Housekeeping

Posted 1 February, 2008 in Uncategorized |

January was a light month content-wise around these parts, largely due to your humble correspondent suffering from what one correspondent politely referred to as a case of the “January blahs.” As a result, TSR has neglected to cover some fairly significant literary news over the past weeks. A.L. Kennedy winning the Costa prize, for instance. (And, by the way: yippee!) The death of editor and CanLit superhero Robert Weaver. Oprah’s choice of a self-help book as her new book club pick (and literature takes yet another swift kick to the ‘nads.)

So, to all of you who have been checking back regularly, hoping for something pithy or sarcastic or annoying to appear in these pages only to be met with crushing disappointment: I apologize. It’s a new month, however, and although the snow is pounding down mercilessly outside my office window, sending me into paroxysms of despair at the thought of winter ever ending, I pledge to try to do better in February. It’s going to be a busy month. Some of the things you can (with luck, and a Herculean effort of will on my part) look forward to over the next twenty-nine days:

• Some discussion of CanLit’s dilemma on the world stage. How does our peculiar brand of parochialism and reticence translate into a literature that, despite our nationalistic delusions, doesn’t compare internationally to that of our counterparts to the south, or across the pond?
• Brace yourselves: it’s gonna get mushy around here. February is the repository — for better or worse — of Valentine’s Day, of that diminutive fucker Cupid and his arrows, which are variously sharp and piercing, or unforgivably blunt and badly aimed. Regardless, love is not a subject that has taken up much space in these pages, in part because of your humble correspondent’s natural disinclination to talk about it, and in part because it flies in the face of the cynical, existential nature of his online project. However, it may be time to redress this, albeit in a very limited way. Accordingly, look for reviews of the new collections Four Letter Word: Original Love Letters and My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro to appear on or around the fourteenth of the month.
• February is also Black History Month, which means I may finally get around to Michael Thomas’s novel Man Gone Down, which one piddling little newspaper thought was one of the ten best books of 2007.
• It’s also — again, for better or worse — Canada Reads month, so watch out for some coverage of that bad boy towards the end of the month.

No doubt there will also be some other subjects that crop up in the news, and I’ll do my best to comment on these in an appropriate timeframe, and with an appropriate admixture of fear and loathing.

In the meantime, if you’re inclined, you can tool on over to Finn Harvor’s site, Conversations in the Book Trade, for an interview that I did, which is now online there. And for those of you who have any interest in my thoughts about Alberto Manguel’s Massey Lectures, City of Words, my review is online, here.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

3 comments to “Housekeeping”

Panic, February 1st, 2008 at 2:56 pm:

• that diminutive fucker Cupid
  HA!

Jay, February 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm:

• Hey, thanks for dropping by my bookworm site. It’s a relief to know that I’m not the only one still reading, and it’s refreshing to know that someone else has opinions too!

B., February 4th, 2008 at 2:35 am:

• Don’t forget…Lincoln’s got a birthday this month, too.

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