Song of the Day

The other night I tuned into the live-stream of U2's Rose Bowl concert, and I was surprised when I couldn't really tear myself away. I haven't been a hard-core U2 fan for years, and I haven't even listened to their last album. But watching the concert rekindled some of my old affection, and I've been replaying my U2 CDs and checking out some of their music videos online. I've even discovered some videos I've never seen before for some older tunes. And thanks to a number of uploaded concert videos of dubious quality, I've learned that on this tour they've started playing two songs they've never played before in concert: Electrical Storm and Your Blue Room --- both favourites of mine. I'm starting to think I might need to go see them when they come, even though I'm not usually a fan of arena shows.

Anyway, that was a long preamble for just this one old song (no video, since I like the album version so much):

Writers on writing -- links

Last night's reading at Arts Cafe was great, with a really strong lineup of readers. My friend Alice Zorn was one of the readers, and I was happy to discover that she was also featured yesterday on Love Ms. Julie. She talks about her writing routine and you can look at a photo of her rather serene-looking desk. A desk that makes a desk look like a good idea.

Friend and poet Linda Besner also recently recorded a piece for The Next Chapter on the trouble with titling her first collection of poetry, which will be coming out with Vehicule. She polled me and writer Rob Weston about whether we supported her title or the one proposed by her editor. It's about 20 minutes into the show if you want to give it a listen --- but you should also listen to the first 20 minutes as it's an interview with Jessica Grant about her novel Come, Thou Tortoise (a novel I loved and have already raved about here).

And writer Jonathan Ball talks to CKUW about his new book of poetry Ex Machina as well as his short films. He has the audio hosted here on his website. Jonathan and I are attempting to post every day this month (what is known in the blogosphere, perhaps somewhat unfortunately, as NaBloPoMo --- not to be confused with NaNoWriMo, which I am decidedly not attempting), so you should check out his blog here and encourage him. Today's post is about the best method for undertaking revisions --- something I am trying not to think about while I'm finishing this first draft....

Readings, readings, readings!

We've been wonderfully fortunate in our literary events lately in Montreal. Thanks to the Concordia Writers Read series, George Saunders was in town two weeks ago to give a reading, which I can honestly say was the best reading I've ever attended (a close second being Yann Martel reading from Life of Pi at a free event at the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, the same morning he found it was shortlisted for the Booker). Saunders read from his recent story in The New Yorker, "Victory Lap." It's a classic Saunders story -- I'm not sure anybody does tragicomedy better than he does. He did different voices for the characters, including a Mickey Mouse-type voice for the imaginary baby deer (read the story, you'll understand) that is still cracking me up whenever I think about it. He answered the questions generously and interestingly and humbly. Everyone I went with was equally impressed.

Then this past Monday was the Biblioasis Metcalfe-Rooke reading at Drawn and Quarterly, where Kathleen Winter, Rebecca Rosenblum, and Amy Jones read from their winning short-story collections (actually, in Rebecca's case, she read a new story, which was a treat). They were all excellent and inspiring readers, and there were some yummy snacks there to boot. Kathleen very nicely sent me home with some of the leftover blue cheese. I'm pretty sure that living off of literary reading leavings means that I'm a REAL writer now.

And tonight at Arts Cafe is a poetry and prose reading, with a lineup including Alice Zorn, who will be reading from her wonderful book Ruins & Relics. The collection is deservedly shortlisted for the Quebec Writers' Federation McAuslan First Book Prize, and I'm rooting for it to win. And on the subject of the QWF Awards, why don't you come to the gala? As always, it promises to be a great event, and at just $10 a ticket, I suspect it is the most affordable (yet still glitzy) literary gala in the country.

writing comics diversions

A comic apropos to yesterday's post about iPhone e-readers, which I meant to include but forgot:

I didn't manage to go camping this summer, but I did go to a cabin and I was looking forward to reading books on my iPhone there -- until I lost track of my charger for the whole trip! That's one advantage a book will always have. It never runs out of batteries.

Debbie Ohi at Inkygirl.com, author of the comic above, does lots of wonderful writing-related comics and posts tons of great writing links and ideas on her site. Always good for a procrastinating click or two (or more...). Here's another recent favourite of mine:

I've definitely become one of those people who try to excise all their adverbs, so this comic hit close to home!

Reading ebooks on the iPhone

So the reason I've been reading Dracula is the wonderful Classics app on my iPhone. The look and feel of the thing is incredible, and I love that I can read it in bed with the lights off. The pages are a lovely cream colour and I can flick them, silently, with a stroke of my finger. There's no difficulty in positioning the thing to see, as there would be with a hardcover, with my head on the pillow. If I stop turning pages, it shuts itself off. And it totally removes the need for a book light, which has already come in handy for me while sharing a hotel room earlier this month.

Thus far I haven't seen the appeal of e-readers (why would I want to start carrying yet another device?), but there is something wonderful about always having something to read right in my phone. For one thing, it makes my purse a lot lighter. It isn't the first e-reader I got for my iPhone, but so far it's the best. And since I downloaded it, there have been a bunch of similar applications released. I'm probably going to get something called the "Charles Dickens collection" next, because that will definitely be easier to lug around than the actual novels.

When it comes to buying e-books rather than paper books, I don't know where I stand. Everything I've been reading so far has been in the public domain. I'm so much of a bibliophile that I can't imagine not wanting the actual object, but possibly I would consider it for trashy reads -- say if I was somehow dying to read the new Dan Brown or something else I wouldn't want to actually ever put on a shelf. But we'll see.

But anyway, hurray for e-readers on the iPhone! From the looks of things, it sounds like Apple is well-positioned to take over the e-reader market. According to a story today on Mashable, book application downloads for the the iPhone have even outstripped game downloads.

Dracula: less sexy than your average True Blood vampire

So for reasons related mostly to my iPhone (more on that later), I've recently been rereading Dracula. I read it once for school back in first-year university, probably the night before the exam, and I remember really enjoying it and finding it impressively creepy. But I was shocked at what I didn't remember, which was most of it: Dracula's moustache, the novel's structure (a collection of diary entries, newspaper articles, letters), the terrifying story of the boat crossing as the sailors are done away with one by one, Van Helsing's conceit of laughter as a king after he is convulsed by uncontrollable mirth:

"Ah, you don't comprehend, friend John. Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, `May I come in?' is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, `I am here.'..."

I've been astounded over and over again by how frightening and absolutely gripping Stoker's novel is, not to mention surprisingly modern. I've been reading it slowly over the past week to get into the Halloween spirit. In other literary Halloween news, last night I dressed up as a character from one of my favourite books, Alice in Wonderland:

In case you're wondering, the cake makes her get bigger.

Orhan Pamuk on Character and Plot

Back from another trip to Boston, this time with a detour to Portland, ME and a drive along the coast of Maine. It was another enforced separation from the novel-in-progress, but while I was away my laptop was repaired (its faulty fan had been making the most awful racket for months) and I had the fun of starting a new story in my notebook (which I am dutifully ignoring for the time being until the novel draft is finished), so all in all it didn't feel like a lost week.

The trip coincided with a series of Norton lectures by Orhan Pamuk at Harvard University on "The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist." I had a chance to attend Lecture 3: "Character, Time, Plot" -- all subjects of intense interest to me, as you can imagine. I brought pen and paper to take notes.

The gorgeous Sanders Theatre just before the talk.

It was a treat to attend a free lecture at Harvard and fun to imagine myself as an Ivy Leaguer, if only for an afternoon. Pamuk read last week to a packed crowd at IFOA, so I've also been feeling a little smug that I managed to attend such an interesting lecture for just the cost of the subway fare from Boston. And to my amazement, who was introducing Mr. Pamuk but James Wood? I would have been excited simply to attend one of his lectures on fiction. (Has anyone read How Fiction Works yet? I keep meaning to pick it up.) And who was moderating the question period but Homi Bhabha? What a world Harvard is.

Pamuk read his lecture, so I suspect it will only be a matter of time before his Norton series is published as a book. One of his main points was that contemporary literature places too much emphasis on character. Pamuk scoffed at the notion that a novel really begins with a character above all else, following the trajectory of that character as he or she changes. He suggested plot should not be a secondary consideration, relegated to the concerns of genre fiction.

During the question period, a freshman mentioned that he had met a number of people who truly were interesting characters, the kind of amazing individuals Pamuk was suggesting are entirely the product of fiction. Pamuk acknowledged his point as valid but replied that in his own experience he had never been so fortunate as to meet anyone actually unique!