2023
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Autobiography as Original Sin
In the posthumously published book about memory and photography, the American author Janet Malcolm (1934-2021) gives this warning about the harmful impact of personal memories on writing: My mind is filled with lovely plotless memories of [her father]. The memories with a plot are, of course, the ones that commit the original sin of autobiography, which gives it its vitality if not its raison d’être. They are the memories of conflict, resentment, blame, self-justification –- and it is wrong, unfair, inexcusable to publish them “Who asked you to tarnish my image with your miserable little hurts?” the dead person might reasonably ask. (p.32) Memory is not a journalist’s tool. Memory glimmers and hints, but shows nothing sharply or clearly. Memory does not render characters. Memory has no regard for the reader. If an autobiography is to be minimally readable, the autobiographer must step in and subdue…its passion for the tedious. (p. 154) Janet Malcolm, Still Pictures – On Photography and Memory, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan, 2023. March 24 
A book with an accurate title
Atlas of the Invisible by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti is intended to change the way we see the world. It shows data concerning highly complex issues (climate change, natural disasters, population trends, etc.,) and presents them in richly visual maps and charts. The authors want to make visible “the invisible patterns” we rarely see. Their book is beautifully laid out and the print quality is superb. They assembled their book during the interruptions of COVID-19. In their introduction they write, “In visualizing data we, we transform it into information, which equips those in position to protect us…For centuries, atlases depicted what people could see: roads, rivers, mountains. Today we need graphics to reveal the patterns that shape our lives.” They describe their book as “an ode to the unseen, to a world of information that cannot be conveyed through text or numbers alone. In the years to come, our hope is that patterns we’ve made visible will inform how you view the choice between business as usual and rebuilding a better world.” Slightly adjusted, they could be describing the goal of all good writing: to depict observed and unnoticed circumstances that can bring new awareness to readers, as authors dig deep into the details of matters invisible or unvisited. When underlying patterns are finally identified, choices and options become clearer. This is true in works of fiction and non-fiction alike. As the great novelist George Eliot concludes about her character Dorothea in Middlemarch (1871-2), even things that are invisible have a power over us all. “Certainly [the] determining acts of her life were ... the mixed result of a young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. … Her full nature, like [a] river…spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” March 18 |
Atlas of the Invisible - Maps and Graphics that Will Change How You See the World, James Cheshire & Oliver Uberti, W. W. Norton, 2021.
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Canada in ‘68
No, this is not nostalgia for what happened after Expo '67 closed its doors. For a comprehensive overview of writing and publishing in Canada and about Canada, here is a 68-page presentation of the depth and range of recent Canadian writing. The 2023 edition of The Canadian Studies Collection/Collection en études canadiennes, published by agency Livres Canada Books gives a fascinating overview of the preoccupations and creativity within the non-fiction world of Canadian writing and publishinig. Here’s a link to this 68-page catalogue on the Livres Canada Books website: https://www.livrescanadabooks.com/Catalogues/Canadian-Studies-Collection/Canadian-Studies-Collection March 8 |
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Detail from a Jan van der Straet engraving in the Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/gepksmnb
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Small presses are thriving even as “big” presses try to become ever bigger.
A recent article in the UK celebrated no fewer than 48 successful "small" publishers. Their success is based on “grassroots bookmaking” according to Philip Jones, chair of the The Bookseller’s publishing awards. “These publishers are reaping the rewards from dedicated and often inspirational publishing, hands-on author care and community building.” One of the finalists, Kevin Duffy, of Bluemoose Books in the north of England describes the work as “Tough, every week is a battle … [but] independent bookshops are telling us that readers are saying they’re not finding anything different, and independent bookshops are pointing to smaller independent publishers. I think that’s one of the reasons why independent presses are being shortlisted and winning literary prizes, because we are taking risks the bigger publishers aren’t.” Penny Thomas, of Firefly Press in Wales says that ever-increasing competition for contracts and sales “means sales have to grow fast for indie publishers to survive. Small presses, including those based outside of London, do definitely publish big books, but with relatively diminutive marketing budgets we are always fighting to be seen in the trade and to get those books out to readers…. We are realistic enough to know that we have to stay at the very top of our game and publish outstanding books.” Britain’s Small Press of the Year winner will be announced in May. February 25 |
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Writing Biography or Autobiography: Is it all a matter of perception?
As Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience professor Anil Seth explains, this is where things get really tricky. How to explain choices, motivations, and unique life-stories? “Every time science has displaced us from the centre of things, it has given back far more in return. The Copernican revolution gave us a universe – one which astronomical discoveries of the last hundred years have expanded far beyond the limits of human imagination. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection gave us a family, a connection to all other living species and an appreciation of deep time and of the power of evolutionary design. And now the science of consciousness … is breaching the last remaining bastion of human exceptionalism – and presumed specialness of our conscious minds – and showing this, too, to be deeply inscribed into the wider patterns of nature. Everything in conscious experience is a perception of sorts, and every perception is a kind of controlled – or controlling – hallucination. What excites me most about this way of thinking is how far it may take us. Experiences of free will are perceptions. The flow of time is a perception. Perhaps even the three-dimensional structure of our experienced world and the sense that the contents of perceptual experience are objectively real – these may be aspects of perception too.” From: Being You – A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth, Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2021, p.282 February 11 |
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Writer and Editor – Poetry
Speaking in an interview of two editors that she has worked with, Evelyn Lau explains the creative input she values:
"…both have been really good about making extremely minor adjustment, down to, as I say, a punctuation mark; that might be the only thing that they would suggest changing in a poem. But, of course, by the time the manuscript has landed on their desk, I’ve gone through it so many times that I don’t want huge intervention. That would be just horrible. But they’ve both been really sensitive about, just making really slight but important suggestions where, one thing that changed in a poem can really change the entire poem. So I am looking for somebody with that sort of eye, that is very close and not ham-handed at all. I guess that would be the term, right? As a poet you don’t want someone coming in and misunderstanding what you do. But even prose editors can misunderstand, especially if your prose is poetic and at the forefront of their thoughts is something like, is the grammar correct? [Laughs.] Well it may not be entirely correct, but once you correct the grammar, it completely throws off the rhythm. So you want someone who can understand the artistry that you are trying to do."
From: John Vardon In Conversation - The Constant Clamour for Words: A Conversation with Evelyn Lau. The New Quarterly – Canadian Writers & Writing, Number 165, Winter 2003, p. 41.
www.tnq.ca
February 6
Speaking in an interview of two editors that she has worked with, Evelyn Lau explains the creative input she values:
"…both have been really good about making extremely minor adjustment, down to, as I say, a punctuation mark; that might be the only thing that they would suggest changing in a poem. But, of course, by the time the manuscript has landed on their desk, I’ve gone through it so many times that I don’t want huge intervention. That would be just horrible. But they’ve both been really sensitive about, just making really slight but important suggestions where, one thing that changed in a poem can really change the entire poem. So I am looking for somebody with that sort of eye, that is very close and not ham-handed at all. I guess that would be the term, right? As a poet you don’t want someone coming in and misunderstanding what you do. But even prose editors can misunderstand, especially if your prose is poetic and at the forefront of their thoughts is something like, is the grammar correct? [Laughs.] Well it may not be entirely correct, but once you correct the grammar, it completely throws off the rhythm. So you want someone who can understand the artistry that you are trying to do."
From: John Vardon In Conversation - The Constant Clamour for Words: A Conversation with Evelyn Lau. The New Quarterly – Canadian Writers & Writing, Number 165, Winter 2003, p. 41.
www.tnq.ca
February 6
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“The hand speaks to the brain as surely as the brain speaks to the hand.”
Robertson Davies, What’s Bred in the Bone In a Guardian article on British novelist Alex Preston, who’s composing his next novel entirely in longhand, the interviewer himself says that using a pen and notebook keeps him in touch with the craft of writing. “It’s a deep-felt, uninterrupted connection between thought and language which technology seems to short circuit.” Canadian journalist, Andrew Coyne agrees: “Text on a computer is definitely corrigible: We commit to nothing, either in words or sentence structure…Handwriting, to the contrary, forces us to make an investment. It inclines us thus to compose the sentence in our heads first – and the other sort of sentence you can compose and keep in your head is likely to be shorter and clearer than otherwise.” Military historian Nathan Greenfield says part of the joy of using a fountain pen is that it’s a beautiful object, but also that it gives him a feel for language. …With a pen and ink you’re your own software. And, an added bonus, there’s no metadata; no one tracks your notebooks.” Ted Bishop: The Social Life of Ink - Culture, Wonder, and Our Relationship with the Written Word, Viking/Penguin, 2014, p. 298-9. January 29 |
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Thinking about editing and corrections and lots of paper
“The printing process involves more than just reformatting a manuscript with the goal of generating a large number of copies to circulate through time and space. It also encompasses a text’s transition into a sphere of error correction and heightened claims to truth. Printing involves press proofs, preliminary corrections, and thorough reviews. The inevitability of printing errors is not eliminated by the ability to print an improved, revised edition of a book, but it is kept in check. … Modern authors are their own editors even before they approve their manuscripts for publication. When Erasmus of Rotterdam described the printed book as an object that permitted, and demanded, a theoretically endless sequence of corrections and revisions, he was not referring to printing alone. Correcting misprints is the job of the printer and typesetter, but factual errors or imperfect verses are corrected in the manuscript itself. In other words, this is the job of the author. In a letter from 1651, Guez de Balzac wrote that in the course of abridging, editing, and reworking a single satire he has used up ‘une demy rame de papier,’ or half a ream. Taken literally, this would have been 250 sheets of paper.” Lothar Müller: White Magic – The Age of Paper, translated by Jessica Spengler, Polity Press, 2014. January 24 |
From the Office of Correction: A Guide to Proofing from the 17th Century
In 1677 in England, Jospeh Moxon (1627 - 1691) published a how-to guide for printers. Here are the pages from his Mechanik Exercsies, Or The Doctrine of Handy-Works in which he explains how a printer needs to "proof" a page before the final printing stage. He reminds would-be printers/editors that they are financially responsible for errors: "For if by neglect a Heap is spoiled, he is obliged to make Reparation."
To browse this remarkably detailed how-to guide to printing, here is a link to its page on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/mechanickexercis00moxo/
(January 13)
In 1677 in England, Jospeh Moxon (1627 - 1691) published a how-to guide for printers. Here are the pages from his Mechanik Exercsies, Or The Doctrine of Handy-Works in which he explains how a printer needs to "proof" a page before the final printing stage. He reminds would-be printers/editors that they are financially responsible for errors: "For if by neglect a Heap is spoiled, he is obliged to make Reparation."
To browse this remarkably detailed how-to guide to printing, here is a link to its page on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/mechanickexercis00moxo/
(January 13)
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Craft: Editing
"I always wanted to be unseen and unheard, which is what editors should be."
In an interview with National Public Radio's Terry Gross, the American editor Robert Gottlieb stresses "service" as the central role of the editor. Famous for editing works by John le Carré, Joseph Heller, and Toni Morrison, he said, "I feel as an editor, it's my job to make the case that I need to make and then it's his job to eventually agree or disagree. You know, I never cease explaining or telling young people who want to be editors, it's a service job. Our job is to serve the word, serve the author, serve the text. It's not our book, it's not my book. It's his book or her book. But it's a very gratifying job. And I love the editing process. I love it as an editor. And since I've done a lot of writing myself, to my astonishment, I love being edited because it's the process that I like. I don't care whether I'm the editor or the editee. It's fun and it's interesting to see how you can make something that you believe is good even better."
Here's a link to the NPR's Fresh Air interview: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/03/1146641641/robert-gottlieb-caro-power-broker-turn-every-page-lizzie-gottlieb
(January 8)
"I always wanted to be unseen and unheard, which is what editors should be."
In an interview with National Public Radio's Terry Gross, the American editor Robert Gottlieb stresses "service" as the central role of the editor. Famous for editing works by John le Carré, Joseph Heller, and Toni Morrison, he said, "I feel as an editor, it's my job to make the case that I need to make and then it's his job to eventually agree or disagree. You know, I never cease explaining or telling young people who want to be editors, it's a service job. Our job is to serve the word, serve the author, serve the text. It's not our book, it's not my book. It's his book or her book. But it's a very gratifying job. And I love the editing process. I love it as an editor. And since I've done a lot of writing myself, to my astonishment, I love being edited because it's the process that I like. I don't care whether I'm the editor or the editee. It's fun and it's interesting to see how you can make something that you believe is good even better."
Here's a link to the NPR's Fresh Air interview: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/03/1146641641/robert-gottlieb-caro-power-broker-turn-every-page-lizzie-gottlieb
(January 8)
Craft: Anne Campbell on Writing
The Deck God
I sit on my deck today
circling in on God
from behind my studio watch grass reach up; shoots
rest on one another leaning forward they bend
in places where elk nest lay their great goodies down
today
beginning is
full of cloud but warmed beyond hope touched
by this gift my soul is making (concrete) words whole
(#8: Banff Poems in Soul to Touch, Hagios Press, Regina, 2009, p.66.)
Anne Campbell (1938 - 2022), writer and long-time arts and
cultural heritage advocate passed away peacefully on October 20th, 2022,
(January 7) in the Palliative Care Unit, Pasqua Hospital, Regina.
The Deck God
I sit on my deck today
circling in on God
from behind my studio watch grass reach up; shoots
rest on one another leaning forward they bend
in places where elk nest lay their great goodies down
today
beginning is
full of cloud but warmed beyond hope touched
by this gift my soul is making (concrete) words whole
(#8: Banff Poems in Soul to Touch, Hagios Press, Regina, 2009, p.66.)
Anne Campbell (1938 - 2022), writer and long-time arts and
cultural heritage advocate passed away peacefully on October 20th, 2022,
(January 7) in the Palliative Care Unit, Pasqua Hospital, Regina.
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Craft: Setting the tone before a scene of conflict
The shadows are lengthening. Across the stripped crests of the elms, beyond the curtain of a row of poplars, white house fronts and blue roofs sparkle in the level light. Hardly anyone is about. Jean can hear the creak of wheels ploughing through the mud of a sunken road, but the cart itself is invisible. Etched upon the horizon, a grey horse and a bay are drawing a plough across a gently undulating expanse of stubble, the soft brown clods rising soundlessley beside the gleaming share. A belated puddle shines amongst the tree-trunks, where, overhead, abandoned nests crouch like big black spiders in their web of leafless boughs. The ploughman has reached the end of the field; slowly he swings his horses round and starts a new furrow. The grey horse, now coming toward Jean, conceals both the plough and the bay horse, and seems to be advancing by itself. The wind drops. The creak of cart-wheels has died away. The dead leaves cease rustling. All is still... From Jean Barois, the 1913 novel by the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, Roger Martin du Gard. First English edition translated by Suart Gilbert and published by the Viking Press in 1949. (p. 77) (January 5) |
Winter Shades of White
"Under a dark sky walking by the river...There all was sad-coloured and the colour caught the eye, red and blue and stones in the river beaches brought out by patches of white-blue snow, that is, snow quite white and dead but yet it seems as if some blue or lilac screen masked it somewhere between it and the eye: I have often noticed it. The swells and hillocks of the river sands and fields were sketched and gilded out by frill upon frill of snow...Where the snow lies as in a field the demasking of white light and silvery shade may be watched indeed till brightness and glare is all lost in a perplexity of shadow and in the whitest of things the senes of white is lost, but at a shorter gaze I see two degrees in it - the darker, facing the sky, and the lighter in the tiny cliffs or scarps where the snow is broken or raised into ridges, these catching the sun perhaps or at all event directly hitting the eye and gilded with an arch brightness, like the sweat in the moist hollow between the the eyebrows and the eyelids on a hot day..."
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Journal entry, Winter, 1872.
The Major Works, Oxford World's Classics, 1986, p. 214.
(January 1)
"Under a dark sky walking by the river...There all was sad-coloured and the colour caught the eye, red and blue and stones in the river beaches brought out by patches of white-blue snow, that is, snow quite white and dead but yet it seems as if some blue or lilac screen masked it somewhere between it and the eye: I have often noticed it. The swells and hillocks of the river sands and fields were sketched and gilded out by frill upon frill of snow...Where the snow lies as in a field the demasking of white light and silvery shade may be watched indeed till brightness and glare is all lost in a perplexity of shadow and in the whitest of things the senes of white is lost, but at a shorter gaze I see two degrees in it - the darker, facing the sky, and the lighter in the tiny cliffs or scarps where the snow is broken or raised into ridges, these catching the sun perhaps or at all event directly hitting the eye and gilded with an arch brightness, like the sweat in the moist hollow between the the eyebrows and the eyelids on a hot day..."
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Journal entry, Winter, 1872.
The Major Works, Oxford World's Classics, 1986, p. 214.
(January 1)