On bounced rent cheques and teary-eyed excuses

Road to Thunder Hill by Connie Barnes Rose

2012-01-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

I recently heard a novelist declare that a great novel achieves three criteria: It's unputdownable, it's unforgettable, and it's timeless. Seeing as only future generations can attest to whether a novel attains the third criteria, I'll concern myself with the first two, which seem valid enough, if not to determine a novel's greatness, than at least as to whether it's worth recommending. By this standard Road to Thunder Hill by Connie Barnes Rose more than succeeds. There are many ways to fashion an unputdownable, unforgettable story. Barnes Rose does it by creating a setting and characters that are so deeply authenticate, honest and affecting it is hard to imagine they aren't as real and present as the folks living next door. The story is told by Trish Kyle, forty-something and at a crossroads in her twenty-year marriage to Ray who spends his weeks working several hours away in salt mines. A freak April snowstorm hits, blocking roads and knocking out power, which exacerbates Trish's loneliness and fragile state of mind. The storm that rages outside is nothing compared to the one wreaking havoc in her heart. Trish is convinced that Ray is having an affair and she's at her wit's end. On Thunder Hill, seeking refuge has always been a way of life for its inhabitants, whether it be in the arms of friends, family, lovers, or escaping in booze and narcotics. Trish has done it all, particularly the latter. Now she has strong memories and emotions to contend with, including an attraction to rugged Bear James, Thunder Hill's 'failed hermit' and Ray's best friend, and resentment toward her alleged half-sister Olive, who now lives in her childhood home and is apparently bent on making Trish feel inferior. When the refugees all find themselves around Olive's kitchen table to ride out the remainder of the uncertain weather, the question Barnes Rose beautifully conveys is when and how - it's never really a question of 'if' - love and forgiveness will finally emerge on Thunder Hill, like the first crocuses of spring.

A New Year Poem by Dave Margoshes

2012-01-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

A New Year poem from Dave Margoshes in my inbox is becoming an annual event. It's a way to start the year for which I'm grateful.

DEFINITELY NOT

“We are not alone!” So the tabloids say,
just below the latest on the Mayans,
the bleak countdown. Not alone,
without indication of God or just some gods
or curious travelers from far abroad.
Well, yes, there are stars, supernovas,
black holes. Clouds cumulous
and cirrus, gamma rays, ozone holes,
the rank odour of modernity and progress.
All around us, evidence of intelligence
and stupidity, the betting not yet settled.
Sunrise, sunset and the heart-piercing cry
of a loon, the hungry wail of a cat in an alley,
a speeding siren, more heartbreak.
And back to those stars, blinking
down with neither passion nor compassion,
nor comprehension. No, we are not alone.

- Dave Margoshes, copyright 2012

The Price Elasticity of Literature

2011-12-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

To self publish or not to self publish. That's the question more and more established and would be writers are asking themselves. There are undeniable success stories, particularly in pulp genres (thrillers, crime fiction, romance, sci-fi, supernatural-romance etc.) Often, authors first establish themselves through the traditional publishing model and them branch off and build their readership and profitability by self-publishing. As with all other product in the marketplace, brand-building is key. The model doesn't seem to work for literary fiction nearly as well though for a varity of reasons and publishers are becoming strictly marketers, divesting from literature by devoting fewer and fewer resources to editing and material support to their authors (not to mention paying smaller advances). Agents and publishing houses are increasingly expecting to receive polished publishable manuscripts. I know a few writers who are paying for professional manuscript editing services in the hope that it can lead to a deal, a risky and expensive proposition. The problems facing the publishing and marketing of literary fiction are dealt with in an interesting article by Alex Good. He makes the point that unlike literary fiction, genre fiction is well-suited for selling on the web which tends to cheapen everything by making it so readily available. A $0.99 to $2.99 price point makes everything merely discardable merchandise, akin to fast-fashion or fast-food ie. not something you cherish enough to put on your shelf. When it's in a person's mind that they should be paying so little for a book (when paying anything at all) how do you then go and ask $10 or $20 for literary fiction (read: higher quality merchandise). When $0.99 becomes the price for a book ie. what readers expect to pay, it doesn't matter whether the author is Danielle Steele, Dan Brown or Dostoevsky. The question is will literature, as we know it, pay the ultimate price?

New Year's Day

2011-12-28T06:08:00.000-08:00

THE POEM THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

It started innocently enough,
a white screen, a thought, leading to an image
that accumulated into words
(she thought of rainclouds forming)
the syllables counted, the line skipped
rhythm added (she thought of sidewalk puddles)
and a clever rhyme about New Year’s Day
that made her smile with
hope for better tomorrows
tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
(kind of cliché, she knew, but it didn’t matter
it felt right for the time of year), she
a junior in university
emailed what she’d typed to her list of friends,
(mostly acquaintances)
with wishes for health and happiness,
and it was read and deleted by most,
but two messages slipped through and
were forwarded to their contact list
and two more were forwarded to theirs
and this went on for weeks
the forwards multiplying virally
through blog links, Facebook sharing and Tweets
and someone posted it on YouTube
accompanied by images pilfered from the web
and a song by Taylor Swift used without permission,
and it got hits and hits galore, millions
and a hundred million and a book deal
(like Sh*t My Dad Says)
that was a New York Times Bestseller
and a film option from Hollywood
and a logo and a phrase that became a clothing line
and the President quoted it
in his re-election campaign speech
and it was translated into forty-two languages
including Swahili, Mongolian, and Ojibwa
and it got its own Wikipedia page
and school children all around the world
committed it to memory
for a while.

Drum roll please...

2011-12-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

The $50,000 poem. Judge for yourself.
(I particularly like how the poet managed to slide in, as it were, the words 'cock' and 'cunt'. That alone makes it worth every penny.)

The weather today...

2011-12-15T05:34:00.000-08:00

DECEMBER RAIN, MONTREAL

The martyr-sun withers behind shadows
Darkly cumulus. Cellophane angels
Wood magi, tinfoil stars appear below
Mount-Royal, new benedictions they sell
To jingles of merchants and Christmas bells
The storefronts hang with icicles dripping
Like clear bloody nails as soles go slipping
Along glacial pavement of downtown roads
Umbrellas popped-open over heads low
Like black mushrooms or propped vinyl halos
Mothers trailed by elfin cherubic broods
Are neon-illumined in rubber hoods
Their tiny icon-faces bright as dolls
Puppet nativities entrance them all.

Same Old Same Old

2011-12-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

The other day my seventeen (eighteen in April) year old daughter confided that she was 'blown away' by a certain Pink Floyd song from their Animals album. She called 'Dogs' up on her laptop (Youtube) and we listened to it together. 'How does he make his guitar sound like yelping dogs?' she queried excitedly. 'The way the synthesizer sounds like a pack of barking hounds. And the lyrics. Freaking genius.' I smiled, knowingly. You see, I'm slightly familiar with this particular tune. Listened to it possibly a thousand times when I was my daughter's age. In fact, I used a quote from Dogs for my senior entry in my high-school yearbook. This seemed a good way to bid adieu to my childhood :

And after a while you can work on points for style
Like the club tie and the firm handshake
As sudden look in the eye and an easy smile
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

I was a cheery optimistic lad.
Apparently, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I'm thinking about this because of a provocative Vanity Fair article arguing that every twenty years or so American society has traditionally regenerated itself with new styles, new fashion, new design, new entertainment. My taste in music (Pink Floyd) was radically different from my mother's taste (Frankie Laine). My dad called the jeans I wore on a daily basis 'dungarees'. The renewal of style has not only distinguished fathers and mothers from their offspring, but has kept the economy pumping at a healthy clip. In the last twenty years, say, from 1992 to 2012 we've stalled, according to the article. The median wage hasn't changed, and the music hasn't changed that much either - Lady Gaga is just a spruced up (and younger) version of Madonna - same with the fashion and even the politics. It would stand to reason then that parents my age, would have a lot more in common with their kids, then those parents had with their parents, which seems to be my experience. I'm not sure that we're in a holding pattern per se, but the rate of cultural change does appear to have slowed. The distance between me who was born during the civil rights revolution and came of age during the heyday of disco, and my parents who were pre-war babies seems transcontinental culturally-speaking. In my day we called it 'the generation gap'. I doubt if my kids would inherently grasp that concept the way we did. So, same old, same old, right? Well, not in one very obvious and important way: technology. All those devices that were science fiction when I was young that are now ubiquitous, commonplace and indispensible. The 'transponder' used by Captain Kirk to order Scotty to 'beam me up' is what we now call a cellphone. The desktops and laptops and i-thingamajigs and Blackberries and video games and Facebook and Google have all undoubtedly shifted the cultural parameters. Styles and eras don't seem to matter nearly as much as they used to and one can argue that it is precisely because of our obsession with gadgetry and the internet which makes us feel as if we are living virtual and a-temporal existences. The internet makes all cultures of all eras immediately present and accessible. We travel through space and time with a mere click of a button. Style, as we used to understand and live it, is irrelevant. I mean, do you really have to care about the clothes you wear, or how you wear your hair, if you live, play, shop, do your banking, go to school, and socialize through a screen?

If you happen to be within 100 kms of the nation's capital

2011-11-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the fine folks at the University of Ottawa's Department of English and the Vered Jewish Canadian Studies Program I have the pleasure of reading from my new (critically acclaimed) novel Halbman Steals Home on Wednesday December 7, 2011 at 6:00 p.m., Arts Hall, 70 Laurier Ave East, Glenn Clever Room #301 and best of all admission is FREE

Publisher's Weekly review of Halbman

2011-11-26T10:32:00.001-08:00

I was surprised (and relieved) to see this brief review of my upcoming second novel only scheduled for release in late February. Nice! It can be pre-ordered at Amazon.ca (hint, hint).

In praise of Salesmanship

2011-11-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

On the right hand side of your screen you will notice a little e-book called "Salesmanship: Three Stories." If you don't think it's worth the $4.99 price tag, here's a little testimonial from one reader of the title story, (okay, so it's not so 'little', nor is it really a testimonial, more a review/critique). William Robinson has published meticulously crafted short stories in a variety of publications including carte blanche, Verbsap and snreview among others. This is one reader who knows of what he speaks. If I wasn't quite sure what I was writing at the time, I'm sure glad I have Bill to tell me so eloquently what the story is really about. (warning: there's a spoiler at the end).

I have so much writerly appreciation for this story. It is a brilliantly told story about a rapidly aging man trying to determine what his life, or life in general, has amounted to. And as the title aptly implies, Salesmanship, after years of having said “no” to the Lubavitcher boys and to faith, he finally says “yes.”

Or at least he’s willing to listen.

Thus, the impetus to find some sort of answer comes one late Friday afternoon by way of a Lubavitcher boy into his office. Time is everything, perhaps, because he is beginning to see his own whittling away. He is no longer selling like he used to. Is it possible that the young boy reminds him of a new beginning, a chance to start afresh? Perhaps.

But mostly we are treated to a text that offers the reader glimpses into the slow grind down of his business, and of a life. Peppered throughout is this running commentary balanced within the present moment of the first-person narrative, which he offers in regard to the events and decisions that have shaped his life. His son-in-law, Joel, runs off to China periodically for cheaper fabrics. The office is lonely and drab. But within that framework, we learn that there is still lust in his heart. (Or should we say in his penis, which seems to function more like an eighteen-year-old's!)

The portrayal of this scene is one masterful stroke after another by the simple yet persistent desire to peek at his dim-witted secretary’s “honkers.” Yet in the same breath we sense that it is too late for him to contemplate the possibility that he could do much more than gawk. Save for the penis, his body is starting to fail him. And thus another strike at old age, for the penis symbolizes lust and power, but within a failing vessel such as his body, what good is it ultimately?

The context of the story is interesting, and conveys the understanding that the writer, either consciously or sub, gets credit for: it was back in the old days quite a common practice for bosses, without remorse or confusion, to schtump their secretaries. It is within that context and implication that adds wrenching depth and complexity to the character and story. Congrats!

So either the world has changed and the old man can’t keep up, or it no longer matters. He is young in mind, but visibly, in real tangible bones, too old in the mind of the world. Although he would like not to have to go quietly into thy good night, he knows on some visceral level that his time has passed.

Enter the boy as the vehicle, the one who is going to attempt to convert him (sell him) after all these years some greater meaning to his life. The fact that the boy is working alone piques the man's interest, throws the his world view slightly askew, and he’s intrigued. By offering the boy a “yes,” he gains some satisfaction, and some power back, as is illustrated in, One thing is undeniable, the kid's giving me a sense of satisfaction. It comes from knowing that by simply answering "yes" instead of "no" to his question I have the power to put a very uncomfortable boy at ease.

And yet the power-grab is all too brief. We are led into this empty, dusty room (the room functions with dual meaning, a paradox, perhaps---either an empty vessel upon which to start over, or the end of something represented by it's very vacantness). And in that room he wants the boy to impart some shared wisdom about God and Jews, something as a sort of keepsake after the boy leaves.

But he’s a boy. The man knew on some level that he wasn’t really going to get much, but there was hope, expectations. And as he says himself, when expectations aren’t met, there is inevitable disappointment. Then we see his memory of the marriage, and the fact that the yarmulkes, which were sewed with the names of his daughter and son-in-law, was all “a load of crap.”

When the boy begins to hum a tune that he is not familiar with, the ritual itself is “so foreign and medieval.” Then he is bound and his fingers lose sensation, the physical symbolism of him losing control/power over his life. When Laurie suggests that he may need help, things turn for the worse; it all becomes too nasty a charade. And so he begins to panic-sweat, due to the realization that in life there are no answers, only truths created by oneself. (I may have wanted a bit more cause-and-effect in terms of him reaching this heightened state of discombobulation rather than his inability to read the thick text, but that’s a tiny quibble.)

The condom is a nice touch at the end—he is on to Joel and Laurie, their illicit affair. (Now the reader, and perhaps the man himself, understands that Laurie's concern had more to do with this secret than for the man's welfare.) Is he going to fire Laurie, get Joel squared up to live a respectful life and treat his daughter right? We don’t know. But the final declarative sentences give us the inkling that he is going to retake some of that lost power, if only briefly, to establish right from wrong—yes, he’s clearly found his own religion---and, by extension, hellbent on grounding himself in the world, a world that he realizes he hasn't yet departed.

Glen, you have created a powerful story about mortality and one man’s desire to come to the terms of his own life and the meaning in it. Beautifully rendered!

Join Me!

2011-11-07T07:48:00.001-08:00

I will be participating along with talented fellow writers Bev Akerman, Elaine Kalman Naves, Ami Sands Brodoff in a literary panel discussion at in the first (annual?) Blue Emet Arts Festival on November 20th. Two good reasons to show-up (besides hearing my awesome co-panelists): I'll be reading an excerpt from my forthcoming novel Halbman Steals Home, and since I'll be vastly outnumbered and at a disadvantage as the only boy involved (story of my life) I'll desperately need your support, so pleeeese come!

Making art from shmatas, or 'extreme sewing'

2011-10-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

Not to be missed: One of Canada's preeminent textile artists, Barbara Wisnoski, is showing recent works from October 29th until November 26th, details here. From the press release:

Décorum ou la broderie in situ is a performative installation featuring Barbara Wisnoski’s ‘extreme’ sewing combined with text adorning the gallery walls. Produced over a ten-month period from an accumulation of cast-off clothing, the textile motifs form a repeat pattern that expands a small domestic embroidery motif to a public scale. The family archive aspect implicit in her raw
materials – a household fabric inventory - is rendered explicit, with narrative text on one wall echoing the design. Through a serial process of destruction and reconstruction – slashing fabric apart with scissors, sewing it together, then slashing it apart again - the remnants form a dense, homogeneous texture where surface melds into structure.

On Thursdays and Fridays throughout the duration of the exhibition the artist will be present in the gallery, where she will finally tend to her large pile of mending. Furnished with comfortable seating and a sewing machine, visitors can engage with her about the artwork or come with clothing repair projects or a good book to talk about.

Part open studio, part performance, part sewing bee, this temporary pavilion mixes the languages of public and private space in a hyperbolic act of decoration, inviting questions about art and labour, ornament and utility, consumption, the measure and value of time, memory and the uses of nostalgia.

It's literary awards season and...

2011-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

Let the griping begin. Actually, the Canadian scene turned out kinda interesting with two novels that few had ever heard of before hitting the literary equivalent of a grand-slam homer by making it to the shortlist of the GGs, the Rogers Trust, the Giller and the Man Booker. One of them even looks like it's loads of fun to read, which would be a switch for most literary prizes. And that's part of the point of this interesting critique of this year's National Book Award fiction shortlist. The ever-widening gap between what some people think we ought to read and what most of us would actually enjoy reading. I think the writer makes one interesting point in particular: In a culture dominated by film and television, all literary novels are so obscure as to be virtually invisible, and books that seem ubiquitous to people embedded in the publishing world are anything but to those who aren’t. (The next time you’re waiting for a bus, ask the person next to you if he or she has heard of Jeffrey Eugenides or “The Art of Fielding.” Hell, ask them if they’ve heard of Jonathan Franzen.) As I've said before, the proliferation of literary awards has been inversely proportional to the cultural significance of books. In other words, as books have become less important more awards have been created. Presumably there is a relationship between the two ie. that awards are being created in the hope of salvaging their declining cultural prestige. Which begs the question, what ought to be the role of literary awards, if salvaging the novel's status in the cultural marketplace clearly isn't working? If you ask any prize juror, they always say that they make their choice on the basis of merit alone. They try to identify the best book to bring it to the reading public's attention. But what's a 'best' book? I think that, increasingly, the reality is 'best' however you define it, has no relevance for most readers. Not the way it might have fifty years ago when novels enjoyed a certain cultural influence. And anyway, no one is ever going to convince me that a juror really reads all 150 novels submitted for any given prize in any given year (that's like reading a novel every two days for an entire year). If 'best' means nothing, than I vote for 'most enjoyable' cause that's about all any juror can honestly tell, and it's the only thing that most readers truly care about.

The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls

2011-09-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

One of the most thrilling memories I have is standing with my daughter - I think she was ten or eleven years old - in front of a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and listening to her read it, recognizing words from a 2000 year old document. Every penny spent on Hebrew parochial school seemed to make complete sense (cents) for the first time. The vastness of two millennia of history and tradition suddenly vanished, time and space contracted into a single awesome moment in a chamber more powerful than a nuclear reactor; the mind of a little Jewish girl. I'm guessing this why the Dead Sea Scrolls going on the internet actually gives me goosebumps.

Coco Chanel: Opportunist and Anti-Semite

2011-09-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

In addition to her collaborations, Chanel spoke loudly and vehemently against Jews, and even tried to take advantage of the Nazi seizure of Jewish businesses and property. Her world-famous perfume, Chanel No. 5, was owned and produced by the Wertheimers—a rich Franco-Jewish family. Chanel had always been paranoid that the Wertheimers were stealing from her (though her lawyer assured her of the contrary), and during the war, when the family had fled to America, she attempted to take full control of Chanel No. 5. But the Wertheimers had anticipated that the Nazis (or Chanel) might try to steal their company, and therefore they signed it over to a Frenchman for the duration of the war. Chanel couldn’t touch it. The Wertheimers also sent a spy, Herbert Gregory Thomas (under the pseudonym, Don Armando Guevaray Sotto Mayor), to retrieve the chemical formula to make Chanel No. 5 as well as collect all the necessary ingredients. He then brought everything back with him to America, so that the Wertheimers could continue to produce and sell the fragrance. Vaughan finally gets his spy moment here, and it is certainly one of the most exciting portions of the book.

She partied with the Nazis at the Paris Ritz and then gave bottles of perfume away to American GI liberators to bring back home to their mothers, wives and girlfriends. Read the book review here.

The failure of university English departments

2011-08-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

In today's university, no one is any longer in a position to say which books are or aren't fit to teach; no one any longer has the authority to decide what is the best in American writing. Too bad, for even now there is no consensus about who are the best American novelists of the past century. (My own candidates are Cather and Theodore Dreiser.) Nor will you read a word, in the pages of "The Cambridge History of the American Novel," about how short-lived are likely to be the sex-obsessed works of the much-vaunted novelists Norman Mailer, John Updike and Philip Roth or about the deleterious effect that creative-writing programs have had on the writing of fiction.

With the gates once carefully guarded by the centurions of high culture now flung open, the barbarians flooded in, and it is they who are running the joint today. The most lauded novelists in "The Cambridge History of the American Novel" tend to be those, in the words of another of its contributors, who are "staging a critique of 'America' and its imperial project." Thus such secondary writers as Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Vonnegut and E.L. Doctorow are in these pages vaunted well beyond their literary worth.

The indispensible Joseph Epstein on why we don't care about novels anymore... Well, not really, but may as well be about that. It's really about how universities have failed students, critics, readers (and by extension writers) of American fiction. I'm not sure that the works of Roth and Updike are likely to be short-lived, or that Vonnegut is a secondary writer. But there is no doubt that the importance of 'contextualization' in the study of literature has raised mediocre novels to an undeserved status, and given aspiring novelists a low bar to shoot for. 'Good' and 'bad' are no longer legitimate criteria on which to judge novels since everything is culturally relative. And it extends beyond the walls of academia. I read far too many book reviews (a practice I have told myself I have to stop for fear that it will turn my brain to sludge). And one notices how readily and often reviewers laud new novels, how loosely they throw around terms like "masterful" and "exceptional" and how rarely "bad" (or its euphemisms) show up. You don't have to read a ton of reviews like I do (did). Pick up any new novel off the shelf and read the blurbs and 'praise for' on the back cover and you see what I mean. With so much mediocre work stocking the shelves and being lauded to the hilt it's no wonder that readers don't know what to believe anymore and seem to have stopped caring.

Sevillians Unite to Save the Empress!!!

2011-08-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

Leila Marshy over at The Rover writes about the ill-fated Empress Theatre building which has shamefully sat idle and deteriorated over the past 20 years while politicians and community organizers argued over what to do with it. I remember the building when it was Cinema V, sister repertory film house (in a sibling rivalry sort of way) of the old Seville Theatre where I worked as a doorman for a few years in the early 80s. Yes, their building was more art-deco beautiful, but we Sevillians thought of ourselves as cooler because our building had a more venerable history (Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr.) and it was downtown, a block from the Forum. Also, our ticket booth was on the street, while theirs was inside. Working the Seville door every Friday and Saturday night (Rocky Horror, Dawn of the Dead, The Road Warrior, Best of the New York Erotic Film Festival) was my rite of passage into young adulthood. I cleaned up more than my fair share of beer-smelling puke, and stopped more than one speed-induced fight between patrons, but the unmentionable perks (Leila mentions some of them) were unmatched and I was the envy of all my friends. Now, the Seville is nothing but a memory. All Sevillians should unite to find new life for the Empress, undeniably a Montreal landmark. We can't let this opportunity slip away, the way it did with the Seville. My seventeen year old is currently looking for part-time employment while she attends CEGEP and I can't help lamenting the fact that there aren't jobs with perks anymore like at the Seville and Cinema V.

Four Montreal Jewish writers worth hearing (at least three of them anyway.)

2011-07-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

I organized and participated in a session of the recent Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Montreal. The idea was to gather a group of local writers to read from new work and talk about what it means, if anything, to be a Jewish writer. It's worth your time if you happen to have a spare hour and a half, or less.

Sherwood Schwartz 1916-2011

2011-07-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

He gave us Ginger and Marianne. The three hour tour. The critics hated his shows and we loved them, and still do, and for that alone he is worth honouring. He rejected the staid father-mother-two kids suburban portrait of the typical 1950s American family and decided that there was something truer and more absurd to our existence. We're actually an incompatible motley shipwrecked bunch thrown together on a lush beautiful island with no obvious way to get off, and somehow we survive together.

Sherwood Schwartz has finally found a way off this crazy island. Here's a fond salute to one of the most influential storytellers of my generation.

Salesmanship: The ebook

2011-07-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

Ever since jumping hesitantly on the bandwagon a few weeks ago I've become positively enamoured with my ereader. Now I am a full-on devotee. The natural next step was to start toying around with epublishing. A few hours of tinkering with free downloaded software and walla!! My first e-book, appropriately titled "Salesmanship", and featuring three short stories. Admittedly, the savvy internet user will be able to track down two of these three stories on the web. But why read off a screen when, for the outlandishly inexpensive price of $4.99 (shipping and handling included), you can own this digital edition to add to your personal ereader library? I'm still not exactly sure how it'll work administration wise, but try it out by clicking on the Buy Now button and maybe, if all goes as planned, you'll receive shortly a special e-package of literature in the e-mail. And best of all no trees were sacrificed.

The $50,000 poem

2011-07-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hear ye!! Hear Ye!! Calling all poets!! Don't delay. The deadline for the inaugural $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize approaches this Friday, July 8th! It's open to all poets - and that means you (who doesn't consider him/herself a poet). Everyone's eligible!

Look, I'm actually fan of poetry. Read the stuff, edited a couple of anthologies, even write the stuff on occasion. So why does this new prize for a poem seem so completely absurd? I keep asking myself, can there possibly by such a thing as a poem worth $50K? We're not talking a novel that takes years to write or a body of literary work; a single poem! And why does it seem that as less people read poetry and buy poetry publications the more poetry prizes there are, and the higher their purse. Clearly, a declining readership has prompted a kind of false, one might even say sad, effort to prop up flaccid, sagging prestige. The spectacle (if that's what it could be when it involves poetry) recalls the compensations needed by the owner of a souped-up muscle car. A new prize will not generate new interest in poetry, if that's what the organizers are after, and certainly not new book buyers. Never have, and never will. As well-intentioned as this prize might be it only serves to make generally ignored poets feel better about themselves, at least one poet anyway. I keep thinking about all that money being put to good use by spreading the largesse; imagine how many poetry collections $50K could buy.

Where Saint-Urbain intersects Chabanel

2011-07-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

It does in fact - I mean Saint-Urbain and Chabanel intersect as you'll see in the video below. I was asked by the Gazette to participate in the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Mordecai Richler's death. My written contribution is here. My video contribution, from Chabanel naturally, is below.

Tolerance? Understanding?

2011-06-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

There will be no synagogue expansion on Hutchison. At least, not this synagogue. And not this time. The real loser here is... (you fill in the blank). Actually I blame both sides. I'm guessing that the Hasids have never invited their neighbours over for tea, let alone smiled and said hello when they passed in the street.

Another referendum in Quebec

2011-06-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

I wrote about the Outremont Hasidic community in The Rent Collector and their fight to erect an eruv, a virtually invisible boundary allowing certain practices on the Shabbat. Round two came when the Hasidim asked the local YMCA to cover a window that allowed passersby to view women exercising in skimpy clothes (the Hasidim paid to have frosted glass installed). Round three is at hand - this battle about whether a small synagogue should be allowed to renovate and expand their building. Of course, this is really all about tolerance and the perceived increasing 'encroachment' of a growing religious people on the surrounding secular community. My guess is that rounds four, five and six are not far away.

Strange Bedfellows at the JPL

2011-05-25T11:35:00.001-07:00

Did you know that the word "avocado" came from an Aztec word that means 'testicle', just like the word "testify"? Or that the word "porcelain" refers to a 'pig's vagina'? Join me as I introduce Howard Richler and learn about these and other words that originate from unmentionables. Howard is a well-known Montreal logophile, columnist and author who apparently has a fetish with language. Should be a, if not racy, then at least very interesting evening. More here.

Montreal Mashup

2011-05-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Someone once said that a great city is twice built, once in bricks and mortar, and a second time in the imagination. Montreal has been built and re-built over and over again. The good folks at Rover recently staged the second edition of Imagine Montreal at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in which parts of The Rent Collector are read along with excerpts from 24 other works by local professional actors. In this video of the event the image of Mount-Royal's cross accompanies an excerpt from TRC.

Imagine Montreal from The Rover on Vimeo.

Thanks For Coming

2011-04-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

When you're dealing with a deity with a sense of humour you may be surprised by what the afterlife has in store. Find out by reading my new humorous piece of fiction up at the Shtetl Montreal website. Check it out!

The Mighty Jacobson

2011-04-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Howard Jacobson plays ping-pong and chats about his newly re-issued tour de force.

Halbman Steals Home

2011-04-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

The cover of my new novel due out early next year. More details here. Let me know what you think of the cover. Don't be shy to pre-order now.

Not knowing how to ask questions

2011-04-20T06:20:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened on the way to the seder. We forgot how to ask questions.

The Passover seder has one main objective; to tell the story of Israel's miraculous liberation from slavery and to do it in a way that will involve the whole family, particularly young children. This is why we don't just read the story, we enact it. We eat it, we drink it, we sing it, we mimic it, we even play a game of redemption, hiding a piece of matzah and paying the finders for its return. Involving children is the central component of the seder. The telling of the story gets underway only once the youngest member of the family asks the four questions, famously beginning with, Why is this night different from all other nights? In fact, how to ask the four questions at Passover is one of the very first things a Jewish child learns to do after they are old enough to learn the Hebrew alphabet. It's a rudimentary skill that is often the first public display of a child's Jewish education. But what happens when no child will ask the questions? Nothing happens. The seder grinds to a halt. Well, that's exactly what happened at our family seder this year. It must be said, that our family seders are unique events. We rent out a room at a hotel and typically have 60 to 100 in attendance extending three and four generations. In recent years it has become practice to post a family tree on a wall so that the cousins can locate their relationship to others in the room. Admittedly, asking the four questions at this seder is not for the shy personality. It's an intimidating scenario. There you are surrounded by eighty or so cousins, most of whom you know only vaguely if you know them at all, who are waiting to hear you sing a song in an ancient, tongue-mangling language you've only just begun to learn. And yet, every year one or two or three courageous youngins always step forward. This year, no one did, in spite of much begging and cajoling. Eighty people in the room, many children of various ages, a number of them parochially schooled and fluent in Hebrew, and no takers. At that moment, in the uncomfortable pregnant pause when it was becoming clear that no one was going to volunteer, a question and its implications arose in my mind: Have we forgotten how to ask questions? A quick survey of the room revealed highly accomplished people, doctors, lawyers, business people, three generations of families, all knowledgeable, educated, thoughtful people. And yet the moment suggested something disturbing to me, a prevailing complacency, a self-satisfied and worrisome disinterest and disengagement, and not just with the seder itself, but perhaps with larger dimensions of life as well. The fact that the seder can not proceed without the questions being asked suggests the essential importance of questioning. The ability to question equals freedom. When we stop asking questions we are tactily, either by choice or by force, giving up our independence. We are slaves, either in physical bondage, or suffering from forms of spiritual and mental slavery. The Haggadah (the seder guide) cleverly anticipates the difficulty of engaging younger generations in the seder by describing four sons, one who is wise, one who is wicked, one who is simple, and even one who does not know how to ask a question. Many rabbis characterize the problem of the fourth son, not as lacking in knowledge, but as suffering from apathy, malaise. It seemed to me precisely the fog that had settled on our seder room. How clever of the rabbis to create a structure and process where, at a single penultimate moment at the outset of the seder, so much would be revealed about where we stand as a family and as Jews. We were rescued from discomfort by my oldest first cousin, a man in his seventies, a grandfather many times over, who stumbled his way through the four questions - he was clearly out of practice, it having been probably sixty-five years since the last time he said them at the family seder, way before my time, when he was the youngest, first grandchild of my grandparents. To be fair, our family seders have never really been about reengaging our religious traditions, culture and history. They've been about re-acquainting with family, getting to know long lost cousins, and introducing new generations to the family, which is important of course. Still, every year that I attend there is a place in my heart where I am hoping that the youngest members of the family will clammer and fight to ask the four questions, that they will see this opportunity to take centre stage in the grand reeneactment of our national story as a privilege and a moment to shine.

The Companion by Lorcan Roche

2011-04-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

A little while back I wrote that I thought there wasn't enough anger in today's writing. Then along comes Lorcan Roche's The Companion a book about two very angry characters; Trevor a caregiver who gets his kicks busting people's heads, and his charge a terminally ill young man suffering from Muscular Dystrophy named Ed. They both have a lot to be angry about. Ed is an only child. His father is a Manhatten Judge ensconced in his study and cares more for his books than his son. His mother is perpetually convalescing from a minor accident and never leaves her room. It's the most depressing portrait of domestic alienation and emotional neglect imaginable. Money might not buy love but fortunately for this family it can buy services. Enter Trevor, a strapping, young, angry Dubliner who answers an ad to be Ed's companion and caregiver. Ed's an ornery, irritable and demanding handful and caregivers don't last. Luckily, the Judge is only too willing to keep writing cheques to replace them. Trevor, it turns out, is experienced in providing care having tended to his dying mother and worked in a hospital for the clinically insane. He has the physical strength and fortitude to handle anything Ed can dish out. Notwithstanding the fact that Ed is physically wasting away while Trevor is fit and works out regularly in the gym, the two undeniably have a lot in common and find solace in each other. They're both fighters. Trevor sees himself in Ed's predicament. "And some days you're so angry you can literally hiss and spit, especially at incredibly healthy fuckers like me who've never been physically sick, not one single solitary day. And you want to lash out, you want to be cruel, and callous, to injure and inflict as much as your mean little spirit will allow. And maybe the only joy you know is the peace that comes after an argument, the feeling of things being washed away by coarse, salty tears. And you wish you could bleed to death heroically, not just leak like a stain into the carpet." This is Trevor talking about Ed, but also himself. In the end this is Trevor's story. We learn about why he fled his home to come to New York, an act of both escape and repentance. America, through Trevor's eyes, is the perfect place to pay your dues because they're so hard to come by here. "Americans are really shite at apologizing; they think the mere fact they bring themselves to mouth the words absolves them. They're not interested in the rites of penance, in listening to precisely how they hurt you, in understanding how small it made you feel. They want to move on, they want closure which is American for wanting things to go swiftly back to the way they were before. Inside their heads. They cannot comprehend that because they don't really know what they did wrong, that because they really don't need to know, the rest of us find them truly terrifying." Reminiscent of Nick Hornby, the searing voice, the depth and candidness of prose are what makes this book so exhilirating. Highly recommended.

Imagining Montreal: The new and improved Blue Met edition

2011-04-14T05:55:00.000-07:00

Not to be missed. Rover has reprised the staged reading, Imagine Montreal, as part of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal on Friday, April 29, at 8 pm. The event is taking place at the Holiday Inn Centreville, in Chinatown. The "script" - a collage of excerpts from 26 novels published since 2000 and set in Montreal - will be read by 10 Montreal actors. The band Sweet Mother Logic will provide music. This idea is greatly reworked since the premiere in November, telling a riveting story: the rebirth of Montreal after a gloomy time in the mid and late nineties. The featured books will be available at The Blue Met bookstore.

Avner Mandelman at the JPL

2011-04-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

Join me as I introduce Avner Mandelman, author of the new thriller The Debba and two killer collections of short fiction. Details here. He's a fascinating person with a unique personal story and one of the rare few who somehow manages to balance success in both business and writing fiction.

Moses texts Pharaoh: "Let my people go"

2011-04-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

Kane's Bernstein

2011-04-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Mankiewicz may not have been the only participant in the Citizen Kane project concerned about whether Sloane’s appearance was sufficiently sympathetic. As Mankiewicz knew, Sloane was a Jewish actor and a veteran of Welles’ theater company. In the years following the filming of Citizen Kane, Sloane embarked on a series of plastic surgeries to reduce the size of his nose and thereby, he imagined, broaden the range of acting roles available to him. Welles later said that Sloane “must have had twenty operations before he killed himself. He must have thought, ‘If I could ever bob my nose right, then I’ll be a leading man.’”

Harold Heft's fascinating piece on Orson Welles's portrayal of the jew in his masterpiece Citizen Kane.

Be careful what you wish for

2011-03-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

A little levity before linking to a disturbing Newsweek piece about the increasing presence of 'religious-Zionists' in the Israeli army. In the past, we heard resentful complaints by secular Israelis that the Hasidim got all the government perks without having to serve in the army. Suddenly, there's worry that more and more officers are wearing knitted yarmulkes and sympathetic to the settler movement. The author asks, will these soldiers obey their commanders or their rabbis? File under: Be careful what you wish for.

The Facebook Effect

2011-03-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

Reducing "people" to "users" and "consumers" through profiles designed to define them as such. (Zuckerberg: "A lot of the information people produce is inherently commercial. And if you look at someone's profile, almost all the fields that define them are in some way commercial - music, movies, books, products, games. It's a part of our identity as people that we like something, but it also has commercial value.")...What made social networking such a big deal was the fact that people liked being used. Anything was better than the loneliness and boredom of the Internet and the derangements brought on by blogger psychosis. And so social networking became a drug. Early on, Facebook executives called the effect their product had "the trance," understanding that what they were doing was essentially pushing a narcotic (not coincidentally, their first big advertiser would be a gambling site).

Read the entire review here.

Poets are masters of concision - but this is ridiculous

2011-03-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

How to reduce a twenty page film treatment into fourteen lines - and rhyming, iambic pentameter to boot! A battle of wills to be sure. Shakespeare himself would be impressed.

Telling the Truth

2011-02-25T05:37:00.000-08:00

All too often, reading contemporary poetry, what I feel is, So many dishonest lines! Lines that sound beautiful but that aren’t meant. If you aren’t really paying attention, you can be seduced by them. But if you’re listening closely, they don’t ring true. They have the sound of trying too hard, or of trying to put something over. They sound as though they are listening to themselves, admiringly, rather than speaking from a real place inside the poet. The words may be gorgeous, they may be clever, they may have dazzle or flash, but they aren’t speaking in a real voice.

Robyn Sarah again on telling the truth in poetry. What she says about poetry is equally true in fiction. I wonder if she would agree with my contention that what she calls writers listening to themselves, admiringly, rather than speaking from a real place may be the result of the 'academization' of writing ie. more writing coming out of university creative writing programs. And bonus; she quotes Joseph Epstein, one of my favourite writers.

Walking the public/private fine line

2011-02-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

For writers who use language as an artistic medium, a tension goes with this dichotomy: the process of creation is intensely private, yet the creation will not be complete, will not have fulfilled its purpose, without an audience. Thinking too much about “audience” during the creative process can inhibit the process and distort the creation, but thinking too little about it can do the same. Soon enough one needs to ask, “Who am I writing this for?”, because it is the sense of audience that gives writing its voice. Voice, style, tone, are how a piece of writing treats its reader.

Robyn Sarah on the writer's challenge to find the perfect public/private balance.

"Dali" by Sivan

2011-02-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

Jewgrass and Canlit

2011-02-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

Not your Bubbie's klezmer says Bev Akerman over at Rover riffing on the recent Shabbat Shira sold-out shindig at our shul. But anyone who knows a little about klezmer knows that it's taken many forms over the last few decades, particularly in the US, ranging from groups like Boston's The Klezmer Conservatory to New York's Klezmatics, not to mention John Zorn's Klezmer-inspired Jazz-infused musical experiments. Being an island of Jews in a lake of Quebecois in an sea of Anglos has made the Montreal Jewish community uniquely conservative in character and consequently late to catch a ride on the upcoming cultural waves. But I'm proud to say that our little shtibel (the only Reconstructionist synagogue in a city of eighty or so Orthodox minyans) is trying to do its part to open a few doors and windows a crack, let some cultural fresh air in to the stagnant atmosphere. A culture is vibrant when artists (be they writers, painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, poets, whomever) feel they have the license to combine their own personal traditions with a myriad of other influences. Today is the 102nd anniversary of the birth of A.M. Klein, a Montreal Jewish writer and one of Canada's greatest poets. A writer who left his mark by combining Hebrew liturgy, Yiddish idiom, a mastery of English literary forms, a fluency in French and profound sensibility for Quebecois culture. So you ask, Jewish bluegrass from Montreal? I say you're darn tootin! And mazel tov to Bev on her new collection of short fiction. Strength to strength!

Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011)

2011-02-11T05:50:00.000-08:00

A remembrance of the late great Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb in the Rover.

A Writer's Life

2011-02-07T06:29:00.000-08:00

I thought back to my days in Miss Jeffries’ Grade 10 creative writing class, where my thoughts went along the lines of: How can I entertain myself? (and as a secondary notion, How can I totally gross out anyone who reads this, particularly Courtney Smith, with her neon green scrunchie, whom I sort of like? — what can I say: I was 15, and not the suave Lothario I am today). I had to rekindle the joy I’d felt when the page just opened up, I fell in, and there were no limitations or worries about target demos, what editors will think, the booksellers, the whole apparatus I’d no knowledge of when I’d first said to myself: Hey, it would be pretty cool to write all day long.

Craig Davidson tells it like it is for most writers.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

2011-01-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

In Howard Jacobson's Man Booker Prize winning novel sad-sack goy Julian Treslove is mistaken for a Jew when he is mugged in the street, or so he thinks. Making matters worse his assailant is a woman. In one fell swoop his sexual and ethnic identity (which is to say his entire identity) have been stolen from him. A personal crisis ensues and Treslove spends most of the rest of the novel ruminating and anguishing about, well, sex and identity. Treslove desperately wants to be Jewish. Why? I'm not quite sure. It may have something to do with the fact that his two closest friends are Jewish, his former teacher Libor Sevcik and Sam Finkler, an old school chum and now a renowned philosopher and media personality. But it's not just their Jewishness Treslove envies, it's their losses. Sevcik and Finkler have both recently become widowers. The combination of love, loss and Judaism are irresistible to Treslove who, aside from being a bore, is an incurable romantic. One more thing Treslove instinctively can't resist about Jews is their penchant for self-hatred. Finkler founds an organization called ASHamed Jews to take a public stand against Israel's actions in Gaza (among a host of other amorphous things Jews have to be ashamed of). Then Treslove becomes fascinated and follows the internet blog of a Jew trying to grow (or more accurately 'stretch') his foreskin back. Self-hatred is something Treslove comes by honestly, and justifiably, having failed repeatedly as a lover and as a father to two sons by different women. He falls in love with the unlikely-named Hephzibah, Libor's great-great niece, a large woman who appears to embody in every way the Jewishness that Treslove craves. He reads a Yiddish dictionary to acquire Jewish idiom in his vocabulary, and aides Hephizbah with the creation of a new museum of Anglo-Jewish life (not a Holocaust museum.) Still (self) acceptance eludes him. This is all intended as ironic, of course, the non-Jew feeling marginalized from history's most marginalized people. I've been a Jacobson fan for a while. I really enjoyed Kalooki Nights, and loved The Mighty Walzer. Those novels were energetic and deftly-written - serious but with a light touch - in a way that The Finkler Question simply isn't. Finkler feels like a performance. The author wanting to say a lot about the state of being Jewish these days. The novel is comprised almost entirely of characters opining, and the humour is heady and forced. But the main problem is that the novel is missing a solid, empathetic core; a central character for whom the reader can genuinely care, as Walzer had Oliver, and Kalooki had Max Glickman. Julian Treslove is a pathetic, self-obsessed drip, a loser who overthinks and spins his wheels in place. There's little that's enjoyable, or particularly funny (or excusable) about watching him sink deeper and deeper into the mire of his own making. As an exposition on the modern Jewish psyche, which it is undoubtedly intended to be, The Finkler Question is tiresome and dreary. As a meditation on friendship it is unrelentingly melancholic. Only a brief glimpse of Jacobson's storytelling brilliance is in evidence when near the very end of the novel he briefly touchingly describes the actual deaths of Libor's and Finkler's wives in successive chapters. The contrast is achingly revealing about their respective marriages, relationships and lives. It's also telling that these sections, the most authentically and beautifully wrtten in the novel, were not about Treslove. Still, I'm thrilled the novel won the Man Booker. Hopefully, it will bring more attention to Jacobson's superior earlier novels. I have no doubt that the award jury intended it that way.

File under: Jews and sports

2011-01-27T05:45:00.000-08:00

I don't know whether to cheer or cry about this headline. I mean the times have definitely changed when the venerable Habs have two Jewish players on the roster, Mike Camalleri and Jeff Halpern.

His 'Get Out of Jail' card

2011-01-18T05:52:00.000-08:00

The indefatigable Woody Allen on games people play.

The Conscious Mind and the Fulfilled Life

2011-01-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

Harold had the sense that he had been trained to react in all sorts of stupid ways. He had been trained, as a guy, to be self-contained and smart and rational, and to avoid sentimentality. Yet maybe sentiments were at the core of everything. He’d been taught to think vertically, moving ever upward, whereas maybe the most productive connections were horizontal, with peers. He’d been taught that intelligence was the most important trait. There weren’t even words for the traits that matter most—having a sense of the contours of reality, being aware of how things flow, having the ability to read situations the way a master seaman reads the rhythm of the ocean. Harold concluded that it might be time for a revolution in his own consciousness—time to take the proto-conversations that had been shoved to the periphery of life and put them back in the center. Maybe it was time to use this science to cultivate an entirely different viewpoint.

Another brilliant article from the indispensible untouchable David Brooks.

Yiddish wit

2011-01-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

No one sees the hump on his own back and more Yiddish wit and aphorism in this delightful illustrated compendium for bubbie, zaida and the whole family.

A New Year poem

2011-01-02T17:10:00.000-08:00

A pleasant surprise to receive this poem in my email inbox on New Year's day from the Saskatchewan Book Award winning poet Dave Margoshes. I think it properly captures the held-breath sobriety of the day; our aims, the goals we set for the New Year, and the feelings of hopefulness mixed with uncertainty at that moment when the midnight clock's hand is about to strike.

A stopped clock

The spiraling ball hovers in the plangent air,

a bullet misdirected. It could go either way,

straight to its true mark, or as far wide

as all the error we are capable of, all

the weight of our hopes skewing its course.

Win or lose is beyond the point, each winner

harbouring a loss within, each loser right

at least once. Tomorrow country, they call it

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

all our tomorrows spiraling just out of reach,

a ball sinking at last to a confounding certainty.

Wishing us all brighter tomorrows

My annual first winter kvetch

2010-12-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

Environment Canada meteorologist René Héroux said the unusual nature of the storm made it difficult for forecasters to predict accurately. He said forecasters follow a numerical model to predict weather patterns, but it seriously underestimated the amount of snow.

"In a way, it was a very unusual weather system. They had rain in eastern Quebec — Gaspé, Rimouski and so on — and snow in the west. Usually, it's the other way around," said Héroux."Forecasting is not an exact science, so sometimes those things happen. It's pretty rare, but it happens."

yeah right...

Email this morning to mom in Florida since last week:

Dear Mom,

A brief dispatch to put a smile on your tanned and sweaty face... Wouldn't you know - it snows here in Montreal in the winter. Spent 30 minutes digging out last night and another 30 this morning. It wouldn't have been so bad if the weatherman (I would say 'weatherperson' but in this case the flub was so glaring it could have only been a man) had predicted the 15-20 cms we got instead of 2-4 cms. I mean with the millions and millions they spend on the science you'd think they'd come within 50% of their target and not miss it by 90%. Caught the overpaid crack Montreal snow removal squad completely by surprise, which I suppose, given past experience with them, is not very surprising. I left home at 7:38 this morning and arrived at work (10 kms) at 9:00 on the dot. The agenda for my day? Survey the buildings to make sure that the huge snowdrifts which typically accumulate into dangerous rooftop canopies that threaten to come thudding down seven storeys onto pedestrian heads are safely removed.

The kids had their ears glued to the radio this morning for the school cancellations. Only the shee-shee $20,000 a year Westmount private schools were announcing a 'snow day' (Miss Edgar's, The Study). Of course - the overpaid teachers and administrators should be the ones to get the day off. Enjoy the beach,

Love Glen

Comes mom's answer:

My face is not tanned, I have given up sitting in the sun, I do not sweat and my heat is on and on and on. It is 3 Celsius this morning. I'll tell you what I do do, however, reading about you shovelling heavy snow. I palpitate. The ventricles and the auricles are going pa-boom, pa-boom, glub, glub. I do not think shovelling snow is a great activity for a slightly overweight Jewish boy in his mid-forties who never does any other exercise except drive his kids around the city to their extra-curricular activities. Your two feet (one for the brake, one for the gas pedal) may be in great shape. Try getting rid of the snow by kicking it! Yes, I'm worried.

Imagining Montreal

2010-11-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

Really enjoyable event last night at the Bain Saint-Michel. Looked like a full house (about 100?). Kudos to Marianne Ackerman and the folks at Infinitheatre (Guy Sprung) for the effort. Excerpts from about two dozen works were read by about a dozen or so performers sitting on stage as if gathered pell-mell at a café or a bar. Weaving the texts together from disparate works of fiction could be sticky business but I think Marianne did an admirable job of bringing out certain themes (Montreal's weather, seasons and languages, being three of the most obvious) and even a subtle narrative arc that culminated in the 1995 referendum, which appears to be the defining event for anglo Montreal writers producing work in the early 21st century. There were stronger and weaker readers, some choosing to play it straight with the texts while others were more animated. Fortunately, the excerpt from The Rent Collector was read by Anna Furstenberg who was one of the more skilled readers. I was left with the impression that the excerpts chosen leaned to the side of a romantic view of the city and its people (young people, artists/writers, the Plateau/Mile-End), as opposed to the caustic or humorous. The excerpt read from TRC came near the end, got a laugh, which pleased me, and also was a denouement of sorts, since it talked about surviving the referendum and the mysterious glue that keeps this disjointed city together. At the end Guy Sprung said that there will be other evenings like this and I hope so. Visuals might be a nice addition to future events.

What Kind of People Can you Love

2010-11-20T10:39:00.000-08:00

My daughter Sidney asks the immortal question in rhyme, what if Ernie and Bert are gay?

WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE CAN YOU LOVE
By Sidney Black-Rotchin

"What kind of people can you love?"
Grover has asked.
The answer is "Any kind"
(if true intentions are masked).

"What kind of people CAN'T you love?"
I always thought.
The answer is "Any kind"
(it's what we've been taught).

People like to point fingers,
and Sesame Street will pay.
For making us believe
that Bert and Ernie are gay.

To me it doesn't matter
if Ernie's just Bert's buddy.
Questioning their preferences
seems really sort of nutty.

After all, they're only puppets,
two dolls that may like boys.
But maybe there's something more to this
than playing with children's toys.

Majors publishers are out of touch

2010-11-18T10:27:00.000-08:00

The message: a healthy literature needs small risk-taking presses... read.

Yann Martel speaks

2010-11-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

November being Jewish Book Month in Montreal I usually wake from my yearlong slumber to participate in a literary event or two. If you happen to be near these parts this week join me at the Jewish Public Library on Thursday, November 18th at 7:30 to hear Yann Martel speak on his new novel. More here.

Ode to the city we love

2010-11-15T05:32:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE November 15, 2010
21st Century Montreal in Fiction

A collaboration between Infinitheatre and the on-line arts magazine Rover, 21st Century Montreal in Fiction brings together some of Montreal’s best actors for a dramatic reading of excerpts from new Montreal fiction. A one-night-only event to be held Sunday, November 28 at the Bain St. Michel, 5300 St. Dominique Street. 5-7 pm.

City of ice and tropical summers, cafés, alleys, parties. The dance of languages. Decadence, rebirth, romance. These are some of the themes that emerge from some two dozen novels and story collections with Montreal as their setting, published since 2000.

Ranging from Heather O’Neill’s poignant debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals to just-published novels by Gail Scott and David Homel, these slices of new fiction have been woven together to tell their own story: a city beset by extreme weather, traumatized by but ultimately triumphing over politics. In the new millennium, Montreal has reinvented itself - with help from the city’s writers.

“When we started out to look at new novels set here, I imagined finding five or six,” says project director Marianne Ackerman. “Instead we quickly passed the two dozen mark, and I fully expect to unearth more titles. Clearly, Montreal is enjoying some kind of literary renaissance. It’s an inspiring city, a destination for talents from all over.”

I can hear the sound of keyboards clicking in different rooms all over the city, the echo of my friends typing steadily in sparsely decorated apartments, overflowing bookshelves and furniture hauled in off the street. ... I love these people and think of them often, up late, writing away, all over town. – from Walkups, by Lance Blomgren

Authors include: Claire Holden Rothman, Nairne Holtz, Edward O. Phillips, Matthew Fox, Marianne Ackerman, J.R. Carpenter, Elise Moser, Ami Sands Brodoff, Ann Charney, Zoe Whittall, Peter Dubé, Rawi Hage, Claude Lalumière, Heather O’Neill, Louis Rastelli, Gina Roitman, Linda Leith, Gail Scott, Neil Smith, Lance Blomgren, Glen Rotchin, Ibi Kaslik, David Homel. Texts assembled by Marianne Ackerman & Megan Stewart.

Don’t miss this unique gathering of strong voices bringing great writing to life. 5 – 7 pm on Sunday, November 28. Admission is pay-what-you-can. Refreshments will be served. Watch for further details on the Rover, www.roverarts.com

For more information about 21st Century Montreal in Fiction, contact Marianne Ackerman at 514-278-5038 or Megan Stewart at 514-802-5320.

Menage à trois; iPad, iPhone and i

2010-10-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

When the other woman is your iPad. Something really disturbing here.

Canada Reads 2011 final 40

2010-10-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

As voted by you.

Canada Reads 2011

2010-10-22T05:24:00.001-07:00

Vote for one or more of your favourite novels of the past ten years. Just like Warren Litwin did. The Rent Collector is sprinting to the October 25th deadline!

2010 Booker

2010-10-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

A deserving winner - Mazel Tov!

And Adam Gopnick has this season's last word on literary prizes.

Book review of interest

2010-10-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Most people, however they respond to polls, do not want to live in a truly just or fair society. They don't believe in the mythical level playing-field. What they want is a playing-field that can be tilted in their favour. Yes, the master graph shows the U.S. climbing off the chart as one of the most unequal countries in the world and the one with the greatest health and social problems. And Cuba is a good model for what can be done in terms of combining acceptable living standards with a sustainable economy. But people are willing to risk their lives to escape Cuba for a chance to live in the U.S., and not the other way around.

Social and economic equality may be better for everybody, we just don't want it. Read the rest.

A final gesture of goodbye to Facebook

2010-10-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

I mention in my post below that leaving Facebook felt a little bit like a suicide. It then occurred to me that, a final gesture was appropriate, but how and where? The answer: On Facebook of course. So I created a group called "Farewell Facebook" where people leaving Facebook can put farewell notes. Turns out I'm not the only one with the idea. Search 'farewell facebook' or variations thereof, and you will find a half dozen or more such groups. Yeah, I know, it's somewhat ironic to create a group that effectively can not have members. On the other hand, it may be the truest facebook group of them all, in a digital world where everything is ironic, where we have 'friends' that are not really friends, 'poke' without really poking, 'support causes' without really supporting causes, 'join groups' without really joining groups, and 'send gifts' without really sending anything at all.

Deactivated and free

2010-10-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

Last night a little voice inside me said, "Deactivate your Facebook account." The voice sounded like he meant it. A voice like the one that commanded father Abraham, "lech lecha me'artsecha umimoladetecha umibeyt avicha - Go leave your land, your kin and your father's house!" So I did. And today I'm feeling strangely relieved. I was never a Facebook fanatic. Not one of those for whom Facebook is a controlling force in my life. I might have checked my page a few times a week on average over the last three years, and hardly ever updated my 'status'. In truth, the impulse to deactivate may have been topped off by an article I'd just read in Newsweek about The Social Network, the new Aaron Sorkin movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook. The piece talks about Facebook as an electronic document of our collective loneliness. And suddenly I was feeling soiled: At worst, an accomplice to a massive fraud, unwitting participant in a Ponzi scheme that has sucked in half a billion other suckers, and at best, a very sad, lonely and unproductive person. The obvious suddenly occurred to me: Facebook is a complete waste of my precious time. The process of deactivation was oddly complicated, well, not really complicated, just bothersome. There were moments of trepidation, as if by deactivation, I was contemplating a type of suicide. How will my 'friends' and loved ones feel? Will they know that I have left this digital world, or will I just not be there when they seek me out? Should I be writing a farewell note? Who will miss me, and worse, who won't even notice? Facebook does not let you go easily. Enlarged pictures of your 'friends' appear at the top of your screen, smiling faces and underneath "So and So will miss you". I was almost choked up. And then, to test your resolve further you must provide a reason for your departure with a drop-down menu to help you out. When I tried to deactivate without a reason a red flag appeared. We will not let you leave without an explanation. I thought, hell, who the f*ck do you think you are to require a reason? I'm a free man. I can go whenever I want. I got angry. Then I felt kind of sorry for Facebook. Like she was a pathetic girlfriend pleading with me not to break-up with her, and demanding desperately an explanation, so we could part company with peace of mind. Afterward, there are the "are you sure" windows which you have to okay, in case you are feeling remorseful for 'breaking up'. Finally, you get messages from Facebook in your email inbox telling you that you can always log back in at any time using your old password and restart exactly where you left off. There's something creepy and stalker-ish about this. In order to permanently erase your presence a request must be made to an unseen higher authority. Permission must be granted. Possibly related, after doing the deed last night, I had a nightmare. In my dream I was out having a blissful dinner with my wife. The next moment I am walking on Chabanel, the place is deserted and the huge industrial buildings that we administrate are skeletal frames, as if a nuclear wind had blown through the neighbourhood leaving rubble, bent metal, and mounds of shattered glass. It is a scene of apocalyptic horror. Utter destruction, devastation and waste. I am lost, calling out, wondering what happened, looking for an explanation, fearing for my livelihood. And then a disembodied voice behind me says, "Didn't you feel the earthquake?" I am dumbfounded. I wake up.

The Mighty Walzer by Howard Jacobson

2010-10-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

Howard Jacobson said that his 2006 novel Kalooki Nights was his most Jewish novel. It was possibly the most Jewish novel ever written, the author claimed. Well I'm here to tell you that he was wrong. Possibly the most Jewish novel ever written was Jacobson's 1999 autobiographical bildungsroman The Mighty Walzer. A book he calls his "history of embarrassments," it's also possibly one of the funniest, most insightful and touching Jewish novels ever written. Jacobson showed with Kalooki Nights that he, and Jews, have a thing for games (kalooki is a card game akin to gin rummy). As a tribe, we have shown a talent for other games too, like chess for instance - according to one source, almost half of the all-time greatest chess players have been Jewish or of Jewish decent (think Garry Kasparov, Bobby Fisher). In the early decades of the 20th century, it could be argued that ping-pong was the Jewish game. If you don't believe me look up the name Viktor Barna. Given the cultural and religious emphasis we place on education, Jews excelling at thinking games is not hard to understand. But a game in which players use rubber-coated paddles to slap a small white ball back and forth across a table? Although I can't explain it myself, I can remember the ping-pong table we had in our basement. And we were by no means the only family in our predominantly Jewish neighbourhood to have one. We had a large basement that was divided into two rooms. One side was for ping-pong and hockey slapshots. The other side held a full-sized snooker table. It was an unspoken understanding among my friends and me that the billiard side was reserved for the grown-ups. We spent hours on the other side playing impromptu ping-pong tournaments. And once, I recall that I spent an entire afternoon at my best friend's house around the corner batting the ball back and forth on his ping-pong table in an attempt to establish a new world record for the longest unbroken ralleye (a world record had to exist.) Ping-pong was still a fixture of a 1970s boyhood, and it's a measure of the game's importance, not merely recreationally but also culturally, that the disappearance of those tables from home basements coincides with the advent of revolutionary technology; the pock-pock of wooden paddle and plastic ball replaced by the bleep-bleep of dials and luminescent dashes on a black screen, and the era of home computing was upon us. I may have been born a generation after Howard Jacobson, but I 'get' his visceral connection to the game. In his brilliantly layered exposition of its various facets, ping-pong, which he says "suffered from too modest a conception of itself," becomes the perfect metaphor for a withdrawn, sexually repressed, working-class Jewish kid's struggle for both social and self-acceptance in 1950s Manchester, England. Oliver Walzer discovers early on that he doesn't possess many talents, but one that he does have involves batting a ball against a wall using a copy of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His other talent, if one can call it a talent, is to make paper dolls out of pictures of his female family members and jack-off to them in the bathroom. As disturbing as this sounds, Jacobson succeeds in making it seem borderline charming. And that's his game as an author, his (Jewish) talent, the ability to perform unlikely literary feats with grace on a tightrope strung fifty feet in the air between two poles; anxiety and hilarity. Oliver's first non self-inflicted sexual encounter is with the always-eager-to-please Sabine Weinberger, and even that plays out like a ping-pong match, with Oliver lying on one side of her and his buddy Sheeny Waxman on the other. But it's ping-pong playing Lorna Peachley and her 'moving parts' that Oliver genuinely fancies. His love is true, so much so that he must continually lose to her in matches. Outside the game, Oliver helps his father make a living selling 'swag' to 'punters', but bemoans that everything is becoming 'tsatskes' and worse, 'machareikes', "that moral infection of triviality to which both sides of my family had always been susceptible." (If you're unfamiliar with Yiddish terms a copy Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish will come in handy). At one point Oliver complains that in spite of winning trophies and being named to represent Britain at international table tennis tournaments, his anti-Semitic headmaster neglects to announce his accomplishments publicly at school assemblies. Echoing this situation is Jacobson, who, in spite of his literary accomplishments, has failed to gain the international recognition he so richly deserves as a major novelist. Hopefully this will all change with a Booker Prize this year. His latest novel The Finkler Question is a finalist. I still can not fathom how The Mighty Walzer was ever missed. It is quite simply a coming-of-age masterpiece.

Creating Jewish culture and community from the street up

2010-09-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

It's a tradition at my synagogue that on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, before Minchah and the reading of Jonah, we hear a guest speaker. We've had many very interesting people come over the years, often connected to the synagogue, but sometimes not. Jewish artists and filmmakers, scholars and activists, invited to speak on a relevant topic. It rarely fails to inspire and enlighten and this year was no exception. The recently appointed Executive Director of Montreal's Federation CJA, Andres Spekoiny provided an overview of the challenges and prospects for worldwide Jewry. A portrait of contemporary Jews was sketched and their relationship to current community structures and services. Spekoiny spoke of most North American communities having been built on a 19th century notion of identity. He proposed that the evolution of contemporary Jewish identities, particularly among the current and next generation of young Jews, demands that modern communities must adjust. For generations, (arguably since the 60s) the Jewish community has been split and Jewish identity defined as an either/or proposition, you were either for or against Israel, either religious or secular etc. The one unifying principle of Jewish identity for the last half century has been the responsibility to maintain some semblance of Jewish identity in order to deny Hitler a posthumous victory. But this, Spekoiny pointed out, is a negative identity. It does not characterize living Jewishly as worthy of embrace on its value and merits as a life-enriching, meaningful endeavour. Our rabbi told the famous story about Rabbi Carlbach and the times he went to speak to a class. He would ask the students, What are you? One student would say, I'm a Muslim. Another, I'm a Catholic. Another, I'm a Protestant. Another, I'm a Hindu. And one student would say, I'm a human being. This student, Carlbach would say, he knew was the Jew. Judaism, Andres Spekoiny said, taught humanity what it meant to be a human being. And yet we have failed to draw the connection for our youth. The radicals to the left and right have defined the public face of Judaism. What has been missing is a middle ground. Young Jews, he said, do not respond to the top down approach of earlier times. Their identities do not fall under overarching categories ie. Zionist or Liberal or Conservative or Socialist or feminist or religious or secular. There is no longer an 'ism' that guides all aspects of their life. Rather the orientation and dynamic of today's generation is increasingly bottom up. Young Jews have a wider self-definition and pick and choose the way they define themselves as Jews, culturally, politically, socially and religiously. The burgeoning social media has had a tremendous impact and will continue to do so. What we see is a greater potential for grassroots movements and the creation of micro-communities. The question is how will the established community respond and nurture the demands of the next generation. One thing that has always been certain: Young Jews are smart, creative and curious. Not only are they rejecting the standard framework, but they are also starting to take ownership of their direction as Jews in earnest. The exciting aspect of the changes taking place is that there is still a healthy appetite for Jewish culture and spiritual practice. New forms of expression are springing up all over North America, both online and on the street. We've seen the renaissance of Jewish fiction with writers like JS Foer, Nicole Krauss, Sam Lipsyte, Nathan Englander, Gary Shteyngart, David Bezmozgis. New websites like Heeb, Jewcy and Zeek. Exciting new musical artists like Matisyahu and Montreal's own So-Called and Jewgrass performer Adam Stotland (the inset picture above is taken from his new album entitled 'Ma'agal', meaning circle). Our city has just had our first ever Jewish Music Festival. Montreal has also seen the creation of a number of new groups that cater to younger, unaffiliated Jews such as the Ghetto Shul and the Mile-End Havura. On this blog I have linked to Shtetl on the Shortwave, a bi-monthy radio show on CKUT 90.3 FM hosted by Tamara Kramer, which has a brand new website. Even if you can't tune in to Tamara's show live, be sure to download the podcast. There's no telling where things are headed, but it seems that the community, by offering to fund and support these initiatives, appears to be finally getting the message.

The Chestnut tree behind 263-265 Prinsengracht

2010-09-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

“Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.” - Anne Frank

This past August 23rd, 5 days after our family visited the Annex in Amsterdam where the Frank family hid for two years, the chestnut tree that Anne could see from her window and symbolized hope and the possibility of new beginnings, fell down.

Now a sapling grown from the tree is coming to Montreal to be planted outside our city's Holocaust Memorial Centre, at a ceremony this coming Monday, September 27th at 5:30. What an inspired and inspiring event. Eleven other saplings from the tree will be planted in the US. Still, one wonders why saplings have not been grown for decades and planted all around the world.

World Cup Wishes by Eshkol Nevo

2010-09-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

When we were in Israel recently we watched a 'reality' tv show called "Mehubarim," ('Connections'). It carries a tag line that translates as something like "five men exposed". The promo showed men lined up at urinals, doing their business, when suddenly the bathroom walls are pulled away and they are standing 'exposed' in broad daylight in the middle of a busy downtown street, passing ladies, hands to their mouth, giggle with embarrassment. The show features videos taken by a group of men from very divergent backgrounds candidly sharing the trials and tribulations of their daily lives. One participant is an eighteen year old who tells of living on the street after he was thrown out of his religious home by his father for, well, doing what most North American teenagers do, smoking, drinking, having sex etc. Another story follows a single dad raising two kids and the mayhem that ensues, both at home and in his dating life. If this show is any indication, Israel is going through a male identity crisis. The tv show's depiction of the sensitive male would have been unimaginable just twenty years ago. Israel is a society that has prided itself on its machismo, from the rejection of the 'weak Jew' of the Holocaust that attended the founding of the modern state in 1948, to the establishment of military service as the very core of the new country, not just as a political and strategic necessity, but as a social phenomenon. In recent years, beginning with Israel's participation in the 'unpopular' (and unwinnable) 1982 war in Lebanon, and continuing through the military operations in the West Bank and Gaza during the Intifadas, service in the military has become questioned among young Israelis, and the role the institution has traditionally played as an agent of social integration and pride among men has been eroded. Eshkol Nevo, in his new novel, makes mention of the seminal Israeli film Late Summer Blues (1987) about a group of high-school graduates on the eve of their conscription. Whereas for earlier generations of young Israeli men military induction would have been a moment embraced, even celebrated, as a significant rite of passage, the cohort in the film is depicted enduring personal conflict, uncertainty and dread. The end of their innocence is shaped by the senseless death of one of the friends in an army training accident. The film is mentioned, one imagines, because it was probably important to the young Nevo when he was growing up (he was sixteen when the movie came out, the same age as the kids in it). It also signals that this novel, about a group of four buddies from Haifa, aims to explore the meaning of friendship and identity for the generation of young men that came of age in the post Lebanon War era. The premise is simple. Four soccer-loving friends since high-school agree to write down three secret wishes which will be revealed at the final of the next World Cup in four years time (2002). The idea is to see how close each has come to achieving his wish during the intervening years. From the outset the reader understands that we are reading a manuscript written and narrated by one of the friends Yuval Freed, and that it has been edited by another friend, Yoav Alimi aka 'Churchill'. Part of the mystery is to find out what happened to Freed, and why Churchill is responsible for editing his book. The two other friends are Amichai and Ofir. Pervading the narrative is another question; how much is true and how much made-up. Off the bat Churchill relates that he is 'ridiculed' in the text, claims that the book is riddled with 'factual inaccuracies', but out of loyalty to his friend, has resisted making changes. The story revolves around an axis of loves and heartaches, loyalties and betrayals. Yuval's charismatic best friend Churchill has stolen away Ya'ara, the only girl Yuval knows that he will ever truly love. Nevo's depiction of Yuval's suffering is heartwrenching. After Churchill's infidelity, Ya'ara briefly returns to Yuval to seek solace. They make passionate love and Yuval writes, "The morning after that night, we both knew there would never be another one like it. That I could never hurt her as she needed to be hurt without faking it, and even though she might want to believe that she could, the truth was that she couldn't live more than a few hours with the unconditional love that I have to give." Misfortune is visited upon the other friends too. Ofir has a nervous breakdown, and routine plastic surgery on Amichai's wife Ilana goes tragically wrong. The friends grow and change, move apart and come together again. When it seems that all is lost and what remains of the friends' wishes is merely the remnant of naive fantasies and dashed hopes, it is the story itself that offers the possibility of salvation. With this second novel Nevo is well on his way to becoming Israel's next major novelist. Highly recommended.

Avner Mandelman

2010-09-21T05:27:00.000-07:00

I was pleasantly surprised to see the name Avner Mandelman on this year's Giller Prize longlist for his debut novel The Debba. Mandelman is one of those super-talented cyborg-like hybrid beings who has somehow achieved the rare combination of success in a variety of seemingly divergent fields including business and the arts. A native of Israel who lives in Toronto, Mandelman has served in the Israeli air force, founded a successful financial firm, written a newspaper column as well as a book on investment, and published award-winning short fiction. I loved his first two collections of stories called "Cuckoo" and "Talking to the Enemy" (my description of one of his stories as "Sholem Aleichem writes Peyton Place on speed" from my Gazette review was quoted on the back cover of the US edition.) He flew under the radar of the Canadian literary cogniscenti for many years, while quietly winning prizes in the Jewish literary world (Montreal's J.I. Segal Prize among them) and in the US (a Pushcart). At a talk he gave at the Jewish Public Library, I memorably heard Mandelman advise young writers to think about everything you know (the old adage about writing) and then write the complete opposite. I bumped into Avner at the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada Award ceremony cocktail the year my novel was shortlisted in 2006, immediately recognizing him and giddily introducing myself. I told him how much I admired his short fiction. Others must have been wondering who this mysterious giant of a man was (he's six foot six). As I expected at the time, one day everyone will know.

A Thought for International Literacy Day

2010-09-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

We love to read novels because no one ever really dies in a novel.

25 Days in August: Diary of a Family's Journey in the Holyland

2010-09-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

WEEK 3

DAY 14 - Thursday
Caesarea or 'Qisarya' in Hebrew is about 30 kms north of Tel-Aviv, about half way to Haifa. From Jerusalem it's about 90 kms, but it feels like it takes longer since you've got to drive to Tel-Aviv and the road tends to get snarled with traffic and periodic stoplights after you exit the fast four-lane highway "1" between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv to take route 4 north through a series of towns and Tel-Aviv suburbs. The most impressive of those communities is Ra'anana, about 20 kms north of Tel-Aviv, which gives one the impression of Boca Raton. I counted not less than twenty construction cranes for luxury apartment complexes going up, and there were the tell-tale terracotta roofs of sprawling upscale housing communities. It seems to be the community of choice for North Americans and apparently has a country club. We also noted a strong high-tech presence in Ra'anana, large office buildings with IBM and SAP emblazoned on them visible from the highway. The consensus about Qisarya is that it is not as impressive as Beit She'an, in terms of ruins, but the coastal setting is spectacular. Actually, I was quite disappointed. While Beit She'an is exquisitely preserved, Qisarya, which was once one of the Meditteranean Sea's most important port cities, has suffered for milennia. Built by Herod the Great with an amphitheatre, temples and bathhouses, as well as a hippodrome where thousands watched chariot races, the city was conquered and occupied and destroyed and re-built over and over and over again. There is evidence of Roman, Byzantine, Moslem, and Crusader presence. But perhaps the most devastating destruction has been the elements; the salty air and crashing waves, which have pocked and crumbled the remaining stonework. The natural conditions of Beit Shean were more favourable to preservation. One other aspect disappointed - Qisarya is very much being promoted as a popular tourist destination so there are art galleries, and restaurants and stores on the site. The offices of the Qisarya Development Corporation (founded by Edmond de Rothchild who dreamed of developing the city) are on the site as well. We expected to be able to spend the entire day at the archaeological site since a public beach was advertised, but found that it was closed. So after a lunch eaten among the ruins, we drove 5 minutes to the public beach in town. The consensus is that it rates highly, one of the better beaches we've visited. No crowd. Clean water. Huge beach. Pale, fine sand that gradually slopes into the water. No rocks. Where it fell short was that the beach was littered, and there were no public facilities at all - every other beach we've been to had, lifeguard, changing facilities, toilets, showers, drinking water fountains etc.

DAY 15 - Friday
The fourteen year old decided to take the day off, staying home to hang out with the sixteen year old (should I be worried?). The rest of us decided that we didn't give Tel-Aviv enough of a chance the first time around so back we went, in spite of the heat. Bathing trunks were brought along just in case we got desperate. We had no real idea about where we wanted to go and ended up at Shuk HaCarmel. Let me just say that I would take Tel-Aviv's market over Jersualem's any erev Shabbos of the week (erev Shabbos of the month?). It's cleaner, more presentable, significantly larger, and according to the eleven year old, a lot less smelly. The challah and sugar-glazed danish stalls are open but don't seem to have the same hive-like attraction to wasps. I may be imagining this but the fruits and veggies seem fresher, the throngs somehow calmer and more easygoing (incidentally Shuk HaCarmel was just as crowded, maybe even more crowded than Machane Yehuda). In a word, the Shuk HaCarmel experience just felt more civilized, especially since, once you've wound your way through it, you can find your way onto Nachlat Binyamin an adjacent pedestrian walkway with hundreds of artists and craftspeople displaying and selling their wares. The artists in Jerusalem sell almost exclusively to tourists and their designs and products reflect their market. Their product tends to be cliched and souvenir-ish; Jerusalem cityscapes and skylines, portraits of hasidic Jews, and other objects to instill piety or ward off the 'Evil Eye'. The artists in Nachlat Binyamin feel more legitimate. Selling to tourists and locals alike, what they offer has wider variety and is more interesting and creative. Tel-Aviv is a more interesting, more creative, more tolerant, and as the eleven year old remarked feels safer than Jerusalem. Granted this may be because she now sees every payas-and-beard-wearing male as a potential attacker. But I also think she senses what I and the wife do: Tel-Aviv is just a cooler, more energized and exciting place. People seem more laid back and less judgmental. Unlike Jerusalem, they also care about their appearance and style. From Nachlat Biyamin we walked up Sheinkin Street, which has all kinds of fashion boutiques, including many familiar American and European brands like Diesel and Aldo. Our real reason for traipsing up Sheinkin was to make a pilgrimage to Cafe Tamar. The wife had been telling the eleven year old about this legendary meeting place of authors, poets, musicians and artists that dates back to before statehood. A photo was taken, but the eleven year old was too shy to go inside and wasn't at all impressed with her namesake cafe. She described the scruffy customers drinking and smoking under the canopy outside as "washed-out druggie failures." I haven't a clue what else she might have expected. From there we went back to our now favourite restaurant in Tel-Aviv 'Yosveta' (the same place we lunched the last time) on the beach for amazing smoothie fruit drinks and American helpings of pasta and vegetarian sandwiches that rival Montreal's Cafe Santropol. Finally, the heat was too much and we decided to give the beach one last chance, at least the wife and five year old gave it another chance. The eleven year old and I found a shady seat along Shlomo "Cheech" Lahit Promenade where we could stand bikini-watch. They apparently don't make one piece bathing suits in Tel-Aviv, or have never heard of them, because no matter the age, shape or size, every girl, woman and grandmother was wearing a two-piece. Which either means there's a great opportunity here for a bathing suit manufacturer, or the women here have a ridiculously inflated view of themselves. Then again, the view was, for the most part, pretty good as fas as I was concerned. According to the bathers the water was super clean this time, giving credence to the report about our last experience being an aberration because of an offshore ship dumping garbage. As head judge of our 'favourite places to swim in Israel' committee the five year old has officially bumped Tel-Aviv's ranking to number three ahead of Qisariya (but behind Nitsanim and Ein Gedi) since the facilities are superior and the beach just as nice.

DAY 16 - Shabbat
I've decided to take my day of rest today on Shabbat, for a change. A day to stop and reflect. The wife and fourteen year old have gone to the Arab market in the old city to shop for tchotchkes: the Arab market being the only place to shop for tchotchkes in Jerusalem on Shabbat. The rest of us are hanging around the apartment. The sun is shining as usual, not a cloud in the sky, but the air feels slightly fresher today. The sixteen year old and her boyfriend are hunched over the living room table scattered with little plastic mosaic-like tiles with letters on them. Occasionally one or the other announces 'Peel!' They're playing a game called 'Bananagram' which is a combination of Scrabble and Dominoes and apparently de rigeur in every Shabbat observant home in Jerusalem. Listen closely and you may hear "Peel!" shouted triumphantly (it denotes some sort of spelling victory) in every quarter of the holy city, which is a bit funny when you think about it since in Hebrew peel means elephant. But I am not thinking about elephants or bananas. I am thinking of expectations, the ones I had in coming here, the ones I have in being here, and the ones I will have when I leave. The wife and I have continually talked about our respective expectations, and how well we're faring relative to them. If nothing else, this city, this country is all about expectations, and its opposite disappointments. In the modern art collection at the Israel Museum you find the surrealist artist Rene Magritte's famous 1959 painting called 'The Castle of the Pyrenees'. The painting depicts a massive gray boulder surrounded by clouds hovering in the air over rolling waves. On top of the boulder stands a non-descript medieval castle. The boulder defies gravity mid-air while the frothing, crashing waves beneath it articulate the very force threatening to drag it down. It is a dreamscape. Physically impossible, and by virtue of its impossibility suggesting the physical reality to which we terrestrial beings are bound. The boulder should fall, would fall into the sea if it were not in a painting and not solely a matter of artful depiction. This is not a boulder, and not a castle, this is paint on canvas, an artist playing with representation and our expectations. Which is exactly what Israel does; plays with representation and expectation. We constantly ask ourselves what this country represents and what we can and should expect from it, and what it can and should expect from us in return. Ever since we arrived, the big news coming from abroad and soliciting not less than three opinion pieces in the Jerusalem Post (the right one, the wrong one, and the one in the middle?) is about the Jewish-Methodist shidduch of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky. A lot of opinionated people seem to care. What does it represent? A step forward for Jews in America and a model for the kind of openness that does not currently exist in Israel (the only legitimate marriage here is one sanctioned by the Orthodox Rabbinate)? Or a step backward? An example of the dangerous pathway that ultimately leads to Jewish perdition by intermarriage? And what of the Rabbi and the Minister together under the chuppah on Shabbat?! And what of the fact that the groom insisted on wearing a tallit and kippah? It's a positive thing that Marc cared enough to wear those potent symbols of his Jewish identity, one commentarist wrote. Marc should be ashamed of himself for perverting those symbols, wrote another. Strangely enough, being here, in Jerusalem, I don't care. The hoopla and outrage seem equally silly to me. What happened (and will happen) between Chelsea and Marc is not the end of Judaism or the Jewish People, or a new beginning. And yet it's taken so seriously; representation and expectation. Some of my reactions to being here have taken me by surprise. I was overwhelmed emotionally on our first day at the Wall, and not by being at the Wall, this most hallowed, all-important spiritual locale, but by being there with my wife and four daughters. It suddenly hit me that the last time I was standing at the Wall (incidentally, during a freak snowstorm) I was alone (my girlfriend/wife-to-be, had returned to Montreal) childless and confused. Eighteen years later, here I am, returned with a wife and four healthy beautiful children. Unbeknownst to me, without even realizing it, I had spent the last eighteen years on track to completing a circle, and here I was standing at the finish line/beginning, a generation later. I felt the most profound sense of being truly and deeply blessed I have ever felt in my life. I was ambushed by the second most moving moment I've experienced so far. It was in the scupture garden of the Israel Museum. I took a series of photos of the girls standing in a variety of postures and positions on the famous scultpture by Robert Indiana that spells out the word LOVE in a square of Hebrew letters (AHAVA). The Judean Hills and the cloudless azure sky are the backdrop. Taken together, the photos evoke and represent exactly how I'm feeling; all the promise and possibility, the hope and expectation, of our four ladies finding their own place and positions around LOVE. What else really matters? I suppose that Chelsea and Marc must feel the same way.

DAY 16 - Saturday evening
We have to delay our trip up north by a day due to a nasty ear infection that the sixteen year old contracted some time Friday/Saturday. She had been complaining of ear blockage/water in the ear, for about 24 hours and, thinking nothing much of it, we tried a series of home remedies. By the end of Shabbat her mild discomfort had become exacerbated to genuine pain and so we knew that a doctor would have to be seen. Eight o'clock last night we rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, which is a newish and expanding complex of buildings in a suburb of Jerusalem. The donors wall at the main entrance indicates that North American money plays a huge role in the development of this impressive facility which includes an attached hotel and shopping centre. We were prepared for another adventure, this time trying to navigate the medical system as a tourist. It took us some time to make our way through the various buildings in the nighttime dark to finally arrive at the emergency admissions, which was not well indicated with signage. As Shabbat was just about to end it was not at all busy. At admitting we had to fill out a simple form and pay 1500 shekels (about $400 CAN, insurance reimbursable) right off the bat. Then we were ferried over to see a nurse who took us right away, asked a series of questions (staggering through half English half Hebrew) and sent my daughter to have an IV site put in. We thought it was overkill so we convinced the male blood nurse just to take a sample for blood tests instead - which they had insisted on doing even when we said that too was unnecessary - and if the patient needed an IV drip later they could jab her a second time. Up to that point we were all super impressed with the medical system. The facilities are incredibly modern, clean and efficient. But from that point on the waiting game started. We were told that we would have to see a doctor (duh, but what we didn't know was that they meant a specialist) and were asked to wait outside until he was available. We waited for about an hour and half until they called us again at about 10:30 pm. We were now told that we would have to go into the main building across the courtyard to the ENT (Head and Neck Department) on the sixth floor to see the doctor. When we got there the doctor saw us immediately (in fact he was standing in the hallway expecting us) and my daughter underwent a most thorough examination. Having been in such a situation with a child more than once before I expected the doctor to ask a few questions and then look in her ear with the standard handheld device that the doctor stuck in my ear as a kid. Not so. The young specialist laid the patient on the table and inserted a device which magnified her inner ear canal and projected it on a screen. I hadn't had this much fun since journeying through my intestines via camera during my colonoscopy. He explained the problem - a small pearl-like bubble could be clearly seen on her timpanic membrane (eardrum) which he said was caused by a bacterial infection. "If she says she is in pain she's not lying" he commented. He gave her an ear drop anesthetic to numb the pain, wrote a full report (in English), and wrote prescriptions for two types of antibiotic. He was patient, unrushed, and methodical. He said she would have to be seen for a follow-up in the next few days and provided the information to make another appointment. We then had to return to the emergency room in the other building to report back to the admitting nurse who would then give us some starter drugs to last until the prescription could be filled tomorrow morning. From there we had to go back to the admissions kiosk to check out. These last two steps took maybe ten minutes. We were out by 11:30ish total elapsed time from arrival to departure was about two and half hours. The last, and most challenging step was getting my car out of the parking lot. When we arrived it was still Shabbat so all the lots and gates were open and because I had no idea where we were going and the patient was in excruciating pain, I just dumped the car in the first available space. When we left it was business as usual, all the gates were down, and I had no way of getting the car out since I had no automatically-dispensed parking ticket. It took about twenty more minutes to find the attendant and pay the 36 shekels ($10) demanded to have the gate raised. It seems to me what we experienced stacks up quite well against the Canadian medical system. The examination and treatment were much more thorough than we would have received at home, to the point of overkill. The facilities definitely top any Montreal hospital (then again we'll have a brand spanking new super-hospital soon). On the one hand, all the running back and forth between buildings struck me as sort of unnecessary. On the other hand the emergency room and waiting area were quite empty, which meant more beds there for the real emergencies. My grade B to B+.

DAY 17 - Sunday

The sixteen year old stayed home and started on her antibiotics while the rest of us met up with Israeli friends, a husband, wife and three young boys, who were back home visiting family from the States where they now live. We ended up at The Bible Lands Museum located next to the Israel Museum. This was our back-up plan after our original choice for an activity was to meet at the Bloomfield Science Museum which turned out to be closed on Sundays. Bloomfield has a lot of hands-on type activities, and hence would have been ideal for three rambunctious little boys. Bible Lands has one of the country's most impressive collections of ancient archaeology dating back 5000 years, but is decidedly on the cerebral side. Our friends were late in getting into Jerusalem from Tel-Aviv and when they arrived we warned them that finding parking on site of the museum would be impossible. We parked our respective vehicles in the vicinity (ours around the corner directly across from the Knesset). Finally, the two families met at the museum, a place where I could have easily spent an entire day on my own. We managed to keep the kids semi-interested for about an hour and a half. From the museum, our friends insisted that we join them for an early dinner in Abu Ghosh, an Arab town fifteen minutes outside Jerusalem. They claimed that a restaurant there makes the best hummus in the Middle East. The hummus was indeed excellent, as were the unending variety of salads that arrived at our table non-stop. Tomorrow, all things being equal, we will be northbound for two days.

DAY 18 & 19 - Monday & Tuesday
It's been a whirlwind tour and we're back in Jerusalem. Everyone agrees that two days in the north was not nearly enough. Most of our time was spent trying to escape the heat. On the drive back today the car digital thermometer registered 47 degrees. While the girls napped I worried about the temperature at which cars overheat and tires start exploding on the searing pavement. What's more, the 47 degree point was reached just as route 90 southward dropped down into the Dead Sea region past the checkpoint which separates the mostly arab west bank from Jewish territory. I kept imagining scenarios where I would be asking a donkey-riding bedouin for help getting my wife and three daughters back to Jerusalem on whatever means of transport he might have at his immediate disposal. But my worry was all for naught and we arrived safely in the golden city in practically sweater-weather, 36 degrees. As for the north, yesterday was one of our best days in Israel. We stopped at Hamat Gader which calls itself 'Israel's Garden of Eden' and the claim could almost be believed if the garden of Eden came with an elaborate petting zoo and the Middle East's largest crocodile farm (200 of the beasts). There was also a parrot show and a huge 30 foot waterslide that only our eleven year old, from the family, was courageous enough to fly down. All to say that the kids were happy as mud-caked baby hippos. And the parents were happy too because Hamat Gader, located 10 kms east of the Kinneret in a rugged valley overlooked by Jordan and visible from Syria, is simply one of the most beautiful corners in Israel. It has been inhabited for more than 4000 years and was a favourite of the Romans who built an amphitheatre and baths there because the valley is fed by mineral rich hot springs that bubble up to the surface from volcanic sources. Yes, I said HOT springs. So there we were lying in spring-fed pools and waterfalls and jacuzzis in sulphurous water that was actually hotter than the 45 degree air outside. Luckily, there are also cool pools so hopping from one pool to the other we alternated feeling drained and invigorated. We stayed at Hamat Gader until closing time (5:00) and then headed up the eastern side of the Sea Galilee. We stopped at Kibbutz Ein Gev at a restaurant that according to Frommer's is Israel's largest with seating for 700. We weren't looking for more crowds, but we were looking for a place that catered to families and served fish (at least the wife and I were looking for fish) and this restaurant is renowned throughout Israel for fish cuisine, particularly their specialty, something called Saint-Peter's fish. People come from all over to try it. I don't know much about the New Testament reference but I can say that the species is native to the Kinneret. The wife and I can attest that their specialty is delicious, light, not fishy-tasting, not bony, gently seasoned with garlic and spices, and lightly grilled. It was the best meal we've had in Israel so far and the view from the shoreline, the Kinneret at sundown, added to an ambiance of day-ending satisfaction. Heading straight off to bed would have tied a ribbon on the perfect day. Unfortunately, there was the small matter of driving 30 km more north to Qatzrin in the Golan where we had rented a room at the field school. Qatzrin is the so-called 'capital' of the Golan. A town of about three thousand inhabitants, the government has poured money into the town to settle it, and it shows. A quiet, quaint municipality with a towncentre, schools, sports complex, a mall, all the needed amenities, and well laid-out neighbourhoods that bring to mind some of the Cote-St. Luc neighbourhoods developed in the mid-70s. Rolling down the main route into town I was excited to catch a glimpse of tanks on military manoeuvres on the adjacent field; Qatzrin is also the Israeli miliary headquarters of their Golan operations. While we drove through the Golan on the way to Safed the next day, along the narrow, swervy-curvy, rising and falling roads, Sidney noted how many fenced off fields there were with signs that warned against trespassing on fields that may be mined. The wife was underwhelmed by our accomodations at the Qatzrin field school, but I'm not sure what she expected from a facility used to board students. We got a 20 by 15 foot room with two single beds and two bunk beds. There was a small fridge, a bathroom with toilet, sink and shower, and best of all, air-conditioning! In spite of the three inch foam mattresses and plywood underpad, I was charmed. I was less taken with the joint the next morning, my spine was as crooked as a Golan sideroad - no chance my back would stand even a single more night - but the next morning Annetta said she was warming up to the place. The kids had a fitful night too, although Eden said she loved having 'a sleepover' with the whole family. A complete breakfast with scrambled eggs, various breads, yogurts and salads, was served in the field school dining room and we were out by nine for the drive down the Golan, across the north shore of the Kinneret, and up to the famed mystical mountaintop city, Safed. The view on the climb was spectacular. We parked the car and strolled through the artist's quarter of the old city. In one gallery/boutique the saleslady we met was a Montrealer who had moved with her husband to Safed a few years ago. It was already getting hot and the kids were losing patience so after a stroll through the narrow alleyways of the Sephardic quarter Safed would be history for us. A quick stop for ice-coffees and a drive-by visit of the famous cemetery where the great mekubalim (mystical rabbis) of the 17th and 18th century are buried and we were on our way. Safed was not much like I remembered it, owing I suppose, to Madonna's influence (our Madonna, not the first one); it was very touristy and built-up with residential buildings, houses, hotels and kabbalah study centres. What we really needed now was to come down from the mountain for a cooling off via immersion. Rafi, our host at the Qatzrin field school had recommended a reed-shaded estuary that feeds the Kinneret called Maj'rase as the perfect place for a refreshing dip with the kids. We had to drive back across the northern shore of the Kinneret from Safed, cutting across many famous Christian sites including the Mt. of the Beatitudes where Jesus gave the sermon on the mount. It seemed that with temperatures climbing into the low 40s we were not the only ones with dreams of baptism-style relief. There were buses and cars filling the lot and lined along the side of the road to the entranceway of the reserve. The wife and kids hiked the wet-trail, meaning they marched along the stream with the throngs, beginning in ankle deep frigid waters and ending an hour later in mid-thigh waters. I took the dry trail next to the stream occasionally dunking my head. It wasn't a long leisurely stopover, like at Hamat Gader, but the kids said they enjoyed it. The almost two hour drive back to Jerusalem in the heat of the day was described above. The ladies conked out in the car while I white-knuckled it.

Day 20 - Wednesday
I have finally done it. It's taken three weeks in Israel and I've finally found the happiest place in all of Jerusalem. It's a place where, like every public place, there are mobs of people. The religious are there with their straggling, toddling broods, their single, double and triple strollers, but unlike other places they're not rolling over toes and being jammed into thighs. In this place the religious and the secular, the Arab and the Jew, pass without seeming to notice one another, or rather there pervades throughout a tone of sobriety, a civilized sort of indifference that transcends cultural and religious differences, and simplistic opposing paradigmatic terms like tolerance and intolerance. The happiest place in Jerusalem, I believe, is the modern, fully air-conditioned, sprawling, multi-storey, American style shopping mall. Okay, I may be exaggerating on the basis of my experience this morning. After all the driving I did over the past two days up north, today was to be a break for me. The wife and two older daughters would spend the day shopping at the Jerusalem Mall, while I took the younger kids to an activity; our choice being the Bloomfield Science Museum, which was founded and endowed by Montreal's own Neri Bloomfield, and was highly touted as an excellent, fun hands-on activity for kids. The elder ladies were dropped off at the mall and we headed off to the science centre. Well, you have never experienced unpleasantness until you have stood in line for fifteen minutes in the hot sun, then paid $35 admission for the privilege of battling hordes of out of control Israeli kids clambering for 'another turn' at generating voltage by spinning a wheel, or lifting heavy lead weights using rope pulleys and levers and letting them crash to the ground. It was as if Jerusalem had closed every other 'family-friendly' activity in town, and since kids younger than 5 are admitted free (for absolutely no apparent reason considering that not one of the installations would be appropriate for that age), every diaper-clad Shmulik and runny-nosed Rivkele was brought along. My two girls took our experience in stride, better than I did. A choking claustrophobia got to me. I lasted a couple of hours by sheer fortitude and stamina - and because I dreaded having to leave the air-conditioned facility to go back out in the 40 degree heat. By lunchtime I was calling the wife in a controlled panic to let her know that we were on our way to the mall to meet her. It was like an oasis in the desert. I may be overstating one thing. I do believe with all my heart that the shopping mall is the happiest place in Jerusalem, not solemn, or morose, or unnecessarily serious, or reflective, with not a hint of anything spiritual. But the parking garage is absolutely the unhappiest place in all of Jerusalem, of this I am also completely convinced, which would be somehow fitting ie. to have to go through hell to get to heaven. Now I know why virtually every car in Jerusalem is dinged and dented and paint-scratched. It's because they've tried finding parking at the Jerusalem Mall. Jerusalemite drivers apparently don't agree with 'no parking' signs or zones, think their cars can fit in 'spots' of any size, don't believe in directional arrows or so-called 'exits' and 'entrances', and apparently the car manuals here, under the section entitled 'Horn', tells drivers that 'manic and inappropriate use is mandatory in the parking garage at the Jerusalem Mall'. We met the rest of the family for lunch at Yotveta, the Jerusalem branch of our favourite Tel-Aviv beachfront vegetarian restaurant. McDonalds this chain ain't - I mean this in terms of consistency. The menu is the same but, we may as well have been dining at McDonalds so non-similar was the quality. The aspect about the Mall that most differentiates it from other crowded places we've been, besides the ample space that better accommodates the numbers, is that I understand mall rhythm whereas I still can not apprehend the rhythm of other crowded Jerusalem places, whether the Bloomfield Science Museum or Machane Yehuda. The same goes for the traffic - different rhythm. I don't get the urgency. The bold, honking global intolerance that seems to extend to everything everywhere. Except in the mall where everyone seems to be content, blithely engaged in a hands-on activity for grown-ups, the religious and secular, the Jew and the Arab alike. We were only too happy to stay at the mall until late this afternoon - I have never been so happy to extend my time at the mall, ever, really. Those who've had me shopping with them, or to put it more accurately, dragged me along, know that five minutes more at the mall is usually wayyyy too long. Tomorrow, we are back to the real world, by which I mean, 200 CE and Massada.

DAY 21 - Thursday
There was a rude knock on our door at number 10 Aleph HaRav Chen this morning at 7 AM. Fortunately, The wife and I were already awake and getting the kids ready for our scheduled trip to Massada. We wanted to get there as early as possible. The prospect of being on the top of a desert fortress mountaintop in one of the hottest places on earth after noon didn't appeal. We thought that if we got an early enough start, we might be there by 9ish, spend a couple of hours visiting and then be on our way home by lunchtime. In fact, the knock on our door was about the heat. A fit-looking, tanned, grey-haired man introduced himself as Yehuda Bertinoff in thick Hebrew accented English, asked if we were who we were, and presented us with a document. He said that a special committee of the Prime Minister's office had been struck to deal with the problems arising from the heat wave that has settled on the country since approximately July 29th and that copious examination of travel records indicates this was the date of our arrival. Further examination by a team of specially convened Hebrew University meteorological-history graduate students (I didn't know such a field existed but apparently Hebrew U is a world leader) has revealed that individuals with our exact names arrived in Jerusalem from Montreal precisely eighteen years ago when there was another freak meteorological occurrence, in that instance, the heaviest snowstorn in more than a hundred years. The Prime Minister's office has therefore determined that we are a national threat and the only way to end the freakishly hot weather that has plagued the country for the past month is to expel us. The document Mr. Bertinoff presented, certified and stamped by the office of Binyamin Netanyahu himself, was an Order in Cabinet asking our family to leave the country within five days, the deadline coincidentally falling on next Tuesday, the very day of our flight. I explained that we were scheduled to depart anyway, and then Mr. Bertinoff turned to leave, looking satisfied that he had done his service for his country. The door was closed and I packed up the kids and we were off on the 100 km drive down to the Dead Sea and Massada. It was an excellent trip. Massada has developed an exquisite museum of archaeological finds on site which was not there when I visited last. We did manage to get there early and left by about noon. On the way back we re-visited Ein Gedi for a refreshing dip in the springs and waterfalls. On the drive back to Jerusalem the thermometer of our car hit 51 degrees. According to latest weather forecast for Israel this heat wave will in fact break the very night we leave, and August 2010 will go into the history books as one of the hottest on records. I just hope they allow us back into the country sometime.

DAY 22 & 23, Friday & Shabbat
We're definitely in winding down mode. On Friday, the wife and fourteen year old went back to Machane Yehuda to do some food shopping and then down to Jaffa street for souvenir shopping. I took the younger two to Kibbutz Ramat Rahel which is within the municipal bounds of Jerusalem, perched on a hill about a ten minute drive from our apartment. The wife heard that the kibbutz has a lovely pool with ample shaded grounds open to the public. So in an effort to beat the heat we packed a picnic and headed over. The kibbutz advertises itself as a 'hotel resort' and the claims are accurate. The facility is not 'luxurious' by North American standards (nothing here is) but the pool is large and the grounds feature beautiful views of the Judean hills - you can see all the way to Bethlehem. When we got there it was pretty crowded (as usual) but we managed to find a shady spot under a tree and the girls spent much of the day in the pool, while I dug into a novel by Eshkol Nevo, a hotshot new Israeli writer getting international attention. Last night we were invited to bring in the Shabbat at friends' apartment, for the second time this trip. She is an ex-pat Montrealer and her husband a transplanted American. They are the only two people we know who have toughed it out and made a life for themselves here. If they weren't so individually accomplished (she is a doctor of psychology and he works for the government in urban planning) we would admire them for that fact alone. As much as I enjoy driving on Shabbat in Jerusalem it doesn't look like I'll be doing much today. We're all moving very slowly and our only plan for the day is to start the new week with a 'sound and light' show tonight at David's Tower in the Old City, one of the few touristy things we've done here. But as we're winding down I thought as a means of summing up I'd share some numbers, compiled anecdotally and idiosyncratically:

Our Trip in Numbers Days: 24

Average normal temperature for August: 30 degrees centigrade
Average temperature August 2010: 34.3 degrees centigrade
Warmest temperature we recorded: 51 degrees centigrade (at the Dead Sea)
Average rainfall for August: 0 mm
Rainfall for August 2010: 0 mm
Kilometeres driven: 2021 kms
Highest geographical point reached: 900 meters, 3200 ft. (Sefad)
Lowest geographical point reached: -422 meters, -1385 ft. (Dead Sea)
Museums visited: 6
National parks visited: 10
Pools visited: 2
Hospitals visited: 1
Ice coffees consumed: 50 (estimate)
Restaurant meals consumed: 8
'Milkies' and 'Danies' consumed (pudding treats that are an Israeli favourite): 100 (estimate)

Litres of water drank per person: 80 (estimate)

Bottles of sunscreen used: 3
Weight lost (me): 7 lbs
Belt loops reduced (me): 1

DAY 24 & 25 - Sunday & Monday
Our winding-down pace has slowed to a crawl. I think everyone is pretty anxious to get home. The last couple of days - we head out to Ben-Gurion airport tonight for an early morning flight tomorrow - have been occupied with tying up loose ends and getting ready for departure. Yesterday, the sixteen year old and I spent another three hours or so at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital for her follow-up appointment. The patient has finished her antibiotics and says that the ear is feeling better, but there is a constant ringing. Another $85 USD to the Israeli medical system confirmed that her ear is mending nicely but there appears to be water behind her eardrum, which we are told will likely evaporate on its own, no further treatment necessary. However, the specialist we saw this time recommended that she have a hearing test. When I asked if this was absolutely necessary, and whether it can wait until she gets back to Mtl, the doctor said, "it should be done sooner rather than later "to rule out the one percent chance of a 'surprise'". Another example of overkill it seems. He also said that the infection probably developed when she went swimming in the Kinneret. If we choose to arrange the appointment for a hearing test it will have to be done with the assistance of the school where she will be studying beginning on Thursday. This is something we'll be discussing this afternoon when we visit Kibbutz Tsuva to meet with the program head and drop off her valise. Our daughter will be sleeping in the apartment in Jerusalem tonight and then she'll take a bus to the kibbutz tomorrow morning. Yesterday afternoon the wife and I went for a stroll around her old neighbourhood in Old Katamon/the German Colony. This area is Jerusalem's Westmount or Forest Hill, prime real-estate. We walked down clean residential streets with large houses on lots, as opposed the crowded apartment buildings one sees in every other neighbourhood. One street was as wide as a North American street with ample sidewalks - and for the first time I really felt the impact of the difference in scale from what we're used to in Canada. For a brief moment it felt like I was breathing easier. We spent our last full evening in Jerusalem having dinner at a lovely non-kosher Italian place called Foccacio's located downtown just off Ben Yehuda that was recommended by Frommer's. We sat on the terrace. The atmosphere was pleasant and breezy, the food was good and the price very reasonable. This is something that the wife has remarked on - the restaurants have really improved in the twenty years since she lived here. We haven't eaten in restaurants often to save on cost (and to experience fully the joys of market shopping for fresh locally-grown fruits and veggies), but most of the meals we've had have exceeded expectations with large portions (most times one dish was shared by two) at decent prices; our meal yesterday for example, including the wife having a glass of wine, cost 230 shekels with the tip which comes to about $65 CDN for the entire family. Service is also improving, although in general your waitress or salesperson still makes you feel like they're doing you a big favour. There never developed in Israel a 'customer is always right' consumer culture. It's been more like 'wait your turn and I'll come to you.' After dinner we walked around Ben Yehuda, mostly the sidestreets off Ben Yehuda actually, where there are happening restaurants, American and British style clubs/bars, and little shops with crafts and art. A few general observations, and misconceptions dispelled: The tractor-driving balaklava-wearing arabs we passed on our up north did not cover their faces for fear of being labelled 'colluders' working for Jews. Rather, the masks help with the heat - though I'm not sure how. There are many reasons for the dirtiness of the city, including the psychology of apartment living - nobody seems to think it's their responsibility to keep the communal garbage bins where each apartment dweller dumps his/her bag of trash tidy. But another reason, for the bad smell in particular, is the season/weather, specifically the lack of rain in the summer. I'm thinking that Jerusalem must smell much fresher in the fall, winter and spring. With regards to Israeli parenting, a woman named Sarit who we met at our friends' apartment last friday confirmed our experience that the kids rule the roost in the average Israeli family. Interestingly, she works as a parenting counsellor, a sort of Israeli super-nanny interventionist (which, incidentally, is a wildly popular tv program here). She told us that many Israeli parents have trouble saying 'no' to their kids, indulge them excessively, and do not know how to set limits. Ironic, considering that Israel is all about limits; walls and checkpoints - but maybe that's why parents don't impose many in the home. This explains the seemingly parentless kids we constantly saw smacking their siblings around and running between the tables in the restaurants. And finally, in many respects, I've gotten used to it here. I feel more personally connected to the news here than at home, daily and international events have greater immediacy and urgency. Although, it surprises me that the aspect about life here that matters least is that everyone is Jewish. The very fact alone seems to cancel out it's importance, at least on a daily-living basis. The wife is right when she says that because everyone here is Jewish the opportunities to live 'Jewishly' and the definition of what that may mean are much broader. To live as a Jew in Montreal usually means that you have to fit in one box or another. And yet, a few weeks here and what is mattering to me are not Jewish-specific aspects of social living, but rather, things like taking care of the environment and treating one another with politeness and basic decency. However, it should also be said that with everyone living on top of one another as they do here, it is astounding that they achieve the levels of common decency that they do. And with all we have in Canada, the resources and the space, it borders on shameful that we can be so preoccupied with pettiness, and do not achieve much much more.

25 Days in August - Diary of a family's journey in the Holyland

2010-08-31T18:43:00.000-07:00

WEEK 2

DAY 8 - Wednesday
We finally managed to get the early start we desired, out the door by 7:04 local time. Amazing how motivating your own set of wheels can be. Our destination for the day: The Dead Sea. The roads heading out of Jerusalem were relatively quiet and we managed to navigate across town onto the route bound for the lowest point on earth without too much problem. We passed the turn-offs for Ramallah and Jericho, now under Palestinian Authority and off-limits to Jewish vehicles, and then took the swervy, curvy road down to 400 metres below sea level on a highway so smooth it would embarrass our provincial politicians. We were fortunate on many accounts. For one thing we arrived at the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve ten minutes after opening which meant that the parking lot was virtually empty and the hiking paths were uncrowded. For another thing the five year old waited until we had arrived and was out of the brand spanking new rental car before heaving her breakfast flakes and milk onto the pavement. The empty stomach didn't stop our intrepid five year old from participating in two easy hikes, one in the morning up Wadi David and the second in the afternoon up Wadi Arugot. Ein Gedi is a wonder. The surrounding lands are desert dry hills rising hundreds of meters above while green wadis with waterfalls are found along the trail below at refreshing intervals. We dunked ourselves every chance we got. We encountered wildlife; frogs, freshwater crabs, Ibex and a peculiar rodent called a Rock Hyrax (the Dead Sea equivalent of a squirrel that looks like a North American groundhog) but avoided the highly poisonous En Gedi viper native to the region. We ate a picnic lunch, visited a 3rd century era synagogue on the park grounds that was recently uncovered with an exquisitely preserved central mosaic that includes the names of patrons and sponsors; in two thousand years not much has changed in synagogues. We ended the day in the early afternoon - it was 43 degrees seaside - by floating in the Dead Sea, re-discovering anew every rash and small cut on our bodies.

DAY 9 - Thursday
Hit and miss. We decided on a morning visit to the Sorreq stalactite cave 20 kms outside Jerusalem followed by a picnic lunch at a nearby park. The drive through the Judean hills feels similar to traveling through Quebec's Laurentian mountains only the roads are narrower, steeper and twistier, and not as well indicated. If you want to get to a centre; Jerusalem, direction to Tel-Aviv, even to a larger town on the edge of the hills like Bet Shemesh, it's no problem. But the guidebook and road signage are not nearly as clear when it comes to lesser known stops like Sorreq. I drove more or less on instinct and a sense of the general direction where we were supposed to be headed. There was one false stop when I read the word Sorreq in Hebrew on a tiny roadside sign which turned out to be in the wrong place - that's something else you see here; two and three locations with the same name, which often turn out to be entrances and exits to the same nature reserve at various locations. The road map provided by the car rental company didn't indicate the route number we were on and, after driving up and down through the hills for a while we determined that we better call the Sorreq office. The man there didn't seem to have a clue where we were, however, from his description I could tell that we weren't far. The stalactite cave is on the western edge of the hills where you get a clear view of the land sloping down and flattening out all the way to the Mediterranean Sea 40 kms away. We took the tour of this delicately preserved site which included an introductory film. The cave was discovered by mistake in 1968 at a quarry blasting limestone rock for the construction of the city of Ashdod. Our tour guide gave explicit and extensive descriptions of how the stalactites and stalagmites were formed. But the one piece of information he omitted was how old the cave was. I had an inkling why this might be, so I asked. He said, well, there is geological and theological consistency on when the cave appeared; about 20 million years ago. I hadn't asked for theology, but I guess every question about the land here requires a theological answer. Where the 'consistency' might be I couldn't understand given that according to Judaism the world was created about 6,000 years ago. And how long did it take for these incredibly beautiful and varied formations to be created? I asked. About 5 million years he admitted. From Sorreq we drove to Sattaf, a favourite hiking park for Jerusalemites which the guidebook decribed as having a restaurant, welcome centre and a fresh water spring where hikers have been known to swim. After another series of miscues and false turns we finally found the park entrance based on directions provided by a bystander. We ate lunch at a picnic ground on site and drove down to the supposedly popular natural spring - it was just too hot at midday to hike the kilometre down and then up again - and good thing we didn't walk because the pool was dirty and unswimmable. Which brings me to the most disappointing aspect about the Holyland so far. How shamefully unclean it is. Litter was scattered all over the Sattaf picnic area and along the hiking trails. It's a situation that one finds everywhere, in the cities and in these JNF funded nature reserves. What happened to the old adage about cleanliness being next to Godliness?

DAY 10 - Friday
Got off to an early start today. The wife ran down to the makolet (the corner store) to pick up a few provisions before we headed out to the coast. First stop would be a 10 am reservation made at the Ayalon Institute and Museum in Rehovot a few miles south of Tel-Aviv. When she came back from the store, she told me she had bought me a present and slipped a Jerusalem Post out of her bag. Handing it over she looked at the front page and cried out, "Oh My God!" I panicked, "What happened, what happened?" thinking the worst; danger, tragedy, a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. "It's friday today!!" And this is how we discovered the reason why last night when we visited the Bible Lands Museum that supposedly opens late on Wednesday evening it was closed. Because it was Thursday! This gives you some idea about how completely out of it we are. Somewhere along the line we lost track of time and hours and days became centuries and all of it started meaning the present. We arrived at the Ayalon Institute exactly on time. Ayalon is a stone's throw from the famed Weitzmann Institute of Technology. But Ayalon is unique and little known. It's not even found in guidebooks. The wife was tipped off by a friend who said it was a highlight of her trip to Israel. It did not disappoint. Actually, the Ayalon Institute is the site of a pre-State era 'kibbutz' where the Hagana made bullets in a clandestine factory, literally underground. The story is incredible. In 1945 a small group of Scouts in their early twenties from Tel-Aviv were planning to set up a kibbutz just south of the city. They were approached by a leader of the Hagana for a secret operation. After a long night of debate and without any explanation about what the operation might entail they agreed to participate. The result was the construction of a 'fake' kibbutz built under the noses of the British where the members worked for 10 hours a day in ungodly conditions to manufacture bullets. This became the sole supply of ammunition of the Hagana during the Mandate period and the primary source during the War of Independence. On the tour of the site we went underground through hidden passageways (there were two entrances to the factory - one in the kibbutz laundry room and the other behind the oven in the kibbutz bakery.) Our guide was a most fascinating and articulate young man named Yonatan who talked about the moral and philosophical dimensions of the project. "What drove these people to sacrifice and risk so much to achieve the goals they believed in? Had they been discovered they would have immediately been hanged by the British." It's a mystery, he said with a hint that this kind of sacrifice would be unimaginable from young people today. He believes from speaking to some of the survivors, that a lot of it had to do with the collectivist mentality of the kibbutz movement, the importance of seeing the connection between an individual life and larger goals of the collectivity that positively effect future generations. Yonatan then told us that he was a member of a kibbutz movement called "Dror LeYisrael" and lives in the area. It's a movement of educators who work in a variety of fields and with various groups committed to closing the gaps between divergent strata of Israel society, the old and the young, the religious and the secular, the politically Left and Right, the Arabs and the Jews etc. Meeting Yonatan was heartening and Ayalon was impressive and meaningful. After Ayalon we drove 30 kms south to a beach between Ashdod and Ashkelon called Nitsanim. Paydirt: Here was the pristine, uncrowded, clean, Israeli beach we had been dreaming about.

DAY 11 - Shabbat
Two observations: First, the streets are empty in Jerusalem on Shabbat, sanity returns to the capital. What a pleasure it is to drive. Second, this country has an obsession for the underground. There are tunnels and caves everywhere. One has the impression that the real comings and goings of life in the Holyland, the truly important activity, the genuine history, takes place underground. (One also thinks of the daily reports of terrorists smuggling arms and goods into Gaza through a network of tunnels.) Yesterday we visited a clandestine factory making bullets in 1945, today it was cave-dwellings and an underground olive oil factory from 245 BCE. The caves of Beit Guvrin are located about 45 kilometres south of Jerusalem, in the lowlands between the Judean Hills and the Negev. It's a national park that covers more than 1200 acres and has kilometers of rugged hiking trails over tels (unexcavated archaeological hills). Beit Guvrin is renowned for its more than 800 caves, most of which have not yet been explored. It was the site of a pre-millenial Hellenistic city, as well as Jewish (first Temple Period), Arab and Byzantine settlements, so it is particularly rich in archaeological finds. There are magnificent so-called "Bell Caves" that are three storeys high and formed from ancient quarries. In other excavated portions there are underground burial sites, a vast network of cave dwellings and cisterns, also, an ancient olive oil making factory (with stone presses, crushers and oil-capturing pits) and our favourite, an underground aviary for breeding pigeons cut into the limestone in the shape of a cross two storeys deep with two thousand holes in the walls (pigeon guano was collected for fertilizer and the birds were bred for cult sacrifice.) When it's 37 degrees you either need shade or water. The payoff hiking in Ein Gedi were the waterfall springs. At Beit Guvrin the payoff is the cool of the caves. The five year old wasn't quite up for the full challenge, so after lunch, when the temps had reached their maximum, I took the eleven and fourteen year olds deeper into the park. The girls were amazing, and it was not easy. We had brought along a lot of water and the park provides various water sources and shady spots along the way. But it didn't help that I guided us in the wrong direction for about ten minutes when I misread the map trying to find a shortcut back to the parking lot. We finally returned two hours later. The wife said she was fifteen minutes away from sending out a search party. The days being as hot as they are, we are happy to return home a late afternoon siesta, and go back out in the cool of the evening.

DAY 12 - Sunday
It's 7:15 pm and for the first time since we arrived a cool evening breeze is blowing down through the Valley of the Cross and up into our apartment window. Today was our last full day with the rental car, or rather this rental car. It has served us valiantly over the last 6 days in which we have put almost 800 kilometres on the odometer. It has ferried us to the Mediterranean coast, up and and down the Judean hills, to the Dead Sea, and as of today, to the upper Jordan Valley, all with air-conditioning. We are seriously considering extending the rental right to the end of the month. The plan for today was to take advantage of the car with a triple-header of touring: a drive approximately 120 kilometers north to the region of Beit She'an, where we would enjoy a dip in the water springs at Gan HaShelosha, then head over to see the ruins of the ancient city of Beit She'an, and finally stop off at Beit Alpha on the way back to gander at the mosaic floor of a 5th century synagogue. I had been to Beit Shean and Beit Alpha eighteen years ago, and remember the ruins of the city at Beit Shean, in particular, as my favourite site in all of Israel. It is truly incredible; an entire Roman-era city partially restored, with Israel's largest amphitheatre, bathhouses, streets with colonnades, market places, and temples etc. Beit Shean has been the site of important cities and major centres of trade going back to the pre-Canaanite period, through Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader periods and on, right up until today. You can not walk the site without bumping into a fallen Roman column, or a piece of sculpted marble that formed part of a building, or stepping on shards of pottery. When we arrived it was even more impressive than I remembered. In the almost two decades since I was there last, archaeological excavations have advanced a great deal and uncovered even more of the city. Beit She'an was our after-lunch stop. Our first stop of the morning was to be extra special for the kids. With the heat, part of the day had to be devoted to swimming. The wife found mention in an article in the Jerusalem Post of a park close to Beit She'an that was called by Time magazine "One of the world's twenty best 'off the beaten track' attractions," with some of the best spring water swimming in all of Israel. Well, either it was a Time magazine from 1980, or it was the West Bank edition of Time, because when we got there the place was mobbed with mostly Arab families barbecuing. In truth, the watering holes were quite spectacular but I felt too uncomfortable to enjoy myself. The wife and two younger kids swam while the fourteen year old and I sat under a rare available shady spot. It was the first day when I felt overwhelmed by Israel's Arab presence. My discomfort began on the drive up. Along highway 90, bypassing Jericho and zooming through arab towns in the Jordan Valley, Arab men are seen waiting along the side of the road, presumably day labourers hoping to get picked up for a job in the fields. Then you pass a checkpoint which defines the boundary between the green line and the Israeli part of the upper Jordan Valley, where the land turns from barren (Arab) to lush (Israeli). Finally, when we arrived at Gan HaShelosha it was all too much for me. By the time we got to the swimming hole my nerves were shot. On the way back to Jerusalem, as we reached the Dead Sea, sand squalls kicked up, like Canadian-style snow squalls only sandier. At one point I had trouble seeing the car in front. We drove to the apartment through the centre of Jerusalem, coasting past the border of Mea Shearim. Best line of the day from the fourteen year old as we passed the ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood: "Next time I'm coming back in a bikini armed with a bunch of water balloons."

DAY 13 - Monday, YAD VASHEM
No photos. No words.

DAY 14 - Tuesday
We extended the rental car to the end of the trip, and as a consequence of a lack of urgency, the pace has slowed considerably. It is evening and slightly cooler. The wife took the fourteen and five year old into the centre of Jerusalem. The eleven year old and I bailed on them after going together to Machane Yehuda Jerusalem's main open market. It's a place Annetta seems to love but the kids and I aren't terribly fond of: A combination of the hustle bustle, the redolence of garbage and fish with a hint of cat piss in the air, the open displays of glazed danish buzzed by a hive of egg-laying insects, all baking gently in the sun. The market has its 'homey' charms (as in Homer Simpson). It's vast and lively. I just don't trust the food. In the meantime, I'm sticking to the pre-packaged grocery store variety. This morning we visited the Israel Museum for the second time. The sixteen year old joined us for the first time in a week. Being a veteran of Israel with friends and contacts, she has had more exciting plans than to hang around with her parents and younger sisters. When we told the five year old that we were going to the museum to see the Dead Sea scrolls, she objected, "I don't want to go to the museum to see dead squirrels!" Three hours was still not enough to cover the balance of what we missed from the first visit to the museum. We decided to work backwards, starting with the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, the incredible 50:1 scale detailed model of 1st century Jerusalem, and the Shrine of the Book (the Dead Sea Scrolls). We barely touched the Contemporary and European Art rooms, and hardly skimmed the Jewish Art and Life section which amazingly features two fully reconstructed synagogue interiors from India and 17th century Italy. We never managed to reach the ancient archaeology (my favourite) rooms before the kids threw up their hands and screamed uncle. I should also mention that last night - although it seems like we've been torturing the kids with museum overload - we took the five year old to a puppet show at the open amphitheatre in Liberty Bell Park (Gan HaPa'amon). It may seem incongruous for Jerusalem to have a park featuring a replica of the cracked Philadelphia Liberty Bell, but actually it is a reminder of the inscription from the Torah "Proclaim liberty throughout the land..." The park also has a "Terry Fox Park" section donated by some rich Canadians in his memory. We saw a group of Arab families having a barbecue on the stone benches and tables there. Jerusalem is replete with such incongruities. An international puppet festival is in town this week. We saw a traditional Italian family traveling circus; parents and their kids playing songs, singing, pantomiming, performing with marionettes, and clowning around. The five year old loved it. Tomorrow, the plan is to hit the road again. Caesaria.

25 Days in August - Diary of a family's journey in the Holyland

2010-08-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

(Participants: Husband, wife and four daughters ages 16, 14, 11 and 5)

WEEK 1

DAY 1-2, Wednesday & Thursday
It's been an exciting and exhausting 48 hours. Our day in Amsterdam was full, arriving at 7 am, taking the train into town, at the Anne Frank House by 9 am (where there was already a line-up at the entrance?), lunch at a cafe, a canal cruise followed by a walk through the red light district. The centre of the city was mobbed with tourists. We were happy to leave. We arrived in Jerusalem this morning at 3:30 am. The sleep-deprived five year old screamed at the top of her lungs refusing to enter. As with all Jerusalem apartments the name of the inhabiting family is identified on the front door. In the case of our apartment the artful ceramic nameplate says The Haber Family (the people we are renting from.) Next door is The Meir Family who also have a sticker on their door proclaiming the imminent coming of the messiah. If tonight's 3 in the morning hysterical entrance is any indication, the Meirs will soon despise the Habers. The apartment is a nice surprise with plenty of room, renovated kitchen and two bathrooms. The mattresses look tolerable. And there is air-conditioning. We had to sleep off half the day to recover from jet lag. This evening we're going to explore the neighbourhood.

DAY 3 - Friday
Today, our first full day in Jerusalem, the wife and I took the kids on an excursion to the ultra-orthodox hasidic enclave Mea Shearim. I don't know what we were thinking. Big signs on the neighbourhood's border warn gawkers that Mea Shearim is not a tourist attraction and that their presence is not be appreciated. I guess we simply couldn't imagine that a woman accompanied by her five year old daughter would be harrassed. We were wrong. The girls were dressed appropriately, or so we thought; shoulders covered and skirts below the knee, in spite of the upper-thirties temperature. Not fifteen minutes after entering the main street of the delapidated, crowded 17th century shtetl-like neighbourhood a flying object crossed my field of vision and struck our eleven year old daughter in the shoulder. I looked up thinking that perhaps something had fallen from a balcony overhanging the street. Then an assailant, a black-coated, fur-hatted hasid leapt forward from the shadows and spat at my wife and the two younger kids. He turned to the fourteen year old and me trailing behind and tried more spitting, but couldn't muster adequate saliva, shouting Tetzei mikan! (Leave here!). The eleven year old screamed, more out of shock than physical injury, and the five year old started bawling. No one else in the crowded street reacted or seemed to hear the wailing of our children. It was as if we were invisible. We looked for an escape route in vain. All the connecting streets went further in to the quarter and the only way out was to backtrack. We sought momentary refuge in a corner. Then suddenly a crash! A water bomb had been hurled at us and exploded against the wall. I caught sight of the same hasid ducking into a side alleyway with a water bucket in hand. A passing cab (as if on cue - I'm quite sure he makes it his regular route) showed up to whisk us away to Machane Yehuda (Jerusalem's main food market) where we joined the throngs doing their Sabbath shopping. In the cab, our fourteen year old remarked that she never imagined when she came to Israel that she would be attacked by Jews.

DAY 4 - Shabbat
We trekked twenty minutes from the apartment across the Valley of the Cross up to the newly renovated Israel Museum. By the time we arrived at the museum the faces of the fourteen and eleven year old were purple from overheating (the five year old rode in a stroller). Jerusalem reached 41 by noontime. Even if the museum wasn't absolutely magnificent, which it is, the price of admission would have been worth the full blast air-conditioning. The museum is an endless array of rooms filled with art and archaeological treasures. The best news of all - hasids stay away from museums on Shabbat.

DAY 5 - Sunday
Yesterday was officially the hottest day of the year in Israel according to the news. In some parts like Eilat and Tiberius the thermometer reached a mindboggling 55. It is now apparent that we arrived in Israel at the beginning of a heat wave. We decided to spend the day at the beach in Tel-Aviv 50 kms away. Israel's metropolis is a bustling city and Jerusalem's secular opposite. The trip was a bit of a shlep (bus-bus-bus each way, six in total) and we got a late start, but we were on the beach by about noon. The public beach is wide and uncrowded and the sand fine. What shocked us was how disgustingly dirty the water was, with little bits of paper and clear plastic rolling in the surf like jellyfish. Leaving the water you felt a coat of slime covering your body. Later, it was reported that a ship offshore had dumped a load of trash polluting the Tel-Aviv shoreline. In the evening we walked up and down Dizingoff and had dinner at a place on the beach famous for their crushed ice fruit smoothies. Tel-Aviv has the character of a lively, rambunctious, progressive city that does not take itself too seriously. A refreshing change from Jerusalem. One has the sense that the two city's are like siblings of the same parents who resent each other and don't talk. Jerusalem the elder and more needy sibling getting the lion's share of parental attention while Tel-Aviv the younger child works and grows and makes it on its own. Oddly, it felt safer to be in Tel-Aviv.

DAY 6 - Monday
Today the wife and I decided to take it easy on the kids after yesterdays long day of shlepping them to Tel-Aviv and back on public transportation. A late start and leisurely walk to the Old City Arab market for souvenir purchases. I had some personal business to take care of at the Wailing Wall - notes for good health and blessings given to me by friends and work colleagues to slip in the cracks. Temps were in the upper 30s. In the Old City I was approached for donations not less than a dozen times; I have started counting. We exited through Zion Gate and climbed the road, arriving at a lookout where you can view the anti-terrorism partition that separates the Arab towns of the west bank from Israel proper. I said to myself, that wall is the one I should be praying at and kissing.

DAY 7 - Tuesday
Another absurdly hot day. Neither the five year old nor the eleven year old left the air-conditioned apartment all day. The five year old discovered that her favourite tv show characters from back home in Canada, Bunnytown and Handy Manny, also speak Hebrew. When I asked her how she understood the shows, she answered "I understand the pictures." The wife and fourteen year old went for a walk in the neighbourhood. At some point, the wife stopped a man for directions. He invited her into his car to get a lift, and then, in the company of our fourteen year old, shamelessly propositioned my wife (I'm almost surprised he didn't proposition the fourteen year old too.) That's twice so far the wife has been propositioned in six days - more score-keeping (one score card for the wife getting propositioned, one score card for the number of times I get approached for a donation.) I'd had enough of shlepping around on public transportation in the heat and decided that afternoon to book a rental car. I went to pick the car up in the evening; a brand new Mazda 3 with a total of 4 kms showing on the odometer. I barely averted my first accident on the way back to the apartment when I misread the lane assignments and traffic signals turning left. I was corrected by a chorus of honks, and one taxi driver who was kind enough to verbally let me know through his open window where I rank on the intelligence scale of our God-chosen tribe.

Gotlieb stories

2010-08-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

I hadn't heard from my elusive old friend Maurice Gotlieb for some time. I began to wonder if he was well and whether in fact he was still writing fiction anymore. Then word arrived that he is indeed alive and well and writing, with not one but two stories online: "Seymours International" and "Another Way Of Putting It". I'm happy to see that he's still at it. Mazel Tov Maurice!

The Love Song of A. Jerome Minkoff and other stories by Joseph Epstein

2010-08-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

Joseph Epstein is one of my favourite writers. One of the under appreciated masters of American belles lettres. Even as his fiction and essays have appeared in every major magazine and newspaper and his non-fiction books have been NY Times bestsellers, one has the sense that Epstein is a bit of a throwback, and might have achieved the recognition he truly deserved had his work appeared twenty years earlier when books were more central to American culture. Epstein is no flavour of the month sort of writer. He writes crafted, crisp, clearly-thought-out prose; no flower and very little sentimentality, in fact, he has a bitter aversion to the pretension of artsiness. His chosen subject matter is often Chicago Jewish males, and in the case of this new collection, men about the author's age, in the third act of life. It's very much Saul Bellow territory and one may wonder why Epstein has never written a novel, though guesses are easy to hazard. For one thing the novel is a 'messy' form (Mordecai Richler, when asked why he wrote novels instead of poetry or short-fiction, famously said that novels left a lot of room for error.) For Epstein, it is apparent from his prose, that any 'messiness' would be intolerable. Another reason may be that novels about Chicago Jewish men of a certain age and ilk are Bellow territory, and he's smart enough to know that it would be unwise to cross that boundary and risk being compared to his illustrious predecessor novelist. It's too bad really because I think Epstein's work would stand up quite well. His doesn't have Bellow's penchant for excess (over-thinking, over-writing, over-indulging.) An Epstein novel, I believe, would be tight and satisfying, perhaps even surpassing Bellow's late period novellas. I know this is pure speculation but the economy and humour of Epstein's prose allows him to manage in a few words and sentences what it often took Bellow pages to describe. For example, in the story "Bartlestein's First Fling" about a man in the plumbing supply business who flirts with the possibility of living a life of passion for the first time, Epstein writes, of the protagonist, "He found the Lexus to be the perfect car for him: dependable, not too showy, efficient, quietly luxurious. He has himself become a kind of human Lexus." In another story, Epstein says of a businessman, "he laughed a lot but I never saw him smile." The comparisons with Bellow, admittedly unfair, are inevitable. It may be why I read the modus operandi in "My Brother Eli" as Epstein's response to what Bellow himself was known for; writing family and friends into his fiction, particularly as a way of humiliating ex-wives. Eli is a Bellow-like character, a novelist, winner of every major literary prize, the toast of Chicago and the literary world, married multiple times, irredeemably self-centered, indulgent and miserable despite his 'success'. Eli keeps getting bailed out by his older brother Lou an auto parts salesman and narrator of the story. When he reads Eli's novels, Lou can't make heads or tails of them, "I had to drag my eyes across every page, thinking who could possibly give a damn about all this. So the hero of the books is sensitive, and the people he is forced to live among aren't. I didn't see the big deal." Epstein mostly sides with the uneducated, the uncultured, and the stalwart. He has genuine affinity for hard-scrabble, hard working, self-made men, particularly those who came of age with WWII, and who might have skipped university in favour of building lives for themselves and their families; men who sought and achieved a quietly noble existence. In the collection's exquisite coda "Kuperman Awaits Ecstasy" one such man is introduced to the pleasures of classical music by a dying woman while providing the ideal companionship to her in the last stage of her life. Every story in this collection seems to be about the search for dignity, which arrives, often unexpectedly, in the form of a gift from a relationship between two complete opposites. In "Beyond the Pale" that relationship is first between a boy and his grandfather who teaches his grandson to read Yiddish. Later, the boy, now a young man and literary editor, becomes the last hope to rescue from oblivion the reputation of a famous Yiddish novelist. As I said, Epstein is a superb craftsman of character whose prose are diamond-cut, hard and precise, not a word wasted. Where his stories tend to lack is their endings. They fizzle out instead of crackle-pop. And maybe that's another reason why Epstein has avoided the novel, plot is not his strong suit. One ending that does provide the required punch is "You Could Also Love a Rich Girl" which closes with a Vaudeville-style zinger.

The Rocky Mountain Locust Plague of 1875

2010-07-20T06:40:00.000-07:00

A swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts streams overhead for five days, creating a living eclipse of the sun. It is a superorganism composed of 10 billion individuals, devouring as much vegetation as a massive herd of bison — a metabolic wildfire that races across the Great Plains. Before the year is up, a vast region of pioneer agriculture will be decimated and U.S. troops will be mobilized to distribute food, blankets and clothing to devastated farm families... By clocking the insects’ speed as they streamed overhead, and by telegraphing to surrounding towns, Dr. A.L. Child of the U.S. Signal Corps estimated that the swarm was 1,800 miles long and at least 110 miles wide.

On 'grasshopper glaciers' and the lessons learned from the mysterious disappearance of a plague of biblical proportions.

"No place in the Quebec dream"

2010-07-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

A bit of a row over at the Cyberpresse. Montreal filmmaker Jacob Tierney had the chutzpah to tell it like it is here in Quebec culturally-speaking; "extremely inward-looking" where "anglophones and immigrants are ignored". La société québécoise est extrêmement tournée sur elle-même, dit Tierney. Notre art et notre culture ne présentent que des Blancs francophones. Les anglophones et les immigrants sont ignorés. Ils n’ont aucune place dans le rêve québécois. C’est honteux. Predictably, the responses have ranged from outrage to a "circle the wagons" mentality. Well, it's not just in film. Here's my story, for what it's worth: A novel published by a small but respected Montreal publisher of english poetry, prose and fiction. The novel, set in Montreal, is about an orthodox Jew struggling to manage an industrial building in the heart of the city's famed garment district. It is well received, garnering positive notices in newspapers across Canada (Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, Montreal Gazette among them). It is selected by W.P. Kinsella as a finalist for the Amazon.ca/Books In Canada First Novel Award alongside Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road and others. The small, respected publisher sends the book to a few of Montreal's more prominent french publishers to explore the possibility that such a novel (positively reviewed nationally, prize-considered, Montreal-set) might be translated and published in French. The answer he receives (I paraphrase) is no interest because the novel is deemed 'offensive'. No further details are given. However, I got an inkling of what could possibly be considered 'offensive' about my novel when a review came out in a small cultural magazine called Spirale, in a special edition of essays on Anglo-Montreal writing which ends up being the only review of the novel published in the french press in Quebec. It was an extensive, thoughtful review which, among other choice assertions, accused the novel of being an 'exportation product whose secondary objective is to soil the image of Quebeckers' (The Rent Collector est un produit d'exportation dont l'un des objectifs secondaires est de salir l'image des Québécois.) Had my novel realized the grand ambition given it by this reviewer as 'exportation product' (sales outside Canada were poor) I would have been very satisfied. Look, Quebec publishers are free to publish whatever they want for whomever they suppose will purchase their product. But if this isn't a case of cultural paranoia, or at the very least, severe hyper-sensitivity, I don't know what is. Jacob Tierney, whose reputation is growing, whose career as a filmmaker is on the rise and will undoubtedly transcend the bounds of suburban NDG, but who loves his city as much as I do and wants to tell its story, the story he knows, is exposing the smallmindedness and insularity that exists here. And the Québécois don't like it.

Enough to be angry about

2010-07-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

This review of a recent poetry collection makes a really interesting point: There's just not enough anger in today's writing. Not enough outrage. And with the state of, well of almost everything, the economy, the environment, our families, our streets - the greed, the corruption, the values (or lack of same) - there is so much to be angry about. If the arts are any indication, we are in a blithe period; polite in our art and criticism, form trumping content, attention-grabbing foolishness (Lady Gaga) masquerading as originality, escapist-fantasy eclipsing discourse. I know it's been said before and better (Neil Postman's seminal Amusing Ourselves To Death). But it might be that the reaction to Yann Martel's latest novel, is also in part, a reaction to an author who dares to be 'serious' and who believes that art/literature should be taken seriously in an unserious ironic age, to the point of being 'offended' by such a position. Clearly, the 'offense' expressed by some reviewers was entirely misplaced and overstated, curiously so. Misplaced outrage in a review says more about how culturally misguided we are than reflect on the quality of the work in question. It may bespeak the forlorn state of book reviewing at the moment but also show how inured we have become to outrage as an important motivating emotion in the art we create and experience. Where anger and outrage still find purchase in our culture seems to be with essayists/media commentarists, some witty, articulate and intelligent, (Christopher Hitchens) and others downright insulting and obnoxious (Rush Limbaugh), especially (and maybe only) when it entertains (John Stewart). It's hard to imagine a novel published today that will outrage, say the way, Tropic of Cancer did. Or a painting the way Guernica did? Or a song the way the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen did: Works so powerful and truthful as to become influential.

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

MUS

ÉE DES CIVILISATIONS, HULL

Crouched beneath Parliament's presiding clock
In a landscape where current myth outruns
Sacred time, this meandering structure
Is analogue to the river. In shape

It recalls serpentine prehistory,
In stature our hunched ancestry, hunter
And gatherer, the self-scarred warrior
And his ways, even hints at lower forms:

The politician's crooked spine. Windows
Of La Grande Galerie open tent-like
On a vista. From totem perch Raven
Surveys the sky grey as clam-shell

Eyes fixed forward unblinking for all time
He does not bother to acknowledge
The scrimmage of people down below
Gathering round his feet as if graveside.

Bear-Cub peeks from her den eyes smooth and hard
As barnacles, damp nose presses the wind.
Will mother return tonight? No usual cues.
Fast as that she knows the world has lost sense.

Shaman’s tapered feather, peace pipe, beaded
Sweet-grass pouch, moose-hide moccasins, clay pot
Documenting loss as do the sundry
Uses of seal skin, whale bone, elk antler.

Next room the freighter Vagabond waits
Children invade her crowded tidy deck
Make-believe helm, cargo bay of cushions,
Smiles stamped on their tiny passport faces.

This place is a printer’s drawer of culture,
With souks of rubber fish and fruit, stylish
Bright costumes to slip quickly on and off,
Crafts that challenge the vocabulary

Of fingers, test the grammar of gesture,
Confound even the most ambidextrous
Of heart and mind. We stare like immigrants
At our children play-acting heritage.

Watching England lose

2010-06-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Okay I'm sucked in. And that goal/no-goal... broke my heart a little, but not Roddy Doyle's.

My Mom by Max Layton

2010-06-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Katie and Hobo

2010-06-26T15:36:00.001-07:00

The adventures of Katie and Hobo

Bonne Fête Nationale !

2010-06-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

FÊTE ST. JEAN

O John if only you knew how your name
is twisted into daggered fleurs de lys
how they baptize this jabbering city
annually in bannering blue flames.
You would cover your bearded chin in shame
would regret how your eccentricity
has changed by some ancestral alchemy
to the pyrite of political fame.
Once fed through the machine of history
Saint-Jean becomes saint gens, Gens du pays
an anthem crackling from parched ember lips
brewing thirst inside a tribal ellipse,
distrust rises like vapour, a halo
for Mount-Royal as Le Peuple swoons below.

Saint-Yann the Defender

2010-06-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

I may not have been crazy about his novel, but I am definitely a fan of Yann Martel, the person. He strikes me as a thoughtful, caring, earnest individual. One who is trying to rescue his artform from cultural oblivion. Saint-Yann the defender facing off against the dragon of multimedia technology. This is the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for choosing the Holocaust as his subject matter. It was not, as he has said in interview after interview, that he wanted to preserve the legacy and lessons of the Holocaust for future generations through new forms of storytelling. Rather, I believe it was to rescue the literary arts (fiction, allegory, theatre, drama, etc.) as relevant forms of storytelling. It's a laudable gesture, if somewhat misguided. I fear that his misfire has backfired badly; we hear people concluding that he was foolhardy to try (probably true) and that hubris played a role (probably true). Also, they are saying that he is not as good a writer as we all thought (maybe true but only because Pi was overhyped, and one reviewer calling him 'not very bright' is just plain wrong) and finally that his novel is proof that the Holocaust should never be touched in fiction and that the literary arts deserve to be marginal. After writing my review of the novel I was left with the desire to sit down to lunch with Yann. Not to ask him about his book exactly, but about the future of the book in the face of new and exciting ways of telling stories, multimedia technology etc. After the fallout, I would ask him how he felt about the possibility that his novel has backfired so badly as to actually discredit the very artform he was trying to save.

Oh, and while were at it, one more on the cultural marginalization of literature.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

2010-06-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

I have lately played the fool much with our Nell, in playing with her breasts.

A fascinating window opened on the daily life of a 17th c. British gentleman (and depending on how salacious the entries get - we can hope - I reserve the right to use the term 'gentleman' guardedly.) This must be the closest we will ever get to hopping in the 'wayback' machine and traveling 400 years back in time. The internet is quickly becoming the universal brain of humanity, a vast and dynamic neural storehouse of memory, information, and opinion.

BIG news...

2010-06-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

from the World Cup

South Africa 1
Mexico 1

France 0
Uruguay 0

okay, so I'm already experiencing hockey withdrawal... (October can't come soon enough.)

All will be made clear in the end

2010-05-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before about my idiosyncratic method for choosing the next novel to read. And how, whatever book I end up choosing for whatever spur-of-the-moment reason, it all makes sense in the end. I walked out of the local library with an armload of summer reading, which, for no apparent reason included Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury and Ellison's Invisible Man. I was consciously thinking 'American classics', subconsciously, I might have realized I was choosing novels set in the South. But the real insight came courtesy of Hanniford's grocery store in Saint-Albans Vermont, which I've also written about before. There I was browsing the used book table where I've had some luck in the past (paperbacks for fifty cents, hardcovers for a buck, proceeds going to local charities) and scored a hardcover edition of Seymour Blicker's 1969 debut novel Blues Chased a Rabbit in decent condition. Blicker's novel is surprising for a host of reasons not the least of which is that a nice Jewish boy from Montreal is telling the not-so-nice story of a young African American's experience with prejudice in the US south. If nothing else, this novel is noteworthy as an anomaly. I can see why critics didn't really know what to make of it at the time it was published. Readers must have been asking themselves 'what the hell does this white middle-class Canadian Jewboy know about it'? There is surely no precedent in Canadian literature. The better known Jewish-Canadian novelists of the time, from Klein to Richler to Cohen to Wiseman to Kreisel, all stubbornly stayed close to home (religiously, culturally, geographically etc.). The best part is how convincingly Blicker pulls it off. So now I'm reading Ellison and Blicker in tandem and can't help seeing parallels. I'm convinced Blicker must have read Ellison and not only that but looked to Invisible Man as a literary antecedent. It would not be farfetched. Think of the solidarity of Jews and Blacks during the civil rights movement in the '60s. I look forward to writing more about both novels when I'm done them.

History-making Torah

2010-05-17T06:27:00.000-07:00

The first ever Torah transcribed by a woman soferet in Canada comes home in time for Shavuot.

Author bio

2010-05-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

AUTHOR BIO

...his poetry has appeared
widely

and a tree falls
in the forest.

Deaf Sentence by David Lodge

2010-05-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

Desmond Bates is a retired linguistics professor who is going deaf. His octogenarian former-musician dad is too. We meet Desmond at a gallery party performing the 'Lorenzo Reflex', not the latest dance craze but the way a person who is hard of hearing bends into a speaker to hear them better. The speaker in question is an attractive blond PhD candidate named Alex (short for Alexandra) Loom who is writing a dissertation on the linguistic/ syntactical peculiarities of suicide notes. Desmond doesn't hear a thing she's saying but nods his agreement anyway. You don't have to be Carnak The Great to predict that trouble is on the way. Desmond narrowly avoids getting lured into the unstable and sexy machinations of his needy protege and Lodge masterfully takes him (and his reader) to the edge of the professor's better judgment. Lodge captures with wit, sincerity and wisdom Desmond's relationships with his second wife Fred (short for Winifred), children, colleagues, and most importantly his crotchety dad who refuses to be put into a 'home'. A touching, funny, bittersweet, multi-layered story about love, family, (mis)communication, human frailty and death - or was that deaf - every sentence crafted with effortless grace. No literary pyrotechnics or violence, just everyday fine, deeply satisfying storytelling. A rare (these days) pleasure.

Print it and they will come

2010-04-26T05:55:00.001-07:00

Men don't read fiction. That's been the mantra of the publishing industry for some time. I've just picked up "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. It was a huge hit when it came out in '96, was made into a popular film, you know the rest... While reading this weekend I couldn't stop from wondering, if men aren't reading fiction who the hell bought this book? I've made the argument about men reading fiction before. Here's another piece worth considering in which the author makes the compelling argument that if the publishing industry is in the doldrums it's partly because they have been ignoring fifty percent of the market. It seems self-evident that when a book like Fight Club becomes a mega-hit, or Harry Potter or The DaVinci Code, that the difference was all the men reading the books too.

My bruised ego

2010-04-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

is feeling a little less touch-sensitive today thanks to Richard Helm.

Yann on the reviews

2010-04-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

"...the way a work of art is received is part of the dialogue of art." - Martel

"Just as every painting is a response to the history, tradition and nature of art, every story is part of a larger conversation about storytelling." - Rotchin

Could you blame me for thinking that Martel is quoting me. Or perhaps I just have unique insight into the writer. It turns out that my review was gentle in comparison to others. I'm a little offended that my review isn't quoted in the National Post piece, especially since it ran in four CanWest papers including in Martel's hometown of Mtl and his current home of Saskatoon - which also leads me to believe that he's got my review in mind. Martel appears to be taking the drubbing in stride, and why wouldn't he with the deal he got. Cry all the way to the bank brotha!

One more on beatrice & virgil

2010-04-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Steven Beattie over at That Shakesperean Rag writes the most thoughtful, fair-minded and precise review so far.

Bellow, Malamud, Roth and ... Mosley?

2010-04-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

The question remains: Why would the Jewish literary establishment in America not want to claim Mosley as a member of the canon? Mosley says that his inclusion would challenge the myth that Jews belong to white America. But perhaps the truth is simpler; perhaps it’s just an oversight, and it’s now time to include him in all serious considerations of the American Jewish canon. Or perhaps the collision of Jewish themes with black themes in his work has complicated the question of what is Jewish writing, and no critic or anthologist has been prepared to accept the ambiguity.

My friend Harold Heft makes the persuasive case for Walter Mosley to be included in the canon of Jewish-American fiction.

More beatrice & virgil, reviewing the reviews

2010-04-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

I was particularly interested to see how the new Yann Martel would be reviewed by others. Pasha Malla gushes in the influential Globe & Mail calling the novel "ingenious." He is intrigued by the way Martel puts himself, or rather a fictional representation of himself, at the centre of the novel.

"What if Yann Martel were never writing a book called A 20th-Century Shirt? What if his 2007 spoilers were, in fact, an extra-textual prologue to the book he was actually working on all along, the book we now have in our hands? Either way, the potential for such speculations speaks to Beatrice & Virgil's capacity to expand beyond its pages, and to the terrain – the reader's imagination – where its multiple layers unfold."

Surely such questions and convolutions, the layers of 'extra-textual prologue' as Malla calls them, are only interesting for a fellow writer or an academic. Where Malla is captivated by Martel's blurring of the boundary between the 'factual' and the 'imagined' others would likely see the exercise as rather pompous and excessively self-regarding.

Most 'ordinary' readers just want a good story. But here, Houston - even Malla rather sheepishly admits - we have a problem: "If there is a weakness to Beatrice & Virgil, it might be the actual story." Well to my mind a novel that has a weak story is akin to saying that the only problem with a certain model of airplane is that it has a spot of trouble flying.

But Malla's qualifying if indicates that he's not terribly bothered by the lack of story. To ask, "what is the book about," he asserts, misses the point. The novel is too "complex" and "nuanced" for questions like that.

Michiku Kakutani of the New York Times calls the Holocaust-fable on which the novel pivots "botched" and "cringe-making". Referring to Life of Pi Kakutani writes "Mr. Martel’s new book...unfortunately, is every bit as misconceived and offensive as his earlier book was fetching.

The Miami Herald reviewer was even more blunt. A cardinal rule of reviewing is that you have to finish the book, so it's not often that you read a book review where the reviewer openly admits that they couldn't get past page 50. "I realized: I don't care what happens to this guy or his book or why this story was sent to him. Once you reach the 'I don't care' point, it's time to move on. And so I did." The public admission that she threw in the towel a quarter the way in struck me as refreshingly honest. Book reviewers hate feeling or looking stupid. Few will admit that they just didn't get it. Martel's obviously a smart guy and it took him nine years to write this follow-up to his international sensation Pi. The pressure on the reviewer to give him the benefit of the doubt is tremendous. But what if the emperor has no clothes?

Philip Marchand sums it up best writing in the National Post "Reviewers will be puzzled and some will damn with faint praise. Unfortunately, they will have good grounds for this response."

More Mode Support - Chabanel fashion for Haiti Relief

2010-04-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

My 15 seconds of fame on the local Global News. I spoke for about five minutes and this is the result. At least they got the spelling of my name right (the company I work for is called Groupe Dayan.) The initiative will ship about 50,000 garments in total when the campaign is done.

beatrice & virgil by Yann Martel

2010-04-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

My review in the Gazette.

Dogs

2010-04-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month. Also, The season of joy for dogs and their walkers.

DOGS

i.

Post to post
lawn to lawn

invisible lines
crisscrossing streets

traces everywhere
left behind

dogs

sensing

bringing you
to your senses.

ii.

You follow
stop watch
wait
patience
running low
comes to an end
your fist tightens
heart ticks
tells you
it’s time
to move on
the leash
snaps.

iii.

The white
pure-bred
German shepherd
on the other side
with unfamiliar master
in tow
is your childhood dog
you’re certain of it
dead and buried

long ago
and you wonder
if could it be
and your answer
is maybe.

Mode Support - a Passover gesture

2010-03-31T18:58:00.000-07:00

"Mode Support" Haiti Relief Fund from Kayak Media on Vimeo.

We managed to collect about 30,000 new garments from Montreal manufacturers/importers in our first clothing relief campaign for Haiti. The shipment should be on the water within a week. We're hoping to collect another container or more next week. Seems like an appropriate Passover gesture for a country that had the first and only successful slave revolt in modern times. Major thanks to all the companies that have and will contribute, especially Mark Edwards Apparel.

"Passover" by David Solway

2010-03-30T06:27:00.000-07:00