Rereading The Anthologist

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I mentioned about a month ago that I was looking forward to rereading Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist. The book club I frequent has it on the list for this year and I just thought, lucky me. I’ve just finished it, again, and again I’d have to say, lucky me. And lucky you too if you read it even once.

At some point in the past month I came across Nabokov’s exhortation to his students on the virtues of rereading. Indeed he didn’t think you could get much out a single reading, though sadly that’s all I’m sure many books get from most readers.

I’m entirely uncertain as to how the other readers in my book club will respond to Baker. I consider him one of the finest American writers. One gets the feeling that every single word is selected with great care. But not at the expense of the overall rhythm and lyrical arc. His intensely human portrait of Paul Chowder  – whom I couldn’t help thinking of as the narrator of Al Purdy’s poem At the Quinte Hotel – could incline you to just want to lean over and give Paul a silent hug. It’s really a love story, I suppose, a meandering exploration and declaration of Paul’s love for Roz. When Roz says, “Don’t you love the smell of brown paper bags filled with raw vegetables,” Paul leans over the bag she is carrying and breathes deep and agrees. His love for Roz at that moment impels him to want “to lie down on the sidewalk as a result.” That’s beautiful. Simple. Sad. Sweet. (rest)

I hope at least a few of the other readers in the group have found Baker’s The Anthologist as touching as I have.

Is music what we do best?

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What a delight – three consecutive nights of great music courtesy of NUMUS‘ Late Night Series Indie Band Festival at the Starlight in Waterloo. With the likes of Drumheller, Snowblink, and Luxury Pond with the added goodness of The Penderecki String Quartet, how could it fail to impress. The added bonus, for me, was that this was my first chance to see these groups live (with the exception of The Penderecki String Quartet who featured in NUMUS’ fabulous 25th anniversary season last year). I wasn’t surprised when someone I was talking to during a break informed me that this – a wave of the arm to encompass innovative contemporary music unbounded by categories – is really what we do best. It would be hard to disagree. And what a treat to see Laurie Brown of CBC’s The Signal in person introducing the acts.

After three straight nights out, I think I’ll take a break for a bit. I’ve got a lot of new cds to keep me company. And there is always the two further NUMUS series in the new year to look forward to.

The Milk Calendar

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Every year around this time households in Ontario (and elsewhere in Canada, I believe), either through their local daily paper or other means, receive a copy of The Milk Calendar. Apparently this started back in 1974 but I only became conscious of it in the ’90s. Kathy and I had moved to Oxford, UK, in September of 1994 with little more than one suitcase each. We had a flat in the draughty, cinder-block, married-student accommodations in north Oxford. We didn’t know anyone, and we really aren’t predisposed to meeting and making new friends (though despite ourselves we did eventually discover the very best of friends). Dreary November and December days stumbled toward the holiday season. But with no funds for travel home or onward we knew we would be left to our own devices.

It must have been some time in December that the package arrived. A well-labelled and multi-stamped box from Kathy’s parents. The shipping label declared, unceremoniously, an itemized list of the “Christmas gifts” contained therein. Nothing grand, but we were so grateful to receive this bundle of cares and well-wishes. There may have been tears. It turned out, however, that the greatest gift was not in fact identified on the shipping label. Perhaps including it had been an afterthought. I’ve never asked. There amidst the crumbled newsprint used as packing material lay The Milk Calendar for 1995.

I’m sure we still have that calendar, though the recipes (yes, recipes!) it contained have long since been transferred to other media. What makes The Milk Calendar distinctive is that it always contains a set of recipes (at least one for each month) for dishes or desserts that are easy to make, taste great, and, naturally, involve milk somewhere in the instructions. What they don’t mention is how those recipes can transport you across time and space. In that slender calendar was the essence, or so we thought that winter, of Canada.

I don’t recall now how many of those recipes from the 1995 calendar we actually used more than once. But I’m fairly certain we did try each one at least once. I remember writing letters to Kathy’s mum to tell her about them (those were the days before email was ubiquitous).  Each one a reminder of how that calendar helped us beat off the damp chill of the English winter.

The Milk Calendar for 2011 arrived today. I can’t help wondering whether any Canadians far from home will be opening a package in a few weeks and discover within that things aren’t nearly so dreary as they imagined. I hope so.

More is easier

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I have a tendency to follow the line that less is more. Maybe it’s because I’m short. I like short sentences. Short paragraphs. Bullet points. And one side of A-4, no more!

But sometimes I have to admit that more is better. What would Proust be like without the long, meandering, sentences that wrap you up and spin you round until your own thoughts are as mixed and muddled as the memories his narrator is dancing through? That must be the very effect he is aiming at. More is also sometimes better when it comes to software and learning.

I am continuing up my learning curve with Drupal. It’s getting better. (Well, I mean I’m getting better at it.) I’m discovering the efficiency that comes of managing multiple Drupal sites. I’ve got three live ones on the go at the moment as well a few test sites. For the live sites I’m trying to follow good practice. Part of that is implementing only what you know. The efficiency comes in when I am able to propagate something new across numerous sites. Repetition, as Proust knew well, has a strengthening effect on memory. My learning curve gains breadth as well as height.

Not so long ago I met up with a number of people who make their livings setting up and maintaining Drupal sites. One thing that struck me was how many of them stuck to a very constrained set of parameters for clients. But it makes perfect sense. Their objective is both to provide the client with what he or she wants/needs while at the same time taking advantage of whatever efficiencies they can build into the process in order to minimize the time and labour cost of developing a new site. One person I spoke to said he could produce a new site, top to bottom, in 15 minutes (he was using the Drush Package Manager, which I’m not even thinking about at the moment).

There is a sense in which the more opportunities you have to exercise a new skill the less cost that is needed to reach a satisfactory end point for any of those opportunities. Which sounds rather convoluted. It’s probably simpler to say that: less is more and more is less.

Writing club demise

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Not so long ago I was enthusing about a local writing club. I had been involved in this group for a year and was looking forward to the new year (it’s meetings ran from October to July).  Alas, a cloud has formed over that group and I find myself at loose ends.

Perhaps I should have seen that cloud on the horizon. Information about the Writers’ Collective disappeared from the KPL website. My email queries to the person from KPL who had faithfully organised the collective for some years went unanswered. And then for two months in a row I received no writing submissions from the other members of my group thereby obviating the point of any meeting.

Maybe it’s me. Last year the group to which I had been assigned seemed vibrant for about 4 months and then folded. I shifted over to another group within the collective for the remainder of the year. Now it too seems to have folded. I know that the two originating groups have persisted despite difficulties with communications (they have been sharing their work directly rather than going through the KPL intermediary). Since I have met some of the members of those groups, I could ask them if I could join in. But I think I would feel a bit like a distant relative who is taken in out of some misplaced familial obligation. (That’s only how I would feel, not how I expect I would be treated.)

It turns out that writing is indeed a solitary activity. To which the corollary can now be added that writing clubs, at least in my experience, tend towards solitariness. Which, I suppose, must contribute to more writing. Or at least I shall take that as my lesson and move on.