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| Hearsay: |
I tuned in for a bit yesterday to Canada Reads, and was glad to hear the group speak. The good people of the CBC sent me the books being discussed, two of which I have not read (Icefields and King Leary), so it will be nice to cut into the Quarrington at some distant point down the road when 150 books aren’t lined up ahead of it. It’s great to see some out-of-print and small press books getting a second kick at the can. (I’m desperate for Canada to have to read Nalo, in part for the entertainment and education, but also to witness the collective, barely-supressed apoplexy of the straight, white community–I realize this won’t happen, but….) All in all, it’s an eloquent enough group, particularly Jemeni and Moore, but it’s also nice to hear from astronaut MacLean, who brings an (ironically?) earthy, somewhat closed-minded “real-reader” perspective to the show. I didn’t hear the whole thing, but from what I did hear, there were some tense moments around culture and race, which was actually healthy discussion, but I wonder if some people wish they had their comments back and could give the moment a “take two”.
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February 27th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Does this mean that the CBC sent you those books in non-bubble packs?
February 27th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I think Lisa Moore’s comments at the end of the program were pretty pertinent. She doesn’t want to be a Canadian, or a Newfoundlander or a woman when she reads. She wants to be nationless, nameless, sexless, open and free-floating when she reads. She doesn’t want an agenda, and I think that’s an excellent approach to a book. She doesn’t want to be “told” anything. I think that has a lot to do with the hostility towards the “cultural specificity” of Brown Girl in the Ring. Lisa Moore takes the right approach in reading the book without an agenda, but I can see why Zaib Shaikh could feel that the books is being presented with an agenda or how Canada at large, without having first read the book, could feel that it could be chosen as a kind of multi-culti lesson for mainstream (read: white middle-class) Canada. And fuck that, frankly. Tell me it’s a good book and I’ll read it, but suggest to me that I should read it because it’s part of some “we are the world” agenda, then I’ll probably tell you to go to Hell. And I think that Zaib might see some of that in this choice (or he may think that Canada at large may see it that way, regardless of what the reality of the book or its choice might be).
February 27th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
On that note, I’m curious about this “straight white community” you mention, George. I’m Casper-pale and heterosexually oriented, but I feel no sense of community or fellow-feeling with people who share such broadly uninteresting traits. Personally, I think Canada should read Yukio Mishima’s _Confessions of a Mask_–but maybe that’s just the conservative gay samurai in me talking.