CALIFORNIA

Yup, that's where I am.

There are so many great songs about this place, and I've been hearing a good number of them while here. (California Dreaming, If You're Going to San Francisco, and Joni Mitchell's anthem, "Will you take me as I am, strung out on another man? California, I'm coming home.")

My publisher tells me I don't post enough blogs for a boy with another book coming out. ;-) Hmm, well. That's largely because I post fotos on Facebook. If you're curious to see what I've been up to, try me there. All fotos and write-ups are open to public viewing.

Cheers!
Jeffrey

MANON, SANDRA AND THE VIRGIN MARY AT BUDDIES IN BAD TIMES THEATRE

Michel Tremblay is arguably Canada's best playwright and one of the world's great queer writers. Oddly, this play marks his first appearance at Canada's largest queer theatre. The reasons for his neglect are not easy to explain, but the clues are there.

Through the 80s and 90s, Toronto's theatre scene was a jealously guarded and highly competitive fiefdom. At the time, Tremblay was already a big enough name that his work overshadowed that of lesser artists. As well, he'd secured support at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and because of that he may have seemed too mainstream for an indie theatre like Buddies. Last, but no means least, were his separatist leanings: he didn't like his work to be performed in English, however much English Canada showed a willingness to embrace him.

All of that aside, it's a pleasure to see his work again. He brings a glow and warmth to the lower-class Montreal neighbourhood he writes about in a way that makes Quebec culture charming to those of us who might otherwise find it an enigma. (He would hate that, of course, preferring to remain an enigma to the English "elite." Tant pis!)

Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary is Tremblay in his prime. Anger, irreverence and blasphemy crack open the facades of two bitter spinsters: the in-your-face drag queen Sandra and the religious fanatic Manon, neighbours in east-end Montreal, both of whom have quarrels to pick with the world and God.

Coming out of the theatrical revolution of the 70s, where traditional dramatics were being abandoned for a more declamatory style, Tremblay created a series of monologues for his characters to reveal themselves. With minimal onstage action, the drama is all in the words. The contrasts are jarring and explosive, with Manon describing her attempts, sometimes humorous and sometimes frightening, to purify herself for the coming of the Virgin, while Sandra narrates her efforts to purify herself for the arrival of her lover ... dressed as the Virgin.

The result is a mesmerizing collision of values and beliefs, with an apotheosis as moving as the descent into madness of Blanche DuBois, and hinging on a turn of phrase as slight as "the kindness of strangers" was to that femme.

In this production, Richard McMillan as Sandra almost literally takes flight, using little more than Tremblay's words to achieve lift-off, as the abused and misunderstood Sandra reveals her true nature beneath her gaudy fingernail polish and grotesque sexual fantasies. Meanwhile, Irene Poole gives us an emotionally stunted and frustrated Manon, groping blindly in her desperate attempts to find salvation in denying her human urges, while behind them a giant image of the Virgin Mary bleeds into view, overarching everything.

Stunning.

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Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary. A Pleiades Theatre Production, translated and directed by John Van Burek, at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre. Running until February 2, 2014.

JONI MITCHELL AT 70

For Joni Mitchell fans, there is a rare treat in the December 2013 issue of Uncut Magazine. Known for revealing herself mostly through song, she seldom does so in print. In a remarkably unguarded and candid interview with Q's Jian Ghomeshi, Mitchell spouts some highly quotable comments on her pop superstar status ("We need goddesses--but I don't want to be one."), on celebrity ("...fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name."), on her ego ("I'd rather have a real arrogance than a false humility."), and the creativity of van Gogh ("It's a lie so you see the truth.") The piece is refreshingly brash and fun and outspoken, even when she sounds cranky and curmudgeonly--which is often, but it's also when she is at her most entertaining and revealing. Enjoy this intimate moment with one of the greats.

THREE BOOKS

VOSS by PATRICK WHITE

Voss is a surprising book. Initially bored with its historical aspects, I eventually found myself intrigued by its visionary qualities. The title character, a German who sets out to explore the harsh Australian Outback in the mid-1800s, is presented as both godlike and demon-like, and therein lies the book's powerful spiritual imagery. Voss's most charged relationship grows from a brief meeting with the rebellious niece of a man who funds his explorations, and with whom he melds emotionally and spiritually during his travels. The descriptions of the perilous desert passage are interesting enough, as is the depiction of aborigines as nature's innocents, but the metaphysical exploration of Voss's inner struggles are riveting.

JAMES BALDWIN by DAVID LEEMING

Biographies don't get much better than this one. Nor do their subjects get more interesting. Leeming does a great job of animating his friend and mentor, the black, gay writer-activist, a leading figure in the 60s American Civil Rights Movement. Placing Baldwin's life and work in an historical context, Leeming allows one to illuminate the other, while building a complex and compelling portrait of the man himself.

ANOTHER COUNTRY by JAMES BALDWIN

Baldwin has written far more controlled works, but it's the raging fire at the core of this one that brings it to life for me, despite its technical shortcomings. A surprisingly frank portrait of bohemian New York in the late-1950s, its prose is infused with the language and rhythms of the Beats, which tends to give it an aura of experimentation. But this is a hold-nothing-back sort of book, and that's exactly what sets it apart from Baldwin's smoother works, like Giovanni's Room, where the holding back gets in the way of the story. Centered around the lovers, friends and relatives of a young black jazz musician who kills himself, the book's charged and highly explicit sexuality (gay, straight and bi), the descriptions of alcohol and drug use, and its despairing vision of pre-liberation America is quite stunning for the era. Baldwin's anger with the racial-sexual hypocrisy of his times drives this story, even while he sermonizes to his readers and unapologetically uses his characters as pawns to dramatize his themes.

THE MYSTERY OF DASHIELL HAMMETT

Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, are considered the three pillars of classic American hard-boiled writing. Hammett came first, however, and pretty well perfected the genre and writing style when it was still in its infancy. As much as the latter two authors leaned on him, to my mind they never surpassed him. He was the best.

I am not the first to note the curious fact that Hammett published five mysteries in five years, one of them among the greatest novels ever written, then never finished another book for the remaining 27 years of his life. No one ever really figured out why, including Lillian Hellman, his companion during those 27 years, though alcoholism, tuberculosis, and persecution by the US government (Hammett spent time in jail due to his political beliefs) are among the chief suspects. (A new collection of his short fiction, The Hunter and Other Stories, reveals that Hammett may have been hoping to shake the tough-guy image and write something completely different, but the stories failed to interest editors, hence their publication now for the first time.)

His first novel, Red Harvest (1929) has a standard-issue feel at the opening, when an unnamed private investigator arrives in Personville (aka "Poisonville") at the behest of an influential client whose life has been threatened. The client is killed before they meet, but his father hires the PI to find his son's killer. The suspects number a greedy girlfriend, a crooked chief of police, the victim's wife, and several of the town's gangsters. So far, so ordinary. But that's where things start to change, and before long you realize you're in the hands of a master of two of America's favourite themes: violence and vengeance. The PI quickly learns he can't trust anybody, including his employer, who first asks him to clean up Personville then orders him to leave town. After one-too-many assassination attempts, however, the PI is unwilling to vacate: now it's personal. "All in all it's one swell dish," is how one character sums things. And that's how the nameless PI deals it, serving up first one gangster after another in his unbending quest to restore law and order. The protagonist has strong similarities to Sam Spade, Hammett's most famous creation, but other characters from his third and best-known volume, The Maltese Falcon, also find their prototypes here, in this powerful and highly engaging story.

The Dain Curse followed the same year, in what may have been an attempt to cash in on the success of its predecessor. For his second book, Hammett threw everything into the cauldron: family curses, religious cults, drug addiction, stolen jewels. You name it, it's there. And not to the book's credit. Perhaps Hammett felt paralyzed by his beginner's luck and tried to figure out just what makes a book work with this second volume. Another nameless PI serves as the writer's alter-ego, making him sound at times like an author in search of a convincing psychology of character and event, voicing the story's apparent contradictions while testing some possible plot permutations. All in all, it's one big mess. But, what's more intriguing: that this book is one of the least enjoyable works of detective fiction of all time or that Hammett's next would be the greatest?

Of his third and most successful book, The Maltese Falcon (1930), I cannot say enough. Its story of greed and treachery, as characters play one another off in quest of the famed "black bird" of Malta, has inspired me and countless others to imitate its perfection and mastery. It is at times funny, cruel, compassionate, bleak, insightful, and riveting. Many will know the John Huston-Humphrey Bogart collaboration that also made it one of the most famous movies of all time. And rightly so. To Hammett's everlasting credit, much of the filmscript was lifted straight from the book, and it all works beautifully even now. The combination of oddball characters, wickedly funny dialogue and immaculate plotting make this the perfect noir masterpiece, as PI Sam Spade avenges the death of his partner Miles Archer and makes the world seem right in a cock-eyed, cynical kind of way. It was ranked 56 in Modern Library's 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century.

Hammett's fourth book, The Glass Key (1931), is an oblique tale written in a completely different tone from his earlier work. It's as though abstract expressionism has infected his style. Tension is rampant, but with little or no emotional anchoring between reader and characters. Here, all is ambiguity: Ned Beaumont, a racketeer, is asked to investigate the death of a respected senator's son by his best friend, a crime boss who wants to marry the senator's daughter. Politics and crime intersect and bisect repeatedly as the story grows more and more convoluted, until nearly everyone's motives are suspect. The purposeful withholding of the characters' rationales contributes to a sense of overall unease, where the reader never knows whom to trust, though both the story's end and the murder reveal are neatly fitting. This was said to be Hammett's favourite of his books.

Three years passed before the publication of The Thin Man (1934), Hammett's last novel. His sense of humour is back and smarter than ever, but there is an additional element in the work: love. The writing of this book happened to coincide with his relationship with playwright Lillian Hellmann, Hammett's companion for the last 30 years of his life, and to whom the book is dedicated. Here, the protagonist is Nick Charles, a former-private investigator who spends his time partying and drinking with his clever young wife, Nora. Against his will, Nick is drawn into a murder investigation along with Nora. The couple are fun and lively and seemingly free of sexual inhibition, as their frank (for the times) sexual banter--including comments on male genitalia--proclaims. The relationship is also refreshingly free of traditional sex role stereotyping, another miracle for its dour era. This is Hammett's happiest book and a fitting epitaph for one whose life would eventually take a permanent downslide into illness, incarceration and disillusionment.

Jeffrey Round is a writer, playwright and filmmaker. Lake On The Mountain, his first Dan Sharp mystery, won the Lambda Award for Best Gay Mystery in 2013. Pumpkin Eater, the second Dan Sharp mystery, is to be published in March 2014. Round is also author of the Bradford Fairfax comic mystery series and other books. Visit his website: http://www.jeffreyround.com.

LOVELY LUBA AIR FARCE MAID, GLAD YOU WERE FREE TO TAKE SOME TEA WITH ME

A night on the town with Luba Goy, star of the Royal Canadian Air Farce, invariably turns into a Magical Mystery Tour. Last night, singer-actor Dorothy Post and I joined La Goy at one of her fave hang-outs, the Wish Cafe on Charles Street East, where she soon had the staff bending over to accommodate her every, erm, wish.

After a tasty meal, plus a brief interlude that consisted of a comparison of luxury lingerie (with Dorothy, not me, but who knew you could spend so much on a brassiere?!), we were off to catch Luba's friend and colleague Bruce Dow deliver a bravura performance in Tim Luscombe's Pig, given its impressive premiere at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre under the sure hand of director Brendan Healy. (If the MORE link doesn't work, click on BLOG above.)

In search of dessert and further adventure we soon landed at a Toronto landmark, Fran's on College Street, where we found ourselves sitting next to film/television actor Eve Crawford, who dropped in with artist/videographer Max Deans. That was how we chose our next stop in the night's madcap roundup: Max's Cancer Is Our Story, a riveting video installation featuring multiple hands and arms in tightly choreographed movements. The video, which repeatedly won applause from passersby, was a major Nuit Blanche exhibition on University Avenue across from Princess Margaret Hospital.

While there, La Goy was mauled by media-guru George Stroumboulopoulos, just one of thousands roaming the streets and checking out the artistic offerings on display. (BTW, Luba is a scheduled guest on George's show this Wednesday night on CBC--don't miss them!)

Of course, the night couldn't end there. We next grabbed a cab and swung all three blocks over to the Eaton Chelsea to round up my friend Eslam, who had just texted to say he was free. (The more the merrier!) Eslam, a veteran of the Libyan civil war, is currently receiving medical treatment in Toronto and has become a big fan of all the city has to offer. He knows Canada is a very cool country!

Cabbing it again, the four of us trekked off to city hall to view the extraordinary large-scale Ai WeiWei work, Forever Bicycles, made up of 3144 interlocked bikes erected at the centre of Nathan Phillips Square. Having seen the full Ai WeiWei exhibition currently on at the Art Gallery of Ontario, this final piece capped for me the work of one of today's most impressive and relevant living artists.

Thanks to the great weather, the square was packed well past 2 AM. I don't think it's ever looked so good. Come to think of it, the city hasn't been this much fun either for a very long time. But that's just what happens when you venture out with Luba Goy.

(All fotos by moi, except for the promo shot of actors Bruce Dow and Paul Dunn. Oh yeah, duh, and the one with me in it, taken by the Lovely Luba.)

WHERE DO CHARACTERS COME FROM?

Readers often ask where I get my characters. The truth is, I don't know. While I may steal a visual from life once in a while--a nice head of a hair, a good jaw line--I don't use real people when it comes to personality. Nor are they all some version of me. If I made a list of what my character Dan Sharp and I have in common, it wouldn't be long. I am not a single dad, a private eye, or a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Nor did I ever sell my body for sex, though I have slept on a park bench.

Growing up in Sudbury, as Dan I and did, there was no small share of potential characters: boys whose fathers were alcoholics; a girl named Shirley who had a boy's haircut and wore dungarees and came to school looking alternately frightened and angry; another girl named Pelka, whose father emigrated from Yugoslavia and who drank battery acid to try to kill himself. I knew that world and mingled with it every day at school. I never thought any of them odd--merely interesting or dull, dangerous or friendly. Nor did I ever look down on any of them.

On the other hand, like Dan, there is a little of the sleuth in me. I recall Miss Kristakos, my grade three teacher, who had polio and limped, and who I secretly followed home one day to find out where she lived so I could surprise her with a drawing of Daisy Duck the next day. Or Rex, my best friend of two months, who had no father and whose mother was so poor all she could afford to serve when I came to lunch was Kraft Dinner, which I refused as politely as I could. Rex vanished as suddenly as he appeared. The adult me still wonders how I could trace him to learn how his life turned out, as would Dan.

While I'm not Dan, I admire him and like to spend time in his company. That's why I write about him. I've had an easier life than he has, and that's one of the reasons I admire him, because he upholds principles despite the difficulties they sometimes cause him. If I knew him, I would be proud to call him my friend. I hope he would say the same of me.