LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE

Let's face it -- writer's don't make a lot money. On the other hand, I agree wholeheartedly with that line in Babette's Feast, "An artist is never poor." Having friends and an amour who enjoys food as much as I do helps too. My friends are always inviting me out for dinner (or inviting themselves in for dinner -- it's all good when you have a grand garden and a BBQ on the back porch.)

It also helps to date someone who appreciates your culinary skills, so when my beau shows up at the door with a bag of goodies and says, "Can you cook these?", plunking down two lobsters, or asks, "Can you make Key Lime Pie?" or "Mango Surprise?" or "Cassava Cake?" (a sweetie with a sweet tooth), I take it as a challenge. Fortunately, it's one I'm up to facing.

OFF DAYS

What do writers do on their days off? I don't know, I don't get any. But what I often do between writing sessions is indulge in the rewards of other artistic disciplines. Today, for instance, I accepted an invitation to the McMichael Art Gallery in Kleinberg Ontario with actor Geordie Johnson to share his passion for the works of Fredericton-born painter Mary Pratt.

Mary's work is a careful study of ordinary-seeming objects, often in domestic settings. Food dominates her paintings, with a special emphasis on reflective surfaces--tin foil, saran wrap, glass--used in the preparation and presentation of the subjects. Mary's seemingly off-the-cuff remarks penned beside the works give keen insight into their inspiration and possible interpretation, such as her note about having lost twins in pregnancy not long before creating an eerie but innocent-looking painting of egg shells in their carton.

In addition, the McMichael is the adopted site of Tom Thomson's "shack", as it is called today, a wooden cabin where he lived and worked up until his death in 1917.

Although it's not open to public viewing, you can peer through the windows to see the recreation of his studio.

SPRING 2014

Wow--it's been a busy spring! February saw the long-awaited release of Vanished In Vallarta, third in the Bradford Fairfax comic mystery series. For fans of Brad and Zach, I can tell you that the fourth book, Bon Ton Roulez, has been finished for some time, while a fifth book, Havana Club (a prequel to the series) is in the works. Look for both of those over the next two years, with additional books set in Palm Springs, San Francisco and Toronto to follow.

As well, March saw the publication of Pumpkin Eater, sequel to my Lambda Award-winning Lake On The Mountain, and second in the Dan Sharp series. If Bradford Fairfax is the happy me then Dan Sharp is the dark side of my personality. I an currently editing the third book, The Jade Butterfly, scheduled for a spring 2015 release. The fourth book, After The Horses, is also in the works. 

I hope that's enough reading for you! Oh, and by the way, I'd love to hear from people who enjoy my books, so drop me a line or find me on Facebook.

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.