When I started this CanLit blog, my only consideration was that I'd have fun writing things about Canadian authors whose archives I'd raided over the years. It's easy: you just tuck the papers into your belt, and leave. But wear a long shirt. (I've got a great autographed copy of Adele Wiseman's Magder's bill for a 3/4-length sable coat.) Fine. It's been great fun, and I've enjoyed every article. But I never thought that I'd have an audience. "Google might help," a friend said. And it has. A week ago I wrote something about a CP24 newscast. Five days later I had about twenty hits stemming from Google searches for "Pooja Handa nude pics."
We're just a humble Canadian writing institution. Every time Dennis Lee sells a book, this site gets a hit. Last week we hit 1,000. If Dennis looks thin lately, well, you've got to understand the correlation.
But today was different. Alive after three stab wounds, and two-hundred hits on my Kit Dobson post. Two-hundred. Is Kit from a Catholic family? How many brothers does this man have?
I'm really tempted to perform an in-depth reading of Dobson's work; I guess that I could share an unfinished article that I'm readying for SCL. I like the man as a critic, and he's got a really vibrant take on contemporary PC fiction. But I want to see how far this thing goes. Does Kit have fans? I can understand two-hundred hits (my post about Milton Berle's penis is up to 134), but that's over four months. Two-hundred hits over twelve hours? I just re-read the post, and I don't see any references to a Miley Cyrus defloration. To paraphrase Rudy Wiebe, Where is the traffic coming from?
I have a feeling that a lot of this could have to do with David Chariandy. He's huge right now. Absolutely huge. In the checkout line at the grocery store, I couldn't help but notice that David and Candice Bergen were seen at Sardi's. It was a Tuesday night, and on Tuesdays Sardi's accepts loonies at par.
"Chariandy Sells Suncor At $96" was the headline. Good for him.
So maybe they're searching for Chariandy, and ending up here. Great. Then I'll post my article on "monocultural multiculture" in Soucouyant. That should be fun.
Could this be the start of a CanLit trend? Just think, one of those hits could've been Smaro Kamboureli. Christ, now I'm excited.
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6 comments:
Hint: you can thank Facebook.
Let's just hope that all this doesn't fool anyone into thinking that literary critics can become *actual* celebrities (too many of them believing that of themselves already).
Signed,
A Concerned Canadianist
PS: It's spelled "Kamboureli."
"Does Kit have fans?"
Oh, Kit has fans. You have no idea.
I'm sorry, but what a tempest in a teapot all this truly is. I would also hesitate to call a critic a "Canadian writer."
Sure, critics *write* but come on. A novelist or a poet "writes" in the way any sane non-academic reader means. We just like to pretend that what we do as critics is as important.
Oh, and sorry about the stab wounds. That sucks. Good luck with your recovery.
Kit Dobson fan, here. You called?
*waves*
Another fan, here. And no, I'm not one of his Catholic brothers.
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