Diane Schoemperlen in Quill & Quire, The Bull Calf

In the December issue of Quill & Quire, Diane Schoemperlen offers up a introduction to found text and collage, and the genesis of her latest book, By the Book: 

The stories in By the Book are in the tradition of the objet trouvé – taking the form of a found narrative or conversation or meditation – each being an expanded, exploded, and embroidered rearrangement of the original material. The selection and ordering of the sequences in each story was a very labour-intensive and time-consuming process, but one that I found immensely enjoyable and satisfying.

Reading and rereading each old book with a pencil in hand, I searched for its hidden treasures and marked each sentence that resonated for me. Then I moved them around like puzzle pieces, working out of instinct and my love of language and its unpredictable largesse, until the whole thing began to gel. More often than not, I was happily surprised by the power of the juxtapositions and how far I could take them. It was a matter of simultaneously trying to control the material while remaining open to accident, chance, and serendipity.

For the full review go to: http://www.quillandquire.com/people/2015/02/04/last-word-diane-schoemperlen-on-found-text/ 

In The Bull Calf, Sarah Bezan offered up a positive take on By the Book:

Perhaps the most successful section of the book, entitled “By the Book or: Alessandro in the New World,” reads between the lines of the Nuovissima Grammatica Accelerata: Italian-Inglese Enciclopedia Popolare (1900), a book intended to be read by new Italian immigrants to the United States. The original text, which includes advice, notes on grammar and nomenclature, and a background on the American Constitution, also traces correspondence that can be used by its readers to navigate “everyday situations such as discussing the weather, looking for work, getting a hair cut, buying groceries, and visiting the doctor,” as Schoemperlen writes in the section’s introduction (2). Interspersed with extracts from the Nuovissima (indicated by Schoemperlen with the use of boldface), this section imagines a real world of love and loss in the character of Alessandro, who longs for his home country, and for the beautiful young women of the New World, in equal measure...Redeeming personal accounts and stories left untold between the lines of remaining documents, By The Book toys with the notion of completeness. Pieced together “the old-fashioned way by the traditional cut-and-paste method with real paper, real scissors, and real glue” (xi), her most recent book explores the enigmatic possibilities of juxtaposing unfamiliar elements in a bold creative practice of scission and adhesion.

For the full review go to: http://www.thebullcalfreview.ca/dianeschoemperlen.htm

Love for Schoemperlen's By the Book

There's been a fair bit of love for Diane Schoemperlen's By the Book: Stories and Pictures of late, some of which has already hit, and some of which is coming down the pipe.  First up, Stacey Mae Fowles gave Diane's book a very smart review a few weeks ago in the Globe and Mail: 

"By The Book reveals with even more vibrancy Schoemperlen’s reconstructive impulse, this time in full glossy colour, with a more sophisticated hand and more depth of source materials. Culling the contents of long-forgotten encyclopedias, handbooks and hilariously dated how-tos, there is less of Schoemperlen’s own voice here and more of a virtuoso performance in found text and visual poetry. ... she reveals herself to be a curator of both juxtaposition and connection, luxuriating in the way language works and what feelings it can conjure when laid on the page."

The November issue of Quill and Quire also contained George Featherling's fine review of the same.  After discussing her process and how the stories work, Featherling offers up the following:

"Her wit, however, is just the glaze on her serious intentions. One need not squint to see that between the lines Schoemperlen is using history to ridicule our own societal certainties or even to protest Canada’s increasing authoritarianism. In every case, she looks for fresh ways of pushing the boundaries of Canadian fiction. She is an original."

We, of course, couldn't agree more, especially about Diane's wit, and her pushing of boundaries.  We've been pretty clear, on Thirsty and elsewhere, what we think of this book: I have been fascinated by it since it arrived a year and a half ago, and it's sent me scuttling back to Diane's earlier work like Forms of Devotion so hungry I've become for more.  This is a book which challenges what both the story and book can do as forms; it's also as joy-filled as a book can be.  

For the full Quill & Quire review, which is paired up with Molly Peacock's Alphabetique, please go here.  

Speaking of joy, Diane talked about how By the Book brought more joy to her than she's experienced in her writing in years on DNTO this past Saturday.  Working on By the Book, she told Sook Yin Lee, reminded her of something she'd forgotten over her years of trying to make a living as a writer: creation is supposed to be fun.  The theme of this episode of the show was garbage, and Diane turned the concept on its head, by showing how the detritus of one period can be transformed into the art of another.  It's a fascinating 9 minute interview, which begins approximately at 38:45, continuing until 47:45.  Take a listen here:

http://www.cbc.ca/dnto/episode/2014/11/27/what-did-you-find-in-the-garbage/

Diane Schoemperlen on By The Book

These six stories are not exactly stories at all. 

Rather, each piece is a construction or a deconstruction or a reconstruction (or maybe all three). I did not exactly write any of the lines in any of them. 

I discovered them (like a continent), mined them (like gold or coal or potash), unearthed them (like bones), excavated them (archaeological artifacts), solved them (like a crossword puzzle), deciphered them (like a secret code), organized them (like a filing cabinet or a clothes closet), choreographed them (like a ballet or maybe a barn dance), arranged them (like a symphony or a bouquet of flowers).

In each case, I picked out the pieces (like gold nuggets from gravel or maybe like worms from the garden), shuffled them many times (like playing cards), and then put them together again (like a jigsaw puzzle, ending with a picture entirely different from the one on the front of the box).

Order By The Book, the adventurous sequel to Forms of Devotion, from Biblioasis

Kirkus Reviews praises Diane Schoemperlen's By the Book

Though I would have thought this book almost impossible to review without having the final version in hand, Kirkus Reviews has nevertheless given two thumbs up to Diane Schoemperlen's latest collection of collage fictions and pictures, By the Book, suggesting:

A new collection by Schoemperlen (At a Loss for Words, 2008, etc.) offers stories that revel in unconventional forms and odd details, each one mining texts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in an exploration of collage and fragmentation.

Only one piece in this strangely appealing collection, “By the Book Or: Alessandro in the New World,” engages with the traditional expectations of narrative.  ... Schoemperlen builds her own story around the old words, focusing attention on how texts might shape life and our perception of it. This exploration continues in pieces that are less and less like traditional stories. “A Body Like a Little Nut” rearranges phrases from a botany textbook in alphabetical order, creating a sequence of images and sounds that works almost musically to encourage imaginative association ... urging the reader to make unusual connections with the personal baggage of their own imaginations. Collages, also created by Schoemperlen, illustrate each story.

An extremely clever and often graceful collection that rewards the curious reader but should not be approached with the expectation of traditional story.

For the full review please go here.

By the Book, by the Box

It's that time of year around the Bibliomanse: t'is the season for wheeled carts and cartons by the skid, for surly delivery men and back-breaking trips down rickety back stairs, for dangerously high piles of boxes teetering on the verge of collapse (and thank God Chris got out of the way in time).  Over the next week as many as half a dozen titles will be arriving, with more following thereafter (complicated, this year, by the fact that the street in front of our shop has been ripped up and deliveries now have to come through the back alley), and we await each one with a mixture of joy and dread and Robaxacet.

Yesterday's delivery, however, was a very special one, and something I believe we all were awaiting with even a touch more joy and dread (should something have gone wrong at the printer) than usual.  This is because Diane Schoemperlen's new collection, By the Book: Stories and Pictures, is quite unlike any book Biblioasis has been part of, and likely unlike anything else published in Canada, ever. It is sui generis, standing quite alone, and without a single doubt the most uniquely curious book you will see this year (and for many years after).  Taking her cue from Octavio Paz and Charles Simic, who have argued that the fragment and collage represent the 20th century's greatest cultural innovation and artistic contribution, what Diane has done in By the Book is approach the story as a form of collage and appropriation, using forgotten late nineteenth century and early twentieth century texts and rearranging them to conjure new meaning and associations.  Her authorship is one less of language -- at least in the sense of her putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard, as is usually the case -- than of an imposing sensibility, adding structure and shape and humour and vitality to what were essentially dead texts.  The stories which make up By the Book vary in form and intent and effect: they move from something approaching a traditional narrative in the title story to others which abandon traditional narrative forms, working by careful association and accretion to, at their best, perform real magic. I have been reminded in stories such as 'A Nervous Race: 222 Brief Notes on the Study of Nature, Human and Otherwise" of the work of David Markson, the American writer I greatly admire, but few if any others come to mind. The reader has a much more active role in assembling meaning and making connections, and the pleasures to be gained from this can be quite wonderful.  It is a teasing book of encyclopedic erudition which, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, makes a good deal of fun of the very same thing.  It is a strange marvel, which pushes the bounds of form.  It is, as a literary judge said to me of another book we published last year, a book which makes other books possible.

If that was all that this book did, it would be quite the thing.  But it is much more than this.  As with Forms of Devotion, to which this tome is a rather unexpectedly strange sequel, and as the subtitle of By the Book suggests, this is also a book of pictures, an object d'art, with more than 60 full colour full-page collages throughout.  These work in interesting ways with the stories, and make By the Book, as a package, absolutely stunning to behold.  It's a work of art, and I know I speak for all of us at the Bibliomanse when I say that we're all grateful to have been able to be a part of it.