Douglas Coupland has called himself the world’s worst worrier, and apparently the thing he’s been fretting about lately is an inaccuracy that appeared in the National Post. In the article in question, crime novelist William Deverell draws on a recent op-ed penned by Coupland to bolster his argument that Canadian readers suffer from what he describes as a “national snobbery disorder.” From Deverell’s article:

The New York Times recently ran Douglas Coupland’s scathing critique of Canadian literary pretentiousness: “There is a grimness about CanLit,” he wrote, in which typically authors are supported by the government “to write about small towns and/or the immigrant experience.” Coupland refuses to accept Canada Council money.

Coupland wants to set the record straight: whatever his feelings about the state of CanLit, he happily supports the Canada Council. Earlier today, he sent out a mass e-mail correcting the misperception. The complete missive is below:

Hi everyone. Sorry for the mass email but it’s important to me. Here’s a letter I wrote to the National Post an hour ago.

Hi Post,

A puzzled friend forwarded to me your September 14 piece on publishing in Canada that I hadn’t read. Glitch! Fact is, I really do support the Canada Council – and have done well by them throughout the years. The Council helps creative people at all phases of their careers and is also critical in helping artists and writers and performers abroad as well as domestically. Could you publish this for me? I’d been wondering why certain people were being weird to me in some situations and now I know the reason. Otherwise all is well, and thank you for your support over the years. And please keep writing about publishing. It’s an interesting moment in its history.

Keep well,

Yours,

Douglas Coupland

That should do it. In case you’re wondering, here is what Coupland actually said about the Canada Council in The New York Times:

I’m a big fan of subsidization of the arts. Without subsidization, CanLit couldn’t exist for 10 minutes. Canada is an extravagantly huge and underpopulated country with no economy of scale. Maintaining an identity is expensive, period — thus the need for money in the arts. And I think the Canadian government ought to be hurling 10 times as much cash at literary arts in general, CanLit as much as anything else.

Geoffrey Taylor, director of Harbourfront’s Reading Series, is to receive an honorary degree from the School of Creative & Performing Arts at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Taylor, who has been with Harboufront Centre for 20 years, is being honoured for his contribution to the promotion of Canadian books and authors.

Over the last five years, Taylor has been responsible for the International Festival of Authors, has served as a jury member for both the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Awards, and has been an adviser to the Humber School for Writers. In 2008, Q&Q included him in a list of the most influential people in Canadian publishing.

Taylor will be presented with the degree at a ceremony on Nov. 7.

…

The IFOA has also confirmed the lineup for its second annual presentation of the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize shortlist. For the reading on Oct. 28, the following authors will be reading:

• Douglas Coupland will read from Generation A
• Annabel Lyon will read from The Golden Mean
• Andrew Steinmetz will read from Eva’s Threepenny Theatre
• Jacqueline Larson will read from Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood’s English-language translations of Nicole Brossard’s Fences in Breathing
• Jane Urquhart will read from Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness on behalf of Munro, who is unable to attend the event

The winner of the $25,000 award will be announced on Nov. 24 in Toronto.

Bookish links from around the Web:

• Douglas Coupland really wants you to name his new Toronto park, and Scott Feschuk wants you to name his dog
• J.K. Rowling is now on Twitter, The Huffington Post reports, but she follows no one and has only three tweets. The billionaire author has 49,570 followers despite the fact that she doesn’t seem to comprehend what a tweet is
• Dr. Seuss’ Fox in Sox gets the beat box treatment. As Scope Notes says, “If you knew that Dr. Seuss invented the word ‘crunk,’ then this will seem like a natural combination”
• Charles Dickens: writer, social reformer … pirate fighter? It’s not what you think
• In honour of Banned Books Week in the U.S., here’s an interactive map of books that have been challenged and banned in a country that prides itself on freedom of speech (apparently, people still have an issue with gay penguins). The American Library Association also has a video to help children understand what Banned Book Week means 
• The Telegraph finds 50 factual errors in Dan Brown’s best-selling novels

This month, acclaimed author and zeitgeist-hound Douglas Coupland publishes his 11th novel, Generation A. In advance of the occasion, he took the opportunity in yesterday’s Guardian to jump into the Wayback Machine and talk about the book that made him famous two decades ago (which, in the hyper-jacked-up Coupland sensibility is tantamount to a couple of centuries….):

[I]t’s odd that Gen X was the thing that would change my life, because everything about the book reeked of disaster and bad decision-making. I’d only begun writing less than three years earlier – non-fiction for magazines in Canada – and I was soon hitting that point in life where poor decisions come back to bite one. I was at the end of my 20s and it was becoming clear to me that my 30s were going to be a continuing mix of rootlessness and poverty.

Thanks to an agent who was “a real huckster” (Coupland’s words), the author landed a sizable advance, which led to his own road-to-Damascus moment at (naturally) Davisville subway station in Toronto:

[O]ne afternoon in April of 1989, I was emerging from the Davisville subway station – there had just been a rainstorm and the sunset was cold and tangerine – and a wave swept over me, one of those waves that occur not too often in one’s lifetime. It was one of the few times I’ve ever heard “a voice” (whatever a voice really is), and the voice very clearly said to me: “OK, Doug. It appears that you’re going to be a full-time writer now. Good. But that means you have to write fiction rather than non-fiction, because fiction is purer. You’ll have to clear all your decks and you’re going to have to change the way you see both you and your future.”

And then the voice left, and I was just another guy standing on a wet sidewalk outside the Golden Griddle. But life was now different.

And the rest, as they say, is hipster history.

Fans of quirky writer, visual artist, and Canadian cultural icon Douglas Coupland can watch three free video clips inspired by his new novel Generation A via the iTunes Store.

Set in the near future, Generation A revolves around five people from different parts of the world and their shared experiences of being stung by bees in a time when bees have supposedly become extinct.

 The clips were developed by Toronto-based production company Crush Inc. in collaboration with Coupland and his publisher, Random House Canada.

In the 10-minute clip “Generation A – 10 Questions for Douglas Coupland,” the author is seen trapped in a sterile white room with a psychologist’s couch and yellow coffee mug, answering questions posed by a faceless female questioner with a clinical British accent. Coupland provides answers to questions such as, “What is the most evil letter?” (answer: j) and “What is the loneliest letter?” (m). He also provides long-winded philosophical replies to unheard inquiries:

 The reason we have books, the reason we have stories … it allows someone else to come in and hijack your internal voice for awhile so that you don’t have to do any of the work. When you hear a story and when you read a story, it sort of somehow ennobles our life … 

In order so that we don’t go crazy, we imagine that our lives have to be stories … whether or not it’s true, it sort of works.

The clip is frequently interrupted by brief “commercials” advertising a fictional television news team and a drug called “Solon CR,” both of which are featured in Generation A.

The other two clips correspond to some aspect of the novel. “Colour Samples” is narrated by a character who eases his mind by concentrating on unique paint colours, while “The Tragic Death of the Channel Three News Team” tells the story of a religious cult bent on killing celebrities, beginning with the Channel Three News Team, in a graphic novel-inspired animated feature.

The film clips will be available on iTunes until Sept. 14. 

The longlist for the richest award for writing in English has been announced. And the longlist is, in fact, long, with 147 authors in contention for the 2009 Impac Dublin prize of £100,000.

From the Guardian:

The list, drawn from any fiction published in English — including translations — is made up of nominations from 157 libraries in 117 cities and 41 countries worldwide. Selected books include most of the literary novels rewarded elsewhere in the last year, as well as titles less familiar to British readers. Perhaps the most unexpected appearance on the list is from Ken Follett, best known for his bestselling techno-thrillers, whose World Without End is the sequel to his medieval epic The Pillars of the Earth.

The selected titles now go forward for judging to a panel of five novelists — Gabrielle Alioth, Rachel Billington, Vesna Goldsworthy, James Ryan and Timothy Taylor — chaired by the former U.S. appeals judge Eugene R. Sullivan.

Canadian contenders on the list include Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero, which was nominated by 13 libraries (making it the second most-popular book, behind A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which received 18 nominations); Effigy by Alissa York; Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay; October by Richard B. Wright; Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani;  Soucouyant by David Chariandy; Spanish Fly by Will Ferguson; The Architects Are Here by Michael Winter; The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill; The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland; The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards; The Milk Chicken Bomb by Andrew Wedderburn; and The Outlander by Gil Adamson.

Rawi Hage took the prize last year for De Niro’s Game.

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.

Here’s a slug this Quillblogger didn’t expect to see: “A short film by writer/director Paul Quarrington.”

But, according to Open Book Toronto, (and as reported by Quill & Quire Omni this past summer) the acclaimed author of the Governor General’s Award-winner Whale Music and this year’s Canada Reads champ King Leary has ventured behind the camera to shoot his first short feature, Pavane, based on his latest novel, The Ravine.

Open Book reports:

In Paul Quarrington’s short film, Pavane, Phil and Jay share more than a family bond — failed careers, failed relationships, bottomless drinks, and a debilitating memory of a shocking encounter in a ravine one childhood day.

The film will screen as part of the Book Shorts Moving Stories Film Festival, which will tour across the country beginning with a stop at the Winnipeg International Writers Festival on September 28, followed by stops in Ottawa and Vancouver in October, and Toronto in November. The festival also features work by W. Bruce Pirrie (adapting Douglas Coupland’s JPod), Bert Kish (adapting Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle), and Irene Duma (adapting Patrick Watson’s This Hour Has Seven Decades). The festival’s advisers include filmmakers Sarah Polley and Robert Lantos, writer Nino Ricci, and Random House Canada publisher Anne Collins.

Open Book has posted a trailer for the Quarrington film, and there are full profiles of the fimmakers and advisers at the Moving Stories site.

Our brand-new September issue features a cover profile of Miriam Toews, whose new novel, The Flying Troutmans, is set for release next month (and is also reviewed in the issue). Also in September, we look at the succession strategies of four B.C. publishers; offer a close-up on author Rukhsana Khan; look at the issue of booksellers ordering from Ingram in the U.S.; and ask whether Canadian novels are just a little too long. Plus the Fall Announcements, and reviews of new books by Ronald Wright, Helen Humphreys, Joan Barfoot, Joseph Boyden, Rawi Hage, Tish Cohen, Cary Fagan, Polly Horvath, and many more. The full contents can be seen after the jump.

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Entertainment Weekly recently compiled a list of the 25 most memorable book covers from the past 25 years. Their list is slightly skewed toward ubiquitous mega-designer Chip Kidd, who scores six entries. The lone Canadian reference is Fred Marcellino’s 1986 cover for Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

We thought we’d play along by starting a list of our own favourite CanLit covers.

Below, you’ll find five picks from the bookshelf of Q&Q art director Gary Campbell. These bold, daring, and memorable covers grabbed him straight away, regardless of the title or the author’s name.

	The Bookseller Matt Cohen (Knopf Canada) Designed by Gordon Robertson, 1993
	Miss Wyoming Douglas Coupland (Random House Canada) Designed by John Gall, 1999
	This All Happened Michael Winter (House of Anansi Press) Designed by Bill Douglas, 2001
	Not Wanted On The Voyage Timothy Findley (Penguin Books Canada) Designed by Soapbox Design Communications, 2006
	The Boys In The Trees Mary Swan (Henry Holt) Designed by Lisa Fyfe, 2008