit. This was the first Winterson book I read, many years ago, and it is a stunning story of a young woman's shaking loose from her fundamentalist religious upbringing as she realizes she is a lesbian. It is not sensationalist, rather it is about this girl's growth and developing identity and is written so very well. I recommend this one; I might just reread it now!

Yann Martel sends a book every two weeks along with a letter, a mini essay if you will, about the book and the reasons why he's sent it. He considers reading as a way to insert yourself into another's life and learn some empathy for differing viewpoints. I will not point out the obvious benefit this would be for single-minded politicians, I'll just say that I greatly enjoyed his opening paragraph:

The great thing about reading books is that it makes us better than cats. Cats are said to have nine lives. What is that compared to the girl, boy, man, woman who reads books? A book read is a life added to one’s own. So it takes only nine books to make cats look at you with envy.

That sounds like the beginning of a wonderful novel! And I am especially envious about the unappreciative Stephen Harper receiving another present from Yann Martel this week, as it is not only a wonderful book, it is an inscribed copy:

To Stephen Harper
From an English writer
With best wishes
Jeanette Winterson
(Sent to you by a Canadian writer, Yann Martel)

The very idea of receiving specially signed copies of my favourite books is almost enough to make me consider going into politics! (um...not really.)

Catching up with Yann Martel, Part 3

Today's recommended read for our Prime Minister is Le Petit Prince. In French. Yann Martel's letter to the PM about this book is also in French. In Canada, at least, this could be construed as a bit of a political statement. We are a bilingual country after all, and PM Harper has not shown what anyone would consider great warmth toward Quebec or official bilingualism. (However, when talking about PM Harper, I don't think he's been to known to show warmth to anyone or anything.) The good news is, I've read this one. Not in French, but still.

The next to last Martel pick for our Prime Minister to read, while hardly what I would consider short, is a wonderful classic, one which I've read more than once! He chose To Kill a Mockingbird, the first book I ever stayed up all night reading. I remember looking up at the end and seeing the sunrise - an amazing memory which is forever tied in to my experience of the book.

With this pick I'm caught up, finally, with his reading list. The last two choices were a play, Strindberg's Miss Julie and a graphic novel, Art Spiegelman's Maus. Both are genres I rarely read, so it was a stretch for me. And perhaps that explains a few of my difficulties. I found Miss Julie an unpleasant and annoying read. In the essays I've read on it, it seems to be important for its stylistic innovations, and its approach to the class structures in Sweden at the time. I just found it irritating, especially the conclusion that the only way out of disgrace for Julie is suicide. I know that she is supposed to represent the downfall of aristocratic excess and self-absorption, but I disliked the 'common' character of Jean so much that I would prefer the aristos to win out in this case! Knowing also that Strindberg was a notorious misogynist makes it difficult to read this only symbolically. I didn't enjoy this one but am interested enough to look into the critical work on it a little more.

As for Maus, I always knew this was a classic of its genre, but the only graphic novels I've read previously are Chester Brown's Louis Riel and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. This is not an area I read much in. I was really impressed by Maus. It takes the always difficult subject of the Holocaust and presents it in an original and honest manner. The character of his father is drawn without sentiment or easy clichés and the story is the more moving for it. Showing his own difficulties approaching the subject, as well as his own prickly relationship with his father, help the story along. I have to agree with the Pulitzer committee, who gave him a special award in 1992; this is an original and outstandingly successful presentation of a very problematic subject. I am very glad I finally read it.

Catching up with Yann Martel, Part 2

Imagine how delighted I was to find that the Sept. 3 Martel pick for our P.M. is Jane Austen's The Watsons. Finally, a book I've already read! And very recently as well; see my earlier review.

I've been working away at his list and am reading classics I should have read eons ago! I've just finished Voltaire's Candide. (translated from the French) This is something I've always been meaning to read and it is so short I wonder why I've been procrastinating. I really enjoyed it -- I didn't expect it to be so funny. Candide travels the world as a 'candid' observer, one who does not have set ideas through which to filter his experiences. He travels with others who try to explain everything through their thought systems , especially by the eternal optimism of the tutor Pangloss. I don't know enough philosophy to be able to identify all the references made to various ideas, but even without a philosophical background the story is an amusing spoof of chivalric romances. Candide and his companions travel the world, having terrible things happen everywhere. Even when they finally reach El Dorado they are not satisfied and end up leaving to return to Europe where their riches and sweethearts await. The King of El Dorado tells them, "when one is reasonably content in a place, one ought to stay there", but they leave anyhow. That quote and the most famous last line, "we must cultivate our garden" are ones I've copied out to think about.

I've also finished Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold (translated from Spanish) and I read it in the same edition with the odd purple cover that Martel mentions in his letter to Stephen Harper. This is a journalistic novel; it's a look at a murder which happened years before, and the narrator is going back to try to unravel its causes. The narrator is implicated in the events, as it occurred in his own small town and the main players were all friends of his. Memories are suspect, recollections vague, and nobody is taking any responsibility for how it happened or how they might have stepped in to stop it but didn't. According to what I've read, the 'chronicle' (fictional reportage) is an established genre in Latin American fiction, and this is an example of that questioning of the veracity of eyewitness accounts. There is some uncertainty as to whether the murdered man was actually guilty of the crime he was accused of; I felt that the narrator could have been equally guilty himself. I liked the possibilities that implied. I was impressed at the beginning but felt that the story slowed down and finally just trailed to a conclusion. I can't help but admire the style; his writing is so masterful. However, this was (for me) a slight story, of some interest but not an immediate reread.

Now just two more reads before I'm caught up to the voracious book suggester Yann Martel...

Catching up with Yann Martel, Part 1

Bonjour Tristesse / Françoise Sagan

New York : Ecco, 2001, c1955.

I am quite far behind in my quest to read all the books that Yann Martel is suggesting to our Prime Minister. I have decided to skip two of the recent choices: first, the Bhagavad Gita, because I am simply not enthused enough to tackle it right now(although some of the features on the online site are tempting). The second is a book of short poetry from the UK that I can not get my hands on.

So that leaves me with 4 books to read and review. I've just finished Bonjour, Tristesse, a French classic. This book was shocking when it was first published (1955) because of the world-weary, sexually frank teenage narrator, Cécile. (The author was only 18.) It tells the story of a young woman who has finished up her convent schooling and now lives with her roué of a father, participating in his frivolous lifestyle. He always has a young woman on the go, and they live for parties, gambling and flirtations.

During the summer in which the book takes place, an old friend of her mother's, Anne, comes to stay with them on holiday. To Cécile's astonishment, the relationship between Anne and her father turns into a romantic one, even though, gasp, Anne is in her forties! (just like the father). Cécile is horrified at the idea of her father settling down, and at having a mother figure to run her life in a more disciplined manner. She puts into motion a plan to ruin their relationship by tempting her father into cheating with his most recent mistress, hoping to have Anne catch him at it and thus leave him.

By the time this plan has come to fruition, Cécile has changed her mind, and rather wants Anne to stay and organize their lives. But it is too late; as Cécile had planned, Anne catches her father in his moment of weakness and flees. Their lives are irrevocably altered, and as Cécile looks back on her part in that summer and accepts her culpability, she says hello to a sense of sadness/regret/unhappiness; bonjour to the perfect French term, tristesse.

This is a very French book, with that unmistakable "French-ness" to it, in theme and in execution. I found it interesting for its evocation of a sulky rich teenager spending a summer on the Riviera, and the interactions between she and her possible stepmother, who is quite a lovely, serious person. The love affair that Cécile is secretly embarked upon fills her head with summer, heat, and the life of the body, which is in direct contrast to Anne's focus on making her study while on holidays so that she will be sure to pass her exams. She is a precocious and self absorbed girl, who learns that trying to make everything go your own way can have results far beyond your imaginings. It is nostalgic and elegiac, and I appreciated it, but can't say this one will be ever be a reread.

Smart Weeping

I've just reread the tiny book by Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. (on the suggestion of Yann Martel) This was a poetic novel she penned based on her passionate love affair with a married poet, George Barker, whom she fell in love with through his poetry. Smart was from a fairly well connected Ottawa family, who were sensitive about their social position. When she first published this (1945) her mother was horrified and used her connections to officials to have publication banned in Canada; any copies that slipped in from elsewhere were sought out and burned.

I read this first in university, lo these many years ago, and reading it again was quite a different experience. I read it the first time for the story of overwhelming passion and self-pity, love and loss; this time around it was much more about the language. It is an extended prose poem, with echoes of the Song of Solomon recurring throughout, and the title drawing on the Psalms. When I was 19 I was swamped by her longing, her agonies of love; this was passion, I thought. Upon rereading at an more advanced age, I realize I just wanted to smack some sense into her. "He's not worth it!" I wished I could yell at her. He was older, married, and much practiced at seduction. I imagine his Frequent Philanderer points were sky high. He seemed to be an addiction for her; he was a heavy drinker and so was she when she was with him. As it happened, it was a typical but long-standing affair; promising to leave his wife, he never did. Smart had four children by him.

That sordid summation is not really what the book is about, however. It is about how it is written. Smart (or her narrator) seemed to want someone to act as the focus of her infinite capacity for love; she decided upon Barker. The language is baroque in its ornamentation, pulling in the whole world, natural and literary, to describe and reflect their passion, glorious and squalid simultaneously. Read it as a poem and it carries you along on waves of emotion. The images crowd in upon each other, and some of them are startling, catching the eye like a diamond in the setting of golden prose.

Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.

My heart is its own destructive. It beats out the poisonous rhythm of the truth.

But I have become a part of the earth: I am one of its waves flooding and leaping. I am the same tune now as trees, hummingbirds, sky, fruits, vegetables in rows. I am all or any of these. I can metamorphose at will.

For an extended vision of the interior life of a woman in the throes of an unquenchable passion, read this cult classic. Admire her facility with language, if not with life.

Update: over at DoveGrey Reader, she talks about an essay by Ali Smith:

Relating the tale of Angela Carter's inclusion on the editiorial committee of Virago Books in the mid 1970's and the reason she gave for joining, "by the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to write By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, exquisite prose though it may contain. By Grand Central Station I Tore off His Balls would be more like it I should hope"

Two Martellian suggestions

As per Yann Martel's latest suggestions to our Prime Minister, I've read Orwell's Animal Farm and Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It is rather difficult for me to realize I've never actually read either of them before. I feel as if I have; I feel as though I know them quite thoroughly. But, it is not so. Now that I've finally read these two classics, here are my impressions of them.

Animal Farm

I'm not sure how I escaped reading this in my youth. It might have made more of an impression then, when political history was something new to me. While very well written, I found it a bit dated and somewhat disingenuous. Still, Orwell's brilliance shines through with his immortal line: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." This story details the inescapable corruption that follows any idealistic enterprise. The farmyard provides suitable examples of the many stratas of society, and Napoleon the boar is simply frightening as dictator. I had Stalin's face firmly superimposed by halfway through. The entrenched cynicism, that liberators necessarily become oppressors, is disheartening. Thus I can only say that while I admire this book for its cleverness and impeccable style, I did not enjoy it in a marvellous-book-to-reread way.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

I can't quite believe I have for so long avoided discovering who murdered Roger Ackroyd. I'm not going to give it away here in case there are some other unknowing readers out there. Suffice it to say I read this over a long weekend, sitting in the sun with a cup of tea. Is there any better way to read Agatha Christie? It was a wonderfully plotted novel; I did not puzzle out who the murderer was until Poirot told me. I nearly always have mysteries sorted by the 3/4 mark; not this time! The guiding principle of this story is, as Poirot states (which is perhaps why Martel chose this book for a politician's reading), that until in possession of proof we only have someone's word for it that they've done what they said they've done. Everyone has a secret, but they are all eventually found out.

In Martel's letter recommending this book he has included photos of the library of some of our previous prime ministers, located at Laurier House. Quite fascinating.

*Breaking News -- A Response*

Response:
May 8, 2007

Dear Mr. Martel:

On behalf of the Prime Minister, I would like to thank you for your recent letter and the copy of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. We appreciated reading your comments and suggestions regarding the novel.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,
Susan I. Ross
Assistant to the Prime Minister

Wanted : Ivan Ilych, dead or alive

I've finally read the first book Yann Martel sent to our PM, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. It was quite a chore finding a copy. As I mentioned previously, the library and my favourite local bookstore were both out. In the vast personal collection of books in my household there was no Ivan Ilych. At the other stores I searched, no Ivan. I was actually reduced to, yes, reading it online. I actually found a full text version, but don't like reading off a screen, or sitting in my computer chair reading extensively, so I printed it off and read it, pen in hand, in my comfy reading chair. Much better.
And it is a good read. It is short, and to the point, plotwise; but Tolstoy is a master of characterization, and the elements of discomfort the people who know Ivan Ilych feel about his imminent death are brilliantly exposed. On hearing of his death, his coworkers' first thoughts are about how this will affect their various promotions and new positions. While he is suffering greatly, his daughter complains to her mother, "Is it our fault?...It's as if we were to blame! I feel sorry for papa, but why should we be tortured?" Everyone participates in a lie to make things easier, by pretending that Ivan is only ill, rather than clearly dying. They require Ivan to also participate in this lie in order to keep the peace. But Ivan sees through it, even as he acquieses.

The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position.

Death leads to a reexamination of his life. As Ivan suffers he realizes that death comes to us all; while recognizing this fact before, he now fully grasps its reality. What makes his dying more difficult is that he has time to reflect on his life, and he begins to wonder, "What if my whole life has been wrong?"

It occured to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.

When looking back on my life, I do not want to be similarly struck with the idea that my priorities were all wrong. I hope that in reading this book, we may all be startled into making that sort of evaluation while we still have time to change our habits and live to our uttermost ability. I also like to think I would not be as transparently self-interested in such a situation as Ivan's friends and family, but while reading there are certain mannerisms in many of the characters that you can see yourself in, rather unpleasantly at times. As Yann Martel himself put it in his letter to PM Stephen Harper:

"That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, as in the case of this book, it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are existentially thicker."

And is that the purpose of reading for all of us bibliophiles, is our quest really to become existentially thicker? I like that explanation, it values all the interior work we quiet readers do. I'm quite sure that I won't look back on my life on my deathbed wishing I'd worked more, or been more popular, or even made more money, but I am equally certain that I'll be wishing I had just a little more time to read all the books still waiting for me. Despite Tolstoy's emphasis on Ivan's dying alone, with no one but his servant Gerasim to truly recognize it and care, he did have me teary at one point, proving that great art can bridge that gap between self interest and empathy. A wonderful book, one I'm glad won't be on my eternal TBR list.

The Ministerial Reading Plan

As I was just mentioning a few posts back, writer Yann Martel is sending our Prime Minister a book every two weeks, hoping that he may read one and gain some appreciation of what the arts can do in our lives. So far, Martel has sent Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych and Orwell's Animal Farm, both accompanied by thoughtful, explanatory letters. The second one he inscribed as a birthday gift; no response yet, though. Harper is writing his own book; maybe if he ever publishes it, he'll send Martel a copy for his birthday!

Anyhow, as I've been following this process, which is causing a bit of a stir (among literary people anyway), I realized I can not expect the PM to read these books if I myself - a literary person, I like to think - have not read them. And I have not read either of these two novels; hard to believe, but they are the kind of novels you feel that you've read, because you know the storyline, and may have even read critical essays about them. But I've never actually sat down and read either of these novels, never taken the time to make my own judgements of them. I've decided that I am going to read these books as Martel suggests them. That way, I can tsk tsk over the PM not reading them without feeling like a hypocrite. :)
On this mission, I looked for Ivan Ilych at the library. All checked out. Hmm. I went down to my local independent bookstore and asked; the owner seemed surprised to have another request for it. "Is there a run on this book, or something?" he asked. "I'm all sold out."
So, Mr. Martel, if Stephen Harper never reads even one of the books you are sending him, you have the comfort of knowing that bookish people nationwide are following your lead.

Governmentally approved reading?

Take a look at Yann Martel's website, What is Stephen Harper reading? He proposes to send a book fortnightly to our Prime Minister, to point out the meaning and vital importance of the arts to a truly lived life. The arts are being badly treated by this government, with international promotion program funding cut entirely, literacy program funding diminished, Canada Council events ignored, etc. As an artist, Yann Martel felt obliged to try to open a dialogue. Interesting; we'll have to see if there is any response at all.