“All night long, Hooker Winslow’s eyes were open.
“Around the room, the first shadows of morning began to lift themselves out of the corners and up from behind the chairs. The curtains–or something in the curtains–motioned and moved and waved. Hooker watched.” Timothy Findley, The Last of the Crazy People

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The Last of the Crazy People is Timothy Findley’s first novel, originally published in 1967, not by a Canadian publisher (it was passed over several times). It is the story of an 11-year-old boy who commits a shocking crime. I can’t tell you what it is because it happens in the last pages of the book, but the lead up is the bizarre tale of a brooding boy and the things that push him to take matters into his own hands.

Timothy Findley is one of my favourite authors, although I didn’t like any of his later novels. The Wars was my favourite, then You Went Away, The Last of the Crazy People, and his book of short stories Dust to Dust.

I have several of my books signed. One I bought pre-signed at a now-defunct bookstore in Winnipeg called the Heaven Art and Book Cafe. You could buy a marriage license in Heaven. Another I got signed at a reading in Vancouver and the third signed in a back office where he was signing books for a wholesaler.

Timothy Findley’s longtime partner was Bill Whitehead, who is a fantastic storyteller in his own right. If Bill ever writes a book about Findley, I’d be the first in line to buy a copy.

“Marie Ursule woke up this morning knowing what morning it was and that it might be her last.
“She had gathered the poisons the way anyone else might gather flowers, the way one gathers scents or small wishes and fondesses … she had been diligent and faithful the way any collector would be, any fervent lover … she had even felt the knowing sadness, the melancholy that lovers feel, the haunting not-enough feeling, the way one covets the flight of swifts and terns and nightjars.” Dionne Brand, At the full and change of the moon

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At the Full and Change of the Moon is one of those lilting tales, full of great beauty and even greater sadness, the type of tale where the cadence of the narrator’s voice can carry you farther into melancholy than any rocket can carry you into space.

The novel reminds me a lot of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. There is a map of characters at the beginning, the story is long and loops in on itself–an epic, you might call it–and there are characters named Ursula. Maybe I’m stretching but read the two sections aloud and see if you see the similiarities.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.”

Hypnotic is the best way to describe this type of prose.

At the Full and Change of the Moon, according to the back cover, is set in 1824 on the island of Trinidad. Marie Ursule, queen of a secret society of militant slaves, plots a mass suicide–a quiet, passionate act of revolt. But she cannot bring herself to kill her small daughter, Bola. Bola survives and her children and grand-children and great-grand-children spread out around the world. The novel is the interconnected stories of six generations of Marie Ursule’s descendents.

Hmm, sound familiar? One Hundred Years of Solitude, the finest epic of modern time, chronicles the lives of six Buendia generations, starting with Jose Arcadio and Ursula.

These are two very fine novels.

“She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway.” Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

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Be patient. I’m sure you suffered through the movie. But the movie is not the book. There are whole plot lines missing in the movie. I think this book is about communication, storytelling, cultures, love and lies. I suppose most of the books I put in the Canada Day quiz are about lies of some form. Not sure what that says about the books I like, but ignoring that, the truth is The English Patient is a fine novel.

In case you missed the movie hype, the characters are a Canadian nurse and a Sikh bomb-disposal expert (who have a love affair), a thief turned spy, a man burnt beyond recognition, and the characters in the burnt man’s mind, in particular his love Katharine.

There are fantastic stories within the story, and lots of great quotes. Like “there are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace.” I know out of context it drips melodrama, but I still like it.

I’m going to have to read this one again.

“My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o’clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.

“I am able to date the occasion with complete certainty because that afternoon I had been sledding with my lifelong friend and enemy Percy Boyd Staunton, and we had quarrelled, beause his fine new Christmas sled would not go as fast as my old one.” Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

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Fifth Buisness is the first novel in the Deptford trilogy by Robertson Davies: Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders. It is the story of Dunstan Ramsay, and it is the most read work by Davies.

The opening scene that follows the above quote is of a snowball being thrown at Mrs. Dempster, a pregnant Mrs. Dempster, who goes into premature labour. The story, as I recall, is Dunstan’s confession. The snowball was apparently aimed at him, he ducked, it hit her. Dunny has a lot of guilt for a Protestant boy.

The beauty of Fifth Business is in the melodrama. Davies creates a world of myth, Jungian archetypes, miracles, circus acts, and lies. It is truly a world of wonders. And what is wonderful is the way that Dunny lulls the careless reader into taking his confession and absolving him of his guilt. He cleverly establishes his credibility, states his confession then appeals to the audience. But it is a bit of a smoke and mirrors show.

The thing to remember with any great magic act is that what you don’t see (or read) is as important as what you do.

Who really did throw that snowball? And who put the rock into it?

“Lydia leans back to laugh at something Wilf Jardine says. Her breasts are the closest thing to Wilf, and he is looking down her taut white throat. Lydia’s teeth and lips a crescent of broken apple. Offering up her breasts and throat to Wilf. She wants to go elsewhere after the midnight fireworks, and that ambition to persist, I have decided, is drawing me to her.” Michael Winter, This All Happened

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This All Happened is structurally organized as the diary of Gabriel English. The novel has 12 chapters, one for each month of the year, and 365 entries. It’s a year in the life of Gabriel English, struggling writer and funny guy, who is smitten with Lydia. Gabriel’s passion for Lydia is of course his undoing. He is pushed from love to jealousy.

This All Happened is set in St. John’s, and although I’ve never been there, I did by the first chapter feel like I had a sense of the place, and knew the characters. I discovered This All Happened in Duthie Books on 4th Avenue in Vancouver. I’d heard about it and then there it was.

Michael Winter is a pretty crazy guy. I met him in Toronto last year and then again at the Vancouver Writers Festival. As I recall he talked about blow jobs. It was pretty early in the morning, but I thought it was funny. If you can hear Michael read it is well worth it, and not just for the blow jobs, sometimes he sings.

You can journey with Michael on his Canadian book tour for The Big Why. I recommend reading at least a few posts. Blog on, Michael: http://mhardywinter.blogspot.com/

Over the next couple of days, I shall unpack the Canada Day quiz I posted on July 1. The quotes and authors are some of my favourites. I shouldn’t keep them to myself.

“Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs. In the week before it happened, there was a string of unusual events that I noticed but did not recognize. Seemingly trivial, apparently unconnected, they were not even events really, so much as odd occurrences, whimsical coincidences, amusing quirks of nature or fate.” Diane Schoemperlen, Our Lady of the Lost and Found

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On an apparently typical Monday morning, a middle-aged writer goes into her living room to water the plants. A woman is standing there. She is the Virgin Mary. Invited to stay for lunch, Mary explains that after 2,000 years of petition, adoration and travelling, she is tired and needs some rest. She stays for a week.

In 2002, I completed my MA thesis. I wrote a creative nonfiction piece about a man I met who was a commando during the Second World War. Now, the university I attended did not have a MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program like the one at UBC. This meant my work had to stand on its own as a creative piece, but I had to defend it academically. Double work. I was a bit of a savage.

The academic focus of my thesis was that the boundary between fiction and nonfiction is an artificial one that the reader creates to make sense of the world. Note that I called my thesis “creative nonfiction,” it’s a label that immediately informs you about the type of writing, and suggests the extent of the nonfiction or factual events described in the book. I argued that as a reader we should consider what is being said, who is saying it, what authority the author has assigned that character, why we believe something to be “the truth” and something else to be a lie. We shouldn’t be misled by the label.

If I was a more accomplished writer, with a great concept, Our Lady of the Lost and Found is the book I would want to write. Instead, it is the book that I had the most pleasure reading in 2001.

Here are first lines of novels by my favourite Canadian authors. These aren’t necessarily the best first lines, but they are all by great authors. Can you match the author to the first line?

All night long, Hooker Winslow’s eyes were open.

Marie Ursule woke up this morning knowing what morning it was and that it might be her last.

She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.

Lydia leans back to laugh at something Wilf Jardine says.

The pizza man.

“We’ll just have to sell him,” I remember my mother saying with finality.

My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o’clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.

Northwest of Montreal, through a valley always in sight of the low mountains of the Laurentian Shield, the Ottawa River flows out of Protestant Ontario into Catholic Quebec.

Hank Peterson went into the bedroom of his house one Friday morning about 6:30, carrying a shotgun, and when he came out the lives of everyone in Red Rock had changed forever.

Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs.

Jerry was fifty years old when his daughters denounced him, as he had always known they would.

He was going into the house through the woodshed when he heard his name mentioned.

Authors listed alphabetically, need hints, look at the book title:
David Arnason, King Jerry
Dionne Brand, at the full and change of the moon
Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
Timothy Findley, The Last of the Crazy People
Robert Kroetsch, The Puppeteer
Hugh MacLennan, Two Solitudes
Alistair MacLeod, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, “In the Fall”
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Al Purdy, A Splinter in the Heart
Diane Schoemperlen, Our Lady of the Lost and Found
Wayne Tefs, Red Rock
Michael Winter, This All Happened

If you were going to write a novel, what would the first line be?

I saw a copy of Haunted at the Beaches Book City in Toronto. Like any curious reader, I flipped to the short story “Guts.” I had a morbid fascination with what words could have caused crowds to faint, in particular the men.

“Guts” I discovered is about the foibles of masturbation, in particular the kind in which the male species engages. Halfway through the story it became clear to me why the men in the audience were affected. “Guts” unpacks all sorts of unwanted, nasty, mental images. It is the short of story urban legends are made of, a story where things get inappropriately stuck or sucked in graphic detail.

I stood while reading and when I felt a peculiar wobble in my knees and glanced ahead and saw the ominous words “corn and peanuts,” I shut the book. I prefer to be momentarily mortified rather than permanently haunted, thank you very much.

For background:
Here’s my first post on Haunted.

There is something about a list that I am attracted to. I make a lot of lists, grocery lists, to do lists, books I want to read lists, movies I want to watch lists. Those are the banal lists that keep me going through the day, but the truly beautiful lists are the ones that draw me in, make me want to copy them down, make me laugh. Dave Letterman’s lists are an example but any top 10 list would do.

I’m not alone. There are all sorts of books of lists published: lists of quotations, trivia lists. Dictionaries are the ultimate lists.

Here’s the list I was drawn to yesterday:

Code blue: cardiac arrest
Code white: aggressive violent act
Code red: fire/smoke
Code yellow: missing patient
Code brown: hazardous spill
Code black: bomb threat
Code green: evacuation
Code orange: disaster/mass casuality
… code “can you guess where I was yesterday?”

Any other great lists out there?

Here are the fun things that happened at the show:

I met with GooglePrint. And I read today that Google has surpassed Time Warner Inc. as the media industry’s most valuable company. The market value of Google is $83.4-billion vs. Time Warner’s paltry $79.4-billion.

Michael Winter signed a copy of his novel The Big Why for me. There’s a paperback coming out soon and the cover looks awesome. I’m not a fan of the cloth cover. I really enjoyed Winter’s first book All This Happened, and The Big Why sounds promising. The first sentence is “I have been loved. I can say this. But back then, before it all went wrong, I did not know enough to consider the question.”

Do you have first sentences that draw you in, are your favourites? Covers and first sentence. That’s my hook.

I saw Joseph Boyden, who I played pool with last year but didn’t get a chance to speak to this year.

I got a copy of On Bullshit, which I love. It is oatmeal coloured with black type. Apparently there are 4 different colours. I’ve only ever seen the white and green one.

I saw Hayley Wickenheiser signing autographs at the show.

I went to dinner with friends and had an amazing pork tenderloin crusted with pine nuts and surrounded by apples. It was delicious, and James will tell you that I don’t like pork. It’s a thin slice between the pork I like and the pork I don’t.

I got to see the new logo for McClelland and Stewart. It is a chariot rider with a bow and arrow. The photo is of the M&S tattoo I have on my arm. Temporary tattoo, it wasn’t that kind of weekend. I’ll tell you the background story of the tattoo and logo later.

Aside from that I steered clear of the bargain-basement style hoarding of free books. Most people at the show are carting enormous book bags packed with titles they’ll never read and will likely abandon in their hotel. But there are also those who I admire, those who will be totally enthralled with your description of a book and will kindly tell you that they don’t want to take it now, but will watch for it. I prefer that approach, which leads me back to a previous post where I questioned why we do this show. According to everyone I asked, albeit it was a small but high-quality sampling, we do it because of the people. Buyers say they can’t do their job without the show. They need to make the personal, face-to-face contacts, and more important, they need to see what books we’re making a fuss about. Sometimes it isn’t clear that a title is huge until a book buyer is at the show, sees the blow-ups of the cover, the light boxes, everyone carrying around the advance copies. But mostly people just want to be around other book people, talking shop, networking and smoozing.