Jonathan Bennett

On Lamingtons

I leave for a trip to Sydney, Australia in a few days. I return on Canada Day (which we are renaming “Richard Ford Day” this year, I believe.)   

Anyway, it’s been six years since I’ve been back to Aust. Long past due. I have nothing much to do while I’m there—this is an extended family affair from start to finish. It will be heavily photographed. Mostly, I suppose I’m just looking for that creative jolt one often gets from travelling. And, in my case, the extra wattage from a return “home”—the vernacular of bedrock memory, the dislocating sense that if I look hard enough, I might catch a glimpse of another version of myself, walking down King Street in Newtown, having never ever left, having become someone entirely different because of single alternate choice made long ago (damn that second lamington).

Reading for the trip: recent novels by McEwan and Banville, so I feel woefully inadequate. Al Moritz’s new books of poems, so I feel woefully inadequate. I might write, but likely not much. It’ll be a trip for memorizing, so I can later not quite recall events properly and, instead, re-imagine things the way I want. In fact, I’ve likely already begun to change what really happened. Yes, I am going to have had a great trip.

They Will Take My Island

I’ve contributed a poem to Paul Vermeersch’s blog-based project “They Will Take My Island.” The title comes from a painting by Arshile Gorky in the Art Gallery of Ontario, but, as Paul put it to me, “that’s only of secondary importance to the blog.”

According to Paul, what he’s doing is asking a bunch of poets “to write a poem with the title “They Will Take My Island,” and then the poems get posted to the blog….So far, the poems have been really great — a good variety of styles and subject matters all echoing the same title. It’s a bit of an editorial experiment, but it’s also evolved into a pretty good read.” 

I’d agree. As a title to write towards, it really pulled the material out—in my case, a poem about my son Thomas who has Aspergers syndrome. It felt good to write, and I’m pleased to be among such good company in Paul’s project. 

On Paul Kane’s poetry, Work Life

Along with Nathanael O’Reilly, American poet Paul Kane and I read at a recent conference on Australian literature held in Toronto. I traded books with Paul. Work Life is his 2007 collection and it’s a gold mine.

A professor at Vassar and a part-time Australian (I mean, who isn’t around here?) Paul Kane’s collection is wise, meditative, and often times just flat out brilliant. I also laughed too. For example, “High-Rise Terminal” a play on the linguistic term that refers to a statement being given the feel of a question, was smarty-pants funny. The long poem “Third Parent” was a moving elegy for his late mother in law, that had the strange effect of leaving me feeling as if I’d known her too. I can’t do justice to this book in a few lines, but if you don’t know Kane’s work, Work Life is great place to start.

Ducking Questions

Here is a link to a recent Q&A I did with power Globe and Mail reviewer J.C. Sutcliffe over at her blog SlightlyBookist on writing, habits, among other bits and pieces. 

A few thoughts on Kyo Maclear’s novel Stray Love

I met Kyo Maclear recently serving on a literary jury. Her insight into the work under review was clear-headed and considered. Impressed, I bought her new novel, Stray Love. 

It’s a second novel that could be mistaken for one penned much later in a writer’s career. It’s a complex, intriguing novel and I didn’t want it to end. All the more impressive because it’s in the first person, and the narrator is Marcel, a middle aged man with a lot of unfinished past that swirls from London in the 60s, to Vietnam during the war, to today. That I was completely convinced of his voice, of his masculinity, that he stayed whole and real over the course of the story, is no small feat. Marcel, a professional illustrator, is stuck. When a young girl, Iris, the daughter of Kiyomi (his own childhood friend and later lover) comes to stay with him, her presence unlatches him somewhat, and his story spills out. It’s a bildungsroman, a book about identity and belonging, colonialism and war, reportage and slippery truth, and the making of art and the artist itself.

There is much to be said about this novel. I found it a compassionate and brave piece of writing with few missteps. Personally, I loved Iris. She just somehow held space of it all, giving light and shade to Marcel in this, mostly, passive way that was just so effortless but necessary. Bravo.

A Handful of Sand

Of all the moving, difficult, wonderful, shame-inducing pieces in the new all-aboriginal issue of Southerly, Merrill Bray’s piece “Gloria Agnala” just blew me clear away. Set in Alice Springs it follows the final days of an Auntie, Gloria, also now a famous painter. With deft touches (she writes with a blade, not a bat) Gloria’s life is drawn small and straight but in every way writes itself large and complexly as the colonialism and the history that frames the narrative, and her life, sinks in. It’s a great short story.

It’s not always an easy journal to get here in Nth America, but seek it out if you’re able. Of course, it is a complicated and emotional read, especially for a white Australian—as it should be. Hats off to the editors for making it happen, and pulling in such a broad selection of work.

From Oz to Ondaatje

This is my belated “favourite books I read in 2011” post. Along with Coetzee’s Summertime and Malouf’s Ransom these two books I read in December were among the best from my reading pile last year.

In Scenes from Village Life Israeli writer Amos Oz does disquiet better than just about anyone. Disquiet is not bleak, and it is not nihilistic. It’s awfully life-affirming actually, because in order to shudder, one must be wholly taken in and convinced by what potential horror is being presented, and, as is often the case in this book, is also a blunt matter of fact. For what it’s worth, it occurred to me while reading this new collection of stories—stories that make irregular orbits around a remote town in Israel—that exploring disquietude as a state of being in literature, is not much in fashion presently. Shame, that. Because stories like Oz’s often earn the disquieting moment by facing it head on. These moments, honest and bravely pursued, resonated for days after I finishing the book.  

The village of the title is the central character. Hero as setting, in other words. Oz does fear and regret a lot in the book, and he is not shy of the (purposefully) untidy ending. I was moved by his memoir of a few years back, A Tale of Love and Darkness. This new one is further proof of his enviable powers, and that the short story form can deliver rare insight into the human condition when crafted by the likes of Oz.

Now to the other “O”. Over the long view, Michael Ondaatje’s career is a wonder to behold. Yet, as far as I can tell, he had a growing problem on his hands. Fans of his last two novels formed only a short, dutiful line. Was the love affair with one of Canada’s most important authors coming to a sad end? Having read the wonderful except from the Cat’s Table in the New Yorker last year, I, for one, was hopeful for a comeback. Thankfully, mercifully, indeed the book proved to be charming, beautifully written, tender, strange and smart. It’s a simple story, but like only Ondaatje can, he reinvents the novelistic structure to tell his story obliquely, leaving the reader with a sense of mystery into how it hangs together so well. While many believe he’s gone too far before, in this case I’d argue he gets it right as things never dissolve or break apart into cold fragments; his reader is pushed not shoved, and never abandoned or abused. For me, the voice of it was what I liked the most. Yes, it’s somewhat sentimental, but is always searching for the missing moments, the explanations, the real truth of the journey they took together on that ship. It’s a big metaphor, expertly carried off in this big book.

I would point those interested to a great review of The Cat’s Table by Annie Proulx, and to this first rate interview with Amos Oz by Charlie Rose.