Wipe your feet, ingrates

The responses aside, I think Victoria Glendinning's assessment of the state of Canadian literature obscures something wonderful.

The strength of Canadian crime writing has never been better.

I've ripped through a trio of great books recently and I'm now much more predisposed to wave the flag as a result of homegrown crime writing than over the wonders of the Giller list. On the basics-plot, character, plausibility, propulsion and just the well madeness of it all, our crime fiction is very damn good and competes with anything.

I feel differently saying that with the crime stuff too, as there isn't a hint of boosterism in it.

Time was, Canadian literary culture had a lot of self esteem issues come up when a heavy hitter was or wasn't on an international shortlist somewhere. It got to be like the Olympics when we'd come up short somewhere, wonder if we were good enough, spending enough, why don't they love us, etc. Clearly that's still present.

Crime writers just kept their heads down and did the work. There was no star system, relatively little in terms of star maker machinery and no money in it.

To be fair, there's not much bank in writing literature either, no matter what Stephen Harper says.

But while Glendinning vs. Canada plays out, it should be noted that there's other dogs in the fight, and that the jacket blurbs on Canadian crime book jackets have (gasp) Americans and even Europeans full of praise.

what a lovely war

Victoria Glendinning has stated the obvious and everyone has an opinion.

Canadian fiction has a "striking homogeneity" and "the U.S too, is a nation of immigrants, but American novelists do not bang on so about its heritage and antecedents."

She then suggested that Canadian novels are usually the product of committee thinking and maybe kind of sort of suggested that some of the work was not that great.

She did, to be fair, say that some of the Giller contestants were "brilliant."

So does this mean anything, other than maybe Glendinning could have waited until the winner was announced before putting her thoughts to paper?

No, not really.

I'm naturally curious how the Giller gets picked, so if she was going to name names or at least write an essay on her jury experience, I'd read it and maybe even pay for one of her books.

I do remember quite liking her novel Electricity about ten or twelve years back.

But when the Brits say nice things about Michael Ondaatje or Alice Munro we can feel good about ourselves; conversely it doesn't add up to much when someone across the pond holds up what can be an uncomfortably mirror.

Lets move on.

Giller longlist

As always it's got some holes and some surprises.

Lisa Moore and Michael Crummey's absence hard to figure, but I'm very pleased that Kim Echlin made it.

to be continued surely

It's Dan Brown's twenty worst sentences.

On a related note the Globe has an odd review of the Lost Symbol this morning.

"I have a confession: I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. Yes, yes, I know, it's overwrought and overdone and over the top. But there's a reason it sold more than 80 million copies worldwide. It's good old-fashioned cliffhanging storytelling at its best."

No bookseller is going to look a gift horse (or even a serviceable donkey) in the mouth so a phenomenon is a fine thing.

But Larry Orenstein who wrote the review is a member of the Crime Writers of Canada so it follows that he knows a few good storytellers. I mention that only insofar as I just this morning finished Robert Rotenberg's Old City Hall and not only is it "storytelling at its finest" it's also very damn well written.

Errors of fact and laughably bad prose get in the way of storytelling and that's not a problem with good crime writing.

Let those cash registers ring, but there's no reason to settle for mere storytelling.

Don't take my word for it

It's the Dan Brown random sequel generator.

"For those of you who can't wait another moment for Dan Brown's next blockbuster, Slatehas your fix: an interactive Dan Brown plot generator that takes a city and a shadowy organization and spits out the plot of the next volume in the Robert Langdon chronicles. You can either select a specific city and/or group from the dropdown menus at the top of the tool or leave it on "random" and let the computer decide. Make sure to hit "refresh"—even the same city and group have multiple story lines.

Seem formulaic? That's because it is."

and, inevitably..

All hell breaks loose when "proud, non-reader" gets a live mic.

Jim Carroll

The New York Times reports that Jim Carroll has died

indulge me

Not remotely bookish, but this is the best Bill Maher column I've ever seen.

When he's on, no political humourist gets anywhere near him.

Barbara Kay loves men

but doesn't care much for women. Or Canadian women? Or Canadian books written by women?

Or maybe just Canadian novelist Lisa Moore?

Maybe she just needs a nap.

"I then read February, which does take place in Canada, and ostensibly in the present (although it makes heavy use of the flashback, a now wearisomely belaboured vehicle), with critical attention.

I can report in good conscience I have no apologies to make for my pre-emptive "review." Like so many other Canadian novels, February is indeed dying in beauty, and it is worth a few paragraphs to explain why, because it is so representative of what the Canadian fiction publishing industry -- itself highly feminized by comparison to 40 years ago -- seems to like, and typical of what wins or is at least nominated for awards here.

Moore is an enormously talented writer, but like so many others of her sensitive, creative workshopped-to-death ilk, a writer's writer privileging an artistic, leisured rendering of memory and feeling over prole-friendly dialogue, action and, above all, plot."

(Sept 9)

Barbara Kay's "pre-emptive review" was an earlier column swatting a profile by Post reporter Katherine Laidlaw. Kay hadn't read the novel but felt qualified to say,

"Take, for example, Katherine Laidlaw's gushy July 9 Post profile of twice-nominated Giller contender Lisa Moore and her new novel, February. I don't know Katherine Laidlaw, but from her uncritical admiration for the novel's preternaturally CanLittish values, she would doubtless be shocked to discover that her selected quotations from, and observations about, Moore, while honorifically intended, smothered -- rather than aroused--my interest in reading the novel."

(July 15)

The dustup is here, but essentially Barbara Kay doesn't care for all the

"Me, me, me and my extraordinary capacity for sadness. Welcome to the unrelenting self-regard of CanLit, where it's all about nobly suffering women or feminized men: men immobilized in situations of physical, psychological or economic impotence (that is when they're not falling through the ice and nearly drowning), rather than demonstrating manly courage in risk-taking or heroic mode."

I'm not sure what "CanLittish values" Kay has such trouble with and it doesn't matter much because she then trots out the tired bits about some (very few) writers getting the occasional pittance from government grants so they can eat while writing. From her screed it sounds as if anyone with a PC and a dream just needs to get in line, but I never see this kind of invective hurled at police or firefighters, who presumably sit down from time to time.

In short, it's political so all your pretty sentences and introspection don't matter much unless your a Canadian version of Ayn Rand.

Sorry ladies.

Kay's opinions are as valid as anyone else, but maybe read the book before putting anything in print, and if CanLit isn't your thing, Canadians do write pretty damn good plots, too.

Preach on, Brother Andrew

It's a pretty big target to fire at, but Andrew Pyper is bang on in his thinking that Canadian fiction could use a little fear.

What happened to bad's fun side? Why can you go through a year's worth of prize-winners without once experiencing even the slightest shiver of fear? Shame, yes, and a good deal of sensitivity training. But leave-the-lights-on fear? The literary project seemed to have given that up along with the booze and grass and making out with the wrong people at parties.

(I'm being cheeky and provocative for the sake of argument here, of course. But, now that I mention it, what ever happened to provocation and cheekiness for the sake of argument?)

Words Worth will never be confused with a horror readers paradise, but we're making some inroads into genre. The bad kids are just more fun to hang out with.

If we can make it here....

The National Post says it's going to be a big year.

'To that end, expect a spate of publicity stunts and out-of-the-box marketing campaigns. Stuart Maclean will repel a 20-storey building in Halifax to promote Extreme Vinyl Cafe, then attempt to make an oversized copy of the book the most autographed book in Canada. Penguin and Canadian Blood Services are teaming up for a blood drive to promote the new Dracula novel, The Un-Dead, in October, while Douglas Coupland has teamed with iTunes to help promote his new novel. Coach House is hosting a "live holiday special" called A Very Christian Christmas to trumpet Eunoia: The New Edition by linguistic gymnast Christian Bok. Even Margaret Atwood has taken to Twitter to promote her latest."

Richard Powers and Jonathan Lethem will continue to just be super cool and let the cognoscenti come to them.

and in this corner....

Generation A by Douglas Coupland is pretty good.

Generation A by Douglas Coupland is pretty terrible.

Did I mention the new Lorrie Moore is out?

The only question is when?

That settles it.

I've only read one Lee Child novel and that was years ago.

They guy has taken off now and I really should keep up. because his top 40 rocks.

event horizons

We've just confirmed Linwood Barclay and John McFetridge for November (venue to come)

and I couldn't be happier. Linwood is closing in on superstar status in crime fiction circles and although I haven't gotten to his new book quite yet. just finished Too Close to Home and the guy just plain puts on a clinic.

A prominent family is shot to death in upstate New York and the Cutter family is spooked as they live just down the road.

Small town secrets come to light, lingering doubts as to the state of the Cutter marriage and a bombshell sitting in an old computer belonging to a teenager who committed suicide years earlier drive a killer of a plot after the Cutter's teenaged son Derek is charged with the murders.

I've read several Linwood Barclay titles in the last few years and he seems to be able to do whatever he likes. The Zack Walker series is great fun and the straight ahead thrillers are so well made as to be almost as good as Donald Westlake; and that's not something I say lightly.

I'm just opening the third John McFetridge book but the first two Everybody Knows This is Nowhere and Dirty Sweet are really solid.

Toronto the Good has never looked so modern and the guy has a real ear for dialogue.

Corrupt cops, bikers, drugs, scams and violence oh my..I'll never get tired of his stuff.

Details for the Fall Author Series are here.

A shout out from across the pond

Ursula K Le Guin approves of the new Margaret Atwood, due any day

in the old days these kinds of misfires were only courtesy of Indigo

At first glance the Chronicle of Higher Education is underwhelmed at Google's book search handiwork.

"Google acknowledges the incorrect dates but says they came from the providers. It's true that Google has received some groups of books that are systematically misdated, like a collection of Portuguese-language works all dated 1899. But a very large proportion of the errors are clearly Google's own doing. A lot of them arise from uneven efforts to automatically extract a publication date from a scanned text. A 1901 history of bookplates from the Harvard University Library is correctly dated in the library's catalog. Google's incorrect date of 1574 for the volume is drawn from an Elizabethan armorial bookplate displayed on the frontispiece. An 1890 guidebook called London of To-Day is correctly dated in the Harvard catalog, but Google assigns it a date of 1774, which is taken from a front-matter advertisement for a shirt-and-hosiery manufacturer that boasts it was established in that year.

Then there are the classification errors, which taken together can make for a kind of absurdist poetry. H.L. Mencken's The American Language is classified as Family & Relationships. A French edition of Hamlet and a Japanese edition of Madame Bovary are both classified as Antiques and Collectibles (a 1930 English edition of Flaubert's novel is classified under Physicians, which I suppose makes a bit more sense.) An edition of Moby Dick is labeled Computers; The Cat Lover's Book of Fascinating Facts falls under Technology & Engineering. And a catalog of copyright entries from the Library of Congress is listed under Drama (for a moment I wondered if maybe that one was just Google's little joke)."

It's funny because it's true.

Andromeda Klein-Frank Portman

I generally don't get too excited over YA fiction because we've got a budding empire for that.

But because King Dork was so damn good, I'm all over the new one by Frank Portman,

Andromeda Klein.

I just started it so a plot summary isn't on yet, but really what's the point when the book has a theme song.

video star

Michael Crummey talks about his new novel Galore.

He's also coming to town.

Thanks to Lauren (a hell of a storyteller herself) for the link