I came across this book at the U of C library yesterday...not quite sure when I'll ever have enough time to read it. Seriously?

Half a Yellow Soap Opera

I finally got through Half a Yellow Sun by Adichie. The book started off with a bang, slogged through pages of smarmy soap opera, and ended with war and a whimper. The first third is pretty special. Nice tight sentences and two story lines (as though she based it on Tolstoy's structure for AK. The development of Ugwu and the other characters was quick, as Adichie ignored reasons why things happened, presenting instead the progression of events and character responses.

Here's why the book lost its bubble. She tried to forefront the Biafran war and make it an impetus for character action...I knew little, I still know little. The presentation was sparse, rambling and I remain totally confused. It caused the characters to jump towns repeatedly. Then the small constellation of main characters slept with each other and the entire plot crashed in on itself, only to be picked up in some sentimental way near the end. In fact, the coincidences and Dei ex machina (pluralized) were so stunning and frequent that the book became the Nigerian version of Days of our Lives. I lose interest when things just keep happening without little overall meaning when events are merely a device to get characters sharing feelings or to add more pages. I really began wishing I were reading Coetzee.

Ugwu, the servant and main character for most of the book suddenly, when war came, became an empty vessel, he just went to war, didn't think or feel like he had earlier, he raped without worry. This bothered me for two huge reasons: first the author allowed her character to internally become someone else with no articulated reason (her lack of reasons now became a detriment); second it seemed to play on a myth that the Black Man has no discrete inner self, but is the result of exterior forces. I recall Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who speaks for whom, and a whole host of myth and racial stereotypes in the arts along this line. It's reinforced by Adichie's selective omnipresent narrator's voice that becomes an exterior, Colonial, voice describing the Black Man while denying his voice. I found it somewhat shocking. Then there is the entire class issue that Adichie is conflicted with. Her main characters are outrageously rich but they don't seem to perceive their class in any particular way; they waffle between having a this consciousness and not, which is odd because they are supposed to be political thinkers.

So what to do? I recommend you read about a third and realize that's all that's necessary. I'll reading more of her work, and if I had to place money, I'd bet she's really more of a short story writer than a novelist.

Elephant Dung

Once I thought romance was in the air, but it was only the smell wafting over from the elephant cages.

The old man Jacob joins a failing circus, he is the third leg of a dull love triangle with Marlena. He marries her, eventually, but then she just disappears from the book. I think he and the author forgot she'd been a character. It's always funny when you're thumbing backwards and forwards through a book trying to find out why a character never again appears.

Someone tossed some people off a train trestle! Shh. This secret could ruin the circus! The circus, as we learn, is already ruined so I guess my telling won't matter. At the end of the book Jacob (think old man/elephant who never forgets -- that's called metaphor 101) sneaks from the old folks home into the circus. Ahh, the sitcom trained tear drop falls from the audience of trained chimpanzees. Sign flashing "cry now." I'd just like to mention that elephants are relatively incontinent, just a point the author might want to expand upon as she develops the metaphor in her rewrite. Huh? That thing was published?

What a reeking, stinking, fly buzzing piece of crap. Elephantine crap. I want my damn admission ticket back and I want someone to clean off my shoes. Thankfully I didn't buy this paperback and I swear to you I read the entire thing in under twenty minutes. You don't need more time than that to fully grasp the third-grade maudlin plot and writing that's as enjoyable as getting your chest waxed -- slowly. BUT, you say, "I loved Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and couldn't get enough of BJ and the Bear." Yeah, forget what I said, you'll love this book in the intimate way you love toilet paper that offers the little bit of extra plush. Sorry to ruin your day but Princess Diana died.

HERE'S WHERE IT GETS REALLY ODD. I watched, the other night on TV, a movie titled The Greatest Show on Earth directed by Cecil B. DeMille. (The book uses the more plodding phrase Most Spectacular Show on Earth.) This was one of many uncanny parallels. I like that, "the many uncanny." A train carrying the the circus was central to the plot, a love triangle ensued but two got together at the end. A big secret functioned as undertow (in the movie it is Jimmy Stewart playing a doctor/murderer -- yes I wrote it that way on purpose -- hiding as Buttons the clown), and a bad guy tries to ruin the circus, it's Agustus the Trainer in the book and it's Klaus the Trainer in the movie, note the Germanic name similarity as well as "a" and "u" reflection. Both are killed in the ensuing panic at the climax of the book.

Too many similarities for me to trust the inventiveness of this "author." Here's something interesting: An ANAGRAM for "Water for Elephants" is "Renew a Father's Plot."

Review from Winnipeg Free Press

Take a shot... don't deny yourself

By: Reviewed by Rory Runnells



Sundre, by Christopher Willard


Esplanade Books/Vehicule Press, 127 pages, $17



EXTRAORDINARY is too mild a word for Sundre. But in a sense the novel offers its own best insight into its richness when one of its narrators, Sandra, describes her daughter's birth: "There was originality in her birth in the way that perfect originality is found in the usual if only you take the time to look."

This second literary novel by Christopher Willard, an American-born visual artist living in Alberta, lets us discover that perfect originality in this saga of Avery and Sandra, living with their two sons and daughter on a farm outside Sundre, a small town south of Edmonton.

The story, told alternately by Sandra and Avery, is a potent, grave, moving chronicle of their lives. Stylistically it is a communion (there is no other word for it) of the poetic and the dramatic narrative.

It's as if Annie Proulx in her Wisconsin stories (of which Brokeback Mountain is the most famous) met Prairie playwrights like Maureen Hunter (in her play Footprints on the Moon), or Saskatchewan playwright and fiction writer Connie Gault, (in her play Sky), to produce an interweaving series of measured monologues rich with emotion.

Specifically, Sandra is the poet (mostly), while Avery is the storyteller (mostly). The novel is told in a mixing of memory and immediacy with Avery stoic, melancholy and emotionally searching, and Sandra flowing, imagistic and edging towards silence since words, cast against the power of the land, become inadequate.

Children are born, grow, have crises, go off to Toronto, like the daughter, Sheryn-Lee, or stay and die in a stupid car crash, like Dode, the older son, or come out of the same crash broken in spirit, like Dusty, the younger son, and driver, who had been sent back to fetch a guitar on the demand of his often disapproving father.

Funerals are attended. The community moves on, as does time. Sandra retreats into religion, Avery works. Then Sandra can't swallow: "She never spoke of it aloud. Never the word. She acted as though she didn't know. She knew."

She is treated unsuccessfully and slowly fades away until she makes a demand that Avery shoot her. Avery is helpless ("She couldn't swallow. What are a man's hands to do with that?") but his central belief is that there is determination and accident.

Take control or nature will. Only then do we fully grasp the opening of the book when he "shoots" her picture, while they both recklessly lean out from the Rosedale Suspension Bridge, is the image we need to hang onto, just as they must to the bridge, and each other.

They are suspended, and so is the reader between that determination and accident. The novel leads to where it has been going and where we as readers may not want to go.

The opening melts into the end. The story opens with Avery's almost jocular remark, "I didn't want to take a shot but I couldn't deny this woman."

He doesn't, and the novel ends with time and memory from the bridge closed as the couple let go of their world. Sandra knows only: "what we are cannot be said."

She, or maybe it is Avery, for at this point, they, like their memories are becoming one, we sense, notes "there was the most absolutely singular quality of light that morning."

The novel doesn't ask sympathy for their decision, let alone for their lives. Willard doesn't miss a step. He presents the "perfect originality" of the ordinary lives of this couple, and asks no quarter.



Rory Runnells is the artistic director of the Manitoba Association of Playwrights and fiction editor for Prairie Fire.



Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 9, 2009 B9

Writer's Block

Writers Block, a quick search of google brings up.....frig google who cares. When it hits one person that person feels devastated who then questions his or her abilities, motivation, and current project. Days and weeks are wasted in a cycle of self hatred and outrageous expectations. Here are a few tips I've found through my own practice and through teaching that may be of use in preventing and getting out of writer's block.

10 TIPS FOR PREVENTING WRITER'S BLOCK
1.) Work every day. Writing makes you want to write more. It doesn't matter what you write, just sit down and start on whatever interests you. Read the first chapter of Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit (it's online and it's not worth buying the whole thing). She echos this attitude. Ten minutes a day is a good start.
2.) There has never been a child prodigy in writing. Talent in writing is learned through experience and hard work. Recent brain studies show that younger people are deathly focused on one thing, while older people have a broader view with more associations -- just what writers need! Don't email me with names of kids who published like that dragon boy. It's crappy writing.
3.) Work on more than one project at once. Putting all ones commas in one basket means when the writing does not flow the whole process shuts down.
4.) Write when you can and when you have to. My own writing times change, sometimes I'm up early whipping out words, other times it's half the night. Go with the flow as much as possible. But, don't allow yourself not to write.
5.) Reward yourself. Promise if you write you will get a glass of juice or more coffee or a candy bar. It's probably primal brain stuff but it's amazing how well it works.
6.) Keep reading. Read what you like and also read to challenge yourself. John Metcalf says he reads poetry when writing prose. Reading expands your horizon. Reading gives you ideas and makes you want to write.
7.) Give up all those self help writing books and magazines. They make you feel worthless and they suggest little tricks will make your stuff brilliant but which don't really work in practice. Instead read real literary magazines and good books, learn from them. Read bad books too, once in a while, to see where the train really derails. The goal is for you to develop your own critical/analytical abilities.
8.) If your writer's block persists, seriously ask yourself if you want to write. Writing is terribly hard and just plain terrible. There's little fun, we do it alone. It even sucks when we're on a roll. But still we keep at it. If you don't get off on this type of self chosen torture, maybe you need to create in a different way. Other people my see their block related to larger life issues. They may require therapy to move past something or they may need medication for chemical depression. None of these are sins, they are levels of acceptance and awareness.
9.) Friends are friends, readers of drafts are readers. Don't mix them up. Get the best writer you can to read your work to offer feedback on the drafts. Friends don't have the knowledge and experience for this but they'll want to see their name first in the credits.
10.) Writing groups can be useful but they're mostly great levelers. Members offer uninformed opinions, they tend to shy away from extremes, they play it safe, the tone suffers from ugly group dynamics. You need a dynamic group leader who recognizes these issues, whose expertise is in motivating each person on their own track, and who supports your experimentation, who in fact helps you learn to contextualize and defend your experiments in light of group norms.


TEN TIPS FOR BREAKING A WRITER'S BLOCK
When a writers block hits, it's as though the world has closed up. For some writers the block can last months. The following tricks will help break the block.
1.) Recognize if you've been working particularly hard that you may need a complete break. Richard Ford takes a year off after publishing a book before he jumps into a new project. Take the time, don't read, don't write. Or read and don't write. Try naked bowling.
2.) Clean your work area and make a decision that you will begin to write.
3.) Sit down and free write for a certain amount of time, no excuses. Read Peter Elbow's books on free writing if you don't know what I mean. Do not judge your writing at this point. The goal is to write.
4.) Stop working on the big project for a while, allow many others to start in the form of notes. This means...
5.) Stop judging your work for a while. I think most blocks come from either a fear of not succeeding or of being over critical about what we are doing. The goal is to find freedom and joy in the process again. If you're worried about keeping your critical skills sharp write a review of another writer's work, or read some non fiction. Clive James has some nice critical essays in this regard.
6.) Stop rushing toward closure. Writers ruin their process by pressuring themselves to wrap up a project. Allow it to sit and ferment, to change and grow. The operative word is "allow". If you have a deadline, a class, for example, you may end up with a slightly ragged work, but if you've been steadily working and allowing it to grow, you will find more depth enters the work. Vladimir Horowitz, great pianist, made tons of faux notes while playing at Carnegie Hall, but the energy and interpretation more than carried the day.
7.) Turn off the negative thoughts. Sounds trite but when I talk to writers suffering from a block they describe themselves and their work extremely negatively saying things like: I can't do this, my work is terrible, even telling everyone they have writer's block. It becomes sort of self perpetuating. Stop worrying.
8.) Remember that Hemingway said all first drafts are shit. One of the greatest writers in the world. If he believes this we should too. In otherwords, take the pressure off yourself to make anything good.
9.) Allow your voice to be. What I mean is sometimes blocks come because we're trying to write "good" stuff or "literary" stuff when what we really need to be doing is just telling our story the way we need to tell it with our own voice. It may be an odd voice or one that most people don't like. So what.
10.) Write first, revise later. Don't mix this up unless your Anthony Burgess. Write as much and as fast as you can, have fun, play games, experiment. Do not judge. Only judge at a later point when the entire draft is done and you get into revision mode. To mix these up is a a recipe for writer's block.

Rarefied Literature Deserving to be Read

I took stock of my reading list/pile/heap and realized a good deal of my interest lies with metafiction. The latest book has been The Death of the Novel and Other Stories by Ronald Sukenick, 1932-2004. The link takes you to a google book where you can read some of it. This is one of those books that prompts me to think about all sorts of things related to style, structure, storytelling, and writing in general. Apparently half the book is a transcription of conversations that were tape recorded, not my favorite parts, and the rest more conventionally structured prose. The latter should be required reading.

Sukenick says he wants to write a story with infolding and outfolding, and he achieves it. Stories move forward in a highly educated stream of consciousness but then they loop back around, revisiting threads and following tangents. What I like best in today's climate is how he really redefines a story in a hypernarrative form -- nearest in intent and style are, in my recent memory, works by Metcalf and Michaels, and a short work by Acker in Biting the Error. If editors want to get an idea what a story can be -- they keep asking for stories that take risks -- they'd do well to read this book.

The Birds is a hilarious end to the book and it includes one of the funnier little quips I've read in a while. I'll try to remember it exactly: Q. What is the defining characteristic of the Bald Eagle? A. Its balls.