Books I was Forced to Read

When you're an English major, you (pretend to) read a lot of books you wouldn't normally read but have to because it's a requirement. Somewhere in my third or fourth year, I took a contemporary Canadian literature course. I'm not sure how I passed this course, let alone achieved at least a B, because virtually all of the books sucked ass. I just found a bunch in my basement I'm going to make Laura read, for validation that I'm not just uncultured and they do actually suck.

My Paris, by Gail Scott

"My Paris is not for those who dislike grammatical experimentation. But for those who do enjoy playing with language, this memoir (billed as a novel) of six months in Paris in 1993 is a pleasure."

It is not a pleasure. Not. A. Pleasure. Here is the first paragraph. I didn't get past the first page because I was too busy gouging my eyes out. 

1. Like a heroine from Balzac. I am on a divan. Narrow. Covered with a small abstract black-and-white print. At end a rice-paper screen. Three mahogany-framed partitions. Pale eggshell walls curving gracefully at corners. Staring up at slender almost ceiling-high radiators. A library with four crescent shelves. Low comfortable black-and-white canape. Low end tables. Glass posed on metal. Grey round dining table and matching chairs on heavy chrome legs. Teak desk with computer. Teak console with television. Video. Fax. Green and yellow rugs on hardwood floors. One with a designer's initials in the corn.

I was a Professional Writing minor. I learned how to edit people's sentence fragments. Then I was required to read this, which government tax dollars helped to publish.

Ana Historic, by Daphne Marlatt

"Ana Historic is written in a stream of consciousness narrative mode, which uses a flow of language that resembles thought, and often a lack of punctuation, to represent an interior thought process or point of view."

Again, I did not get past the first page because I was in the emergency room receiving treatment for my bleeding, injured eyes. Except apparently this makes me uncultured, because this novel is Canadian literary canon, and especially queer literary canon.

Who's There? she was whispering. knock knock. in the dark. only it wasn't dark had woken her to her solitude, conscious alone in the night of his snoring more like snuffling dreaming elsewhere, burrowed into it, under the covers against her in animal sleep. he was dreaming without her in some place she had no access to and she was awake. now she would have to move, shift, legs aware of themselves and wanting out. a truck gearing down somewhere. the sound of a train, in some yard where men already up were working signals, levers, lamps. she turned the clock so she could see its blue digital light like some invented mineral glowing, radium 4:23. it was the sound of her own voice had woken her, heard like an echo asking,
         who's there?

I prefer the books I read to be accessible and engaging. I would rather read Fifty Shades a thousand times over than attempt to complete reading either of these novels. If that makes me uncultured and gauche... well...

Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson

"The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present."

He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet. Born about 650 B.C on the north coast of Sicily in a city called Himera, he lived among refugees who spoke a mixed dialect of Chalcidian and Doric. A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen. Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do. Stesichoros' words were collected in twenty-six books of which there remain to us a dozen or so titles and several collections of fragments. Not much is known about his working life (except the famous story that he was struck blind by Helen; see Appendixes A, B, and C).

I made it further in this book. Except most of it's in verse, and I'm not a huge fan of poetry in general, so I have no clue what this book is about either.

Restlessness, by Aritha Van Herk

Restlessness is about a paid assassin an international courier who hires another paid assassin to kill her rather than commit suicide. It's a fascinating exploration of depression and loneliness. And this summary is not in quotations because I wrote it myself, because I actually read this novel and enjoyed it. The only thing I had to look up was the narrator's occupation, which I remembered incorrectly. My copy of this book is riddled by notes in all different colors, which I find visually pleasing. I read this book when I was 20 or 21. I was depressed at the time, but have since gone through several cycles and different types of depression, as well as counselling, and have otherwise got 10 (okay, 12) more years of experience under my belt and may actually read it again. I also wish I still had the essay I'm sure I wrote about it (judging by all the margin notes) so I could more accurately compare my thoughts on depression between then and now.

I am alone in a room with the man who has agreed to kill me.
      Such an ordinary room, without a hint of gothic foreboding or sinister intent, the walls papered with some elegant stripe, the curtains hanging a polite two inches above the floor, which is decorously warmed with good quality Berber. Two armchairs hold wide their elbows in front of the window, a bed, substantial and bolstered and duvetted, metaphor for comfort and the sleep that is supposed to knit up raveled sleeves, rafts the center of the room.

That first sentence alone is enough to suck you in. The description of the room is pretty evocative, except the last sentence could really use some help a red Sharpie.

If I remember correctly, this course also included some plays and several books of poetry. I read the plays, not so much the poetry. One of the books of poetry was written by the instructor of the course, which seemed like a great way to force people to actually buy your really boring poetry. I think this course was probably English 455: Contemporary Canadian Fiction and Poetry, or something close to that as it's the closest one on the list on the English department website currently. It has been rebranded  Canadian Literature in Transnational Times and sounds infinitely more interesting.

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is about a First Nations woman who moves to the Downtown Eastside and eventually dies. It would have been really interesting to study this after actually having spent time working in the Downtown Eastside, and then post-Robert Willie Pickton.

The Rez Sisters I read, but don't actually remember. Billy Bishop Goes to War was fun cuz I like me some history, and it's a one-man play.

Boringass books with bad grammar aside, if I hadn't majored in English, I don't think I would have come as easily to the realization that - for reals, dude - it's not just white people who make contributions to art, culture, and society. For serious. I grew up in a blue collar home in a really, really white town. The high school books read were, as far as I remember, all about white people. Except Hiroshima and Obasan, so Japanese people existed and made contributions, but they were limited to topics related to WWII. Otherwise it was just white people.