Can we talk about words for a minute?
A long minute.
This week, I spent time up north doing chores, a bit of swimming and SUPing, but mostly reading and writing.
I read Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage, not in one sitting but pretty darn close. Hage is originally from Beirut, and his novel is about death, plain and simple. It’s also about war and how people exist (often by separating themselves from reality in one way or another) in the midst of conflict. I was drawn to the book when I heard Hage interviewed by Shelagh Rogers. They discussed how the story looks at commemorative practices for the dead. I was hooked as this is a direct connection to my work at McMaster.
One of the most interesting techniques that Hage employs is he uses these incredibly long, detailed sentences. All the rules about keeping sentences to a digestible length that I’ve been taught – out the window. (Truth be told, I’ve also been taught to learn the conventions and rules, so I know when, as a writer, to throw them out the window effectively.)
The long sentences make the pacing very chaotic. At other times, he slows things right down, for instance, describing an encounter with a group of men that was meant to humiliate the main character. The descriptions instead make you get inside the head of the targeted character and you feel his emotional reactions and clearly see how he took control back from his tormentors.
This book is violent and full of death, literally FULL. Yet there is such beauty in his writing that I wanted to keep reading.
I am also reading A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott. Elliott is a Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of the Grand River and living local to the Brantford area. I had heard a lot of buzz about her work and I now know why: there are not enough platitudes to say about this book. It is a collection of essays that cover a range of topics including her experience of having both Indigenous and white parents. The essays are forthright and clear in their purpose: to show her experience and that of her family and ancestors in relation to colonialism, racism, sexism, poverty, and trauma.
By contrasting, for example, gentrification in Toronto with colonialism, she draws stark comparisons that simply cannot be ignored.
As I began reading the book, I was reminded of The White Supremacy Workbook by Layla Saad. She created the workbook out of an Instagram challenge. It provides non-BIPOC a framework for taking a deep look at racism, if we are willing, and how we participate and uphold white privilege and supremacy. The framework was created even though it is not Saad’s (or any other BIPOC) responsibility to create a way for white people to learn about racism. And yet she did just that.
Similarly, Elliott wrote her essays and through them, there are lessons that can begin to help people more fully understand the experience of Indigenous people in Canada.
If we are willing. Read Elliott’s book. Be willing.
I also have been reading a lot of Alice Munro short stories. I think that short stories are my biggest interest as a writer, and I have found no better mentor than Munro. Through the use of often simplistic language, Munro reels you in to the depths and complexity of life. Her characters, people who appear from the outside to have simple lives, are like all of us: nowhere near simple. There are nuances at every turn to surprise and delight you, to keep you reading. One of the pieces she is most known for, Gravel, has been in the curriculum for two of my three writing courses to date. It is beautifully written, but not one of my favourites. I get frustrated with Munro sometimes because I don’t want heroic endings, or cliché endings, but sometimes she leaves me hanging. Or surprisingly disappointed.
Case in point: a story I read Friday has the main character leave her young children. Like permanently. Not a mistake, leaving them behind at the grocery story, or in the back seat of a car. She leaves them.
I don’t relate to every character of Munro’s, but I usually identify on some level with a mother. But this one, I could not fathom walking away from my children. I’m not talking an abused woman fighting for her life in hopes of fighting for her children from a position of strength.
Nope. Just chose a different life. No goodbyes, just gone.
So, I put down the book and walked away for a day. Not the first time.
I always come back, because her words are spectacular and her narratives so wonderful.
***
I may have to revise my belief that Margaret Laurence is my favourite writer. She is my favourite writer of a novel, The Diviners. And Munro is my favourite short story writer.
Pretty lofty idols I’ve got going there.
Finally, I have been reading Startle and Illuminate which is a collection of thoughts of Carol Shields about writing. I’m confident my highlighting pen will be dry by the time I’m done underlining all the points which intersect with my understandings of what being a writer is, can be, should be, and hopefully will be.
