Who Knows?

by Joshua Whitehead

“Who am I now?”

This is a question I’ve always asked myself.  This notion of ‘whoness’ always being a haunting thing that contradicts my expectations, alongside the temporal check-in of the ‘now,’ like a perpetual measuring tape that situates me between life’s fundamental hurdles.  And thinking on this in all of its depressing isolation — my next entry I’ll try and write with people, I promise — I channel Walt Whitman, who, very often, makes me feel a whole lot better about my life (I often correlate it to his Santa Claus beard).  In asking the question of ‘Who am I now?’ I offer up a quotation by Whitman in which he so confidently boasts, “Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large — I contain multitudes.”  Perfect.  I feel well.  Thanks Walt. 

I’m sure you have found, or will find, these notions in the work of our five writers at the Wednesday night Mainstage event: André Alexis, Doretta Lau, David Alexander Robertson, Martha Baillie, and David Bergen.  Their ideas are large — they contain multitudes.

Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances I missed the first reading as done by André Alexis.  I do apologize.  I was told his reading was superb! 

I did, however, arrive just in time to hear Doretta Lau read from her novel, How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?  An eclectic, time-travelling narrative which tells the story of a variety of young Asian Canadian who come of age in the 1990’s.  The stories feature time-travelling tech-savvy future selves who send retroactive (and yet futuristic) text messages from across a galactic digital system in order to forewarn, congratulate, and/or criticize their younger selves.  These texts contain ominous, cryptic, foreshadowing messages about future moles, hopeful scratch tickets, a case of herpes, and a serious bout of self-inflicted Münchausen by proxy.

Lau’s How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?, although seemingly unruly in its style, offers some serious contemplation as per ideas of national and personal identity.  Notions of contemplation, self-reflexivity, and grandeur are situated within the very title of the book itself.  ‘Whoness,’ as per Lau, being a question that is tossed around and as transformative as the temporal energies of our time-travelling hero/ines.  Lau transfixes the notion of ‘now,’ allowing it to become an irrelevant thing; for what is ‘now’ but a second past?

Next was David Alexander Robertson who shared with us The Evolution of Alice.  The premise behind Robertson’s novel was the interplay between memories and lived experiences.  I’ve been a big fan of Robertson’s work ever since I read his graphic novel, 7 Generations (which I highly suggest you read!) so I was superbly excited to hear him perform.  He read for us an excerpt from a section entitled, “Staring at the Sun”. The scene opens to a living room; the television is dimly lit in the background providing pedagogic entertainment to a small child.  The child, Alice’s daughter Grace, repeatedly smudges the screen with fat fingerprints in order to answer Dora’s exploratory questions.  “Where?” asks the inquisitive pink-shirted cartoon adventurer.  Ah, there it is.  A print blurs the yellowing pixels on Dora’s on-screen map.  But this is a memory — a regenerated snapshot of a day since past.  The scene refocuses.  Alice is alone.  The child is gone.  A mundane midday television show plays instead.  “I’d do anything to have to use windex,” Alice mentions.  Anything.

For Robertson, memory, or moreover the past, as compared to Lau’s futuristics, becomes a blurring thing.  Memories crawl over Alice like goosebumps — an uncomfortable feeling, yes, but a welcome one too.  The house is empty.  The words are heavy.  Grace flashes in bursts and blends into the breeze.  She is gone.  We are asking ‘what-if?’ and ‘how come?’ 

In a final scene a swing lolls in an open field.  The grass is giggling.  She is there. 

“We are going away.” Alice protests. 

“How far?” her children ask. 

“Far enough.” 

As we witness Alice, in the short vignette that Robertson read us, evolve I was reminded of Toni Morrison’s Beloved in which a former runaway slave, Sethe, reconstructs the memories of her dead child, so aptly remembered as Beloved.  It’s not the content of the two novels that I link as much as a notion that Morrison introduces in Beloved known as ‘rememory’.  This concept is understood as an act of remembering a memory; when a memory is revisited either physically or mentally.  Interestingly the word is not a verb but a noun.  It is an actual thing.  This concept I see deeply imbedded in Robertson’s work.  The past is always a haunting thing — nostalgia always stings.  Grace, Alice’s dear baby, is not a fleeting image, a harmless verb, but an actual thing, a biting noun; a ghost brought to life through desire; a phantom that feeds through necessity — ‘whoness’ being a leeched identity.  But through memory, or ‘rememory,’ one can begin to identify one’s self as a human being with unrealized potential, one can become one’s own best thing. 

That, I believe, is The Evolution of Alice. 

Next to read was Martha Baillie who patiently guided us in The Search for Heinrich Schlögel.  The protagonist of Baillie’s novel pieces together a life through archival research, that is, the life of Heinrich.  If you’ve ever delved into an archive of any sort, or you’ve come across a love note in an old book, a photograph from the past, a memento from an ex-lover, you are well aware of the past’s ability to become interchangeable with the present — for time, place, space to blur in a mishmash of undecipherable symbols.  These notions, I believe, sit at the core of Baillie’s novel: this is how one searches for Heinrich Schlögel. 

“The sentences,” as described by the novel’s protagonist, “that Heinrich loved best were hard as rock candy and lasted.”  The protagonist, approaching the question of, ‘who am I now?’ self-reflexively asks, “Should I address him in the past tense?”  The story then shifts to the point of view of Heinrich Schögel — our reanimated archive.  Heinrich seems a quiet boy, introspective, curious.  In one scene, Heinrich travels down a road gathering the corpses of a variety of dead birds.  He collects them in a bag, which, has now become useful in another manner, in that it not only carries bread, cheese, and fruit — but also dead birds.  Heinrich, sitting down, removes the birds and inspects them.  He examine the colours that reflect off their wings when a certain degree of sunlight reflects off their feathers. “The hardness of a beak,” Heinrich says, “the softness of an eye — these are mine.” 

Baillie’s protagonist formulates an important observation, in regards to not only the novel but also to our own lived experiences as human beings, noting, “It is mostly for speculation that we exist for others and ourselves.”  I love this quote.  I think it is an important gesture to be conscious of the fact that we are all searching for our ‘self’ through the eyes of the other — searching for our selves by constructing another.  For Baillie, the past and the present are interchangeable.  Baillie’s protagonist, in a final gesture, comes to the conclusion that, “I am choosing the present tense.” 

André Alexis calls time.  Baillie stops.  There, in the spotlight, hovering in the random bits of dust and dirt that kick up from Baillie’s closed book is the question we are all asking of Baillie, of Heinrich, of ourselves, ‘Who is he now?’ 

Lastly we have David Bergen who read from his latest novel, Leaving Tomorrow.  He opened with a vivid, anything but nostalgic line, “The thing to do when you’re in junior high is fight.”  Thus, we are introduced to Bergen’s protagonist, Arthur, a well-read, witty, slick-tongued boy in Alberta.  Arthur is a lover of literature, philosophy, and the brother of a boy who fights.  He finds pleasure in the bewilderment between he creates in his mother — a bewilderment caused by a fascination with language.  “Who taught you to talk like that?” she asks.  Arthur also uses the power of words to bewilder his bullies by forever cursing them as ‘scallywags’.  “Fight you dick!” one of Arthur’s bullies yells.  “It’s against my principles,” he replies.  Fighting, as Arthur describes, “is for baboons and lions seeking mates.”

Arthur is a lover, not a fighter; a lover of characters.  He is a boy who wants to be someone else.  A boy who craves the possibility of having his arm drawn behind the curtains into bizarre saloons and can-can girls (who he undoubtedly will love, for any touch from a girl, Arthur notes, automatically conjures up those feelings).  He craves the illusion of another self.  A mirror.  A comparison in which to gather his ‘self’. 

Wednesday’s Main Stage Event was a wonderful night that sparked a wide range of introspective questions for me.  I learned a great deal, in terms of not only writings styles but in formulations of self-identification, from each writer.  I came in, pen in hand, thinking to myself: Okay who are these people?  Who are their characters?  What means ‘who’?  Usually what I’m looking for is a snappy one-liner, a poetic quote to enjamb my thoughts, a reference to a book I should probably read.  This night was different.  I was not only asking ‘Who are you?’ about each writer and their characters — I was asking it about myself.  And I’ve come to the conclusion that I too am a second past; that I am constantly regenerating memories of identification; that I far too often condemn the present tense; that I’m far too often waiting to be drawn behind the curtains.  And I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘whoness’ is not singular; it is both a noun and verb — it is fragmentary.  So I’m all aboard with Heinrich in his proud statement of “these are mine[!]”  I too contain multitudes.  I too am large.

Who-ness.  I want that.  I think?  Is that even a thing?  And if I ever figure it out, well, maybe, for truth’s sake, I’ll let you know.  But who knows? 

Who knows? 

Right now I’m a blogger, you’re a reader.

by Janelle Curry

The theme of the night, “Who Am I Now?”, was captured through a variety of texts, by several talented authors. André Alexis, Doretta Lau, David Alexander Robertson, Martha Baillie, and David Bergen each read excerpts from their books that reflected this theme in different ways.

Alexis’ excerpt from Pastoral featured a pastor who had quite the shock seeing a man walk on water and speak in tongues.

Lau’s short story was entitled “God Damn, How Real is This?”, and flowed from the premise of the future selves of people texting their present selves, often with warnings that didn’t quite yet make sense.

Robertson’s reading from The Evolution of Alice followed a woman, Alice, who was grieving for her deceased daughter Grace, seeing her child in every part of her home.

Baillie read from her novel The Search for Heinrich Schlögel, which is narrated by an archivist who is attempting to piece together Heinrich’s life history.

Bergen read an excerpt from his novel Leaving Tomorrow, which followed a romantic, Arthur, stuck in a brawling country town in Alberta.

All very different, each of these authors brought a new perspective and a new style of writing to the theme. Between authors Charlene Diehl, director of Thin Air, mused about the Self. She remarked that we often have a tendency to consider others as fixed entities, even while we recognize ourselves as constantly changing beings. Even the question, “who am I now?”, suggests that we know we can change, and do so quite often, but we still seek to identify and title ourselves at every turning point. It’s often seen as a bad thing to think of yourself too much, but really we all do it and it’s part of our nature. Attempts at self-definition motivate us and do a lot of good, in the end. But as a room filled with people who appreciate literature, I’m sure we could all relate to the desire to overcome this habit by connecting with others in meaningful ways, even when they’re just characters from a book.

Stories provide a window into the mind of another; not just the characters portrayed, but even the author can be discernible between the lines. Seeing these very talented authors speak their words on stage added a layer of intimacy to the readings, similar to the experience you have when meeting a close friend’s parents or family for the first time. The author creates the character, nurtures her, shapes her, and can even be surprised by her. Readers connect with these characters to different degrees, in different ways, and can often even see things that the author did not intend. These mysterious elements of a character that spring up in a line of dialogue or during a description, but only to those who are primed to see it, are what make a character so real: even their parents don’t fully know who they are.

Each of the readings tonight reflected a different role or perspective that affects self-definition. Redefining oneself after the death of a child, or after contact with your future self has made you wonder if you’re secretly a misogynist. Interpreting a man walking on plastic cylinders in a pond as satanic, or being mistaken for many different people by many different strangers. Believing you’re surrounded by idiots because all they want to do is fight, while you prefer to read.

These all suggest how dependent our identity is on our relationships with other people. It’s kind of a beautiful irony, that we’re so self-centered and yet define ourselves by our interactions with others.

Well, might as well interact with one (or all) of the books that were read from tonight, to take your mind off of yourself for once. Geez.

Women on the Front Lines: Tuesday night at the Mainstage

by Jennifer Clark

This was my first Mainstage event at this year’s Thin Air festival, and I came in thinking a short interview would follow each writer’s reading. There were six writers on board, and before arriving I wondered about the logistics: how could they possibly fit that many discussions in a two hour event? After realizing that there were no interviews—in reality, each writer is given about 12 minutes to speak—I can only assume that Thin Air readings I’ve attended in past years were so revealing that I thought there was a discussion to draw that information out. It’s the great passages they showcase, and the glimpses of their lives that they share, that likely left that impression with me.

This evening didn’t disappoint, either. The theme was “Women on the Front Lines,” and Caroline Adderson, Monia Mazigh, Joan Thomas, Alison Pick, Audrey Thomas and Miriam Toews all read from their new books.

Ellen in Pieces is Caroline Adderson’s latest novel. In the darkly funny scene Adderson read, Ellen is in the midst of her second break-up with her ex-husband when she resists an impulse to sleep with one of her clients. Why does she stop herself? Let’s just say the reason will give you the creepy crawlies.

Monia Mazigh read from her novel, Mirrors and Mirages, which explores the perspectives of Canadian Muslim women. We met three in her reading: Sally, who becomes radicalized at a young age despite her moderate upbringing; Samia, a wealthy woman who immigrated from Kuwait with her husband and daughters; and Louise, who converts to Islam much to the dismay of her mother.

The Opening Sky is Joan Thomas’s third novel and what she calls her “Winnipeg novel” (references in her reading included Charleswood, Fort Richmond and our Fringe Festival). Sylvie, a university student, goes for her first ultrasound after finding out that she and her environmental activist boyfriend are pregnant—despite his membership in the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

Charlene Diehl, Miriam Toews (it appears we can read her thoughts!) and Audrey Thomas

Alison Pick came with her memoir, Between Gods. In her funny and poignant reading she described her first, tentative foray into psychotherapy.

Audrey Thomas read from her book Local Customs, which is based on the true story of Letitia Landon, a successful British writer from the 1830s who marries relatively late in life, travels to West Africa with her new husband and dies shortly after.  

Miriam Toews closed the event with an excerpt from All My Puny Sorrows, a sad and funny novel about family, love and loss. This was the only book featured this evening that I’d had a chance to read and I was looking forward to hearing Toews read from it. She read from the second chapter, in which Yoli has to cope when her older sister Elfrieda leaves to study piano in Norway. I attended this event with members from my book club, which discussed Miriam Toew's book, A Complicated Kindness, earlier this month. We all enjoyed the opportunity to hear all these writers read from their work.

Women on the Front Lines (but the front lines keep on changing…)

 By Sara Nadine Matyas

I just spent the evening with six incredible women – vivid, powerful, hilarious authors who made me

even more fiercely proud of the complexities and subtleties of life as a woman. But what I loved most about the women onstage tonight is that they made no sweeping statements about womankind. They made no assumptions about what the XX-chromosome holders of society would do or should do in the midst of any particular state of affairs.

Instead, each author gave voice to the story of a particular woman, and the particular events of her life, and her particular thoughts about what transpired. Each story was about women, but only because it was told by a woman about a woman. These authors came from all across the world, speaking different languages and wearing different traditions on their backs. And the characters they created were just as varied – young and old; married, divorced, and single; searching, hiding… And yet, in each of them, through the incredible diversity of their stories, a constant thread was woven: change. Just as the story was getting comfortable, something happened to shift everything. 

A half-hearted seduction suddenly interrupted by lice. A hesitant psychotherapy session distracted by a bared septuagenarian belly. A promising young engineer switches her devotion to “pure unadulterated Islam.” An impetuous marriage proposal ends in sudden death. A Voluntary Human Extinctionist finds herself pregnant. And a small-town Mennonite girl tries to hold on to both her fleeing sister and her out-of-control car.

Oftentimes, we don’t even recognize change until so many little changes have piled up to produce an extraordinary rebirth. Tonight, these stories paused that process of rebirth and gave us a glimpse of just how revolutionary each step of the transformation can be. This evening was a challenge to pay attention to those changes. If change is the one commonality between each of us, then changes in our own life can nudge us closer to a better understanding of someone else’s life (and quite probably, a better understanding of ourselves in the process).

And all that was from hearing mere snippets of these books! I can only imagine the changes that will come once I read them in their entirety… 

Ah, Technology!

by Joshua Whitehead

Technology, as described by Merriam Webster, is “the use of science in industry, engineering, etc.”  Science?  What do I know of science?  The mere notion of anything scientific frightens my right-sided brain.  I listen to music, I can recognize colours, I am creative, I can (aside from distinguishing between the potential meanings of a winking emoji) recognize emotion.  But science?  What a terrifying thing for us creative folk.  Technology.  And what irony I employ in creating this blogpost— writing while I intermittently reshuffle my Maroon 5 playlist (I far too often swoon at that any mention of Levine’s falsetto), check my text messages, delete my Rogers e-bill, crop a photo on Instagram, reply to a tweet, add a quote to Pinterest, and say no to umpteen Candy Crush requests on Facebook.  Technology — a word that looms on the peripheries of our consciousness on the daily — brings into mind notions of cohabitation, dependence, necessity, problem solving.  It’s with that technologic, cybernetic, modernistic mindset that I invite you into tonight’s main event: Technologies. 

Monday night featured six exemplary writers hailing from a variety of locations across Canada; most of whom, I assume, deployed some mode of rapid transportation to get here.  Ah, technology! 

Guillaume Morrissette

The first writer we were introduced to was Montreal based Guillaume Morissette.  Morissette, along with his new novel, New Tab, strongly utilizes technology, in the form of social media, in order to narrate his semi-autobiographical novel.  His style is unique, uncouth, though in the absolute best of ways, sly, and sharp.  We are quickly introduced to a world in which smartphones, Facebook, Xbox 360’s, and unconventional parties rule.  A world that, amidst being so laden with technology, is lonely, isolating, secluded.  A world in which everyday feels like Wednesday and every time someone looks at the clock it reads 4 p.m.  A perpetual hump day, no more, no less.  Static.  Morissette’s protagonist, Thomas, is introduced as having a Facebook conversation with another character, one in which Morissette forgoes the “he said/she said” standard, substituting less personal, less intimate: “he typed/she typed”.  This little vignette sets up the tone of the entire novel, the interplay between technology and community, between isolation and psuedo-relations.  Something which I for one am used to — and if you are reading this blog I am guessing you are as well. 

            Morissette’s protagonist reads like Holden Caulfield in the 21st century.  A sly, older, Francophone Holden who tumblrs about ‘phonies’ in the aftermath of a 2 a.m. after party.  Except now he’s a little more self-conscious (can you imagine?) and into the habit of deciding the correct amount of hair gel to maintain his brooding demeanour.  Morissette then introduced us to a vignette in the latter half of his novel in which an eclectic group of tweeting friends with an affinity for sexy firemen, plastic tiaras, and budgeting their drug addictions.  Friends are exceptionally skilled in the art of “fucking up”.  We’re moved to a bar setting in which Coyote Ugly bar-dancing, poker chip boxers, and fire-red briefs are introduced in a comedic scene.  Lastly, Thomas explains to us his extreme dislike for his father’s celebrity crush (a father, who, I’m sure if given the chance would nominate every Wednesday as his weekly #WCW) Pretty Woman actress, Julia Roberts on the premise of nostalgic boners — something which, as Thomas so proclaims, the body always remembers.  Surprised?  So is our beloved narrator! Make sure to check out Guillaume’s novel, New Tab. 

            Secondly we were introduced to Peter Norman and his new novel, Emberton.  Norman’s protagonist, Lance Blunt, is one secretive fellow.  Can you keep a secret? (Lance can’t read or write).  Lance ends up working for Emberton Tower, a firmly established publisher of the Emberton Dictionary.  Emberton Dictionary, as described by its employees, is like “an inept panhandler — [they] don’t see a lot of change.”  The characters we are introduced to are cunning, elusive, and distrustful in every sense of the word.  One is Lance’s boss, a nosy, inquisitive villain who is described as perfectly round and “squeezable like a stress ball.”  Technology, in Norman’s novel, becomes an interesting concept for us as readers of contemporary literature and asks us a question which constantly circulates in my psyche: how does a printed dictionary, or any printed text we read, exist in a technological age?  Technology, for Norman, becomes a menacing thing as it stands in as this monolithic Emberton tower — one that privileges sales crises over seizures.  Intrigued?  I know I am.  I intend to seek at least a partial answer when I pick up my copy of Emberton later this week. 

Next was Arjun Basu who read from his latest novel, Waiting for the Man.  The novel’s protagonist, Joe, is a successful, yet wildly unhappy, ad copywriter who constantly envisions a man who smells like a clean horse and wears a floppy hat.  Joe’s illusory companion, dubbed as ‘The Man,’ tells him to wait on his front steps.  Joe does.  His simple nothingness turns him into a celebrity, a spectacle, and all of the hipsters come to enhance their ‘coolness’ factor by posing with him (#nofilter).  A buzz fills the air as the incessant, tic-tac of intermingling conversations erupt; simultaneously, the tone produced by Joe fills the novel with a buzzing silence as caused by his extreme introspection, his longing loneliness. 

Technology, in Basu’s novel, becomes a curatorial thing.  The camera’s eye, which is seemingly always pointed at Joe, becomes the lens in which we too look at him.  The thing, Joe says, (and I am paraphrasing here) that makes technology popular is democracy, though this is also what makes people wary of it.  As we are introduced to a cavalcade of seemingly random communities of people we see as they are consumed entirely by their technologies, their smartphones, their cameras — they are static, unmoving, waiting.  I believe, in recalling the title and the overall tone of the novel, that we are, along with Joe, meant to ask, “What are we waiting for?”

The fourth reader of the evening was Diane Schoemperlen who hilariously read from her latest work, By the Book.  Schoemperlen’s book, a collection of illustrated stories, is taken from old textbooks in the 19th century.  Textbooks, as Schoemperlen describes, which are laden with an angry, dictational, and pedagogic tone.  Schoemperlen describes her creative process in terms of this book as being that of a jigsaw, a bricolage, the reinvention of words. 

Schoemperlen read an except from the vignette titled “A Nervous Race”, featuring a series of directional phrasings such as “look here” and “turn here”.  The mere notion of dictational movement was exhausting.  Though, Schoemperlen’s reinvention of the primary text into a new form invites a calm pace and asks for us to look and enjoy as a curious guest, rather than as a time managing tour guide.  Schoemperlen turns anger into laughter.  Her style lends the pedagogy of the text into an introspective, observational thing.  From beautiful idiotic butterflies to bone-licking vultures, By the Book has it all.  Within its comedy is a serious contemplation.  As Schoemperlen suggests, “It is one thing to see things it is another to notice so you think about them.”  What a beautiful note to end on.  So if you want to be By the Book then I suggest you buy the book. 

Up next was our famed hometown writer Margaret Sweatman, who introduced and read from her latest novel, Mr. Jones.  Sweatman’s novel contemplates the necessities of politics in the name of gender.  Sweatman writes, “men need politics to be a part of a greater good.”  Interesting. 

Margaret Sweatman

Sweatman approaches the topics of politics with a hardened subtlety.  Her voice is soft spoken, whispering, as in a kiss.  The pastels of her setting are made up of cashmere sweaters, woollen socks, smells of scotch, cigarettes, soap, raw onions.  Subtle.  Homely.  Dangerous. 

Sweatman reading brings her characters to life:  her voice grunts as the brutish Bill Masters and flip-flops into a cheery ‘yoo-hoo’ for the energetic Ethel.  We are, in this vignette, introduced to a very serious baby named Lenore, who Bill, a Tom Buchanan-esque alpha male, describes as not being “the laughing type.”  Sweatman’s writing is airy, loose, but not without its edge, its pace.  It is an inhalation that forces you to choke on your breath.  It tickles while it cuts.  It smothers while it hugs.  I do implore you, if you’re the sadomasochistic type or not, to pick up a copy of Mr. Jones and tread through the pages with an anxious excitement as I intend to do! 

Our last reader of the evening was Fred Stenson who read from his novel, Who By Fire.  A perfect follow up to Sweatman’s performance.  Stenson’s reading style was airy.  He elongated his vowels and capitalized on a long sentence structure in order to induce a feeling of aloneness.  I could sense the wind whooshing on the cold linoleum floor.  I could feel the tinge of bare feet in cold boots.  I could hear teacups rattling in china cabinets. 

Stenson quickly introduced us to a young boy mimicking his father — a scene which sets up the novel as a whole in terms of duplicity and bifurcation.  There is a sense of interconnectivity that is at odds with an impending separation in Stenson’s work.  There is an open vastness in the expanse of horizons, an overall quietness; and in said vastness looms industry, the noise, the lights, the confinement of technology.  In that, Stenson’s novel presents an interesting tension between naturalism and modernism.  A tension that is prevalent in the home and on the horizon.  All of this, I argue, is wrapped up in Stenson’s dialogue: “You’re letting the coffee get cold — it had never been cold to begin with.”  Absolutely enthralling. 

In a later scene two characters discuss their interests in post-secondary education: one being interested in engineering out of province, another in teaching rurally.  Both, in the confines of the house, are brought back by sick parents who impede their futures.  A sense of failure and regret bubbles in Stenson’s reading of the scene.  Again, the notion of interconnectivity is intermittently linked with an impending bifurcation.  The stakes are set — the tensions pulled tight. 

In returning to the notion of technology and the expansive fear of science I bring us to my last inspiration from Stenson’s novel: the notion of hydrogen embrittlement.  This is described as the process in which metals become brittle and fracture from repeated exposure to hydrogen.  What a wonderful analogy for the entirety of the novel’s tone; the structure of Stenson’s novel seems fractured: his characters, the house, the setting, all fractured, all brittle.

The Thin Air Mainstage

Technology, in the case of Stenson’s novel, is an overflowing thing; modernization foreshadowing the reshaping of deforming relationships.  And I think that this notion of deformation and reshaping is the linking metaphor for each of tonight’s performances.  Stenson left us with a final quotation in stating, “We’ll keep trying to fix things.”  A superb ending which finely wrapped up the evening and set an epitome of not only his novel but of all of the texts the writers explored with us tonight. 

From prostitutes with a heart of gold (which may or may not induce nostalgic erections); to round “stress ball” bosses; to newly minted sedentary celebrities eating apples; to beautifully stupid butterflies; to serious babies named Lenore; and to failed engineers contemplating hydrogen, this notion of deformed relationships (with others or with one’s self), and the processes which we deploy in order to reshape them, seem central to each novel.  So, as we trudge through our lives, fictional or not, perhaps we too can “keep trying to fix things.”

Ah, technology!  

Homespun Horror on a Chilly Day

By Juanita Klassen

It was a rainy day as I walked to the Park Theatre—wholly appropriate to enjoy a satisfying afternoon of murder mysteries. 

The theatre itself is a comfortable space; tastefully decorated, but still with the feel and smell of its past. A shot of Fireball helped warm things up before the show and I was pleased to see others enjoying beer and potato chips while reading their mystery books. I firmly believe that booze and salty snacks are the perfect companions to great reading material, especially murder mysteries.

After introductions by Thin Air Director Charlene Diehl, we heard readings by the two invited authors: Alison Preston and John McFetridge.  Preston read from her novel Blue Vengeance, set in 1964 Winnipeg. Young Danny is the protagonist, bent on avenging his sister’s death by killing the one teacher he holds responsible. McFetridge followed with a reading from Black Rock, an even darker tale about a series of murders set in 1969-70 Montreal against the backdrop of the FLQ crisis. Both writers read engagingly and the stories were a pleasing contrast to one another; one intensely private, the other about two extremely public events.

Following the reading, we enjoyed a discussion between Charlene Diehl and the two writers. I was fascinated to hear each author talk about their different methods for getting their stories out. Preston begins with one sentence and the story unfolds as she goes, whereas McFetridge plots out characters and events before beginning. Preston talked about polishing the tale as she goes, tying up the loose ends, making wee revisions, nudging the story here or there as the book grows, rather than composing a typical first draft. On the other hand, McFetridge, inspired by the 3 Day Novel competition, plows through his first draft until it’s done; he can then relax and work on revisions.

Diehl then asked a question I’ve often wondered about: how do authors who write gruesome material make peace with the grisly and terrifying stories that emerge from their pens?  Again, the difference in answers caught my attention. Preston said that she’s naturally attracted to dark, evil topics, so she enjoys telling those sorts of stories, whereas McFetridge loves cheery topics, hates reading or watching anything about serial murderers, and didn set out to write a book about one of them. For him, the key was his own personal association with downtown Montreal and the fact that his sister fit the description of the victims. Those connections started McFetridge on this tale and he followed it through even though he found the subject matter of his story unpleasant.

For a brand-new writer, this first experience with the Thin Air festival was delightful, and warmed me up on a rainy day. I look forward to hearing other stories this week, and how their creators brought them to life.

Put On Your "Luminaries" Face: Opening Night with Eleanor Catton at the Thin Air Writers Festival

by Jennifer Clark

I had to laugh when writer Eleanor Catton described what she calls the “Luminaries face:” the look her partner would get when she “emerged all breathless” from a solid day’s work, excited to share the latest updates on her novel’s progress. This summer I saw my own version of that face on a friend of mine during my month-long reading of Catton’s 832-page novel, The Luminaries.

If my friend’s look is anything like her partner’s, it’s a mix of attentiveness and bemusement as he tries to follow my enthusiastic account of the characters and plot lines in this complex, densely populated murder mystery set in the 1860’s gold rush in New Zealand.

I think I had a Luminaries face of my own as I made my way through the novel. It was sometimes difficult to keep track of everything and everyone. But that is one of the things I enjoyed most about the book: puzzling over each fragment of the story, flipping back to re-read earlier sections of the novel, and trying to fit the pieces together much like the characters try to do. And I enjoyed the people who fill this novel: fascinating and full of life.

Eleanor Catton reads from The Luminaries

So I was looking forward to hearing Catton speak about her book on the opening night of this year’s Thin Air festival. She began by reading three excerpts from the novel. In conversation with festival director Charlene Diehl, Catton spoke at length about the structure of the novel. The Luminaries was built on what Catton calls celestial archetypes, in that each character represents a Zodiac sign or a planetary body, and their upcoming encounters with one another are drawn on astrological charts that appear at the beginning of each section of the novel. 

I liked learning more about this, because while I was aware of this dimension of the book, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I could have when I was reading it. In my opinion, the book is still good without it. After all, it is the lives of these characters that really drew me in, not the structures. The approach intrigued me though, and I was already planning to read the book again in the near future so that I can better appreciate it. This evening with Eleanor Catton has given me a head-start.