Two Reviews of Join the Revolution, Comrade

Finally. Two review this week of Join the Revolution, Comrade. The first appearing last Saturday in the Hong Kong Standard (almost certainly our first review in an Asian paper), and begins like this:

Canadian Charles Foran, a one-time resident of Hong Kong, has just had published a collection of essays under the title Join the Revolution, Comrade, covering life on three continents and spanning topics from China to Cervantes.

In a world where "page-turner" is often seen as the ultimate accolade for a book, collections of essays aren't for everyone. Essays don't, by and large, propel the reader from chapter to chapter but instead induce pauses for reflection.

But Join the Revolution, Comrade isn't merely a book for savoring, although it is that. The complaints that Western writers don't make an effort to understand Asia and its cultural subtleties are possibly partly based either in a lack of awareness of those writers like Foran who can move seamlessly from Tariq Ali to Lu Xun to Yeats - or also, perhaps, in a certain unwillingness to read books whose pages don't turn by themselves.

The whole review can be found here:

www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=15&art_id=67920&sid=19595292&con_type=1

The second review appeared in the Globe & Mail Books section this past week. Part of a group review, Foran's section begins like this:

In Join the Revolution, Comrade: Journeys and Essays, novelist Charles Foran leaves Nowhere - Toronto's Willowdale - for Somewhere - China, Thailand, Vietnam - taking us with him on a rich and reflective voyage as he skillfully navigates the clash of languages, cultures and points of view that travelling can trigger if you are wide-eyed, curious and eager to learn.

The whole review, which also includes a review of Bruce Serafin's Stardust (which I might pick up), can be found here:

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080705.BKESSA05/TPStory/?query=charles+foran

Steven Beattie interviews Charles Foran

That Steven Beattie guy just might like us. Two posts in one day. This one an absolutely fabulous interview with Charles Foran around this April's Join the Revolution, Comrade. For which I thank him, again, heartily.

You can find the whole interview at That Shakespeherian Rag, here:

stevenwbeattie.com/2008/06/17/tsr-author-interview-charles-foran/

A brief excerpt:

Novelists who do make an attempt to write in a more challenging or idiosyncratic way that might lack mass popular appeal are often castigated for being “elitist,” an epithet that William A. Henry III has suggested “has come to rival if not outstrip ‘racist’ as the foremost catchall pejorative of our times.” How do we counteract the prevailing cultural tendency towards comfortable, staid fictional products and authors?

At this stage, there is likely no escaping charges of elitism. Simply to aspire to write not a “literary’” book or a “real” novel or any such loaded term but to write simply to the tradition, to Cervantes and Sterne, Eliot and Conrad, Virginia Wolf and Keri Hume, is to open yourself up to epithets. As I said before, it seems we don’t really want these books, these writers, any longer. We only accept, begrudgingly, the “difficult” ones that the Nobel committee or, sometimes, the Booker jury, bully onto our media bookshelf. (What a tiny, badly constructed shelf that is, too: can’t hold more than a few titles at any one time, books rated by gaudy covers and sensationalized titles, then still filed upside-down or spines-to-the-wall; all excess releases allowed to topple off the edge and tumble to the ground, there to be not even trampled on; just ignored, until covered in dust, dirt, and returned to the earth.) We no longer have the time or attention span or, possibly, the faith in the form. We’ve moved on.

What to do? Join the Revolution, Comrade, I suppose — or else …

Charles Foran & Rebecca Rosenblum

For those of you in Toronto tonight -- where I should be, if I was not so tired of travelling -- there's two Biblioasis-related events going on. First, Charles Foran will be reading with Pico Iyer at Harbourfront from Join the Revolution, Comrade, at 7:30 pm. Indigo's order came in a little slowly on this title, though it's through now, and copies of Charlie's collection of essays should be everywhere across the country no later than the middle of next week. It's already at any independent bookshop worthy of the name.

Also going on tonight, Rebecca Rosenblum will be at the Writer's Trust Gala in anticiaption of the Journey Prize announcement. Rebecca is one of the three finalists for the 10,000 dollar prize, for her story Chilly Girl. Rebecca also, you might recall, won last year's Metcalf-Rooke Award. Her new collection, Once, in its final, edited state, has finally crossed the transom at chez Biblioasis, and I'll be looking forward to getting right into it. It's one of the books were most excited about this fall. Congratulations to Rebecca, and let's all keep our unused appendages crossed for her this evening in the hope of a Rosenblum victory!