lapsus linguae

Dear writer-friend,

Dear writer-friend [insert name here]:
I planned to go to your reading all week.
I even washed my hair this morning, but
it doesn’t look like I’m going to make it.
It’s too complicated to explain in an email,
and no matter what I say it will sound like
I’m just making excuses, but here goes:
I’ve got two deadlines at once this week.
And an absentee husband, on account of
there’s a high-end audio tradeshow in town.
I’ve got to walk the dog and I haven’t yet.
And then I’ve got to take something over
to someone who’s inconveniently leaving
town tomorrow and needs this thing by then.
Stupidly, I haven’t eaten anything all day.
It’s almost 6:30 already in Mile End and
your reading starts at 7 downtown.

Sorry.

Good lick tonight. I mean good luck.
Some typos just have to be left in.

JR
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The Very Short Story 101

So two fiction writers walk into a bar. That’s not the opening line of a joke, that’s just what fiction writers do. They walk into a bar. Now if they haven’t slept with each other yet they might engage in some witty flirting. If they have slept with each other already or are sleeping with a friend of a friend or secretly hate each other or each other’s writing or have written reviews of each other’s work, some awkward editorializing might be required. But basically, two fiction writers walk into a bar, they drink an alarming amount, there’s chemistry or there’s competition, and eventually one will turn to the other and ask: So, who have you been reading lately?

In January 2006 Mike Bryson, editor of the Toronto-based web journal The Danforth Review, asked 27 Canadian writers what curriculum they would bring to class, if they were asked to teach an introductory level course, The Short Story 101. I’ve never taken an introductory level course on the short story let alone taught one, so I don’t know what makes a good curriculum. Not all of the 27 lists listed on TDR read like curriculum. Some seem like maybe they were compiled to impress fiction writers in bars. But maybe that’s just me.

I used to hate to read short stories. Then I found out I write very short stories, which isn’t quite the same. Anyone signing up for “The Very Short Story 101” would probably be better off just reading poetry. Chances are I’ll never be an English teacher, not with that attitude. But the next time I walk into a bar with a fiction writer, here are some of the authors, stories, or groups of stories that I’ll try and squeeze into the conversation:

Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphoses”
Isaac Babel, “Red Calvary”
Gogol, “The Overcoat”
Chekov, “The Kiss”
James Joyce, “The Dead”
Angela Carter, “The Bloody Chamber”
Haruki Murakami, “The Elephant Vanishes”
Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Grace Paley, “The Small Disturbances of Man”
Cynthia Ozick, “The Shawl”
Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”
Barbara Gowdy, “We so Seldom Look on Love”
Anne Carson, “Short Talks”
Lydia Davis, “Almost No Memory”
Mark Richard, “Strays”
Joy Williams, “Honored Guest”
Ron Carlson, “Towel Season”
Lisa Moore, “Open”
Greg Hollingshead, “The Roaring Girl”

So, who have you been reading lately?
. . . . .

JRC on CKUT

Hey, tune in to CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal today at 11:30 AM. The nice people at Studio XX are going to ask me all kinds of questions on their show The XX Files. A follow up of sorts to the artist’s talk I gave at Studio XX last week. See below for more on that.

Here’s what they say about the XX Files: “The XX Files is the Studio’s weekly radio show exploring all aspects of the digital revolution from the perspective of the women living it. XX Files was conceived by Deborah Van Slet and Kathy Kennedy. Our first show aired on May 29, 1996 and has been going strong ever since.”

For more information check out out the Studio XX website: http://studioxx.org

You can listen to CKUT at 90.3 FM in Montreal or online at: http://www.ckut.ca

And if you’re in the CKUT archives, you might want to hunt down the Monday February 13 – 11AM edition of Dialects. In the second half (11:30) Jeffrey Mackie and I had a chat about the Moosehead Anthology X: Future Welcome (DC Books, editor: Todd Swift), which we’re both in, and I read my poem “Searching for Volcanoes”. For more information on that book visit: http://luckysoap.com/publications.html
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Lust for Life Launch Tonight

I’ll be reading “The Prettiest Teeth” tonight at the Montreal launch of Lust for Life: Tales of Sex and Love at the Sergent Recruteur (4801 St-Laurent, corner Villeneuve).

The event will begin at 7:30 p.m., and will feature readings by contributers: Matthew Anderson, J.R. Carpenter, Tess Fragoulis, Harold Hoefle, Nairne Holtz, Neil Kroetsch, Mark Paterson, Neil Smith, and Barry Webster.

See you there!
. . . . .

The Prettiest Teeth

One of my short stories called “The Prettiest Teeth” has been published in the anthology Lust for Life, edited by Claude Lalumière and Elise Moser and published by Véhicule Press, January 2006.

“The Prettiest Teeth” is not about boys or girls or love or lust or sex or sexuality. It’s really all about the teeth. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“Beth Wharton sits across the aisle from me. She has the prettiest teeth in the sixth grade. My teeth are a mess. One eyetooth is misshapen and the other one never came in; one front tooth pokes through my lips if I smile, so I try not to. I try to keep my mouth shut altogether, but it’s a losing battle. I can’t stop myself. I crack lame joke after lame joke on the off chance that Beth Wharton will crack a smile.”

For the whole story, drop by the Toronto and/or Montreal launch events or visit: http://luckysoap.com/publications.html
Lust for Life - The Prettiest Teeth
The Toronto launch will take place on Saturday, February 11th in the upstairs pool room at Rivoli (334 Queen Street West) at 7:00 and will feature readings by: Nalo Hopkinson, Barry Webster, J.R. Carpenter and Harold Hoefle.

The Montreal launch will take place on Monday, February 13th at Sergeant Recruteur (4801 St-Laurent) at 8:00 and will feature readings by: Matthew Anderson, J.R. Carpenter, Tess Fragoulis, Harold Hoefle, Nairne Holtz, Neil Kroetsch, Mark Paterson, Neil Smith and Barry Webster

Véhicule Press says: Lust for Life is a smart, witty, and fascinating anthology celebrating the diversity of the human sexual experience. These stories are daring, playful, funny, romantic, genderbending, sensual, mysterious, and sexy, and explore and celebrate love and sex in all its forms. It includes stories from Matthew Anderson, Catherine Lundoff, Neil Kroetsch, Robin Evans, Mark Paterson, Ashok Banker, Dan Rafter, Scott D. Pomfret, Neil Smith, Tess Fragoulis, Vic Winter, Harold Hoefle, Joel Hynes, Nalo Hopkinson, Nairne Holtz, Barry Webster, Ray Vukcevich, Holly Phillips, J.R. Carpenter, Maya Stein, and Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia.

For more information about the anthology visit: Véhicule Press
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Searching for Volcanoes

Search for my poem Searching for Volcanoes, recently published in Future Welcome: The Moosehead Anthology X, edited by Todd Swift (Montréal: DC Books, 2005).

Future Welcome comes 50 years after 1955. In his introduction to the anthology editor Todd Swift notes: “1955 saw: the opening of Disneyland; the publication of Lolita; ultra-high frequency waves produced at M.I.T.; Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment; the introduction of the first fluoride toothpaste, Crest; the International Air Pollution Congress (held in New York City); the debut of Scrabble; B-52s put into service; Ray Kroc’s acquisition of McDonald’s; Elvis’s TV debut; Salk’s polio vaccine; a time bomb on United DC-6 flight; Glenn Gould’s “Goldberg Variations”; Eisenhower’s upholding of the right to use nuclear weapons in defence; US Congress ordering all American coins to read “In God We Trust”; the deaths of James Dean, Wallace Stevens and Albert Einstein; and the birth of Bill Gates.”

Where are we now? Certainly not where we thought we’d be. Swift writes: “I wanted poems and prose both of our moment, and yet imbued with the same sense of retro-kitsch that popularly defines the 50s–works about the future, robots, space travel, technology, and sci-fi terror.”

Searching for Volcanoes tells the not-quite-sci-fi-terror tale of trying to do Internet research on a dial-up connection. It’s hard to believe that the Internet didn’t exist in 1955 and yet, in 2005, a 56k connection is utterly antiquated. Volcanoes are a good analogy. As my brilliant friend Norman T. White pointed out to me: “Funny thing about erupting lava – it’s brand new, but it’s also ancient.”

Here’s an excerpt from searching for Volcanoes:

56k
takes forever to fill
collapsed craters
with blue-screen-blue
caldera lakes.

Line by line
the sky downloads:
progressive jpeg descends
a strafe of cloud dithers,
geological time passes –
falls toward mountain…

Future Welcome includes new writing from David Wevill, Sina Queyras, Raymond Hsu, Robert Minhinnick, Annie Freud, bill bissett, Patrick Chapman, Meredith Quartermain, Jason Camlot, Liane Strauss, Todd Colby, Jennifer K. Dick, John Hartley Williams, Louise Bak, Hal Sirowitz, Adeena Karasick, Mike Marqusee, Kavita Joshi, Stan Rogal, Tammy Armstrong, Richard Peabody, Jenna Butler, Ali Riley, Jon Paul Fiorentino, David Prater, J. R. Carpenter, David McGimpsey–plus many more.

For more information on or to order Future Welcome vist DC Books

For more information on editior Todd Swift visit his web sites: http://www.toddswift.com/ and http://toddswift.blogspot.com/
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Con-Textilizing Critical Language

Surfacing - Con-Textilizing Critical Language My essay, Con-Textilizing Critical Language, appears in the winter 2006 issue of Surfacing Journal, a publication of the Textile Artists & Designers Association.

In this essay I suggest that less time be spent worrying about what does or does not pass for criticism, and much more time be spent on thinking about what to say, where and how to say it, and to whom. I contend that the critical decisions made by fibre artists in their work that more than qualifies them as critical voices:

High art, low art, craft or trade – the artist’s ontological position is established through the active generation of “material” language. The choices made – between riotously sexy velvet, florid fuchsia fun fur or deliberately domestic damask – speak volumes. If the vernacular is not official, or correct, or refined, or even immediately recognizably critical – so much the better, I say. Content is more critical than criticism. If the story is a good one, it will get read. So let’s focus on deciding what story to tell and how best to tell it – in fluid script discharged from printed fabric, in re-programmable circuits woven into cloth, in loaded statements laboriously crocheted from continuous thread – and forget for a while about what is or is not said about the story after the fact. Fibre Art, adept as it already is at working in the margins, has its very elusiveness at its disposal in its quest for critical language… the language of Fibre Arts can choose to include the fragmentary, the inconclusive and the digressive. It can be interlaced with texts. It can be something you can’t quite put your finger on, like the tip of a needle. It can also be as cerebral as the head of a needle. Head and point and eye, looking for just the right place to push the point… out, and out loud.

J. R. Carpenter, Con-Textilizing Critical Language, Surfacing Journal, Toronto, WInter 2006.

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Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment

Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment, an illustrated essay, appears in the Fall 2005 issue of ARS MEDICA, A Journal of Medicine, Health and the Humanities, a new quarterly literary journal that explores the interface between the arts and medicine, and examines what makes medicine an art.

Writing and healing have always been intrinsically linked. ARS MEDICA seeks to provide the reader with vivid examples. Content includes narratives from patients and health care workers, medical history, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, illustrations and photography.” http://ars-medica.ca/

Ars Medica - Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment I began writing Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment as a response to the discourse of disembodiment that was prevalent in early days of the Internet. I never believed that the physical gendered body would be subsumed in an idealized information age. Even in our attempts to externalize and expand upon the processes of the brain through the computational and storage capacities of the computer, the precariousness of the biological body persists. It seems to me that somewhere along the way cultural theory veered away from body politics. In Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment I have tried to examine, from the inside, not just ‘the’ body, but also ‘my’ body in particular. I have focused on the storage and retention of bodily memory in order to explore the relationship and/or disconnect between body and mind that has preoccupied philosophers for generations. In Ethics, Part II: Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind, Spinoza writes: “The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and … is cable of receiving a great number of impressions… If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing… Memory is simply a certain association of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications of the human body… The human mind has no knowledge of the body, and does not know it to exist, save through the ideas of the modifications whereby the body is affected.”

An earlier version of Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment is available for viewing online at: http://Luckysoap.com/notions/

Thank you to: Alison and Ian at Ars Media, for their attention to detail; Elise Moser, for telling me about the journal; OBORO, for supporting the production of the online version; Dave Liss, for including an installation version of the “Nails and Hair” portion in “L’Entrespace II” at the Saidye Bronfman Center; and to Barbara Layne, who instigated the project way back when I was …

“suddenly far from my brain and naked without it”
Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment
J. R. Carpenter, http://Luckysoap.com/notions/

. . . . .

CARVE Vol. II

(A little lit mag that prints the good words of Montreal-area writers.)

Featuring…

The poetry of Maxianne Berger, Ian Cant, John Lofranco, Catherine Paquette and Tom Pokinko

Prose by Emily Anglin, J.R. Carpenter and Ilona Martonfi

A tour of Papeterie Saint-Armand by Andrea Belcham

Reviews of David Solway’s *The Pallikari of Nesmine Rifat*, and Julia Tausch’s *Another Book About Another Broken Heart*

And lovely line-drawings of Montreal scenes by Tom Pokinko

…With a snazzy bookmark insert, letter-pressed by the folks at Papeterie Saint-Armand
Carve - The Cape
Pick up your copy today at The Word Bookstore (469 rue Milton), Local 23 (23 rue Bernard O.), Librarie Clio (Pointe-Claire Plaza) or TWIGS Café (85 rue Ste-Anne, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue)

Or… send $7 to Andrea Belcham, 96 Parkdale Ave., Pointe-Claire, Quebec H9R 3Y7 >>>>> carvezine @ gmail . com

*(Copies of Carve Vol. I still available! Includes the fine literary stylings of Katia Grubisic, Maeve Haldane, Angela Leuck, Scott McRae, Dimitri Nasrallah, Catherine Paquette, Sonja Skarstedt and Sherwin Tjia, with pretty pics by Sarah Robinson)*
. . . . .

The Cape – A Very Short Story

My very short story The Cape has just been published in the new Fall 2005 issue of Carve, a delectable morsel of a magazine published twice a year out of Montréal.

You may also visit The Cape online at: http://luckysoap.com/thecape/

“These events happened so long ago that this whole story is in black and white.”

J. R. Carpenter, The Cape
Montréal 2005.
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