Date
Tue March 25, 2008
Recommended Reading: The Moslem Wife and Other Stories by Mavis Gallant
View more items filed under “Short Stories” in our Open Book Archives.
Again at Type
Submitted by clelia on October 24, 2011 - 3:51pm
To stand among the Type book stacks again after a summer of being mostly away has put me in such a lovely frame of mind. There is nothing more endemic of my time in Toronto than coming in off of Queen Street only to see many familiar faces strewn amongst the books, their attention diverted to the designated standing room for the showcased writers a little deeper into the book store. I feel as though I am shaking off a summer spent mostly in the woods, mostly with books and canoes and moccasins, and I am entering back into the city of Toronto and all of the events of a busy fall literary season. The evening’s event generated by the YOSS crew (Year of the Short Story) featured three excellent writers in the genre: Carolyn Black, Dennis Bolen and Andrew Borkowski, who speak of the event and their writing in an interview for Open Book here I picked up Black’s The Odious Child because it somehow synthesized with Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality inside my brain and informed some of the power politics that I had just chatted about in one of my OCAD Graduate courses. I find this is happening a lot. THE ODIOUS CHILD It is interesting to consider power in the realm of sexuality and to watch what happens when we all acknowledge the Foucaultian consideration that power is maintained from the bottom. When we all start questioning our assumptions about "the way things are" and wonder what would happen if we stopped believing in those assumptions, so many surprises explode onto the scene. Black’s dance with technology and dating versus real-life encounters, most prominent in her story "At the World’s End, Falling Off," informed many thoughts I have had lately about the interface of the body and technology, our expectations around this interface and the strange moments of disconnect that occur when we transpose our cyber reality onto our third-dimensional reality. I love how the beautiful boy in the story, seemingly uncomplicated and happy in his profile, becomes brooding and brow creased and nothing like his profile in real life. When the female character’s physical distress enters into the scene on a date, we watch the dream of cyber reality fall away and a more awkward human reality begin to inform the narrative. Not unlike this story, I have recently experienced in a most surprising way the transition of a cyber relationship (albeit brief) into the reality of my life. Nothing like looking up in class one afternoon and thinking to myself "I know that face…." Most surprising when this transference occurs, and the result can be a complete disaster or a delightful surprise. It depends. Black’s prose reminds me of the paintings of Jenny Seville. To me, Black’s words and Seville’s paintings become a rewriting of the human female form from one of passive authorship to an immediate vibrancy. It is a lovely thing when such traditional mediums such as the short story and the painting can bend a conversation in such a contemporary way. I have left you with some of Seville’s images to ponder. It’s nice to be back in the Open Book: Toronto community again after a summer away. Please do e-mail me at contributers@openbooktoronto.com if there is something you would like me to write about. Until next time. Suggested Reading: Recently Published Short Story CollectionsThe Meaning of Children (Exile Editions) by Beverley Akerman Help us build this list by posting titles of short story collections that you recommend in the comment space below. Related item from our archives |