Cage Match!

I almost met fightclub dude Chuck Palahniuk today getting off the plane from Toronto in Calgary for Wordfest. We would have rode from the airport to the hotel together. There was someone in a white cowboy hat with a sign that said "J. Millar / C. Palahnuik" waiting for me at the airport when I got off the plane. She was awesome. But then Chuck's "handler" showed up (she was actually very nice when I was trying to get off the plane -- "after you" she said --) she basically told us thanks anyway but fuck off -- they'd arranged their own private car to the hotel. She had very stylish glasses.

So now I propose a cage match in which BookThug takes on Random House for the next Palahniuk novella.

Spoiler: we'd turn it down anyway.

Random House: call me.

My Failed 3-Day Novel

Yesterday I had thanksgiving dinner dinner with my inlaws in London. Among those present was a couple who had arrived unannounced. I learned at some point that this couple happen to live in Clinton. I asked how they felt about Alice Munro winning the Nobel prize. I wasn't able to tell if their blank and confused looks were the result of confusion or if they couldn't hear me. They told me later that they are each deaf in one ear. But they had still never heard of Alice Munro, or the Nobel Prize for that matter. "We's just here for the free meal" said the woman, whose name was "Fioner." At least that's how her sister pronounced it.

Literary Tourism

Last summer my family went on a trip to California. We landed in San Francisco and immediately started exploring. I'm not sure if I can express what an interesting city San Francisco is, a completely walkable city of connected neighbourhoods. We might have liked it as much as we did because of many features it shares with Toronto. 

One thing the city of San Francisco does not share with Toronto was literary tourism. This doesn't mean that Toronto doesnt have a literary history, but there is nothing about it  that is recognized publicly or in the sense that one might travel thousands of miles to experience a part of it. Toronto literary history does not have the cache that might attract a pilgrim -- we just aren't very good at myth-building. This might be said of every Canadian city, actually, and to be honest it is something that appeals to me quite a lot about Canada: nothing has happened here that has, in the grand scheme of literary history, made an ounce of difference. 

So in visiting San Francisco it became obvious that there are places where literature is a significant part of the cultural tourism. But what was strange were the emotions I experienced in the literary places I visited: City Lights Bookstore and the North Beach neighbourhood; the exhibition of Ginsberg's photographs at the Jewish Museum, Jack Kerouac Lane, to name a few. Each neighbourhood I visited seemed to have a literary component that was one of the reasons to visit. I confess, it was incredible to see these places and to be a voyeur-pilgrim who had made his way across the globe to come close to something that was considered by many to be important, a cultural phenomenon regarded with a sense of honour and value. But at the same time I found myself experiencing a growing sense of bewildering anger. The same feeling occurred visiting the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur -- it was great to be there but at the same time I found myself infuriated for no reason that I could reasonably explain. 

It has been two months since I visited California, and I may have reached some kind of answer, however vague or stupid. Partly it has to do with stereotypes that literary tourism offers hapless pilgrims: I can't know anything about it, really. It is like reading a translation and realizing that you're not reading the book but an approximation; partly it has to do with the sadness of realizing that the past is encased in a kind of mellification the world created; but mostly, it has to do with gazing around at the present and considering what might become the literary tourism of the future. The latter issue contains some of the saddest things I could possibly imagine, and the terror of what might be simmers deep within me alongside the hope that humanity will end rather than have any of it become a history sanctified by a collective acknowledgement of its worth. 

Lines

Sometimes standing in line gives you the opportunity to write a few lines, even if you are standing in line for no particular reason. Maybe you happen to like standing in lines. Maybe that's how you choose to spend your free time, all the precious free time that you could be using to do unproductive things, like reading a few lines of a poem, or writing a few lines that might never be read and therefor never change the course of human history. Except they have come into existence, and so human history has been altered, even if incredibly subtly. 

A New Book & Launches

TIMELY IRREVERENCE



Vancouver Launch, Saturday 13 April 2013: 7:45PM
WESTERN FRONT
305 E. 8th Avenue



Toronto Launch, Saturday 20 April 2013: 5:30PM
SUPERMARKET
268 Augusta Avenue



Hope to see you there!

aka bpNichol: a speculative biography

Last week I finished aka bpNichol, a preliminary biography by Frank Davey. I can honestly say that it was probably one of the strangest texts I've ever read on the subject of another person's life, and so I am now only thinking of it as a "biography" - just like that, in quotes. This is not to say that it was not interesting to read, but it should probably not be read as a biography of Nichol. Throughout the book, Davey discusses a number of intriguing things - the invention of the author persona by an author, for example, or the concept of a "psychotherapy poetics." Even the minimal historical context Davey provides about the rise and fall of The Coach House Press phenomenon makes the book worth reading, and given the climate of our current poetry culture, there is some worthwhile discussion about the anxiety that may or may not be produced when an author tries to produce both "honest" and "original" work under the weight of the cultural milieu in which they live. But in order to discuss these things, I don't think it was necessary to use a biographical framework of bpNichol, especially given the fact that Davey speculates so much about so many things. That and why Davey has chosen to focus in particular on embarrassing material about Nichol's early childhood is what sends the whole narrative off into questionable territory. What makes it all untrustworthy is Davey's choice to use, for the most part, Nichol's notebooks written as an adult, a recent history of Therafields, & Nichol's own poetry as evidence (Davey quotes nearly 600 lines of the Martyrology throughout the text, not one of which was asked for permission to use, I understand) to support his speculations. In fact, Davey didn't appear to talk to anyone who knew the man, and only quoted written . So, a "biography" aka bpNichol will have to be, now and forevermore. I would go so far as to call aka bpNichol a "speculative biography," which is a term that perhaps Nichol would appreciate, but maybe only the version of Nichol that Davey has presented his reader.

The question that remains is how to deal with this weird book moving forward. A biography of bpNichol was way overdue, but now that aka bpNichol exists, will anyone be able to work past it and create a more accurate picture of Nnichol's life and contribution of Canadian poetry? Probably the correct response would be a biography of bpNichol composed by a community of those who know him.

The Future of Literature

All this kaffuffle with the Globe & Mail "letting go" or "reassigning" Martin Levin and Jack Kirchhoff from the Book Section, which will still (apparently) continue their "stellar" coverage of books and literature even though they are slashing the section and folding it in with their Focus section (after already reading globe articles about the shifting plane of literary publishing -- the death of the mid-list author for instance, or the changes in the landscape that have left House of Anansi Press (who are now using musicians to decide what is good literature) as the largest Canadian owned publishing firm in the country) has me thinking that the future of literature is likely not in books, but in Television or Film, and it will be published in Hollywood.

BookThugs & TroubadourSlaves

Come out on 31 January to see me and Michael Menegon jam music and poetry together into an evening of unpredictable entertainment. There is also a lot of chocolate available!

What: BookThugs & TroubadourSlaves (Jay MillAr & Michael Menegon in concert)
When: 31 January 2013, 7-11pm
Where: COCO, 365 Jane Street, just south of Annette.
Why: Why not? Chances are you might hear me read all of ESP, some fungal poems, a few select "cover tunes" and some poems from my forthcoming collection Timely Irreverence. And Michael will be playing all sorts of things too – original songs and accompaniment.
How: Where there is a will there is a way to get to COCO.

Back

I was gone for a while again. Not that I actually went anywhere. But it is now 2013 -- and i turned 42 -- isn't that strange? It seems like a good number, even, quiet, and sure of itself. I am in the midst of dealing with various things -- anxiety mostly. Who knows where this stuff comes from or why it sticks around the way it does, but it sure is annoying and why not become happy or even content with oneself? The world isn't so bad, even if it is going to pot. In fact, the world doesn't even care -- it's like the world can't be critical because it is so particulary indifferent, so you have criticize your self all by yourself. So I'm trying to lift myself up and over all that stifling self awareness this year. Should be fun.