Ken Stange

The Writer As Bad Guy

It would be nice if writers were all nice. Wishful thinking!

Here, just off the top of my head, is an Interesting brief list of significant writers I’ve enjoyed reading, but definitely do not qualify as nice guys.

• Arthur Rimbaud (druggie, gun runner)
• Paul Verlaine (attempted murderer of his teenage lover, Rimbaud)
• Gene Genet (repeatedly convicted thief and male prostitute)
• Marquis de Sade (sadist, misogynist)
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline (fascist and anti-Semite)
• Ezra Pound (fascist propagandist)
• Aleister Crowley (sex cult leader)

Of course these guys aren’t typical. And their good writing isn’t the result of their bad behaviour.

Tweet

Almost Done Embracing The Moon

I have finally finished proofing my next book, with my wife’s help.

The title, Embracing The Moon, was inspired by the legend that the great Chinese poet, Li Po, died by drowning, when—having consumed too much wine—he leaned out from his boat to embrace the reflection of the moon in the still water.

I’m almost done with Embracing The Moon, and I didn’t drown.

Tweet

About The Full Moon

It is said that everything in the universe wants to be a sphere: sun, moon, and planets. It is the most natural and perfect of shapes. 

The main body of Embracing The Moon consists of the “Twenty-Five Little Worlds”: a series of full colour, spherical artworks on the verso page with a related poem on the recto page. The poems all conform to the tanka verse form, chosen for its succinctness.

My Moon is rounded out with a prose introduction and expletory endnotes about each of the twenty-five ‘”worlds”.

Tweet

Your Man Friday’s Ideas: Physicists’ Magical Mystery Tour

These three entertaining, animated videos are exceptionally clear explanations of the fundamental and mind-altering facts that physicists have discovered about our wondrous universe. An hour and a half watching all of them is a crash course in the weird world of contemporary physics.

Man Friday links here:  http://kenstange.com/yourmanfriday/?p=1481

Tweet

Writing In The North

I know I’m not alone in feeling a bit of resentment with the presumption of those writers who think their ‘town’ is the literary centre of the universe and anyone living and writing outside of city limits has to be a hick and a hack. Gosh, could I be referring to Torontonians?

I shouldn’t have limited that observation to writers. It may be an unjustified belief, but most Ontario residents who don’t live in Toronto have the impression that Torontonians dismiss the rest of Ontario as a backwater.

So it’s amusing that when I moved to Toronto from Chicago, I thought of Toronto as a bit of a backwater. In The States we sometimes used the phrase—probably of Roman origin—“sent to the provinces” to mean exiled to the sticks. So here I was literally in a province.  And I’d already thought of Chicago as culturally insignificant compared to New York.

Now Toronto is promoted as a “world class city” up there with New York or Paris or London. Well, the antics of Toronto’s mayor is certainly getting the city a lot international press, so perhaps it is an important city. International news agencies wouldn’t bother to cover similarly outrageous behaviour of the mayor of a small town.

Torontonians do, of course, have good reason to be proud of their city’s culture—if not of their stupid electorate that put their current mayor in office.  And it does have a rich and thriving literary community.  But writers can write anywhere, and many prefer to do so far from the madding crowd.

In North Bay, we do quite well, at least per capita. We have an independent bookstore, Gulliver’s.  We have a literary group, The Conspiracy of Three, which has for more than three decades met once a month to hear new and established writers read from their works. We have a branch of The Writers Union of Canada (Canada’s professional writers’ organization): NOLL, as well as a number of poets that belong to the The League Of Canadian Poets.

Tweet

Dark Days Are Upon Us

The days are getting much shorter up here in the North. And the nights are getting much longer. This naturally elicits dark thoughts. But this morning I remembered the perfect antidote to such brooding. So I’m searching my chaotic personal library for Loren Eiseley’s The Night Country. This book is a masterpiece where Eiseley’s poetic prose lights up the darkest night.

“Consider the starry heavens: We see certain things most clearly after dark.” —Hippokrites

Another fine book by him is The Star Thrower.

Tweet

Light Reading

It’s an interesting dead metaphor: light reading. I guess it’s intended to convey the same idea as ‘easy listening’: not challenging, not disturbing. It’s not about shining light on anything; it’s just not ‘heavy’. If you do too much of it, your mental and emotional muscles will atrophy. But then who wants always to be straining?

My personal preference is for light reading that still has a little heft to it. A lot of good genre fiction is like that. Good science fiction packs in ideas with its page-turning narrative. So do spy novels, such as those by John le Carré. Good crime novels, a very popular genre, often include wonderfully complex and interesting characters and intricate plots. And I should add that often a large part of the appeal is the quality of the prose. I’m a fan of James Lee Burke, for his description of New Orleans and the Louisiana bayou country often rises to the status of poetry.

It’s worth remembering that a lot of books now considered heavy, and that students consider a burden to lift, were once the popular, ‘light’ reading of large audiences.  Both Dickens and Dostoevsky, for example, were both extremely popular novelists in their time, and both sometimes wrote what could be considered ‘crime’ novels. It seems fitting that it was a poet, Edgar Allan Poe, who actually invented the genre with his tale, “The Purloined Letter”.

Tweet

About Writers Reading

It is always good to hear writers read from their own work, which is why book launches and public author readings are so appealing. Sometimes, of course, writers aren't the best presenters of their own work, for the same reason that playwrights aren’t qualified to be actors in their own plays. Nevertheless it is always worthwhile to hear writers’ own oral interpretations of what they wrote. This is true even if they mutter or stutter—or slur their words from partaking too much of that liquid courage an introvert sometimes needs to mount the stage. (I speak from very personal experience—as someone who has hosted some ‘interesting’ guest poetry readings here in North Bay.)

This week I heard three fine writers read from their works, and I’m pleased to report that they all had their presentation skills finely honed. Two fine, established writers, my old friend, the poet, James Deahl and his wife, Norma West Linder, both read at the Conspiracy Of Three on Tuesday night. That they both had taught to supplement their income was evident by their relaxed, polished delivery. The next morning James gave an excellent talk about another poet, Alden Nowlan at Nipissing University.

Then last night Wayne Grady read and discussed his novel Emancipation Day at Gulliver’s Bookstore. I know the book is great, and I know he is a good reader, but his presentation was exceptionally interesting, for after reading three sections of the novel, he discussed the backstory to the genesis of the book. And it is quite a story.

Tweet

Falling To Pieces

For some reason I was browsing through my third book, Nocturnal Rhythms and came across this introduction to the section entitled “Remnants”.  It was yet another reminder of how our obsessions stay with us over the years, for it was more than three decades later that I did my digital art triptych, “Coming Apart”. 

“Remnants, what is left from the daylight world. The vestiges of sanity. The shards from a shattered mirror still reflecting a wee bit of distorted light. The scraps of day montaged by night. I am an insomniac, and hence I am an expert on transitions. Each night I battle with wakeful reason, only to win a wakeful sleep. Unlike the natural sleeper, my nights are not blank sheets, for I dream with an intensity often greater than reality. At night, many hide in a dreamless sleep. I can't, so I don't. My lover can, and she does. For this I hate her. For this I could kill her. Mean­while I suffer my own series of little deaths. Fragments of noc­turnal life. Shards, splinters, memories distorted into immediate experiences.”

Tweet

Coming Apart: Shredded

http://kenstange.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=949

Tweet

Your Man Friday’s Ideas: Making Art With Science

Science is related to art in two different ways. Doing science is actually an art, a fact unappreciated by the many people who naively assume it is a purely mechanical endeavour. Science, however, is also a tool for the making of art—something that is somewhat more widely appreciated. Here are some striking examples of visual art created with the tools provided by science. 

Man Friday links here: http://kenstange.com/yourmanfriday/?p=1498

Tweet

Exposing Yourself

I think for many writers, and certainly for me, one of the most uncomfortable aspect of being a writer is feeling exposed. Most writers are introverts, and most prefer to keep their private lives private. I know there are many notable and flamboyant exceptions, but because they get all the attention, their personae have shaped the stereotype. At least most of the writers I know are really quite shy and private people. They are closer on the spectrum to J.D. Salinger than Norman Mailer.

Yet publishing means making something public—and inevitably something about your self—even as a writer of fiction. It doesn’t help that people are almost always wrong in thinking they know the writer from what he writes, for their perception is usually disturbingly distorted. I can see why some writers hide behind a nom de plume.

Tweet

The Writer Inside The Writing

Would-be writers are always instructed to write about what they know. It’s not entirely meaningful advice. Of course if you try to write about something that you don’t know shit about, you’re just going to embarrass yourself. And it’s true that much good writing comes from within, from one’s own experiences and emotions, but—and this is important—manipulated and distorted. What makes it good writing is this creative manipulation and distortion of it to create something interesting to someone else.

The writer is always there inside the writing, but he or she has been encrypted. As a writer, I wish people would stop trying to crack the code.  They just garble the message.

Tweet

Poet As Career, Profession, Or Condition?

“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” ― Robert Frost

I have a dislike for certain words as they relate to writers (and artists in general): particularly the words ‘profession’, ‘occupation’, and even ‘career’. 

‘Professionals’ are often distinguished from what is considered to be the antonym, ‘amateurs’, by their being paid for what they do. But there is something wrong about considering Emily Dickenson unprofessional (an amateur!?), while the writers for Hallmark Card doggerel could be called professionals. I suppose that if you asked these greeting card versifiers what is their occupation, they could justifiably say that they’re professional writers. But for the serious writer, writing is not an occupation; it’s a preoccupation—even an obsession, a case of possession.

It is shameful, but for most writers (and again what I say applies to every kind of artist) it is unrealistic to expect to make a good living just from their work. Yes, some few do, and an even fewer get downright rich. (For those who are exclusively poets, those few and fewer are a helluva lot fewer.)

I like the word ‘vocation’. It means a calling, a dedication to what is a worthy endeavour. Its antonym is ‘avocation’, meaning merely a hobby. Well, being a real writer is a calling, as is being, for example, a dedicated teacher or scientist. It’s not just a hobby or a job. One knows it is what one simply has to do. One may not be rewarded appropriate to the value of what one does, but it is the intrinsic reward that acts as compensation.

It has to be acknowledged that sometimes one isn’t even that good at what one is ‘called’ to do—although commitment and dedication make that less likely than when one is just working for a cheque. That is why writers almost never retire. They’re not doing what they’re doing so they have enough money stashed away to not have to do it anymore.

This may be why even the word ‘career’ bothers me, because it implies, at least for me, a systematic progression up the scale of rankings and ratings—and income. Every time an artist deviates from previous patterns to creatively investigate something new, it seems to be called ‘a bad career move’. It seems very odd to talk about Emily Dickenson’s ‘career’—or Van Gogh’s.

But what really matters has nothing to do with describing the writer’s life. What matters are the writings produced. Better to simply speak of a writer’s oeuvre.

Tweet