The Toronto launch for Lee Henderson’s debut novel happened on Wednesday, Sept. 3, at a This Is Not a Reading Series event at the Gladstone Hotel. The evening kicked off with a Henderson-led tutorial about amateur wrestling leagues and YouTube dance crazes, and ended with a lament for the declining arts scene in Vancouver, where Henderson continues to live.

Penguin Canada senior publicist Stephen Myers, with Laura Fetterley of HarperCollins Canada and Penguin publicist Melissa Robson.

Lee Henderson at the signing table.

Henderson discusses art – and the state of his hometown – onstage with Q&Q’s own Nathan Whitlock.

Rachel Harry (centre), formerly of BookTelevision, with IFOA communications co-ordinator Becky Toyne (right) and a partygoer.

According to Henderson, all of the art displayed on the walls of the Gladstone ballroom was by artists who had recently left Vancouver to live in more artist-friendly locales.

On Wednesday, the arts community gathered in a crowded Toronto theatre to denounce the $40-million in arts funding cuts announced by the Tories in recent weeks. According to the Toronto Star, the night’s speakers, who included former chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada Susan Swan and activist and author Naomi Klein, had some choice words for the government.

“Could it be, Mr. Prime Minister, that you don’t want to understand the value of the arts? Could it be that you would prefer the arts to be an arm of government propaganda instead of the free expression of ideas and innovation that’s so crucial for a successful democracy and a good economy? Could it be that you feel threatened by artistic expression because you can’t control it?” Swan said.

“Artistic expression spreads goodwill about Canada around the world. Culture is us, Mr. Prime Minister, and if we don’t value ourselves, the world won’t either,” she added.

In response to the cuts, one community group, dubbed Department of Culture, is proposing a number of measures to defeat Harper, including organizing “swing teams” in vulnerable Tory ridings. A more whimsical tactic is to draw attention to a quote by Quebec author Gabrielle Roy inscribed on the Canadian $20 bill, which reads, “Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?” From the group’s website:

To direct attention to the place of the arts in our society as a means of both economic and cultural exchange we encourage you to recite the quote every time you pay for something with a $20 bill.

U.S. firm Perseus Books Group is offering small publishers a chance to access digital book technology with the launch of a new service. The New York Times reports:

The new service, called Constellation, will allow independent publishers to make use of electronic readers, digital book search, print-on-demand and other digital formats at rates negotiated by Perseus on their behalf. Unlike large publishers, small ones typically lack the resources to use digital technology and as a result often bypass it altogether.

The service, which was officially launched on Thursday, involves a partnership with six major technology companies and is offered to Perseus’ 300+ distribution clients, as well as its own imprints, which include Basic Books, Running Press, and Vanguard Press.

The companies involved in the deal include Google, for its Google Book Search feature; Amazon, for its Kindle electronic reader; Sony, for its Sony Reader; Barnes & Noble, for its “See Inside” feature on its Web site; and Lightning Source, a print-on-demand company.

Publishers who use the new service can provide a single digital book file to Constellation and specify how they would like it to be used. As a result consumers may see more obscure, esoteric books available in digital formats, Perseus said.

The move solidifies Perseus’ status as one of the foremost distributors of indie publishers in the U.S., after the firm began handling distribution for Publishers Group West clients last year.

Friend of Q&Q John W. MacDonald has a great shot up on his Flickr site. At last week’s Ottawa launch for Kerry Pither’s book Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror (Penguin Canada), one of the book’s main subjects, Maher Arar, was in attendance. Below, Arar thanks Pither as she signs copies of the book. (Photo by John W. MacDonald.)

The latest national venue to pick up on the “Salon des Refusés” is Maclean’s, where Paul Wells recaps both the controversy and last month’s public roundtable.

Both Urquhart and Penguin have preferred to lay low through all of this. In response to a request for comment, Urquhart, through her agent, turned down an interview request from Maclean’s. The publisher sent this quotation from Penguin president and publisher David Davidar: “We’re proud to be the publishers of The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories edited by Jane Urquhart. Jane is an exceptional writer and editor and her anthology has made the bestseller lists and been well received critically. We have no doubt that it will remain in print and delight readers for a long time to come.” And indeed it might. But it will no longer go unchallenged.

Urquhart has, in fact, made some public comment, though without getting into the specifics of the complaints made against the Penguin book.

There is already more than enough troubling and tawdry whoop-de-doo surrounding Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick for the vice-presidential slot, to make the whole circus worth watching, but this paragraph from a long article in Time magazine about Palin’s tenure as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, should have some special resonance for Quillblog readers:

[Former mayor John] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

This just gets better and better.

Rabid Twilight fans the world over will have to find something else to do with their future Friday nights, as series author Stephanie Meyer has decided to abort a planned companion volume. According to Entertainment Weekly, the volume in question – Midnight Sun, which would have seen hunky vampire Edward take over the lead role – was scuttled after a rough draft was stolen and illegally posted online. In the EW piece, Meyer says that she “feels too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun.”

As for the leak itself, Meyer writes, “I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being. As the author of the Twilight Saga, I control the copyright and it is up to the owner of the copyright to decide when the books should be made public; this is the same for musicians and filmmakers. […] This has been a very upsetting experience for me, but I hope it will at least leave my fans with a better understanding of copyright and the importance of artistic control.”

Shortly after the piece was posted, however, a note was added that Meyer has now decided to post the first three chapters of said work on her website, “in fairness to her true, loyal fans.”

One reason to look forward to the rise of e-books is that we’ll no longer have to worry about leaving books behind on the streetcar or in hotel rooms. On the other hand, we’ll no longer have the pleasure of randomly happening upon a lost book, either.

The Guardian looks at the phenomena of lost and found books in this post about the most popular books left behind in Travelodges.

Meanwhile, the Leader-Post looks at the Regina Public Library’s 100th anniversary celebrations, which saw staff leaving 100 new books in various public spaces about the city, in the hopes that people will discover them and pass them on.

Fans of the late Canadian novelist and ZZ Top lookalike Robertson Davies can now claim a part of the author’s history for themselves. StyleNorth reports that selected pieces of furniture and decorations belonging to the novelist and playwright, who died in 1995, are up for sale. Canadian auction house Ritchies is conducting the sale, which will be held from Sept. 16-18.

Items in the sale include an English walnut stationery box valued between $200 and $300, and a Victorian page turner with a tortoise-shell blade and a handle embossed with the image of St. George, whose shield is monogrammed with the initials RWD.

But perhaps the most desirable item on the block will be Davies’s personal writing desk, an early-20th-century leather-topped, Chippendale-style mahogony desk, valued between $1,000 and $1,500. Superstitious writers who want to bask in the reflected glory of a Canadian literary icon and possibly soak up some residual inspiration may be willing to part with a couple of thou’ for this particular item. Given Davies’ own fascination with ghosts and spirits, perhaps the buyer will wind up with more than just a jazzy piece of furniture.

Does anyone have $1,500 Quillblog could borrow?

Rushing in where angels fear to tread (as is his wont), and flagrantly flouting the dictum that discretion is the better part of valour vis-à-vis answering review(er)s, author and essayist Stephen Henighan responded in Saturday’s Globe and Mail to Nigel Beale’s recent review (it’s behind the paywall) of Henighan’s new volume of criticism, A Report on the Afterlife of Culture:

By quoting Dr. Johnson at the beginning and end of his review of my A Report on the Afterlife of Culture, Nigel Beale strikes the pose of a crusty fellow who’s not going to put up with any nonsense — particularly, as his disparaging references to Susan Sontag and Naomi Klein make clear, leftist nonsense.

But in order to pull off the crustiness act you need to get your facts straight. As Beale’s review demonstrates, crustiness combined with historical inaccuracies, questionable summaries and turgid prose soon becomes unconvincing.

Henighan accuses Beale of betraying his “ideological type” in arguing for the market as a determinant of literary quality: “So the great novelists of our time are Dan Brown and J. K. Rowling?”

Not to be deterred, Beale responds to the response, accusing Henighan of getting his facts wrong and castigating him unjustly:

[T]here is no ideology at work in my hostility toward Henighan’s book. I dislike a good many of its essays for the simple reason that they are poorly argued and sloppily constructed.

Since it appears that no quarter is to be given from either party, perhaps the best solution is to go the Craig Davidson route, and have the two pugilists climb in the ring and duke it out. The last man standing gets bragging rights, and a claim to historical accuracy.