March 2011: Book Buying

I hadn't been to the Kyobo bookstore in Gwanghwamun since they remodeled, so when I was in Seoul for book group on March 20, I couldn't resist a little look-see. I had been so good all month.

As part of the upgrade, they added a particularly winsome shelf that they've labelled half in English and half in Korean. The English words say "Book" and "Die", so I'm assuming the staff has amassed their selections from 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I found the first two books on the above receipt there. 84 Charing Cross Road was a nice surprise, but when I saw They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I breathed in sharply and muttered, "Omigod." BIG score. Big, big score. As Matthew Sweet put it in one of his songs, I've been waiting/and I want to have you... The woman next to me said, "I know. It's like a candy store."

Once again, it seems that Restraint is not my middle name, but looking at the particulars of my receipt, it seems that when I go into Kyobo, I am actually another person, so I can't be blamed for my dizzy behavior. This is entirely the work of "Suran Bylee".

Late To The Table

I don't know how I let this challenge almost slip by me. I'm definitely in, tying on a napkin and going for the Bon Vivant level (4-6 books). This is the prompting that I need to finally read Becka's copy of Chocolat, which I borrowed last fall. It's also a great excuse to go shopping for some of those food memoirs I've been coveting. In addition, maybe this will compel me to stop circling copies of Good Morning, Kimchi! and take the plunge. The upcoming Readathon just got a little tastier. Is this ironic or just merely funny?... it's the middle of the night, and I'm awake and wandering around in Blogland because of indigestion.

The Custom of the Country -Edith Wharton

You say you're done with The Age of Innocence. Not so fast. Just hitch up your bustle, loosen up your stays and flop right back down on that horsehair sofa. Settle back for another delectable wedge of Wharton.

The Custom of the Country (1913) was written seven years before The Age of Innocence, but takes place in the New York represented in the latter book's last chapter. The Old Guard of New York society is still hanging in, but its inexorable grip is being peeled away, slowly and tenaciously, one gloved finger at a time.

The novel opens with a beautiful girl (with a decidedly unbeautiful name) named Undine Spragg who, with her mother and father, newly rich and newly arrived from the midwestern Apex City, are perched at the fashionable Hotel Stentorian. Because her daddy is rich and she's so damn good-looking, it's only a matter of time before she marries into the big deals. Mrs. Heeney, a "society" manicurist and masseuse, counsels Undine and her mother daily to be patient about getting in: "The wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it, you can pull and pull, but you'll never get out of it again...Undine's all right. A girl like her can afford to wait...she'll have the run of the place in no time."

Undine has her sights set on Ralph Marvell, who resembles Newland Archer in that he's been abroad and fancies himself broad-minded but it is mostly a veneer; he's very much entrenched in his upbringing. His one bold step out proves to be disastrous -- he falls for Undine. Since she isn't from his world, she's practically foreign and he's charmed by it. When he meets her bumpkin-ish mother, one would think Undine would be undone, but he's charmed through and through. She meets his family as well and damns herself everytime she opens her mouth. Ralph treats her pronouncements like witty repartee, but his family is aghast.

As the set-up for the romance and the romance itself is grinding through the New York City society mill a bit too slow for Undine's liking, she tries to help it speed along by asking her father for money for new dresses and one time, she asks him to rent a box at the opera for her for the whole season. Since moving to New York (obstensibly for the single purpose of getting Undine launched into society) Mr. Spragg's been "a mite strapped" but Undine stubbornly persists and gets everything she wants. Why these common-sense plain folk meekly put up with this late Victorian-era Veruca is a mystery, but Wharton cleverly withholds that for a time, then lets it drop rather late in the novel in an offhand way.

Also arrived in New York City is a red-faced fellow from Apex City named Elmer Moffatt, whose proximity as well as his "spruced up" appearance is enough cause to make Mr. Spragg scowl nervously and Mrs. Spragg reach for her vial of digitalis. Undine encounters Moffatt at the opera when she's engaged to Ralph and can fairly smell the wedding cake baking, and she's horrified to see him. She asks Elmer (nicely) to get lost and he obliges, for the moment.

Undine snags Ralph and things go to hell in a handbasket. Even though she's now among society folk, she's still working hard to be a big splash, so she's still spending money like water. The Marvell family isn't rich, but working for a living is frowned upon, so Ralph is forced to ask his father-in-law for an allowance before the wedding. Undine and Ralph have a son and she's not terribly interested in staying home and taking care of little Paul.

Meanwhile, Undine has had her Homer Simpson "D'Oh!" moment about society not necessarily equaling tons of money, so she's already got an eye out for her next conquest, but it's a mistake she's destined to repeat. Nothing deters Undine for long, though -- she's a great one for believing in "starting over". She's got pioneer spirit, but it runs so amok that it makes amok look normal.

Undine is a fascinating and repelling creation of the Becky Sharp/Scarlett O'Hara variety. Wharton is superb with this character and even more so with poor hapless Ralph Marvell who will break your heart. The Custom of the Country is brilliant and my favorite Edith Wharton novel so far. Really good read -- I promise. Go find it.

Canadian Reading Challenge 4: The Cariboo Horses - Al Purdy

The Cariboo Horses (1965) was the book that, after 22 years of writing poetry, put Al Purdy (still styling himself as "Alfred" here) on the map -- he most deservedly won a Governor-General's Award for that collection. I feel so full of love for The Cariboo Horses and Purdy that I'm quite incoherent. I just want to type heart heart heart. Those are big ol' maple leafs dancing in my eyes.

Rather than read my burble, go here to the CBC archives and listen to an 11-minute 1967 interview. Happily, the questions are kept to a minimum and once he audibly settles into the studio chair with a little sigh, Purdy is let loose to perform three of his poems from The Cariboo Horses,"Thank God I'm Normal", the title poem and the hilarious "Homo Canadensis". The latter is a poem about a drunken stranger having some fun with patriotism at a watering-hole and demonstrates once again how Purdy could have been a contender for a short story writing crown as well.

I love Purdy's voice. He's Canada Wry and has an almost Jimmy Stewart twang. I can hear everything in his syllables and even the spaces between: Ontario, rough weather, smoke, wide open provinces, Kraft Dinner, homemade beer, hockey games. I must have more.

Blogiversary!

Happy Birthday, Blob.
This is year #7 and it's also my 600th post. Wow.

Canadian Reading Challenge: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir

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This graphic novel? picture book? by Graham Roumieu is a delightfully and grubbily illustrated no-holds-barred memoir written in Biglish (Bigfoot English) is so much fun. Nasty, silly, profane, a gross-out fest, an encyclopedia of yuck -- I can't praise it highly enough.
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Bigfoot tries hard to get by in the world and be a "forest gentleman" but the world often makes him "angry like Henry Rollins". One of his few human friends, Chet, compares himself and Bigfoot to Han Solo and Chewbacca. Bad move, Chet:
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I wake up next day with Chet scalp in mouth. Seriously, I not Chewbacca. Dude.
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In Japan, he dons a mawashi and sumo wrestles wild animals:
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Not want to toot own horn or anything, but I really good. I Harlem Globe Trotter of Sumo. Tear head off puma, throw head in garbage can 50 feet away and pretend play rest of body like guitar...walk down street everybody whisper: 'Bigfroot! Bigfroot!'

He readily admits that his luck with women isn't too great: Most of them run away, a few haul out the pepper spray, but Worst is when they do silent scream and vomit trickle down chin like hot fudge on sundae.

Even on the bad days, Bigfoot can always take comfort and pride in being one of a kind:
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...me very proud of being on endangered species list because of all privalege of being in exclusive club. Some day, I just pick up phone, call Black Rhino and shoot the shit. I can even use the word rhino and shoot in same sentence and nobody think twice. Crazy! I get away with murder cause everyone think I fragile since I last of kind and so on.

Of course, the downside of being a rarity is that Bigfoot also attracts a lot of poachers. A safari hunter who had a yen for Bigfoot's organs stalked him and studied his habits. Learning of Bigfoot's love for Count Chocula cereal, he hid in the refrigerator, disguised as a carton of milk.
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Unfortunately, for the hunter, Bigfoot had just decided to go on a low-carb diet:
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...so no Chocula. Man freeze to death in fridge. Bigfoot also have cirrhosis at time so it convenient for me use him for liver transplant donor. Bigfoot enjoy irony.

Blame it on the compost smell or maybe that family of voles nesting in his armpit, but I find him pretty damn irresistable, and can't wait to read his follow-up memoir, Bigfoot: I Not Dead.

Canadian Reading Challenge: To Paris Never Again - Al Purdy

I don't know any good living poets. But there's this tough son-of-a-bitch up in Canada that walks the line.
-Charles Bukowski-

Apparently, the hard-bitten admiration was mutual, because the first poem in Al Purdy's last poetry collection published during his lifetime is "Lament for Bukowski" in which Purdy says, "You wrote like God with a toothache" and leaves even the most casual reader of Bukowski, or anyone who's ever seen Barfly with this spot-on image:

Pop Bukowski in his coffin
dead as hell
but reaching hard for a last beer
and just about making it

The second poem in the collection, "On Mexican Highways" is a disturbing memory of being able to see the final expressions of a family in a car in the last seconds before they plunged from the trecherous road and down the mountainside. He compared it to a photo. Spooky stuff, the seeds of future nightmares.

To Paris Never Again consists largely of memories of the past that seem to have been covered in his earlier volumes, but this is no shambling about in old age -- he's revisiting these scenes expertly, eloquently. There are also meditations on approaching death and coming to grips with the passage of time:

The Clever Device
Time is a thing you invented
for a point of reference
for yourself
--after three score years
and ten of your clever device
you point to yourself
in the mirror
and say POUF
you no longer exist
and laugh
or not be able to laugh

I'm a little sorry ("soar-e", as the Canadians would pronounce it) that Al Purdy wasn't more of a fiction writer. (He wrote one novel rather late in his career, A Splinter in the Heart.) He had an endearing gift for detail and setting a scene. In "Case History", he goes back to the 1950s and early 60s, hardscrabble years when he and his family were just barely getting by. They lived in an "A-frame house, half built" and he did a variety of odd jobs: "collecting scrap iron, picking tomatoes, selling apples door-to-door". When even the odd jobs became scarce, they subsisted on "Kraft Dinner [macaroni and cheese] and cooked road-killed rabbits."
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One day, Purdy discovered the garbage dump near the Mountainview RCAF base and found discarded food rations. He brought his family back and they scavenged cans as well as "boxes of quarter-inch plywood and cans of red and black paint." This "manna" meant that not only would they be able to eat better, he would be able to make progress on the A-frame:

With literary confidence
I didn't really feel
Stashed the worksheets of a poem
inside the house overhang
along with a note
directing future discoverers
to take the sheets to the English Dept.
of any Canadian university
and receive as reward
for this unknown masterpiece
one small case of beer
or more likely
an embarassing question
"Purdy -- who he?"

In another meditative poem, "Happiness", Purdy has a lovely image about writing that echoed exactly how I feel about reading his work and just about reading and books in general:

Happiness
the writing itself
the words exploring
all my veins and arteries

Then, there's that exquisite grappling again with life and time and what it all means:

--and by this time
it has become plain to me
that I'm not writing about happiness
at all but the puzzle of being alive

Purdy is also generous in making sure that people who helped him get credit. During the road-killed rabbit and Kraft Dinner days, there was an editor, Bob Weaver, who evidently saw promise in him and other struggling poets. "Do you need any money, Al?/Just send me some poems/I'll make sure you get the cheque fast." Purdy remarks, "Bob Weaver was Santa."

I don't know if he ever got any thanks
or for that matter wanted any
for making the connection
that these rather scruffy human beings
with all the faults of everyone else
were responsible (though very rarely)
for something that leaped up from the printed page
dazzled your brain
and fireflies whizzed in the cerebellum.

Another Carveresque short story masquerading as a poem, "Aphrodite At Her Bath" takes the reader back to Montreal, 1957 and relates an odd incident. Purdy's wife's cousin, a beautiful young woman is newly married and newly pregnant. She doesn't want the baby and has heard that the combination of beer and a hot bath would induce a miscarriage. Purdy's wife goes off to work and leaves the two there alone, the cousin sitting in the bath and Purdy fetching more and more of his home brew. They're both getting sloshed, then abruptly, Purdy flashes-foward. Aphrodite is sixty now, he tells us, with two kids:

And now the venue changes
from Montreal to Sidney BC
Anno Domoni 1995
near forty years later
where I sit writing
these words on paper
trying to avoid the eyes
of quite a large crowd
of pro-life denonstrators
gathered threateningly
around this poem.

One of the last poems in To Paris Never Again is about Marius Barbeau (1885-1969), a Canadian ethnologist and folklorist. Barbeau spent years during his career living among the Native American tribes. One evening, when Barbeau was older and largely retired from field work, Purdy asked him about Tsimsyan drumming dances. Instead of telling, Barbeau said he'd show him. Purdy writes that Barbeau really got into it and forgot everything, "focused on only the mountain at the end of the sky." Purdy admits that at the time "I was embarrassed for him/but now I'm embarrassed/that I was embarrassed/Barbeau was one of the ancient rememberers."

I first became acquainted with Al Purdy's work in his 1984 collection Piling Blood. I'm now reading 1965's The Cariboo Horses and meeting the younger Al(fred) Purdy, with smiles and shocks of recognition, a growing affection and that deepening sense of sadness readers get when they freshly discover someone who is long gone. I want to know all the incarnations of Purdy, all the way back to 1944 and his debut collection, The Enchanted Echo.

Purdy died in 2000, three years after To Paris Never Again was published. His stuff (I don't mean "stuff" trivially or dismissively. I mean it in the baseball sense, in which a pitcher is lauded for his "stuff" -- his talent and skills) makes me wish I could have met him and shared a glass of his home brew.

I'm really grateful to my Canadian friend, Jim Cooper, who is sharing his Al Purdy collection with me. I'm also glad that John Mutford continues to host the Canadian Book Challenge. Wish I could give my thanks in the shape of a poem, guys.

February 2011: Book Buying

After acquiring a huge load of (I lost count after 30) books last month for free, you're probably thinking: No. She could not have possibly gone out and bought books. Well, of course I could and did. You must be thinking of someone else. I almost made it through the month without opening my wallet, but books happen. Two of them this time:

1. The Sum and Total of Now - Don Robertson. I bought Robertson's wonderful The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread back in April, 2008 and gobbled it down almost as fast as the object in the title. I never meant for three years to pass before buying the rest of the trilogy. One night about a week ago, I woke up with the sweaty dreadful conviction that the new edition of The Sum and Total of Now was going to become as difficult to find and as expensive as its hardback ancestor from the late 1960s. To hell with that. I made my move.

2. The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened - Don Robertson. Bird is the word. A body in motion tends to remain in motion. Plus, my Inner Completeist Bookworm was clamoring for me to complete the trilogy. I had to. Buying the second book and not the third would have been like playing only the first three notes of Beethoven's 5th.

I suppose I should feel ashamed of my book gluttony, but when I think of those two books winging their way across the ocean to be with me, I can't help but feel pleased. In fact, I would like nothing more than to set up a lawn chair in the lobby of my apartment building and spend the days with my eyes trained on the wall of mailboxes until they arrive.