Its always a great pleasure to discover a new writer that you like,
or an old writer that you hadn't paid attention to before. Such is the
case with Mavis Gallant. I was on the New Yorker web site where I found an audible short story selected and read by Antonya Nelson (whose father was a college professor of mine).
Online it was entitled Waiting but the real title is "When we were almost young". It was originally published in 1960. It stuck me as such a great story I had to rush to the library to
check out the complete Collected Stories.
Here is the abstract summary of the story:
Mavis Gallant, Fiction, "When We Were Nearly Young," The New Yorker,
October 15, 1960, p. 38 October 15, 1960 Issue
In Madrid, 9 years ago, the writer & her companions lived on the
thought of money. The re were four of them: two men & two girls. The
men, Pablo & Carlos, were cousins. Pilar was a relation of theirs. The
writer was not Spanish & not a relation, just an accidental friend.
The thing they had in common was waiting for money. Carlos & Pablo
shared a room in a flat; writer lived in another room in the same
house. Pilar had her own small flat. They were all in their 20's &
worried about approaching their thirties. Getting along on their
meagre funds was a constant challenge. The Spaniards' characteristic
trait was a certain passiveness. One day the writer received some
money, but it aroused bitterness. Carlos remarked that the difference
between them was that something would always come for the writer but
not for them.
(That doesn't do the story justice.) There are a couple of quotes I remember:
"Poverty is not a goad but a paralysis."
..."we were not afraid because after all, what was the worse that could happen. No one seemed to know."
Thats when I thought, that would be a good question for the Buddha.
Me: What is the worse that can happen?
Buddha: Life is suffering.
Biography
An only child, Gallant was born in Montreal, Quebec. Her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried. Gallant received her education at seventeen different public, convent, and French-language boarding schools. In her twenties, she worked as a reporter for the Montreal Standard (1944-1950). She married John Gallant, a Winnipeg musician in 1942. The couple divorced five years later in 1947. Gallant left journalism in 1950 to pursue fiction writing.
Gallant has been forthright about the protectiveness she feels towards her autonomy and privacy. In an interview with Geoff Hancock in Canadian Fiction magazine in 1978, she discussed her “life project” and her deliberate move to France to write by saying, “I have arranged matters so that I would be free to write. It's what I like doing.” In the preface to her collection of stories, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), she uses the words of Boris Pasternak as her epigraph: “Only personal independence matters.”
In 1981, Gallant was honoured by her native country and made an Officer of the Order of Canada for her contribution to literature; that year, she received the Governor General's Award for literature for her collection of stories, Home Truths. In 1983-84, she returned to Canada to be the writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto. Queen’s University awarded her an honorary LL.D. in 1991. She was promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 1993.
In 1989, Gallant was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, she won the Matt Cohen Prize, and in 2002 she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. The O. Henry Prize Stories of 2003 was dedicated to her.
With Alice Munro, Gallant is one of a few Canadian authors whose works regularly appear in The New Yorker. Many of Gallant’s stories have debuted in the magazine before subsequently being published in a collection.
[edit] Critical assessment
Grazia Merler observes in her book, Mavis Gallant: Narrative Patterns and Devices, that “Psychological character development is not the heart of Mavis Gallant’s stories, nor is plot. Specific situation development and reconstruction of the state of mind or of heart is, however, the main objective.” Frequently, Gallant’s stories focus on expatriate men and women who have come to feel lost or isolated; marriages that have grown flimsy or shabby; lives that have faltered and now hover in the shadowy area between illusion, self-delusion, and reality. As well, because of her heritage and understanding of Acadian history, she is often compared to Antonine Maillet, considered to be spokesperson for Acadian culture in Canada.
In a critical book, Reading Mavis Gallant, Janice Kulyk Keefer says, “Gallant is a writer who dazzles us with her command of the language, her innovative use of narrative forms, the acuity of her intelligence, and the incisiveness of her wit. Yet she also disconcerts us with her insistence on the constrictions and limitations that dominate human experience.”
In a review of her work in Books in Canada in 1978, Geoff Hancock asserts that “Mavis Gallant's fiction is among the finest ever written by a Canadian. But, like buried treasure, both the author and her writing are to discover.” In the Canadian Reader, Robert Fulford has said, “One begins comparing her best moments to those of major figures in literary history. Names like Henry James, Chekhov, and George Eliot dance across the mind.”
[edit] Major works
Gallant has written two novels, Green Water, Green Sky (1969) and A Fairly Good Time (1970); a play, What is to be Done? (1984); numerous celebrated collections of stories, The Other Paris (1953), My Heart is Broken (1964), The Pegnitz Junction (1973), The End of the World and Other Stories (1974), From the Fifteenth District (1978), Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981), Overhead in a Balloon: Stories of Paris (1985), and In Transit (1988); and a non-fiction work, Paris Journals: Selected Essays and Reviews (1986).
[edit] Current life
Although she maintains her Canadian citizenship, Gallant has lived in Paris, France since the 1950s.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Ask the Buddha
For Christmas I received a "Ask the Buddha" plastic statue which
works like the "Magic 8 Ball" which was popular a few years ago.
To ask the Buddha a question you shake the statue then turn it over and read one of twenty possible Zen like responses. For example : Seek Enlightenment, or Live with Joy, or Where is my monkey, or Seek the truth etc. There is a little 20 sided geometric
figure that floats in some kind of liquid. A 20-sided flat figure (polygon) is called an icosagon. If it is a solid figure--three-dimensional--it is an icosahedron. You can have very in depth conversations with the Buddha or shallow if you prefer:
Me: What should I do today, Buddha?
Buddha: Live with Joy
Me: Should I go to the all you can eat buffet?
Buddha: You are not ready.
Me: Should i vote for a Democrat or Republican?
Buddha: You know the answer.
Me: But which one?
Buddha: Seek the truth
Me: maybe i should just go back to bed?
Buddha: Meditate on it
Me: Seriously, what should I do today?
Buddha: Rub my belly
... Such is the life of the retiree.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
New Year Resoution - 7 months later
Realizing the folly of the previous post i'll copy this article by Andy Borowitz:
New Year’s Resolutions, Seven Months Later
by Andy Borowitz August 9, 2004
Resolution No. 1: I Will Quit Smoking
On New Year’s Day, I started using nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and nicotine lozenges but stopped when I began to hallucinate that I was a Lucky Strike. January 2nd brought a new, less arrogant resolution: “I will smoke only cigarettes I did not pay for.” Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated how easy it would be to steal them at the 7-Eleven, especially when the girl behind the counter was on her cell phone trying to cast a vote for “American Idol.” Seven months later, I’m actually smoking slightly more than I did last year, but that may be because I’m more focussed on trying to quit stealing.
Resolution No. 2: I Will Lose Thirty Pounds
Successful dieters say it’s not what you eat but how much you eat that counts, which is why, back in January, I resolved to eat only while driving. After all, there’s only so much you can shove into your mouth when one hand is on the wheel and the other is holding a cigarette. I guess we’ll never know whether my diet would have worked, since on January 3rd I drove my Sentra into the display window of a roofing-supply store in Long Island City. Since then, I’ve actually gained about five pounds, most of which I chalk up to the nervous eating I’ve been doing while awaiting my trial. On the positive side, now that I have to walk everywhere it’s only a matter of time before my unsightly love handles are ancient history.
Resolution No. 3: I Will Be Nicer to My Co-Workers
I’ve never exactly been Mr. Popularity at work, but I’ve never been Mr. Unpopularity, either. (That would be Dale, especially since I spread the rumor that he, and not I, was the one who had been stealing everyone’s yogurt out of the refrigerator.) Still, I resolved to be a little nicer around the office, as this January 4th exchange with my co-worker Barry demonstrates:
Me: Hey, Barry, how’s it going?
Barry: Real busy—got a big presentation tomorrow and I’m nowhere near ready.
Me: Oh, well, let’s have a pity party.
Barry: What did you say?
Me: See ya—wouldn’t want to be ya!
O.K., so maybe I could’ve been nicer than that, but if being nice means sucking up to self-important shits like Barry I’d just as soon ditch this dopey resolution altogether.
Resolution No. 4: I Will Stop Sneaking Up Behind People and Poking Them with a Sharp Wooden Stick
I did this only three times last year, so it’s a reach to call it a “habit.” And yet, those three incidents, plus the time I spent online shopping for just the right stick, constitute a troubling pattern of behavior. Here’s the good news: so far this year, I have sneaked up behind only one person and poked him (Barry, on January 5th), so, at that rate, I will do it only twice this year—well off last year’s pace. The bad news is that these incidents could pick up in frequency during the cold-weather months, when it’s easier to conceal a sharp wooden stick under a heavy overcoat. But even if I wind up poking, say, four or five people, total, this year, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. What with all the other resolutions I’ve made, this is one of the few simple pleasures I have left. ♦
New Year’s Resolutions, Seven Months Later
by Andy Borowitz August 9, 2004
Resolution No. 1: I Will Quit Smoking
On New Year’s Day, I started using nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and nicotine lozenges but stopped when I began to hallucinate that I was a Lucky Strike. January 2nd brought a new, less arrogant resolution: “I will smoke only cigarettes I did not pay for.” Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated how easy it would be to steal them at the 7-Eleven, especially when the girl behind the counter was on her cell phone trying to cast a vote for “American Idol.” Seven months later, I’m actually smoking slightly more than I did last year, but that may be because I’m more focussed on trying to quit stealing.
Resolution No. 2: I Will Lose Thirty Pounds
Successful dieters say it’s not what you eat but how much you eat that counts, which is why, back in January, I resolved to eat only while driving. After all, there’s only so much you can shove into your mouth when one hand is on the wheel and the other is holding a cigarette. I guess we’ll never know whether my diet would have worked, since on January 3rd I drove my Sentra into the display window of a roofing-supply store in Long Island City. Since then, I’ve actually gained about five pounds, most of which I chalk up to the nervous eating I’ve been doing while awaiting my trial. On the positive side, now that I have to walk everywhere it’s only a matter of time before my unsightly love handles are ancient history.
Resolution No. 3: I Will Be Nicer to My Co-Workers
I’ve never exactly been Mr. Popularity at work, but I’ve never been Mr. Unpopularity, either. (That would be Dale, especially since I spread the rumor that he, and not I, was the one who had been stealing everyone’s yogurt out of the refrigerator.) Still, I resolved to be a little nicer around the office, as this January 4th exchange with my co-worker Barry demonstrates:
Me: Hey, Barry, how’s it going?
Barry: Real busy—got a big presentation tomorrow and I’m nowhere near ready.
Me: Oh, well, let’s have a pity party.
Barry: What did you say?
Me: See ya—wouldn’t want to be ya!
O.K., so maybe I could’ve been nicer than that, but if being nice means sucking up to self-important shits like Barry I’d just as soon ditch this dopey resolution altogether.
Resolution No. 4: I Will Stop Sneaking Up Behind People and Poking Them with a Sharp Wooden Stick
I did this only three times last year, so it’s a reach to call it a “habit.” And yet, those three incidents, plus the time I spent online shopping for just the right stick, constitute a troubling pattern of behavior. Here’s the good news: so far this year, I have sneaked up behind only one person and poked him (Barry, on January 5th), so, at that rate, I will do it only twice this year—well off last year’s pace. The bad news is that these incidents could pick up in frequency during the cold-weather months, when it’s easier to conceal a sharp wooden stick under a heavy overcoat. But even if I wind up poking, say, four or five people, total, this year, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. What with all the other resolutions I’ve made, this is one of the few simple pleasures I have left. ♦
New Years Resolutions
I heard this morning on NPR that one out of ten people actually
accomplish their new year resolutions. I think about one out of
ten years i actually achieve mine. With that in mind and realizing
their likely failure here are my 2008 resolutions:
New Years Resolutions 2008
1) read 10 non-fiction books - biographies and history)
possiblities : The Beatles by Spitz, Einstein, Will in the World ,
Truman, Battle Cry of Freedom, Peoples History of U.S., Biographies
of Kant, Whitman, Edison, World is not my Home by Michener
2) read 10 books on Buddhism and Mediation
possibilities : Best Buddhist wrintings of 2007, Buddhist Bible,
Wheel of Life and Death, Seeking Heart of Wisdom, One Dharma,
Enlightened Mind , Zen Keys
3) resee 10 film classics,
possibilities: Amacord,Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Dr Strangelove, Citizen Kane,
To Kill a Mockingbird, Apocalypse Now, Everyone says I love,you,
Annie Hall
4) Attend 10 live concerts:
eg.: Wilco,DM Symphony, Bues Festivals in Davenport and Wintrop Wa., SXSW in Austin, any String Quartets, NiteFall on River
5) see live theatre when possible
6) Travel - see friends, wildlife refuges and nat'l parks:
Arizona,Texas, Minneapplosis,Omaha,KC, Ohio -rock and roll museum in Clevland,Kentucky, Vermont, Georgia, Carolinas
7) See 10 bird species i have never seen before
8) write 10 bad poems - including haiku
9) Make CD compilations : eg. favorite songs and poems of 2007,
compilation of songs and excerpts from books that i was exposed to in high school(62-65)
10) laugh as much as possible (with of course not at)
11) lie less (except to produce laughs - see #10)
12) lose 30 pounds
accomplish their new year resolutions. I think about one out of
ten years i actually achieve mine. With that in mind and realizing
their likely failure here are my 2008 resolutions:
New Years Resolutions 2008
1) read 10 non-fiction books - biographies and history)
possiblities : The Beatles by Spitz, Einstein, Will in the World ,
Truman, Battle Cry of Freedom, Peoples History of U.S., Biographies
of Kant, Whitman, Edison, World is not my Home by Michener
2) read 10 books on Buddhism and Mediation
possibilities : Best Buddhist wrintings of 2007, Buddhist Bible,
Wheel of Life and Death, Seeking Heart of Wisdom, One Dharma,
Enlightened Mind , Zen Keys
3) resee 10 film classics,
possibilities: Amacord,Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Dr Strangelove, Citizen Kane,
To Kill a Mockingbird, Apocalypse Now, Everyone says I love,you,
Annie Hall
4) Attend 10 live concerts:
eg.: Wilco,DM Symphony, Bues Festivals in Davenport and Wintrop Wa., SXSW in Austin, any String Quartets, NiteFall on River
5) see live theatre when possible
6) Travel - see friends, wildlife refuges and nat'l parks:
Arizona,Texas, Minneapplosis,Omaha,KC, Ohio -rock and roll museum in Clevland,Kentucky, Vermont, Georgia, Carolinas
7) See 10 bird species i have never seen before
8) write 10 bad poems - including haiku
9) Make CD compilations : eg. favorite songs and poems of 2007,
compilation of songs and excerpts from books that i was exposed to in high school(62-65)
10) laugh as much as possible (with of course not at)
11) lie less (except to produce laughs - see #10)
12) lose 30 pounds
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