Canadian Literature
Distilling everything we've read so far I have determined that this is what makes up Canadian Literature.
It's about immigrants not melting in. Groups of people speaking discreet languages and taking care of their own. The dangerous jobs they have- digging tunnels, tanning leather, crocheting wires to form bridges, mining uranium, mining the sea for its treasures. Maybe it's too cold for them to melt together. Each group freezes into its own shapes.
Canadian Literature is about looking back to countries of origin. The heavy family history of the survivors who live on in Canada. Remembrance of the misery before leaving. Crushing poverty. Sickness. An uncertain future. Misery during the crossing. So much water stretching forward and backward. Sickness and death following them from their homeland. Small bodies wrapped in cloth, sliding down a plank. The ritual of burial at sea.
Then there is the cold. Ice that freezes solid enough for horses to walk across. But also ice that freezes treacherous enough for cattle, sleighs, and people to fall through and be swallowed whole. Cold that kills.
Trees that serve as a border. Trees that speak, that flow down rivers in a "corduroy road," that are stuck into the ice as a guide. Trees that signal danger. Trees that hide the danger. Danger trees.
War and its aftermath. Missing limbs. Dead sons, siblings. Maimed bodies and minds. The missing people who should be there but aren't.
Canadian Literature is also about not being America. Not assuming that everyone wants to be just like you. Not being a world superpower. The importance of provincial autonomy. Republic. Confederacy. Nationalism on a local level. Going beyond the appearance of things, but also concealing more than is revealed. Ambiguity. The absence of bad men. Being the younger brother.
Caring too much and trying too hard.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
The Lightening Bolt to the Head
Clearly lack of sleep does something for me. Maybe it's like the spirit journeys taken by some Native American traditions where sleep deprivation is involved. When voluntary, maybe this dizzy delerium gives you access to the spirit world.
Becuase I got few hours of sleep last night (I can clock them if I look at the times between this post and the last one) and I had to get up and write.
I think I have an idea not only for my final paper but for Thesis as well. And happily, Advanced fiction
is being taught on Saturday this spring, so my academic career is not in ruin and I should be set to take Thesis I next fall.
Here's my thought:
Novel/collected story about Kenya that juggles voices of Sara, her aunt, Magdalene, and someone in the past during the uprising. Maybe someone Sara's age at the time. Intermingle emails from Sara to home. Include news clippings of things happening while she is there and news from the uprising. Possibly include illness of her mother as one of the reasons her parents sent her to Kenya for the summer.
The final paper - a creative endeavor
I am thinking of what to do for the last paper for my Canadian Lit class.
What are some things the keep coming up again and again?
• The Loyalists who fled to Canada after the American Revolution.
(Atwood, Davies)
• The huge impact of World War I, which was not felt anywhere near the same scale here. (MacFarlane, Davies, L.M. Montgomerie)
• Deadly force of nature
(Atwood, Robinson, Wright)
I'm still attracted to research-based things:
• Ondaatje's historical fiction
In the Skin of a Lion incorporating facts and characters from real life.
• Anne Simpson's burial at sea poem: "Descent."
• Atwood's
Alias Grace.
• Autobiographical elements in Mistry and Davies
• Intertwined narratives in Mistry, Davies, Ondaatje
Do I let the research drive the creative work? Or do I begin creative work and then seek out the research that I need? Expectant waiting is definitely part of my creative process. And only occasionally am I struck in the forhead with a bolt of lightening telling me what to do next.
My autobiographical stuff has focused on the trip to Kenya lately.
Research could be on the current situation and historical situation.
I could write from several character's points of view.
I already have Magdalene and a bit of Camille.
I could cover the Doctor.
She wasn't there for the scariest times.
I could also do her friend, Mrs. Shah, who was.
Interlinked stories? We all seem to be taken with Mistry.
Roberston Davies, along with Umberto Eco, Michael Ondaatje and others whose names I can't call to mind at this moment, knows more than he has any business knowing about any number of subjects.
He used his love of the theater, Jung, and a great deal of autobiographical experience to craft Fifth Business.
• Davies and Ramsey both had fathers who were one-man publishers and Davies grew up in the publishing business.
• Davies and Ramsey were raised in the Presbysterian church but later rejected its strict doctrines.
• Davies had a lifelong love of the theater, travelling circuses and drew heavily on these for the scenes with the adult Paul Dempster.
• Davies also had a lifelong interest in Carl Jung's readings and in the Saints, which he gave to Ramsey.
Here's a Robertson Davies Bio
I cam across something that stated most of the characters in Fifth Business could be identified as Jungian archetypes.
Mother - nurturing one
• Ramsey's mother to other families, but not so much to him
• Mary Dempster in an unconventional way
Shadow - perceived as the enemy, but really amoral; like the snake in Eden. Monsters, demons...
• Mary Dempster as seen by the town
• Liesl
• Paul Dempster
Persona - public image, good impression
• "Boy" Staunton
• Leola early in her marriage
Anima/Animus - Female/male spectrum - two halves in equal partnership
• ?/Ramsey
Father - authority figure
• Amasa Dempster
Family - ties that go beyond reasonable explanation
• Ramsey and Mary Dempster
Child
• Paul Demptser as a child
• The statue of Mary
Wise old man
• old monk/priest
Trickster
• Ramsey as a child
• Paul Dempster as an adult
Hermaphrodite
• bearded lady
Jung Archetypes
Ondaatje and Gilgamesh
So I'm doing my paper on themes of Gilgamesh that are also covered in In the Skin of a Lion.
There's a lot. It's kind of fun, but I don't think I'm in any danger of becoming a brilliant literary critic. I feel very out of my element. I'm not sure I've even
read any literary criticism up to this point.
I went out and got some Susan Sontag essays so I'd have some idea of non-boring critical stuff. That was a good idea. It was also a good idea to pick an author I'm rather attached to. Even if this is not my favorite book. I still have a lot to work with.
And I think maybe if it were a favorite book I'd just get lost in the adoration and write a stupid, trite and worshipful paper that would inspire my professor to write a smiley-face on it and add "cute," in emerald green ink.
If I had to pick four words to describe my writing, cute would not be one of them.
The cute thing actually happened when I wrote a paper as an undergrad for an East Asian Studies class. I hadn't written an essay since high school, which by this time was four years away. My teacher was married to my advisor and even though I was really interested in his class, it was right after lunch and we had class in a warm dark room and he had a voice like Garrison Keillor.
So I fell asleep every day.
I tried everything I could to stay awake. I had cafeine. I chewed on carrot sticks and ice cubes. I took a nap in the morning. I went for a walk right before class. I sat in the very front row, thinking I would be too embarassed to fall alseep right in front of everyone. No such luck. Every day I woke up half-way through class. With drool on my desk.
I wanted the paper to make up for my considerable shortcomings in classroom participation. I wanted to be brilliant and inciteful. I wanted him to say I had touched on points that he hadn't considered before. I wanted him to tell his wife that I was a gifted student. Instead I wrote a mediocre paper that earned me a "cute" out of ten.
Maybe that's why I don' t like the essay form and I feel like a fraud when I try to approach anything critically.
I don't exactly have the attitude of my friend who thought, "I'm just a graduate student... what right do I have to say these things?" I think instead, "Why would I want to bother with this? Someone else has probably already done it better and besides I think I have to wash my hair or do the dishes or perhaps go get my teeth cleaned instead.
Here are the aims of
Canadian World Domination:
- The systematic destruction and sublimation of all opposing the Canadian reign -- and the polite, yet horrifically brutal, control of our future territories of conquest.
- Infiltrating the USA and through a cleverly designed plan, destroying it, and using its resources for our own purposes.
- Demonstrating to the world that Canada is the final and ultimate power.
- Decontaminating the world of American influence.
- Reorganizing a New World Society of Canucks to suit our kindly, peace-loving, and diabolical aims.
Revealed Poetry
There is so much unnecessary beauty in the world
Why should trees shedding their leaves
Become souls on fire.
There can be truth in silence.
Poety Stuff - Coats
Pink Coat, Size 2T
Fake Fur
Cotton as Candy
Soaking up great slurps of grey slush
A mother weeps over the laundry.
Green Coat, Size 6
That year the snowdrifts peaked at the tops of the lamp posts
And I went sliding with no sled down the mountains in our yard
In my new coat of Austrian wool with embroidered edelweiss and pewter buttons
She told me she would never buy me another coat again
And why couldn't she have a stupid daughter with one grain of common sense
Vintage Coat, Size Unknown
Someone else wore this coat
In another life
And years ago the lining
Separated itself
And the insulation
Settled in the hem
Like silt
When I opened it up
Slit the lining to replace it
Clouds of orange dust
Powdered the room
Purple Coat, Size 3x
I bought it before you were born
in the spring
when you were the size of a soybean
It was a great tent
that covered even
the November of my belly
And afterwards I kept wearing it
wrapped around us both
your little head
peeking out
above the buttons
And more random ideas
Here's some more snips from class:
• Sweaters in the House and what they reveal
• The secrets of the laws of my parents. Who were they revealed to and when?
(my parents were the communist party)
• Think about being dressed by others
(people are always offering to iron my clothes for me)
• The loss of self
• Where did you get taught the idea of a happy ending?
• How do women come to hate other women?
• Transformations you have feared big or small
Did they make you more yourself?
Less yourself?
Horrifying to you but interesting to others?
• Unofficial Biographies on my job list
• Whose stories am I in ownership of?
(the sad people always come to me with their stories)
• Give something a name.
"Not just playtime at the Language Zoo"
• A "traveller's guide" to where you have felt unwelcome
The Main Story
What is the main story? The one that defined you?
My friend Shannon once asked me if there was any moment in my life that I could grab to make a good movie. This was in college.
I thought about my years in high school with my eating disorder and my clinical depression and the shedding of my personality. And maybe it would make a good story and it CERTAINLY defined me but I couldn't write it.
I remember thinking at the end of treatment that I was glad I had gone through everything I'd gone through because it had made me who I am. And I was strong and truthful and fearless. I felt the power that is given to cancer patients to not deal with petty crap but cut right to the chase.
But here's why I couldn't write it: there are big holes in my memory. My junior year is pretty much gone. I have snatches of senior year. There are a few completely clear moments. I remember the day that I decided to seek treatment for the depression. I was sitting in band practice and they passed out a sheet of new music and I couldn't read it. But I don't remember people or classes or conversations. It might seem normal to forget, but I didn't forget. The memories were never written on my brain to be forgotten.
I wanted to read about depression from someone else who'd experienced it so I read William Styron's
Darkness Visible. But after I read it, I didn't think it helped me remember what it felt like to be depressed and it made me realize a fundamental truth. It is hard to write about depression because when you are depressed, you cannot write. And once you are no longer depressed, you can't quite remember what it was like. You just know things weren't how they are now.
Other reasons I can't write my defining story:
In a writing workshop someone told me that I couldn't have a character who was a writer and who was depressed because they were so goddamn sick of reading about depressed writers.
And I don't want to write a Hallmark Hall of Fame story about one more anorexic girl. Blah Blah Blah. Recovery may have been a powerful experience for me but I'm afraid to use it even in fiction. Unless I warp it a lot. I'll have to think about how to do that.
Multi-Genre Writers
A lot of the people we've been reading write in multiple genres. Atwood and Ondaatje are the two I'm thinking of particularly. We talked a bit in class about how they stop the action in the narrative sometimes and get some poet's work done. How do they do that? When do they do that?
It's hard for me sometimes to separate the poety stuff from the narrative stuff. Many of the authors that I love to read like Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie write with consistently beautiful language throughout the book. Sometimes I don't even notice that the action has slowed down. I'm lost in love of language. (Like the 'literation?)
Both Atwood and Ondaatje spent a great deal of time in flashback, and they also leaped from one character to another and stayed with them for a chunk of time.
Spiritual Things in Monkey Beach
We made a list of things that were of the Spirit in Monkey Beach. Here it is:
plant gathering
death sendings
dreams
songs
voices in the water and trees
Aunt Edith's prayers
Ouija board
fire/smoke
T'sonoqua
Little troll (really creepy leprachaun)
Crows/crow
raven
offerings: whisky, hair, clothes, tobacco
B'gwus
Questions to ponder:
What 4 words describe what you want to be as a writer?
• connected
• prolific
• cross-genre
• unexpected
What haunts you through your life?
• Christianity -- but in a non-creepy way
