Gay books and street etiquette

I'm part of a gay book club. I mean the books are gay; they have homosexual themes and characters. It wouldn't be very PC to call it a gay book club based on its members' sexualities, I know, even though we all happen to be gay men.

Our last book was Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, which was made into a movie of the same name. We don't go easy on the books we discuss. Personally, I only love books when they're well-written and contain interesting subject matter. Some of the other guys are more forgiving when the book is well-written but boring, or vice versa. But this book is great in style and content, and it's funny. I LOLed over and over.

Also, I appreciate that gayness is not the one major theme of the book. The main character Augusten (the author—it's a memoir) just happens to be gay. I'm not saying his sexuality is glossed over, or hidden, it just isn't a main focus. Why can't more not-necessarily-gay books have gay characters?

Speaking of queerness, there was a lady at Starbucks today being rude to the trans barista. The rude lady wasn't complaining about this barista's gender identity specifically but I think that's what she was upset about. Either way, she kept using the wrong pronoun on purpose.

As a by-stander, what should I do in that situation? The barista is obligated to keep her cool, but I'm not, so should I tell her off on the barista's behalf? Or do I ignore this lady's rudeness and move on? I would have found it emotionally satisfying to tell her off, but it's not practical to upset people, even terrible people, in the short term at least.

Would bad people be nicer if everyone stood up to them? I honestly don't know.

I feel similarly about those employees of charities who hold binders at the edge of the sidewalk, trying to ask you for money. Nobody likes them, yet some people stop to chat. Why? To feel polite? Don't they know binder people feed off attention? That conversation is their oxygen, and without it they would die, or at least stop wasting strangers' time by guilting them into conversation?

Apologies, reader, if binderperson is your occupation. I'm sure your mother finds you charming.

The Circle Game

Since the weather turned nice I've spent lots of time on my deck, reading and tanning. My cubicle buddy mentioned I looked tanned, a satisfying compliment after so many hours spent outdoors in the name of beauty. But the effects of my other outdoor activity, reading, went unmentioned! She didn't say "Cam, you look tanned and you sound more intelligent than you did last week." I guess she didn't want to imply that I sounded dumb before all the reading. We're very polite at the office.

I've just finished The Circle Game, one of Margaret Atwood's first books of poetry. I think I've read it once before but not recently, and I'm sure I skipped the introduction the first time because it really helped me mentally string the poems together. I think it's important in a book of poetry that the poems "speak to each other." I don't think a one-page poem can accomplish much on its own, which is maybe what makes lit journals so boring to read, despite their being full of great Canadian poets, because the poems are published individually. The introduction is written by Sherrill Grace who was once an English prof at UBC, my alma mater.

As usual with M.A. the content in a number of poems is a mystery to me--aside from a few cool images I'm mostly scratching my head and grumbling over and over "but what does it mean!" Some of them are concrete and straight forward though, the kind I love initially but then the meaning sneaks up on me in the last few lines and I love them more. And of course there are a few really cutting poems about dysfunctional relationships which are always my favourite. One great poem "Eventual Proteus" ends "my face flinches/under the sarcastic/tongues of your estranging/fingers,/the caustic remark of your kiss." Burn!!

But then there's another poem "Letters, Towards and Away" which I find romantic--I'd even call it a love poem. Romantic? Margaret Atwood? I know! I hate to "sum it up" but I would like to think it's about an emotionally closed woman (the speaker) who is opened up to the idea of love by another person (the "you" in the poem.) My favourite part: "but just by standing there and/being awkward/you force me to speak/love."

I'm headed out to the deck now to read some short stories by Alice Munro (from her new collection of selected stories Alice Munro's Best) which I'm enjoying quite a bit. BTW, I have the week off work and I'd like to find some good contemporary Canadian poetry to fill my time. Any suggestions?

Poets turned fiction writers (or the other way around)

Recently my mom bought me Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall. It takes place in Parkdale and as usual I think it’s neat to recognize place names in books. I have friends who don’t like to see Toronto landmarks appear in Canadian writing because that means the author is “trying too hard to be Canadian.” I think that’s a double standard though because American writers can sprinkle the names of New York subway stations into their stories as gratuitously as they like and no one bats an eye.

I also borrowed a book of her poetry, Precordial Thump, which I really enjoyed. Now I wonder if my reading experience was enhanced by having read her fiction already. I think it’s interesting to read poetry and fiction from the same author, particularly when I read them one after the other so I haven't forgotten all the author's writerly quirks. In writing school I felt bad about recycling my favourite words across all my genres but as a reader I’m interested to pick out a writer’s recurring words, characters, images, etc. Zoe Whittall seems to like “monitor” as a verb and she uses a lot of paramedic jargon. As for Margaret Atwood, I’ve noticed she likes “bulge” and turning circular things into eyes.

Speaking of them together, Zoe Whittall and Margaret Atwood have both written poetry about dating liars/psychopath types. Those are my favourite in Precordial Thump because I find myself attracted to unemphathetic types fairly consistently. Learn from your mistakes Cam (...but they’re so charming!)

The idea of wanting to see somebody as either all good or all bad comes up in both the novel and the poems, which is another comparison I would make if I were required to write a five paragraph essay about them. I think I miss school.

My Diva

I hope this doesn't sound homophobic, but some gay writers feel so strongly dismissed by the rest of society that they can't write anything that doesn't underscore their status as an outsider, which they feel is double the outsider status of straight writers, who are also loners but less often discriminated against. And it's sometimes true, I guess, that when a gay writer comes out, he first has to overcome society's lingering homophobia (which does seem inextinguishable, doesn't it, even after so many celebrities have come out) and then, when he's finally feeling entitled to his gayness, he's rejected a second time by the gay community itself, which is full of shallow monsters who lack the emotional complexity of an artist, and who hurt his feelings on purpose.

Maybe I can't properly empathize with these gay men because I found acceptance so quickly and so easily. By luck, I guess, with my friends and family, and with gay men because I'm good looking.

This week I've been reading My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, an anthology edited by Michael Montlack. Most of these writers seem to define "diva" as a woman who gay men admire because she inspires feelings of strength and courage. Usually it's Judy Garland or Madonna, but this anthology includes a lot of unusual divas like Annie Lennox and Wonder Woman, which is cool.

But how many times can an anthology get away with publishing the same line that starts with something like: "As gay men, we have all faced discrimination, exile and soul-crushing loneliness..." It's not interesting, as self-pity tends not to be to anyone but the person experiencing it, but what really miffs me is how it claims to apply to all gay men. Some gay men didn't require the assistance of a strong female role model in coming out. That's okay too, isn't it? I can't help comparing the book to the kind of older gay man who pulls you aside at a nightclub and tells you how fortunate you are to have been born more recently than he was.

A good metaphor jumps out at you from the dark alleyway of life

I really dislike being quizzed on my knowledge of Canadian literature. It usually happens at parties when I call myself a writer and the other person asks whether I've read a certain book by a certain author and I have to admit I haven't, despite that author being a well-known Canadian, and then they frown like I'm being uncooperative on purpose.

So I'm trying to brush up on Canadian lit to save myself the embarrassment.

I'm nearly finished a non-fiction book by Jan Zwicky, a Canadian poet and philosopher, called Wisdom & Metaphor. One cool feature is its page numbering. On each left-hand page there's Jan Zwicky's writing, and it shares a page number with an excerpt on the right-hand page by some other writer. So structurally the book itself is metaphor-like because each page matches up writings from two different authors that are meant to bring each other new meaning.

Jan Zwicky is really, really smart. Some pages I only slightly understand, just enough to realize I could get it if someone explained it to me. Jan Zwicky is in cahoots with Don McKay, Robert Bringhurst and a few other Canadian writers and academics who have similar ideas about language and the way it means what it means.

"Gestalt shift" comes up a lot on the left-hand pages. It's meant to describe a metaphor's immediate effect on a person. At UBC my English profs loved to ask us students to define metaphor, and that seems to be something even Jan Zwicky struggles with. So don't feel bad if you don't know what it means either. Because by definition a metaphor should contain two non-identical parts, but once a metaphor stops surprising us, we understand it automatically as one concept without having to put in the effort of making a comparison. I think computer memory might be a good example of a term that was once metaphorical. Because although a person's brain stores information differently from a computer, some clever person coined the metaphor "computer memory" and it stuck because it gestalt shifted people into better understanding their hard drive. But now we just accept that computers have memory--it's not a metaphor because we're no longer surprised and delighted to hear it said. Anyway, that's paraphrasing what I learned from Jan Zwicky so I hope I got it right. I think she would approve.

I also tried to read a book of Jan Zwicky's poems, Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences, but I didn't understand any of them! The language was simple and the poems were short but they still made me feel stupid. So for my self-esteem's sake I'm glad I'm having better luck with her non-fiction.

Another book blog to check out

Did you know that "What is Cam Reading?" is a play on the name of Yann Martel's blog? It's true! Did you also know that titles can't be copyrighted, so even if I wanted to call my blog Life of Pi nobody could do a damn thing about it.

It was my brother, a librarian, who introduced me to Yann Martel's blog, What is Stephen Harper Reading? Yann Martel introduces the blog by vowing to mail the Prime Minister a book every two weeks "that has been known to expand stillness" along with a letter introducing it. He often asks Stephen Harper for feedback on the books but sadly he receives few replies.

It's a really funny blog. You ought to check it out: www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca

The time joblessness leaves for reading

Not having a steady job, my days are full of spare time. Last Saturday I watched a computer generated walrus fork a polar bear with its tusks on YouTube and I realized two things, not at once but consecutively: first, I had finished watching every episode of Animal Face-Off, which was crushing enough. But second and more importantly, I had wasted time I could have spent reading.

So, I'm starting a blog about books I'm reading because it will be fun and also motivational. If I go weeks without updating it please send me an email to ask why I've stopped reading. I'm probably halfway through a TV series online and in need of encouragement.

Your friend in literacy, Cam

PS: No offense to Animal Face-Off. That show is both awesome and educational and it's even accessible to kids much younger than myself. If you'd like to watch an episode I particularly recommend Anaconda vs. Jaguar.