Excellent Stories

We all know that story collections don't get their due, except if you're Alice Munro. So many are published to relatively little fanfare and are quickly forgotten. It's arguably the most difficult literary form. With a novel you have to persist but at least, as Mordecai Richler once said, with novels there's room for error. Poems are compact and therefore manageable. Short fiction requires the author to have the plot/character sense of a novelist and the word sense of a poet. A tall order that has frankly confounded me. When they are well-executed short stories encompass entire worlds, entire histories and entire musical scores.

Some of the most memorable books I read last year were story collections. I wanted to recommend two of them which I fear are destined to slip away unnoticed. The first is Tamas Dobozy's "Last Notes and Other Stories." These are funny, witty, playful, serious stories, one of which is a comic masterpiece called "Into The Ring" about a husband and wife who settle their marital conflicts by boxing.

The second is a new collection I've just finished called "Blood Pudding" by Art Corriveau. A Montreal native, I'd never heard of Art, but he's been quietly garnering some impressive publication credits mostly in the US (where he lives) and the UK. These are beautifully crafted tales about fully-realized characters in which the author delicately maps out the emotional landscape of relationships. My favourite in the collection is "Loss of Gravity" about a woman who has lost her husband in a tragic car accident and decides to take action as a way of dealing with overwhelming grief. Both books are worth your time.

Bears or Bull

What a quandry. There I was last night, reclining in my lounge, flipping the channels back and forth between CNN/ABC's coverage of the US Democratic Party nominees "debate" on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, and a CBC documentary called "The Edge of Eden" about a man who raises orphaned Grizzly Bear cubs in Kamchatka, Russia.

It was absolutely compelling. I was riveted for two solid hours. By the Grizzly bears I mean. The party nominees bored me silly with their bull. Of the four, John Edwards was most impressive playing the role of an average Joe, sharecropper's son (or grandson, something like that), a Washington outsider (never mind that it's his second run at the Democratic nomination), who'll never cave in to special interests unlike his opponents. Hilary dug her hole deeper by repeating "reality check here," not quite seeming to comprehend that the last thing the electorate wants to hear is a reality check. Richardson, who ever he is, spoke a lot, too much, but I don't remember a single word of what he had to say, though he said it a lot, whatever it was. And Obama agreed with Edwards and disagreed with Hilary because she's a Washington insider who likes screaming "reality check!"

As I say the Grizzly bear cubs were absolutely riveting. And made more sense.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Tell me this guy's not trying to look like Shakespeare. Yeesh. (In my author pic I look like Yogi Bear.) Read the interview.





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=GRXQIBCEX1M11QFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/arts/2008/01/05/sm_jeffreyeugenides105.xml

Best Songs of the 1970s - and it's definitive

Okay I've thought long and hard about this - for at least the last 24 hours, minus sleep hours, eating, playing with my kids, doing house chores - okay let's call it the last couple of hours, long and hard.

One thing I've come up with definitively; the 70s was a dacade of great albums, not great songs. The 50s & 60s had great songs, the decades of Jukeboxes and 45s. By the end of the 60s, thanks in large part to the Beatles, albums emerged as the primary popular musical artform. I could name dozens of great albums of the 70s, from Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy," to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" to The Rolling Stone's "Goat's Head Soup" to Joni Mitchell's "Blue" to Neil Young's "Harvest" to Supertramp's "Crime of the Century" to Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" to Steely Dan's "Aja" to Elvis Costello's "My Aim Is True" to the Clash's "London Calling" and on and on. Great songs are much harder to decide on. One looks for something else. And actually, with the exception of Springsteen I don't think any of those great albums has one particular song that would make my best list.

And one more point before I unveil my list; it seems that the new instant downloadable technologies are leading us back to the era of the song as opposed to the album. This should make the next decade very interesting from the standpoint of the type of songs that will be produced.

In chronological order:

1. Ball of Confusion (1970) - The Temptations (Really a sixties number but released in 1970 and there is no better song to capture the tumultuous transition from one decade to the next.)

2. Levon (1971) - Elton John (The line "the New York Times said 'God is dead' and the war's begun" did it for me.)

3. Won't Get Fooled Again (1971) - The Who (Originally written for Pete Townhend's failed Lifehouse project, his overly ambitious multi-media follow up to Tommy.)

4. Stuck in the Middle With You (1973) - Stealers Wheel (Produced by the Baltimore Jewish writing duo of Leiber and Stoller who wrote "Hound Dog.")

5. Takin' Care of Business (1973) - Bachman-Turner Overdrive (According to Randy Bachman the opening riff was originally a rip-off of The Beatle's 'Paperback Writer' but I don't hear it.

6. Midnight Train to Georgia (1973) - Gladys Knight and the Pips (The greatest background vocal arrangement ever in pop music.)

7. Born To Run (1975) - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (The only track on the album in which Max Weinberg did not play the drums. They were played by Ernest "Boom" Carter.)

8. Get Down Tonight (1975) - KC and the Sunshine Band (Had to throw one disco tune in and it was a toss up between this one, ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and The Bee Gee's "You Should be Dancing" but since I like KC's song better and he won't ever appear on any other list... ever...)

9. Heroes (1977) - David Bowie (Robert Fripp of King Crimson played the guitar.)

10. I'm The Man (1979) - Joe Jackson (I was thinking of Elvis Costello's "What's So Funny 'bout Peace, Love and Understanding, but it was written by Nick Lowe and didn't quite capture the spirit of the end of the decade the way Joe Jackson's song does. Also Joe Jackson always wrote more catchy tunes than Elvis.)

11. Yes, a number 11 of the top ten because "Hotel California" (1976) should probably make my list but I prefer the discoish "One of These Nights" for an Eagles song to capture the zeitgeist of the decade. Also you can add Don McLean's "American Pie" (1971).

Okay, discuss amongst yourselves, criticize and write me.

The Best Songs of the 70's?

Is this guy on drugs? No, actually he's just British. Mind you, we were all on drugs in the 70s. I mean I like Led Zep's "The Immigrant Song" a lot, love it, but the best song of the decade? I discovered this article at UK's Telegraph and got a good chuckle.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/01/03/bmseventies103.xml

I'm a child of the 70s. Actually I was born in '64 but came into consciousness, musically-speaking in the 70s, a decade that started as a hangover of psychedelia, turned to disco and ended with the punk revolution. A wild ride to be sure and probably the reason for my warpedness. Full disclosure: I loved The Captain & Tenille's "Love will Keep Us Together." But it won't make my list. I was heavily into serious, cerebral Brit prog rock (Genesis, Floyd, Tull) while the rest were into boogeying. I campaigned to have sequined halters and mirror-balls permanently banned. Favourite album from the era, Supertramp's "Crime of the Century." Lemme think about it some more...

More Americans than Canucks picked up a book in 2007 ?

According to this Ipsos-Reid poll.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=81b3a991-6004-4ca8-8259-4d605e1cf767&k=50303

And in other news: 50 percent of Canadian readers lie about how many books they've read over the course of the year. Which would also explain the apparent interest in Pierre Bayard's new book "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read" (which, by the way, I heartily recommend you don't read, just read this piece instead http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2232830,00.html

Sorry, but I'm having a hard time believing that most Canadians who've read a book in the past year read on average 20 books, that's almost two a month. That's about my rate and I've got deadlines to meet. This is a country that is provincially book-ended with literacy - BC clocked in at an astounding 33 titles per year with Atlantic Canada (didn't know there was a province called "Atlantic Canada") registering a mere 22 in second place. As a Quebecois I hang my head in shame. We're apparently too busy listening to the latest Celine Dion album(s) to read books.

Snow and ice

2008 is looking a heck of a lot like 2007: it's snowing. They're calling for 15 more cms.

As I no longer play shinny and don't live anywhere near a pond or field, and as Jan 1st has become a day to play an outdoor hockey "classic" in Canada (or Buffalo, close enough), here is my contribution to the national festivities.

HOCKEY
For RCL

The pond polished and framed in piled snowbanks

Like a cherished family photograph;

The carved interlocking geometry

Of memory and youth frozen in ice.
Your first skates are forgotten, but never

The aroma of leather damp and worn,

The numbness of bare earlobes winter-chilled,

Forefoot pinched by lace, heavy thighs
Like hunks of meat packed into stiff wet cords,

Wobbly ankles taped straight, the bent stick, knobbed,

Propping you up slipshod like a scarecrow,
The game makes fools of us, a joke of gods.
Having witnessed the split-second glovehand

Save, you know full well how spells are cast,

Spectacular, oracular, it appears time itself

has been mastered by the net-minder,

Masked kabbalist, anonymous ritualist,

Stoic and precise, whose gestures utter

Secret names, conjure the possible from the improbable.

And drawn out in lines, curves, flights, telemetries,

You glimpse the fluid blueprints of nature,

Shielded by the games seamless design,

Tribalism, brutality, impulse: The puck

A capricious lover, is ever in motion, careening,

Cavorting, refusing to be possessed, disloyal

And always the center of attention

As the jilted players, men hot with appetite

A wild jealous bunch scrimmage,

While the child watches from the sidelines, wanting

Only one thing, to be good enough

to be counted in.