Canadian(ist)

BNN Blocks Chrystia Freeland's Cleavage

2010-09-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

Summer's gone. Now it's back-to-school time. More tenured profs teaching two seminar courses on Willa Cather, picking up $130,000 for their troubles. More PhD students pretending that Roo Borson's worth even seconds of a healthy life. This year I'm lecturing on Thackeray and Marguerite Yourcenar. I don't know who the hell she is either, but no one'll pick up that course. The carrot moment happened when the university advanced me $5,000 to head out to a Yourcenar conference in South Africa. That's government-funded cash, baby. Your money. I plan on spending two grand on the trip and a thousand on a weekend in Vegas where the other 2K'll go on the Green Bay Packers to win the NFC North.

I'm not even prepping for my courses. About a week ago I saw an older prof. carrying a box of research on Lord Durham's Report, and the life just drained out of me. Now I'm watching the TSX stock ticker almost endlessly.

Chrystia Freeland was on BNN a couple of days ago. She was wearing a plunging v-neck top and was obviously bra-less. Freeeland's head of something at Reuters, and she's not a bad-looking woman. Here's a picture. Anyway, she was showing a ton of cleavage, enough to keep me interested in the interview with Paul Waldie. Then BNN threw up some electronic text block that completely obscured Freeland's chest. It said something like, "Dow down in August." And that little message stayed on the screen for minutes. Every time that Freeland was shown, the message popped back up. They'd go to Waldie and the message would disappear. Then back to Freeland and up it came.

Freeland has nice tits. Inappropriate or not, that's my conclusion. And this is the kind of post that I really enjoy writing because having already Googled "Chrystia Freeland and tits" I know that no one else is out there digging into this kind of message. Every time that I write something about Atwood I get angry emails from semen-less men and women who never saw a menstrual cycle complaining about how Atwood's an artist and a writer and a beacon of hope. Okay. But do I get people talking? Damn right.

So now Freeland has an admirer. When she goes to Yahoo or Infoseek or whatever site she uses and types in "Chrystia Freeland" this post'll be right there. And is there a better compliment that a man can pay than recognizing good cleavage? That's sure as hell better than being told that you teach The Tragedy of King Christophe better than any other ABD student.

Nadeen Boman's Breast Implants; Every Jay McInerney Book Stolen

2010-07-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Summer's here, and everyone knows what that means: a four-month paid holiday courtesy of a SSHRC grant. Ordinarily I'd feel guilty about taking your tax dollars, but my old SSHRC money went to break a car lease and pick up a new 2010 Jaguar XJ, so this new SSHRC cash is tucked into my pocket, later to be dropped on a craps table at Fallsview Casino.

Fuck. Have you glanced at the competition results from this year's SSHRC offensive? This is truly a glimpse into the mashing of priorities that stick the honest working-stiff in a Regent Park apartment where mentally ill tenants piss and shit in the stairwells while the gov. cries poor. Seventeen grand to Kim Havens for her dissertation, "Resistance Themes in French Postcolonial Literature for Children." Seventeen grand to Jessica MacEachern for her dissertation: "Eyes roving over an empty hog's skull: poetic perceptions of constructed neutrality." Seventeen grand to Adrienne King for her dissertation, "Edith Wharton and existentialism: a reconsideration of Wharton's milieu." Seventeen grand to Erin Julian for her dissertation, "Dangerous boys: the performance of female communities in Ben Jonson's Caroline drama."

Outrageous. Absolutely outrageous.

I know that I'm being an asshole about this, but it's just another kind of investigative journalism or self-loathing. Call it either. You know that if you make twenty grand a year and you need a root canal you're stuck pulling out that tooth with string and a doorknob. But if you're a grad student the gov./CUPE'll basically re-build your body from scratch as long as your paper on Wooff's Harbinger Farms shows some progress. I remember sitting through a CUPE meeting where some SSHRC recipient was bitching over the fact that CUPE's provider wouldn't cover her condom costs. The system's been fucked for so long that no one should be surprised when tenure turns into a memory, and profs aren't earning $140 K/year for teaching two seminar courses.

So that just shows you where my mind's at right now. It's the reason why I've been watching so much TV. And is anything more habit-forming than shows where young, attractive women try to lose weight? Chief among those: Bulging Brides, and The Last Ten Pounds Boot Camp. I love this Tommy Europe character. Here's a personal trainer with a 100% success rate; a guy who takes an overweight chick off her couch and six weeks later has her running a ten km sprint up a mountain. The other star of the show's a nutritionist named Nadeen Boman. Now because I'm so into this thing and have watched dozens of episodes I've noticed something completely unimportant and maybe even perverse: Nadeen has a new chest. The first season she was wearing camo. tops and earth tones. Suddenly she's Ms. Cash--the woman in black. And not just black tops; I'm talking about black everything. Black tights, black tanks, black cardigans, black sweaters. She could be pregnant and you'd never be able to tell. But every so often she turns to the side or the light's just right and it looks like her breasts are much, much bigger. As far as I'm concerned, that's amazing. I have no idea whether it's just an optical illusion, but that's just my guess.

As far as the McInerney goes, I went to a university library to pick up some Jay and it was all gone. The online catalogue said that the books were all shelved, but every single JM book was missing from the stacks. So, because I felt like it, I took five or six Foucault texts and shelved them around the building, on different floors. Maybe that's crazy, but it'll really piss off some too-literate grad. students looking to show how Dungo "controls the discourse" in Matt Cohen's The Bookseller.

If only they had a wood-burning fireplace.

Contest: Recommend A Good (New) Canadian Novel; Win An Autographed Copy Of The Handmaid's Tale

2010-05-10T06:14:00.001-07:00

I was in the library yesterday, and a friend was sitting on the floor surfing a purse blog. The purse blog, which is located at purseblog.com was running some kind of contest in which readers could win a purse or a clutch or a wristlet or whatever women use to carry their phones and a VISA. She told me that contests are huge, and that all good blogs use them to attract readers. This isn't a "good" blog, and readers keep trickling in despite the lack of content, but in the name of fairness I'm willing to hold the first Canadian literature contest in which entrants may actually win something of real value: an autographed first edition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It's my least favourite book; I think an incredibly self-indulgent fantasy that doesn't read well and just isn't very good.

So why do I have it? I was at Atwood's place a year or so ago and she was carting out a few boxes of junk. Only, in Toronto, there are certain things that the city won't pick up. You clean out your basement or garage, put the stuff on the curb, and the garbage haulers'll laugh at you as they stop, pick up one bag or one box, and leave the rest behind with an orange or green sticker to let you know that you're fucked. Then you find that the city's policy of conservation and carbon footprint reduction is really about not letting you throw anything away.

So Atwood was tossing the boxes and asked me to carry one to the curb. I said, "They'll never take this; it's a box, and it's too heavy." She said, "Well, they're just books. They'll be recycled." I opened the box, rooted around, and they were all copies of Atwood novels that I guess had been issued as promo copies. She was tossing them. They were all autographed. I said, "Why are these all signed?" She said, "Practice." I said, "Yeah, but why's this one addressed to Beverly?" "I like the name."

So Atwood hones her signature on first editions. And she likes the name Beverly. Who knew.

Here's the contest: The first person who recommends a good Canadian novel published within the past five years wins the book. No catches; it's that simple. Just comment on this post, recommend a book, and if I like it you win.

Or, the first person to send in a nude photo of Rudy Wiebe wins all of the books: autographed first editions of every Atwood novel published to date.

Notes From The Canadian Literature Symposium 2010

2010-05-08T05:55:00.001-07:00

Every time that I abuse this site by, say, not writing anything for two months, I come back and find that more and more people are being directed (by Google) to posts about Margaret Atwood's yeast infection, Alice Munro's African dildo collection, or just a nonsense time-wasting post on how Rudy Wiebe loves honey-whole wheat bread. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe I should write more? Maybe I should write less? Maybe Atwood and Canesten are teaming up for a campaign. God only knows.

As a segue, I'm at the Canadian Literature Symposium at the University of Ottawa. The CLS is an annual thing that, essentially, gets Canadian literature scholars out of the house for a few days. Universities pay the tab--as they always do--and we sit around and talk about Yvonne Johnson or Todd Babiak for a few days. We eat celery. Then we go home and read the New York Times on the 'Net. I think I've pretty much captured it exactly, but maybe a little more detail would be helpful. Especially since I know that some if not all of the participants will Google their own names in the next three weeks and somehow be drawn to this post.

Yesterday Pauline Johnsnon, who died in 1913, was compared to Lady Gaga. Obviously, the comparison was strong. Johnson was a performer; she read poetry, chanted, and gave no-hands blow jobs. Seriously, Johnson created her own identity, was a little mysterious, and danced a bit. And she gave no-hands blow jobs.

What else is happening out here? What's coming up? Today Brooke Pratt and Erica Kelly are presenting a paper on teaching Malcolm's Katie in the modern classroom. That should be interesting. I know that Isabella Valancy Crawford is a polarizing figure on university campuses. There's a lot of controversy there. I've taught two seminars on Crawford, and the consensus was that everyone hated her work--found nothing redeeming at all in it. But I guess that she's still dutifully kept alive on a syllabus somewhere. F.P. Grove's still cool though.

Joel Baetz is going to talk about Helena Coleman. I like Joel, so I'll be there.

And, of course, we're gonna hear about T.C. Haliburton and Archie Lampman. I'll have my copy of At the Mermaid Inn ready, but the cover'll be wrapped around a copy of Richard Ford's The Life of Irwin Bierbraer.

Is this conference the least useful, the most wasteful, the pinnacle of esoteric knowledge-grubbing of the past ten years? I'm obviously a bit ashamed that I can't say anything substantive about nineteenth-century Canadian literature scholarship, but I'm so exhausted by its heavy, heavy tone that for the next day I'll just float around and try not to be depressed by the frequent and dizzying use of "discourse," "aesthetic," "ideology," etc. I feel like we're all huddled in a cave obsessively protecting something that no one wants.

Anyway, I think that the verdict on early-Canadian literature scholarship's been delivered. Given that a SSHRC grant for Haliburton studies is about as likely as finding a technicolour photo of Jane Rule fisting Judy Garland, the subject's closing fast. Scary or not, no one--and I mean no one--knows who the hell William Wilfred Campbell is.

Melissa Lee Hates Gary Kaminsky

2010-02-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

Quick shift: It's RRSP season, and time for some portfolio planning. Yeah, academics own stocks: give someone a $100,000 SSHRC grant and they can buy-write 'til tenure. So I've moved away from the life of T. Mann to dig around other interests: my band of LEAPS. Now that Amanda Lang's on at 4:30, I can watch Fast Money and the L\OE. And Fast Money is percolating. It's getting hot, and it's getting ugly.

This has nothing to do with Canadian literature, but has anyone noticed the raw vitriolic hatred popping the liquid crystal diodes of TV puppetry whenever Melissa Lee and Gary Kaminsky are with a scent's distance of each other. The garlicky Kaminsky and his onion-everything bagels are now well under Lee's skin. Lee, a fair Harvard grad. with the emotional depth of a plastic spoon, just wants to stab this man with vituperative lyrics--Hit 'Em Up, maybe--'til his silk ties unravel. You can see it plain as Najarian's black-pepper border braid. ML's a mean robot of a person, and she ain't used to the rugged individualist-Sammy Glick. At Harvard the circumsized ones all wore Zegna and wintered in West Palm. GK was there, but he was eating Strub's kosher pickles.

It's amazing how Lee--the most glib personality on TV--reacts to Kaminsky--the clear winner of the global ego contest once contested by Peter Schiff, and Charlie Gasparino. But Kaminsky's just clobbered them with grammar (like PS and CG, his favourite pronoun is the royal we) and his almost-unbelievable conviction in determinism. It's like Nostradamus lives in GK's mezuzah. While Schiff and Gasparino--both huge pricks--are guys who'd grunt their displeasure if, while behind you in line, you ordered a rye and delayed them unduly by asking to have it sliced, Kaminsky seems like the kind of person who'd hit you with his boat. While I can't be sure...well, Christ, I am sure that if GK were behind me at an advanced green, he'd lean on the horn as soon as the verdant photon packet hit his retinae. And probably a second before.

Last week I was moved to knee-slapping joy when Kaminsky launched himself onto Fast Money via telephone to congratulate everyone for their prescience re: Lloyd Blankfein's sub-$100 million bonus (it turned out to be $9 million in stock). As Kaminsky rambled on, praising "we" and "us" for the guess, Lee's ocular fluid dipped below the freezing point. Finally, enough: "Gary, that was your call." Right. He said "We," didn't he? He is "We."

The man had been on earlier in the week pounding the table re: Lloyd's bonus. In fact, it was almost as if he'd read it in a burning bush. No one else really offered an opinion, and Kaminsky made it clear that he owned the call. Then he had the balls to come back for a curtain call? Even Tim Seymour's hair shifted uncomfortably on that one.

Karen Finerman, the Jewish WASP of the panel, seems almost horrified by Kaminsky--as if he's crawled out of the shtetl thrusting a huge salami sandwich at her. You see, pre-Kaminsky, Finerman was Fast Money's token Jew. I know, odd for a Wall Street-focussed show. But, like Shawn Green, Finerman was the Jew who'd play on Yom Kippur. So no one really knew or cared. But Kaminsky's changed the whole dynamic of the show. Just watch. If he's there long enough, he'll elicit the Jew out of Finerman, start asking her how her seder was, and she'll flip. Though she always looks like she's dying, Finerman's reactions to Kaminsky are shocking: if she sniffed any louder as he passed by, I'd be tempted to look for an arm band. Maybe red and white with a funny equilateral cross bent at right angles. There are some things that you just know: GK eats pickled herring in the green room, offers Finerman a chunk and some horseradish, and Finerman's memories of Beverly Hills cheder just come rushing back in horrible Semitic technicolour.

The rest of the guys: Najarian's too caught up in FCX to care. Adami's transparent--you can see his jaw tightening. He could go Rickles at any moment. Terranova's the same way, but he's a classic narcissist: as long as GK stays away, Joe's happy with his Clinique pocket compact and Glitzy Glam emergency survival kit.

Oh...Jeff Macke. If Jeff Macke were around, we could really have some fun. Before he was spanked off the set, non-disclosure clause in hand, Macke was the resident cynic/comic/human being. Everyone else was courtesy of Ann Taylor and the Vineyard, but Macke was a guy who'd eat a hot dog and like it. Macke would lose money, then talk about it. GK sticks his finger down his throat pre-show just to get those stories swirling toward the Hudson in cast-iron pipes. As good as Adami can be, he's slippery as hell. Macke was honest as pine. Macke vs. Kaminsky vs. Ratigan, and--Unclie Miltie or no Uncle Miltie--you'd have a Friar's Club Roast. A Berle-Stang showdown that'd have me waiting for Joe E. Lewis to smack someone.

Just wait for the bloodshed. It's coming.

As for my RRSP: I think I'm going to buy SU and sell the Jan '11 $34s.

Michael Ondaatje Is A Prick; He Deserves Bulldog Coffee

2010-02-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

There's a coffee house in Toronto called the Bulldog Cafe. They make great coffee. The coffee is excellent; only don't ask for coffee. Ask for a latte or a Cafe Americano.

It's a great place to sit and get treated like shit. I went in there a month ago and ordered a coffee. I don't know the history of the coffee bean; I have no idea what happens to coffee when you release its essential elements and add hot milk. But I have a friend whose avowed homosexuality keeps him anchored to Church Street despite the impossibility of finding parking for his Lexus SC430 (his summer car) and his Lexus RX350 (his winter car).

Last month that friend and I went to the Bulldog to have a drink and maybe talk for an hour. It was an experience only few TTC riders'll ever have. I ordered a latte and tried to pay with a twenty. The guy behind the counter looked at me like I'd just vacuum-aborted octuplets in his revolving door. "Don't you have any change?" He asked/spit. The bill was $8.74. I didn't know that I had to travel with a coin purse just to avoid merchants thumbing a quarter and a thin zinc cent.

"No, sorry," I told him.

Then he thrust the latte at me. I thought that I was going to have to catch it. It's the first time that I've ever had someone say, "Here!" and simultaneously hand me a scalding drink.

So I sat down with my friend, and we talked. It took about ten minutes to finish the latte. Then we got the eye. The guy looked at us and said, "Well, this isn't a library." Really? Then how'd you explain the guy in the corner using a copy of Green Grass, Running Water to give himself papercuts on his glans?

I said to my friend, "Let's get the hell out of here." And as we got up to leave, someone yelled at us: "Clean up your cups!"

What the fuck? What kind of antebellum plantation did we wander onto? At any moment there was a risk that we'd be asked-told to tote dat barge or lift dat bale. I told my friend to run if he didn't have time for a brief middle passage. And he's a skin doctor who was on a lunch break, so clients would be upset if he turned up, say, three months from now in South Carolina. To the counter help: Clean up your own goddamn cups. You own the place. You've got people working for you; though I know that they'd rather be watching Friends episodes streamed on Ninjavideo.

Then something happened that made it all worthwhile: Michael Ondaatje walked in. No one recognized him, but I'd seen him in that suit a hundred times. He walked to the register and said, "Give me a coffee."

"Aren't you going to say the magic word?"

And then Ondaatje just walked out. Turned around and walked out. Later that day I saw him in a Pizza Pizza on Wellesley. Ondaatje's the kind of guy who needs his ego stroked. And maybe his balls too; I don't know. Though I've heard stories.

The Wisdom Of Alissa York

2010-01-30T09:35:00.000-08:00

For a vanity CanLit blog this thing has some devoted followers. I don't know why. I'm actually starting to question my literacy; I write a post and wonder if blogging's inimical to the horrors of academic writing. Must be.

But I was thinking, maybe the reason that people read this thing is that Canadian writers are so...private, and Canadian literature fans are so devoted. But they never meet. Maybe a few signings and readings help to provide a personal fix. If you like Michael Redhill, it's not like you can meet him at the Sunset Grill. You wait years for a novel to come out, you read it, then you wait for the next one. But all the while Redhill's writing, reading, cooking dinner, grocery shopping, and you'd never know.

So here's something that Alissa York said. You Alissa York fans'll enjoy this. And I guess I'll get to Redhill and Pyper and the rest of them. They're all articulate people, and sometimes they say interesting things.

Like York (to a guy in a red sweater): "Do you ever watch a porno right to the end? Sometimes I do. I want to see what happens. Usually, you can guess."

Well, Paul Quarrington's Dead

2010-01-26T13:24:00.001-08:00

Paul Quarrington died last week. I'll tell a short story, and then you can surf to Amazon or Chapters and decide if you want to buy a Quarrington novel. Better yet, why not go to the library and steal one.

I met Quarrington at Harvey's--the burger joint. If I buy a hamburger, it's usually at People's Foods on Dupont. Otherwise I buy ground beef, add some basil, pepper, and garlic salt and fry up four 1/4 pounders. But every few years I hear someone say something about Harvey's, or use the word "charbroiled," and I have to go back to remind myself that Ray Kroc was an evil man.

I'd seen Quarrington's picture in a dozen places, and I'd actually watched him on TV during his King Leary escapades, so I knew that it was Paul. He was arguing with the counter help over onion rings. Apparently he'd bought a medium serving of onion rings (who the hell knows why he didn't go for the large), and he was complaining about the thickness of the onions. The counter help explained that the onion rings were shipped frozen; Paul didn't care. He wanted new thinner onions, or he wanted his money back.

Then he started eating the onion rings. After every ring, he'd say, "Too thick." Eventually he finished the cup. He said, "You made me eat every one. They were all too thick."

The manager said, "I'm sorry, sir."

Quarrington said, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

And he got his money back. The only thing that he said to me was, "They're good with salt."

So, no, I didn't know Quarrington, but, living in the city, you were bound to see him. From what I've heard he was a decent enough guy, and a good friend of Paul Gross. I don't know if David Marciano liked him.

Another Canadian author goes the way of Hugh Hood. The real question is, Who's next? Considering that Atwood and Munro--like fine plastic--can never die, it's gotta be between Alistair MacLeod and Wayson Choy. I'll give the edge to Wayson.

Jerking Off to Canadian Fiction: Part I

2010-01-22T17:26:00.000-08:00

Christ, it's been a long time since my last post. I don't think that I trust electronic media. I find that, aside from my whining re: the university, blog posts tend to show weird typos that just mar the whole purpose of the text. Maybe it's karma. Who the hell knows.

Oh yeah, I was going to talk about jerking off to Canadian fiction. It's an interesting idea, and I don't think that many people have really dug into the subject. I know that I once took a Canadian literature course with a professor who admitted to having jerked off to a picture of George Ryga, but jerking off to the text is a different kind of perversion. Anyone can jerk off to Ryga. Before he turned into a perpetually-old Anthony Quinn, Ryga was a handsome guy. I know that Rohinton Mistry's compared Ryga to a young Tom Hanks. Fine. Alice Munro used to look a bit like a white Aunt Jemima, or maybe Myrna Loy discovering a large spider.

I said that I'd start with Soucouyant or Canada Made Me, but I think I'll go with Clark Blaise's A North American Education. The whole collection's good, but the story works on its own. It's something that can really excite you, really get you ready for a good, long close reading.

Since, according to John Metcalf's statistics, about three new people discover Blaise each year, it's probably a good idea to start with an introduction: not just a note about the story, but about the guy. As far as I can tell, Clark and Marie-Claire are not related; they spell their names differently, and only one of them loves Jesus and foreign object penetration. Try to guess which one. Because I respect his work, I'll be clear: not Clark.

A North American Education is a fine collection of stories; impressive in a lot of ways, but especially noteworthy for its author's willingness not to meditate on the complexities of runaway teenagers and widows and grocery shopping. Instead we get a boy's lost love for his father--something entirely original. The writing is heavy and opaque, but it's good stuff. And you can really crank to it. I'm talking about the scene with Princess Hi-Yalla and the vaginally-smoked cigarette. Now Atwood can do it, but does she write about it? You've got little boy Thibidault doing his best to spy on a neighbour's bath-time ritual. Very little imagination's required: a woman--in this case, Annette--who takes that many baths has (a) a very contoured shampoo bottle, or (b) memories of Atwood changing at "the lake," a shower massager, and very nimble fingers. For Blaise's boy, the eroticism's obvious. How many movies, TV shows, and gonzo porn flicks use the same tired set- up: person A discovers person B nude. Person B does not know that person A is watching. Person A has only one choice: jerk off. Whether he does it beside a bush, under a trellis, or in an English garden, that's just the way it is. And so Blaise's story has a distinctive purpose: it's a Penthouse Forum you can find at the university library.

Obviously, I had to put my theory to work. I couldn't write about masturbation and Canadian fiction without testing my hypothesis. That would be intellectually dishonest. And so, with a few Google images of Bharati Mukherjee to get me going, I set to work cranking it to The Bridge, Snow People, and Words for the Winter. I thought that I'd save Going to India for later. Now, it wasn't the most exciting ride--it wasn't like the pink bathroom stall at Studio 54--but I can tell you that a person--a determined person--willing really to get into it, and with about an hour to spare, can orgasm to Blaise's work. There are chafing implications, and your determination's going to be tested, but it's possible.

Also, it's very hard to jerk off with one hand and turn the pages of a trade paperback with another. That's something for publishers to consider. Luckily I had a library copy.

I guess a woman could get the same results. First you'd have to light a candle and maybe burn some tea leaves, but if the mood were right there'd be a chance.

This is tough stuff. So non-academic that I find it hard to go back to writing papers and journal articles. But if you can't write about jerking off to Canadian writing, what can you write about?

The Best Canadian Novels To Jerk Off To (or; The Best Canadian Novels To Which To Jerk Off)

2010-01-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

Canadian fiction's been called many things, but nothing that Ethel Wilson never heard before. I was once told by a friend that a piece of Chilean bass was "as dry as an Atwoodian blow job." Another friend then said that the only way really to prevent forest fires was to keep Atwood away from popsicle sticks, pine needles, and provincial parks. Then I said, "If you really want to make a joke about Atwood starting a fire by sucking a piece of wood, why don't you just tell the story of Jane Rule's false cock and her scorched Penman's long underwear?" That ended the conversation.

As an academic, I deal largely with esoteric issues--like Morley Callaghan's vision of the city, or Douglas Coupland's vision of the future, or Margaret Laurence's vision of the past. Simple stuff; not very interesting. This year my department's hosting a conference on the question mark: Postmodern? Modern? Pre-Modern? The idea's simple, general, and has the potential to draw in a lot of fully-funded researchers. It's amazing how easy it is to sucker people with these weighty conference topics. One year we did "Cold." That was it, Cold. Another time it was "The Imaginary Farmer's Feel-ed: the writer and the emotional urban farm." Weird shit, and none too interesting.

But no one'll play my game. I wanted to do: the best novels to jerk off to. "Too controversial," they said. "Academics don't masturbate." I was pissed off, but I'm used to the Ivory Tower's take on non-standard paths. And everyone knows that academics do masturbate. Many in their university offices; some female ones using thick university chalk and, strangely enough, those long, thin pointers. Back to SSHRC nonsense: somehow it's great to hand out a hundred grand to get a paper or--even better--a thesis on Canadian immigrant fiction and its Polish antecedents, but the second you imply that Lisa Moore's at her best when she's giving you a hard on, that's it. It's over. You're teaching a course on grammar, and Moore's writing more date-rape ballads.

As an aside, I wonder if, as a writer, you ever get to a point where it's just not that fulfilling to type about truck stop rapes and stranger rapes and assorted childhood fondlings and questionable spankings. I guess not. Not to make any substantive comparisons, but here you've got East of Eden, and there you've got sixty-five character sketches of a tortured female id. Wouldn't it be nice to break out and write something about, I don't know, finding a treasure map and some lost pirate gold? But the Giller committee would hate that.

So I'm counting down the best Canadian novels to jerk off to. If the university won't do it, I will. I'll start with David Chariandy's Soucouyant, and work my way down to Norman Levine's Canada Made Me. It'll be an interesting literary voyage.

What Margaret Atwood Gave Me For Christmas

2009-12-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

With all of my fall term exams graded, I finally have some time to reflect on 2009. Nothing really happened. I taught a bunch of kids to read Teilhard de Chardin, who's only slightly less musty than a pair of Alice Munro's panties--worn on a camping trip (a hot day and a long hike) and somehow left in the tent to be wrapped up and stored in the garage all winter.

I read some Annabel Lyon and some Adele Wiseman. It turns out that the Wiseman was the Lyon, and the Lyon was really a book of Bible verses that someone had chosen to conceal between the covers of The Golden Mean. Then I read The Golden Mean, and I couldn't bring myself to jerk off for close to three weeks.

As David Bergen said re: Lyon's book, "If excellence is our standard, then this novel will certainly flourish." Which recalls Rudy Wiebe's whispered review of Bergen's The Time in Between: "I read Bergen's book, and even an enema couldn't take me out of that magical place--Vietnam."

No, no. Bergen's great. I hear that he's hooked on iCarly right now, but a new book's coming.

Margaret Atwood bought me a baseball cap for Christmas. It's from 1996, and commemorates the Baltimore Orioles' wild card victory. The brim is bent, and the hat looks like it was left in the trunk of someone's car--maybe under a spare tire or a pair of jogging shoes. It was clearly bought at Goodwill.

"Thanks, Margaret," I said. "It's a beautiful hat."

"Do you like it?"

"Yes. It's a child's medium. Just my size."

"You can adjust the plastic strip in the back."

"I'll wear it with pride."

"I was going to get you a copy of The Tipping Point, but the library was all checked out."

"No, no. This is great. Thanks. Enjoy the Louboutins. I tried to get them in your size, but I know that your toes are all crooked. Maybe you can get a pedicure this year."

"Those girls are all Korean."

Lou Paget Teaches Giller Nominees To Suck Cock

2009-12-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

Lou Paget, the Calgary-born sex instructor, was in Toronto last month. I caught her coming out of a Second Cup, and stopped to ask her if it was true that she'd once given a private session to Annabel Lyon that, if true, would completely shatter Lyon's image as a slab of sandstone with librarian ambitions. One colleague told me that, upon meeting Lyon, she was sure that she'd seen a coelacanth imprinted on Lyon's right arm. "What's that, a tattoo?" my friend asked.

"No," Lyon said, "it's a fossil."

Back to Paget. So I'd just asked about Lyon and blow jobs...

"No," Paget said, "I've never met her."

"Really?"

"Yes. Although I did once teach Margaret Atwood to eat pickles. 'Chew, Margaret,' I said. Apparently Norman Levine once tried to get her to pull out all of her teeth, and she's never recovered. But put a butternut squash in front of that woman and you've got yourself a show."

Typical as that conversation was, I asked Paget about another rumour that, in preparation for the big Giller bash of 2009, she'd been flown in on Jack Rabinovitch's twin-engine Cessna to give a private lesson to the short list. I'm very glib about these things: the Giller never has candidates or nominees or thinking human beings with families and fingers that type; it has, simply, a short list. The list changes every year, but it changes in the sense that Tuesday is neither Monday nor Sunday, and Wednesday is neither Thursday nor Friday. There's no fucking difference; every year there's a canoe on the cover of at least one Giller novel, and, if you're like me and you read in bed, like an Alice Munro cocktail party or an evening in the Annex, someone's gonna get raped by the time the night's over.

Someone should write an essay on rape in the Canadian novel. That's a joke, folks. You could cook dinner for Scarborough's promising young athletes on a bonfire of essays on rape in the Canadian novel. But then you'd miss the sheer pleasure of reading said essays, all of them using, in one way or another, the name/word "Portia."

Fuck that. A little too banal for this space. It's about time that someone wrote about being raped in a canoe. Wait, Andrew Pyper did that. By the way, is anything more Canadian than being raped in a canoe? Maybe slitting one's wrist in a cabin built out of Margaret Atwood trade paperbacks and remaindered copies of Survival.

Back to Lou Paget: the woman taught Anne Michaels and Kim Echlin good oral sex technique? Two out of three Giller finalists (female finalists, that is), but not Lyon? The whole thing sounded crazy, and Paget denied it. You can't get someone to admit to something like that. Even though I tend to roll downhill toward impropriety, I still wouldn't tell a stranger on the street that I'd shoved a black rubber dildo in front of Lyon and told her, "Pretend there's an itch at the back of your throat that you just can't scratch."

That said, it was a decent year for the Gillers. The Canadian literary community keeps getting smaller and smaller. And older and older. Lyon, Michaels, and Colin McAdam are like new barns built from old lumber. I keep waiting to meet one of them to ask how they felt when Robert Peel was almost shot.

But if Paget had taught them to suck cock, I wonder what that would have been like. Would they have asked for towels, would they have applied chapstick? I don't know. Would they have giggled and talked about Michael Winter's angled pool cue of a prick? (It's common knowledge in the Canadian literary community that Michael Winter's fucked every Canadian female writer, and that Rex Murphy's watched.)

I'm reminded of the time that Margaret Laurence told an old professor of mine that she wasn't averse to swallowing: "Sometimes," Laurence said, "there's just no place to spit it."

Well, now that we're through, I will say that Fugitive Pieces was terrific, and that Michaels, despite the fact that she looks like Sigourney Weaver auditioning for a Rudy Wiebe novel, is a fine writer. A female Nino Ricci. And I like Nino Ricci.

And I'd let her blow me even if she had a cold sore.

Margaret Atwood's Labia Compared To Corned Beef

2009-09-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Another academic year starts; Margaret Atwood's promo. events start to bleed through the provinces. So it must be fall. I don't know if anyone's read Atwood's new book The Year of the Flood, but if you haven't you're surely jerking off to inferior material. An Eaton's catalogue, or maybe Spike TV ads. Flood is a fantastic read; I'd recommend it to anyone catheterized after minor surgery.

I went to an Atwood event last night in Toronto, and the usual crowd of supporters had gathered to kiss her feet, carry her around on a sedan chair, and generally cry in her presence. Seriously, I'm not sure why Atwood's such a Canadian deity. I know that we're not a crowded room of Updikes, but I know also that I'd love to read a book without waiting for the inevitable rape-inchoate rape scene. The maven-Atwood writes well, but you can't read her books without feeling that there's a cold-as-hell finger shoved deep up your ass.

That's just a man's point of view, so dismiss it out of hand Atwood fans. I know that Atwood doesn't hate men, she just hates John Moss (who know, by the way, walks around the city in a black watch cap and loves camping).

So, again, everyone was at this Random House-Doubleday book-hawking expo. And they'd all dressed up for Atwood. Except for one guy--an older man--who told me that he'd gone down on MA in the '70s, and compared the experience to licking hand-cut Schwartz's Montreal smoked meat that'd been left in the car overnight in February. I begged him for details, and he told me that there was really nothing more to tell, but that Peggy likes the missionary position 'cause it lets her imagine that the roof's about to cave in.

So this isn't a book review as much as it is a prurient look at the Atwood you weren't meant to see; the part usually concealed behind layers and layers of wool.

Fuck. Atwood was never better than she was in Surfacing, which, to me, is like saying that my shirt never smelled better than after I'd walked down Spadina from Bloor to King Street.

Now back to prepping for tomorrow's CanLit lecture: The Tin Flute and Canadian modernism. Drop in if you have a chance.

Alice Munro Out Of Giller Running, But Still Wants Those Pizza Pizza Coupons

2009-09-02T10:32:00.001-07:00

The Star ran a story re: Alice Munro's hand-slap of the '09 Giller nominations. Alice wants to step aside, let other writers have a shot at taking home the cash, the award, and the little rag dolls that Margaret Atwood makes every year and hands out to nominees.

That's admirable, and I salute Alice for her gesture. She doesn't need the money; she has all the fame she can handle; her mantle is full.

But what wasn't reported in the Star's story was Munro's surreptitious acceptance of the book of Pizza Pizza coupons that comes with a Giller nomination. Pizza Pizza, which has sponsored the CanLit ceremony since its inception, has made a tradition of handing out the equivalent of a year's worth of Sundays of large pizzas. The idea is that working writers shouldn't have to worry about cooking dinner; Pizza Pizza delivers, and the fifty-two coupons are good for dipping sauce, a bottle of Coke, and chicken fingers. That's a family dinner.

I can understand why and how so few people know about the Pizza Pizza gesture. When you see that big cash prize and that black-tie dinner, the last thing you're going to drawn to is a vinyl tarp declaring the birth of the jalapeno pizza roll.

So a friend who works with the Giller administration tells me that while Munro effectively resigned from Giller consideration, she neglected to return the pizza coupons. A little off, but it doesn't surprise me. What's interesting is that the coupons don't include a tip. And all reports are that Munro doesn't tip. A famous CanLit author-at-large story has Munro at the Keg eating a New York strip steak and leaving $25.05 on a $25 cheque.

If only I could be the delivery guy who knocks on that Rosedale door.

Camilla Gibb Plays Softball At Battery Park

2009-08-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

With nothing else to do yesterday--no reading, no shopping--I went to watch Camilla Gibb play softball. She plays on a team called the Raiders--I don't know if that has any significance--and the team plays most Saturdays and sometimes on Tuesday nights. I know this because a friend of mine named Marc Berger put together the team, and is constantly bitching to me about how bad Gibb is at baseball.

"So why let her play?" I asked him.

"She paid."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah. It's a rec. league. What can I do, tell her to fuck off and go swimming?"

"Can I play?"

"The team's full."

So I went down to Battery Park, bought a Crunchie chocolate bar and some Trident gum along the way, and settled down to watch the Raiders play an afternoon game.

Gibb does, in fact, suck at softball. She rotated around the infield on defense, and hit eleventh (out of twelve). The Raiders lost 34-21. For a normal softball team, that'd be a lot of runs. But when you can't throw or field, shit happens. It was probably the most poorly played game that I've ever seen, and even on a blank slate of a Saturday afternoon, I won't be going back.

Let me recap Gibb's at bats:

1: Strikes out looking.

2: Grounds out to the pitcher after swinging the bat with her hips. The coach had to tell her that you're better off using your shoulders and arms. Gibb was concerned about her manicure. Yeah...If she'd actually had one in the last fifteen years, that'd be something to worry about. Given that her 'nails look like they were lifted off the corpse of professional shit scraper, there was no danger of aesthetic harm.

3: Grounds out to the pitcher. This time the ball actually hit her hand and rolled to the mound. She winced, but did not cry. Gibb is famously stoic. When a good friend died, she once commented that her Tori Amos tickets wouldn't go to waste.

4: Strikes out swinging. A strike out is rare in softball, but, like I said, she's terrible.

In the field Gibb was even worse. A ball was hit to her at third base, and, as she jumped out of the way, it hit her shoe and died. She picked it up, tossed it in the direction of first base, and watched as the ball sailed about four feet before settling on the infield gravel. Since first base was about forty-five feet from third, this was not a good outcome.

Another grounder bounced up and hit the brim of her hat. She screamed and kicked it toward second base.

After the game I asked her what she's working on now, and she said a novel about a young woman who travels to BC in order to plant trees. Fuck, I can't wait for that to hit the shelves.

Things That I Found In Margaret Atwood's Garbage

2009-08-08T05:34:00.000-07:00

Back from a six-month trip to Africa, I decided to take a stroll around the Atwoodian neighbourhood at the foot of Yonge and Davisville. It doesn't really have a name, but us Torontonians sometimes call it Atwood-ville, or The Finger Lick. What was I doing on the dark continent? Surely it must have been something altruistic, something nice and pure.

I tanned. Ate yams. I dug one well, but did not hit water.

Mostly, I was engaged in some artisanal diamond mining. Most of what I found I kept. The rest went toward Alice Munro's mortgage.

No...Really, I was doing research for my dissertation: Black Canadian writers go to Senegal: a corn roast.

So I get back to YYZ, pick up my car from the vault of Pearson's long-term lot, and drive into the city. What do I find? A garbage strike. Garbage piled everywhere; rotting garbage from Spadina-College all the way south to the last Pho Hung Noodle. Fucking Chinatown: an incredible amount of cabbage and ginger tops just sitting there on the curb. But I credit a group of UofT political science grad. students who led an "earth-greening" expedition from the Spadina JCC all the way down to Kensington Market. Many of their bicycles were later reported stolen.

I walked into my favourite liquor store, and was told that if I wanted a bag, it would now be an extra five cents. I said that was a "fucking joke," and was told that Margaret Atwood had reacted similarly when told of the levy.

"How is Peggy?" I asked.

"She hasn't been in since the garbage strike."

"The garbage strike? There's a garbage strike?"

"It's been on for weeks. Ridiculous, huh? I only wish I made what those guys make. And all the old record players they find...They keep those. The bed frames, too. What the hell else do they need? Like they're sick eighteen times a year? I don't even get it."

So there was a garbage strike in my old city. The homeless had built garbage igloos. Everything had decayed in my absence.

I immediately walked over to Atwood's house to say hello; to tell her about my trip.

Her small lawn was covered with garbage. Garbage bags everywhere--there must have been at least fifteen. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. A neighbour came out--an older woman whom I'd met before--and told me that Atwood was away for the weekend. Somewhere out in Barrie or Orillia picking wild blueberries at a friend's cottage for a "jam session." Yeah, well, that's Atwood.

With nothing left to do for the rest of the afternoon, I sat down on her porch and started tearing through her garbage. What the hell had she and The Big G consumed over the past few weeks that would create so much solid waste?

The first bag had mostly cans and pickle jars, with some old tubs of coleslaw and potato salad. I guess it was recycling that wouldn't fit in the overflowing blue-grey bin. Had she put out a deli spread for some friends? Who knew.

The second bag had old US and Lucky magazines. A lot of people think that 'cause Marg's such an activist, that she's not into feminine gloss. That's not true: Atwood loves Mischa Batron; wouldn't miss her if Joy Kogawa herself descended with a rare edition of Eli Mandel's Foot, Feet, and Feeties: A Poetic Odd-iss-ey.

The third bag was dental floss, bagged hair, and some broken Hot Wheels toy cars. There were also some pictures of Atwood at a Colin James concert.

No used condoms, but many, many dried apples tied together with string.

After that third bag I kinda felt bored. I ripped open the other twelve bags, spread their contents on the sidewalk, and walked over to Harry Rosen. All of Margaret's secrets revealed, I bought a new tie.

No, I'm not too happy to be back, but what the hell can you do.

McGuinty To York's Bargaining Team: "They Couldn't Get Me Free Delivery Of The Sunday Times."

2009-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

With the Liberals set to legislate CUPE 3903 back to work, the process of evaluating this strike can begin. What did it accomplish? Well, the union proved that York is nothing if not accommodating: Although, starting on November 6, the school was officially closed, it was still possible to park at any of York's faculty lots for the bargain rate of $6/hour. At $25,000/year, that's about half of what York contract faculty make to work at the school. Which explains why Mamdou Shoukri's limousine was parked across five spots.

I think the university spent something like eleven days bargaining with the union. In eleven days, Barack Obama created the world, and rested on Thursday. But York couldn't hammer out a settlement.

But that isn't exactly true: They wouldn't hammer out a settlement. As part of some strange, penurious stance, they decided that they simply had no money to give to contract faculty. And, when the union said, "Fuck money, just give us job security," they decided that they didn't haven't much security to give, either. "We can't just be giving out job security," a York official told me. "What are people going to do? Work here?"

Obama was inaugurated during the York strike. Last Monday, as I exited a coffee shop, I was approached by a man selling waving an American flag. "Anything is possible," he shouted at me.

"A negotiated settlement at York?" I asked.

"Shit, man," he said. "It's just an expression."

I Meet York's Chief Negotiator

2009-01-23T05:38:00.000-08:00

Last night I met York's chief negotiator. I won't mention his name, but he represented himself as a very fine, able, upstanding man. The knees of his pants worn shiny by trips to the Communion rail, the felt of his hat clean and black with an orange feather tucked into the band.

I asked him what the university had to lose by giving contract faculty, say, five-year appointments.

"Nothing. They're working there; who cares if we hire them every year, every other year, or every five years. We wouldn't be employing them if they didn't do a good job."

I asked him why the university wouldn't agree to small changes in its health and childcare plans.

"We'll do that. It'll cost some money, but nothing serious. Same with the pay raise. Is tuition frozen? So we charge fifteen bucks more for a full-year class. It's no big deal."

"So," I said, "what the hell's going on?"

"A few grand a year we can handle, David," he said. "But tenure-stream jobs? No way. Not with our funding scheme. Where are we supposed to come up with millions?"

"Raise tuition."

"People are already screaming that it's too high."

"So they'll scream a little louder."

"Do you know how much it costs to go to school in the States? Tuition's high here? What does it cost? Five, six grand? They're paying three, four, five times that. No, we can't do that. And, by the way, those kids celebrating after that vote. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. I don't know how they let that happen. You're alienating an awful lot of people. An awful lot. This isn't the time to ask for anything from an employer, not to mention celebrating when you vote down a raise...Wait! I know what you're going to say: It's not about money. Fine. I know that, you know that. But does a guy picking up the Sun know that? He sees people cheering down a 10% raise. They look like a bunch of fucking spoiled brats. No public relations from that union. None at all. And they think that people are going to have sympathy after being held up in their cars, trying to get to Osgoode or wherever they're going? Trying to go to the library, and being stuck between a gate for ten minutes. Then being lectured?"

"But something has to change. You can't have people with PhDs working for you for twenty years without being given a shot at a steady job. It's obscene."

"That's the way it is. If the government gives us more money, we'll spend more money. But did you see the story: $100 billion in deficit spending over the next two years. You think they're going to give us a cheque? I don't think so."

"It's a bit of problem, isn't it."

"David, it's bullshit. I'll say that: it's bullshit. Kids want to pay less to go to school; kids want to be paid more to teach at school. What are we supposed to do for money? Grow it? David, the world's turning to shit. I don't know what to tell you. But if I make a good deal for the university, do you think that I get to take home the cash I saved? No. So why wouldn't we offer our best deal? It's not our money. We don't get to keep it. It's not coming out of our pockets. We're giving what we can give."

"And what about the president's salary? And his perks?"

"What does he get that Dick Fuld didn't, or John Thain didn't? He's a fundraiser. He raises money. Ok, he makes a nice buck, but he's the fucking president of the university. There's kind of an industry standard that we have to abide by. I may not agree with it, but that's reality."

"So what else can you do?"

"Nothing."

"So what's going to happen?"

"I don't know. I guess we wait."

CUPE 3903 Rejects York's Offer; Union Leaders Get LA Gear Shoes Re-Soled

2009-01-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

I should've pointed this out before: I'm not a member of CUPE 3903. But as an English graduate student I know York TAs and contract faculty, so I've been allowed some insight into what's happening in the community.

Last night CUPE members voted down York's settlement offer. I watched coverage of the Novotel vote, and I swear that I saw a guy wearing LA Gear shoes.

York's position is actually pretty interesting: They're happy to pay their tenured and tenure-stream faculty six-figure salaries. They're happy to do it. But as far as their contract faculty go, they won't back away from this 9.5% three-year pay increase.

Consider that the average contract faculty member makes around $25,000/year. That's a 3% raise in Year One: $750. A 3% raise in Year Two: $772.50. A 3% raise in Year Three: $795.66.

That's still not even a third of what tenure/tenure-stream professors make for doing the exact same job.

And what's the strike really about? Opening up the hiring process so that contract faculty can actually become professors. But then the university says, "Publish. Publish. Then we'll hire you."

That's a crock.

But the problem is that as the economy turns to shit, no one has much sympathy for intellectuals. And intellectuals can't seem to help themselves. Remember a few months ago when Maple Leaf tainted meat was killing people? Well, Michael McCain, a good-looking man, a man with a nice chin, came out and spoke to the press. Food produced at his plant was actually causing people to die, yet the public had great sympathy for him. The man is a millionaire selling dangerous meat, yet he's beloved.

Now you've got a bunch of people fighting for very reasonable contract demands, and people want to throw paint on them.

Who does CUPE march out for the media? A couple of guys who cut their own hair. A guy who collects Betty Boop keychains? A guy who goes on the radio, on a very popular station, on a very popular show, and iterates and re-iterates the importance of adverbial connectors.

Even the letters to the editor published in Toronto's dailies have been darling: auxiliary verb, adverb, main verb. Check. Let's see some goddamn hacking and chopping. Mamdouh Shoukri won't bargain, but he spends $100,000/year on a chauffeurred limousine. He wouldn't typically spend that much money, but his SSHRC grant came through.

In terms of public relations, this strike's been a fucking disaster. My grandparents, who live in Toronto, keep asking me how the union has the balls to strike for more money when so many people are being fired, laid off, etc. I have to keep telling them that it's not about money; it's about these contracts and conversion schemes. But they can't understand what I'm talking about. The papers mention money; the six o'clock news mentions money. You wouldn't think that this strike was about anything other than three grand over three years. Bullshit. It's not about that at all.

These union leaders, these union negotiators...Great job. You've spent three months negotiating, you've received almost no concessions, and you're this close to splitting your membership. You get a 70% turnout on a key vote, and your TAs and research assistants are heading in different directions. Professors are signing petitions to get you back to work. Sure, they're making five times as much as you are for doing the same job, but they've got the benefit of condescension on their side. And they deserve to judge you; they've placed articles in The Journal of Eastern Produce, and Stubb's Review.

And the public hates you. Don't you have anyone with a sense of humour? Don't you have anyone with new clothes--a toqueless person who can speak without hitting on talking points. It's just pathetic to see a good cause fail so miserably. Why is it that the university looks so clean, and the union looks so dirty?

I love the cause, but the execution's terrible.

Canadian Writers Who Support CUPE 3903; or The Gifts They Gave

2009-01-20T17:15:00.000-08:00

I'm really ashamed that I haven't done more to chronicle the strike at York, but for the longest time there just wasn't much to say. The union wouldn't budge; York wouldn't budge. The union's negotiators, in an attempt to blow off steam, went to the gym. It was one of those gyms with a pool, a spa, a sauna, and a Turkish bath. And they were excited; they were ready to swim, sweat, steam, and soak. But no one would take off their shirt.

A couple of days ago I wrote about Margaret Atwood's visit to the picket line. She must have had a good time, because the next day David Helwig was out, ready to lend support to the strikers. He brought his guitar; and, though his fingers froze, he still got off a pretty good interpretation of Brown Eyed Girl.

Nino Ricci brought his flute and some tomato sauce.

Arundhati Roy was out, and so was Jhumpa Lahiri. I couldn't figure out what they were doing in Toronto, but a friend has since told me that JetBlue had a sale on tickets to Portland, but you had to fly out of Pearson. So that question's answered.

Jacob Richler was going to come out, but the sun rose that day.

By far the most exciting visit was made by Carol Shields. I love to pick on Carol, but she's really a terrific woman. If I could be friends with any Canadian writer, it'd be Stephen Marche. But if I could fuck any Canadian writer, it'd be Camilla Gibb. But if I could have any Canadian writer fold my laundry, it'd be, without question, Carol Shields.

Carol was out on the line, answering questions, signing autographs. You should've seen her cringe when someone handed her a copy of Mr. Sandman.

"Get that thing away from me!" she yelled.

It turns out that Canadian writers really do support Canadian English faculty. No, they don't love them. They don't really like them. But they will come out for subsidized hot chocolate.

Carol's great. She looked at the female TAs and contract faculty, bit her lip, and took everyone to H&M. You don't see too many women wearing canvas anymore.

The shopping trip was a big success; everyone picked up a bunch of stuff.

"Don't worry," Shields said, "I can afford it." She reached into her purse. "I shorted IYG."

CUPE 3903 Gets A Boost From Margaret Atwood's Miata

2009-01-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

Folks outside of Toronto won't know this, but CUPE 3903--the union that represents York University's graduate assistants and contract faculty--has been on strike since November. I think the exact date is 6 November 2008, but that's not important. I'm just grounding this story so you can appreciate the next part. The meat.

Anyway, 3903's been out for a few months, and students and parents and elected officials are starting to sweat the possibility that this academic year may be cancelled. The first semester's assignments and final exams haven't been marked or sat, and the second semester's already three weeks old. Couple those facts with the reality that 3903 and the university are bargaining with the skill and motivation of an Alice Munro dye job, and it looks grim. It just doesn't seem like a deal's going to get done.

So external parties are trying to expedite a solution. They're putting pressure on 3903 to vote on York's offer; they're putting pressure on 3903 to accept York's offer. Is it a good offer? Well, let's take a quick, objective look at it. The salaries of Ontario's professors--all of Ontario's professors--can be found via this link. You'll notice that $100,000 is almost a base salary for tenured profs. Contract faculty? Well, they're not listed. But, roughly speaking, they make enough to walk to the local food bank.

Should tenured professors make more than graduate students? Of course they should. But should graduate students have the opportunity to become tenured professors? Damm right. David Chariandy was just hired by SFU, and that was after a Giller nomination. So what're other contract faculty supposed to do? Play in the sandbox with Bob Rae's children? A friend at York told me, "For a tenure-track job, I'd channel a Cruel Intentions-era Sarah Michelle Gellar and give Bob the old 'anywhere-you-want' speech. It wouldn't be so bad; Gowdy says his cock's not that big, and he dips it in honey, first."

So what else could you do? Cook Jack Rabinovitch dinner, then spend hours re-assuring him that Mordecai Richler really was his friend. Didn't hate him. Would've come over even if he didn't have the good Strub's pickles?

I think York's English department's doled out three tenure-track jobs in the last ten years. Sure, people with PhDs have been teaching at York during that time. They've just been making fifteen-twenty grand. Looking at York's course calendar, it seems that more than a few tenured profs are making their nut teaching one, two, or three classes. And some of those are graduate seminars. I guess the only thing they can tell their students is be good, smile, be polite, and maybe in twenty-five years you'll make a living, too.

Back to Atwood.

So they're pressuring 3903 to take this deal. Atwood doesn't like that; doesn't like that at all. Marg is a great supporter of the working man--just last year she bought a hot dog on Queen West. And whenever's there's a worthwhile social cause being prosecuted, she's out there lending her voice. Last week she was down on the York picket lines, handing out coffee, passing out donuts, chopping wood for those oil-drum fires. "It's awful," she said, shivering, "just awful. Fucking universities. They teach my books. But never the long ones. Like it would fucking kill them to put Alias Grace on a reading list?"

This went on for about forty-five minutes. Atwood complained about the establishment, about Emma Richler's new nose, about Thomas Wolfe's watch (which she'd bought, but which couldn't keep good time). Then she complained about Entenman's (Why can't you buy the donuts here?), about Kraft Dinner (There's never enough cheese in the packet), and rice wine (Where do they get the sugar?). Finally it was time to go--the Big G was calling on her iPhone--and she waved a royal goodbye to the crowd.

But her car wouldn't start. Her Miata--her new Miata--had conked out in the parking lot. It was cold, and the engine wouldn't turn over. There was no question that she needed a boost. And so a striker walked to the parking lot, waved down a guy in a Nissan Sentra, and got him to jump Atwood's car. She screamed, "Don't cross the wires." And, of course, no one did. The car was running within thirty seconds, and Atwood was off down Steeles.

Where did she go? It's fun to imagine, isn't it? She went to buy a bikini. She had to get a birthday present for Naim Kattan. She went to a pottery class. She made her own wine. She was late for lunch with Christie Blatchford. Tomson Highway bought her a Coke. Frank Davey had a bit of a chest cold, and she drove to London to blow out his furnace's pilot light. Jacob Richler licked her toes.

So, on an otherwise shitty day, the Atwood visit buoyed our spirits.

Muppets Voiced By Margaret Atwood

2009-01-15T16:32:00.000-08:00

I find myself playing the role of the Canadian literature muckraker. I guess that's fine, but so much of our muck is really just shit, and Guy Vanderhaeghe still hasn't returned my boots.

Did anyone know that Margaret Atwood worked on the Muppet Show? She did voice work; it was all off-camera. Yes, it was a well-kept secret. But, after a lot of journalistic sweating, I'm outing her in this post.

Atwood did Link Hogthrob, Dr. Julius Strangepork, Aunt Verona Fingerpuck, Slow Moon Nguyen, Pancakes Flatly, Gordon G. Sassberry, and Norah Popeswife.

She also played the nude model of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.

People are going to say, "Henson did those characters. Not Atwood--Henson. And Dave Goetz." To them I say, "Read the transcripts." Atwood's fingerprints are all over those shows. They're all over Alice Munro's lifetime supply of Canesten, but they're all over the Muppet Show, too.

Here's one of Norah Popeswife's rants. See if you can find Atwood's voice somewhere in the subtext.

Norah: Fuck the Swedish Chef.
Fozzie Bear: Norah, you can't say that on TV.
Norah: I fucked Fred Penner last night. In his log.
Fozzie Bear: Jesus Christ! He's not even on our network.
Norah Bear: And I've had enough of Gonzo. His nose is just as curved as his cock. If it bent the other way it'd really hit the spot.
Fozzie Bear: At least be witty if you're gonna be so rude.
Norah Bear: I'm drunk. I can't be witty and drunk. How do I look?
Fozzie Bear: Like Rowlf took a shit on you. And you liked it.
Norah: Fuck this show. Can somebody get me on fucking Fraggle Rock?
Fozzie Bear: I heard you fucked Animal.
Norah: Yeah. Scooter wanted to watch. No one's licked my ass like that since Timothy Findley thought I had balls.

If that's not Atwood, who the hell is? Robert Lecker? That's our hero. That's our Canadian literature doyenne. And she jokes about screwing stuffed animals.

I called her last night.

"Margaret," I said, "why'd you do the show? You were publishing, you were doing well. What could've possibly appealed to you about the Muppets?"

"They all had hands up their asses. Got me? Now that's common, but, at that time, no one else was doing that."

You'd think more people would read our books.

Canada's Next Top Writer

2008-12-31T06:15:00.000-08:00

Michelle Olsen has an article in the National Post...It's a bullshit article. But she traces an obscure online writing contest to the bright lights, big city concept of Canada's Next Top Writer. That'd be a reality show--based on the Next Top Model franchise--that would pit Canada's best aspiring writers against each other in a battle to be named the next Michael Winter/Lisa Moore.

It's a good idea, but let's consider how I found the Olsen story: It was linked to this post. Oh, I get a laugh out of that. Ask a hundred Canadians to name one Canadian writer, and half'll end up telling you, "Oh...You know...The one on the broom."

Although, as a PhD candidate who focuses on Canadian literature, I'm not supposed to buy the story that the CanLit scene is throttled by a few elites who control the content/form of Canadian fiction...Jesus Christ, it's true.

And let me tell you something else: Those elites went camping last year. They went way up north, set up at their site, and realized that they'd forgotten to bring matches or a lighter. Well, they needed a fire. There was no question about that. One took out a wooden dildo and dropped her pants. Within two minutes they were spit-roasting an elk.

And I'm not Everyman; I've actually met these people. I could tell you stories about Douglas Gibson's tenure at M&S that would piss you off to no end. Do people really think that Canada doesn't have its John Irving--a guy who, if he isn't the greatest stylist, can actually tell a story that people'll enjoy reading? Canadian Irving exists, but he didn't go to school with John Metcalf's daughter. I promise you that you'll never read his name in print.

This conversation inevitably gets back to Mordecai Richler, who was really our best "popular" writer. Richler's first two books weren't good enough for an extended "It's a Small World" cruise, yet he somehow managed to get his later, better works in print. Though I wouldn't want to make any wild guesses, it seems increasingly likely that he, at one point, blew Jack McClelland. In my scenario McClelland, who must have had either a small or crooked penis, publishes Richler as part of some blackmail programme. How else do you explain how and why M&S turned down Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, yet broke their arms securing the rights to Leonard Gulben's The White, White Canoe of Churchill, Manitoba: A Comedy?

The Canadian writing business is funny. People don't read Canadian writing; I just met an American PhD who couldn't name a Canadian author. I said, "Atwood?" and she gave me a blank stare.

"Who's Atwood?" she asked.

"A very famous--The most famous Canadian writer."

"Is she any good?"

"Better than Michael Chabon's sister."

But, fuck it, let's consider Olsen's idea for a minute. We've got five Canadian writers looking to win a publishing deal with a Canadian house. What do they look like? They're all thin, all dressed in corduroy. Hopefully none writes about ninjas or vampires. We put them in a room and tell them to come up with a story based on the sentence, "The lamb lies in the tall grass."

Two hours later we open the door. In marches Atwood. She reads the five entries, then exits the room. The door is shut, locked from the outside, and a guard turns on the "showers."

The Margaret Atwood Museum In Red Hat, New Mexico

2008-12-06T15:18:00.001-08:00

I got an email from a man named John Coolbaugh. John found this site through Google, and he was pretty much pissed off at the slant of many of my posts.

"Why do you have to pick on Margaret Atwood?" John asked. "Is it because she has so much talent and success, and you have nothing?"

Yes. The answer is Yes. Margaret Atwood does have a lot of talent; she does have a lot of money. Not many people could've insinuated themselves into Ken Thomson's will quite like she did. No Jews--that's for sure.

But let's take a look at what John has. John runs the world's first and only Margaret Atwood museum. He runs it alone, out in the desert, and he considers himself one of Atwood's biggest fans. John told me this in his email, and I'm just relaying it to you.

I Googled "Coolbaugh 'and' Atwood," and found nothing. So right now I can only go on John's word. But why would anyone lie about a thing like that? If you say you've got a Margaret Atwood museum, chances are you've got at least a shrine. Maybe a few pictures and the shopping cart she uses to haul her empty wine bottles back to the Rosedale LCBO. But you've got something. And if people are coming to visit...well, that's a museum.

So I asked John why he'd decided on Atwood. He said, "I just love her smile."

I asked him what the Atwood museum looks like; what kind of exhibits does it have; how many people visit.

"I get about 40 people a year," he told me. "I have the place in an outbuilding in my backyard. We don't have plumbing out here, so that's where I used to shit. But now it's all different: I've got ten copies of Lady Oracle in there. About the size of the place? I'd say it's twenty feet by twenty. I know: big for a shithouse. But I like to stretch my legs."

John's an American. And you wouldn't think that the world's first Atwood museum would be in New Mexico. You'd think Toronto, Sutton, Sudbury, the Sault, or maybe Hamilton, even. But not Montreal. And sure as hell not south of Oregon. But we're Canadian, and we're insecure, and we can't recognize anything we do as "good." That's why Richler was so famous in New York and Los Angeles. People used to say to each other, "Did you read this Richler? Fuck, it's a good thing the Korean woman who reads to Bellow is blind."

If a guy in the New Mexico desert can build an Atwood museum, then I think Torontonians ought to consider setting aside some space to recognize one of our greatest living writers. But that doesn't mean that Atwood can't have a spot, too. We'll give something on Queen Street; something gritty and real--like Robert Kroetsch's neck.

I make fun of Margaret, but I also respect her as a writer. I can say the things I do because I believe that she is, in fact, a great talent. Surfacing is a great book, and Frank Davey's wrong: I didn't like it better as Heart of Darkness.

But the Atwood museum...You've got to go. Their best-selling souvenir: a big wheel of a twisted-sugar sucker with hair already on it. And how can a good Canadianist ignore that?

They Never Got A Giller

2008-12-01T19:16:00.001-08:00

They Never Got A Giller

Last week I was sipping water at the Gillers, trying not to look down Camilla Gibb’s dress. She was wearing something with something else underneath, and at one point she turned around and there was a refrigerator magnet stuck to the fabric just beneath her left breast. I picked it off, and she turned around, chuckling. “Underwire bra?” I said.

“No; American quarters.”

She’s a beautiful woman, and I’ve always enjoyed her writing. Now a Giller staple, her role is to make sure that everyone finds their seat. She also took Alice Munro’s drink order, and was a Copenhagen butter cookie richer for her effort.

I can joke about her, because Camilla and I are great friends. I know that’s strange: you wouldn’t assume that Camilla and a Jewish, twenty-something academic would be friends. But she really likes garlic. We met at a Loblaw’s. She was trying to return a complete set of the New Canadian Library, and I had to tell her, politely, that the express lane was for ten or fewer items only.

Camilla’s skin is flawless, and, with the exception of Joseph Boyden, she has the nicest hair of any Canadian writer. She told me her secret: Hellman’s. “Mayonnaise?” “No, Lillian. I just comb it out every night and leave it on a Polystyrene head.”

But I love the Gillers; I love the atmosphere, the excitement, and the concentration of all that talent. And the fashion. Sears must’ve done well this month. I know they don’t sell evening dresses, but it’s amazing what Margaret Atwood can do with some time and Djanet Sears’s old head scarves.

Looking around at all those terrific artists—Neil Smith, David Chariandy, Marina Endicott—I found myself pointing out winners. A GG winner over here, a Commonwealth winner over there, a W.O. Mitchell winner counting rosary beads under there. And I thought, “You know what, David—a lot of great writers never got a Giller.”

Robert Kroetsch, who said to George Bowering, “Not on the collar, she’ll know,” never got a Giller.

Norman Levine, who said, “Sure, it’ll come out, Mordecai. It’s just pea soup,” never got a Giller.

Margaret Atwood, who whispered to Alice Munro, “Sure, Hage is a great artist, but, Alice, Lam can write prescriptions,” never got a Giller.

Emma Richler, who said to Florence, “Where’d the mezuzahs go?” never got a Giller.

Barbara Gowdy, who said to Jack McClelland, “Do I look like Carol Shields?” never got a Giller.