Pico Iyer in Ottawa

Pico Iyer gave a talk in Ottawa last Saturday. It was a watershed experience for me. Iyers might be the salt of the earth, but let’s face it, they do not do interesting things (at least, they didn’t while I was growing up). Iyers are accountants. SAHMs. Bureaucrats. Professors. If they’re musicians, they’re of the classical school. Some strayed inspite of themselves into Indian cinema, but, in general, they’re super-staid conservatives. (I rush to add that the community has its share of alcoholics and wife-beaters and so on; this post does not, in way, claim the group’s moral or intellectual superiority over any other community). 

Anyway, modesty, conformism, and obedience are highly valued amongst Iyers; travel writing, not so much. So Pico Iyer was a demi-god to me–the only cool Iyer in a two million-strong community. He did not have a steady job. In the Iyer community, that’s like missing a lung–you can’t breathe easy without a pension fund lub-dubbing away in the left corner.  He travelled the planet and authored fine books and had a Japanese partner and a Harvard education and wrote for the New York Times. I wanted to be him, failing which, I wanted to marry him. I’ve failed notably at both ambitions, but the fascination remains, and when I finally got this chance to see him in person, I was properly thrilled and apprehensive.

 (This picture is taken from John W.MacDonald's site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwmacdonald/).

Oh, it was that rare occasion, fellow bloggers, when my expectations were happily exceeded; not all our childhood fantasies are destined to turn to dust. Pico Iyer was as articulate and thoughtful as his impressive pedigree–child of professional philosphers–implied. And best, there was no disconnect between writer and speaker;  I received the impression of a great intelligence allied with a profound  understanding of the goings-on of contemporary society. I wanted his opinion on everything–Hillary or Obama, the new Indiana Jones, Cuba after Castro, my new jeans–just to know what a mind like his thought about it. Long exhale.

The talk itself was about Iyer’s new book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The book has been widely (and positively) reviewed (see Pankaj Mishra’s review in The New Yorker, or this review in the New York Times) so I’m not going to talk about it here, except to say that I’m going to rush out and buy the book tomorrow. As you should too.

An evening with Yann Martel

We’ve been having an unseasonal bout of snow lately (heavy even by Ottawa standards), and I’ve been contemplating the prospect of 4 months more of the same with something approaching desperation; a slave to the radiator till spring! Friday night, however, saw me slipping along the icy streets towards St. Brigid’s Church, where Yann Martel was giving a talk. Here’s a picture:

(This picture was taken by John W Macdonald. More pictures at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwmacdonald/2058854653/in/pool-20543830@N00)

At this stage I make the shallow and irrelevant observation that Martel looks more yuppie-ish than I’d imagined.

Martel spoke about the new illustrated edition of Life of Pi. Now I’ve never been keen on illustrations in a novel outside of children’s literature–all too often, they interrupt the flow of the story, and break the spell cast by the plot. But the illustrations in this book made me reconsider my stance, for they are illustrations in every sense of the word–going well beyond translating words into pictures to illuminating ideas. Objects hazily imagined become beautifully clear–we can see what Pi’s raft looked like, for instance, or where Richard Parker sat on the raft. The pictures themselves are gorgeous, with jewel-bright colors and astonishingly clever perspectives; all the scenes are depicted as though viewed through the eyes of Pi–a trick that pulls the viewer right into the picture.

Martel also spoke about the organic relationship between writer and illustrator, in this case an artist named Tomislav Torjanac, who, despite being located in a  small Croatian village, not only succeeded in getting his work chosen by Martel, but also managed to locate pictures of South Indian food for his paintings, all thanks to the internet. Fascinating.

The second half of the talk dealt with Martel’s attempt to inveigle Canada’s prime minister into reading. (I’ve blogged about this in an earlier post.) Martel’s chosen a wide variety of books–Maus, Oranges are not the only Fruit, the Bhagavad Gita—and hopefully, one of these will pique Harper’s interest.

The talk, however, faltered a bit for me when Martel began to link the importance of reading with the state of the Western World. He set up the West against the East, labelling the West as deeply unhappy inspite of its material wealth, and the East… you get the idea. Anyone who has seen anything of poverty knows this to be a gross oversimplification, and a dangerous romanticization of what is a very wretched condition.  But there’s no denying the passion and piquancy of Martel’s idea, and I hope he succeeds in getting Harper to put aside the Guinness Book of World Records (reputedly his favorite book) for a pint and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Yann Martel versus Canada’s Prime Minister

Not exactly bear versus crocodile, this.

Yann Martel– author of the Booker-winning Life of Pi– will send a book to Stephen Harper  every two weeks to encourage him to read. The first book Martel has mailed is Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych.  As Martel writes on his website  http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca./ :

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.

Martel was prompted– nay, pushed!– to do so by the lack of attention the current (Conservative) government pays to arts funding. The Canada Council for the Arts, which helped Martel back in 1991 with a grant enabling him to write his novel, isn’t exactly getting much support now. As Martel asks:

Do we count for nothing, you philistines, I felt like shouting down at the House. Don’t you know that Canadians love their books and songs and paintings? Do you really think we’re just parasites feeding off the honest, hard work of our fellow citizens?

I think it’s a brilliant plan, one that’s educated the public about the government’s arts-unfriendly policies successfully. Will Martel manage to shame Harper into reading, though? I, for one, am going to keep an eye open for pristine copies of The Death of Ivan Ilych in Ottawa’s second-hand bookshops…

(Pic. of Yann Martel from www.randomhouse.ca)

Bookninja’s George Murray on “Building a Better Blog”

I attended a talk by George Murray on blogging on Sunday evening, at Ottawa’s Library and Archives Canada. If anyone who was at the session is reading this post–this blogger is the young South Asian woman in the red turtleneck from the third row.

George Murray is the founder of  bookninja.com, a literary blog I visit regularly–not so much for the news as for Murray’s crusty take on all things literary. How can one not love a blogger whose commentary on Jenna Bush’s proposed novel goes:

I cannot possibly get my finger far enough down my throat for this one. I need to puke legacy bile for this one. I need to puke a meal that a paramecium ancestor of mine digested a billion years back to truly do this utter bullshit justice. This is truly a sign of end times.

Thank you, George. 

I re-confirmed I’d made the right decision to spend 5 dollars on a ticket when Murray mentioned that The Guardian was the best newspaper in the world. Yes, it is; read it for yourself and see.

Murray went on to talk about blogging in general, stating that personality of the writer and content are the two forces that make a blog. In other words, say your stuff well and update that blog everyday. It’s not exactly ground-breaking advice, but hearing it from a  successful blogger who is a poet married to a feminist scholar has the sort of chastening effect an email from my mom can never achieve… I’ve now resolved to be more regular about updating this blog.

The talk was part of Ottawa’s literary festival, about which I’d blogged earlier. More about George Murray can be found at his site  http://georgemurray.ca/ 

Ottawa’s literary festival

While Ottawa, Canada isn’t exactly a hot spot for literary events, we do have our own International Writers Festival every spring and fall.  This year’s festival runs from April 15th to 22nd; details may be found here. 

After seeing the programme however, I’m wondering why it’s called an “International” writers festival when the focus seems quite determinedly Canadian. The first day, for instance, features Canadian columnists, Canadian poets and a Canadian blogger…

I’m not complaining, though–there’s an interesting line-up of writers, and I plan to attend several events including a talk on blogging by George Murray (founder of the devilish good litblog Bookninja.com). There’s also a discussion on the writing life that includes Barbara Gowdy amongst the panel members. I really hope it stops snowing by the 15th!

Ottawa celebs: Tracy Quan, writer and sex worker.

Visitors from outside the country always ask me ” Are there any famous people from Ottawa?”, to which I usually whisper “Alanis Morisette” (or Alex Trebek, depending on the questioner’s demographics) and then talk about the weather. Today we had so much snow that there was a power outage! Really! But there’s a writer from Ottawa whose story satisfies the hungriest fame-hound. I’m talking about Tracy Quan. 

Just in case you missed this literary phenomenon: Quan is a call girl, and the author of the Nancy Chan novels, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and Diary of a Married Call Girl.  The books themselves are fascinating; a down-to-earth account of the ‘world’s oldest profession’ by a woman who’s smart and confident and knows exactly what she’s getting into. There’s a great interview with Quan in the literary magazine Rain Taxi, where she talks about Ottawa:

I grew up in Ottawa, the unnamed “quiet city” in the Nancy Chan novels. I wanted to describe it without naming it because there are preconceptions about Ottawa, just as there are about prostitutes. However, a Canadian war reporter recently told me that Ottawa produces people with tremendous ambition—he’s from Toronto where they tend to deride Ottawa, so he wasn’t just shilling for Ottawa reflexively. His theory: it’s the center of Canadian reality; no matter how small it is, you have a sense of owning something quite large and you can develop ambitions that are out of proportion to “reality.” My theory: There’s nothing to do there but think. And think. About what you are going to do when you get out of Ottawa. And so you have this driving ambition to create your own reality.

I grew up in the centre of town—a safe, short bus ride away from Parliament. My friends from the Ottawa ‘burbs don’t share this view but I feel very lucky to have spent my childhood years there. I was surrounded by the values of bilingualism—I received my first kiss, on the cheek, from a French-Canadian boy of eight (I was seven). He was amazingly chaste and he lived next door. There was a strong awareness of human rights. Homophobia was taboo. Everybody I knew was politically aware, and many were politically committed. It was provincial and international at the same time.

It could be very frustrating growing up in this backwater where everything seemed to shut down at 10 pm. Our parents felt safe raising kids in such a small, easy city but you could still see a Shaw play or Marcel Marceau at the National Arts Centre, which happens to be located right across from Byward Market. The Market was Ottawa’s red light district when I was a kid and, as far as I know, still is. It’s conveniently located—right near Parliament Hill. At some point, in the ’80s, wicked yuppies tried to eliminate streetwalkers and they didn’t really succeed. As kids, we all knew that something racy went down in the Market, and we also knew that our parents thought it was a normal fact of life.

Quan’s website is at http://www.tracyquan.net/, where you can check out her blog, donate to the ABA Bookseller Relief Fund for Hurricane Katrina survivors in the book trade, and read letters to her at Dear TQ, amongst other things. Perfect activities for a snow day.