September Q&Q: Dany Laferrière and more in the spotlight on Quebec publishing

The cover star of the September issue of Q&Q is the Haitian-born, Montreal-based author Dany Laferrière, who came to national attention in the 1980s with his first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, and is set to make a comeback in English-Canada with his latest novel. Also in the issue, Q&Q looks at a Quebec City publishing house that is bringing English-Canadian writing to French readers, and at the Montreal micro-publisher Conundrum Press, which evolved from being a quirky literary house to a quirky publisher of graphic novels. All that plus Fall Announcements, listing every fall adult title, and reviews of Linwood Barclay’s Fear the Worst, Douglas Coupland’s Generation A, Shinan Govani’s Boldface Names, and Arthur Slade’s The Hunchback Assignments.

Returning North

Globe-trotting novelist Dany Laferrière is a big-time celebrity in Quebec. Now, after a decade-long hiatus, he’s being published again in English

Exposing family secrets

Six authors on navigating the personal minefield of memoir writing

The English invasion

An upstart Quebec City house is discovering a surprising demand in its home province for English-Canadian writing. And more in the spotlight on Quebec publishing: The evolution of Conundrum Press, and the dying art of literary translation

Fall Announcements

The season’s complete listings

FRONTMATTER

Bonnie Burnard is back in the spotlight

Don LePan among the Animals

Snapshot: BookNet Canada’s new CEO Noah Genner

Cover to Cover: Lavie Tidhar and Nir Yaniv’s The Tel Aviv Dossier

The e-catalogue cometh

Harry Bruce on the Hugh MacLennan novel that almost never was

Local Buzz: Back to the Beach

GUEST OPINION

Canada’s beleaguered litmags must experiment online to stay relevant, argues Jason McBride

REVIEWS

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Galore by Michael Crummey

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

Animal by Alexandra Leggat

Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Violet by Tania Stehlik and Vanja Vuleta Jovanovic

The Winter Drey by Sean Dixon

The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade

Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE LAST WORD

The ups and downs of Amazon’s sales rankings can drive authors to distraction, writes Linwood Barclay

Munro scuppers anticipated battle of the titans

Anyone who was champing at the bit for an awards-season showdown between the two reigning CanLit deities – Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood – must be feeling a bit disappointed following the news that Munro has taken her new collection, Too Much Happiness, out of contention for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize. According to an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, “punters” are upset that the literary cage match between Munro and Atwood (whose new novel, The Year of the Flood, is also a likely contender for the award) won’t materialize. Among the most disappointed, unsurprisingly, are Munro’s own publisher and the organizers of the Giller Prize itself:

“Her reason is that she has won twice and would like to leave the field to younger writers,” Munro’s publisher, Douglas Gibson, confirmed this week. “In my role as greedy publisher I pointed out that the Giller Prize produces so much publicity, that even to be nominated for it is tremendous publicity,” he said. “But her mind is made up on this. Alice preferred to withdraw from the competition.”

Giller Prize administrator Elana Rabinovitch echoed the disappointment. “I appreciate the reason she’s doing it, but I also think it’s a bit of a shame,” she said. “Ultimately the prize is for the best work of fiction in Canada, period, and this takes a likely contender out of the mix.”

Translation: Munro’s classy move puts the kibosh on a no-brainer of a marketing campaign for the Giller organizers and McClelland & Stewart, which publishes both authors.

It is perhaps worth noting that when Munro’s 2001 collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage failed to garner a Giller nod, there was speculation that Munro had pulled the title from contention. At the time, Gibson told Q&Q, “It would be entirely consistent with [Munro's] personality” to do so, although if she had, it was without his knowledge. That same year, Timothy Findley pulled his novel Spadework from consideration “for any literary prizes.” Munro and Atwood have both taken books out of the running in years that they served on the Giller jury, the former with The View from Castle Rock in 2006, and the latter with The Blind Assassin in 2000.

In this year’s case, it is hardly “disappointing” that Munro is generous enough to put her own interests aside and allow other writers the opportunity to share in some of Giller’s reflected glory. (If there is anyone still unconvinced of Munro’s merit, her winning another award is unlikely to change that.) The disappointment voiced by Gibson (who is admittedly speaking with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek) and by Rabinovitch smacks of self-interest. By recusing herself, Munro has made it harder to argue that CanLit is dominated by a hegemony of familiar figures that keep popping up again and again.

In fact, the only person who seems to appear completely selfless in all of this is Alice Munro.

Bookmarks: offensive books, William Golding, and Alice Munro country

Some book-related links:

• Where the Brooklyn Public Library hides the offensive books
• William Golding was not the lord of his own fly
• Travels in Alice Munro country
• How John Grisham helped free the Norfolk Four
• Five sci-fi and fantasy books that never should have been written

IFOA goes XXX with Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Eoin Colfer and more

The International Festival of Authors has just announced the preliminary lineup for this year’s edition, which will mark the festival’s 30th anniversary. (In the press release, the festival is dubbed “IFOA XXX,” which suggests the usual schedule of readings, panels, and onstage interviews will be enlivened by literary mud wrestling and peep shows. Alas…)

Though it seems a wee bit early  for the announcement – the festival runs Oct. 21-31 – the list of confirmed authors is impressive.

Already confirmed are Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Barry Callaghan, Anne Michaels, Lisa Moore, Miriam Toews, Daniel Poliquin, Leon Rooke, Jane Urquhart, John Irving, Nicholson Baker, Debra Adelaide, Denise Mina, Tash Aw, Paul Theroux, Sarah Waters, Audrey Niffenegger, Kyle Buckley, Paul Durcan, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Linwood Barclay, John Brady, Hal Niedzviecki, Tim Cook, Sherman Alexie, John Bemrose, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Bonnie Burnard, Dani Couture, Michael Crummey, Anne DeGrace, Margaret Elphinstone, Robert Girardi, Jason Guriel, Jennica Harper, Jim Lynch, Linden MacIntyre, Jean McNeil, James W. Nichol, Kate Pullinger, Boualem Sansal, Ingo Schulze, Olive Senior, Adam Thorpe, Michael Turner, and Alexis Wright.

In other words, more writers than you can shake a stick at.

There will also be an appearance by Anne Murray – yes, that Anne Murray – and fans of the late Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series will get a look at a new, 6th installment, penned by U.K. kidlit favourite Eoin Colfer.

(We are also happy to note that Q&Q‘s own Meaghan Strimas will be reading at the festival.)

The New Yorker slobbers over Alice Munro

Among the many reactions to Alice Munro’s well-deserved winning of the Man Booker International Prize, one of the more interesting is that of The New Yorker, the magazine that has published the lion’s share of Munro’s stories over the decades.

On The Book Bench, the magazine’s book blog, Willing Davidson claims that “the arrival of a Munro story in the fiction department is always an event – her typescript pages, with their oddly bolded paragraphs, produce an almost atavistic salivary response.”

Really? They actually salivate when a new story arrives? Munro’s stories are great and all, but you know you’ve perhaps given over too much of your life to literature when you find yourself preparing to eat one.

Though, given how dry Munro’s prose style can be, perhaps a little spit is exactly what’s needed.

In other magazines: Munro in The New Yorker, Boyden in Driven

There’s a new Alice Munro short story in the latest New Yorker. The biennial fiction issue also includes work by Roberto Bolaño, Colson Whitehead, and Donald Antrim. The magazine has put several of the fiction pieces, including the Munro story, behind the online paywall, so you’ll have to shell out for the print copy.

In other news, Giller winner and erstwhile Q&Q cover star Joseph Boyden has another cover to his credit – the new issue of the men’s lifestyle magazine Driven, out this week, includes both a Boyden cover profile and a new short story by the author. (Disclosure: Driven editor-in-chief Gary Butler is a Friend of Q&Q and sometime contributor.)

Bookmarks: International booklists, textual absurdity, and more

• Over at The Guardian, Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game, Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce, and Alice Munro’s short-story collection Carried Away, were mentioned as some of the best books of 2008.

• Publishing big-wigs have had to cut their lavish lunches — but their wardrobe expenses won’t be next. At least, not according to this video at New York magazine of publisher Christian Van Gastel and his designer gear

• Firefox users can install the Tumbarumba extension to their browsers, and wait for story text to gradually surface while browsing. While some may call this “reading,” others  call it “procrastinating” or “wasting time”

Herald writer doesn’t get this Alice Munro thing

It’s not often you read an Alice Munro slam, so Quillblog took notice of this one in the Calgary Herald. Staffer Naomi Lakritz, who is apparently a political columnist at the paper, attacks Munro’s new Selected Stories:

Alice Munro’s world is unremittingly grey. It may be one of the seven deadly sins of CanLit to utter a critical word about Munro, but the sin of a scanty plot is an even bigger one. This collection can’t rightfully be called stories. They’re unsatisfying sketches of characters who wander through depressive environments, observing the idiosyncrasies of those around them. Yet, those idiosyncrasies are there simply for the sake of being there; they do not lead to climaxes or denouements.

Now, although we’re certainly Munro fans here at Quillblog, we’re also in favour of critical reviewing and disinclined to kneel before sacred cows. So when we say this review’s an embarrassment, we’re not saying, “Lakritz doesn’t like Munro, therefore she de facto doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

However, it does seem painfully apparent that Lakritz simply hasn’t read much literary fiction before. Which is the real issue here: surely some sensitivity and expertise should be a prerequisite for a book reviewer?

The scents of CanLit

Following up on our earlier post about the new Danielle Steel perfume, we thought we’d offer some fragrance suggestions for our own literary stars:

Wayne Johnston’s Terre Neuve – Cod oil, salt water, and seal blubber combined in one haunting, historically epic fragrance.

Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero – A puzzling perfume that begins one way and ends another. You’ll never be sure what you are smelling.

Souvenirs of Douglas Coupland – The smell of today and tomorrow and the day after! Contains essences of bubble tea, Red Bull, and bad office coffee.

Alice Munro’s The Scent of a Good Woman – A fragrance that is dependable, trustworthy, and utterly devoid of flash. It’s not your mother’s perfume – though it may be her mother’s.

What is Stephen Harper Smelling? by Yann Martel – The patron scent of lost causes! Equal parts piquant and pedantic, this relentless fragrance reminds you, over and over and over again, of its own importance.

Banned books

It’s the American Library Association‘s Banned Books Week, and their website features lists of frequently challenged books covering various eras on their website. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is 37th on the ALA’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s.

In honour of Banned Books Week, the Guardian asks whether or not you’ve been exercising your freedom to read, with a quiz about censored books past and present. Here’s one to ponder:

Who was the ALA’s most frequently “challenged” author of 2007?

1. Mark Twain
2. Richard Dawkins
3. Maya Angelou
4. Robert Cormier

Here is a look at some books that have been challenged in Canada, and some of the reasons why. The list includes a number of Canadian authors, including Deborah Ellis, Alice Munro, and Mordecai Richler. And, going local, the Fahrenheit 451 blog for the Pelham Public Library in Fonthill, ON, discusses censorship issues and provides lists of books that have been banned at the library challenged in various locations, including schools and libraries, over the past few years.