Waking Up To Banned Books: Toronto Jews Talk American Politics

I know one American. And he's not American, really. His mother was born in New York, and so he's been gifted with the right (or privilege--however you see it) to vote in the upcoming U.S. election.

"What do you think of Obama?" he asked me.

"I think he's an idealist."

"So?"

"So, all he has to do is believe he can fly."

"I don't get it."

"Wendy. Captain Hook. Understand?"

"No."

"I like him better than the rich white guy and his rich white wife and their rich white Roy Cohn."

"Roy Cohn?"

"Palin."

"Oh, right. Well, I don't know. I don't know about him. Obama, I mean."

"I can understand that. But change might be good. Even if it lacks substance, even if it doesn't work."

"I'm going to vote for McCain: he's good for Israel."

And that's the way that Toronto Jews see it. They actually follow American politics; they're interested in American intrigue. Our politics is--that's right, it's singular--awful. Boring, stupid, and completely devoid of characters. Our prime minister once took his children to a coal mine. When they got bored, complaining that they wanted to go home, he told them that they couldn't leave or they'd miss the tonnage.

So we follow American politicians. But democrat, republican, or otherwise, only one thing matters: Israel.

Which is why Sarah Palin is really scaring Toronto's Jewish community. Remember that story about Palin trying to ban certain books? This was up in Alaska, in her district schools and libraries. The list--apocryphal as it may be--is long: Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint, Herzog, The Naked and the Dead, The Magic Barrel, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, Tuesdays with Morrie. Starting to see a connection here? (Hint: unleavened bread is somehow involved.)

"She bans books," my grandmother said. "I don't like that. I think that people should be able to read what they want and make their own choices."

"She banned Silas Marner my grandfather said. Silas Marner! Why?"

"That list was wrong," I said. "Don't trust it."

"What about Heller, Roth, Albom?" my grandfather shouted. "She banned them all."

"I'm telling you: don't trust the list."

"She bans Malamud. What'd he ever do to anyone. Ban Richard Wright, for crissakes. He killed someone."

"No he didn't."

"Look it up! David," he was getting conspiratorial, "listen to me: She's banning Jewish books. She's banning all of them. Think about it: What does this mean for Israel?"

"Please!"

"She hunts, David! She shoots animals for fun, then eats them. Do you think she cares about 2.5 million Jews?"

"How's that an argument?"

"Her husband's the First Dude. He rides dogs to work. German Shepherds. You know where they used German Shepherds?"

"Yes, I do."

"Did you see her campaign manager? David, did you see him? He's Jewish! He's a Jew. David, she made him wear a pinstripe suit. David, did you see the yellow kerchief in his breast pocket? Did you see how it was folded? Five points. She made him wear that."

"Go golfing, Zaida. Pick up your clubs, and go play golf."

"You and everyone else. You'll see."

My grandmother sipped her hot water and lemon. "To ban books? In this day. I can't believe it. And especially Portnoy's Complaint. That wasn't even dirty."

"Yes, it was. It was incredibly dirty. Almost as dirty as Henry Miller."

"Oh, she banned him too."

"Miller? Well, maybe she's not so bad."

Question: Can Serious Prose (Fiction) Survive A Blog?

I've been doing a lot of sly bullshitting lately, and it's made me wonder whether this blog shouldn't or couldn't be a little more serious. Should I add poems, should I perform the office of a legitimate prose writer. And what I mean by that is Should I actually offer any insight(s) into dasein as I both see and imagine it.

I don't think I should. I think, if anything, I should be even more outrageous; even less serious.

I was looking through an old essay, and I'd written, about Woolf's To the Lighthouse, that "Nature is sombre and has a soul of passion." I wrote that years ago. (They call that "creative criticism," and at the graduate level it's good for two pounds of flesh.)

But I thought, "Well, I can do something like that. I can be honest, I can write serious fiction; I can post poetry."

And then GBS (Bernard Shaw) spoke to me. "David, why do you want to do that? David, so many others are doing that. David, please...David--Where in the shower does David Adams Richards rest his foot when he's shaving his testicles? Tell me that, David. Please."

So I could be serious. I have unpublished novels; I have unpublished short stories. I have unpublished poems.

But why ruin it? As Robert Bolt once told me, "David, you've already got one Margaret Atwood. Be funny!"

I dug my toe into the sand. "Well, Robert: I try."

I just wish that people cared. If people don't read Saul Bellow, why would they care that he's thinking of buying a new canoe?

About two months ago I met Zadie Smith. "Zadie," I said, "I want to let you know that I really love your stuff. But, please, smile, honey. Just part your lips. Come on. It would mean so much to me. How about a grin? Zadie, just smirk."

I don't sound like that. But I put on the voice. For you, readers. Just to entertain you. But it doesn't work. It reminds me of the time that I baked a pecan pie for Bret Easton Ellis. He'd asked for it, and I baked it. "Bret, have a piece."

"No."

"Just a taste."

"I'm not hungry."

"But you asked for it."

"David: I do not need pie right now."

That's the future of blogging. In my opinion, of course.

Drink, Drink

I believe that as you drink your identity's revealed. So here's a test for all self-abusing writers: If you want to know whether you're really made to swallow and re-swallow the description of a tree--or even to look at a tree and wonder, "What kind of tree is that?"--then get drunk. If you get boisterous, if you start joking about the size and angle of your friend's nose, then you may be a writer. If you claw back at fun, if you stop yourself from being fun, then you are a writer. And you ought to sit down and get to 160,000 words, because you have no choice, you'll never escape it, and thin women like writers.

Last night, while drinking will fellow Canadian academics, I wondered what it would've been like if Derek Walcott had risen from the grave (I know he's not dead), and observed our table.

Walcott: Where's my money?

And I think that would've been about it.

One time I was in a bar and Michael Redhill walked in with Christian Bok and Stephen Cain following not-too-far behind. "Great," I thought. "Entertainment." So I pulled over my chair and started to listen.

Cain: "I've just not been pleased with the quality of kimchi in Mississauga."

Redhill: "No, no. It's no good."

Bok: "I can't find a good mirror."

Famous Canadian Authors Eating

I've been getting such a good response to my Camilla Gibb-sandwich story that I thought I'd inaugurate a new series of posts on Canadian authors whom I've seen eating or drinking in public. No one else is churning out this kind of material, so why not fill the need? We Canadianists want to know what Joseph Boyden looks like eating a slice of pizza. We want to know what Joseph Boyden looks like eating a gyro. We want to know how Joseph Boyden eats an ice cream sandwich, and we want to know how Joseph Boyden cuts his watermelon. Does he cut it down the middle, then slice it into wedges? Does he cut the meat from the rind, choping everything into steak-like triangles? Does he cut it into squares? Or does he do all three?

We must know this.

But, interestingly enough, this post isn't about Joseph Boyden. Instead I want to remember a time when I saw Jane Urquhart eating crab cakes and New England clam chowder at Captain John's Harbour Boat Restaurant in Toronto.

I was there with my grandparents, celebrating a birthday, and Urquhart was at the table across from us. She was with a man--he could have been her father or her grandfather--and they were sharing a bottle of wine and a large Caesar Salad.

Urquhart's got an appetite. But the fork kept missing her mouth, and pieces of lettuce would jam up against her cheek, leaving a smear of Caesar dressing.

My grandparents saw me watching, and wanted to know who Urquhart was.

"That's a Canadian writer," I said. "Very famous. John Metcalf loves her."

"He does?"

"Sure. Last week I heard him tell Russell Smith that she was the best thing to happen to us since Frederick Niven."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter. She's just a writer. Leave it at that."

"I think that I've read her," my grandmother said. "I thought she was okay."

"She is," I said.

"I like the way that all her paragraphs end at the bottom of the page."

Urquhart managed to drop a hunk of cheesecake down the front of her dress, and when the man went to help her retrieve it she raised her chin and stuck out her tongue. "Look at that," she laughed, "straight to my tits."

Well, coming from Jane that kinda shocked me. But her grandfather-date did her one better: "What tits?" he said, drumming a rimshot with his hands.

It's not really a story, but it's something that I like to tell at parties. Jane Urquhart and a salad; Jane Urquhart and a piece of cheesecake.

Watching Camilla Gibb Eat A Sandwich

Last week I was downtown buying a present for my brother's wife's father. He's [my brother's wife's father] turning fifty next week, and we're all going to their place for a glitzy backyard party. They live near the Spadina Village; they've got a two-hundred-year-old oak tree in their backyard; they serve premium liquor, and they've always got lots of lemon and ice. The last time we were there they were celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. I had about eight cups of coffee, and spent most of my time talking to a really attractive, really vital, really athletic young female dentist. She was thinking about leaving dentistry to become a weaver, and I tried to convince her that it was the right thing to do. But it didn't work. "What're you trying to do to my sister," my sister-in-law asked. "You want her to lose her mind?"

The affair was catered by Josh Okorofsky Catering, and the food and service were superb. I'd describe it as a classy barbecue, and even Gerry Schwartz left full.

The man likes expensive cheese. I can't understand it, it's never been my thing. Very rarely would I say to someone, "And what kind of cheese is that?" But it makes it very easy to shop for him. Buy him a wheel of good cheese and it's like he's just been sent back in time to his sixteenth birthday party. With the listeria scare hitting Kensington Market, I decided to stop by Olympic Cheese Mart in the St. Lawrence Market. I don't know anything about cheese, but were prepared to point me at something and take my money. And I think that's terrific.

There's a place downstairs in the market that sells eggplant and veal sandwiches. Go there from 11-1 on any weekday and you'll find lines snaking through the door. They've got six people working in a space that's just big enough to park a car. They need two people just to hand out change.

I stopped there after I'd picked out my cheese wedge. I was hungry and it was time for lunch. And guess who was in line just steps away? My favourite Diablo Cody thinkalike: Camilla Gibb. I was the only one who noticed her. The three firemen behind me were busy talking about a tire, and the rest of my linemates were occupied with picking out their sandwiches. Would they get cheese or no cheese? Sauce or meat sauce? That type of thing. I watched Gibb as she chewed her hair.

I don't believe in hero worship, but I've defended the right of average Canadians to touch and pet our literary "celebrities." But that day I didn't feel like fawning; just watching.

And I watched. Gibb ordered a giant meatball sandwich with sauce and cheese. She took it all the way down to York Street, where she settled on a concrete construction barrier that was being used to shepherd people past Union Station.

I'll say this about Gibb: she's a slow eater. After twenty minutes of nursing her sandwich she took a sip of a diet Pepsi. Then she went back to the sandwich, dropping a meatball on her skirt. Then she hiked up the skirt, just enough to give me a glimpse of a large bruise, and dropped a meatball on the bruise.

I couldn't take it, so I walked across the road to offer her a napkin.

"Excuse me. Hi, I think you need this." And I handed her the napkin.

"Thank you," she said, ignoring my extended hand. "But I can just lick this clean."

And she raised the hem of her skirt--raised it all the way to her mouth--and licked off the sauce.

"Wow," I said. "Can Mary Novik do that?"

"Yes."

That was an interesting answer. "Fair enough," I said.

"Who are you, anyway? Were you watching me?" Kind of sly.

"No, no, I wasn't watching you." I thought this was kind of slick. "I was admiring you."

"I was writing a prose poem."

"No, I think you were eating a sandwich."

"I can do both."

I looked at her skirt, at her thigh. "No, I don't think you can."

"Fair enough."

So, that was my day. If I see Camilla again I'll be sure to relate it in this blog. I'd love to date her, but she says that I'm just too rational for her. That was an interesting conversation. "When you park," she started, "where do you park?"

"In a space?" I said, not at all confused.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Noah Richler Is Right; Leave It To "They," And We'll All Be Lab Techs

I've had a running feud with the Richlers ever since, at a bar mitzvah luncheon, Jacob Richler stole my seat, saying something like, "Scoot, Patty. Scoot." My name, as you can see, is not Patty; the word "scoot" just screws that thorn deeper into my paw.

But I'll admit that Noah Richler, in his latest piece in The Globe and Mail is absolutely right: "they" are getting more stupid.

Richler's argument peaks in the following "fuck you" coda, directed at the un-beating heart of each and every socially conservative Canadian:

"Of course, not for a moment do I believe that Stephen Harper and his ignominious crew are about to reverse the cuts to the arts that they have made - realizing, in a sudden epiphany, that beyond the extraordinary returns on their investment these subsidies constitute, that actually reading novels such as Yann Martel persists in sending the Prime Minister every two weeks, or even thinking about bestselling films with the sort of critical faculty that an education in the arts and social sciences promote, might improve Canada."

Kevin O'Leary, a very rich, very strident Warren Buffett of the north would very likely spit in Richler's pocket square. Investments need tangible returns, not educated, aware people. Educated and aware they'd all realize the kind of bullshit in which they wade. You can't be philosophical and an accountant. Or anything else, really. You have a job; you go to the job; you do the job; you come home; you go to sleep; you go to the job again. No time for discourse or Socratic monologues. My cousin, the accountant, a man with a graduate degree in mathematics, still doesn't know the difference between to and too, their and there. I asked him to name three people, dead or alive, with whom he'd like to share a bathroom. He said, "Joey, Chandler, and Ross." But that's the world that the Harpers want us to live in. Everyone's packaged and canned in high school; they burn out, thin out in university; then become the computer engineers of the next generation.

There's no premium on critical thinking, because critical thinkers are critical. What scared, scheming, stiff-as-a-board, semi-literate Canadian politician wants more readers in his riding? Why? So someone can say, "You know what, you sound just like Elmer Gantry"?

The real question is something like Why are the arts so offensive to some--see "most"--Canadians? Forget "the arts"; let's focus on the artists. No one looks at a dentist and says, "Forget this teeth shit; go to OCAD." But people are so angry at artists and writers. "Write something that normal people would like!" "Like what?" "Something with treasure! And a nuclear submarine!"

Harper's edict proves two things: 1) anyone who talks about Canadian ideals probably parts his hair on the left; 2) this generation can't rebel.

Remember hippies, beatniks? People who left society? Well, now they're locked in. Where's this arts money going? Out of one pocket, into another? Damn right. As if artists and writers who live on subsidies don't buy food, don't put that money right back into a cash register. They're sure as hell not saving it.

But, you know what? If they were certified financial planners, this never would've happened.

Asked to name his strongest attribute, our Harper once spouted, "Prudence!" Flavourless intelligence. Nature is sombre and has a soul of passion; the Conservative government puts water in its Cheerios 365 days a year.

Less Than Less Than Zero

I wonder how the official, government-sanctioned, Canadian version of Less Than Zero would read. Bret Easton Ellis did such a terrific job of describing life in L.A. in the mid-'80s. What about life in Toronto in the late-2000s?

I have a feeling there'd be a white guy, an Oriental guy, a black guy, an East Indian guy, and a Native (Indian). Then there'd be a white girl, an Oriental girl, an East Indian girl, and a Native (Indian) girl. Don't even think about calling her a squaw.

And since this is a government-sanctioned book, everyone would be terribly optimistic. "You've got the future in the palm of your hand," one would say. "All you've got to do to get you through is understand."

More than likely they'd live in a loft on Queen West. And it'd have four bathrooms. Since this is fiction, there'd always be lots of hot water. I don't know...Who'd write something like that? Kyle Draymond? Michael Treuw? I don't get the feeling that there's any impetus right now to tell an honest, socially irresponsible story. Or maybe there is and no one'll publish it. I'd say that one is equally likely as the other.

I know there isn't much urban fiction being written in Canada, but our rural stuff is just as disaffected and bleak as Ellis's pan-Hollywood valley. In fact, it's probably worse. So where are our newish young people dying on farms? At what point did Canadian characters stop being self-destructive? The '80s? The '70s? When did we get so quirky? Wes Anderson, discussing Canadian literature, once said, "It's the influence for all my work. I love how no one is ever quite real, but is somehow real enough."

Ellis could've learned something from F.P. Grove or Sinclair Ross. You've got the soul-destroying nothingness of the farm; you've got the soul-destroying nothingness of bareback Hollywood. I'll take Hollywood, but the farm's a close second. If we're going to be moral and self-destructive, let's at least involve casual sex and drug abuse.

The Two Moral Crises of the Twenty-First-Century Man-Child
1: Can I do this for the rest of my life?
2: What did I miss?

I think the problem could be that I just know too many people who've committed suicide. I know one guy who got stuck in the safety netting at the Bloor Street Viaduct. He was freed by firefighters, thanked them, then walked in front of a truck. In his suicide note he blamed Domino's Pizza for always getting there twenty-nine minutes after he'd ordered.

I don't really believe in anything, which is why I'm wondering if there's a chapter after Ellis's novel that applies to us northerners. LTZ was published in 1985. Maybe there's a very slow ripple spreading across Canada. And now we're just starting to feel it in the centre of the universe--Toronto.