Browsing “Print Matters”

‘Print Matters’ brings us literary news and reviews from published works that are related to Toronto. Authors from Toronto, literature that takes place in Toronto, and published works that are about Toronto are all covered here and bring the importance of print to mind.

On December 19th, 2012 Buddies in Bad Theatre will host the launch of a new multi-author book entitled City Voices: A Book of Monologues by Toronto Artists. 28 writers combined their theatrical monologues, spoken word, poetry and prose, which reflect life in Toronto at this moment in history.

“The idea for City Voices came out of a desire to show the strength of the arts community in this city and to create a forum with which fellow artists could showcase their work.”, Editor-In-Chief Jenna Harris tells me, ” ..this book involves a lot of really exciting writers and artists and is very much of the people for the people.”

Photo: City Voices Book Launch Flyer

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‘Print Matters’ brings us literary news and reviews from published works that are related to Toronto. Authors from Toronto, literature that takes place in Toronto, and published works that are about Toronto are all covered here and bring the importance of print to mind.

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brad Smith, whose latest novel Crow’s Landing has been receiving rave reviews. This is Brad’s second novel featuring beloved character Virgil Cain, who finds himself in a sticky situation when he fishes a cylinder of cocaine out of the Hudson River. Brad will be speaking on a panel of writers at the International Festival of Authors at the Ex next Monday, August 27th, at 5:30 pm in the Direct Energy Centre, Exhibition Place. We have 2 signed copies of his book to give away. Just check out our Twitter Link for details on how to get one.

In a moment of sweet synchronicity, I read Crow’s Landing while visiting Upstate New York. It really got me thinking about landscape and writing. I wonder if you might say something about how landscape influences your writing?

Crow’s landing is situated where it is because of the predecessor, Red Means Run, which had a musical background to it. The main villain, if you want to put it that way, was a famous music producer who ends up killing a famous movie producer. So I needed to put it someplace that had a musical background. There’s no place in Canada where that would work. I thought about Nashville, but I’d written a previous book, Big Man Coming Down The Road, in Nashville and it didn’t quite fit what I wanted. So, I was looking around on a map and thought about Woodstock. Of course it’s got all the great history of Bob Dylan, The Band, and Van Morrison lived that at one point. The famous Bearsville studio was there and the concert. It just seemed to be a really good fit. I drove down there and scoped the place out and just loved it. I said, okay, this is where Red Means Run needs to be, and so when it came time to write another one with Virgil Cain, I had this idea about the cocaine cylinder. It actually comes from a true story that happened here in Toronto. A Toronto cop told me it about ten years ago. Some guys were coming into the harbour here with a cylinder full of cocaine and the cops were there and they threw it out. Nobody’s ever found it. So, when we’re done the interview…

Yeah, I’m heading down to the harbour to try to fish out a cylinder… One-eyed Jacks was set in Toronto. Is that the only one of your novels that is set in Toronto?

Yes, and it was a period piece set in the 50s.

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‘Print Matters’ brings us literary news and reviews from published works that are related to Toronto. Authors from Toronto, literature that takes place in Toronto, and published works that are about Toronto are all covered here and bring the importance of print to mind.

One of my favourite books and one of the novels most suited for this column is Michael Ondaatje’s “In The Skin of a Lion”. The book encompasses all three aspects required to be featured in this section: the author is a Torontonian, the book takes place in Toronto, and it is about Toronto and it’s history. Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan born writer who has lived and taught most of his life in Toronto and Southern Ontario.

The novel was first published in 1987 and tells the fictional stories of immigrant workers living and working in Toronto who built some of Toronto’s oldest foundations. Ondaatje reportedly spent much of his time gathering information from the Toronto archives where he managed to weave the fictional stories of his characters into the history and real events of early 1900s Toronto. Such historic events include: the construction of the Bloor-Danforth viaduct, the construction of the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, and the disappearance of Theatre owner Ambrose Small to name a few.

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‘Print Matters’ brings us literary news and reviews from published works that are related to Toronto. Authors from Toronto, literature that takes place in Toronto, and published works that are about Toronto are all covered here and bring the importance of print to mind.

Every city is ultimately the product of the utopic visions of its citizens and leaders. The word utopia refers not only to a perfect place or condition, but also to the impossibility of perfection itself (nerd moment: the word comes from the Greek  ‘ou’ + ‘topos’, which literally translates as ‘no place’, but first appeared in English in Sir Thomas More’s book Utopia which describes his vision of the perfect republic). This is why utopic visions, by definition, are always doomed to fail. But, they fail in really interesting ways a lot of the time, and Toronto is basically a compendium of sometimes interesting, sometimes beautiful and sometimes frustrating utopic failures – all of which contribute to the reasons we love our city.

In uTOpia: towards a new Toronto 34 different writers from as diverse a range of perspectives, interests and disciplines as the people of Toronto themselves (well, almost) contribute their answer to the question: how can we make Toronto as ideal as possible? Toronto, one of the pieces accurately points out, is basically a teenager – still young enough to hold on to hope, but old enough to have accumulated some wounds along the way. What we must do, uTOpia suggests, is use the benefits of our youthful optimism to promote progressive and innovative utopian agendas – things like a better TTC, more public washrooms, changing the voting age from 18 to 16, creating a network of tubes for bicycle lanes, and my personal favourite, a roller coaster from harbourfront to the islands. At the same time, we have to take note of what already makes Toronto a wonderful city to live in – things like pedestrian Sundays in Kensington market, families like the Zedler family who have been contributing to the art scene for generations by making downtown accessible to artists (most recently in the form of the 401 Richmond building), sidewalks that hold the imprints of those who were there (you know, when people doodle in wet cement), and neighbourhoods that remain unique, diverse and downright lovable.

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‘Print Matters’ brings us literary news and reviews from published works that are related to Toronto. Authors from Toronto, literature that takes place in Toronto, and published works that are about Toronto are all covered here and bring the importance of print to mind.

At the Junction: David Rotenberg’s The Placebo Effect and one girl’s love for her hood.

My favourite author, David Foster Wallace, once said that fiction is one of the few mediums of art that allows an individual some relief from the loneliness of life. It is a rare moment when we’re exposed to a truly honest expression of the psyche of another. Fiction provides an opportunity for us to see exactly how alike, or how unalike, our perception of the world is to that of the author. Generally, I think DFW was thinking of character development and the inner workings of how we understand other people when he made this statement. That being said, I think it can also be applied to the experience of perceiving landscape. David Rotenberg’s The Placebo Effect provided that very experience for me. Rotenberg’s novel, the first in a three-part series called The Junction Chronicles, follows Decker Roberts, a man both blessed and cursed by an uncanny ability to detect the truth in others through visual cues, as he runs from the villains that seek to gain control of his synesthetic superpower.

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