Book Review: Therafields, by Grant Goodbrand

It was with considerable surprise when, browsing the shelves of our favourite used bookstore, Balfour Books, I was handed a book by my wife. "Did you see this?" It was purporting to be about a massive psychoanalytic commune which had its roots in downtown Toronto during the 60s and 70s. I was surprised because I'd never heard of it before - the group was called Therafields. I was immediately struck by the communal angle, the era, the emphasis on psychological investigation - it was like being handed a screenplay by David Cronenberg. The fact that I am studying psychotherapy and its theoretical/historic development made it irresistible.

Subtitled The Rise And Fall of Lea Hindley-Smith's Psychoanalysis Commune, Grant Goodbrand's Therafields is just that. From the mid-60s till the early-80s, what was eventually coined Therafields, became one of the largest active communes in North America (significant considering both the era and that it happened with virtually no physical or cultural traces left in this city), owning as many as 35 houses within, and 400 acres of farmland just outside Toronto. At its apex it had over 900 members.

Starting out with a modest practice in the Annex, Welsh émigré Lea Hindley-Smith began by seeing people in her home. Her open embrace of students combined with an uncanny ability to get to the bottom of her clients' problems (not to mention her real estate acumen) conspired along with the socially progressive ideals of the 60s to develop a remarkable experiment in psychotherapy: a live/work environment which operated also as an ongoing group-process for its members, all under the auspices of Hindley-Smith who became their professor, CEO, and den mother. More houses were bought so that more living spaces could be added to accommodate new members, and new groups were developed. The story of Therafields is an account of how this creative hive eventually became an unmanageable empire. It is also an invaluable reflection of the changes happening at the time, guest-starring those stranded by the revoked promises of Vatican II, the back-to-the-farm movement, and the idea that psychotherapy could be about society rather than the individual.

I am a child of the 70s. Nothing could possibly be less meaningful than that statement. However, culturally speaking, I was surrounded by the 70s. The mid-70s to mid-80s were a formative time in Canadian television. In other words, we saw a lot of ourselves. And what we saw was produced and inflected by those who came of age in the 60s and early 70s (that's the way it always worked until recently, by the way - the older generation helped the younger generation identify with their own generation). In other words, I can imagine Therafields, while reading about it. Goodbrand has done a good job of contextualizing the era in which his book takes place. It also helps that Goodbrand was a key member of Therafields himself, and as such is gifted with a familiarity which an outside author would struggle to develop. The flip-side to that statement is that an outside author might have had a better chance of keeping the rhythm of the book's story consistent: there is a habit of temporal back-and-forth which does not make for smooth comprehension at times.

Considering Goodbrand's credentials, Therafields unfortunately suffers from a detached perspective. He is as qualified as anyone to write about Lea Hindley-Smith and those who were key to the group's skyward development - like esteemed poet bpNicol, for example - yet it seems only an accumulation of actions, the plotline of a biography, which gives us clues to the hearts beating behind the cast of characters. Goodbrand's book sometimes reads like an account rather than an experience.

And here we come to a marketing dilemma: I'm not sure who the intended audience is. I am thankfully, luckily, well-suited to read, understand, and enjoy Therafields. Yet... With its insistence on differentiating what Hindley-Smith practiced (Kleinian) from classical psychoanalysis, without necessarily providing a debriefer for the reader on what makes Kleinian psychoanalysis different from it, I cannot imagine the "average reader" walking away knowing what that all should mean. Perhaps that won't matter if they are keen on digging into a prime slice of Toronto history - complete with addresses, one could conceivably operate a motor-tour of where Therafields took place.

It is, nonetheless, an insightful read and an invaluable chronicle of a peculiar social/cultural phenomenon. Therafields, by Grant Goodbrand (ISBN: 978-1-55022-976-9), is available (evidently) from a used bookstore near you, and also online.

Another One Bites The Dust

ARG! One of my favourite literary blogs is ending its run! I encourage you all to visit Ward Six. I really appreciated their approach: to book reviews, to the art of writing. To art itself.

The reasons they give are sensible, yet I will be selfish and whinge that I am now left with oh so very few relevant, intelligent, knowledgeable literary blogs to follow.

Nonetheless, I wish John and Rhian all the best.

Update

First off, things are going very well on the Keyhole blog. If you haven't checked it out, please do. Yes, this is me, shilling for myself (and the film).

It is a departure from Guy's previous works, which tended to rely on the aesthetic of film itself as a language; Guy has been very upfront about his love of tropes from the early days of cinema. The difference is that in Keyhole these elements are reordered in priority, toward the background as mise-en-scène and not a character in and of itself. Keyhole is subliminally deeper and more purely emotional than his earlier films; a drawback is that I'm not sure how much people will be able to absorb in one viewing. If there is one challenge that I am experiencing, it is balancing the educational, editorial, and entertainment-oriented components of the diary/blog.

Aside from this, teaching, student-ing, writing are going well. I am working on a submission letter to a literary agent for my novel. The weather is getting warmer. I can't complain

Well, I will complain: we have a federal election coming up May 2nd. I don't mind the election per se, but we have exceeded three weeks of campaigning already and not one word of either Afghanistan or Libya - two wars which require a position, regardless of whether you are the sitting government or one of the contenders. Oh, and health care. It's the weird-assed priorities which bug me - who are they trying to appeal to? Swing voters and pundits, it seems.

Guy Maddin's Keyhole

Good news #1: I'm supervising the post production on the new film by Guy Maddin, Keyhole.

Good news #2: I've been asked to do a blog/diary of its progress. Sweet!

Here's the link to my Keyhole post production blog. Don't be surprised if it takes my attention away from here for the next while. I will endeavour to keep Imaginary Magnitude updated.

My "I Hate Award Shows" Article is up!

Ryeberg has posted my compendium of award show trainwrecks, just in time for the Oscars. Enjoy.

Book Review: The Tiger, by John Vaillant

(I had done a mini-review of this on my end-of-the-year post, but thought it merited its own entry)

I found myself flipping through the Globe and Mail book section one weekend in the fall of 2010, and found myself staring at a review for a non-fiction book called The Tiger, by author John Vaillant. Let me begin by saying that I am a prolific reader, yet not someone phased by what's new so much as what interests me. To this extent, given my eclectic tastes, I will switch from Turgenev to Bukowski, from John Ralston Saul to Stanislaw Lem, and so on. I sometimes don't have a lot of time to read books, period, owing to a fairly full schedule of projects (which includes working on a novel). As a result, I sometimes feel a little out of touch with the contemporary world of books, especially when there are people on Twitter who are aiming to read fifty books this year.

Getting back to me and the review, I glanced at the synopsis and was struck by how meaty it was: the Russian far east, a vengeful killing machine, a dark exploration of our ties to nature. It seemed to be everything I was looking for (especially as a Russophile) and gave me an opportunity to actually read something published in the year that I was reading it.

It is, in short, a fabulous book. Fabulous, above all, because of the depth of Vaillant's research into his subjects and his skill at balancing this collective learning against the white knuckle tension that is at the heart of the story. The Tiger begins with the stalking and subsequent killing of a tayozhnik - a Siberianism for forest dweller - named Markov and the series of events it sets in motion against the backdrop of the merciless taiga (or "boreal forest") surrounding the little logging town of Sobolonye.

The tension is established early, not by Markov's demise so much as the complex relationship between humans and tigers in this paradoxical part of the world, much of the relationship predicated on the aboriginal teaching that a tiger will never attack a human, so long as the former respects the latter's spiritual and physical superiority. This superiority is laid out in full measure: from a zoological perspective, the tiger is perhaps the most sublime killing machine that exists in the world of mammals and Vaillant spares no time outlining how every inch of the beast exceeds any comparable hunter on the planet - both in physicality and mentality. The tiger thinks. The tiger learns. Most compelling of all, the tiger remembers.

It is this last quality which lends much tension, because, as the tiger is tracked by a team of professional hunters over the course of two weeks, the question is repeatedly asked: did Markov bring this on himself? And how?

The Tiger is a stunning combination of layered storytelling and educational insight into the evolutionary relationship between man and animal. Indeed, given the barren environment of the setting, it feels sometimes as if the conflicts between man and animal are staged in a prehistoric past rather than their modern setting in the late 90s. There are also some sad truths made about the aftereffects of the economic collapse of the former Soviet Union and the perennial designs China has on the taiga's natural resources - tigers included.

The Tiger, by John Vaillant (ISBN: 978-0307268938) is published by Knopf and is readily available in your local, independent bookstore.

Book Review: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Sometimes things just line up in such a way that you can't help feeling they were put there on purpose. Early this month, as part of a course I'm taking, I went to a weekend retreat, held at a secluded compound by the Credit River. It was a bit eerie, because many of my dreams take place in expansive compounds: wherever I go, even if it seems I'm outside, I just have to look up to see that there is a roof, or some sort of enclosure to remind me that I am not free. So, what book from our library did I take with me at the last minute? Why, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, of course. What I didn't realize is that much of it takes place on a compound...but I'll get back to this.

I've not read any books by Ishiguro - I haven't even seen the movie adaptation of Remains of the Day. That said, I did work on Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music In The World, an adaptation of one of his short stories. I'd heard good things about Never Let Me Go, and had always meant to read it. With it being released as a film recently (I don't think it did that well, despite the critical praise), and since I needed something to read during my time away, I thought it would be a good pick.

Never Let Me Go concerns the story of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. It's told from Kathy's perspective in the present. She is a carer, who drives from centre to centre, visiting those she looks after. Very soon we are introduced to their beginnings, as children, in a place called Hailsham. It's an isolated educational enclave, somewhere in England, where the students live, go to school, and grow up. But there's something a little odd about it all. Perhaps it's the isolation from the rest of the world. Something in the way some of their guardians regard them. All too soon, their sun-dappled childhood in Hailsham becomes something which haunts them as they grow into young adults. It's practically all Kathy can use to mark the passing of her time.

Within these reminiscences, we are introduced to Tommy and Ruth, who become the foundational friendships Kathy clings to through adolescence, regardless that Ruth oscillates from friend to enemy - a colourful rather than careful individual who becomes a voice of danger in the fog of their relationship.

The magic of this book is the skill with which Kathy's perspective is written. There is a purpose for Hailsham, for their being there. There is a reason she is a carer. Never Let Me Go is a capital-H haunting novel, inhabited by people who are slightly cold but reaching out, never quite managing to touch a meaning they hope is there. I can't say much more without spoiling things, not that it's a book laden with surprises, so much as layered with subtle, sad observations. A beautiful book for a rainy day.

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (ISBN: 978-0-676-97711-0) is available at an independent bookstore near you, or at various online retailers.

Ryeberg Article #2 is Up!

Just a note to say that my 2nd contribution to Ryeberg, the curated video-essay site, is now online.

Previously it was Dennis Bergkamp and the World Cup of '98. Now it is the bossa nova spell cast by Elis Regina, and the classic song Águas de Março.

I Don't Want To Know

As a writer, even though I am not part of any sort of literati, I am still plugged into the lit scene. You need to be if you want to understand the general to-and-fro of any industry you are interested in becoming a part of (same goes for TV, music, theatre, etc..). That said, I must make an admission. I am making this admission because I think there are a lot of people like me out there who feel the same but are reticent to admit it.

Here goes: I don't take any particular interest in the life of the artist outside of his or her art.

When I read a book, I don't care if an author comes from the East Coast and studied journalism, had a drug problem and now lives in a shed with a mastiff. It's not that I don't care about this author personally, it's that these facts shouldn't have anything to do with the book that I am about to read. I should be able to pick up the book, knowing nothing about said author, and be able to read it, enjoy it, be fully affected by it, without substantially missing something due to a lack of familiarity with the author's biography.

And yet, when you are culturally plugged-in (and by this I mean, you check out industry blogs, trade mags, etc.) there is so much white noise about the artists themselves that it seems divergent from what it is they are supposed to be doing: their work. We can talk about Picasso's passions, but 100 years from now there will probably only be discussion of his work - your work is the only thing left after you and everyone who knew you has died. And if people are still talking more about you than your work after this point, then I would think the quality of your work was overstated.

Would knowing that Stephen King battled drug addiction offer an insight into some of his writing? Yes. But, my point is that if that insight is necessary in order to fully appreciate a piece of work then there is a problem. The work doesn't work if you need a biographical cheat sheet to inject context into the material.

I think Bryan Ferry is an fantastic vocalist - and I don't want to know anything more than that. Nor the details outside a director's films, nor what inspired the playwright to write her play. I've got my own shit going on, thanks very much.

Ephemera is for journalists, fanzines, and those working on their Ph.D. The general public should not feel inadequate if they pick a DVD or book off a shelf, sit down in a theatre, or load a song without being prepared with supplemental information not contained within the medium which contains the work. The work inevitably has to stand up for itself. I write this for two reasons: first, with the likes of the AV Club and traditional print/TV media clamouring to add as much web-based context as possible to every article, there's a growing sense that - for the everyman - if you aren't savvy to the smallest details of each artist's passings and goings, you are nothing but a tourist. Secondly, embracing social media to a claustrophobic degree, we can now read endless commentating on authors reading their work for a live audience!...something no one really asked for outside the publishing companies themselves and perhaps the authors' parents. Let's face it: most authors can't read aloud to save their lives - it's not their specialty.

There are reasons for digging deeper, but that's up to the individual. It was interesting to learn more about HP Lovecraft when I reviewed Michel Houellebecq's quasi-biography of him and his work. What's funny, however - using that same example - is that when I proceeded to read the two works by Lovecraft contained in that same book, I don't recall thinking to myself "Ahh - this is where his uncomfortable relationship with women takes shape!". That's because the stories were two of his masterpieces, and when you witness a masterpiece, peripheral biographical information is going to gunk-up your enjoyment.

The medium may be the message, but the work contains the words. Outside of this we are left with cultural "bonus features". Nice to have, but not necessary.

Swirl

I am trying (desperately) to avoid a "boy, it's been a wacky ride these last few months!" post. It certainly isn't for lack of things to talk about, news to update you with, opinions to confess/shout.

Thing is, I don't know who you are. Sure, I know there are some of you who are semi-regular visitors. There are others who happen upon this place by accident (via Blogger or StumbleUpon). There are also those who come here via Google searches, either via my name or - most likely - a book review (which admittedly I haven't done in, oh, a year or so *). And no, this isn't going to be a "Matt wittily evading accusations of being a lazy bastard by turning the camera on the reader" post.

I've been posting artsy stuff, writerly stuff, industry opinion stuff. I don't mind the randomness, so long as there's no fluff. I do mind the lack of output. I wish, for one, that I could post more photographs (which is to say, I wish I had a better selection of photos to post **).

It comes down to the fact that I've been working like a dog since May (note: this happens every year that I'm working on a SAW film). When I come out of these periods, I feel like Rip van Winkle: a little dazed, slow on the up-take. Whereas last year this time I started teaching, this time this year I am a student (part-time) †. I have a small (but good) feature and a small (but good and potentially controversial) TV show on my plate from now till February. If funds allow, I also hope to have an editor working with me on my novel, with an eye to approaching a publisher or self-publishing if that doesn't seem feasible ††. I'm collaborating on a musical.

My plate is full.

- - - 

* which isn't to say that I'm not reading or that I don't want to do any more book reviews. I'm reading a lot of non-fiction, thank you. Much of it either out of professional or academic interest. However, if only to improve my Google ranking, here's a quick book review of Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño: What the fuck was that? (ISBN-13: 978-0811217170)

** another casualty of working so much is my photography. I still have the same roll of film in my camera that I'd loaded in June. I think I've only taken 4 exposures since then. Of course, my cellphone camera gets all the fun these days, unfortunately.

† I will be continuing teaching, but for only two terms this year as opposed to three (which was exhausting and... exhausting)

†† It needs a new name, for one thing. And I know this is going to drive me up the wall more than any changes to the actual content of the book.

Ryeberg

I should note that I've contributed a few pieces of work to an innovative website, called Ryeberg. The conceit of the site is user-contributed curated YouTube videos, narrated by personal essays on a variety of topics. I am in revision-mode currently, but when my stuff gets posted, I'll let you know. In the meantime, feel free to visit.

Fiction Excerpt: Cloud Species

I've labelled myself a fiction writer in my bio - I've certainly mentioned my writing here and there - yet I have never posted any work on this blog. Why? Well, mainly for fear of publishing something which would contravene most lit journals' definition of "unpublished". How am I getting around this? Well, at least for now, I am providing an orphaned excerpt - I don't know what it belongs to, so please consider this a "work in progress". Well...maybe I do know what it belongs to, but I think it's safe to upload it, for now at least.)

Cloud Species (excerpt)

Something made the hedge in front of the porch shake, as if shook by a hand reaching out of the ground. I would've leaned forward to look closer, but I was exhausted from the previous night. There – it happened again. I could hear dry twigs cracking. The morning sun approached my feet on the floor of the porch, the volume of civilization rising slowly around me: coffee grinders, piano lessons, radios. Yet I couldn't see a soul. I was alone, focused on the hedge, curious what made it move. I didn't want the sun to touch me yet.

She left a newspaper behind but I didn't touch it. It was sitting in the sun. She must have been up earlier than me. Perhaps she'd been up all night until now? I didn't want her gifts and I didn't want the troubles of the world to make rain from the cloudy anger hanging in my head. I sat brooding in a Muskoka chair asking myself what exactly I'd expected to have happened the night before, instead of what did.

It was a robin. It ran out from the hedge onto the yard, took one look at me, head cocked to the side, momentarily frozen. It was hunting. It seemed more threatening than I could be, sitting staring at it helplessly, drinking coffee like it was an antidote for paralysis.

I asked myself why I'd gone to bed so early. Why before then I'd drank so much, so quickly. Why I'd bothered making the trip if I was so exhausted in the first place. I couldn't answer any of it. I wasn't allowing myself to. It was like staring at long division on a chalkboard: I could see the numbers but didn't want to understand where they came from.

The bird carried on with its sweep of the yard, unconcerned by my presence. The sunlight crept closer to my feet, my head was stuffed with thoughts, a jumble of unconnected ideas which became words scribbled over each other, my coffee cup was empty and I knew I'd have to creep up the stairs in order to get more. Past her, sleeping. Sleeping, I hoped, alone.

Dreams

(Over on Ward Six, there was a post about dreams and the use of dreams in one's writing. This is my response/non-response to that post.)

Dreams, without exploding into a cavalcade of pet-theories, feed our experiences back to us as deconstructed information. Familiar objects and people are shuffled, perhaps not randomly, and re-proposed to us. As reality.

I am haunted by dreams still. Dreams I had when I was a child. Nightmares. Fantasies. No wonder. When you are growing up, the easel upon which your dreams are painted is like an IMAX screen: massive, all-encompassing, as close to real as it gets. As you get older, as you obtain experience, as your field of vision and reason begins to vibrate independently - in other words, as you become an individual - dreams cease to take centre stage. They exist and appear just as often as before, but for some reason their weight and impact is lessened.

And yet, a handful of times every year (it's so hard to pin-down because they disappear into the ether like clear helium balloons) I will have a dream which haunts me throughout the morning (if not the day). It is those dreams I try to write down. Some I make into short stories as realities. Some, I incorporate into long fiction as, well, dreams.

Dreams are language. They vex interpretation, yet I feel there is nothing arbitrary about their construct. I fancy: somewhere in our sleeping minds an architect awakens and sorts through our lives, our goals and fears, our friends and enemies, our passions and hatred. This architect then casts a mold: fluid, non-dimensional, mantic. And it is this we are exposed to in our vulnerable slumber.

We wake up and try, often in vain, to make sense of it. And yet I think the most sense we will ever make of our dreams is by not interpreting them at all but allowing them to stand on their own. Allow them to stand as imponderable totems, sculpted by a subconscious architect: haunting, monolithic riddles. They represent the need for non-linearity in our lives.

Impetus

Since the beginning of 2010 (I still can't adjust to typing that without staring out the window to see if there are flying cars in the sky) I've felt change is imminent for me. Whereas last year seemed to be a boat load of life coming straight at me, the inverse seems to be conjuring its way into this year - I feel more connected to surroundings, and better able to manipulate (if I may use the word manipulate in the best possible way) the outside world, the not I (to quote Krishnamurti).

This is not to say that I've got all of the problems with life, the world, or myself sorted out (ha!), but rather I feel a greater impetus to direct energy outward to affect change; to raise my own hurdles rather than wait for life to throw me hers.

I just don't know the details of how this energy will manifest yet - I'm listening intently. Perhaps small steps: publishing my short fiction to this here blog, and/or showcasing others'? Alternately, putting a cap in this blog entirely and moving on to something different. Shifting to work more with my own media rather than with others'. Sparks. You see: the light of change. Inarticulate still, but pulsing with activity, from the inside out.

Mobile: Dispatch #1

Dispatch...

1.​ to send off or away with speed, as a messenger, telegram, body of troops, etc.

2.​ to dismiss (a person), as after an audience.

3.​ to put to death; kill


Dispatch from the 501 Queen streetcar. Thoughts dispatched, sent like troops via cellphone: instant, unilateral.

This is not a dialogue.

Dispatch. Done with; I am finished incubating this thought. I am done. It has been sent in contravention of MacLuhan, without a message.


Message sent.


[Sent via BlackBerry]

An Unspoken Rule: It's Never Simple

For the last few years, I'd get the odd inspiration to write something suitable for the Facts & Arguments section of the Globe and Mail. For those unacquainted, it is a daily feature of one of our national newspapers; a personal essay between 800 and 1,000 words, open to the public for submissions.

Easy, right?

Truth: no. Every time I've tried in the past, I can't pull it off. Can't even get past two paragraphs. It's not a question of writing 800 words of personal essay, but rather pulling off 800 words of personal essay that actually is interesting to a wide array of people which isn't intellectually disingenuous at the same time. I say this because it's easy to make fun of the Facts & Arguments essay (or at least I find it easy). "In the end," I've joked to my wife, "what I learnt from my cat is that it's not the travails I endured, but the lessons contained therein which have enriched my life. Ha, ha". They are all, clichés aside, about personal experiences which lead to larger realizations. You could compare this (somewhat) to the essay featured at the back of the New York Times Sunday magazine, only longer and not as consistently curated.

Again: easy, right? After all, it's just 800 words of personal stuff. You're a writer, eh Cahill?

Truth: no, not easy. No, not at all. One misty Sunday morning over the Christmas break, I got the inspiration and decided that I was going to finally hunker down and do it. Me, the fiction-writing blogging sorta guy was going to sit his ass down and write an honest to goodness Facts & Arguments-style essay if it killed me. And it had to be good. And it had to be honest. No bullshit. No cynical kiss-ass formula-copying. It would, after all, have my name on it, published or not.

I realized several things immediately:

1. Even though I write for this blog, which could be construed as "personal non-fiction" (or whatever the latest strain of non-fiction terminology is), it's still pretty free-form stuff. It's not like I have an editor, aside from my own middling expectations. In other words, it was not a load of help.


2. Unlike fiction, I couldn't write it all down as a semi-coherent story and then revise-by-whim from there. I don't write enough non-fiction to have those strengths. My first "draft" (and trust me, that word deserves those odious quotation-marks) was a stinky grab-bag of overly-literary ideas which made no sense to the world outside my head, which for the most part seemed up my ass at the time that I wrote it.


3. Being honest in a blog and being honest in a personal essay intended for mass (as in nationwide) publication are two totally (totally) separate things. I had to pay attention to a lot more than I had bargained for. And no swearing.
   

It has been torture. I've spent more time on this than I care to mention (at last count, thirteen revisions in two weeks). And yet, I didn't want to give up. The format was a challenge and as a writer/artist/whatever it's important to be challenged, especially if one wants to be versatile. In the end (ha ha), I've finally got something worth submitting. Whether it actually gets published (and, God knows, I've done my best on this sucker) is no longer a chief concern. The goal was to submit my best effort and that is what I've done (though of course I've cursed my chances of this ever happening, having written about it beforehand and all).

Many lessons learnt, indeed.

Excerpt (with Revisions)

Miscellany: November 18, 2008

• Ingrid is approaching world domination. Her plaudit-winning reinterpretation of the cover for Cormac McCarthy's The Road has not only received international online acclaim (Bookninja, The Guardian, Boston Globe), but her work was featured in Sunday's New York (bloody) Times Book Review. Print and online editions (with the unfortunate misspelling of her last name in the print edition - needless to say this took a little of the shine off of the accolade. They will, however be printing a correction in an upcoming edition and the online version has her name spelled correctly).

• I've sent the first revised draft of my novel to a few selected readers. Unofficially looking for feedback and consensus that what I'm doing is worthwhile. Nervous. Anxious. Perhaps as a result of this and other things, I've been struck by some interesting what-if's regarding a new book idea. I must be a masochist. At least it doesn't hurt.

• I turned 38 on Saturday. I share that day with Ed Asner and Tilda Swinton (they were not in New York, unfortunately - I tried).
  

• Two films I worked on opened within two weeks of each other. One is a franchise horror film (of the "moral error leads to violent suffering" kind) which traditionally draws massive audiences and box office gold (if not good reviews). The other is (wait for it) a gore-Goth rock opera which is only receiving an eight-theatre release (if not good reviews). They represent what I've been working on for the last twelve months. Working in film/TV is "what I do for money", a distinction I wish I didn't have to make, save for the fact that the quality stuff (often Canadian) doesn't pay my rent. It's a quandary punctuated by background horror-movie funhouse screams.

Art & Suicide

As reported in the news over the weekend, spilling into the papers this week, American novelist/essayist David Foster Wallace took his life. He had hung himself in his home, only to be discovered later by his wife.

To be honest, I've only read one piece by Wallace - an essay in an issue of Harper's almost ten years ago on the release of the revised Oxford English Dictionary - and yet it left an indelible impression on me. It made me laugh out loud with its quirky honesty and his style was unique and strong; in short, it made me take notice of writing and writers at a time when it simply was not on my radar (for various reasons). I always swore I would read one of his books, but the prospects of picking up the one he is best known for, Infinite Jest, all 1,000 pages of it, was intimidating. It still is, but that has more to do with the fact that I'm in the middle (or, factually, just past the middle) of War & Peace with Joyce's Ulysses staring at me from the bookshelf longingly.

Wallace's suicide is the second in the last few years by an artist who's work I'd kept an eye on. The first was that of American humorist and performer, Spalding Gray, who - it is assumed - leapt from a ferry into the Hudson River and drowned. I saw him at Massey Hall (one of the most venerable venues in Toronto) many years ago. As with Wallace's essay, I remember crying with laughter during Gray's droll monologue.

Which brings us to the question of artists and suicide.

Someone on Bookninja had this to say in reaction to the story:

In my work (psychiatry) I’ve seen so many creative people who are so tortured inside. I’ve often wondered if, given the choice, they’d choose peace over creativity. Maybe suicide is exercising that choice.

I thought about this. I wanted to respond, because I had something to say, but in the end I decided it would only be a tangent and while tangents are allowable in most online situations, an obituary is not exactly the place for one.

The answer is that artists do not want peace, or at least an artificial peace. To do so would be to abandon the tension which is inherent in art (and science, for that matter). In their art, over the course of their lives, artists attempt to resolve this tension; to articulate what it is that is at the centre of a storm which motivates them to create. The tension is the artist. Them against an outside world which does not work. Art becomes a philosophical expression of an existential dilemma. With this as the case, how many artists would willingly barter peace for creativity if such a trade were even possible? Not many, I would wager. What is peace when art allows you to reach higher than ever before, to touch the cookie jar of euphoria with your fingertips?

Like Wallace and Gray, I too suffer from depression. Their passing gives me pause, to put it lightly. Last night over dinner, Ingrid and I had a long talk about this - Wallace, Gray, art, and suicide - and she used a quote from Wallace that she'd read in one of the obituaries, that suicide happens very slowly. He is right. It is not, as commonly portrayed, an impulsive decision, but rather something which gestates very gradually within the mind of the sufferer. The danger is that this internalized dialogue, over the course of years, may eventually lead to the rationalization or acceptance of suicide as a logical option or self-fulfilling prophecy.

Art, however, is not depression, and depression should not be construed as something which only afflicts those in the arts. When you are depressed, anything can inflame the situation. Both the fire and the water used to douse it. It is for this reason that I take a moment to bring this up. So that people may understand what is, for lack of a better term, a mental illness. Allow me to suggest a wonderful series in the Globe and Mail, perhaps the best collection of stories and first-person recollections on the subject to be found in any newspaper.

I tip my hat to Wallace, to Gray. I mourn for the grief experienced by their loved ones.

Film Informing The Word

Reading Shelly Lowenkopf's blog - which he should consider titling Opium for Fiction Writers - one does not need to look too closely to see he likes the TV program The Wire; he often references the show to demonstrate whatever aspect of story-crafting he has chosen as his subject that day. I've never watched The Wire, but I'm sure some day I will, if only because it seems to genuinely merit the attention.

Being more of a film person, it got me thinking what films have influenced me as a writer, or which - should I ever find myself in a situation to dispense wisdom - I would choose, if only because they demonstrate some part or element of writing very well. What follows are a few films which, for lack of a better term, have writerly aesthetics. Coincidentally, most of what I've picked ended up being based on novels.

Off the top of my head, I would begin with Cutter's Way (1981), a little-known/little-shown film with Jeff Bridges and John Heard. On the one hand, it's about a drifter in San Francisco who thinks he witnessed a murder one night, who's suspicions are heightened by his best friend, a self-destructive Vietnam veteran. Yet, the more ornate (and by the ending, spectacular) elements of its drama serve as a background, a nuisance to the drifter protagonist, and it ultimately becomes a story about someone who discovers they've spent their life dodging the responsibility of making tough choices. Based on Newton Thornburg's novel Cutter and Bone.

I would then travel back in time to The Third Man (1949), with Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles, a film-noir set in post-WWII Vienna (then occupied, as wonderfully described in the film's opening narration, by the American, British, and Russian armies, and of course, the black market). An American novelist discovers on his arrival to the city that the only person there he knows - his old friend, Harvey Lime - was recently killed in an accident. Yet, the longer he stays, the more splintered are of the accounts of Lime's passing, and the more strange are the cast of characters who claim to be his deceased friend's associates. Add love interest and stir. Strangely, though written by Graham Greene, it wasn't based on one of his published stories; he wrote a novella as a means of creating a template on which to base the screenplay, later published in book form after the film's release.

Fast-forward to 1980 and The Ninth Configuration, with Stacy Keach and Scott Wilson. It is the story of a shadowy military psychologist assigned to a remote castle in the Pacific Northwest, used as an asylum for those temporarily discharged from service in the Vietnam War. However, as the colonel is inspired by his discussions with the asylum's star patient, an astronaut who abruptly terminated his mission to the Moon just prior to take-off, the staff discover the colonel's methodry is more unorthodox than expected. This is the one film I knew was based on a novel, seeing as I read both the first incarnation (Twinkle, Twinkle "Killer" Kane) and its subsequently re-titled revision prior to the film being released. Written, produced, and directed by none other than William Peter Blatty (author of "The Exorcist", and a damn good director in his own right).

So, what is it? What is it about these random picks which touch upon fiction writing, aside from their literary pedigrees? Well, they all instill in the viewer a wider, more long-range idea of the story being told - much in the way that a good novel is capable, with the inclusion of just a few words inserted into the right spot, of suggesting dimensions which exist beyond the edge of the book pages. All three films include characters who stand out; characters who you can imagine living beyond the breadth of the films' respective duration times, if not from the beginning then surely afterwards. In all three films, we have protagonists who are thrust into a gnawing responsibility they did not request to be part of, a responsibility which in The Ninth Configuration is karmic, in The Third Man is seductive, and in Cutter's Way a question of conscience over desire. However, like all good stories, these responsibilities are seminal for the characters, and for the viewer with literary influences, perhaps inspirational.

[Post-script: it is not lost on me that all three of these stories are essentially mysteries, influenced by the remnants of armed conflict, namely WWII and Vietnam. I'm tempted to delve into why this is, but again, this is a blog and not a doctoral thesis. Perhaps another day. In the meantime, I've got a film mix to supervise...]