And I Feel Fine

There's no way Nicolas Dickner's follow up to the breathtaking Nikolski was going to be as well received. Get cliché, call it a (critic-induced) "sophomore slump." To Dickner's credit, I don't think he even tried to get near that achievement. Instead, he wrote a "novel [that] almost seems intended for teenaged readers." I agree, emphatically. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Apocalypse for Beginners works extremely well as a YA book, and maybe should have been published as such. This isn't to say that Apocalypse is lacking content that would interest adult readers, or that its language is too simplistic; that would be a disservice to both Dickner and YA as a genre. Excepting the Gossip Girls and the Twilights (and there is just as much speedy garbage on the adult shelves), good YA fiction is just as deep and thoughtful as some of the adult novels out there, dealing with topics like sexual assault, eating disorders, sex and sexual identity, drugs, religon... all the biggies that cause angst in both teenagers and adults.

Dickner's heroine, Hope, is dealing with the inevitable approach of a hereditary mental illness, that causes her and her family to think much more about the End of the World than others might. She carries the burden of being the caretaker for her mother, who has been broken by this illness. Her companion for most of the novel, and the book's narrator, is a thoughtful young man named Randall. Randall is living in a world in flux: from geopolitical events (and the new ways in which people have access to information on those events) to the changing model of business (from family run to corporate owned) he is affected rather deeply by events he can barely fathom, let alone exert any power over. While Hope's family has a condition that causes them to pick a date for a literal apocalypse, Randall and other "normal" kids like him are seeing a massive shift in their world, as the Cold War -- and the easy binaries it enabled -- ends (and in contrast, making a real apocalypse less possible). To say that I think Apocalypse for Beginners was misfiled as an "adult novel" is not an insult in the slightest. I think that given the size of the book (less than 300 quickly read pages), the age of the characters in it, and a romantic "relationship more chaste than anything this side of Hogwarts" the novel is pretty solidly positioned in YA territory.

That "chaste" comment above is from the Whitlock review again, and I gotta say, this seems a strange sort of criticism to me. Are teenagers allowed to do things other than give into their hormones? Does it have to be Cruel Intentions to be believable? I exaggerate, but take my point. I don't see anything wrong in not fucking, as long as that's not held up as some kind of moral thing, as in the Twilight books. Randall just seems to 1) be shy about things and 2) care about Hope -- and understand her overly-complicated life -- enough to know that any attempt to add a sexual relationship to the mix would cause her more harm than good. Again, he's a thoughtful, nice boy. They exist, even in high-school. This lack of overt sexual action does also position the book back into YA territory, which certainly doesn't shy away from sex in all cases, but is often able put sex aside for the sake of the story, and whatever central issues it contains.

The reviews have been mostly middling, but I think fans of Dickner (and his excellent translator Lazer Lederhendler, who knows just which French bits should remain in order to keep the reader placed solidly in Quebec) will enjoy Apocalypse for Beginners. It's not Nikolski, it can't be Nikolski. It's a smaller, quieter book; less great, perhaps, but not less worthwhile.

35 years, 33 days

I am alive at night.
I am dead in the morning,
an old vessel who used up her oil,
bleak and pale boned.
No miracle. No Dazzle.
-Anne Sexton, "Moon Song, Woman Song"

I followed a Twitter link, the other day, to an article that said "the age of 35.09—or approximately 33 days past your 35th birthday—is the precise tipping point," the point at which a woman's looks inevitably, irrevocably, go downhill. The study, such as it was, was paid for by a skin cream company, natch. It still hit me hard. I just turned 35 in December. My D-day had been January 25^th. It was all downhill from there. I updated Facebook with the link, and commented "Nothing left to do but die." This birthday has been dragging me down. What was the point in all that exercise and healthy eating and not having baby weight if my visage is just going to get hag-like anyway? Nice legs, shame about your face.

I have "marionette lines," that look to me as if someone carved them in with an Exacto knife. It's the years of smoking, taking their toll. Everything a 20-year-old does, they do with supposed impunity, without any real knowledge of the fact that aging comes for all of us. I remember, so well, feeling invincible.

As a kid I was taunted for my looks, for being ugly, acne-covered, and fat. I internalised all of that. I did my time in the Disordered Eating Dungeon. I never felt thin enough, though I relied on being thin, because I always felt so ugly. Last year, at 34, I discovered running, and the for the first time I felt real peace with my body, and consequently with my face. Photos were taken of me that year that I liked, not just tolerated. When I looked in the mirror I consistently enjoyed what I saw. For once, for a year, I felt good about myself. If this was aging, I was all for it. Then came the lines. And the 35^th birthday. So much for all that.

Maybe it would behoove me to read I Feel Bad About My Neck. See how the older half lives. I have beautiful friends in their 20s. They're dewy and gorgeous. One of them expressed surprise at my feelings on aging. She asked, doesn't one become more confident? I replied that you have to be confident, to compensate for looking old. I hate being the voice of sadness, but I can't help expressing how this feels. How surprised I am that I look in the mirror and see what is just the beginning. The decline. I am not comfortable in my skin, as I was for that one gorgeous year.

Thanks, Susan, but knowing it doesn't stop it from kicking the shit out of me. Because it really is. Sontag even acknowledges the dreaded number by name: "After thirty-five any mention of one’s age carries with it the reminder that one is probably closer to the end of one’s life than the beginning." People laud celebrities for looking amazing at 40 and 50, but of course they have the money and time to spend on looking perpetually 30 -- maximum. "Most of the women who successfully delay the appearance of age are rich, with unlimited leisure to devote to nurturing along nature’s gifts. Often they are actresses. (That is, highly paid professionals at doing what all women are taught to practice as amateurs.)"

"But although this system of inequality is operated by men, it could not work if women themselves did not acquiesce in it. Women reinforce it powerfully with their complacency, with their anguish, with their lies." But what's a girl to do? Even a girl that recognizes all the binaries and bullshit. I've read The Beauty Myth. To not buy into the anti-aging industry

is the real social threat: that women will first accept their aging, then admire it, and finally enjoy it. Wasting women's money is the calculable damage; but the damage this fraud does women through its legacy of the dread of aging is incalculable. (Wolf 113)

It's capitalism. It's a patriarchal set up; a possible excuse for the males who leave us for new models when we lose our fecundity -- if you believe the biological determinists. And yet: what's a girl to do, when she is no longer a girl (despite the embarrassingly erroneous suffix on her email address), and the world does not come easily knocking at her door, what can she do but anguish? Fuck me, I want a cigarette.

Simone Weil wrote something that speaks beautifully and simply to me: "To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death." When I was 34, I tattoo'd Klimt's conception of Death on my arm, from shoulder to elbow. When my tattoo artist placed the stencil on my arm, he remarked on Death's gaze: "He's got your back." It's not dying I'm frightened of; I accept death as truth. For me, the fear is what's expressed by Alex in The Witches of Eastwick^*: "Getting old. That scares me. I mean, it's a short life, isn't it? [...] I look in the mirror sometimes and I see everything falling apart. Fast." Live or die, but don't poison everything...^**

Sontag's article was written when I was three. When I was eight, Susan Brownmiller's^† Femininity was published. In it, Brownmiller noted that we live

[...]in a culture where the chief criteria of feminine success are ephemeral youth and beauty, a woman's sense of failure is likely to begin at the moment she is percieved by others as no longer young and desirable. (165-66)

The Beauty Myth came out when I was 15. And here we still are, when I'm 35. The terrors of aging have made women react with horrors of their own, long before I was born. Lady Bathory's legend is of bathing in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth, and today Joan Rivers has, though surgery, bought herself an inhuman mask. In the morning, when I see a face I don't want, I understand all of it.

^*From the screenplay, found here. I don't know if this actually appears in the book.
^**Anne Sexton, "Live"
^†In one of the alternate universes in Robert Anton Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, breasts are called "Brownmillers." Oh tee hee, Wilson.

The School Visit

I have lingering flu weird head space. So forgive some wandering in this post. I've been living on Green Juice for days.

When I was in the 10^th grade we had a Real! Live! Author! come give a talk to the budding writers among us. It was totally optional to go, and there were probably about 20 students collected in the library to hear her talk. I'd just handed in a short story that had received an unusually high mark (and I've probably not written any fiction as good since), and was told that I should go as well. So there I was.

The author was Elona Malterre. You might not have heard of her. Certainly the other students hadn't. But by some weird twist, I had. My Dad had bought and read her book, The Celts^*. Since I was constantly raiding my Dad's library, I'd read it too. This was my encounter with a Real! Live! Author!, and I still remember thinking "Well if I'd have known it was her, I'd have brought the book for her to sign!" I was actually pretty thrilled to meet someone whose work I'd read. I'm still that way, and I'm totally in awe that people I call friends are Real! Live! Authors! It seems like a sort of magic to me, to be able to create a whole book.

Since this was 20 years ago, I don't remember terribly much. However, Malterre said one thing that has always stuck with me. She told us that every book has a time in your life. Even if you start a book and can't finish it, set it aside and pick it up again next year. Or the year after. As you grow and change, your perspective will be different, and that book will mean something new. She told us never to force yourself to finish a book, just wait until the time is right for you and that book. This was powerful advice. There have been a few books in my life (some Great Literature, some not) that haven't thrilled me on first, second, or third try, but when the time was right, I'd tear through them. The best example from my own life is The Crystal Cave, which I tried to read about five times between the 7^th grade and University. Maybe it was all the Arthurian revival stuff I was reading in my Victorian poetry class, but things finally clicked, I spent a thrilling couple days with the book in 1996.

Sadly, I don't read like I used to. I finish almost^** every book I start, owing mostly to my extensive use of the Toronto Public Library system, and the books don't have time to match my mood, or life path, or whatever. It no longer happens that I have no next-book scheduled and instead must peruse my shelves (or box of mass markets) for that book I didn't finish, but wouldn't give away (and there are still of few of those sitting there, so sadly neglected). I keep buying, too, and that pile just grows and grows. I still value what Elona Malterre said, though. It's great advice. I pass it on to others, when I can.

This post was sparked by an author who also does school visits, Jill Murray, and her post today on Bookmadam about how authors pay the bills. I don't know how common school visits are; I only ever remember having that one (my distant foggy elementary school past thinks we might have had one there too, but it was Calgary, and we didn't have a lot of local published talent). I think it's a great idea though, and something that really benefits the kids who get to participate. I didn't realise it was something authors did to supplement their income, but people need to be paid for their time, and to my mind, it's money well spent.

^*I don't know where he came across it, and if it was just some freaky coincidence that she happened to be a local author. He and I both did most of our book shopping, at the time, in used bookstores, so the mass market paperback copy we had probably came from there. Sorry, Elona!
^**Picoult is just really that bad.

One Day

My taste in most things seems to run to Brits. Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Radiohead. Quality Street, Sherbet, Jellybabies. A.S. Byatt, Thomas Hardy, Angela Carter. So One Day was an easy sell for me. It's a rock-'n'-roll candy-bag of a book, with an essential easy Englishness. While One Day deals with some more serious topics (death, divorce, alcoholism, life paths), it feels like reading Bridget Jones's Diary. This is a complementary comparison; One Day is filled with likeable, relateable characters, who are often very funny. These are people I'd have over for dinner, and Drunken Yelling^TM.

Spoiler-y things happen after here!

One Day's narrative trick is to relate the events of July 15^th, starting in 1988. This is the day we find Emma and Dexter in bed, though not post-coitus. We are led through the next 20-odd years of their life, through the ups and downs of a vibrant and wonderful friendship, reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally. In fact, Emma's later boyfriend, Ian, actually alludes to that film, though derisively. I found myself tearing through the first 3/4^ths of the book, just enjoying the ride. Unfortunately, no one can ever just let men and women be friends, and the thing I dreaded most happened: Emma and Dexter get together. Moreover, they get married. Emma, to this point, had been rather unconventional, with a wandering career path and a "not-for-me" attitude towards marriage and children. In fact, she resents the intrusion of children into the lives of all her friends. When she marries Dexter, however, she comes to realise she does want a child. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a show of maturity for Emma, or an easy narrative out. Either way, seeing Emma become those things she fought against being was a let down. And then, Emma dies.

By this part of the book, I'd checked out a bit. I just didn't like them together any more. Maybe Nicholls didn't either, and had to kill Emma off to make things interesting. Emma dies suddenly, riding her bike in the rain, struck by a car. The passage itself is supposed to be startling:

Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever

I was reminded of another startling death scene I read a couple years ago, from a breakout French bestseller (this is probably spoiler-y too, but I'm trying not to be). Same sort of premise: quick death, struck by car. Yet that time, I wept from it. I didn't see it coming, and I cared so much, that I was brought to tears^*. When Emma died, I thought "Oh, that was easy."

One Day remains an excellent read, though I resented the conventionality it stumbles into near the end, and the odd way Nicholl's tries to make up for it. One Day was yet another Lainey Liu recommendation (she's a hell of a reviewer and reader, whatever you think about the celebrity gossip biz), and I wouldn't say the less-than-great ending quarter of One Day would make me trust her taste in books any less. She nailed Room, and got me to read Furious Love, so I'll keep heeding her suggestions.

^*I almost never cry at movies, but Hardy (for example) can make me bawl for days. I'm more invested in the word, I suppose

This Again (In Defence of the Humble Worker)

So often on book blogs, and book news sites, I see people complain about the chain bookstore employee. About how dull and stupid they are, what a crime it is they can't spell "Ondaatje," how tragic that the bookstore employee encountered can't read minds/hasn't read what you're looking for/doesn't know your favourite author. Whenever I see it, I'm not shy about yelling at the author of such comments.

During a morning meeting at Chapters, near the beginning of my time there, one of my managers said "Even if you read a book a week, that's only 52 books a year. Look around you. There's no possible way you will ever read even a tiny percentage of the books here in your lifetime. So when customers are frustrated that you don't know exactly which book they're vaguely talking about — and they will be — it's not your fault." We'd do the best we could to help customers. Most times we didn't have to work too hard to get it right; people are generally looking for popular books and showing them the best-seller shelf usually did the trick.

Chain or not, bookstore employees are usually readers. Maybe we weren't all chomping down on Dostoevsky, but we read. A lot of folks I worked with had post-secondary degrees (as do I), of the sort that don't have real practical applications. Yet there's an inherent classism that happens when some people enter a chain bookstore. The retail grunts can't possibly be human, right? "They don't really care about books, I mean, look at all these candles... oooooh lavendar!"^* Fact is, your local Chapters/Indigo employee is probably pretty passionate about books, and reading. Sure, there's the odd person who's doing it solely for the paycheque (and that's totally fair too), but for readers who work retail, there's no better place to do it.

I worked at the Chapters location mentioned in the recent Eye Weekly article "In defence of Chapters." Unfortunatley, the piece does suffer from the same prejudice I mention above. Sarah Nicole Prickett writes "They make no suggestions, having nothing to prove; they work at Chapters." The implicit message is that they couldn't possibly care about literature, they work in a big box. She goes on to say that while spending time at Chapters "[t]he only risk is running into someone with a normal job, like in corporate PR or helping children[.]" Because, you know, people who work retail aren't really "normal" or "people" or any of that. Maybe I'm taking this a bit on the chin, but Prickett isn't defending anything here, other than her need to go to Chapters and casually rip up magazines (and actually, yes, they do mind when you do that, that's called "loss" and stores don't like it).

Given all this, it was nice to see that chain bookstores really can mean something. When the Barnes & Noble in Lincoln Sqaure closed, the employees left a heartfelt note in the window. Patrons, who had come to treasure this big store, and the people it employed, wrote back.

Click for larger version

^*The number of people who would complain to frontline employees about the selection of non-book items in Chapters/Indigo was pretty hilarious. You think those folks have anything to do with the decision making? Or that they have a direct line to Reisman/Silver (is Silver still around)? Please. Fact is, the margins are better on that stuff, and it's what keeps the stores in business.

When She Takes a Walk

Missing woman dies after exposed to extreme cold.

My Mom hadn't been working for a while. Before we'd admit anything to ourselves she'd been let go from her job, unable to learn new computer systems. So she'd been spending her days indoors, wandering from room to room, wiping down counters and dusting bookshelves. Every day she'd clean the catbox then walk to the end of our street where there was a "poop and scoop" deposit bin for the surrounding off-leash park. The walk was a good idea; it got her out of the house every day, into the fresh air.

When her diagnosis finally came I went home as soon as I could. I arrived on Boxing Day. It was a relief to my Dad to have someone in the house. He'd been leaving her alone, going to work. He couldn't afford not to. Still can't. On returning he'd often find the oven or the taps on. It's what we expected to happen, eventually. So having me there was one whole week without the stress. I would turn off the taps and the stove, if needed. I'd make her eat. And every day she went for that walk.

I joke that cold weather follows me: when I moved to Toronto at the end of February the temperature suddenly dropped; I went to LA this Christmas and was met with rain and 10 degree temperatures; that December, leading into January, Calgary denied me a Chinook, and instead greeted me with snow and minus 30. Still, every day my Mom bundled up, walked a little over five minutes each way, and deposited the catbox refuse. One morning, half-asleep in the basement bedroom, I heard the back doorbell ring. Initially I ignored it. It wasn't my house anymore, the caller wouldn't be there to see me. The doorbell kept ringing. Then I realised my mother had gone for her walk. It was my mother at the door, outside, in minus 30 degree weather. I raced up the stairs to let her in.

She'd lost her keys somewhere along the way. She insisted we go back out and look for them, in the howling wind, on every lawn, in any disturbed snowbank. We never did find her keys. I was completely shaken. This event, more than the diagnosis, made her disease real to me.

It was minus 30 and 9am. My Dad wouldn't return home until 4. This morning, when I heard the story of the woman who died, all I could think of was that cold day my Mom locked herself out.

I told her that she had to suspend these walks, at least for the winter, trying somehow to reconcile the fact that this was both my mother and a person I had to make rules for. Sounding like a mother myself, I said "You could have frozen to death out there!" I was so thankful she'd remembered, somehow, that I was there. She had enough in her to ring that doorbell. Though maybe she'd have rung it anyway, all day, waiting. It hurts to think about.

I didn't show my Mom how upset I was. I tried to be calm, but I was so young, and so unprepared for this to happen. That was a real taste of the times we'd have moving forward. All the changes for her life.

I read Tangles on Christmas day this year. It was painful to read, and after the bit about how Sarah Leavitt's Mom got lost the first time, I had to put the book down because I was crying too hard to see.

Before my visit I asked Mom if she would let me videotape her talking about having Alzheimer’s. She though that would be a good idea[…] She said she had made some notes about the day she got lost. This is that story without all the pauses:
"I knew I had to walk down Smythe Street to our house. Part way down, I got lost. I mean, I could see where I had to go, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there. It seemed so far away. I ended up outside Harvey’s, where you used to go, remember? So I went inside. A nice young man […] called me a cab and I told the driver what happened. 'I got lost because I have Alzheimer’s.' 'Alzheimer’s . Phew. That’s rough. My Dad had it, used to go out to the bar in the middle of the night.' People here are so kind. They really care. I’m so lucky.
[…]
This is my new bracelet. It’s from the police in case I get lost. But I’ll never go out again by myself.

After my Mom lost her keys that day, my Dad didn't replace them. He'd just lock the back door when he left, and hoped she didn't decide to go out the front door (which has a knob deadbolt, not one you'd need a key for). I don't know why it didn't occur to either of us just to change the lock. None of us were in our right minds. Thankfully, using the front door was something my family never did, and she'd never got the habit of leaving that way. At that stage, she was relying a lot on rote. Later that year, in the summer, she did leave by the front door once, and wound up deep into a different suburban neighbourhood. From what my Dad told me, a nice older lady -- older, for my mother wasn't even 60 yet -- managed to get my Mom talking enough to piece together where she lived, and got her home. They waited there for my Dad to get home from work. Mom got the bracelet then, though Dad also changed the locks. She never needed to use the bracelet; she would never go anywhere unattended for the rest of her life.

The Wayback Machine

There's a lot of talk right now about the edited Huckleberry Finn.

I just keep thinking about this Family Ties^* episode.



^*Man, I totally forgot how didactic 80s sitcoms can be. "Aren't we the most perfect rich, white liberal family ever? Peachy!! Learn our ways!"

2010 Year End List Thing Blah Blah

I thought I might squeak one more book into the count this year, but I've actually read NOTHING over the past week, while on vacation in Los Angeles. Weird state of affairs that. Anyway, here's the 2010 Book Count.

I should have done this yesterday, but I spent the day convalescing, watching 30 Rock, and hoping the gin in my system would wear through eventually. Here are my no-particular-number-of 2010 standouts (and hopefully my from-memory details are right; I'm still partially made of gin):
The Glass Room - Should have won the Booker. My favourite of the 2009 field.
The Women's Room - When the Women's Movement was newish, finding its feet, and really, really active. This is some sort of Golden Age that I'm too young to remember.
Ten Storey Love Song - An entire novel in a single sentence, that starts on the front cover. Sounds gimmicky, but isn't. Bit of a Trainspotting vibe, but everything Brit+Drugs has that by default I suppose. (Linked review by Irvine Welsh doesn't help either, heh.) Even the Dogs is also a Brit+Drugs book, which is lesser only in that it isn't as daring.
Fauna - As much of a love song to Toronto as anything else. Reminded me why I live here (there, heh, I'm not in T.O. right now).
Gate at the Stairs - Rightfully in a lot of "Year's Best" lists. Deals with Big Issues (race, class, 9-11, becoming an adult) on an extremely personal level.
I Love Dick - I discovered Chris Kraus this year, rhapsodized about her, and haven't been the same since.
Fear of Fighting - Read in three hours, hurtling through breakups and mental illness, sadness and hopefull steps towards redemption.
Player One - Not because it's anywhere near his best work, but my copy is signed, and that's a definite highlight in my year.
Room - Truly amazing. A lot of people are put off by the 5-yr-old narrator, for various reasons, but the linked review by Lainey Lui (a noted gossip blogger) really, really nails why it worked for me.
Tangles - I cried my way through Tangles. I went through a lot of this with my Mom, who is still alive in a nursing home, but as gone from us as a living person can be. It was very, very difficult to read, but I'm glad I did. Yes, it upset me, but it also showed me that the absolute horror of this disease isn't something we do alone. There are others like us.

Feminized Literature, Motherhood, & Canada Reads

It was with trepidation I opened the current CNQ, dubbed "The Gender Issue." I understand, and advocate, the need to be fair to all sides when delving into any issue, but today, this week, I'm tired of being angry. And if you're going to give equal time to all ideas on gender (specifically, gender and Canadian literature), I'm going to get angry at something. It's inevitable. I'm an "angry feminist" and generally pretty happy about that.

So I was gratified that the lead piece was Nicole Dixon's "The Other F-Word: The Disappearance of Feminism from Our Fiction." Dixon takes on the current landscape of Canadian female-authored fiction with a real "angry feminist" eye, that I appreciate. Sometimes, I feel that as feminists we have to pull our punches too often, so as not to offend. Third-wave feminism, as the reader no doubt knows, was a big, needed leap forward in terms of inclusivity. However, Dixon and many other feminists now take umbrage with a theory of feminism that has become too scared to make a point in fear of coming across as not inclusive enough. Feminism, so the thinking goes, has become too susceptible to alternative versions and definitions (Sarah Palin, anyone?). The resulting

problem with keeping feminism undefined and mutable is that the stereotypes the second-wavers fought against creep back into public thinking and published fiction, brought back and advanced by women as well as men.

One of the stereotypes Dixon rallies against, within a CanLit framework, is compulsory motherhood. As I've said before, I'm child-free – recently I chose to have a tubal ligation to (hurr hurr) seal the deal – but I am interested in motherhood narratives, sometimes just for the reassurance that I have made the right choice for me. So, for someone like me, it's always good to read a piece that fights against the notion that motherhood is a necessary part of the female experience, though it is one of the most common. Of Lisa Moore's February Dixon writes:

To write and publish such a novel and create such a character at a time when more women graduate from universities than men sends the message that breeding is more important than education... Why coach women toward publishing and graduate degrees when Canada's successful women authors literally coach them toward mental suicide?

I don't think Dixon is suggesting that those women who have had children are now brainless (though mothers with too little sleep might argue they feel as such). Rather, that the imagined women of CanLit, and indeed some of the authors, are defined not by their own personhood, but by the existence of their children.

There are, of course, some issues with Dixon's analysis. While I agree and/or am engaged by a lot of her critical analysis of the texts, the politics fall down a bit. In returning to a more second-wave activist viewpoint, Dixon does neglect some of the things the third-wave worked so hard to achieve, mainly understanding. First off, I'm troubled by the unthinking classism displayed here.

Nothing else a woman does is universally applauded as having a baby – not earning a PhD (more women attended a friend's baby shower than her PhD defense), not becoming a lawyer (most of my lawyer friends are now stay-at-home moms), not even running for president

Not all women have the opportunity to get graduate degrees, let alone attend post-secondary education. While I did get a BA, I'm not exactly a high-powered career woman, and there are lots more like me. Are these women invisible? Is the “loss” of people like me to motherhood okay, because we don't have graduate degrees? I doubt this is what Dixon means, but her examples are not exactly pan-experiential

Dixon also assumes that “women can choose to live whatever lives they want (in this country anyway)[.]” This again, seems to speak to a certain section of Canadian female experience that is, indeed, over-represented in CanLit. Some women don't have a choice (or don't know that they have a choice) about motherhood, due to cultural, familial, or religious obligations and constraints. However, if we're going to focus more on the white, likely middle-class women who write the books Dixon is looking at, there are still issues. The thing is, a lot of women really do choose motherhood. Not to beat the fandom horse, but Kerry Clare and Marita Dachsel have a wonderfully thoughtful conversation on motherhood and writing^* posted at Pickle Me This. Many of my white, middle-class friends have, or want, kids. If motherhood narratives are popular, it must be at least partially due to the number of mothers reading and identifying with them. It's dangerous to call too many of these narratives mindless, because that view is suspect of the readership,^** and in truth, there are a lot of really smart women out there, with children, who appreciate literature on the same level that Dixon does.

While I'm critical of Dixon's piece, I also want to make clear that I really, really like it. I think it's a really great bit of feminist analysis that has me thinking about CanLit in a new way, and it's given me a critical framework that I'll definitely employ going forward. It also reminded me, through some of the works it deals with (Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Birth House^†)and the mention of Dixon's roit grrrrrl university days, that a really deserving book missed making the Top 5 of Canada Reads this year, after making it to the top 10. Bottle Rocket Hearts is the story of Eve, making her way through life and love in mid-90s Montreal. Zoe Whittall belongs to the same cohort as Dixon and I, and Bottle Rocket Hearts inspires fond memories of how transgressive we felt, before "alt" was (ironically) so common a modifier as to be completely meaningless. Eve is unsure and tough, all at the same time, and reminds me of the 20-year-old arrogance and swagger we displayed, while not having any fucking clue what we were really doing. If I'd met Eve in 1995, I'd have wanted to be her, though I was probably more like her than I think. Bottle Rocket Hearts is, I hope, a book Nicole Dixon could get behind.

^*Yet, I was also taken aback by the following comment: “My own view, of course, is that biological reproduction is intrinsic to creative work, and that the labour of giving birth and of finishing a book are pretty close to the same thing.” I felt this comment to be marginalizing to those of us who have chosen not to participate in the parenthood process (not to mention those women who – for whatever reason – can't have children but want to). The comment has since been contextualized for me, but honestly? It still rankles. I am definitely pro-mama, and I think as a society we still don't value mothers as people enough. However, we can't go so far as to assume that “biological reproduction” is a necessary pre-condition for a certain kind of work. Not only am I child-free, but I'm the second generation of my family to be adopted. This history, in part, leads me to believe that there is an over emphasis on biology and reproduction. Which is where Dixon and I meet up again.<sup>‡

**</sup>And this is something I find all too often with critical analysis in this country; if something is popular, it must be mindless. I feel there's a classism in this as well, and I don't believe that populism is necessarily a bad thing. But what do I know? I don't have a graduate degree.

^†It's odd to admit, within the context of a post dealing with feminism, that I read The Birth House because I saw Ami McKay give an award acceptance speech that made me cry. I ended up liking the speech more than the book.

^‡And I could also write three times as much on all the times I said “Yes!!” in my head, or on some other little things I want to engage with, but I'm trying to be ever-so-slightly focused.

This Can't Be A Coincidence

Last night on Family Guy, Brian published a book with Penguin. And here's how that show portrayed a higher-up at Penguin:

This can't be a coincidence.