Ray Smith's Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada

Over at That Shakespearean Rag, Steven W. Beattie continues his 31 Days of Short Stories with a thoughtful and spirited exploration of the title story of Ray Smith's first book -- and our first Renditions title (& the reason why I thought of starting the Renditions series in the first place) -- Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada.

The title story of Ray Smith’s 1969 collection is a postmodern collage that neatly puts the boots to the kind of earnest Canadian nationalism running rampant in this country at the time. Subtitled “A Centennial Project,” the story traverses the nation from Cape Breton to British Columbia, with detours to Poland along the way, in the process touching on subjects as diverse as American hegemony, Expo ‘67, and the literary technique of The Bible. Clearly, Smith’s story is not a typical piece of Canadian naturalism.

Commenting on the story in his introduction to the Biblioasis Renditions edition of the book, Smith says, “Large political enthusiasms (and there were lots about in the late sixties) seem to me to suffer loss of clarity, complexity, subtlety. ‘Cape Breton …’ was my attempt to retrieve and fix some nuances in a valid balance.” Readers unsympathetic to what Smith calls “soi-disant originality” may find little apparent balance in his story, which appears on its surface to be a series of unconnected, technically discrete scenes. But “Cape Breton …” evinces a deep structure, not on the level of plot (there is no plot to speak of) but on a thematic level. The balance in Smith’s story results from the involutions of his sustained examination of power dynamics on several fronts: personal, national, and international.

For the rest of Beattie's post please go here.

Brown Dwarf Launch Photos

One of the problems with traveling so much these past few months is that I have missed, with one exception -- and even that looked unlikely for a spell, due to a certain volcanic ash problem -- every launch this season, and a few other events besides. One of these was Kathleen Miller's Brown Dwarf launch April 14th, in Toronto. Thankfully she's sent a few photos, and the text to her introductory speech, which I've tried to upload to blogger, but it's simply not having it, and after a half-an-hour of fiddling I'm going to have to put it off for later. Fascinating talk though, and when combined with the photos gives at least a taste of being there.

Biblioasis Translation Series Launch Photos

It's been a bit of a busy time around these parts of late, and I've been meaning to post these photos for some time now. At Blue Met last month two of Biblioasis's Translation Series Authors were in attendance. From all received accounts Horacio Castellanos Moya, pictured above, was one of the hits of the festival, with three scheduled festival events in English and Spanish. Rumour has it that one of these sessions was recorded by CBC for playback at a later date. We'll try and find out when it will run and post a link when we do.
We also launched the latest title in our translation series, Mauricio Segura's Black Alley. A novel about Haitian and Latino gang violence in the Cotes-des-Neiges region of Montreal, it was quite a controversial novel when first published in French more than a decade ago, and it has lost none of its edge in Dawn Cornelio's translation. We're planning to do other events in support of this one. Stay tuned for further details ...

Pictured above, Translation Series Editor Stephen Henighan with Mauricio Segura.

Rebecca Rosenblum...

has a new website (to go along with her new chapbook. More on this when I receive my copies.): check it out:

http://www.rebeccarosenblum.com/

This Week's Biblioasis Bestsellers

I know, I know: Biblioasis and Bestsellers seems to be a contradiction in terms. Except that once this year when Rumrunners slipped in at number 10 on the Globe & Mail list. And that time in 2008 when Diana: A Diary in the Second Person made the Calgary bestseller lists for several weeks. But we *know* that that was Russell's parents buying up all of the available copies before anyone else could. I am, as always, profoundly grateful for family support: where would we be without our parents?

(If any of you other Biblioasis-o-philes have a work of literary smut out there to peddle, I'm beginning to think working in embarrassed families buying hundreds of copies makes just about as much sense as the rest of my business plan. At this point I am ready to try almost anything.)

But contrary to general belief, we do actually sell non-pornography from time to time. Just ask BNC. Though Russell's Diana is back in the top 5 titles, and has been for several weeks. I thought I'd post the top 5 selling Biblioasis titles this week according to Book Net Canada.

1. Marty Gervais. The Rumrunners.
2. Terry Griggs. Nieve.
3. Mauricio Segura. Black Alley.
4. Russell Smith. Diana: A Diary in the Second Person
5. K. D. Miller. Brown Dwarf.

*: Of course we don't know this. It's probably just all of those lonely oil men. Or women.

Atlantic Canada Reads

Chad Pelley, who had such nice things to say about Kathleen Winter's boYs last week, has started an Atlantic Canada Reads competition, and is asking readers from across the country to nominate their favourite book by an Atlantic Canadian. It got me thinking: I think we've published some of the best writing by Atlantic Canadians in the last several years, including the books you see here.

Amy Jones's What Boys Like anyone? Can't get more Atlantic Canada than Halifax.

Ray Smith's Century, winner of Kerry Clare's Canada Reads Independently? Any of you new converts to Smith want to try your hand at defending this book? Or how about his Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada? Night at the Opera? The Flush of Victory?

Or what about Kathleen Winter's boYs?


No? then what about David Helwig's Saltsea, a novel taking place on the shores of P.E.I., and quite easily one of the best things David's done? You prefer poetry? Zach Wells's Track & Trace? David Hickey's In the Lights of a Midnight Plow? Shane Neilson's Meniscus? Help me out: let's get a Biblioasis title on Pelley's list!

Further information can be found here.

First Review of Black Alley

Mauricio Segura's Black Alley is this season's first installment in the Biblioasis International Translation Series, and the first translation we've published that deals with Canadian experience: in this case, that of Chilean and Haitian immigrants in the Cote-des-Neiges area of Montreal. Stacey May Fowles reviews it in the current Quill & Quire, and says in part:

It’s a shame that so few books explore Canadian urban themes (especially those unique to Quebec) as well as Black Alley does. This long-anticipated translation of Mauricio Segura’s acclaimed and controversial 1998 novel, Côte-des-Nègres, is a unique window into the immigrant experience, city life, and gang violence. ... As the novel progresses we become deeply invested in the poignant confrontation between childhood friends who have become divided by race and gang allegiances. ... What results is a crystal clear and unadorned look at the many intersections of class, race, gender, and generational divide in modern urban Quebec. Black Alley is a distinctly refreshing reading experience.

What the Story Writers are Doing...

So I gather that it is National Short Fiction Month. It's the first I've heard of such a beast, though I do think it's a good thing not to let the poets get all of the attention. If Gordon Downie had only penned a song with the lines "Don't tell me what the short story writers are doin'" perhaps we'd have a bit more respect. On Twitter the other day Tom Waits had quipped that Marcel Marceau gets more radio play than he does. Which, to stretch things more than they could possibly bear, might make short fiction Tom Waits to poetry's Gordon Downie. Downie may get a lot of airplay, but we all know where the real soul lies.

In any case, a few folks have been doing their best to try and shine a little spotlight on the short story this month. Steven Beattie has once again embarked on 31 Days of Short Stories, radically altering my reading patterns for the next year. The Globe is highlighting a story a day on the blog. And over at Salty Ink, Chad Pelley is posting on short story writers he's been most influenced by. This week, Kathleen Winter, for her (and our) boYs. Chad writes:

Her vibrant use of language raised a bar for me, as a writer.

Kathleen Winter’s vibrant collection of short stories, boYs, has won the hip-assuring Metcalf-Rooke Award and the prestigious Winterset award. If you haven’t read it yet, what more encouragement do you need?

This book is alive, sentences pop like firecrackers, you expect nothing and love everything. This is ultra-modern, punchy, lucid diction. What I enjoyed the most were her consistently jagged, unexpected, and yet remarkably apt descriptions, some of which catch you offguard, like, “Sponge flan soaked in red sauce that tasted like bandages,” and “[The wind] smelled like wildflowers and clouds and lakes with trout in them.” As I read the pages I saw images, not words. It is one of few books I’ve read that appeals to all of the senses: even the sounds blare off the pages, and then there are the smells, like “…sweet to breathe the mysterious scent of someone else’s blankets.” We all know that smell, right? This is a catchy, diction-driven book well-deserving of all of its attention.

For the rest of his post, please go here.

I have some other fabulous Kathleen Winter news, but will save it for another post.

Echoes in November

The National Magazine Awards were announced earlier this week, and Zach Wells was nominated in "the one of a kind" for an essay on a poem in another Biblioasis author's book: 'Echoes in November,' by Robyn Sarah, from Pause for Breath. It's an exceptional essay about an exceptional poem, and it is now online here.

Road Stories

Received notice today that Frog Hollow is set to release the next installment in their short fiction chapbook series. Rebecca Rosenblum might be known to a few readers of this blog as the insanely talented writer of short fiction, including Once and (forthcoming) The Big Dream. Though I haven't yet had a chance to read these stories, I'm certain that they will be fabulous -- little I've read by Rebecca does not qualify as such. I've ordered a few copies of each edition -- surely this is one of those occasions where one copy is not enough. As there are only 70 paperbacks and 30 hardcovers, it might be worth getting your copy soon.

For further information please go here.

Reading the World: Horacio Castellanos Moya

Earlier this month, Horacio Castellanos Moya stopped in for an event in Rochester for Three Percent's Reading the World Series, part of a month of travels that brought him to London, Guelph, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa as well. Below is the discussion that took place that evening. An entertaining, thoughtful discussion.

PMT on Brown Dwarf

While I was away (Which means that, yes, I have returned, dear readers. At least physically. Several parts of me -- including my heart -- remain elsewhere. More on that, possibly, later.) Kerry Clare wrote a review of K.D. Miller's wonderful Brown Dwarf.


K.D. Miller’s novel Brown Dwarf is a delicious secret. A slim volume, gorgeous to behold (and to hold! that cover. those thick pages. such an elegant typeface, perfect leading), it knows far more than it is telling. Rae Brand, a successful mystery novelist, turns to her own personal narrative in order to confront a pivotal event from her childhood. Though she’d been Brenda Bray then, lumpen outcast, daughter of a depressive, the character Rae Brand has been escaping ever since.

For the rest of it please go here.

More to come, including Black Alley launch photos. As well as, perhaps, some photos on what I did when my British vacation was interrupted by an Icelandic volcano.

Notes From A Stranded Publisher

This is, perhaps, why I've never bothered up to now to try and get to the U.K.

It has taken me 37 years to make my first trip to London, for next week's Book Fair. I wish that I could say, like Thoreau, that I was well-travelled in other ways, but it is, alas, not the case. University to bookshop to press, the last 12 years have been pretty tightly packed with other things. Throw in two boys seven and under, and my wife's business, which requires that she be available on an almost daily basis, and our opportunities to jetset about have been rather limited. Part of me regrets this -- who doesn't want to see oneself as a cosmoplitan world traveller? -- but part of me is quite happy to be an armchair traveller. And now the Gods -- being a bit of a megalomaniacal polytheist (& recent Battlestar Gallactica convert -- seem to be conspiring to give me a quick Continental Grand Tour, and I'm seeing much more of Europe than I expected to.

Without a word of a lie, on Wednesday morning, as we were passing Iceland, Alexis said to me: "You know, we should have planned a brief stopover in Amsterdam." Little did we know that at almost precisely that moment, a volcano had erupted, spewing ash capable of shutting down a jet engine. So perhaps it is her fault. I've always thought the dame had rather special abilities.

We were supposed to be in Amsterdam for an hour. We're into our third day. Much of this time has been spent trying to get our baggage, or arranging alternative modes of transport. We managed after several hours on the phone to rebook a flight with KLM, the Dutch Airline, who had the temerity to play Bjork records while we were on hold: as if Icelandic ash wasn't enough! Luckily we then went down to the central railway station, this still at before 6 am Amsterdam time, to get one of the last tickets on Sunday via train to London. A good thing too, as KLM has already cancelled our Sunday flight. So we'll be seeing Brussels and I assume France tomorrow via a train window, to arrive in London in the early evening.

We don't yet have our baggage, and there's a better than reasonable chance that we won't by the time we leave tomorrow morning. We've been lucky to get a decent hotel in the hearet of Amsterdam, at an exorbitant price, but there are travellers who have not had a bed for more than two days, and others who will be stranded longer than we will be.

Our main fear is that this ash cloud may not dissipate enough for us to leave on time next week. If the volcano keeps spewing ash, then there's a chance that things may stay shut down for quite some time. And the pressure on the airlines will be greater every day, as the accumulation of cancelled flights and backlog causes more and more problems. So we may very well cut our London trip short to try and find a way via train to the south in the hopes of finding a plane that can make Canada close to our original return.

Not all of it is bad, of course. We're making the best of things. Did a canal boat tour, had a wonderfully over-priced peasants' dinner in a restaurant dating from the 16th century, we're in a hotel from the 17th, hit a museum, the Red Light District, and we're planning on going to the Van Gogh museum and doing a trip to the countryside to see the tulip fields today. We're finally over our jetlag, which cost us much of yesterday. And we've learned a lot. For instance, you don't NEED to buy a beer to use the washroom in the bars around town, and if you shower enough, you can stretch the same set of clothes (almost) three days. The Dutch advertise their pornography channels using a Mozart soundtrack. Who knows what else we'll discover by the time we make it back to Canada?

I'll try and keep you all posted about the further European education of a provincial publisher.

Q&Q On Brown Dwarf

Trying to prepare for our trip to jolly old England this eve, wired as I am on Red Bull to try and catch up on an ever-growing pile of uncompleted tasks, I thought that I would take a moment to remind all Toronto-area readers of this here blog that K.D. Miller's launch is tomorrow eve, at St. Clement's Church, at 59 Briar's Hill Ave, at 7 pm. I wish I could be there, but as my host is leaving London on the 15th, I need to try and make it beforehand. Please, any of you Biblioasis-o-philes who can make it in my stead, do so. You know who you are.

I learned this eve that Corey Redekop has reviewed Brown Dwarf quite favourably in the current Quill & Quire, saying, in part:

Possibly basing her tale on the real-life exploits of novelist Anne Perry (fictionalized in Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures), Miller superbly captures the abject cruelty and loneliness of adolescence. Brenda’s alternating excitement and misery is rendered with haunting precision, sometimes recalling the youthful feverishness of Stephen King’s novella “The Body.

This is the second review of Brown Dwarf I've read in as many days which makes the connection between the book and Anne Perry's own youthful experiences, though I'd not made the connection on my own. Perhaps we should ask K.D. about that.

Girl Crazy

Girl Crazy is the title of Russell Smith's new novel, but in the Tuesday Essay over at the Globe & Mail, he also writes about another earlier and more pornographic work with another -- ahem -- press:

A few years ago, I set out to write a pornographic novel (I prefer that word to “erotica,” which I find cowardly). I wanted to try it first as an exercise, to get over my hesitation in writing sex, and to explore ways of using language that weren’t comical or clinical or crude. It was really tough. There are only so many body parts, so many acts, and so many words to describe them. I found myself being repetitive. My solution to the linguistic problem was just to try to be as specific and precise about physical acts as possible. I always want to document exactly which finger goes where.

I was hoping, too, in introducing more graphic sex into my fiction, to try to rub away, so to speak, a little more of that blurry line between the artistic and the pornographic. I have always hoped and believed that pornography would eventually become more literary and literature more pornographic. I think in my case the exercise has worked: in my new novel, Girl Crazy, I wrote a lot of sex scenes without really thinking of them as such. It’s not a sex novel, not a genre novel; it’s a serious novel. The sex scenes are just a part of the emotional narrative, just as the weather might be. They’re not meant primarily to arouse, although I won’t complain if they do. That’s a relief for a writer – it means I don’t have to worry if they have this physical effect or not. All I care about in this case is whether the reader cares or not what is going on.

I hope she does. Because I can’t imagine understanding the characters without understanding what they do in bed. In fact, I would say this about real people too.

For the rest of Russell's essay, please go here.

Review: Dance With Snakes

from a review in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, published by The Dalkey Archive:

Shocking and bizarre the book certainly is, but what makes it most interesting is the way in which violence, initially inspired by a vague personal sense of vengeance, begins to threaten the entire shakily-constructed social order. Various characters in the media, police, and government, each with his own self-promoting agenda, have a say in the novel, concocting their own theories to explain the chaos until a convincing conspiracy is created, at least in the minds of most, and the unknown herpetophile becomes a major political figure.

Brown Dwarf Toronto Launch this Wednesday

K.D. Miller will be launching her fourth book and first novel this Thursday, Wednesday, April 14th, at 7 pm, in the Reception room at St. Clement's Church in North Toronto (59 Briar Hill Ave., at the corner of Briar Hill and Duplex, one block west of Yonge, five blocks North of Eglinton). Refreshments will be served and books will be on sale. Please come out to support the launch of one of the highlights of our 2010 list.

Alan Daton Paints A. J. Somerset

The above painting is the latest in a series on Canadian writers and editors by Alan Dayton, and is at least the second of a Metcalf-Rooke winning author. Other authors and editors in this series include John Metcalf and Terry Griggs.

Over at Banjaxed, A. J.'s blog, Andrew writes:

This is the latest strange development in a series of strange developments that have developed since November 23 of last year, when the manuscript I’d been tinkering with for far longer than anyone would consider healthy won the Metcalfe-Rooke Award. Strange days, indeed: who woulda thunk anyone would do a portrait of me? For purposes other than police identification?

For the rest of his piece, please go here.

Patricia Young Reading

Over at The New Quarterly's blog, The Literary Type, Rosalynn has posted a podcast of the reading from Patricia Young's recent tour. Worth a listen, on this second Friday of Poetry Month.

Photo, once again, by A. J. Somerset, of Combat Camera fame.

Patricia Young, after a reading.

Headed to London for a quick trip on Wednesday to share a curry with house-bound David Hickey and listen to Patricia Young read as part of the Poetry London Series. A. J. Somerset was in attendance, and took some photographs at the pub after the event, including this one. He has been promoted to Biblioasis's official photographer, just so long as he promises to keep me out of his viewfinder.

A wonderful reading, great conversation and company, passable beer.

For the (brief) story behind this photograph, please go here.