Canadian Bookshelf

Balmy, blue skies outside my window, and I'm still in my bathrobe at 1:30 in the afternoon.  I'm currently taking time off from my day job in order to hibernate and finish writing my historical novel ...  So I shan't get distracted from the task at hand by launching into a blog post.  But if you feel like reading something I've written recently on my escape from academia and the process of writing my memoir, here is a short piece that was published in Canadian Bookshelf's blog. 

Book #63: Novel or Short Story?

“It had a beautiful screwdriver in it, the orange translucent handle gleaming like a lollipop in its worn leather loop, the silvery shaft sculpted, sparkling.  Sasha felt herself contract around the object in a single yawn of appetite; she needed to hold the screwdriver, just for a minute.”

                                                                                                       -Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

A few days ago, I wandered to my neighbourhood bookstore.  I’d spent the morning writing, but that slightly disoriented feeling of coming out of somewhere and blinking in the sun, not knowing which way to turn, had hit me, a sign that my writing might be on the verge of taking a wayward turn …  So I decided to put it aside and stroll to the bookstore.  I was searching for that one perfect novel that would inspire me.  I was craving a novel as tried and true as Edith Wharton’s TheHouse of Mirth – a longtime favourite on my bookshelf – and yet I wanted it to be set in the contemporary moment (not that I don’t love Wharton’s fin-de-siecle New York, of course). 

I flipped through Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the GoonSquad  somewhat randomly.  I had a vague memory of reading a review of the novel when it came out a couple years ago and picked up the Pulitzer Prize.  My eyes skimmed over the epigraph by Proust and launched into chapter one.  And speaking of Wharton’s Old New York …  Here it was, transported to the present.  What luck.  Our heroine, Sasha, a beautiful kleptomaniac, who snatches a wallet from the washroom of a hotel bar near the former World Trade Centre in the opening scene, has distinct hints of Wharton’s Lily Bart, a woman no less fragile and neurotic and unsure of what she really wants.  Not five pages in, I found myself engrossed in Sasha’s world, a place where the possessions of strangers suddenly beckon, throbbing with seemingly animate properties: the coveted wallet is described as “tender and overripe as a peach.”  The scene expertly cuts back and forth between Sasha’s recollection of stealing the wallet and her therapy session, where she lounges on the couch of her therapist, Coz, as they try to make sense of her peculiar predilection for thievery.  Not for money, not because she wants any of the random objects she steals for money.  Something more primal drives her desire to snatch these things – a treasured pen, a screwdriver, a lost mitten – which she displays in a shrine-like way on a table in her flat.  Her psychology struck me as reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s theory about the Collector, a figure who tries to “rescue” objects from the world of commerce to imbue them with a more unique, sentimental value. 

I wanted to know where the novel would go.  I wanted to know where life and love would take this deeply troubled, isolated young woman.  But although the book was nicely packaged to look like a novel – with a blurb on the back that makes it appear that the story is about Sasha – I should have detected that our author is subtly poking fun at the predictable conventions of the novel genre, with all its focus on forward-moving momentum and predetermined endings: “She and Coz were collaborators writing a story whose end had already been determined: she would get well.  She would stop stealing from people and start caring again about the things that had once guided her: music; the network of friends she’d made when she first came to New York; a set of goals she’d scrawled on a big sheet of newsprint and taped to the walls of her early apartments:

Find a band to manage
Understand the news
Study Japanese
Practice the harp”

It turns out that this very sense of “writing a story whose end had already been determined” is what Egan is subverting by telling a story – or series of stories – that do anything but that.  After standing in the bookstore and reading the first story, which reads so beautifully like chapter one of a long, lush novel, I bought the book and reclined on my sofa, only to realize that it isn’t a novel at all.  The stories fan out following the random, fortuitous connections of modern life, with a minor character in the first story (Sasha’s music producer boss, who’s known for sprinkling gold flakes in his coffee, an unusual drug of choice) turning into the main character of the next story, and so on.  Much as I enjoyed the sheer diversity of voices and experimental form that some of the stories take, there was a part of me, I have to admit, that still craved to know more about Sasha’s journey and fate.  My mind kept wandering back to her …  I wanted the novel.  My desire was not entirely thwarted, as a few of the later stories loop back to Sasha, illuminating a past or future moment in her life, now told from other characters’ perspectives.  It was just enough for my imagination to provide a shadow sketch of how own heroine’s life would have unfolded, were we reading a novel.    

Photo from: here

Book #62: Intimacy & Locality

"After one girl has fallen, the rest are explicable; they have a template, a precedent.  But before that, it is hard to understand.  At the beginning of this problem, then, is a single girl, the first to fall."                                                                          -Maggie Helwig, Girls Fall Down

Over the weekend, I read Maggie Helwig's Girls Fall Down, which was recently named the Toronto Public Library's One Book, a city-wide initiative to encourage Torontonians to read the same book in April.  Although I don't particularly like the idea of going with the herd in terms of my reading, I heard Helwig being interviewed on CBC and was so intrigued that I couldn't resist picking up her novel.

It's set in Toronto, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  One of its central themes is clearly the culture of fear that 9/11 initiated, yet I found Helwig's narrative technique of conveying this sense of mass hysteria to be unusual, delicate.  Although the novel is largely told from the perspective of her main character, Alex - a medical photographer who takes pictures of open heart surgery by day, while taking pictures of the grittier side of life at night - many of the chapters begin and end in an omniscient voice that pans over the city and goes into momentary close-ups on the lives of random inhabitants.  "Across the river, among the towers of St. Jamestown, a Somali girl tightened her head scarf, zipped up her red jacket and set out on her hike to deliver newspapers, and on the street an Iranian man who had once been a doctor cleaned vomit from the backseat of his taxi.  A woman put a pan of milk on the burner of her stove, and stared at the creamy ripples on the surface."  It's as though the city itself is a main character, replete with emotions and misery.

This misery takes many forms.  In the opening scene, we see a pretty, glossy haired girl at the centre of a clique of high school girls suddenly fall down on the subway, her skin erupting in a strange, vicious rash, while smelling something like roses.  The incident precipitates a mass panic that sweeps through Toronto, as other girls mysteriously collapse in the days that follow, while the same paranoia plays out in the mind of our protagonist, Alex, who suffers from diabetes and becomes convinced he's on the verge of going blind.  But it soon becomes clear that Alex's physical state is inextricably tied to a deeper turbulence.  An old flame (or fling, to be precise) named Suzanne has wandered back into his life, a girl he used to be secretly in love with, back during his misspent youth in the louche establishments of 1980s Kensington Market.  He's all too familiar with the feeling of having watched Suzanne for years - Susie-Paul, as she was known back then - flirting, seducing and discarding men at whim, when they used to work together at a small newspaper, and all the while he tried to convince himself that "there was something different between them, sharper and more actual.  But he was probably wrong."

The novel beautifully illustrates the past and all his unresolved feelings refracted through the present story, as she seeks Alex's help in finding her schizophrenic twin brother, who has gone missing in the ravines of the city.  For the first time, Alex comes to understand why she was so messed up all those years ago and he is brought face to face with all her fears, secrets and vulnerabilities that persist even now, well into her thirties.  In this sense, I found the novel deliciously revealing and close to the bone, and I found that the characters drew me into their peculiar circle of intimacy so well, perhaps partly because many of the scenes are set in my own neighbourhood (Little Italy) and other adjacent neighbourhoods, like Kensington, where I've also lived and idled away much time during my wayward youth ...  The perfect stimulant to my own writing and emotions, as I embark on writing the final section of my own novel, part of which is also set in Toronto.

And speaking of Toronto writing, the cultural organization Diaspora Dialogues recently interviewed me about the role of Toronto in my own fiction ...  If you wish, you can listen to the podcast here.

Photo from: here

My Book Launch

Normally, I'm not the sort of person who likes being the centre of attention, so I was wondering about how I would perform at my first book launch.  Although I'd been jittery and plagued by insomnia a few days before, on the day of the event, a calm came over me, and when I was suddenly there, immersed in all the people who'd come to celebrate and hear me read, it suddenly dawned on me, I'm really enjoying myself!  In a strange way, it felt as though my whole life had been leading to this moment (and I suppose it had, since I've been wanting to be a writer since age six).  Here are a few photos....  A big thank you to all of you who came out to celebrate and to The Japan Foundation for providing a beautiful venue, as well as to my publisher and agent for hosting the event.

A warm hug from my publisher, Sandra Huh

Having some pink bubbly with my agent, Sam Hiyate

Signing books for some old high school friends

Signing a book for my uncle, Bruce Kuwabara

Reading from my book

With my parents

My boyfriend and I ended the evening by wandering with a couple friends over to the bar on the eighteenth floor of the Park Hyatt and got splendidly drunk.  (They felt it was an appropriate venue because the bartender is known to have served drinks to Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler and many other Toronto writers, and I was just tipsy enough not to feel like a complete ingenue).  We enjoyed the view from the balcony of a skyline ethereal and fading, before joining my agent and his friends for a nightcap around the corner.  A memorable evening.
 

Book #61: One More Week ...

Just one week until my book launch ...  These past few weeks, my mind has been oscillating wildly.  I have consulted my doctor, my naturopath and meditation coach about various sleep remedies, with varying results (in the end, listening to the sound of thunderstorms and ocean waves on my iPod seems to work the best).

Of course, I knew this day would come.  And I am excited.  And yet, there is an unnerving side to the self-exposure of having your memoir published, I've discovered, somewhat belatedly.  While having dinner with some friends who are now reading my book, it has, not surprisingly come up as a topic of conversation - particularly, the racier sections.  "Which old boyfriend was that?" one friend asked with an arch smile, trying to decode the changed names.  She'd heard bits and pieces over the years, over boozy dinners, but never as uncut as this.

I heaved a sigh of relief when she reassured me how much she was enjoying it and didn't object to when I changed the topic of conversation.  I guess that's what old friends are for.

Perhaps my insomnia hasn't been helped by what's on my bedside table.  When I haven't been writing, I have been reading Haruki Murakami's tome-like novel 1Q84 and I am now nearing the midpoint.  Although this novel feels experimental and meandering in structure, and may not be among Murakami's finest works, it is nevertheless strangely addictive to read.  It takes the reader on an epic journey through a world, which, on the face of it, is 1984 Japan, but turns out to open outward into a world of double reality.  As one of the main characters, a serial killer named Aomame, reflects: "The streets had fewer passersby.  The number of cars declined, and a hush fell over the city.  She sometimes felt she was on the verge of losing track of her location.  Is this actually the real world? she asked herself.  If it's not, then where should I look for reality?"  Characteristic of Murakami, the world of reality bleeds into another world that is surreal and disturbing and possibly is contained within his protagonists' minds and fantasies, but just as possibly might actually exist.  Similarly, it occurred to me, my own perceptions have been feeling weightless and off centre lately ...  Perhaps this is what the writing life does to you: it dissolves the world into pure, malleable representation, which can quickly take on a life of its own. 

Equally compelling about this strange double world is the quest of the other main character, a writer named Tengo, who has been retained to ghostwrite a novel based on the experiences of a mysterious, almost autistic high school girl, Fuka-Eri, who has lived through some unspeakable childhood in a cult.  But who are these strangely mystical beings called the "Little People" that haunt Fuka-Eri's narrative?  Don't expect this novel to provide a little soothing bedtime reading ...  More likely you'll find yourself up reading until three in the morning, unable to sleep, like me.

Hope to see you next Tuesday at my book launch!

Photo from: here

My Book Launch & Book Giveaway

The book launch for The Reading List is just a month away - I hope that many of you who live in Toronto will be able to make it!

The event will be held:

February 14, 2012 

at THE JAPAN FOUNDATION

131 Bloor Street West

5:30-8:00 pm
RSVP: info@jftor.org or  (416)966-1600, ex. 103

Yes, I know it's Valentines Day...  Drop by for a glass of wine before heading to dinner with your significant other or spend the whole evening with us luxuriating in literary chitchat.  Who knows?  Those of you who are single might even meet someone scintillating and well read...

I also want to announce that I will be raffling off two copies of my book to those who wish to participate in this giveaway.  To be entered in the draw, you can do one of the following:

1. Become a Follower of my blog;
2. Leave a comment; or
3. Email me at leslieshimotakahara@gmail.com

The deadline for entry is February 11, 2012.

Here is a brief summary of what The Reading List is about:

Leslie Shimotakahara is a young, disenchanted English professor struggling to revive her childhood love of reading. Her father Jack, recently retired from a high-powered corporate job, finally has time to take up reading books for pleasure. The Reading List tells the story of Leslie’s return home to Toronto to rethink her life and decide what to do next. At the same time, she bonds with her dad over discussions about the lives, loves and works of the novelists on their reading list – Wharton, Joyce, Woolf and Atwood, to name a few. But when their conversations about literature unearth some heartbreaking, deeply buried family secrets surrounding Jack’s own childhood – growing up Japanese-Canadian in the aftermath of World War II – Leslie’s world is changed forever. Could discovering the truth about her father’s past hold the key to her finally being happy in love, life and career?

Btw, some friends have recently asked me which novels are included on the reading list that the main character (me) discusses with her father over the course of the book.  Not surprisingly, they're some of my all-time favourites.  Here is the list:

1. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
2. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
3. Dubliners by James Joyce
4. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
7. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
8. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
9. The Professor's House by Willa Cather
10. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
11. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
12. Obasan by Joy Kogawa
13. Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje

"An engrossing and charming memoir about getting back to basics: home truths, family, and the life-altering, life-saving power of books."

                                                                                   -Emma Donoghue, author of Room

Book #60: My Holiday Reading

“For weeks the kid been going on and on about how dreadful we sound.  He kept snatching up the discs, scratching the lacquer with a pocket knife, wrecking them.  Yelling how there wasn’t nothing there.  But there was something.  Some seed of twisted beauty.”

                                                                                              -Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues

Ever since childhood, my favourite thing about the Christmas holidays has been the lazy, languid days of curling up in my bathrobe and doing nothing but reading all day.  And this year has been no exception.  Right now, as I write, I’m wearing my favourite black terry cloth robe, a stack of books teetering on the sofa beside me.

Not surprisingly, I got a lot of gift certificates for bookstores for Christmas.  The first book I bought was Esi Edugyan’s Giller-winning Half-Blood Blues.  I read this novel in just a couple days, unable to put it down.  What a pleasure to become immersed in the strange, delicious world of this novel, the underground jazz scene of Berlin and Paris during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of Sid Griffiths, a “half-blood” musician from Baltimore, whose skin is so light he can almost pass for white.  But just the opposite is true for others in the band, most notably Hieronymus Falk, who, despite being the youngest, is the genius of the group.  Hieronymus – “Hiero,” as he’s known – is a “Rhineland bastard.”  He’s of mixed German and African parentage, fathered by a Senegalese soldier who was serving as part of the French colonial troops occupying the Rhineland after World War One.  Despite growing up being reviled for his skin and relegated to a stateless identity, Hiero has musical talents that win him the name “Little Louis.”  Sid and the others take him under their wing, as a little brother at first, but as Hiero develops as a musician and artist, his remarkable abilities lead to tensions and rivalry.  Particularly where a certain singer, Delilah Brown, is concerned.  Sid becomes enamoured from the moment he first glimpses her strangely glamorous turban and thin, stark body and mesmerizing, pale green eyes.  Although she returns his affections, to an extent, she appears far more enticed by Hiero’s musical brilliance.

This is what I found so compelling about this novel: Edugyan brings to life a slice of history that until now, I’d known very little about, yet she does so through the lens of a set of characters and relationships that are so rich they’re constantly drawing me in.  Who among us can’t relate to the predicament of being jealous of a more talented friend?  Yet what under normal circumstances would simply be clashing egos and rivalries over art and women lead to much larger, tragic events in Nazi-occupied Germany.  Sid’s guilt and tormented conscience over whether he could have done something to prevent Hiero’s capture by Nazi police, in the riveting opening scene, lays the ground for his emotional journey in the rest of the novel.

And now, I've just started reading Chattering by Louise Stern, a slim, elegant collection of stories that I stumbled upon quite randomly a few days ago at a used bookstore on Ossington.  The best $4 I’ve spent in a long time.  Narrated from the perspectives of different deaf characters, drawing upon the author’s own experience, these stories give an intriguing glimpse of what it feels like to be constantly struggling to express oneself through sign language, body language and scribbled notes – heightening the ways in which we all feel estranged from language at times.  Young and surprisingly adventurous, these characters hitchhike with strange men, sleep on the beach, wake up in weird, risky places.  In between stories, I’ve turned my attention back to Haruki Murakami’s tome-like latest novel 1Q84, which is gradually drawing me in….  So much holiday reading to do….

Photo from: here