Sex in the fifties

Diane Di Prima remembers how cool the game was.

Memoirs of a Beatnik, by Diane Di Prima (Penguin, 195 pp, from $7.00 to $13.00)

Some books give you a glimpse of the time they are set in. Memoirs of a Beatnik will also give you a taste of it. And the bitter sweet flavour of New York in the fifties will stick to your tongue for a long time.

Diane Di Prima, the author of the Memoirs, will tell you everything you’d have never dared to ask about her beatnik youth.

She describes sex with a surgical precision that may make you need to put the book aside for a while and take a few deep breaths with your head resting on your knees.

Yet you’ll read on. Because Di Prima takes pleasure seriously and will make you start doing so.

There were a lot things you took seriously in Di Prima’s fifties. Poetry was one of them.

In a small, damp New York apartment, the young poetess defied the cold every night to study classic poetry and write her own poems. Meanwhile, she made a living posing for nude photographs, working for crooks and helping a wealthy couple divorce by pretending to be the man’s mistress.

Another serious matter was remaining cool, whatever happened, Di Prima tells us. Being cool was about pushing away boundaries, swimming against the current, accepting artistic and sexual challenges, and, most importantly, not seeming to care. Young Beats had a thing for bending backwards – sometimes literally, in a middle of a bar to dance the Fish or in bed.

Memoirs of a Beatnik is turning 40 this year and it has aged well. It is a good opportunity to learn what it was like to be a female Beat. It shows how much energy a young woman needed to have when she wanted to break away from her parents’ ideals and define herself as a new, free individual.

It doesn’t merely celebrate the body as a sensual instrument but as a whole thing. It also deals with filth, pain and sickness.

It’s a book where women have their period and where sex, as free as it may be, has consequences – something male writers often forget to mention.

Don’t expect a lesson on birth control from Di Prima though, who regards it as rip-off. “Fuck the Pill”, which makes your body feel pregnant all year long, she writes, just have sex and, if you get pregnant, collect welfare and raise your children.

Di Prima was a Beat before the word even existed. She writes about the early fifties, when a small but growing community of weirdoes, runaway teenagers and university drop-outs were living for casual sex, meaningful art and serious excess and started calling themselves “bohemians”.

They were waiting for a sign, something that would unite them, which finally came with a shock in 1956 when Allen Ginsberg published Howl. (He and Kerouac feature together in the book in an interesting scene involving a flying tampax).

The book will give you a new perspective on New York in the fifties, as much as a sense of the time when Di Prima wrote it – In 1969, of all years. By then, she was living on a commune in California, and the Beats had disappeared, some for good, others in new roles as Zen priests or hippies.

Aroused? You can find the erotic memoirs in second-hand bookstores or order them online.

• How to read it? Suggestion: Getting into the New York vibe

Paloma prepares for a few days in the Beatnik capital.

• Just to get you started, Paloma reads an excerpt where it’s all about bending backwards.
  

(Many thanks to Salvatore Ciolfi.)

From Poland to Montreal, there’s only a Freudian slip

Ann Charney tells us about Montreal in the fifties, the immigrant experience and the art of looking beneath the surface.

Distantly Related to Freud, by Ann Charney (Cormorant Books, 336 pp, $21.00)

In the house where Distantly Related to Freud’s heroine Ellen lives with her mother, there is a portrait hanging over the mantelpiece.

However, it’s not the portrait of a relative they lost in the tragedy they rarely talk about that forced them to flee Poland a few years before. It’s not even the picture of Ellen’s father, who was “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and is now nowhere to be found.
It’s the portrait of a distant relative: Sigmund Freud.

To Ellen’s mother, who belonged to the Central European intelligentsia that settled in Montreal after the Second World War, that familial connection to the father of psychoanalysis is a great source of pride.

“By evoking Freud, you evoke the world that created Freud—these countries that were under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—that valued education and the arts and saw themselves as capitals of enlightenment,” said author Ann Charney.

Like her heroine, Charney was born in Poland and immigrated to Montreal as a child. Distantly Related describes the complexity of the immigrant experience, particularly that of those who survive disasters or wars.

“A lot of people who survive disasters don’t really talk about that,” she said. “They come to North America to reinvent themselves. In order to do that, they often try to shed their past. Of course, they never succeed totally.”

Ellen, the narrator, grows into a thoughtful but impatient teenager. Her connection to Freud brings no longing for a faraway world she cannot even remember. It instead symbolizes her growing self-awareness and her hunger for understanding the world as much as she can in order to discover who she is.

Distantly Related centres on Ellen’s appetite for experience and hypersensitivity; it successfully describes the blooming of a young girl longing for freedom and sensuality and how independence often comes at a price.

Some parts of the story may feel a bit too detailed, but the narrative offers good insight into Montreal in the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s.

“I was writing about a city that no longer exists,” explained Charney. “I wanted people who weren’t there to know what it had been like and others to be able to recognize the parts I had put in the book, our shared common memory.”

She relied on her memories of the city during that period to write the story and made sure she had got the facts right afterwards.

“It was the opposite of writing non-fiction, where the story comes after interviews and a lot of research,” said Charney, who is also a renowned journalist. “Because, to me, fiction is something that first comes from inside of you.”

(Review first published in The Link — Oct.13, 2009. Many thanks to The Link’s literary editor Christopher Olson. See original article here)

Plassans, ton univers impitoyable

Où Zola nous apprend comment conquérir une ville de province.

La Conquête de Plassans, d’Emile Zola (Paris, Gallimard, 1990, 466 p. $13)

C’est l’histoire d’une ascension fulgurante. C’est l’histoire d’un drame familial.

Les Mouret vivaient à Plassans dans un contentement bourgeois de marchands qui ont réussi, trop heureux de réaliser leur profit à l’écart des querelles de clocher et des intrigues politiques, satisfaits de leur vie d’habitudes et de leur belle maison.

L’installation chez eux de l’abbé Faujas détruit cet équilibre. Le prêtre ne paie pas de mine lorsqu’il débarque de Besançon dans sa soutane râpée, flanqué de sa paysanne de mère. Pourtant, il va parvenir à charmer tout le gratin de la ville et gravir les échelons de la hiérarchie ecclésiastique ; sa famille va envahir la maison de ses propriétaires et saccager leur santé mentale.

Avec La Conquête de Plassans, Zola dresse le portrait sans concession d’une ville de province retorse et magouilleuse et donne un violent coup de buttoir dans les fondations d’un régime politique qu’il abhorre et d’une société bourgeoise qui le dégoûte.

Le roman fait partie des grands oubliés de la série des Rougon-Macquart, ces 20 volumes par lesquels l’auteur unit le destin d’une famille à l’histoire du Second Empire (1852-1871).
Ni étudié en classe, ni adapté au cinéma, ce quatrième tome n’a pas l’aura d’un Germinal ou d’un Nana.
Il en a par contre la force et le mordant et partage le même esprit de critique sociale au vitriol.
Ceux qui ont lu de la série Pot-Bouille et L’Argent retrouveront la mesquinerie et l’esprit de calcul des bourgeois parisiens chez leurs homologues de province.

Zola souligne également dans ce roman la bizarrerie politique d’une France alors divisée en factions royalistes et bonapartistes, ennemies jurées mais unies dans leur peur des quartiers populaires acquis à la cause de la République. Il dénonce aussi le pouvoir de l’Eglise qui manipule avec une froideur mécanique le destin d’une ville comme les destins privés.

Impossible d’oublier la perspective naturaliste dans ce roman peuplé de Rougon aux dents longues et de Macquart plein de roueries. Leur ancêtre commun, la tante Dide, dont le vice a corrompu toute la lignée, est d’ailleurs encore vivante, enfermée dans un asile à la sortie de Plassans. La peur de sombrer comme elle dans la folie tenaille ses descendants.

Zola dresse aussi un portrait de jeunesse court mais éloquent d’Octave Mouret. Le futur bourreau des cœurs de Pot-Bouille et du Bonheur des Dames cache déjà des maîtresses dans ses placards…

Ne vous laissez donc pas effaroucher par le craquement des soutanes et les lourdes odeurs d’encens.
Manigances, esprit de cliques, trahisons, passions interdites, folie furieuse… La Conquête de Plassans réunit les ingrédients les plus prenants d’une série américaine des années 80 – les stetsons en moins, la plume acérée et le cynisme de Zola en plus.

• Partez à la conquête de Plassans avec cet extrait du roman. Première visite d’un salon de province…. mieux vaut ne pas se prendre les pieds dans le tapis!

Temps mort!

Allez, un peu de théorie. Pour tuer le temps…

Mythes, rêves et mystères, de Mircea Eliade (Paris, Gallimard, « Les Essais », 1957 ; rééd. « Idées », 1972, 279 p. $12)

Pourquoi donc lisons-nous?

Pour tuer le temps. Vraiment.

Lire, c’est activer un moyen de défense contre le Temps — ce Temps qui passe, inexorablement, et que nous voudrions bien pouvoir arrêter.

C’est ce qu’explique Mircea Eliade dans Mythes, rêves et mystères, où il traite notamment des comportements mythologiques qui survivent de manière diffuse dans notre monde moderne.

Par la lecture, nous pouvons échapper pour un court instant à nos angoisses profondes, indique l’historien des religions.

Plonger dans un roman, vivre d’autres histoires que la nôtre nous permet en effet de sortir du présent. Nous nous trouvons projetés hors de notre propre durée, intégrés à d’autres rythmes. Nous avons alors l’illusion que nous maîtrisons le Temps et que nous nous sommes soutraits “au devenir implacable qui mène à la mort”.

Voilà une théorie stimulante qui souligne le caractère universel de ce désir que nous avons de nous perdre dans les récits inventés et, qui, en quelque sorte, le justifie.

Il y a quelque chose d’irrésistible dans l’idée qu’à travers le temps, nous, la grande communauté des amateurs de fiction, depuis les auditeurs d’Homère jusqu’aux lecteurs d’Hemingway, nous nous tournons vers une solution commune pour réaliser notre désir profond d’évasion, de fuite devant le Temps.

Nous véhiculerions d’ailleurs d’autres comportements mythologiques, souvent en rapport avec ce Temps devant lequel nous nous sentons tellement impuissants.

Quand nous rêvons de vacances sur une île paradisiaque, par exemple, c’est aussi que nous voulons fuir le Temps (et la mort)! C’est que nous tentons de retrouver en ces paysages édéniques le Paradis perdu, “ce territoire privilégié où les lois sont abolies, où le Temps s’arrête”, explique Eliade.

(Re-) plongeons-nous donc dans la prose accessible et nuancée de cet intellectuel roumain de premier plan qui a enseigné à Paris dans les années 1950, puis à Chicago.

C’est toute une époque! Dans les années 1970, il fallait avoir lu d’Eliade Le Sacré et le profane, au même titre qu’on se devait d’exhiber sur ses étagères Montaillou, village occitan d’Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie.

Pour ceux qui préfèrent essayer d’effleurer l’immortalité à coup de fiction, c’est aussi possible avec Eliade, qui était également romancier. On lui doit notamment La Nuit bengali (ou Maitreyi), situé en Inde, qui raconte la passion interdite qui consume un Américain et une jeune Indienne.

• Suggestion de lecture:  façon vitaminée.

Annabelle au Marché Jean Talon (Montréal). Dis-moi ce que tu lis/manges, je te dirai qui tu es…

(Photo: Anthony Di Domizio)

• Si, si, ça se lit bien! Voici un passage qui vous reviendra la prochaine fois que vous fêterez le Nouvel an ou que vous organiserez une pendaison de crémaillère.

A: Poetry teetering on the brink of out of control

Q: What is slam?

Montreal will host the National Slam finals in 2010. A great achievement for a city that only sent its first team to the competition in the fall of 2008. (Actually, I’ve just learned it’s going to be in Ottawa… PRL, Nov.3 2009).

Jay Alexander Brown was part of the team. He had just got back from the finals in Calgary when he told me about writing and performing slam poetry.  A good slam, he said, could feel like the Rolling Stones getting up at a Mozart recital.

Jay Alexander Brown (Photo: Jenny Gallagher)

So, ever wondered what slam is about? Ever wanted to know what the inspirations of a young poet are? Jay Alexander Brown tells you here how if he fell off of his poems he could break a leg.

Now you may want a sample… Click here to listen to his poem called Mango.

– Many thanks to Jenny Gallagher –

From an interview with Jay Alexander Brown on the rainy evening of November 12, 2008.

Getting to the edge of reason

Reading Fatted Calf Blues, by Steven Mayoff (Turnstone Press April 2009 150 pp $19.00)

Steven Mayoff wants to drag you out of your comfort zone. In Fatted Calf Blues, his latest collection of short stories, Mayoff takes the reader to places that might seem familiar, only to reveal their poetic dimensions and tragic potential.

“I want to give the readers a feeling of, ‘This is familiar,’ and then tilt it a little, take them to situations they don’t know,” the author explained.

Each story offers something different: a passenger on a crowded streetcar in Toronto announces that he is the most important man in the world; a man travels from Glasgow to New Glasgow in search of a new lease on life; the parking lot of a truck stop in Manitoba is the scene of unexpected medical recoveries.

Mayoff

Mayoff’s stories depict a world where nothing is what it seems on the surface. He finds inspiration in the geological makeup of Prince Edward Island, a place he has called home for the past five years.

“There, you look at the water on a clear day and it’s blue, but underneath… rouge,” said Mayoff. “You first get the sense that it seems like a simple place, a simple life, but this red under the water, it has the feeling of an interior life.”

Fatted Calf Blues concentrates on the characters’ sensations as much as the mental spirals in which they are trapped. Though they try to push back the rules, they are often helpless and can’t escape their own nightmares.

“I like writing that has gut feelings. I want it to be a sensual experience,” said Mayoff, who also works as a songwriter. He said writing lyrics was like an apprenticeship for writing fiction.

“I was more drawn to the kind of lyrics that tells a story,” he said. “The principle of writing lyrics is economy, choosing the right word. Fiction works the same way.”

Mayoff is currently working on his first novel, recounting the story of his Romanian grandparents’ immigration to Montreal.

“The past follows you wherever you go,” said Mayoff. “I don’t think you can get away from it.”

Reading Fatted Calf Blues feels like taking a disturbing and compelling trip to the edge of human reason. Each story is likely to make you wince, but has the energy and rhythm to make you want to complete the journey.

• How to read it? Suggestion: West Island-style.

Alex reading Fatted Calf Blues in Beaconsfield – Pool, beer and literature

• What does it sound like? Alex reads an excerpt from “The Most Important Man in the World”, first short story of the collection. Click here to listen!
  

(Review first published in The Link — June 9, 2009. Many thanks to The Link’s literary editor Christopher Olson. See original article here.)

Incipit

Les lecteurs parlent aux lecteurs

Autant vous prévenir tout de suite : je suis quelqu’un de cruel. Mes livres de poche en savent quelque chose. Je suis toujours en train d’en maltraiter un tout au fond de mon sac, entre mon portefeuille et mon agenda, sur un lit de vieux relevés de caisse et de mouchoirs usagés.

En ce moment, c’est The Truth About Lorin Jones d’Alison Lurie. Et de futures victimes frémissent déjà sur mes étagères.

Très franchement, tant que je sais que j’ai un bon livre à portée de main – en train de s’effriter au fond de mon sac – je me moque bien du reste. Je vous planterais mes coudes dans les côtes pour parvenir à ouvrir un livre dans un wagon de métro bondé. Il m’arrive aussi de laisser passer les gens dans la queue du cinéma ou au supermarché pour pouvoir terminer un chapitre.

Je ne ferai pas la liste de toutes les fois où j’ai réprimé de féroces envies de lire (pratiquement tout au long du lycée pour être honnête, bien souvent entre deux fantasmes sur Ewan McGregor ou Edward Norton).

Comme beaucoup de lecteurs invétérés, je ne suis pas spécialiste de l’analyse littéraire. Certes, j’ai fait ma part de commentaires de texte et de dissertations dans le temps. Il en reste quelque chose : une aptitude à disséquer les textes, un regard critique – voire un mépris pas toujours justifié pour la littérature à succès.

Mais depuis qu’il n’y a plus de prof de littérature penché sur mon épaule, j’ai tendance à laisser mon intuition me guider – cette intuition que nous avons tous en nous, celle qui nous permet de décider, lorsque nous ouvrons un livre au hasard et lisons quelques lignes, si ça vaut le peine de continuer le voyage.

Au fond, c’est tout ce que vous avez besoin de savoir : je suis avant tout une lectrice… C’est à dire que je déteste qu’on me fasse la leçon mais que je fais toujours bon accueil aux conseils d’ami. Je préfère acheter un livre parce que son titre ou sa couverture me plaisent que parce qu’on le recommande dans un magazine. Je n’ai aucun scrupule à couvrir de gribouillis ou tâcher de chocolat les pages d’un livre de poche mais je suis prête à payer des fortunes en supplément de bagages pour ne pas avoir à abandonner mes livres.

Tout ce qui me fait vibrer devrait se retrouver sur In folio, des romans au slam, des biographies aux paroles de chansons, des pièces de théâtre aux essais.

Nouveautés, grands classiques, oubliés des annales… nul n’échappera à ma brutalité affectueuse de lectrice passionnée.

From Me To You

Let me get this straight right from the start : I’m kind of cruel. If my paperbacks could talk, they’d tell you how bad I usually treat them. You’ll always find one of them at the bottom of my bag, dying slowly between my wallet and my agenda, among old receipts and dirty tissues.
Right now, I’m giving a hard time to The Truth about Lorin Jones, by Alison Lurie. My future victims stand silent on my shelves.

As long as I know that I have a good book within reach, that is crumbling away at the bottom of my bag, I don’t give a damn about anything else. I have bullied people into giving me enough space to open a book in overcrowded subway cars. In line for a movie, or at the supermarket, I have let people pass so that I could read the end of a chapter.

And I’ll spare you the list of all the times I’ve had to fight really hard the urge to read (nearly all the time when I was at high school, to be honest, between fantasies involving Ewan McGregor or Edward Norton).

Like a lot of devoted readers, I’m no specialist in literary criticism. I wrote my share of textual analyses and essays back in the old days and that’s how I’ve earned a certain ability to probe into texts, a critical eye – and maybe a sometimes unfair discrimation towards best-selling literature.

But since I’ve escaped the custody of literature profs, I tend to rely much more on my intuition – this intuition we all rely on when we open a book randomly, read a few lines and decide if it’s worth trying to complete the journey.

In the end, that’s all there is to know about me : I’m just a reader… That is, I hate it when people try to lecture me but I always welcome friendly advice. I’d rather buy a book because I like its title or its cover than because a magazine recommends it. The pages of my paperbacks often end up covered with chocolate stains or scribbles but I can pay a fortune in extra-luggage not to leave my books behind.

Whatever gives me a thrill as a reader should end up in In folio, from novels to slam poetry, from memoirs to lyrics, from plays to essays.

New publications, classics, forgotten treasures… nothing shall escape my brutality and tenderness.