August 11, 2008

A CASUALTY OF WAR, edited by Peter Burton (Arcadia 2008)

A CASUALTY OF WAR is the delightful new collection of gay short fiction by renowned English editor Peter Burton. Despite its title, the book’s themes are multifarious and range from hardcore wartime tales to infectious comedy. It opens with a Kafkaesque piece, WHEN THE TIME COMES, by writer-director Neil Bartlett, and continues with a heart-warming tale, TROUBLED, about nascent love in the punk era, by novelist/critic Sebastian Beaumont. It includes work by three Canadians, including me, Patrick Roscoe and Ian Young. Roscoe’s MARIPOSA, BUTTERFLY reads like a Spanish fairy tale while Young’s THE BUGGERY CLUB is a real nostalgia piece for anyone out and living in London in the ’80s. Thankfully, the collection also contains works by distinguished writers from an earlier era, including ATTI INNOMINABILI by Michael Davidson, a bittersweet look at adolescent sexuality, previously published to a limited readership in the ’60s. Among my favourites (they’re all favourites, really) are Stephen Saylor’s KINDER, GENTLER, with its emotionally-charged ending, Cliff James’s THE VIOLENCE OF THE GARDENER, with its superb noire twists, Richard Zimler’s perceptive take on gay/racial tensions, A DRY PAST, and the truly wonderful comic piece, AWKWARD RELATIONS by Richard Haylock, the English novelist who died recently at 87. This latter, a sort of CAGE AUX FOLLES set in ’80s Morocco, alone is worth the price of the volume.

August 6, 2008

Yesterday I woke with a germ of an idea for a short story. It seemed so slim that I was about to toss it off and ignore the impulse. Something made me sit down and write it. A few hours later I’d completed a 3400-word short story entitled Mouse, about two brothers, one of whom is a drug addict and the other of whom knows the secret that turned his brother into an addict. I don’t recall ever finishing an entire story in one sitting, so that’s a first. It still needs refinishing, but so far it seems to be a solid effort.

July 29, 2008

What I've been reading:

NO BEAUTIFUL SHORE by Beverley Stone (Cormorant Books)

God, I love a woman who can swear! And Beverley Stone is right up there with the best of them. This beautiful, disturbing book is one of the most honest tales of contemporary Newfoundland I’ve come across. Part-TRAILER PARK BOYS and part-THELMA AND LOUISE, it’s an account of teenagers Bride Marsh and Wanda Stuckless’s attempt to leave out-port Newfoundland for life in Toronto, a challenge much bigger than it sounds. Bride is the sexy one who gets hit on by men, while Wanda is the entrepreneurial tomboy who sells dope to make her passage ‘away.’ Both prove hindrances to their goal. A sharp blend of the comic and tragic, Stone’s story is filled with wisdom, insight and some very deft writing.

July 23, 2008

Despite being a comic book, THE DARK KNIGHT has moments of greatness. A good deal of it’s due to the acting, but there are wonderful moments of writing and musical scoring and let’s not forget the camera work. The movie is so viscerally visual that for someone like me who suffers a fear of heights (and pretty much a fear of anything moving over 5 km an hour, if that has a name), at times it’s torture to endure. The movie isn't entirely Heath Ledger’s, though he is its brightest focus, being totally at ease and so clearly relishing his role as the greasy, green-haired Joker in a performance more than a little reminiscent of Brando. One of the things I loved about Ledger was his chameleon talent, how he changed so completely from film to film, also like Brando. How different are the roles of Ennis del Mar and the nerdy College-boy look he sported as Jacob in THE BROTHERS GRIMM from this and any of his other roles. And even if the film wasn’t interesting, you knew Ledger would be. Overall, this movie is a bit long, but you don’t mind because it means extending time with Ledger for nearly the last time. This must be what it was like to watch James Dean in GIANT a year after his death, though THE DARK KNIGHT is far more enjoyable than GIANT.

July 23, 2008

Despite being based on a comic book, THE DARK KNIGHT has moments of greatness. In the larger sense, a good deal of it’s due to the acting, but there are wonderful moments of writing and musical scoring and let’s not forget the camera work. The movie is so viscerally visual that for someone like me who suffers a fear of heights (and pretty much a fear of anything moving over 5 km an hour, if that has a name), at times it’s torture to endure. The movie is not entirely Heath Ledger’s, though he is its brightest focus, being totally at ease and so clearly relishing his role as the greasy, green-haired Joker in a performance more than a little reminiscent of Brando. One of the things I loved about Ledger was his chameleon talent, how he changed so completely from film to film, also like Brando. How different are the roles of Ennis del Mar and the nerdy College-boy look he sported as Jacob in THE BROTHERS GRIMM from this and any of his other roles. And even if the film wasn’t interesting, you knew Ledger would be. Overall, this film is a bit long, but you don’t mind because it means extending time with Ledger for nearly the last time. This must be what it would have been like to watch James Dean in GIANT a year after his death, though THE DARK KNIGHT is far more enjoyable than GIANT.

July 11, 2008

A friend who is a Dante scholar recommended WANTED. I assume he had his reasons, and they are probably all Angelina Jolie. I have my own fixation on James McAvoy, and was glad to see the film for that reason. I left of two minds, however. I think McAvoy is potentially one of the best film actors of his generation, especially now with the loss of Heath Ledger. His first major film, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, suggested that fact, while his second, ATONEMENT, confirmed it. In WANTED, however, he seems to be spinning his wheels looking for some sort of emotional grounding that’s definitely not in the script. It’s a fun film, if you can call a film that not only glorifies but actually glamorizes violence “fun.” This is not a good-guys-forced-to-confront-evil kind of story, but a plot that actually asserts that the good guy must willingly choose to kill. It’s on morally questionable grounds at best. Story aside, I dislike the thought that McAvoy is going to be turned into another Hollywood steroid puppet like Tobey Maguire, a once-promising young actor who hasn’t done anything worthwhile since he beefed up his scrawny boy torso and began his Spiderman crusade. Despite my crush, I don’t want to see McAvoy all hotted up and toting bullet-spinning mega-guns while spouting lines that belong in a Rambo film. Keep Colin Farrell, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt and all the other non-actors—but don’t steal McAvoy!

July 1, 2008

Yesterday I finished the revision of A CAGE OF BONES, first published ten years ago. Not surprisingly, I found the writing uneven, with some remarkably good bits and some very embarrassing patches. My strongest objection lay with the longer descriptive passages. I was able to cut out much of the excess while maintaining the book’s simplicity and charm—it’s a story about young people, after all, and I didn’t want to change it too much. When I got to the final chapter, however, I had a moment where I thought I might not be able to re-publish it without substantial rewriting. To me it seemed excessively flowery and I couldn’t see any way around it. For comparison, I re-read the ending of Joyce’s A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, another story about liberation of the spirit. To my great surprise, his ending is far more flowery than mine—embarrassingly so! With that in mind, I pruned the last chapter but left it mostly as it was, hoping future readers will be more tolerant than me.