Slice of Life

After a wonderful snow day, had to get up an hour early, and leave warm bed with BoyMan in it to travel across the city to go to work.

Zipper on my skirt broke, so I am wearing boots over jeans, which is uncomfortable, and was only supposed to be a weekend snow measure, not a poor fashion choice.

Left BoyMan's house at a time that usually gets me to work 20 mins early; the joke was on me.
I) Huge crowd at Coxwell station.
II) One empty subway train goes by
III) Next subway train comes. It's too full. I don't get on.
IV) Get on the next train. At Yonge get yelled at for not moving out of the way, when there is nowhere to move to, because the people moving around me, won't move single file. This is my fault how? Be the sheeple you are, and follow each other.
V) Big line for Bathurst streetcar. When it finally does come, the mass of humanity pushes to the doors. Woman on the cell phone in front of me says "This idiot behind me is pushing me." I give her the finger. She turns around to see that, and I say "I'm getting pushed too, what the fuck do you want me to do?" She says "Sorry." I call her a name. She shuts up.
VI)Am 15 minutes late for work.

Get to work and the light above my desk is burned out.
I)My lamp doesn't work, because it's missing some adapter thing.
II) Co-worker's lamp doesn't work at my desk, even though all the outlets I tried work for other stuff.
III)Go to steal light bulb from unused work station, only to find some jackass has screwed it in too tightly, and the bulb has come away from base (the screw-in part). Try to get both pieces out delicately, but -- of course -- succeed in dropping bulb. *smash* Congratulate self on at least being smart enough to have turned the power off before all this happened.

And the final indignity: I'm drinking Starbucks coffee. Blech.

It's a damn good thing I have chai cupcakes with coconut frosting.

Why is Blogger so weird? It will take the "li" tag, but only as far down as the end of the picture. That does not make sense! MAKE SENSE DAMN YOU! I HAVEN'T THE PATIENCE!

(Over)Due

I did promise a post about Nobody's Mother to a commenter a while back, so that's where we'll go today.

Nobody's Mother is mostly written from a upper-middle class, middle-aged, white, straight perspective. There is one essay from a lesbian, and one from a Native North American. I was hoping for a few more younger voices, because a common issue that child-free women have, is not being taken seriously if they're pre-menopausal. I had the same issue in asking for a tubal ligation (which I didn't get, by the way). I was 30-years old, and still got the "you might change your mind" speech, accompanied by the "what if your partner wants children?" question. (My response? "Clearly, I'm not the partner for them, then.") The majority of the essays are women looking back on how and why the came to be child-free, by choice, happenstance, lack of opportunity, etc. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it makes the book read more like Dropped Threads than a political work, which is something I was hoping for. To give the publisher credit, there's no hint that the book is all that political, but a girl can dream.

In fact, there is some "oh, well I'm not a feminist but..." stuff going on in there that irked me a little. Further, and I find myself doing this, I was annoyed by all the "but I like kids! really!" disclaimers. As a child-free person, I'm pretty tired of saying that. Fact is, I do like my friends' kids, but I shouldn't need to defend myself with that fact all the time. Part of the problem, is that the term "child-free" has been hijacked by a minority of people who very much dislike children, and by extension, mothers. I won't go into some of the truly awful rhetoric I've seen on child-free boards, but I will say I believe that to be anti-mama is to be anti-feminist, as much as being anti-choice is being anti-feminist. This is black and white to me, and you won't move me from that.

I bought this book looking to shore myself up against the chorus that gets ever louder as I roll through my 30s (32 in a week and a half, there's still some shopping time left). I wanted an angry, political diatribe against all the bullshit that child-free women face, both for those who chose it, and for those who did not. I wanted viewpoints I'd never heard, arguments I'd never thought of. What I did get, was 50% "Yes, I've thought/said that" and 50% "Ugh, you shouldn't have to say this!"

Which is not to say Nobody's Mother is a bad collection. In fact, it's very good to hear all these voices. As most of the contributors write and/or read for a living (journalists, professors, poets), the writing is uniformly excellent, and compelling. For an example, Lorna Crozier's essay is reprinted here. I think, though, that the book might stand better as an educational tool for parents, or future parents, to understand their child-free loved ones a bit better, and perhaps stop the misunderstanding of why some women would choose not to have children.

The best essay, for me, was Katherine Gordon's, that addressed specific questions she's (presumably) often asked. I have excerpted it here:

I'm 42 years old. I have no children. I'm very happy
But you would be so much happier if you did have a child.
Excuse me?
Children are such a joy. Having one would make you really happy.
I'm sorry. I know you mean well. But what makes you think you know what makes me happy?
You're not complete unless you have children
Ah. A person cannot be whole without kids? And therefore cannot be happy?
That's right. You don't know what you're missing
Well I can't argue with that. But I could say the same of you, of course.
You don't have to be defensive, you know. It's not too late. You have options. You have choices
I made my choice a long time ago.
What kind of person are you, not wanting to be a mom?
Someone who makes parents uncomfortable to be around, I guess -- the unhappy ones, anyway. To justify their decision to include children in their lives, parents have to judge me by their own standards and find me wanting. To dispel any discomfort they may have at being parents, they tell me what they believe I really think and feel, even when they do not know me at all.

My Guilty Pleasure Gets More Embarrassing

I was in University, desperately seeking some nice pulpy distraction, when my Dad handed me my first Ken Follett novel: Pillars of the Earth. Knowing my love for anything over 500 pages in mass market form, and historical fiction (Clan of the Cave Bear in the 6th grade, up to Edward Rutherford novels in the 9th grade), he simply said "You'll like this. It's about a church." And we were off.
In the succeeding years, I'd often turn to Follett for a day or two of suspense and action. Nothing else he's written (excepting of course the new "sequel" World Without End) is like Pillars of the Earth in scope, or topic. Mostly Follett writes WWII spy stuff, a genre I wouldn't normally come near (you may know of Eye of the Needle which became a Donald Sutherland vehicle). Thing is, I liked his writing, his pace, his ability to transport the reader, his grasp of suspense (cliffhanger on the chapter ends, check!). I always describe him as writing "soap operas for men." Replace WWII France with Port Charles, and it's basically the same sort of stories. But guys like war, yeah? Ken Follett novels are one of my happy, guilty pleasures, with Pillars of the Earth always being a favourite, and one often re-read, like literary comfort food.

Then Oprah came, and bungled the whole thing.

I try to avoid the flavour of the week/month/year books (Da Vinci Code, Tuesdays With Morrie, that sort of thing). If Heather picked it, the odds are pretty good I won't. If Oprah picks it, I'm even more likely to stay away (though I did love The Corrections, controversy or no). Now, I do realise that Follett is already a hugely popular novelist, and that Oprah isn't blessing some new upstart, and outing them from obscurity (but since when has she, and with her kind of power, shouldn't that be what she's doing?). Oprah's also picked books I've long since finished, like Middlesex. So what's my issue here? There are a few:

1. Follett writes pulp. I don't particularly care if it's about 13c England. It's pulp. Let's acknowledge that it's pulp, and not hold it up like it's a novel to change your life, Oprah. Granted her picks have been all over the board, but for the most part, she does try and choose a book that has got some sort of heft. Remember that Steinbeck nonsense?

2. It's already my guilty pleasure, damn you. Don't make it more guilty.

3. As I mentioned, my bookshelf is starting to look pretty Oprah approved, and that pisses me off. It's a bit hard to explain, but I'm a bit of a book snob, like I am a bit of a music snob. I don't want to (have) read the same things that every suburban soccer-mom is reading. Um, don't look at that Eat, Pray, Love entry. Ha!

I guess I'm ambivalent about the whole thing. All at once, I think my tastes are too good for Oprah's book club, yet I don't think Follett is good enough to be in the same company as most of the other picks. What's next, Oprah? Jackie Collins^*?

* * *
In writing this entry, I came across a cool Google tool, that I'm sure has been around for a while, and I'm just discovering now. I put "Ken Follett" in the search, and the first result was the Google Books tool. If you click on a specific book it will link you up to reviews and references... oh how nice! And to think, I'd just been using the regular old search page! Anyway, I'll be using this tool a bit more in the future, and see if it comes up with anything cool.


*Ol' JC was also excellent semester break reading. When you've had it up to here with Gaskell, it's nice to read about Hollywood silliness

Writing About Writing About Writing About Writing...

I admit it: I'm the worst blogger ever. There's no rhyme or reason to when you'll read my exciting prose. Today, half my systems are down, and I really can't do much without them, so I might as well create some content. Because you miss me. You know you do.


With a salute to Steven W. Beattie, if you're still out there...

If you want to know why I love Coupland so much, it’s for books like The Gum Thief.

Reading The Gum Thief felt a lot like reading Eleanor Rigby in a very good way. I had a low-level sadness, and empathy for the time I spent reading both books. To me, Coupland is at his best when tackling the normal people that you miss, pass by, and forget about instantly. You wouldn’t remember either of the main characters, other than to think “Isn’t that guy a little old to be working retail?” or “What’s with the Death Chick?”^* Coupland captures loneliness, the way it brings odd people together, and how it keeps them separate better than anyone I’ve read recently. However, The Gum Thief wanders into post-modern territory, where Eleanor Rigby did not.

Overall, The Gum Thief is a meditation on writing itself, and thus lends itself nicely to post-modern self-reflexive narrative. While Coupland does the book, within a book, within a book, structure that Atwood used in The Blind Assassin, The Gum Thief has a different reason for employing it. Coupland makes the reader think about the process of writing, about who is writing, and why (for the record, I don’t really have any answers, just more questions every time I think about it. However, I think that’s kind of the point). The two main characters are ostensibly writing to each other, yet their voices seem strikingly similar. Roger is, in turn, writing a “bad” novel called Glove Pond about a critically lauded, yet commercially unsuccessful novelist, Steve, and the dinner party he and his wife Gloria host for their direct opposites. Kyle and Brittany (named for Roger’s “real life” co-worker, and her boyfriend) are young and successful. Kyle’s book has sold ten million copies, and his next work takes place at Staples, where the “real-life” Roger works. It gets a bit weird when I try and re-tell it, but Coupland never loses you. There are sidetracks about Bethany’s writing assignment in her one creative writing course, where she was instructed to “be” the toast that is about to be buttered. This assignment is revisited several times throughout The Gum Thief, with both Bethany and Roger tackling the task, with increasing degrees of success. Finally, we are left with a grade, to Roger, from his writing teacher, assigning him a C^-** for the whole work. The reader is left wondering which part of the fiction was Roger’s fiction: The entirety? Just Glove Pond? Does Bethany really exist? Can she said to exist in a fiction? Can she be a double fiction? Is Bethany any more or less “real” than Gloria and Steve? Gum Thief succeeds, in high-style, in creating the mind-loops that good post-modern writing should.

I really, really disliked J-Pod for the same reason dislike a lot of post-modern writing –- the self-congratulatory feel of it all. In The Gum Thief however, you’re not hit over the head with “aren’t I cle-vah?” Much like Dave Eggers’ excellent You Shall Know Our Velocity^†, it’s voice, not tricks, that takes the book out of traditional narrative structures, and that is the kind of post-modern writing I can get behind. Everyone in J-Pod was too busy being quirky to just be. The Gum Thief has characterization, back-story, emotion, all the things that make characters really exist, in a much as they can within fiction.


*Actually, I’d probably critique her makeup based on mid-90s goth aesthetic and find it wanting, because I’m old like that. Not old school, just old.

**This is all from memory. It might have been a C or C⁺.

†Mark this in your calendars, kids. I don’t have a lot of praise for Eggers generally.

A Hardback Life

I'm currently a third of the way through Eat, Pray, Love, the Feel Good Book of the Year. Bookslut tipped me off over the summer, and I put in my reserve at the library. (How ironic that publishing doesn't really pay enough for me to buy all the books I want to read, though I guess the case could be made that I should mainly be reading the books I work with. No matter.) Three months later, I finally got my hands on a copy. Everyone is reading this book, and while I usually avoid books like that, I do trust Jessa at Bookslut (even though she steered me wrong with Sharp Objects). I'd pretty much agree with the Slate review of it^*, though I'm a bit more forgiving of the "(you should) like me" tone, because I do like the author, or at least the author's persona. Too often, I'll read a book by, or about, the super-privledged (she owned an apartment in Manhattan and a house in the burbs, c'mon) and not be able to get any empathy going.

My inability to empathise kicked in with The Year of Magical Thinking, where Didion is going through this really grotesque time of her life, and all I can think of is how many times she plugged her backlist, and how she whined about having to run the dishwasher all the time (um, hi, it's called hand-washing, some of us don't have the option). More importantly, I kept thinking about how if all this had happened to a working-class family in the States, the daughter would have been long dead, since they wouldn't have been able to afford the costly specialists needed. Also, the daughter's name, Quintana, grated. The Wiki on Didion has a great quote from Barbara Grizzuti Harrison:

When I am asked why I do not find Joan Didion appealing, I am tempted to answer -- not entirely facetiously -- that my charity does not naturally extend itself to someone whose lavender love seats match exactly the potted orchids on her mantel, someone who has porcelain elephant end tables, someone who has chosen to burden her daughter with the name Quintana Roo....

But back to Elizabeth Gilbert. She's likeable. Maybe it's because I got divorced about the same age as she did and spent my time howling on the bathroom floor. Maybe it's her general acceptance of the world: God isn't GOD, it's a (to coin a phrase from the Other Scottish Earth Sign) "general good intention of your choosing"; anti-depressants aren't the devil, but they're not a panacea either. She isn't every woman, but she's identifiable in myself, and I can only guess in the other women who've read her. It's why she keeps getting read. It makes me forgive her wealth (what a funny thing; I'm such a Marxist), her ability to travel with her huge publishing advance. I simply settle in, and care about what happens next. This is ultimately what makes a good book for me. I cared about Lilian in Away. I cared about the Sylvia Plath portrayed in the excellently written Rough Magic (though going back to Plath after reading that biography, I remained fairly unmoved, and unimpressed). Gilbert hasn't left Italy yet, and still has two countries to see. Still, I have a pretty good idea that I won't be let down.

* * *

The problem with library books, is that they tend to be hardcovers. It's only from really using the library system that I've been able to adjust to reading hardcover books. Still, I remain dedicated to paperbacks. This post on Literary Kicks sums up my feelings nicely, and also inadvertently makes a case against e-books.


*OH, HOLY SHIT. I just said I agreed with Kaite Roiphe. It's all over people. Where's my dagger? Let me fall upon it. I feel so incredibly dirty right now.

Have I Whinged About This Before?

I have an English degree, from a University not really known for its Arts programs. Nonetheless, I did spend many years, reading, thinking, and writing about literature. I preferred dealing with the novel over poetry and plays, and did my best work on the Victorians. I was good at it. I wrote many a fine paper. I saw things other people didn't see (oh this crazy thing I did on Alias Grace as a re-write of Jane Eyre). So writing this blog sort of pains me at times, because I've lost the ability to write a really critical review of something. I'm not sure if it's laziness, or if the skill is lost without practice.

Today I feel this loss keenly, as Away is a novel that deserves a critical, thoughtful review. Fortunately, other people are around to tackle that task. Here's what I can tell you: It took me a little over two days to read Away. It's not a long book, so this isn't much of a feat, but there's a lot of momentum in the writing, without a lot of actual tension, which I find interesting. Usually, a "unputdownable" book is one with a lot of tension, or cliff-hangers at the end of chapters (Sidney Sheldon saw me through Jr High school nicely). Away doesn't really do that. I didn't have the burning need to know what happens next, but rather I was carried into the novel, plastered to protagonist Lillian's side, and it kept me coming back, and reading well into the night.
The old English major did notice a sort of leitmotif in the book, to my relief. There's something going on with skin, and scarring. It's an obvious metaphor; scars on the outside tell of the hurt on the inside. However, Bloom actually does more with the scars, blisters, ink stains, and wounds that Lillian gathers through her life. When Lillian arrives in New York, from Russia, she carries two scars: one from her mother's hot soup spoon, and another from one of the men that murdered her family. In New York, those first scars are noticed, and noted, but as the novel goes on, they appear less and less frequently, as they fade on body and in mind. In the last part of the book, I don't believe they're noticed at all. It is the blisters on her feet, the mosquito bites, the transient pains, that are administered to, and the old scars don't even get a mention. It's as if Lillian's original impetus (to cross the U.S., go up through Canada, and Alaska, and cross the Bering Straight to find her lost daughter in Sibera) matters less and less. She is pushed forward because the journey itself has become the thing, and her daughter fades, not through lack of love, but through the process of hardening, over time. When Lillian meets her final love interest, it is his skin she notices. His scars, the way his broken collar bone pushes against his skin, the bits of frostbite.
Ink also enters the skin. Lillian works as an inept seamstress upon her arrival, and her fingers are covered with blue dots, from the ink of the silk flowers on the needle that pokes her fingers repeatedly. She gets a prison tattoo of her daughter's name in Prince Rupert. Yet these things too, fade. The tattoo isn't mentioned again, after it is done. I think this is all part of what I was thinking about the scars.
If I had two more weeks with this book, and a deadline, I'd probably be able to give you 10 MLA formatted pages on this. But I have none of these things. So I leave you with those bits. Away is worth the read, and is worth the journey you'll take. The reviews I link to have some persnickety things to say, but I don't get paid to point out flaws, and thus, didn't really spend time noticing them.
Also, the British cover is better.

Blogland was on fire yesterday, quoting anti-Feminist mecha-droid, Ann Coulter. What amuses me, is that people actually take anything she says seriously, that anyone even bothers to be outraged. People, she's a 5-year old, screaming for attention. Who knows if she believes any of this crap, but you realise that she's only saying it so people will write about her, so she can see her face on TV again. She's Baby Jane, or Norma Desmond, her time is over, and she's lashing out. It's boring now; it fails to shock. Now, if she really wanted to shock people, she could do a 180, tell us how wrong she was, and proclaim herself a Rad Fem. Not that we'd welcome her, but she'd certainly get some press for that. So, as they've been saying since the dawn of the 'nets: Don't Feed the Trolls.

Speaking of feminism SUSAN FALUDI IS BACK. Can you see I'm excited? Her first book, Backlash changed my life. Before I'd taken a couple women's studies courses, and was a bit peeved at the portrayal of women in the media. After, I was proud to be a Feminist, I was angry as hell, and I was political, with no apologies. I foist that book on anyone who mentions even a passing interest in Feminism, and even on some that haven't. It's not simply a polemic, but an extremely well-researched survey of the ways in which women in North America were undermined and systematically oppressed at the end of the 20^th century. Backlash was already about 10 years old when I read it, but the conditions for women haven't much changed, and in the U.S., things like reproductive freedoms have become even more threatened. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America is her 3rd and latest book, and I can not wait to read it. The NYT has a profile.

I only realised yesterday that Bona Drag, the name of a Morrissey album, is itself Polari. Given the first track is called "Picadilly Palare," and I've known about Polari for a while myself, you think I'd have clued in a long time ago. These roots, my friends, are blonde. I leave you with an instructive article on the life of Polari.

Not Really Book Related

Things have been a bit hectic since I got back from my Montreal mini-break. The new profile photo was taken at the Botanical Gardens. Well, actually, outside the Botanical Gardens, since the two Scottish earth signs in attendance balked at the $16 entry fee. Oh sure, they throw the Insectorium in there... *shudder* No thanks.

I did see a couple movies at the TIFF, including Control (the Ian Curtis bio pic) which I've been excited about for a while. It's a beautiful movie, especially if you're a fan of Anton Corbijn. The director's mark is all over this movie, and you always know you're in the middle of his work. That said, the dialogue and characterizations are rich, and you come away feeling great sympathy for all involved. Sam Riley plays Curtis, and does a fine job of making someone so mythologized a real person. Though, I think the guy who played Curtis in 24 Hour Party People did a better Ian Curtis dance. Control is based on the book Touching From a Distance, written by Ian Curtis' widow, Deborah. Yeah, I misted up a bit at the end.

I was at the Virgin Festival for the two days following. Highlight of the weekend was Editors, who played on the B stage. Otherwise, I have to admit that I'm not at all cut out for festivals. Too many people, too crowded, line-ups, porta (porto?) potties. No, no, no, no.

While I was at the Virgin Fest on Sunday, the other Scottish earth sign was at the Joy Division documentary, where he scored me this:
Yes, that would be Peter Hook's^* autograph. Ieee!!

I was presented with the autograph while on line to see Atonement, the adaptation of Ian McEwan's brilliant novel. If you have not read this book, stop what you're doing now, go find a copy, and sequester yourself. It's one of the best things I've read in years, and that's not an uncommon opinion. Hmmm, this is the first time I've look at McEwan's website. Very thorough! Impressive! Anyway, the movie. Keira Knightley is about the smallest human being on the planet, though it works in the film, since it's set, initially, in the boob-hating 30s. She's also a really, really beautiful woman, and a fine actress, as far as I'm concerned. The movie's sound wasn't mixed down properly, so we missed some of the dialogue, and the typewriter click leitmotif was a bit annoying. And, as is the case with most adaptations, there was a pretty important element missing in the movie, which I can't talk much about, because it ruins the book. Plus, my movie reviews are worse than my book reviews. I would like to mention the stellar work of James McAvoy. I hadn't heard of him before (but not being a movie person, that's no surprise), but he's very, very good in this film. Here are the two leads on the night I saw them at the film's opening.

Ulrich Schnauss' music is the soundtrack to the best dream you've ever had. Hearing it live and loud is like having that dream in the arms of the person you love the most. The first time I heard Schnauss, on his MySpace page I fell into a "bliss coma" (the same thing happened the first time I heard Slowdive's Souvlaki). I bought his latest record a couple hours later. The live show sounds gorgeous, but I've never been all that entertained by a guy and his laptop, no matter how nice the accompanying visuals are. So I pretty much just closed my eyes and let the music wash everything else out, which is pretty easy to do at that volume, when the bass is rattling your ribcage.

One of the openers was Madrid, whose live show sounds more rich than a trio should reasonably be able to create live. Good stuff. Picked up their EP at the show, which is a bit more nouveau-new wave than the live show, which sounds more shoegazer/dream-pop. Either way, opening bands don't generally make such a good impression on me, so good on 'em. They're semi-local too (apparently from Niagara Falls)!

And that's all I have for now, kids. A month of no blogging, and this is all you get. Ha! Hopefully I'll have more to say soon, since I just got my copy of Away and I'm racing through Carol Shields' Republic of Love so I can get to it. *According to that Wikipedia page, Hooky plays a Yamaha BB1200 on "Joy Division's Closer LP and every New Order album." Cool! I play a Yamaha RBX270J.

A Woman of Excess, of Zeal and Greed

I'm a bit scattered today, so here's a bunch of almost point-form bits and pieces that have a vague theme. Not so much on the witty commentary.

Picked up Lost Girls and Love Hotels after reading a review on That Shakespeherian Rag, and tore through it in about two days. Excellent debut novel about hopelessness, and the hedonism that arises from it. There is a "love" story in the novel, but it doesn't seem tacked on in an effort to conform with expected female narratives. Rather it seemed to be an extension of the free-fall the protagonist is in. Love, too, is a drug, and the more illicit, the better the high.
The American cover is hideous, and I'd have never given this novel a chance if it looked like that. Yeah yeah, book by its cover, but Lost Girls and Love Hotels isn't miso-flavoured chick-lit, and the U.S. cover leads you there. I just looked at the reader reviews on Amazon, and the first one complains about the cover too.

Laura Albert, of J.T. LeRoy infamy, is profiled in the New York Times.
"[...]I never really thought of it in terms of right or wrong, truth or lie. It was more like two computer programs running in my head. There was him, and there was me."

In the last post, I wondered where I could smoke that cigarette indoors. Turns out smoking bans might be killing English literature. (The comments are also worth a look.) I know the bans killed a lot of pool halls and sketchy bars, but literature? Hey, I'll go for that.

Bookninja linked to this footage of Anne Sexton reading her poetry. Anne's been with me through some of the craziest times, though I was warned against reading her during those times ("Don't feed your crazy!").
No one was crazy like Anne, bless her art.


The title of this post is a line from "Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women".

Schadenfreude Pie

I've already admitted that I'm a bit addicted to stories of domestic distress. I'm also a capital-F Feminist. The "mommy wars" is where these two things meet up, rather uncomfortably. See, while I'm child-free, a lot of very important people in my life are mothers. Many of them stay-at-home mothers. So I've become very interested in this whole "mommy war" thing, which we know now is very much a product of the media, used to sell papers and magazines. More importantly, it's a product of the patriarchy, which has always used "divide and conquer" as a means of making sure the underclasses ─ in this case, women ─ don't rise up. Who has time to fight the real enemy, when you're fighting each other, right?

A couple years ago I read The Mommy Myth, more as a backup to my child-free choice; I needed something to stablise my mind, in the midst of the "You just got married, when are you having kids?" chorus. At the time, my cohort was mostly child-free as well, but when I started meeting some mamas and their kids, I started noticing the "mommy wars" articles. That's when I got a hold of the excellently researched The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars. A couple months back, someone in a feminist forum (perhaps it was the comments section of my favourite radical Feminist, Twisty Faster) recommended Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. Not only does this book tackle the "mommy wars," but it takes a very serious look at how mothers are expected to be superhuman, even if they're part of the "opt-out" set. There's more than a hint of the post-feminist *cough* in here. Feminism seems to get the blame for making women take on too much, since we (those of us born in the 70s) were told that we could be mothers and career people growing up, and when that doesn't work, we still channel all that super person work ethic into raising children. The concession is made a couple times, far too briefly, that if things were just equal, if men were able to be full co-parents, then perhaps mothers would get a break, get a nap for crying out loud. However, the overriding impression is a bit defeatist: you were lied to; you can't have it all. It's the impression I got anyway. Overall though, there's some really good stuff about how hyper-parenting isn't good for kids, and that mamas need to take it easier on themselves.

And here's the uncomfortable alliance, and full confession: I read, and sympathise, and disseminate, and support mothers. And yet, and yet... I read these books and I still have to breathe a sigh of relief, because I've got it so, so easy. I'm not sure if that makes me a total asshole or not. I suppose the blog world will have to tell me. At any rate, I've been wanting to share the following link forever now, and because the aforementioned sigh of relief just might be bordering on Schadenfreude, I bring you:
How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie.

The problem with all these books, is they focus on a very specific group: middle to upper-middle class (mostly) white women. They almost always miss the people who are struggling to get by, the people who don't have a choice about working, the people who don't have a choice about staying home. They miss the working poor and the single mamas. That's why I was glad to see this article the other day:
The Working Wounded.

The debate over whether mothers of young children should opt out of full-time work, and instead stay home with their kids, has important implications for all mothers, but the vast majority of those mothers are being excluded from the conversation. The vocabulary of the discussion -- opt out, choose to stay home -- reveals its bias: It assumes that all mothers can make a choice that, in actuality, very few mothers are in a position to make.

Because not everyone is Rebecca Eckler (annoying).

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In the least shocking news ever, it turns out Americans don't read a lot.

One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday.[...]The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

I wouldn't mind seeing some Canadian numbers on this sort of thing. I assume they'd be higher, but I have absolutely nothing to base that on. More important than the statistics in that article, is the picture: where is this bar that I can still smoke in!? Tell me! I will go to it! Bah, it's probably a wretchedly old stock photo.

By the way, if you're curious how many books this Canadian reads per year, check out the "2006 Book List" and "2007 Book List" links on the sidebar there.

Do You Think These Lyrics Are Heartless?

I'm currently about 150 pages into Girlfriend in Coma. Given my love of Coupland, and my love of Morrissey, you'd think I'd have hit this one sooner. I have to say, I'm completely creeped out when I'm reading it. Far more so than when reading Winterwood or any horror genre stuff. I'm not sure if it's because Coupland is hitting some deep-seeded fears in my brain (vegetative states, Armageddon), or because he's just that good. While I haven't loved everything he's written, there are books of his that can completely alter my mood, and tinge everything around me. Eleanor Rigby made me quiet, and small, and vaguely depressed, like I was walking through mist all the time. It didn't get great reviews, but I feel it's one of his finest. All Families are Psychotic, on the other hand, had me thinking "Franzen did it better." And let's not even get into the absurdity of the China sequence in JPod. Far too meta, and you know how I feel about meta^*! But Girlfriend is Coupland at his mood-altering best. I can't put the thing down, till my eyes close by themselves to sleep. At the same time, I'm repelled, knowing something pretty awful is coming. It may not sound like it, given my one-line reviews, but I have a deep, deep respect for Coupland, and a love of his writing, even when it's pissing me off.

I also love Penguin, the publishing house. When used book shopping, I'll always take a look at the orange spines first. It's how I discovered A.S. Byatt. The orange spine has always had such a calming effect on me. So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Coupland had an exhibit up, using Penguin covers. I went to the Distillery District on Sunday to check it out, and was completely blown away. One of the things I love about Coupland, is his ease with, and reverence for, pop culture, and the sly references to it (Girlfriend has Smiths' lyrics all through it, but if you didn't know The Smiths, you'd have no idea). While it's interesting to look close up at the covers, and the words attached to them, the exhibit works best from ten feet away. I stood in the middle of that room, and turned slowly. A helpful gallery person came up to talk to me, and I asked what the pieces were going for. "$800 for a single, $1550 for the diptych." Most things had been sold, but there was one diptych left, and it read, vertically, "Dazzle Ships." The gallery person didn't know the reference. But I did. And it was still available. I really did wrestle with this. Three things I love, all together. In the end though, I'd have to go into debt to do it, and my miserly Capricorn nature stopped me. But I'll dream about it, and cry here and there. If only, if only, if only.



^*Funny that the review of Girlfriend in a Coma I link to above says: "Mr. Coupland has become the first popular mainstream author in America to publicly declare that postmodernism is dead." Though one wonders how good a review this can be, when they get the author's nationality wrong. C'mon, 99% of his writing is set in Vancouver! This is not difficult.