Each piece in Anne Carson’s Short Talks is a startling gem – some disorienting, some intimate, some wry, some wistful, many bright and impish. My favourite, combining almost all of those states, is:

This volume, slender in multiple dimensions, will be so easy to go back to again and again.

Thank you to Brick Books for providing a review copy of Short Talks, by Anne Carson.

It’s actually fairly easy to compose a review – be it for a book, concert, what have you – for something that didn’t meet expectations or just didn’t really click for you. You can clinically delineate the disappointing elements or ingredients, sum it up, be done with it. No joy in that – perhaps no point in that – but there you go.

It’s even fairly straightforward to compose a review for something that didn’t make the grade, at least for you, but in which you try, however painfully, to say something constructive or useful. There is maybe some grim satisfaction in at least offering suggestions for improving the experience next time out. Maybe the artist will see your review and take note, and/or someone else will take note, and/or you’ll adjust your expectations accordingly or just not make a return visit to that artist’s offerings, life being too short and all that.

And of course, light, happy, effusive reviews for the delightful … well, are clearly delightful, to revel in, to share with others, to be part of the collective joy.

What hurts and doesn’t work and won’t come out right is when you try to write something about a work that you love, when you know quite rightly that not everyone will love it or care … or should, because you know it isn’t for everyone …. and especially when you know it is the last thing you will hear from a beloved artist. So I’m just going to write what has been percolating for weeks and weeks since I rather unwillingly finished the last page of this book, and be done with it, however inadequate it’s likely to be.

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace is the author’s most intimate and courageous work in a body of work characterized by much intimacy and courage, viewed both from what is within the book’s covers and viewed externally, in terms of its place in Wallace’s oeuvre and in the context of what happened while the work was in progress. When editor Michael Pietsch gathered and attempted to shape what his friend had left behind upon his death, one can only imagine the intimacy and courage attendant in that unanticipated and daunting mission. While a nascent bone structure of plot, theme and character is clearly evident, even the final product with which Pietsch leaves us is not and couldn’t possibly be fully formed. Interestingly, it doesn’t feel like it needed editing and paring, but likely as if it would have blossomed and grown even more complex, but would have had more elements come full circle, connect and resolve in what Wallace would have considered and delivered as the finished work.

The Pale King is ostensibly about the backgrounds and somewhat intertwined experiences of a cross section of employees of the Internal Revenue Service in Peoria, Illinois. Through their experiences, the reader learns about and, if the reader can bear to stick with it, absorbs the intensity and seeming futility of boredom, especially boredom bred of layers and layers of unquestioned rules, regulations and process. Amazingly, that boredom somehow becomes transcendent, counterpointed by a sense of the nobility of contending with boredom for seemingly greater causes, personal, social and even spiritual.

I was astonished at how Wallace made dealing with boredom so heroic, poignant and spellbinding. The standout sequence featuring IRS co-workers Shane Drinion and Meredith Rand is hypnotic, because Drinion is so arrestingly zen, compassionate and invested, listening so attentively to the story of Rand’s troubles, even though it was tedious, repetitious and self-absorbed. But it was still an absorbing sequence. And it showed what compassion and incredible attention to detail Wallace had himself. Perhaps it was that same intense sympathy and empathy that – who knows – drove him to what he did. So, the whole reading experience was both gorgeous and immensely bittersweet on numerous levels.

This is by no means the book with which readers should try to introduce themselves to David Foster Wallace – that could be anything from This is Water (which you can digest in a relative blink online), Consider the Lobster, possibly even Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. However, it is a wrenching and essential, albeit sadly premature last installment for Wallace devotees.

See also:

THE PALE KING: Monologues From The Unfinished Novel By David Foster Wallace
(a PEN benefit from April, 2011)

A Reunion with Boredom, by Charles Simic
(from New York Review of Books, August, 2011)

Guy Vanderhaeghe’s works such as The Englishman’s Boy and The Last Crossing have set the gold standard in Canadian historical fiction. The respected author mused recently about the challenge of letting readers know where history leaves off and whole cloth story begins:

“… There are many people who make the argument that there is very little distinction between history and fiction, because they are both authorial constructions. I do see a very great difference between the two.

“History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt. It allows contemporary people to under what it was like in another time. The second argument I would make is that history, as it is often written, makes people think that history was predetermined, that no other outcome was possible. Historical fiction inserts the idea that individual choices matter.”(1)

Katherine Govier tackles this very dichotomy in her extensively researched and exquisitely crafted The Ghost Brush, and as such, helps to define that gold standard. She does that by vividly raising one individual from the footnotes of another individual’s historical record. It’s history turned to fiction, then provocatively and not improbably turned back into history – and it’s unforgettable.

Katsushika Hokusai was a revered, prolific Japanese painter and printmaker of the Edo period, when Japan was ruled by the Shogun military dictatorship. Hokusai worked hard and managed to comparatively thrive both personally and artistically during that largely repressive rule, producing an astonishing range of work from the late 1700s to mid 1800s. He is perhaps best known for the print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the iconic, still prescient image The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

Hokusai was an astonishingly accomplished, innovative and brave artist and vibrant human being in his own right. However, Govier forges an even more captivating tale out from under Hokusai’s formidable shadow, that of the story of his equally if not possibly more gifted daughter, Oei, the titular presence of Govier’s singular novel.

Against the rich backdrop of 19th century metropolitan Edo, with its fascinating districts and social strata, Govier focuses on the thorny, symbiotic but ultimately loving collaboration and partnership between father and daughter. It becomes increasingly evident that Hokusai’s accomplishments reasonably and realistically exceed his age, health, lifestyle, abilities and inclinations, and there is confusion about who is signing what signature to various works. The fundamental mystery of Oei is whether or not she willingly subsumes her skills – her ghost brush – to the will of her brilliant, domineering father, to the constraints and expectations of Japanese society, or to her own ideas about achieving a perverse kind of freedom out of the spotlight. As one outsider to both the relationship and the social context observes, after meeting Oei:

Take Japanese women, for instance. The rare sophisticated woman ran a family inn or store. Others, earthier, were skilled in weaving or silk production. But even the most independent of them withered in the presence of a male relative. Women, he observed, had no social context of their own. They rarely appeared alone in public; it was positively Arab that way. Here was the greatest puzzle: there appeared to be no coercion. Women were willing partners in their own invisibility. Why was the Japanese woman so dependent, her very existence defined by obligation?

And yet, as seen today, why was the opposite evident, at least this once?

While the father-daughter relationship and collaboration is central to The Ghost Brush, Govier also introduces other relationships relative to Oei that to some extent crack the enigma and round her out as an intriguing but also believable character and singular woman. It’s not her relationships with other men – an off-kilter, brief marriage, various lovers – but Oei’s connection over the years to the feisty courtesan Shino that truly bring Oei to life, both setting her choices and perceived shortcomings in relief against a contrasting but equally strong female figure. Interestingly, the Oei/Shino relationship reminded this reader of another recent pairing of female/feminine characters offering each other both a counterpoint and counterbalancing support: the relationship of Wayne and Wallis in Annabel, by Kathleen Winter. Both Oei and Wayne exist in the shadows of strong father figures, struggle with their respective identities on one level or another, and find friendship, support and guidance from a figure who is sister and/or mother and/or full or partial alter ego.

Govier has acknowledged that she strove to use “fiction as restoration” to create Oei’s story. She has seamlessly blended her considerable research and a profound understanding to not only create a thoughtful and memorable story, but to subtly and firmly force a reconsideration of the original historical account.

As Vanderhaeghe points out, effective historical fiction posits that “individual choices matter”. In this case, the real Oei’s individual choices mattered as they affected her place in history and how it was interpreted and presented. Govier gives us the wonderful opportunity with The Ghost Brush to also make our own individual choices as readers in interpreting how just and accurate history was with Oei’s story and true accomplishments.

Notes

1. Guy Vanderhaeghe quoted in A Good Guy, by Allan Casey, in Quill & Quire, September 2011

See also:

Hokusai article in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai

The Ghost Brush web site
http://www.theghostbrush.com

Thank you to the author and to HarperCollins Canada for providing a supplementary copy of The Ghost Brush, by Katherine Govier that includes the afterword. I’m also grateful for my original copy of the trade paperback version of The Ghost Brush, acquired through the online Slave Lake Book Auction, generously donated by the author,

Rin Tin Tin, The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean, is a book that will satisfy a variety of readers in a variety of ways. Orlean has researched with heart and commitment the story of US army corporal Lee Duncan, a lonely young man who discovers a litter of abandoned German Shepherd puppies in rural France near the end of World War I. He goes to great lengths to transport two of the puppies back to US with him, one of the puppies does not survive beyond her arrival on American soil, but the surviving puppy goes on to become the genesis of the Hollywood and television legend Rin Tin Tin.

The story of Lee and Rinty – their devotion to each other, their collective determination to succeed, their collaboration and dedication to an unusual type of performance craft and most importantly, their profound bond – is a sufficiently absorbing and heartwarming tale unto itself. On that basis alone, Orlean offers a book that will captivate readers who are pet owners and animal lovers.

But Orlean takes that story as a starting point for examining and meditating on much more. Thematically, she muses on and considers how some lose families and familial identification and forge new families and identities (as was the case with Lee Duncan), and how some live with animals and make them part of uniquely constituted definitions of family. Through Lee Duncan and subsequent dog trainers, breeders, fans and professional and amateur curators and archivists who contributed to the ongoing Rin Tin Tin story, Orlean scrutinizes, sometimes in person and close at hand, how some ascribe to animals the traits and qualities we aspire to, and how many seek to fill what is lacking in their lives and relationships with companion animals. On that basis, Orlean offers a book that will appeal to readers seeking a non-judgmental exploration of the ways in which people find professional, personal and even spiritual fulfillment.

Eventually, the physical reality of one man and one dog, who obviously couldn’t live forever, ascends into something bigger. Rin Tin Tin becomes a franchise (a series of dogs, some blood related, some not, take up the Rin Tin Tin name), a trademark, a brand, an idealization and a legend. Orlean offers interesting and even instructive insights into the entertainment and advertising realms.

Orlean makes clear throughout Rin Tin Tin that the ideas of continuity and enduring memories and values developed in the book had personal significance for her. She is a strong presence and even a participant in the later chapters of the Rin Tin Tin story, both confirming her devotion to and connection with the subject, but perhaps also provoking the questions:  Does Orlean in fact bite off more than she can chew thematically with Rin Tin Tin? Does she get too involved in the story, perhaps not leaving space for the reader to independently interpret and react to how different players in the story – including Orlean – are variously invested in the legend?

We all have our own motivations for being drawn to a character and entity like Rin Tin Tin and to a book chronicling his story and enduring value. Susan Orlean provides a range of intriguing entry points into a still fascinating story that will appeal to many.

The following is a brief interview with Susan Orlean about her experiences researching Rin Tin Tin, The Life and the Legend:

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing a review copy of Rin Tin Tin, The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean.

Appointment in Samarra vividly traces Julian English’s calamitous and seemingly inexplicable path of destruction in 72 hours during the Christmas holidays of 1930. In his early thirties and from an affluent family, college educated, manager of a thriving Cadillac dealership in small town Pennsylvania, married to an attractive and admired woman – there would seem to be nothing significant to explain English’s reckless behaviour and decisions that precipitiously eradicate his professional, personal and even spiritual footing in a matter of days. Even more so than Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 novel that captures a doomed character’s similarly compressed and irrevocable slide into oblivion, Appointment in Samarra is a breathless read, where one simply can’t look away until it’s over.

O’Hara’s novel showed great daring for its time, with respect to language and subject matter, touching on everything from alcohol consumption to sexual relations, marital infidelity, criminal activities and even suggestive clothing. The narration and dialogue are brisk and jazzy, albeit somewhat dated, but still vibrantly capture the idiom of the Prohibition and pre Great Depression era. The propulsive action of the story – wherein English lurches from one social gaffe to increasingly more disastrous, perverse behaviours – while compelling in its own right, almost overshadows O’Hara’s equal daring with more experimental themes and stylistic approaches. These include the suggestions that English’s bewildering flameout is somehow predestined, suggested by the novel’s epigraph, hinted at in references to English’s grandfather and even prefigured by the time frame of the novel, where there are mentions of the looming economic and social storm clouds of the Depression. As well, O’Hara employs shifting voices and points of view, and even some striking stream of consciousness narration.

Finally, O’Hara brings the novel to a startling non sequitur of a conclusion that drives home a memorable, almost existential lesson: the irony of how one’s misdemeanours might never be forgotten, but one’s essence and value can vaporize from memory as soon as one is gone.

Norman Bray is a middle-aged, underemployed actor who perhaps is self-deluded as a professional skill and defence … or perhaps is just self-deluded. As career, home and relationships all unravel, events from his past start to bubble up for re-examination. As circumstances change more and more rapidly for Norman, does he learn and change personally? It’s hard to tell as this acerbic, at times funny, at times troubling story unfolds. It’s that “hard to tell” element that is the most authentic and lifelike aspect of this at times infuriating but always intriguing, surprisingly affecting book.

None of the multiple meanings of “the cat’s table” suggest positions in the room, in the world or in life that hold particular esteem or prestige. However, all meanings hint that secretly (or perhaps not-so-secretly!) that’s where we know we’ll gain the most insights, meet the most interesting characters and have the most fun. Certainly, it’s a reverse, perverse privileged position and where you want to be to embark on the latest adventure in storytelling spearheaded by the incomparable Michael Ondaatje.

In sea voyaging parlance, the cat’s table is the polar opposite of the coveted and perhaps ostentatious Captain’s Table, where anyone who aspires to be anyone wants to be and be seen amongst passengers on a cruise, in company of the head of the vessel and voyage. The cat’s table is the humble dining spot for those lowly passengers – maybe not affluent, influential or glamorous, likely young, often carrying some kind of social stigma – with whom no one else is interested in keeping company.

The German expression “Katzentisch” (quite literally “cat’s table”) was also a small low table at which well-heeled people fed their cats or small dogs. (1) Such a table was situated in the dining room, but in a corner away from the dining table. Again, it connotes something at a remove, although perhaps it was a somewhat more exalted position for an actual cat to be at a cat’s table than a human being.

Finally, the cat’s table was and is synonymous with the kids’ table, a dining room tradition still common today at family holiday gatherings, where children are seated at a table separate from and often shorter, humbler and featuring only an abbreviated dining selection from that of the grand dining furniture and repast of the adults. It’s considered a rite of passage and maturity to move up to the adults’ table. At the same time, the most fun, mayhem and mischief can be found and is tolerated at the kids’ table. Notably, adults who join the kids’ table are often remembered most fondly (that would be game-for-anything Uncle John in our family) and are clearly most able to throw aside inhibitions and prejudices to hang with the truly most entertaining crowd.

Ondaatje’s young protagonist, Michael, encounters the cat’s table in almost all of these forms during the course of an eventful ocean voyage in the 1950s. Shunted for not fully articulated or understood reasons from his family in Ceylon to his mother awaiting him in England, 11-year-old Michael balances the freedom of a comparatively unsupervised (except for perfunctory check-ins with a couple of ostensible but largely indifferent guardians) three-week adventure on an ocean liner with feelings of rootlessness, disconnection, loneliness and disaffection in the intriguing, bustling and highly socially stratified of that closed world. Michael finds his niche in that world fairly quickly, and perceptively and precociously assesses its hidden worth: while the Captain’s Table was where self-important people puffed up their dubious significance, the truly worthy people and experiences were at the polar opposite of the dining hall and the social spectrum.

Or is young Michael precocious? While The Cat’s Table shimmers with the freshness of a child’s wide-eyed and openhearted perspective, it is filtered through the sophistication and acquired emotional agendas and baggage of an adult, and is also reframed through the eyes and ears of poets – both Michael the protagonist’s eventual vocation and, of course, Michael Ondaatje’s. At times, it isn’t clear if a given episode or its interpretation is that of the child, the adult or the imaginative artist weaving it all in a new fashion. That’s both part of The Cat’s Table mystery and charm, and sometimes a very minor source of disorientation, possibly germane to a story where both the child and the adult might not entirely know what was going on.

Michael’s alliance with two young fellow passengers, Ramadhin and Cassius, seems initially to be one of convenience, not allegiance. That is, the three boys are handy partners in crime and backups, and egg each other on getting into the varieties of tempting mischief unfettered and parent-less children can get into from the engine rooms to the decks to the staterooms of a largely and surprisingly unprotected environment. As their adventures unfold and the three boys navigate this realm of no parents, lost parents, surrogate parents, and various broken, reconstituted and newly realized families, they come to mean a great deal to each other, which Michael much more fully appreciates as an adult.

The Cat’s Table would have been enchanting as just a series of character sketches and picaresque vignettes, culminating in an affecting reassessment as an adult of the connections made as a child. That a genuine mystery emerges during that short but momentous voyage – gravitating around a menacing, shackled prisoner who is only let out under highly and unusually protected conditions at night – is a splendid, intriguing bonus.

If The Cat’s Table is not Ondaatje’s best novel yet (oh, but I think it is …), it is certainly his most straightforwardly told and emotionally accessible story. It’s a yearning tribute with an almost fairytale-like aura to the memories of awe that pervade our dreams (and nightmares and fears), and the memories of sometimes unlikely affiliation and love and what we mistake as love that pervade and haunt our hearts, guide us or sometimes lead us astray.

Notes

1. Definition of Katzentisch
http://www.katzentisch.com/2009/07/what-is-katzentisch.html

Thank you to the Alfred A. Knopf representative at the June, 2011 American Library Association Conference and Exhibit, who provided a U.S. advance reader’s edition of The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondaatje.

Here are the books I’ve read so far in 2011, with links where they exist to books that I’ve reviewed. It’s a competition with no one but myself, but it is always interesting to reflect halfway through the year where one is at with one’s reading, both quantitatively and qualitatively. I could perhaps have read more thus far, but I’m really liking my reading year so far. How about you?

Braydon Beaulieu and Janet Somerville have been reading up a storm so far in 2011 – theirs are engrossing and impressive lists! Tweet me your list @bookgaga, and I would be happy to link to it here.

1. Patient Frame
   by Steven Heighton

2. The Water Rat of Wanchai
   by Ian Hamilton

3. Better Living Through Plastic Explosives
   by Zsuzsi Gartner

4. The Canterbury Trail
   by Angie Abdou

5. Pigeon English
   by Stephen Kelman

6. The Year of Broken Glass
   by Joe Denham

7. Irma Voth
   by Miriam Toews

8. The Bird Sisters
   by Rebecca Rasmussen

9. A Visit from the Goon Squad
   by Jennifer Egan

10. Lookout
    by John Steffler

11. The Guilty Plea
    by Robert Rotenberg

12. Up Up Up
    by Julie Booker

13. The Empty Family
    by Colm Toibin

14. Ossuaries
    by Dionne Brand

15. Skippy Dies
    by Paul Murray

16. The Cat’s Table
    by Michael Ondaatje

Currently in progress:

• Voltaire’s Bastards
  by John Ralston Saul

• The Mill on the Floss
  by George Eliot

• Offshore
  by Penelope Fitzgerald (rereading)