KNOW YOUR POE: The Life of Poe? . . . OH, NO!

(In my recent quest to find a decent or even a complete biography of Poe, I was disappointed - twice. I was upset enough to do something I would not normally do - write and post a book review, FOR FREE. For, no matter what people assume, I was paid for my reviewing, and had a modest but steady income as a writer for more than thirty years. In this case, I was upset and disappointed enough to post a couple of freebies on Amazon.)

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science 

by John Tresch

1.0 out of 5 stars

This is not about Poe at all!

This is NOT a true biography of Poe at all, only a dull synopsis of his life events and some of his stories (with spoilers galore for people who have not read them all). The author strains to connect Poe to "science" (a tenuous connection at best), and recounts in page after page the “discoveries” of lesser scientists, one of whom made “astonishing” discoveries that it turned out had ALREADY been discovered a year earlier by someone else! 

He forces his thesis into the narrative like someone trying to make a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that do not fit. Finally it became so tedious that I told myself I'd skip any passages that WEREN'T about Poe, and several times had to skip four or five or SIX pages, as it turned out Poe had no connection to these "scientists" and their amazing "discoveries" at all. At one point he is commissioned to write a textbook about shells, and a few people read it and he made all of $50.00. 

But the narrative stops and starts, derailed by all these long science detours, and the writing style is unengaging – I’ve read textbooks which were more interesting than this. And after reading it, I still know virtually nothing about Poe and his life, relationships, and the inner man. When he marries his 13-year-old first cousin (and she takes up maybe one small paragraph, then drops out of sight), his only remark is that since other biographers have commented on it extensively, he will not (!!). So he is also lazy, letting other biographers write the material for him, quoting their ideas as if they are gospel truth - meaning he has nothing new to bring to the table. 

In between the long drones about science, he will drop things such as that he and his aunt and wife are starving to death and living on bread and molasses, even though he always seems to be gainfully employed. I was never clear as to how this money was drained away, and there was no enlightenment to be found here. Wasn't he a compulsive gambler? I'm not sure, because it isn't mentioned here at all! But not only was he gainfully employed virtually all his adult life, he was employed in his own field as a literary critic and editor of his own magazine. 

Thus he was quite well-known and even well-respected as an author, a poet and a literary critic: a very fortunate situation for someone living on bread and molasses! His interest in “science” was peripheral at best, and largely in the realm of the speculative and the mystical, actually running counter to real science. I can’t return it, though I tried to, because – the “window of return is closed” – which I have never seen before! Means I can’t unload it and get my $25-some back. 

This is NOT about Poe, and we have no sense at all of the man, his convoluted relationships, or why he was so chronically destitute. I read in a review about an early engagement to a woman, which I had to look up in the index because I did not remember even seeing it, and found, once again, her name mentioned exactly twice, with NO EXPLANATION and nothing at all about their romance. Period. So I am shelving it, but only because I can’t return it.

Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance

by Kenneth Silverman

3.0 out of 5 stars

Rich in detail, but a hard slog

This is the SECOND time I've been disappointed by a Poe biography. The first one (The Reason for the Darkness of the Night) tried to tie him to the scientific discoveries of his time - and didn't, because there was no real connection. Silverman's bio is detailed to the point of agony, but mostly recounts in microscopic detail his work as a magazine writer, editor and critic, which he seems to think took up far more of his time and energy than writing his famous tales and poems. 

But what was truly dismaying was the fact I just could not get a good sense of Poe the man. His life could be as creepy and disturbing as his stories, in that he married a blood relative who was basically a little girl, lived with his aunt who comes across as unpaid help, and was a shameless opportunist and even a hypocrite, savagely criticizing the noted authors of the day, then sucking up to those same authors for writing opportunities and even money. 

The fact that Poe was constantly broke is also baffling: surely he was gainfully employed through most of his life, and in his own field of literature - so where did all the money go? Silverman does not explain it. His mental illness and alcoholism were tremendous obstacles, though Silverman does not get around to writing about them in detail until about mid-book.

The main fault of this bio is that he spends too little time on Poe's complex, contradictory personality, his spirituality, his sexuality, and all those deeper traits that make a biographical subject come alive. Poe worked, drank, and swindled people, often plagiarizing writers while railing against OTHER writers who did the same thing. After all this, I find there really isn't much that I like about Poe, but I am reading this mainly as a biographical introduction to a massive tome I bought featuring all his tales and poems. 

I have read enough Poe to realize he was brilliant, subtle, mercurial, sly, and undoubtedly a genius - in his work. As a person, he was pretty dreadful. Though his life was cut short, It truly amazes me he managed to live for forty years. It's hard to determine just what Silverman thought of his subject, and by mid-book I got the distinct impression he wished he hadn't committed himself to writing this. The hard-slog feeling is difficult to push past, and the sense of "homework assignment" gives the narrative a labored quality. 

Worst of all, his writing style is so ponderous that I often had to go back and read sentences twice to figure out just what he meant. "Where's the verb?" This should NEVER happen in ANY book! Do anything, but don't bore or confuse me. Overall, it's a doorstop, and has helped me get to sleep on many a midnight dreary, which I hope I will not be able to say about Poe's complete works when I finally get to them.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Why do books change?

In my long (long LONG long) stint as a book reviewer, I reviewed well over 300 titles for the likes of the Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Stampede and Victoria's Secret. When I got to the end of it, I was so tired I wanted to die.

"Don't you miss reviewing?" a former cohort (I've forgotten his name now) asked me. "Miss who?" I said.

A lot of people don't "get" reviewing. They ask if I just send in reviews of things I like (even if they came out ten years ago). Others, quite a few in fact, do not even know what I mean by a "review" and ask me to explain it, as if I had just told them I am a geophysicist.

But when you write for a publication, you don't get to read things you like. I was either handed a book, with a deadline, or presented with three or four books and allowed to choose one or two (a great concession, my editors believed). If these were not read, reviewed and published within two weeks, they'd be "killed" because they were already too stale and irrelevant. The kill fee amounted to ten per cent of the normal, paltry amount. Take it or leave it.

It became a mill. It really did. I've re-read some of them (just now, in fact) and I was surprised to find my reviews are generally quite well-written and cover the material to a depth I didn't expect. But I didn't get into this to write badly, did I? (When a writer says anything remotely positive about her own work, she is immediately branded a "narcissist"). 

And I remember how I sweated over these, and how they nearly ruined my unbridled joy in reading.

But a funny thing happened on the way to retirement.

The books changed.

Some of them changed so much that when I revisited some of my favourites, I couldn't get through them. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, one of my top-forever titles, fizzled out on page 36. I'm sorry, Junot Diaz, it just did. I had raved about it to "whoever", the Edmonton Journal I think. I don't know what happened to it, but something did.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt similarly fell like a failed souffle. Have I become a lot more critical in my literary dotage, or what?

And then there's food critic Ruth Reichl's memoir Comfort Me with Apples. I almost raved about it way-back-when, but now I find the story of her rise from waitress to editor of Gourmet Magazine almost tedious, not to mention full of purple prose. She doesn't just taste food; it "explodes" in her mouth. She tastes a cayenne-laced soup: "My head flew off." She goes to Paris, and "I felt as if I had all of France in my mouth".

First time around, that was OK. This time it's beyond lavender: it's deep purple, and as we all know, purple isn't good writing. It's writing that calls attention to itself.

When did these books change?

Movies, too. Few of my early favorites hold up. Midnight Cowboy makes me want to commit suicide. Easy Rider? Blecccchh. Even some of my beloved old black-and-white faves have gotten a bit tattered around the edges. Though I keep watching Now, Voyager whenever it comes on Turner Classics, I wonder honestly if I "like" it any more, particularly now that I fully realize what a total bastard Jerry is, keeping Charlotte on the hook like that in perpetual spinsterhood while he has a girl in every port. Too "noble" to divorce his wife? Not bloody likely!

Some classics do hold up, but does that say something about me, or the movies? Whatever Happened to Baby Jane is still a guilty pleasure: watching Bette Davis savagely kick Joan Crawford's head in or serve her a rat for lunch still sends shivers of delight down my sadistic spine. When it comes on TCM about once a month, I always get lassooed by Gone with the Wind, whether I want to or not, and basically it's pretty sound in its storytelling, though except for that incredible "I'll never be hungry again" scene (which never fails to make me weep), the acting is mostly workmanlike. Everyone looks so good, even in the throes of antebellum famine, that they all manage to get by (and Hattie McDaniel is the glue holding the whole glorious mess together).

I've seen Taxi Driver innumerable times, and its queasy-making portrait of a sociopath's evolution from antisocial jerk to lionized murderer is gripping: but I mainly watch it for that incredible Bernard Hermann score. The first time I heard it, I kept getting goosebumps on my arms. It was just so unexpected. Those harp-glisses were like having acid thrown in your face. I still come back to it, step into the trap, knowing I am in for a disturbing time and not wanting to get away from it.

I've tried to figure it out. No doubt some movies just become dated. I've really tried, I mean it, to like Charlie Chaplin, and I don't, I just don't. I still adore Harold Lloyd, but with his nerdy Everyman persona (which he nails like no one else, making comics like Woody Allen possible) he somehow stays contemporary, even fresh. Chaplin is a dustbin character, shambling around with a cane, his eyes too made-up to be convincing. In fact, his Little Tramp persona is more creepy than loveable. 

It took three or four tries for me to watch The Great Dictator all the way through (though I think I did make it through Modern Times, enjoying the automatic eating machine). I only broke through after seeing a superb documentary by Kevin Brownlow (and Kevin Brownlow was THE ONLY person who was nice to me through the whole wretched, soul-destroying process of trying to get The Glass Character noticed). It was called The Tramp and the Dictator, and I am sure it far surpasses the original movie which had the usual overblown quality of the Chaplin talkies.

But then I gave it one more chance, and at some point - maybe where Jack Oakie as Mussolini began to rant and rave in faux Italian - I began to laugh. Had the movie changed? I didn't exactly cry by the end, but I was moved. Maybe you've heard the speech at the end, a plea for mercy and sanity in the midst of a global meltdown. The speech is sentimental and antiquated to the point of being almost laughable - but not quite.

Now that I sit here, however, I realize something both surprising and not-surprising: Charlie Chaplin was the first silent film star I ever saw. There was a half-hour Charlie Chaplin TV show on Friday nights when I was ten. Just enough time for a couple of his early two-reelers. The kids at school actually talked about this show, though it was on the same night as The Addams Family. That must have meant something.

When books change, when movies change, they often seem to change for the worse - unless, rarely, like The Great Dictator, they redeem themselves. And actors. It happens to them, too. Robert Redford was just a pretty face (granted, pretty gorgeous) until I recently saw him in something called The Candidate. The way he conveyed cynicism hiding behind an ingratiating mask, the way that cynicism retreated and the mask ultimately became who he was - it was, if not masterful, then extremely subtle and worth watching. He gave himself to the character and then disappeared.

Is it possible some of these movies get better on television? The big screen maybe pumps up some actors to the point of explosion. If they're too histrionic to begin with - Chaplin? But Lloyd works either way, and so does Keaton with his more mechanistic, emotionally shut-down style. (Keaton, by the way, was the second silent film star I really spent time with. Once again, it was Kevin Brownlow who opened the door for me with his superb documentary, A Tough Act to Follow. Would it be an exaggeration to say Kevin IS silent film history, living and breathing and walking around? No, I don't think so.)

I'm getting to it, I'm getting to it! Or I hope I am: what all this says about me. Me, yes, the person sitting here eating Greek yogurt with apricot preserves, crushed walnuts, and fresh blueberries, which explode in my mouth. The secret is not to chop the nuts but to crush them in your fingers: it somehow presses out the oil and makes them tastier. But I digress.

The cliched way of looking at it is, "Well, now you've grown up and matured and your taste in books/films is different." Is this why my precious all-time favourite novel, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, now seems almost trite, or (much worse) gimmicky? I first read it in 1973, when I was 19 years old and just getting married. (Yes.) But it isn't just that. Maybe I've gone sour on some stuff. Maybe I AM more critical. I shone the spotlight on too many titles, and it got too bright, glaring. Did I lose the ability to truly enjoy a book?

I wonder, I wonder.

I just re-read Keith Maillard's The Clarinet Polka, another book I reviewed years ago, and kept thinking, "How does he do that?" The character was an alcoholic who treated women shabbily, and there was no way he could be called likeable. Yet we liked him. It's just that he wanted something better. He had this shining, idealistic crush on a girl so young he had to wait three years even to make a move on her - then he married her! Shouldn't we have groaned? Well, I did, but I still liked him, and her, and (needless to say) the novel.

But the point of fiction isn't to make us "like" characters, or even (necessarily) identify when them. We must see something real in them, something that rings true and human. A novel could be about Hitler, and I'd want to read it and give it a good review IF the author provided a convincing portrait. Chaplin leaves me cold (or cold-ish: when I finally got through The Great Dictator on about the fifth try, I said to myself, "I'm glad I watched it all at last"), but that's because he isn't real. Surrealism is great, but it has to hit closer to home. The sight of Mr. Everyman struggling to hold on to the hands of a clock 30 stories up still feels real to us. His terror feels real. So does his desire to please, which embarrasses us a little bit, because that's like us, too.

Doris Lessing once said (and I bailed on re-reading my former favorite Love, Again when it, too, went and changed on me) "a real book reads you". What we choose to step into, spend our time with, is certainly revealing. As the clock ticks away in my own life, I realize a lot of people my age are dying because they are considered "elderly". If I spend time reading a book, I am giving my time to it. Which means I am NOT giving my time to other things, like eating, sleeping, dancing, or playing on a swing. It's an introverted thing, isn't it? Movies aren't much better. Though I have no qualms about singing along with "Springtime for Hitler" for the twenty-seventh time, I wonder why, sometimes, I try to force myself to give up two hours of my life, one hundred and twenty minutes I can never have back, for something that isn't likely to make me happy. 

And sometimes, I admit, it is a kind of selling out. Come on, Margaret. Everyone raves about this movie! Like it, won't you? Or at least watch it. Then I watch it, feel dull and drained afterwards, and realize - or maybe I'm realizing just this minute - that the time I spent on it is gone and behind me and is two hours crossed off the total hours of my life. Whatever that total might be.

POST-POST. In looking around for images to illustrate this post, I wanted to try to convey the idea that memories change as our minds slip and slide and try to come to terms with "what was". 

When I tried to google terms that might bring up something interesting, I got one thing, and one thing only (though with many sappy backgrounds):

PEOPLE CHANGE. MEMORIES DON'T.

PEOPLE CHANGE. MEMORIES DON'T.

PEOPLE CHANGE. MEMORIES DON'T.

I honestly thought there would be some acknowledgement that "memory" is a slippery concept at best, a malleable thing, and that how we remember things changes with maturity and experience and shifting perception and even the time-altered, gradual slowing down of the brain.

But no.

Nowhere could I find any of that. Just sappy memes telling us (and who is "us" exactly?) to "never regret the past, because you can't change it! You can only change the future."

But you can't do that either. Can you?

Why don't people get it, or am I the crazy one (as I have often been told)? For no doubt, most of these people are far more successful in the eyes of the world than I. I guess total lack of imagination is a big help. Their imagination was sucked out of them by the school system, after which they breathed a great sigh of relief and got on with the business of exploiting as many people as possible.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

An offer you can't refuse

Well, yes.

And no.

I know I show my age when I say I started book reviewing back in 1983. Probably did 350 of them over the next 30 years or so (gulp), ending it only when my last steady source of reviews, the Edmonton Journal, told me they had cut their formerly-lavish books section to half a page and wouldn't be needing my services any more.

It was a lot of hard work. I sweated and laboured over those things. I tried my best, every time, to read every word, to analyze the writer's skills with care (this is starting to sound like a Boy Scout pledge, so forgive me), and to figure out just what made this book "work" or "not work" in my estimation. To do so, I had to develop a set of analytical skills as well as an appreciation for the aesthetics of effective writing. Ahem.

In other words, dang! I think I was pretty good at it.

But, big surprise, I did not always give each of these 300-odd books "good" reviews, though I tried to assess them fairly. As a rule, they fell roughly into three categories: a sort of top 10 - 15 per cent that I believed were truly outstanding, a large middle that covered a very wide spectrum (and I was willing to forgive many weaknesses if the book had some redeeming strengths), and a dregs, a sludgy bottom which included a vapid thing by Anna Murdoch, then-wife of Rupert, obviously given the license to slap any old sewage she wanted onto the page and still have it published. (Another all-time worst was by Daniel Richler, son of the legendary Mordecai. Something about nepotism.)

Nowadays, when you write a book review, you do it "for" a writer. Usually, one you know.

Usually, too, it is one who has already written a book review "for" you.

This reminds me of the old Mafia saying, "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". But whatever way you look at it, it's - lousy.

Lousy because these aren't "reviews" at all. They're about as meaningful and manipulative as Facebook "likes". In fact, they are ALL "likes", a five-star bartering system. If you hand out one of these, the recipient is then, suddenly, beholden to you and "owes" you five stars.

What the flying fuck does this have to do with the quality of the book???

I must be old school, or "no school", or something, because I won't take part in this ridiculous charade, even though I've been "reviewed" in the most sappy, generic way, a way that indicates the person slipping me the stars hasn't even gone near my novel, let alone read it. But why should that make a difference? These are stars we're talking about. Why else does a writer get up in the morning?

A real review, usually called a "bad" one, may help sink the author's career without a trace, particularly if what he/she is turning out is literary pond scum. I've been happy to contribute to such sinkings, but only when warranted. Meanwhile, I NEVER play the five-star shuffle. I was approached once by a Facebook "friend" (who was unfriended pretty quickly after that) who messaged me thusly: "Hello, Margaret! Happy to be on-board! I notice you got hardly any reviews for your novel on Amazon. Well, sometimes I have that problem too! If you'd be willing to take a look at my last eleven books and post your five-star reviews of them, I'd be more than happy to fill up some of those awkward spaces for you!"  I thought about it a lot, for maybe seventeen seconds, wondering how long it might take me to write a review without reading a single word of ANY of her eleven novels.

The whole thing quickly went south, but not before she mentioned the name of a "Hollywood producer" - he had an Irish name I can't remember - whom she talked to about "developing" one of her eleventy-seven interchangeable novels. She said he might be interested in The Glass Character as a "property" - a term I hate only slightly less than "brand" - and gave me his email address. And I was all set to follow up on it, when my hand involuntarily jerked back from the mouse with a fierce crackle, like the Wicked Witch trying to grab the ruby slippers.

I googled the guy, and found out that he was a convicted felon currently serving time for embezzlement, forgery and fraud. Passed himself off as a Hollywood producer. There was some sort of message board-type thing in which people expressed their ire at all the various ways in which this man had ripped them off and taken them for a ride.

Imagine. Fraud! How can anyone think of being that dishonest? Whatever happened to the great literary virtues, like sincerity? Don't people even bother to fake it any more?

The most I ever made from writing all those ACTUAL book reviews was about $300 a throw (and yes, I WAS paid - don't fall over backwards from the news). Nowadays, I'd get exactly nothing, but maybe-just-maybe I'd get a fawning, drooly thing back from the author that I could paste up or post on my Amazon page.

But why stop there? I'm thinking of going into business in a slightly more ambitious way: a service to create individualized, post-it-ready reviews, one-click, no-mess-or-fuss. A computer will scan the novel and sum up the plot, pull out relevant quotes, etc. etc., and effuse about it appropriately. It will even sound like you've read it, but you won't have to do a thing (except pay me)! I'll set up subscriptions and everything. Maybe I'll call it Fakebook! But if it's like all my other good ideas, somebody thought of it last week or last year and is already rolling in the profits.

Harold Lloyd: somebody up there likes me

Blogger's Note. The long drought is over! Finally, a review - and not only that, the kind most authors would kill for. And the fact that it's by  Matt Paust (posted on his Mutable Blog as well as Facebook) just makes it better, in my eyes, and more worthy of posting here. It's my novel and I'll brag if I want to.

The Mutable Blog

it can change on a whim

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Carpet Ride to Magicland

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the guy with the straw hat and Woody Allen glasses, in the suit, dangling from a clock on the side of a building so far above a busy avenue the cars below look like ladybugs on wheels.

 Harold Lloyd.

Movie comedian of the silent 1920s. Called himself the “Glass Character” because his trademark glasses were fake. No glass in them. The guy was a nut. Blew one of his hands to Kingdom Come fiddling with what he thought was a stage prop bomb. It was real. Deliberately gave himself powerful electric shocks to get his hair to stand straight up. Did his own stunts—the clock dangle, the shocked hair, pretending to trip and stagger on building ledges up in the sky, netless—a brave, some would say foolhardy, genius. Nut.

Knowing this and being acrophobic, I can't watch his movies anymore. It even scares me to look at the photos. I'll let Margaret Gunning watch the movies and look at the photos, and I'll read her reports. Well, then again, I don't have to anymore. I've read her book, The GlassCharacter. It's all in there.

Margaret, poor girl, is in love with Harold Lloyd. It started out as just a fascination with soundless images. Love snuck up and struck her dumb somewhere amid the exhaustive research she was conducting for a book about what was then still just a fascination. Love. Alas. Margaret is happily married and has two lovely daughters and four darling grandchildren, yet is far too young to leap the gap into the day when her beloved Harold held sway with the girls of a baby Hollywood. Fortunately, for her and for us, she's a novelist. She has the skill to weave the magic carpet to carry her backward in time to those days of yore, those Harold heyday days, and set her gently down along the path the love of her dreams must follow should he wish a rebirth in the imaginations and hearts of admirers forevermore. She's woven that carpet. It's large enough to take us with her on that long strange trip. I rode along on a test flight. We made it back, and I'm still agog.

When we stepped off the carpet in la la land I saw that Margaret had changed. No longer the familiar author of two of my favorite novels—Better than Life, and Mallory—she'd become sixteen-year-old Jane Chorney, a virgin and erstwhile soda jerk in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a terrible crush on movie idol Harold Lloyd. Soon after we landed, Margaret /Jane (and later “Muriel”, as you will learn) decided to pack up her meager belongings, cash in her chips (two cents shy of fifty bucks) and head to Hollywood and into the arms of her eternal love. I might have tried to instill sense in her were I anything more than invisible eyes and ears. Unfortunately I had lost my voice and corporeal substance upon alighting in the Santa Fe dust.

So it was off to Hollywood via a wearying, bumpy bus ride, Margaret/Jane/Muriel full of glitzy dreams and innocence, and me hunkered weightless, mute and unseen on her delicate shoulder.

I won't say more. I took no notes and had to avert my gaze any number of times during moments that really were none of my personal concern.

The Glass Character is Margaret/Jane/Muriel's story, not mine. What I did see and hear, 

and learn during our holiday in history is captured with such lucid, insightful poignancy I 

can't help but wonder if Margaret didn't in fact remain there, dictating her journal to a 

holographic image of herself in the distant future tapping on a keyboard somewhere in a 

place called Coquitlam, B.C.

My first review!

Stunning Star Shines - Great Book, April 12, 2014

By David (SUMAS, WA, United States)

This review is from: The Glass Character (Paperback)

I couldn't resist turning page after page when I started reading this novel. It is as fast-paced, frenetic, frantic, as the jumpy quick movements of silent film action. To say this book captures the spirit of the silent film era, of the flashing, double-dealing, over handed and underhanded Hollywood of the 1920s and onward, is a disservice. The reader is drawn right in, involved totally with the heroine of the story. The story is about her, but it is also a thorough portrait of the great film Comedian, Harold Lloyd. He comes to life in these pages, a three dimensional fully rounded fictional character. The good, the bad, the surprising, the ugly. He is totally human and his motives and circumstances are clear.

I've read Gunning's two earlier novels, Better than Life, and Mallory. The Glass Character is far more ambitious in its depth and breadth. It is longer, more expansive than the early works. Gunning has presented her master piece, in this novel. She fully comes of age as a serious, yet entertaining writer, who displays a lovely choice of words and a often refreshing turns of phrase.

If you haven't read Gunning yet, start. If her latest novel doesn't win, or at least get nominated for the top literary prizes, there is no justice. Don't miss an engrossing, absorbing read. By the way, you'll definitely want to hit YouTube to find full length Lloyd films, outtakes, and documentaries. Don't leave yourself hanging from the clock hand, get the silent era spirit and enjoy the book!

Order The Glass Character from: Thistledown Press  http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character Chapters/Indigo.ca http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

The Edmonton Journal: the one that walks the dog

I've been at this forever. Writing, I mean. Writing for print/the public or whatever you want to call it. More than 25 years ago, I lived in a small hamlet (actually, more of a teeny-tiny town) called Hinton, Alberta, in the foothills of the Rockies. There wasn't much to do there, so I wrote. Wrote feverishly, tried to write novels, fell short. My letters to the editor were ubiquitous. Then I had this idea:

What if, instead of being sandwiched in with all the other tirades from Hintonites upset about the smell of the pulp mill (wet garbage and horse manure) , I had my very own column? You know. Something with my picture on it, and all that.

I sent in some ideas to the local paper, and waited. Nothing. Months later, one of my columns actually ran, but with no name on  it.

I got on the phone.

It took a while to straighten things out. The column, called Between the Lines, mostly consisted of domestic comedy, with now and again something more weighty.

I had this gig for a year before somebody said to me, "Gee, I like your column. How much do they pay you for that?"

PAY??

I did a little digging and found out that all the other columnists were paid ten dollars a week. Not a princely sum, but still. So I sent them a friendly letter, and I got this (paraphrased) message.

"Since you signed on to do it for nothing, you will continue to do it for nothing. The other columnists signed on to do it for money, so they will continue to do it for money."

"Signed on"? No one signed anything in that place!

Alrighty then.

I guess I kind of went off the deep end, starting a campaign to make the bloody ten dollars like everybody else. Embarrasses me now, and the paper cut me off forever, but meanwhile somebody I knew in the actual news business said something like, Your stuff is good enough to be paid for, but not at the Hinton rag. Try a real newspaper.

I thought of the one we read every day. So I tried the Edmonton Journal.

How could I have known then that I would form a sort of marriage with the Edmonton Journal, that it would weave in and out of my writerly life like love's old sweet song? 

I think my first piece was an editorial about AIDS, which was then new and a very hot topic. Don Braid was the editor of a new section called the Eye Opener, which ran stuff that was on the edge of subversive. I was in! and extremely excited, but as with everything I have ever done in my life, momentum died and I had to start all over again. All my subsequent attempts at editorials bombed, but meantime I was writing to columnists and asking "how do you do this?"

This isn't supposed to happen - in fact, it has only happened once in 28 years or so - but somebody gave me a break. Somebody said, "Will you review my book?", and handed it to me.

Thus I reviewed Judy Schultz's toothsome collection of food stories, Nibbles and Feasts. An enjoyable book, and fairly easy to review, though I did nitpick about a few things, thinking, what have I got to lose?

I was astounded when the reviews kept coming. Kept coming, that is, until I left Hinton in 1988, and it all stopped. I had to start all over again, building a column in the Tri-City News which ran on and off for six or seven years (and this time they paid me, because I asked for it, though I still didn't sign anything). I trudged around, mentally speaking, and eventually placed book reviews in other papers: the Montreal Gazette (for whom I was briefly - don't laugh, now - science editor!), the Vancouver Sun (who initially told me, after one review, that they would never use me again), and even the much-vaunted Globe and Mail.

But eventually, perhaps with the advent of computers and the ability to send things by a method other than snail-mail, the Journal re-entered my life. Not sure when or how, but suddenly I was on again (with a different editor - this is another amazing thing, because inevitably a change of editor means you're toast). My cheques came on the button, there were never any problems, and for the most part (incredibly - this is really rare) my pieces ran unedited.

Fast-forward to my first novel coming out - oh Jesus, the lifelong dream fulfilment, and then the horrific letdown when it was in the stores for about six weeks! And the on-line magazine I was working for (for free - I must have been desperate) telling me, "We can't run a review of your novel because it would be nepotism." I accepted this, and it didn't hit me until years later that all the other publications I had ever written for didn't feel that way at all. The Montreal Gazette ran a slightly dotty but overall favorable piece, the Vancouver Sun likewise, and the
Journal. . .

I can't tell you how good this made me feel, especially in light of the record poor sales that sank my book (and I still don't know why it didn't generate that mysterious "buzz" that makes it all happen). When Better than Life came out in 2003, the Journal decided to go all-out for its longtime contributor. I got a full-page spread, a rapturous review, and was named one of the Top Ten books of the Year. This was a bandaid on the wound, or at least until I learned the reality of publishing in Canada.

The reality being: we are all part of a vast pyramid, with the huge majority at the bottom. There's not much room at the top (the "top" meaning that somebody reads your book). Books DO disappear, regularly. Authors disappear. I don't know, maybe they commit suicide or something (or no - that's poets). But you don't hear from them again. Publishers considering your next book glance at at the glowing reviews and rich promotion from your last book and say, "Nope, it didn't sell".

I can't fault them for that, because they are in the business of selling books. Hey, I want my book to sell too, even more badly than they do. But when the second one suffered a similar fate, well then. . .

My local column went belly-up when the editor left. After six or seven years, I was not allowed to write a farewell column. So, battlescarred, I took whatever work I could find. I couldn't write another novel, not yet anyway. It was like dating after a divorce. But still there was a thread, something holding the whole thing together. Though there would sometimes be gaps as long as two years, eventually I'd end up back with the Edmonton Journal. Incredibly, they actually seemed to want me.

Sounds a little sad, doesn't it - sounds Sally Fields-ish: "They like me, they really really like me!" But do you know how rare it is to receive that kind of treatment in this business? I sometimes think shabby treatment is the norm (either that, or being ignored). Writers are almost non-entities, except when they miss their deadlines, and then they get hell for it.

I had a low spot with "a" paper - I won't mention the name, even though I am sure they've forgotten me by now - in which my deadline was March 25 or something, so I emailed it in at 4 p.m. on March 25 and received a shrill call saying, "You missed your deadline."

"No, I didn't. It was March 25. Today is March 25."

"But I wanted it first thing in the morning so I could edit it and go home by noon."

She then went on to tell me everything that was wrong with the piece, which was why she was going to "kill" it (no kidding, that's the term - and way back then, though not now, you got something called a "kill fee"). I managed to place the review elsewhere and somehow, just, well, incidentally, let the author of the book know about it, and he wrote back and gratefully acknowledged it as one of the better pieces he had seen.

Then I , oh-oh. This is what I shouldn't do, like campaigning to the Hinton paper for $10. It just made me look bad, and the editor sounded like one of those squirrels flapping its tail and chattering up a tree. I sent a copy of his letter to her. It was a sort of nyah-nyah. I was so sick of being trampled on, and being expected to just take it all with a smile.

I don't know if any of this is interesting or not. I had a hiatus from reviewing, frankly sick of the whole enterprise (including hearing from one editor, a honcho from one of the Big Papers, after I pitched a book they'd already covered. He said, "Not paying much attention, are you?" Writers are not allowed to make even one mistake.)

But somehow, I guess I needed to come home. I contacted my alma mater, with a new (to me) books editor, Richard Helm. And the answer was yes. And now they offer books to me, so I don't have to jump, and jump, and jump. And I can even turn books away!

In my long long long long long career as a reviewer, approaching 30 years now, I have covered something like 400 titles, a total which I used to be proud of but now makes me groan. People don't take it well. They look at me as if I've said, I used to work in the Barnum and Bailey Circus as a fire-eater. It's weird. It's too much. Why do I want to do this so badly, anyway?

I want to tell them: OK, let's do the math. If I do 2 reviews a month, which for a long time was my normal output, that's 26 reviews a year. Times ten, it's. . . times twenty, it's. . . You see, it all adds up.

Columns, well, I wrote literally thousands. Some paid, many not. I kept them all and they molder, yellow and gross, in binders downstairs. I was afraid of disappearing, and still am.


What is wrong with me? I have a disease. I can't help it. I have big ambitions and they are never fulfilled. I get treated badly and just swallow it, and if I hit back at all, I am immediately yanked up short. Or so it seems. But one paper has been like the best bud who always shows up during the worst times (like when somebody dies), not with a casserole but with rolled-up sleeves to do the dishes and walk the dog.

It's like someone is saying, not "go away" (the usual response I get to everything), but "More, please."

More???

What with ever-shrinking books sections and more and more canned reviews, this gig will eventually end, but what a ride it's been, especially during the many rotten times I've lived through bashing my head on cinderblock walls.

To all the snarlers and grouches, I'd like to say this. It IS possible to treat writers well. It IS desirable to be respectful and even polite, and it doesn't cost you anything. See, there's one paper that's been doing it for years and years.The rest of you: come on, guys! Get with it.