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.

What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Charlie Foran has stepped in for a spell at Yann Martel's What is Stephen Harper Reading?, and his selection for this round is Ray Smith's CENTURY. Calling it "A Book Still Patiently Waiting its Readers," Foran writes:

Books, like people, can get overlooked. I’d like to use this slot, so generously offered by Yann, to tell you about a wonderful Canadian work of fiction that still awaits real discovery. Ray Smith’s Century first appeared back in 1986, and didn’t cause much fuss. It had a decent publisher, and Smith had already released two books that had won him a small but noisy crowd of admirers: Lord Nelson Tavern and the humbly-titled Cape Breton is the Thought-Control Centre of Canada. These were charming, off-the-wall fictions, of a cheerful piece with the prankster stuff then emerging from the coastal regions of the United States. Smith, a Cape Bretoner exiled to Montreal, had his own coastal vibe, but it wasn’t stoner/surfer cool: it was late night FM radio, chill and iconoclastic, joshing of mainstream tastes with bite but no malice.

Still, Century didn’t launch. It took Ray Smith a long time to finish, and it wasn’t as easy in its literary skin as his earlier work: more moody and anxious, less sanguine about the triumph of light over dark. It was also set mostly in Europe, and spanned a near century in just 165 compacted, almost pointillist pages. Things had changed in Canadian culture and literature in the interim, and Smith responded by, in a sense, going even further off-shore than the island where he comes from (and now lives again, in retirement). Whatever Century was, it wasn’t “Can Lit,” as the impulse or industry was being dubbed.

I called it a “work of fiction” for a reason. The book, which has six parts linked by a single character and regular tonal overlaps, could be classified as a novel of the, yikes, post-modern variety. But, besides having no interest in any desiccated academic trope, the stories are all self-contained, as in a collection. Even Smith’s one discernable theme—how art must embody the morality largely absent from a corrupted world—isn’t writ in BLOCK LETTERS, so everyone will get it. Century defies categories and shrugs off expectations. Look, says the text, of course this isn’t life; of course it’s just a book. Allow these elegantly-arranged words to fall over you, confetti at a wedding, and then decide what the marriage is comprised of.

For the rest of Charlie's letter, please go here.

Gesundheit

Over at the Contemporary Poetry Review, Jason Guriel has an excellent analysis of Robyn Sarah's poem Gesundheit, from October's Pause for Breath.

Montreal’s Robyn Sarah also presents an exemplary model for the painstaking poet. Like Wiman, Sarah publishes little but what she does publish tends to be fully realized (which means you get the feeling, reading her words, that she can account for the choice that led to every one of them) and necessary (her poems stopper a gap, a need). In retrospect, it was necessary for Wiman to draw our attention to that flock of birds, wasn’t it?, and in “Gesundheit,” published in Maisonneuve, last summer, Sarah draws our attention to the banal business of sneezing, perhaps as no other poet has:

Gesundheit

Orgasm of the nose

the sneeze

builds to hairtrigger pitch

and sweet release.

Echoes itself, betimes.

Atchoo . . . aaaatchoo! (it rhymes),

or comes in multiple,

whole strings of sneeze.

Sneeze ladylike, in a hanky.

Sneeze workmanlike, in a grab

of the grubby shirt.

Or (caught unawares)

sneeze a grand unprotected sneeze

in open air.

Some with a toothpick or a twist

of tissue, tease a sneeze,

a private trick to clear the sinuses.

A sneeze rattles the face.

Loosens the mucus.

Paves the way for the trumpeting

honk and blow—

A pepper sneeze, a pollen sneeze,

a feather sneeze, all alike

pledge to untickle in a rush,

give leave to raise

a just-a-minute finger

before succumbing to the flush—

a microsecond’s uncontrol,

a dispensation to go blotto

with impunity,

going where it takes us,

brakeless,

making the noisy noise

it makes us make.

A sneeze bobs the head.

Single or double bob,

or strings of pigeon bob,

brings blessings down on it.

That “grab / of the grubby shirt” is a delight as is the extraordinary, sonically intricate last verse paragraph, whose repetitions and internal rhymes bear the reader irresistibly along as if she, too, were committed to a sneeze from which she couldn’t pull out, a launch sequence that’s “brakeless, / making the noisy noise / it makes us make.” Unlike Wiman’s poem, though, which carefully rolls out an argument, Sarah’s poem is all perception, choosing to approach its subject from multiple angles. In the process, “Gesundheit” catalogues more sneezes than we knew existed, like an ambitious, unblinking anthropologist let loose among previously undocumented behaviors. The result is a showy, shameless, but, finally, wonderful splurging of real talent.

the rest of the essay, which looks at poems by Steven Heighton, Christian Wiman, Derek Walcott and John Ashberry, can be found here.

There is also an excellent essay in the Winter 2010 edition of ARC on Echoes of November by Zach Wells. Check it out.

Friday Funnies

Many of you may have tripped on this glossary long before now. A first time for me. Enjoy.

ADVANCE: A secret code signalling to the marketing department whether or not to promote a title.

ADVANCE COPY: A bound book that when opened by an editor will instantly expose an embarrassing mistake.

AGENT: An intellectual property and contract law specialist who is unable to pass the bar.

ANTHOLOGY: An artifact that has been superseded by stacks of velo-bound photocopied pages, usually unnumbered and with text cut off at the edges, known as CLASS READERS.

AUTHOR: A large class of individuals (approximately three times as numerous as readers) serving a promotional function in book marketing or providing make-work for editorial interns.

AUTHOR BIO: A piece of creative writing whose length varies inversely with the attractiveness of the person depicted in the AUTHOR PHOTO.

AUTHOR PHOTO: Pictorial fiction. Authors always choose photos that emphasize that quality in which they feel most deficient.

AUTHOR TOUR: A hazing ritual intended to make authors compliant to their publishers.

AUTHOR’S DISCOUNT: A penalty charged authors who are unable to wheedle sufficient masses of free copies, purportedly for the purpose of promotion, from their editors.

To see from B-Z please visit Tom's site, here.

Q&Q review of Nieve

Robert Wiersma reviews the new dark fantasy YA novel by Terry Griggs in this month's Q&Q:

Terry Griggs’ genuinely creepy new YA novel will thrill young readers while giving their parents nightmares.
Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Michael Ende’s Momo, the story follows feisty, independent Nieve, whose parents are freelance weepers ... Nieve possesses a ceaseless flow of dangers and perils, and yet Griggs accomplishes this headlong narrative drive without sacrificing character development or emotional complexity. It’s a tremendously visual and visceral novel, with bodies aplenty (including those of babies) and human beings transformed into various household items (a chair, for example, provides a crucial clue to what’s going on).
Over the course of the novel, Griggs develops a thorough and compelling mythos, one both original and drawn from traditional lore, while also creating a realistic and immersive world. Given that Nieve is the first novel in a projected trilogy, this is crucial. Readers will want, desperately, to return to Nieve’s world, and the sooner, the better.

For the full review, go pick up a copy of April's Q&Q!

We Are Not Farm Teams

Over at That Shakespearean Rag, Steven Beattie has posted an interview with Rebecca Rosenblum on why she chose to stay with Biblioasis for her second book.

Rebecca Rosenblum is the author of the 2008 collection Once. That book, published by the small Ontario-based press Biblioasis, won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and received almost universally positive reviews. In the wake of her success with her debut, Rosenblum was in a perfect position to jump ship to a larger house. But, for her second book, the upcoming collection The Big Dream, the author decided to stay with Biblioasis. In its ongoing series inquiring into the gulf between large and small presses, TSR asked Rosenblum about her decision to remain with her originating publisher, and her feelings about how her association with Biblioasis has benefited her as an author.

Why did you choose to stay with Biblioasis for your second book?

1) Because I had a really good editorial relationship with John Metcalf – he pushed me, but only in the directions I wanted to go, and it was exciting to be challenged like that. I think the book is better than it would have been – much better – without that relationship.

2) Because I liked the “book-creation process,” for lack of a better term. I got to lay down a piece of art on a table with Dan (Wells, publisher) and John and say, can this be my cover? And the answer was yes. A lot of work was done to make sure I didn’t have to cut the book’s length at all. The copy edit was solid. I like the title page design. These things matter.

3) Because the promotion of Once exceeded my expectations. I was really thrilled with the review coverage Once got – more like shocked, really. I got to go to a few festivals, I got to be on the radio, do readings, do interviews. I am very much aware that not every unknown author of short stories gets to do this stuff. Some of it was luck, sure, but some of it was because Biblioasis worked really hard for me.

Did you ever consider the bigger payday you might have received from a larger house?

No. I mean, I should make it clear that I think I was paid decently for Once and will be for The Big Dream. My agent, Samantha Haywood, negotiated the latter deal and was very positive about it – she would never have let me sign anything inappropriate. Beyond that, no, money was not a factor.

For the rest of the interview please go here.

Flying The Coop

Mark Medley has an interesting article on the ecology of the small press/large press divide, for which I was briefly interviewed last week. You can read it here.

I've been trying to post a response to the article for an hour now and have failed. I'll post it, for now, here. If any readers out there can figure out how to add a comment to the article on my behalf, my neurotic side would be greatly appreciative. Maybe it would lessen the tingling sensation in my left arm.

My response:

A Couple of things:

One: Cordelia Strube was never a Biblioasis author. She is, in fact, currently a Coach House author, which is why I thought of her, to act as a counter to the idea suggested here that movement is only one way. It is far more fluid than that. Strube is a hell of a writer who has worked with both larger and smaller presses, for reasons that may not always be entirely about the money. The other authors mentioned, and the point I tried to make in doing so, is that many of these writers switch back and forth between larger and smaller presses, depending on the project. Think of Leon Rooke, one of your Canada Also Reads candidates, moving from Thomas Allen to Biblioasis to Porcupine's Quill to Thomas Allen to (in 2010) Exile.

Two: We are not farm teams and this isn't baseball. It doesn't do justice to what actually happens in publishing -- see above -- and it does not do justice to the authors on our lists. The quality of play on a farm team is almost always far below that of the majors: that just isn't necessarily the case here. In baseball, if you're one of the best, you move up to the majors, at least in part because excellence in the sport and commercial reward are very closely aligned. It just does not always work that way in publishing. Everyone, especially in the industry, or reporting on it, knows this. It's simply not a question of a writer hitting their peak, as Mark suggests, then leaving. And how we judge "excellence" is not always the same. Are we speaking commercially? Aesthetically? There's much more at play here than the quality of the work. No self-respecting publisher would view their press as a farm team. It's a tired cliche, and an extremely disrespectful one. Coach House, Cormorant, The Porcupine's Quill ... they're just damn good presses, with proud histories, who have made lasting contributions to Canadian literature and culture, and for frankly often very little reward. Perhaps it's time that they get some.

3. No one begrudges the writers their money. Though I've yet to read the Waterproof Bible, Superheroes is evidence enough Andrew is wonderful. I'm sure his new book is as well. But he also strikes me as a writer who might, for a variety of reasons, be back with Coach House or some other press at another time. And the gap between what smaller independent presses can offer and what the larger presses are willing to offer in many cases is getting to the point of being negligible, especially for literary fiction. This is just more evidence, as I see it, that the "ecology" of this particular issue is a bit more complex than Sam Hiyate and company would have you believe, and that there's a lot more here which needs to be explored far more rigorously. No one begrudges writers their money, or their moving on (or, for that matter, their return). But if you focus TOO MUCH on following the money you risk missing out on the larger (& quite possibly more interesting) story.

Dan Wells
Biblioasis

Dances With Snakes Explores Humanity's Grotesqueries

If there is a truth in Horacio Castellanos Moya's novel Dance With Snakes, it is a dirty one: a truth about the grotesque possibilities and misunderstanding of humanity.

The book opens in confusion. A mysterious yellow car has been parked in front of a housing complex in San Salvador, El Salvador. Intrigued by the vehicle and its lone, dirty occupant, the unemployed and largely unemployable sociology graduate Eduardo Sosa begins talking to the man. After an incident between the man (Jacinto Bustillo) and the police, Sosa spends the day with him, eventually assuming his identity in the book's most traumatic passage.

From this point, the novel assumes its dreadful arc of misunderstanding and violence. The new Bustillo takes up residence in the old yellow Chevrolet, in which he finds four snakes. He is soon accepted by the snakes -- whom2 he names -- and unleashes terror on the city.

The violence begins with a simple lack of understanding between some mall security guards and the ever-drinking Bustillo/Sosa. It spirals out of control and blooslust is incited as the snakes reek havoc in the downtown market. After learning the truth behind the original Don Jacinto's downfall, the new Bustillo seeks vengeance on those responsible. Savagely beaten by one of Don Jacinto's destroyers and his associates, the new Bustillo, lying on the ground near a gas station recovering from his injuries, is peed on by a drunk youth. He retaliates.

Finally, while trying to find a place to lie low while the police search the city for him, the new Bustillo kills a rich family their security guards and maids in their home in an affluent neighbourhood.

By the end of the first chapter and its 50 pages, it is apparent that there is no particular reason the new Bustillo kills so many people.

Castellanos Moya is able to strip raw the chaotic effects of violence across a society by switching narrators throughout, using different characters in the second and third chapter. By the fourth, he returns to Bastillo/Sosa.

The second chapter is narrated by the deputy police commissioner responsible for stopping the outbreak of violence, which he must do while dealing with pressure from his superiors and the media, as well as with the unknown factors of his own staff and the crimes' unpredictable nature. It originally appears that the high-profile lady killed in the first attack just happened to wind up in the wrong place, but when her even higher-profile brother and his family are the victims of the final assault in the rich part of town, the serious question of whether this is a political crime is again raised.

A journalist narrates the penultimate chapter, which dutifully captures the political leadership and public's insecurity and penchant for reactionary behaviour. Neither the deputy commissioner nor the journalist are able to grasp the truth of the events.

Returning finally to the original narrator and his erotic relationship to the violence he has unleashed, Castellanos Moya skillfully captures the problems of perception that both make violence possible and exacerbate its effects.

Though graphic and possibly disgusting, Dance With Snakes strips bare with black humour the disconcerting capacities buried within humanity -- which all too often in the author's native South America have emerged to widespread misery. As an allegorical analysis of South American violence, this novel's incision cuts very close to the discouraging truth.