Prelude to a Soundtrack

During my 29th year, as I prepared for marriage, I wrote a short novel about a failed Christian rock musician. The central character was an Angelino by birth, whose youth consists of moodily keeping track of Nixon's fall, and smoking pot whenever he gets the chance. This unremarkable tedium is dramatically altered when he attends a youth rally, and answers the altar call.

Now that he's "born again", things get seriously weird. In a pinball explosion of Charismatic encounters, our hero gets annointed to head up a Christian punk band, christened to save souls from the satanic mosh pit. He and some recent acquaintances assemble their band, pull together a few chops, scrawl lyrics on sheets of foolscap, practice jumping around while playing, then set out to claim the country's youth for Christ. Coffee-houses are booked, and the misadventures begin.

The environment is all wrong for a Christian punk band. Coffee-houses book the band, expecting the sort of Kumbaya fare that's become the staple of "Contemporary Christian Music". Meanwhile Christian kids don't know what to make of punk music, nevermind their parents. Christian record companies won't touch them, and their mission/career looks seriously compromised.

Rather than pack it in, our hero follows the Spirit's leading and introduces the band to the bar circuit. Now their notoriety starts to grow by leaps and bounds, thanks to the free publicity of zealous televangelists publicly campaigning against the growing scourge of Christian Rock. Just as the group gains a following, our hero starts writing lyrics with depth and critical bite, frequently targeting televangelists, and the religious music industry that rejected him.

Now he and his group are hedged in by moneyed enemies at all sides. Thanks to this pressure, and a particularly ill-advised misadventure, his fate is sealed. Before his 35th birthday, his marriage is in ruins, his bandmates are fed up, and he is driven from the Promised Land of the California coast to the barren wilderness of Michigan. When we catch up to him in his late 40s, he has remarried, and is making a modest living producing musical tracks for video games.

For the last 11 years, this story has sat in a drawer with two other novels and the usual collection of short stories. I dusted it off the other day, and gave it a quick look. It's not bad, if I don't say so myself. Were I to shop it around, I'd probably ramp up the laugh factor a bit, but other than that, it holds together, and I'm happy with it.

An easy story with obvious parallels (more than one, actually, as I loosely based it on the perilous career of a living Christian rocker). I hadn't thought of it in years, but with my 40th birthday upon me, it was the only project I was drawn back to. This entry was meant to be yet another list, this time the soundtrack to my 30s. I may get back to that, but as I was compiling it and mulling over the obvious embarrassments - so many profoundly guilty pleasures, from AC/DC to POD - I realized that music, rock music particularly, constitutes such an intimate pleasure that I struggle to share it with the public at large.

This isn't self-gratification I'm talking about, either - at least, not entirely. When I was in my teens, I had my passion for rock (even the wholly toothless Christian rock) set straight by an earnest counselor at a Bible camp. It was a base music, unbecoming of the Creator or His children, and I was well advised to leave it alone. Instead, I went home and did my research. Gradually, circuitously, I got to dispensing with the whole notion of a sacred/secular delineation, and for the most part got on with enjoying what I enjoy. This experience is the chief reason why I'm unlikely to ever bend my knee to a proposed "Christian aesthetic."

Ah, but the echoes reverberate! I wonder if there isn't a pivotal adolescent encounter drilled through the inner identity of every adult? For my atheist friends, it's their first emotionally honest conversation about theodicy. Another popular bone of contention in church youth groups is "Following The Will of God" – that's sure to generate discussion among a bunch of hormone-ridden teens! Then there's sexuality: it's a rare person whose initiation into sexual experience isn't clumsy and messy, and not a little confusing, even if they wait for the honeymoon (Oscar Wilde on Niagara Falls: "It's the young bride's second disappointment!"). If sex is indeed a sacrament, it's the most primal of the bunch.

Those generally aren't the echoes that plague me, however. Mine reverberate to three chords on a Gibson - an embarrassing obsession I briefly gave voice to, once upon a time. An assumed persona, foolishly bent on doing the right thing, and expressing every earnest and naïve hope I'd never admit to. Unless, of course, I was under the influence - surely the most appropriate conditions for proper rock & roll.

Hayao Miyazaki: Gravity and Animation

Miyazaki's movies have a much different tempo than the in-your-face American cartoons with vocals by ... jabbering showbiz personalities. (The main characters of Robots couldn't take a walk across town without it turning into a brain-rattling spectacle.) It's not that Miyazaki's work is static. It's that everything has its proper weight. David Edelstein reviews the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Howl's Moving Castle (emphasis mine)

Most Japanese anime qualifies as little more than a personal curiosity. Anime franchises from Pokemon to Akira recklessly plunder the mythologies of the world (or their Cliff's Notes versions) for images and characters, give them a little tweaking, then hurl them into a pal-mal storyline. The result is a spicy, but nutrient-free, soupstock. Miyazaki's stuff, on the other hand, is spellbinding and unforgettable - it sticks to the ribs.

Miyazaki also plunders, but he seems to store his loot in a deep subconscious cellar, where he lets it mutate and mature before revealing it to the public. Nothing is displayed without due consideration of its true emotional impact on his characters, and on the audience. As a result, a sunny entertainment like Kiki's Delivery Service (my personal favourite) literally flies with emotional grandeur; surreal tales like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro disturb and comfort on a profoundly sublime level.

This sort of attention to detail - to its weight - is powerfully rewarding on the big screen and invites multiple viewings on the little screen at home (the DVD subtitles and the original Japanese vocals are always a delightful revelation best enjoyed after you've become familiar with the American dub-over). It's too much to ask American animators (and their studio creditors) to invest their work with deeper emotions like rage and resolve. But if Pixar's financial success is any indication (Toy Story and Monster's Inc. being two of its heftier offerings), even the slightest acknowledgment of emotional weight is welcomed by audiences.

The Call of the Meme

Bet you didn't see this one coming! Okey-dokey, then - my answers to the meme:

Total number of books owned: Couldn't say, but if we include comic books we're certainly approaching thousands.

Last book bought: Two, actually - Nick Hornby's Songbook (my wife requested I read this to her in weekly installments while she makes the Sunday night pizza), and Tijuana Straights by Kem Nunn.

Last book read: Barring unforeseen interruption, tonight I will finish The Watch by Dennis Danvers.

Five books that mean a lot to me (I'll be cheating a bit, here):

The Deptford Trilogy, by Robertson Davies (I own a single-bound copy). Reading this book in my mid-20s had a more profoundly subversive effect on me than my voracious reading of the Beat Canon. Re-reading it this last year yielded new surprises, including Davies' neat skewering of any sort of nationalistic fervor that can grip a person during heated discussions. Davies' art was never quite so accomplished after this - but it had no need to be.

Moon Palace by Paul Auster. Previous blog here.

Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall From Grace by David Beers. No book does a better job of articulating GenX angst - and you're getting this from an unwavering fan of Douglas Coupland.

Tapping The Source by Kem Nunn. Bikers, surfers, drug-dealers, a mysterious occultic sect ... man, did I get a kick out of this book! Ten years before I read TTS, the last book that tickled me so was Woody Guthrie's Bound For Glory.

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. In this case, I'm referring to a specific copy of that book. A very dear friend of mine, when she heard I was a McCarthy fan, procured a limited signed edition for me. Priceless.

Five people to be memed: well ... I invite any one of the "Cobbers" to pick it up voluntarily. But I'm confident I can go ahead and tag Scott without incurring his pique.

Fire!

So here it is, 12:00 noon, and I'm feeding the girls their lunch of bean soup and peanut-butter sandwiches. It's business as usual, with me chafing at the latest round of goofiness - I ask a question about their morning at school, and get a silly answer customized to test my patience. In the distance we hear the town's Volunteer Fire Department, striking up the sirens and peeling off. Doubtless they're off to address yet another set-upon farmer - it's been a very dry spring, and the VFD have had to attend to barn-fires, and the like.

Then I'm smelling, well, smoke. It's not uncommon for neighbors to burn tree-trimmings and yard-waste in fire-barrels, but this smells decidedly industrial - like shingles burning. The sirens get closer. I jump to my feet and race outside.

Two doors down, our neighbor's house is flaming like a toasted marshmallow.

Curious how quickly the mind does its survival math. Wind + Dry = THREAT!! I gather up the girls and hustle them back to their school two blocks away, then return to the house to figure out what to salvage first if the blaze skips roofs. The smoke is now white, however, and the VFD seem to have things under control.

Our neighbors are in profound crisis, of course, and I am duly impressed by the calming talents of our volunteers.

As for me, I might just breath a sigh of relief - in a day or two.

Following the "Meme"

The fun starts at Darko's place - he's just been "memed" by Cowtown Pattie. For those who don't know, a "meme" is a questionaire that works something like a chain-letter, minus the dire consequences should you choose to ignore the darn thing. The questions in question are:

1. What is the total number of books you have owned?
2. What is the last book you bought?
3. What is the last book you read?
4. What are five books that mean a lot to you?
5. Who are five people you will lob the meme to?

Darko acquits himself with the expected finesse: excellent titles all, including a few delightful surprises.

From there, I moseyed over to Texas Trifles, to see Ms. Pattie's picks. Ms. Pattie is a regular favorite of Michael Blowhard, for good reason. Her observations have a deceptively light touch, but stay with you for days. Read her short bit on Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, and I think you'll see what I mean.

Then I visited the blogs she "memed", and was especially taken by two:

Hokule'a speaks movingly about the emotional echoes that occur when a straight woman's soul-mate is a gay man - here.

And Mary Lee at Full Fathom Five seems like the sort of woman my mother would take a shine to - straight-forward, no-nonsense, innately curious ... and a host of other attractive qualities to boot. Here she undertakes a subconscious whodunnit (whatdunnit?):

One woman, my roommate D., told a fascinating story. She talked about a recurring nightmare she's had of a bloodcurdling female scream that seems to go on forever, and when it finally stops she feels like something is crushing her chest and she can't breath or cry out for help. She's been awakened by this nightmare all her life, and puzzled over it because as far as she knows, she's never heard a scream like that.

This sort of thing hooks me in pretty quickly. I found the final "missing link" both fascinating and incredibly moving. All in all, a wonderful round of provocative reading.

Whisky Prajer's List of Five Great Canadian Novels That Aren't By Margaret Atwood or Robertson Davies - And Won't Piss You Off

The wide-ranging, always engaging Minister of Culture and Amusement, Darko, points me to this link of book lists at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and asks re: Great Canadian Novels, "Your thumb: up or down?"

The list in question:

GREAT CANADIAN NOVELS THAT AREN'T BY MARGARET ATWOOD OR ROBERTSON DAVIES

As for Me and My House by Sinclair Ross. A faithless minister and his wife cling to existence in Depression-era Saskatchewan.

The Diviners by Margaret Laurence. Autobiographical fiction on the writer's life in a cold, isolating country.

The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. One woman's cantankerous refusal to go gently into that dark night.

The Wars by Timothy Findley. How to go from the quiet streets of Toronto to the mud-caked fields of Flanders in three easy steps.

Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff. A son details his mother's perilous and terrifying drift into Alzheimer's.

- Mary-Liz Shaw

My thumb? Waaay down. Here's why:

First of all, Ms. Shaw's banner is telling. Pairing the still-productive Atwood with cold-case Davies suggests Ms. Shaw's experience of Canadian lit is chiefly in the past-tense, when Atwood and Davies were the presiding monarchs over the Canuckle-head lit-scene. The list confirms this: Ignatieff's book is the only title that isn't over 30 years old. Now, I'm not especially prone to making knee-jerk In-With-The-New/To-Hell-With-The-Old proclamations, but I do believe that a list of Canadian books culled exclusively from the 1970s CanLit canon is both misguided and (gasp!) dangerous. Misguided because it's dated and uninformed, and dangerous because anyone who attempts the list will find themselves mired in an odious chore, and permanently turned-off.

This list pretty much covers the mandatory reading in my high school curriculum, and let me tell you, it's no fun. Even Ms. Shaw must be aware of this - just look at her book descriptions, and ask yourself: "Do I really want to read about 'a faithless minister and his wife, cling(ing) to existence in Depression-era Saskatchewan'? How about 'autobiographical fiction (set) in a cold, isolating country'?" etc. If you're already reaching for your dog-eared Wodehouse Omnibus, I don't blame you.

There’s a reason for this perversity. The CanLit crew of the 70s was giddy with international attention - our national culture seemed to be taking its first tentative steps out of the ghetto. But while the young Turks were following the dizzying lead set by Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, it still seemed desperately necessary to acknowledge that constructing the ghetto to begin with was no small feat itself. Thus the canon was established, and 15-year-old boys who'd rather be rockin' out to Loverboy were forced to put down the headphones and pick up Margaret Laurence. Alas, the ghetto they were touring had been formed according to the still-dependable maxim among earnest literwannabes: the quickest way to leave a deep impression is to be relentlessly grim.

Ms. Shaw would have done well to follow the leads of the two names she sought to evade. Davies' oeuvre is a fastidiously flossed impresario's grin, and even Atwood displays flourishes of impishness throughout her reams of "set-it-right" prose. A little humor goes a long way, and if I think back to my grandparents' stories of the Depression, I remember not just the grim and chilling vignettes, but the hilarious anecdotes as well. They impressed me with their robust character, which was the true heritage of that terrible era.

Right then - robust character. Here are my five alternatives to Mary-Liz Shaw (please check the links for further commentary):

Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler. A Canadian novel that sprawls from the Depression-era to the 80s, engages in impious theological speculation, is profoundly moving, and generates laughs - who'd of thunk it!

How Insensitive by Russell Smith. Mr. Smith's chief source of income, I'm sorry to say, is one of those "How To Wear Trousers" columns in the Globe & Mail. In fact, as his debut novel makes clear, he is a funny and impeccable satirist of the first order. (I should probably be recommending Muriella Pent, his latest novel, which was ranked #1 on Amazon.ca’s list of Best Fiction 2004. I haven't read it yet, but it's in the docket, and I'll let you know what I think.*)

The Barking Dog by Cordelia Strube. How to laugh while coming to grips with the fact that you're dying of cancer and your son is a murderer.

Tay John by Howard O'Hagan. Originally published in 1960, Tay John is the only emotionally engaging post-modern novel I can think of. O'Hagan succeeds, I suspect, because he couldn't possibly identify "po-mo", even if Foucault had bit him on the ass (which I'm not suggesting ever happened).

One-Eyed Jacks by Brad Smith. Of Mice & Men, brilliantly retold with a wicked twist-ending in a convincingly seedy "Toronto The Good". The fastest read of the bunch.

If you're after a literary pedigree with some longevity, I'll send you directly to Richler and the still dismally unknown O'Hagan. My point is these are Canadian works that are a treat to read, and have an easy finish that won't send you staggering to the liquor cabinet for recovery. However, if you're still intent on "high seriousness", you can always refer to Whisky Prajer's Five Heartbreaking Works of Staggering (Canadian) Literary Genius.

Post-Script: one year later and I have read Muriella Pent, and, no, I can't recommend it. I do recommend Young Men, however.

Whisky Prajer's List of Five Heartbreaking Works of Staggering (Canadian) Genius

Again, avoiding Margaret Atwood and Robertson Davies:

Anything by Alice Munro. There's a reason why she's called "Canada's Living Chekov" (hint: it has nothing to do with putting on a red velour tunic and a bad accent).

The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock. At the rate I was giving this book away after 9/11, I was courting bankruptcy.

In The Wings, by Carole Corbeil. This link has the entire Books In Canada review - a rather moving bit of prose itself.

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe. In a just universe, this guy would be bigger than Larry McMurtry, Wallace Stegner, or even Cormac McCarthy.

That Summer In Paris by Morley Callaghan. Okay, so this last one isn't a novel. But it's a brilliantly rendered account of what it was like to be a Canadian (like, regular guy, eh?) rubbing elbows with Gertrude Stein's "Lost Generation" in Paris - the last generation of writers everyone paid attention to.

Enjoy! (Thanks, DV!)