David Foster Wallace: consider the exaggerations

On the film-related website The House Next Door, Glenn Kenny, a former editor at Premiere, reminisces about working with David Foster Wallace on three articles for the magazine. One of those pieces, about the Adult Video News awards, also appeared in Wallace’s 2005 essay collection Consider the Lobster. As Kenny recalls:

We worked very hard on the cut, and then there was the whole matter of legal, which was very weird, because there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s invented, starting from the dual pseudonym which he then expands into a conceit of first person plural narration. There are the characters of Dick Filth and Harold Hecuba, who were invented characters that were also composites of myself and Evan. Legal was like, “Oh-kay … Harold Hecuba’s trifocals winding up in cleavage of Christy Canyon and then never being seen again?” Obviously, that’s not what really happened. It was more like, Jasmine St. Clair got Evan into a choke hold at a party one night. But we said they should let it go because: “Neither Evan or I care about the fact that we’re Dick Filth and Harold Hecuba and … the writer’s a very big deal!”

Er, the piece was billed as non-fiction in both the magazine and the book, right?

Perhaps Quillblog is too much of a purist, but it’s disheartening to learn that Wallace apparently subscribed to the David Sedaris view that strict truthfulness is for lesser mortals. It’s also pretty dismaying to see a major magazine knowingly allowing falsehoods as long as (a) nobody’s likely to sue, and (b) “the writer’s a very big deal.”

Bat boy found in cave, poet gets media attention, and other unlikely headlines

Vancouver poet Shannon Stewart has accomplished something that most poets could manage only by developing psychic powers or undergoing an alien abduction. She’s been covered in Weekly World News.

Stewart engages tabloid tropes in her latest collection, Penny Dreadful, and that angle caught the attention of the venerable tipsheet. The piece prints one of Stewart’s poems – “Supermarket Lobsters Escape Tank & Terrorize Shoppers” – and also links to the original WWN story that inspired the poem. Both are highly entertaining.

Blurb this!

“Eighty-five per cent Austen, fifteen per cent a television writer named Seth Grahame-Smith, and one hundred per cent terrible.”

– The New Yorker on the much-ballyhooed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Griffin Poetry Prize reaction

Some reaction to the Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist, unveiled yesterday, is trickling in. The Canadian Press interviews two nominees, Jeramy Dodds and Kevin Connolly, while the National Post has a backgrounder on this year’s selections. Q&Q reviewer and conflict watchdog Zachariah Wells says this is “one of the best Canadian shortlists I’ve seen…. Kudos to Michael Redhill, this year’s Canadian judge.”

Wells does add, however, “Given that the prize is funded by Anansi’s owner, it would have looked a lot better if Redhill had managed to shortlist but one of their books.” And the Toronto Star‘s Vit Wagner also notes the Griffin-Anansi link, though he doesn’t exactly press the point after Anansi president Sarah MacLachlan assures him that it’s a non-issue.

Quillblog’s take: it is an appearance of mild conflict, but probably unavoidable. Given Anansi’s commitment to poetry publishing, their titles deserve to be in the running, and if they’re in the running, they’re probably going to turn up on the odd shortlist. (It’s also worth noting that no Anansi title has won in the nine-year history of the prize.)

Bob Plamondon’s lucky break

Montreal’s The Gazette engages in a little Kremlinology over rumours of Conservative Party feuding over Brian Mulroney. How did these rumours get leaked? Writer L. Ian MacDonald suggests that author Bob Plamondon did it,

as a clever ploy to promote his new book, Blue Thunder, on Conservative leaders from Macdonald to Harper. The book was launched last night, appropriately enough at an Ottawa pub named for Sir John A., who was known to take the occasional libation.

The story of the Harper-Mulroney rift was perfectly timed for the launch of the book. What better way to draw attention to it than highlighting a split between the Harper and Mulroney camps, between the Reform and Progressive Conservative wings of the Tory party?

MacDonald’s tongue must be at least partly wedged into his cheek, but there’s no denying that for Blue Thunder, the timing of all this is fortuitous. The Gazette piece isn’t the only one to use the current Tory turmoil as a peg for talking about Plamondon’s book.

Griffin shortlists unveiled

The Griffin Poetry Prize shortlists have been announced. Nominees for the Canadian prize and the international prize are listed below; each winner will receive $50,000 at the June 3 ceremony.

Canadian shortlist

• Revolver by Kevin Connolly (House of Anansi Press)
• Crabwise to the Hounds by Jeramy Dodds (Coach House Books)
• The Sentinel by A. F. Moritz (House of Anansi Press)

International shortlist

• The Lost Leader by Mick Imlah (Faber and Faber/Penguin)
• Life on Earth by Derek Mahon (Gallery Press)
• Rising, Falling, Hovering by C.D. Wright (Copper Canyon Press)
• Primitive Mentor by Dean Young (University of Pittsburgh Press)

This year’s jury was made up of poets Saskia Hamilton (U.S.), Dennis O’Driscoll (Ireland), and Michael Redhill (Canada). Jurors read 485 poetry titles to arrive at the shortlists.

And here’s some Q&Q coverage of the Canadian nominees:

• Review of Crabwise to the Hounds
• Review of Revolver
• Profile of Kevin Connolly

Event Photos: Harvey Brownstone, Mary C. Sheppard

Justice Harvey Brownstone launched his book Tug of War: A Judge’s Verdict on Separation, Custody Battles and the Bitter Realities of Family Court (ECW Press) at Toronto’s Park Hyatt last week. Below, Brownstone (centre back) is thronged by well-wishers. (Photo courtesy of ECW Press.)

Late last month, Mary C. Sheppard launched her latest YA novel, Three for a Wedding (Penguin Canada) at Ben McNally Books in Toronto, complete with a fiddle player and home baking. Below, Sheppard (centre) celebrates with authors Gillian O’Reilly (left) and Deirdre Baker. (Photo courtesy of Penguin Canada.)

CBA plans June conference, wants publishers in

The Canadian Booksellers Association is announcing plans for a conference to run on June 20 and 21 at Toronto’s Radisson Admiral Hotel. From an e-mail circulated today by executive director Susan Dayus:

Over the two days, booksellers will attend educational sessions, get updated on industry trends, preview new releases, exchange views on industry challenges and opportunities, hear from sales reps, talk to key publishing management, place orders for exclusive Summer Conference Specials, meet authors, attend CBA Libris Awards and much, much, more!

CBA believes strongly that there is a need for a national forum to bring booksellers and publishers together and has designed the program and events with that in mind. There is ample opportunity for bookseller-publisher dialogue through structured publisher promotions, displays and conference specials, author presentations, pitches from sales reps, publishing panel discussions, and order-taking, as well as informal networking at breakfasts, luncheons, refreshment breaks and CBA Libris Awards Reception and Celebration.

The event kicks off one day after the Book Summit, just as it did in the scrapped BookExpo Canada setup. Assuming all proceeds as planned, the only thing still missing from the 2009 experience is a trade show and a couple of parties.

Watch Q&Q Omni in the coming days for more coverage.

Bookmarks: IMPAC reaction, marching toward e-books, and more

From far and wide:

• The IMPAC shortlist is unveiled, sans any Canadian authors this year (Rawi Hage won last year). Note that Canadian novelist Timothy Taylor was one of the five judges, though. The Irish Times parses the list and the prize’s history, while The Guardian highlights the omission of Philip Roth and J.M. Coetzee.
• New Zealand publishers are starting to worry about missing out on the e-book revolution. Here in Canada, meanwhile, B.C. presses like Self-Counsel and D&M are taking steps to digitize their lists.
• Stop disposing of books that could surely find a home somewhere, says Yellowknife columnist.
• If only this weren’t an April Fool’s joke: Crown backs out of Bush book deal after acquiring editor realizes that none of her colleagues will look her in the eye.
• Is Gabriel García Márquez done writing books? (We might have put this one at the top of the list if the story weren’t just guesswork.)

The duties of an editor

The Calgary Herald looks at Knopf Canada’s New Face of Fiction program, which this year includes Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise. (Grant is an erstwhile Calgarian, having earned a creative writing degree from the university there.) And the piece suggests that one of the signs of a really dedicated editor is remembering a birthday. Not the author’s birthday, but her character’s.

Diane Martin was among those who helped groom Grant’s debut novel Come, Thou Tortoise. Still, the University of Calgary graduate was surprised when Martin phoned her with birthday greetings on Feb. 29. It was not Grant’s birthday, mind you, but the fictional birthday of Come, Thou Tortoise’s endearingly oddball protagonist, Audrey.

“She wanted to say happy birthday to Audrey,” says Grant, in an interview from her home in St. John’s, N. L. “She knew my character’s birthday! That, in a nutshell, was how I was treated by the people I worked with.”

Not quite up there with a three-hour phone call every day for six months, but still impressive in some way, Quillblog supposes.