Category: fiction

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Reading Fiction

One casualty of the COVID-19 lockdown has been the fact that I can’t read fiction. The good news is that this doesn’t affect my ability to read/revise my own writing, however any plans I’d had to finish or start something transportive I’ve had to set aside.

My assumption is that this is a product of low-level fight/flight/freeze instinct at play. Once again, there’s a very real danger out there, after all. A lot of very real deaths out there, too, which has in turn halted the world’s economies. Mass layoffs, and entire industries staring into the mirror, wondering what awaits them around the corner. Fast-forward two endless months, and each province, state, and country is playing a game of How Much Do We Open, some more cagily than others. And still the thrills and chills — commercial real estate as we know it may be undergoing a paradigm change — continue.

Whatever the reason, I just don’t have the space for fiction at the moment. I have enough room in my head to be able to navigate the world (as well as the fictional ones I’ve created) and that’s about it. And, believe me reader, I would love nothing more than to finish Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Big Green Tent, which is a lovingly told novel about the lives of a trio of young men (and by extension their loved ones and colleagues) in post-Stalinist USSR. I suppose the good news is that I get to savour it?

As for non-fiction? I’m mainlining that shit. And I’m so thankful for my subscriptions to the Literary Review of Canada, and (a Christmas 2019 gift) the London Review of Books. Yes, make of this what you will, but though I don’t have room in my head for fiction, I have more than enough for reading essays about books (some of which are fiction).

I’m also thankful that I’d started learning a musical instrument last year — being able to practice guitar (and, more importantly, relearn a lot of music theory I’d abandoned decades ago) allows me to appreciate music in a fuller way than I have previously as just a listener/devotee.

So, perhaps it bears repeating: there are no awards being handed out when this is all over, because the “all over” will neither be soon, nor easily measurable because it stands to happen very gradually (and I’m not placing any bets on the “all” part). A lot of us who have had our self-development routines halted — going to the gym, dance class, recreational team sports, for instance — are looking for ways to perform (on a basic level at least) so that we feel some sense of personal progress. And the truth is that I think we will all be left on our own to make sense of this, in our own ways — which is perhaps the equivalent of a participation badge rather than an award.

Just make the best of it. Don’t expect a lot, because this is a crisis. Take whatever you can find in terms of growth and accept that for what it is. Routines will come, but later. Relaxation will come, but later. Reading fiction (for me, at least) will come, but later.

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Comedy

The next book is going to different.

I’ve given up on “the next book isn’t going to be an ambitious book” because inevitably I churn out something that ends up doing so, or at least attempting. That said, I would like to write something funny, which is hard — at least if you’re aiming for something that is consistently funny. Then there’s the type of funny. Not all funny is funny to all, and that’s the main problem with writing something comedic: it has to have a consistency that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from other genres (as long as a thriller contains a handful of thrills then it earns the merit badge of its title), and not just in terms of how populated it is with humour; there’s consistency in terms of the volume of material but there’s also consistency in terms of texture — is this a satire that a smaller number of people with more rarefied knowledge will appreciate (think of the film The Square, a wry satire of the upper echelons of the art world), or a broader, more bombastic, plot-driven variety (see Hitchhiker’s Guide)?

It’s intimidating and I may abandon the whole thing, but Radioland, my second book (hello, publishers at this year’s London and Frankfurt Book Fairs — my agent will be looking for you!), took a lot out of me and I’m looking to try something stylistically different.

Wish me luck!

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The One I Feed

If I’ve learned anything this year it’s the command, perhaps even the primacy, that music holds over my creative life, which is strange(ish) for someone who isn’t a full- or even part-time musician. Let me qualify “someone who isn’t a full- or even part-time musician”: I can play drums decently well, I’m barely adequate on keyboards, and I’m beginning to develop confidence on electric guitar. But there are no stakes for me: I’m not in a band, I’m not hoping to become a recording artist. So, as an established/emerging writer, what’s the deal?

The deal is that music presents as part of a triumvirate of full-blooded influences on me: music, film, and writing. I am incomplete as an artist without one of these. Don’t get me wrong, I love other forms of art — dance, painting, sculpture, etc (to infinity) — it’s just that my DNA is activated by music, film, and writing.

But the predominancy of music in my life sometimes has me worried.

Let’s start with writing. Music twists around my work almost symbiotically. The Society of Experience involves a character whose day job is a music supervisor for film and TV productions, and thus the narrative is punctuated with songs from the very beginning; the main character is sometimes haunted by the sound of a jukebox in the bar beneath his apartment. And yes, of course I created a soundtrack for the book’s launch (which features music mentioned within as well as inspired by the themes and subject matter). My next novel, Radioland, involves a “successful” musician having a nervous breakdown. The novel I’m working on right now, [untitled matt cahill project], involves the power of a DJ on a young boy in the country. If I could afford the rights I would quote song lyrics to introduce book sections.

Even when it comes to film, music has been immensely influential. From the quirky soundtrack of Brazil to the Wagnerian flourishes of Excalibur, I have not only fed deeply on music scores and soundtracks but have followed a countless number of rabbit holes. If it hadn’t been for watching Underground, I wouldn’t have spent a year chasing down recordings of Serbian brass band music. In film school, one of the best things I ever did was a one-take b&w short I shot on a wind-up Bolex that I played back w/ The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Reverence blasting in the background.

I care deeply about music to the extent that, on a social occasion where we were taking turns playing songs on a nearby jukebox based on a chosen theme, I was asked to choose 3 songs I hated. I said I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t because a) it meant sitting through 3 songs I hated, and b) life is too short to listen to songs you don’t like. It made for an awkward moment and I felt somewhat precious, but that’s how it goes when you take a principled stand about most things.

So, my worries, however ephemeral, are whether I’m suffering from a blindspot in how I prioritize music. Is it a blinder? Is my appreciation for it distorting my perspective insofar as my writing (in particular) might suffer? I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of artist friends, and the ones I do have probably wouldn’t deem this to be something worth much concern. That said, sometimes I wonder: am I using one art form to inform and/or expand another, or am I misusing either/both? Should I be concerned when things become sacrosanct? 

These are not really questions that require answers, but as an artist who wishes to be reasonably self-aware, they are good to ask nonetheless.

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Content Discontent

I think I’ve had my fill of TV (streaming or otherwise) and mainstream films.

The first problem is mine, and is one of saturation. I worked in film and TV post-production for 20 years, watching everything from 15-second TV commercials to multi-part TV series, to box office-busting films. And part of working in film and TV is keeping up your fluency so that you can communicate effectively with each other (if a director makes a reference to Picnic at Hanging Rock you better be ready to watch it if you haven’t seen it already). Also, I’ve watched hundreds of films and countless TV shows over the course of my life — the seminal and forgettable, the laughable and the revelatory.

I’ve pretty much seen every storyline at least once. I’ve seen every twist and turn, every “surprise ending.” I’ve seen every plot device, every sort of villain, every sort of (male) anti-hero, every sort of Disneyesque sentimentality and every sort of nihilist purging of the arthouse soul. It’s hard for me to be taken in by a show or movie — either to suspend my disbelief or my anticipation of what the creators are going to do.

The second problem is out of my hands. In this age of streaming services, we are awash with content. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave, etc. all require things to put on their virtual shelves so that we can be enticed to part with our money in order to explore their goods. I have no problem with this business model — it’s basically turned into (back to?) cable TV. The problem is one of quality. It seems that, in the effort to fill the shelves  seasons are lengthened with filler and show renewals are rubber-stamped that end up being samizdat versions of the preceding season. Multiplexes are filled with the faddish (and profitable) notion that (see: Marvel) everything can be part of a franchise. If I hear another producer say “We originally imagined this as a trilogy/series in four-parts” I’m going to scream.

What bugs the shit out of me is how this affects what’s presented as upper tier programming. A good example is Good Omens, the heralded adaptation of Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett’s collaboration. I haven’t read the original book — I have a notion that it’s written in a larger-than-life, Douglas Adams-y style — but the show is painful to watch. It wants to be sly and slick satire and it has strong early moments, but it’s all so buffoonishly overplayed — the actors who aren’t line-reading chew their way through the scenery — to the degree where I had to wonder whether the producers might’ve considered making it for children. The worst is that for a six-part series there’s barely enough story to take up three. I lost count of how many time-sucking flashbacks and side-stories are introduced in order to lead to the telegraphed, overdue finale. Speaking of Gaiman, adaptations, and overdue finales, please see the meandering second season of American Gods (which I abandoned).

For the record, I don’t have a problem with the Marvel Universe franchise. They’re not hiding anything: it’s a stream of big-ass popcorn epics. They aren’t being released as exemplars of anything other than “hey, here’s a well-executed adaptation of a comic book most people haven’t read.” Sure, given the choice I’d rather watch an imperfect  Olivier Assayas film over Ant Man, but at least I can watch the latter and know where to keep my expectations dialled.

While I’m bleating, a trend I wish would die, pardon the pun, are films where it’s obvious the protagonist won’t get a scratch despite killing 100 hired assassins (see the three John Wick films, The Equalizer, and Colombiana). Where’s the suspense if you don’t allow the audience to imagine that, no, the protagonist might not make it. This is an inherent problem with films and TV shows that are made in the hope of infinite reboots: no suspense (see: Orphan Black, a prime example of where the producers missed multiple opportunities to draw more attention by killing off one of the clones).

Why can’t we make something, leave it be to stand on its own merits, and move on without exploiting its success with sequels and prequels and remakes and reboots? As good as the original was (and it is), who in god’s name, save for the cast and crew, asked for a second season of Big Little Lies? What part of that story begged for extended development? Note: Liane Moriarty, the author (whom I share a birthday with) whose novel was adapted into the show never wrote a sequel until the HBO adaptation achieved success (she ended up writing a novella by request, not exactly the way any author would like to work, let alone revisit characters, though I don’t blame her).

Anyhow, I sometimes wonder, in the industry’s effort to satisfy its appetite for content, whether we are sacrificing the magic of our relationship with entertainment for the sake of Say’s Law, the (questionable) belief that supply creates its own demand.

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Writing Adv*ce: Character

I’ve been thinking lately about a couple of short stories I’ve been working on over the last few years that don’t seem able to find a home with a publication. Now, there are a thousand reasons for a story to get rejected, and some of these have little to do with whether or not a story has issues to be worked out: subject matter, “fit,” philosophical angle. The stories I’ve been thinking about felt fleshed out and yet I suspected — no matter how badly I wanted to believe they were “done” — they were missing something that kept them from being as good as they promised to be, and, if I were honest with myself, the sort of work I want to be known for: complex, nuanced, readable.

One clear-headed morning on my walk to work, I was feeling comfortable enough to get over my nearsighted, belligerent writerly arrogance and apply some frank analysis to these two works.

Rather than bang my head against the wall staring at the works themselves, which I’d done previously, I took a different tack and investigated what it was that made some of my previously published work resonate and these current works not. And I realized, thinking specifically about Snowshoe and There Is This Thing About You, that the characters in these works were relatable — you might even despise them, yet there was a rapport with the reader, an “in”. These are difficult characters, conflicted, and sometimes there will be the desire to sublimate these characters onto a two-dimensional plane that makes it easy to dislike them. Yet, though we might grow impatient with their lack of finesse, accomplishment, and patience, the reader can’t help but want to relate to them, to understand what makes them tick. And in the stories I’ve been troubleshooting I discovered this very thing — relatability, respect, empathy — to be at least part of the missing element.

I recognized that each of these problematic stories featured a supporting character who was, to some degree, the bane of the main character’s journey; in each story the protagonist couldn’t possibly move forward without the effort of this unwitting adversary for whom in each story the protagonist lacked respect on some basic level. And it occurred to me that if the protagonist so clearly lacked respect for them on the page then on some level maybe I did too.

Despite this revelation, the work ahead is not paint-by-numbers. If anything, I realize that there’s a deeper layer that’s missing and by nature deep layers don’t just get applied like false eyelashes. It’s going to take some more reflection before I understand the meaning of what needs to be done, otherwise whatever I do is going to have QUICK FIX written all over it and the wily reader will see it a mile away.

Oh, and for anyone reading this who is under the impression that once these changes are made getting these stories published is a slam dunk, think again. Unless your name is Alice Munro you’re always going to find yourself at the whims of an editor or editorial reader — that’s just the way it goes.

(* I hate advice-giving, so rather than doing that, I’m going to provide something more meditative and complex, and maybe useful to some)

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A book, some photos

I swear I’m not a packrat, but sometimes you hold on to things for reasons that seem more intuitive than logical. Which brings me to a book on our shelf at home — The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. This was from Grade 9 English class, if I’m not mistaken.

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Let’s get something out of the way, in case that book cover looks cool. It has absolutely nothing to do with the story, its characters, the themes. I am afraid to say there are no weapon-wielding anthropomorphic insects, which was a crushing blow as I turned the pages at the time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book, and John Wyndham (The Midwich Cuckoos, The Day of the Triffids) was no slouch.

However, a couple of years ago, when I took it from the shelf to have a look, I found two photographs inserted. You see, back then I was a yearbook photographer, and these were a couple of photos I’d probably printed off at the time (this would have been 1985?) perhaps to give to one of the people pictured should I have seen them in the hallway between classes. It’s possible it was just a fancy bookmark. I don’t honestly remember, but I’m struck by the good condition of the paper (printed on glossy stock, which was verboten in the darkroom because of its cost and scarcity). If you look at the bottom margin of the upper photo below you can see that I didn’t square the cut.

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This is not a John Hughes film. At the end of the day, we’re looking at three teenagers standing at the rear (smokers’) entrance to Memorial Composite High School, in Stony Plain, Alberta. I sorta knew a couple of them. The guy in the middle was an asshole straight out of Stephen King’s Christine. I suppose I could grab my yearbook and look up their names, but all that’s going to give me are facts, right? What strikes me about the Wyndham book, the photographs, is how much of a time capsule it all is, as a somewhat complete package. Of a kid who was yanked from town to town, school to school, who didn’t get to have much say of where I went, what I had to endure along the way, who became more preoccupied with getting through it as opposed to (cue Hughes, whose movies I grew up watching) Having The Time Of My Life.

I suppose there’s a clever thing I could do: to connect the misrepresentation of the cover of The Chrysalids vs the more complex content, to the misrepresentation of how high school is sold to us vs the reality of growing up for many of us. So I will.

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Update: May 2017

My lack of updates (at least over the last few years) represent activity elsewhere (offline, or online somewhere else). In April I had the wonderful pleasure of being accepted at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity for a self-directed writing retreat. I hadn’t been to Banff since I was in my teens, so it was a great refresher on a very unique part of the country. It was also my second time visiting Alberta in the space of 6 months (previously over 20yrs before that), so with all that (including altitude and time changes) it was an intense, and dizzying, yet ultimately productive week. 

When I say “productive” I mean that I’ve been working on the next novel. I can’t say that I achieved any fist-pumping wordcount, but the quality of the content was my focus. I realized when I began to work that I’d written much of the “easy” stuff beforehand, leaving this idyllic escape the setting for me to enter a very challenging series of character mindsets. Not fun. There was beer. 

This past weekend, I got to take a getaway to Prince Edward County for some much-needed not work/not writing time away from home. I really love that neck of the woods. I have an affinity for rural environs: the smell of manure, the birdsounds, the expanse. And yes, the wonderful wine and beer, and cheese. Yet, coming back to Toronto, I realized that there were things missing that I would struggle to live without. Rural areas don’t have a lot of diverse culture (I will say that Picton has a very nice movie theatre, and Bloomfield has a cool-looking drive-in), and they also happen to be very white. By “very white” I mean they are almost exclusively enclaves of white people. I grew up in those sorts of enclaves and I am in no rush to return without some evidence that [wherever I fancy moving to one day]  welcomes POCs (persons of colour).

I’m working through a lot of ideas as a result of these two trips, some fictional, some filtered through autobiographical experience. Along the way, I’m hoping to begin posting writing-related ideas here (I say “ideas” because I’m not comfortable with “tips,” which springs from my work as a psychotherapist who eschews advice-driven approaches).

Stay tuned.

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ReLit 2016 Nomination!

I am honoured to have The Society of Experience shortlisted for the 2016 ReLit Awards. What are they, you ask, and wasn’t 2016 last year?

The ReLit Awards are, to quote the blurb on their site, “to acknowledge the best new work released by independent publishers — may not come with a purse, but it brings a welcome, back-to-the-books focus to the craft.” In other words, rather than being about money and televised coverage, it’s about quality. One distinguishing element of the ReLit Awards is that they select books from the previous year. Thus, the 2016 ReLit shortlist represents fiction, poetry, and short fiction from 2015.

I am with some good company:

The Capacity for Infinite Happiness, Alexis von Konigslow (Buckrider)
All-Day Breakfast, Adam Lewis Schroeder (Douglas & McIntyre)
One Hit Wonders, Patrick Warner (Breakwater)
Split, Libby Creelman (Goose Lane)
Chinkstar, Jon Chan Simpson (Coach House)
Too Much on the Inside, Danila Botha (Quattro)
Martin John, Anakana Schofield (Biblioasis)
Winnie’s Tongue, Nic Labriola (Insomniac)
One Hundred Days of Rain, Carellin Brooks (BookThug)
The Theory of Light at Midnight, Elizabeth Ukrainetz (Tightrope)
A Superior Man, Paul Yee (Arsenal)
A Free Man, Michel Basilieres (ECW)
The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan, Robert Hough (Anansi)
The Hunter and the Wild Girl, Pauline Holdstock (Goose Lane)
The Society of Experience, Matt Cahill (Buckrider)
Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Lynn Crosbie (Anansi)

I expect the selected category winners to be announced in a month’s time.

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Essay in Humber Literary Review #6

I’m happy to say that the latest issue of Humber Literary Review (#6) is out, and I have an essay included. This is their first themed issue, and it’s about mental health. Because I’m a psychotherapist who is deeply reflective about the way in which we choose to see the world, I saw this as a golden opportunity to submit a pertinent perspective; my essay, On Madness Within Imagination, confronts a cultural blindspot – the depiction of madness in fiction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is available at the following Toronto bookstores:

Another Story (on Roncesvalles)
Book City on the Danforth
Book City on Queen
Book City on St Clair
Book City in the Village
Presse Internationale on Bloor
Presse Internationale in the Beaches
Type Books (on Queen)

It is available elsewhere, of course, but I have no clue where. You can also purchase a subscription from HLR.

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December

Driving from Camrose to Calgary AB in November

It’s been a hell of a run. I am exhausted and happy to focus on my (very busy – not complaining) day job.

November’s tour of Alberta was wonderful, and I’m happy I pushed myself to make it happen (and grateful my publisher was able to wave her travel grant wand my way). I met readers, old friends, new friends, and relatives. I saw Alberta — a place I haven’t set foot in for almost 30 years — with fresh eyes (and a driver’s license). I could not have asked for a smoother tour, and I am thankful.

I am also tired, and am happy to put The Society of Experience to rest so that I can focus on the next book. I don’t want to publicize anything for a while. That said, I will have an essay coming out in the next issue of the Humber Literary Review, looking at our skewed depictions of madness in film and literature – that’s coming out in January, I am told.

If you are reading this, I hope you have a good December, and are able to find light in what was quite a dark 2016 for many.

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