Charlie Huisken joins TINARS

Two of Toronto’s veteran indie booksellers are teaming up to organize the book event series This Is Not a Reading Series. Charlie Huisken, co-founder of This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, is the organization’s new event producer, joining Pages Books and Magazines founder and current artistic director Marc Glassman. The organization has also hired freelance publicist Bruce Walsh as a consultant.

The news underscores the fact that the two veteran booksellers have struggled recently to stay in business in the traditional sense. Last summer, Pages closed its doors for good, citing rising rents in downtown Toronto. And This Ain’t closed last month after two years at its new Kensington Market location.

“Although bookstores are closing or suffering from economic trauma, creative activity continues in this city,” Huisken is quoted as saying in the official TINARS press release. “I look forward to this opportunity to recreate book culture in Toronto and to open up more channels for public discourse.”

Huisken takes over from veteran TINARS programmer Chris Reed, who left in June to become publicist at University of Toronto Press. According to the release, Reed will “continue to consult” with TINARS.

Event photos: Christian Bök as Santa, Mark Breslin with Ralph Benmergui

The book world is just starting to shake itself awake after the holidays, so here are a couple of photos from events that happened before the break.

Avast! Canada’s Dada bard has a Santa hat: Coach House published a revised edition of Christian Bök’s “univocular” work Eunoia, and celebrated the re-launch at Toronto’s Supermarket on Dec. 15 with readings from Andrew Pyper, Ken Babstock, Darren Wershler, Priscilla Uppal, and Bök himself, pictured here wearing the finest in Maple Leafs headgear. (Photo by Rick/Simon, courtesy of Coach House Books)

We assume they’re laughing on the inside: JAZZ FM host and occasional comic Ralph Benmergui interviewed Yuk Yuk’s head honcho Mark Breslin at a This is Not a Reading Series event at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto on Dec. 9 to launch The Yuk Yuk’s Guide To Canadian Stand-up (HarperCollins Canada). Above: Breslin (left) takes Benmergui step-by-step through the comedy “rule of three.” (Photo by Chris Reed, courtesy of HarperCollins Canada)

Event photos: Attack of the Winnipeg Hockey Moms

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin launched his new book, My Winnipeg (Coach House Books), as part of Pages’ This Is Not A Reading Series this past Tuesday at an event called Attack of the Winnipeg Hockey Moms. The book is a companion to his movie of the same name. (Photos courtesy of Chris Reed.)

Maddin kicks off the night by introducing some of his favourite film moms.

Maddin takes on Leafs announcer Andy Frost in an intense table hockey match. Chuck Molgat officiates.

Coach House senior editor Alana Wilcox and Maddin.

Russell Smith, the not-so-reluctant pornographer

Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes a new book from author, Globe and Mail columnist, and self-appointed fashion pundit Russell Smith. Diana, published by Biblioasis Press, is an erotic novella in diary form.

Actually, this new book is an old one – it was originally published by the now-defunct Gutter Press five years ago. In an interview with Eye Weekly, Smith lays out the twin urges – sex and money – that lay behind his initial interest in writing porn.

“I started it as an exercise,” Smith recalls. “I found that in all my fiction I was not writing the sex scenes. I was doing the stereotypical pan to a window when a couple fell onto a bed. Why was I avoiding it? Part of it was that sex is difficult to write. There’s such a lack of a vocabulary and in the vocabulary that exists, you have a choice between the clinical and the euphemistic. So I felt I had to practice to get better.” With a full manuscript (made wholly from solicited scenarios contributed by his female friends) Smith also became enamoured of pulling off a literary hoax by hiding behind a distaff pseudonym — a time-honoured tradition in the world of blue books.

Beyond the fun of a hoax, Smith also points out that the pseudonym, Diana Savage, was to be his way of skirting the realities of demographics. “Women are the market you want for any work of fiction. They are pretty much the only readers of fiction left, and particularly of erotic fiction, of which they, statistically, are the only readers.” Diana was initially accepted by Black Lace, the UK publisher of erotica quickies, but Black Lace confronted Smith’s agent at the last minute and demanded proof that Diana Savage was a woman. Not wanting to turn his hoax hobby into professional fraud, Smith put aside his dreams of a second, lucrative career as Diana Savage, chronicler of infernal passions.

The article also mentions the critical pasting that the original edition of the book – and its author – got from Noah Richler, who was then the book columnist for the National Post. Smith lays this all out in detail in the book’s introduction:

I remember seeing Noah Richler … [at the 2003 launch party], and warmly shaking his hand and asking him if he would like a beer. He seemed friendly enough. I left him to go and chat up a tall and very pretty woman who turned out to have a Polish accent. She later said that I seemed obnoxious and full of myself. I must have been in a good mood.

Fast-forward to the next day, when the book receives its drubbing in the Post.

Richler was disgusted by this book. I think he was disgusted by pornography generally, by the idea of pornography. Basically, he was embarrassed.

I was, let’s say, surprised. Had I not seen Noah at the launch party? Had he not enjoyed the free beer and the attendant tall Polish girls? I seemed to recall him listening to the reading at least. And, wait a minute – when did he have time to write the article?

None of which is particularly erotic – unless the petty politics of Toronto launch parties are your thing.

Lest he kill the mood entirely, Smith does end the intro on a note more befitting the overall aim of the book:

It’s that simple, dear reader: this book is pornography. Its purpose is to titillate. It exists solely to arouse you. It is telling you to position yourself at a window where you can be seen, unbutton your jeans and slip a hand inside the waistband. Now await further instructions.

Unless you happen to be reading the book on the subway or on a plane, of course.

Lest anyone think Smith has given himself completely over to the realm of stroke-lit, we should point out that the book’s full title is Diana: A Diary in the Second Person.

Everyone knows that narrative POV is just so hot.

(But really: jeans? How déclassé.)

[Russell Smith launches Diana tonight at Toronto's Gladstone Hotel as part of This Is Not A Reading Series.]

Kerouacapalooza at the Gladstone Hotel

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s seminal On The Road – as well as launch a pair of Kerouac-themed books – Toronto’s This Is Not a Reading Series held a “Kerouac Legacy Party” at the Gladstone Hotel on Sept. 5.

Ian Brown inspects author Ray Robertson’s muttonchops. Robertson was launching his new novel, What Happened Later (Thomas Allen Publishers).

Publicist Debby de Groot fears losing her soul in the camera’s flash. Author Stephen Finucan, on the other hand, appears to welcome it.

David Creighton (right), who was launching his book Ecstasy of the Beats (Dundurn Press), makes a point as Robertson and host Jian Ghomeshi listen.

Dundurn design and production assistant Erin Mallory, owner Kirk Howard, and new sales and marketing director Margaret Bryant.

House of Anansi’s Laura Repas with her copy of Robertson’s book.

Local chef Sacha Gatien Douglas hoists one for Kerouac with Catherine MacGregor of HarperCollins Canada.

Novelist Michael Helm and his wife, Juanita Des Barros. (Note designer Bill Douglas going postal in the background.)

Poets Ken Babstock and Karen Solie.

Ghomeshi gets cozy with Thomas Allen publisher Patrick Crean and publicity manager Lisa Zaritzky.

Robertson in a publicity sandwich between Thomas Allen’s Laura Palumbo and Larissa Chalmers. (Warning: staring directly at the pattern on Robertson’s shirt may cause dizziness and/or nausea – though it seems to have had a calming effect on Bill Douglas…)

Alicia Hogan, Thomas Allen senior editor Janice Zawerbny, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Shirley Hudson, and author Paul Quarrington.