With today as their deadline, Whistler Reads folk have been busy creating a fountain of books in the Whistler Public Library, inspired by Contemporary Artist, Alicia Martin’s “Bilbliographia” installation in Cordoba, Spain, and the Whistler Artwalk.
All it took was 140 ft of custom bent rebar, 75 ft of rebar wire and hundreds of books donated by the Whistler community and the Library. It all ties in to tonight’s Whistler Reads discussion, ”Seven Days In The Art World” by Sarah Thornton. 
American photographer Kyle Cassidy once wrangled an invitation to a party at award-winning sci-fi writer Michael Swanwick’s house. Mostly, he suspects, because he was mistaken for someone else.
While there, Cassidy asked if he could see the five Hugos Swanwick had won, and therewith found himself in Swanwick’s office.
“THIS” thought Cassidy, “is a place of great significance and it needs to be seen!”
Cassidy says it was like he’d cracked open Swanwick’s skull and seen the gears of his genius. He described the workspace as a nest, made out of books, as intricate and well assembled as a Nevelson sculpture.
His natural response, as a photographer, was to ask to document it.
And that launched a project, whereiwrite.org, in which Cassidy set out to explore the places writers build around themselves, to see if there’s any connection between where they work and the work itself.
Wired magazine calls his project : Cribs for the literary set. Check out Neil Gaiman’s writing cabin there.
What kind of a government decides to trim spending in a ‘let’s-not-call-it-a-depression’ by cutting funding to libraries?
All my smugness about living in a highly evolved social democracy is rapidly evaporating. Surely there’s a mini-Obama in Canada somewhere.
Library use is up across the province. The Pemberton library, since moving into its new facility, saw a 70% increase in circulation in April, with 75 new members a month…
And the province is threatening to cut funding from libraries? Seriously? Is it a cunning plan to create a stupider, more compliant, less politically literate population? Is it part of an ongoing agenda to create a two-tier society of haves and have nots? Are the BC Liberals THAT offended by public spaces that not only do they want to privatise rivers, education, our railways, but they want to magic away the most democratic of public institutions – the library? Or is it just thoughtless?
If this makes you stomping mad, check out www.stopbclibrarycuts.ca.
Write to your MLA and the Premier. Let them know that literacy is not-negotiable.
Undercover agents of the Vicious Circle have secured top secret documents that suggest a conspiracy is afoot to turn Whistler into a hotbed for Canadian writers.
The documents, poached from the notebooks of Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds reveal details from their works-in-progress as well as cunning plans on Grady’s part to subvert fiction through the continued support of creative non-fiction.
Further inquiries have revealed that the Vicious Circle is conspiring with the Resort Municipality of Whistler to turn the formerly disused residence, Alta Lake House, into headquarters for a growing gang of renegade scribblers, who are gathering in response to the call to arms issued by the Residency leaders Grady and Simonds.
Clearly in a move to avoid the attention of CSIS, CIA, Minster Kenney and the Canadian Border Police, Grady and Simonds are currently making their way by vehicle to Whistler, where they will hole up in their new headquarters, indoctrinate 20 warriors of the pen in a month-long training camp, and then remain installed in the house to work on their own nefarious projects throughout the fall.
Vicious Circle insiders advise that training camp still offers opportunities for would-be ink-slingers. All that potential residency collaborators require is a desire to commit themselves to the cause. No other training is required. Although a “manuscript” is due August 10, the workshop leaders are as capable of guiding a writer on how to grow a story from several pages of a notebook, as they are to workshop more developed manifestos.
A page from Merilyn Simond's notebook reveals the genesis of her current work-in-progress
Wayne Grady's notebook contains all the evidence needed
“For me, writing starts with a line, or some imagination, or some notion, and I just go with it as far as I can. You set yourself afloat on the language. And you think, I’ll see how far it can take me before this little raft I’ve cobbled together falls apart and everybody understands that I’m really just a fraud, or drowning—whichever comes first. But when it’s really working, readers go with you to the most unlikely places. They take big leaps with you.”
So says undertaker (and New York Times op-ed writer) Thomas Lynch in the Utne reader this month.
Working with the dead gives him a unique perspective – ““Yeats said to Olivia Shakespeare that the only subjects that should be compelling to a studious mind are sex and death. Those are the bookends. And think of it, what else do we think of, what else is there besides that? I think most people drive around all day being vexed by images of mortality and vitality. All they’re wondering about is how they’re going to die and who they’re going to sleep with, or variations on that theme—what job they’re going to have, whether they’re tall enough or skinny enough or short enough or smart enough or fast enough or make enough money, and all of it plays into these two bookends.
If you’re writing about life, you’re writing about death. If you’re writing about life, you’re writing about love and grief and sex and all that stuff.”
Once upon a time, he says, poets could change cultures… They were the ones who literally brought the news from one place to another, walking from town to town, “which is how we got everything to be iambic and memorable and rhymed and metered, because the tradition was oral before it was literary.”
Maybe instead of writers’ workshops, we should be hosting writers walk-shops… reconnecting the story with the feet, the beat, the action of blood-pump and armswing, as opposed to the navelgaze and swoon and angsty-pencil-chewing…
Because, says the undertaker, there is power in poetry. “Poetry is as good an ax as a pillow. You should be able to cut with it if you want to. But I do want to avoid hurting people inadvertently. I don’t mind hurting people I intend to hurt—inadvertent damage is the thing I fear. I think all writers are capable of it. You’re dealing with powerful tools, you know; words are powerful business. I’m not saying you should be guided by fear, but I think general kindness is still a better thing. It’s just evolution. We want to be better people.”
After more than a year of operating in Whistler, Players Chophouse is working hard to cater to the tastes and budgets of working locals – hence their summer initiative, 420 Fridays.
The laidback weekly patio session, as featured in the Pique’s Epicurious column, combines local musical talent coupled with a $10 pizza and beer special. If Mother Nature doesn’t co-operate and the heavens open, the party simply moves inside to the lounge and all appetizers on the menu are half-off.
New chef, Whistler’s Jon Campbell, has pared the menu to feature appies and plenty of dishes for sharing… a budget-conscious approach that follows along the lines of “save water, shower with a friend…”
Their current menu features 14 appetizers, like Quebec City poutine, bruschetta, creamy, traditional escargot, and delicious thin-crust prime rib pizza, all ranging in price from $8 to $18 apiece.
Official friends of the Slow Food and Green Table movements, Players Chophouse is also a friend of the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. they’re far-sighted enough to know that literature is just as nourishing as a good meal.
We read in the summer, because long sultry days beckon us to slow down, to power down the crackberries and texts and tweets, and wallow in daylight that lasts until 9pm, and heat that thickens the blood, and a culture that celebrates a lazy day at the lake, or in a hammock… and the pace of a novel suddenly fits, in ways it struggles to do when you’re in the time-famine of a busy week with too much on the to-do list.
With a host of Canada’s best writers and novelists headed to Whistler this fall for the 8th Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, this summer is the perfect opportunity to beef up on your CanCon…
Here’s our top 5:
1. The Reckoning of Boston Jim, by Claire Mulligan is the book that changed bookseller, Robert J. Wiersma’s mind about historical fiction. “Deeply historical but with a strong contemporary approach and solid storytelling, it’s the sort of book the makes other novelists jealous… It deserves every accolade that can be applied to it, and more than that, it deserves readers.
Longlisted for the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Reckoning of Boston Jim evokes the colony of British Columbia, 1863, amidst the chaos of the Cariboo Gold Rush. Long-abandoned mine-shafts and traplines are par for the course amongst the mountains of the Whistler region – this gripping account of life 150 years ago brings the ghosts of the Pemberton Trail era to life.
2. The Man Game, by Lee Henderson was “one of the most intense books I’ve read this past year”, says CBC Hot Air host, Paul Grant, who will be stepping up to emcee the Festival’s Gala Opening and Saturday night Battle of the Bookclubs. Winner of the 2009 Ethel Wilson prize for Best Book of Fiction published in BC, The Man Game creates a mythology for the city of Vancouver, with time travel and naked, dirty, lumberjack wrestling.
3. The Golden Mean, by Annabel Lyon is Lyon’s response to the question “what are you going to do with an undergrad degree in philosophy?” A tour of Greek history, brought to life by Lyon’s deft prose, The Golden Mean tells the story of the philosopher Aristotle who, for 7 years worked as the tutor to the prince’s son, the child who would grow up to become Alexander the Great. Exhilarating, brilliant and profound, hailed the reviewers.
4. February, by Lisa Moore In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine’s Day storm. All eighty-four men aboard died, and the tragedy remains just below the surface of life for Newfoundlanders. February is a fictionalised story of Helen O’Mara, one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns.
5. The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbours by Hal Niedzviecki. Toronto writer makes it to Oprah’s list of 25 Books You Can’t Put Down with this exploration on the way twitter, blogs and social media are changing us. Hal’s working on a documentary about “peeping” – expect the buzz to build.
Got hot tips? Loop us in.
No surprise to Whistler readers that Lisa Moore’s newest novel, February, (excerpted here at The Walrus) has been garnering rave reviews. Her appearance at the 2006 Literary Leanings readings series in Whistler won her a solid local fan base.
In the Globe and Mail, she tells John Barber: “I think a book is just part of a tree. The living thing is the story,” she said, adding that every book means something different to every reader. “When a reader speaks to me, it’s like the book is as much theirs as it is mine.”
Moore claims to love writing even more than she loves talking about it. “I think life just is deeper and richer when you reflect in the way you have to reflect in order to write about it. It’s an obsession. I absolutely love it. I love it, I love it”
Add it to your summer reading list.
To celebrate the forthcoming Slow Food Cycle, the Pemberton Library has designated the last week of July (Monday July 27 – Sunday August 2) Harvest Time for stories.
Storypickers are wanted for the Strange Summer Fruit project, to help the Library discover whether pickings are sweeter in summer or winter…
Mostly, the stories of people’s lives are told after they’re dead.
Instead of obits, the Pemberton & District Public Library is encouraging people to write “live bytes” about folk in their community, with the second round of Strange Fruit: A Community Story Harvest calling for contributors for the Slow Food Cycle summer exhibit.
Strange Fruit launched in the winter, when more than 30 folk, ranging from pioneers to new residents to former Mayors, war veterans, vodka brewers, coroners and various nominees for Citizen of the Year, were interviewed. Local photographers shot their portraits and the resulting “pickings” were exhibited at the Library during Winterfest.
To contribute a 300 word story-portrait from the Potato Nation for the summer harvest, writers/contributors can sign on at the Library. Stories will be due August 2.
For more information, visit http://Strangefruit2009.wordpress.com, or visit the Pemberton Library.
Last summer, Watermark’s Lilli Clark took a break from event-producing (she produces Cornucopia and the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival’s cultural line-up) to take up a coveted spot at New York’s Atlantic Acting School, founded by David Mamet and William H Macy.
This summer, she’s combining her multiple hats and passions – as event producer and actor – to launch Whistler’s first ever fringe theatre event, the Blank Slate Theatre Festival.
Two performances, both comedies with an edge, will enjoy a three-night run, using fantastic alternative venues at the Squamish Lillooet Cultural Centre and The Path Gallery – giving audiences a chance to mix up their weekend and get a decent fill of dark comedy. Tickets will only be $20 per show.
At last, a theatre project that doesn’t prop itself up with Shakespeare, and is willing to start small, indie and passionate… like great art oughta. Save the date.
Win a weekend at creative boot-camp in Whistler, September 11-13 2009 with accommodation, dinner and passes to attend the 8th Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. No push-ups necessary. All you have to do is answer this skill-testing question:
Which Vancouver-based author, and Whistler Writers Festival guest, wrote the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize 2009 winning novel, The Man Game?
and you could win:
2 Festival passes to the 8th Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, September 11-13 2009, Whistler, BC
Dinner for two at Players Chophouse, Creekside, Whistler’s freshest steak house. Two nights accommodation at the brand new mountain lodge, Evolution, in Whistler’s Creekside.
Enter at the straight.com before September 2.
Books and art and life already enjoy a messy connection, spilling into each other’s realms like ingredients in a messy kitchen.
The Whistler Library, BookBuffet founder Paula Shackleton and the Whistler Art Walk are combining forces this week to combine the forces of life, books and art, by creating a book sculpture.
The project is inspired by Spanish Contemporary artist, Alicia Martin and her Madrid-based Bibliographia piece, made of 5000 books.
The project, and Paula’s statement that “Books are usually forgotten items that take up space on our shelves collecting dust”, draws parallels with the wave of post-modern sculptors who reclaim junk to make art, and a simultaneous commentary on our throw-away society… It also makes me wonder if we are watching the death of the medium. E-readers are in. And those old books are good for one thing – making elaborate artistic statements.
Visit the Whistler Library during Artwalk and let us know what the book art sculpture provokes for you.
David Sedaris says “I think the only difference between me and most people is that I carry a notebook around in my top pocket.”
There’s that. And the fact that Sedaris is freaking hilarious. Chatting with the CBC last weekend, he confessed that he isn’t sure why he’s done so well, that when he started journal writing he was pretentious, and that now, when he pulls out his notebook, people tend to get nervous. ”I exploit everyone and everything I come into contact with.”
Listen to David Sedaris on North by North West for tales of life with his notebook… and revelations about the number of women who have drunk or baked with their own breastmilk…
This summer, THIS magazine urges the CBC to review more books, and revive the art of professional book-reviewing, rather than paying people to review Hollywood films.
But, the vital question is, does a book review make for more readers?
Or is a movie adaptation the only thing that is really going to bump a book onto bedside tables?
Ultimately, what brings any form of entertainment to life is that it has social currency. If there is buzz… if people are talking about a) the latest scandal afflicting Jon & Kate, b) Michael Jackson’s death, c) Annabel Lyon’s new book, or d) Sarah Palin’s memoir (25% more God!), it is as if there is a wind whooping through the yard, and those particular garments are puffed full of life, and dancing around on the washing line.
It is our interest in things that gives them currency – if we talk about books and writers and ideas, those books will grow a readership. Hence, the success of Canada Reads, to get people talking about certain books, to send them in great hordes to second hand bookstores and libraries and amazon.ca…
For these crudely articulated reasons, the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival (entirely dependent on there being a culture of reading) is amped to be working with the Tyee, Vancouver Review, and the Georgia Straight, who are all keeping the conversation spicy, sparkling and substantial. Because really, there’s no reason for the sagas of Jon and Kate to ever enter your frontal lobe…
What does a literary event look like? Whistler design talents have turned their hands to the art of manifesting words…
From our 2009 Gallery of Graphic Greats:
Something for word nerds from the folk at Inhabitat. What books would make your sleeping nest/fortress?
by Beth Shea
‘Bedtime stories’ becomes a literal interpretation in the design of the Uroko House Book Igloo — a cozy, fort-like enclosure of bookshelves which encircle a bed. Being surrounded in slumber by books is a bibliophile’s dream, and Point Architects enables lovers of literature to wrap themselves up in their treasured tales while drifting off to sleep in this cleverly constructed lair. The backless shelves allow one to grab a book from inside or outside the Igloo. Conceptually designed for children, we think it’s a telltale sign that as adults, we’re equally smitten with the Uroko House Book Igloo, and wouldn’t mind curling up with a good book, or fifty, in one of our own.
