Kinda Sassy

Sometime last year, for reasons unremembered to me now,  I found my way to the blog “Stephanie’s Written Word”  Maybe my memory of the reasons for  finding the blog is coloured by the fact that I wanted to take part in the Everything Austen Challenge and couldn’t. What can I say? Life with a busy four year old and academic studies got in the way of more readerly desires.
 
Cue to this year, and the starting date for the Everything Austen Challenge was July 1. Anyone along the Eastern  region of Canada or the United States would know that around that time, apart from the Tour de France starting, was one of the nastiest heatwaves ever to hit the region.  I don’t know many people who can handle heat and much worse, humidity that makes it feel like it 45C /113F   day after day!  Further to the discomfort, we didn’t own an air conditioner, making it sticky, smelly and sweaty in this glass walled, sun filled apartment.  So the idea of writing an entry stating what I would do for the challenge – even if I could have stopped my computer from overheating and fritzing out within five minutes – was much more than I could to do. But here it is, the end of the July, the extreme heat has blown out across the eastern seaboard, (or maybe it’s because we have blown out our budget and bought an air conditioner,)  but I now have the ability to get four brain cells to jump together and form coherent sentences.

The first activity I am currently undertaking is reading Cassandra and Jane ; A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley.  It fills me with wonder that for such a beloved author, we know so very little about her real life and have to fill in the gaps with hearsay and guesses.  And as a student of the past, who has never quite gotten over the inhumanity of not being born in Europe where I could fully wallow in all things personally interesting historically speaking, it’s a given that I will choose something historical to complete. 

University studies took over almost every moment for the last few years; watching television  has been a luxury that I had to forgo. But not now, and I intend to watch all things Austen. I have the Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility, as well as the BBC 2008 production. I must confess that I continually put this version on late at night as I snuggle down in bed, thinking I have the staying power to watch all the way through in one sitting and never do!  I also own the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma, but as of yet I haven’t watched the 2009 BBC production and have been desperate to do so.  Now that I think about it, I also saw one episode of Lost in Austen which made me giggle, but never saw the whole series. I should defiantly rectify that.

I have accepted the idea that to truly push the boundaries of my comfort zone, I should perhaps read one of those (ghastly) Jane Austen and Zombies / Vampires / Other Gobbltygook books that were so much the rage just a year or so ago. I haven’t really made up my mind as to which one yet – I’m open to suggestions.  And of course, as befitting for a challenge  I must read some of the work from Miss Austen. I intend to read Persuasion and Mansfield Park; two novels I’ve never actually read.

I do have the odd little thought in the back of my head that I should attempt some other kinds of challenges that make the most of my own personal skills and abilities. Something like trying my hand at completing some examples of embroidery from Miss Austen’s time. And maybe having a go at cooking a meal such as people from late 1700 to the early 1800’s would have enjoyed.  As I said, odd little thoughts. And that, I should think, will see me through six months worth of Everything Austen.

For me, one of the privileges of living in countries such as Australia and Canada is that there is a blending of peoples from the four corners of the world and the cultures that they bring to a new homeland.  There is no room for the homogenisation of culture in a new country. The best of everywhere melts together and blends into a new thing altogether, or according to the cultural mosaic theory, everyone comes together and keeps themselves separate whilst creating a new whole together. I personally believe it’s one of the greatest strength of a new nation that there is room for everyone, but the pros and cons of such ideas  as melting pots or mosaics are obviously a whole other blog entry and thought process altogether!  So it was quite striking to me to read what could almost (almost) be considered mildly sour grapes in reading about an immigrants story in The Globe and Mail. 

 Writer Carole Enahoro’s satiric novel upends every cliché about Canadian writing – if you can still call it that.
Diasporic fiction is nothing new in Canada – it is fast becoming our national literature.
And the furthest frontier ever for anything that might credibly be called Canadian literature.

 
It seems that as a nation created of native and diasporic peoples, reading novels based in far away countries is a common theme, possibly even growing in popularity. Within my own critique group the women are enjoying listening to my romance novel that I’ve based in Australia, which bears witness to the idea that Canadians enjoy reading stories based in other countries. But it seems to me that if you are a country that welcomes strangers to your homeland and invite them to make it their own, of course the newest artistic members of society are going to use the memories, experiences and ideas that come from their original homeland into novels that are published in their new home.

And to be honest I’m not sure where its written to be the literature of a nation, a novelist  must reflect the nation within the story to carry the title of the said nations literacy excellence. I’m willing to confess that personally, I don’t have a great deal of interest in Carole Enahoro’s book – it doesn’t sound like my kind of story. But the tone of the article really made me burn with frustration. True, I might have interpreted John Barbers article completely. Maybe he really is praising the strange places that immigrants are writing about in their debut novels which are most obviously not Canadian in setting. Maybe there aren’t any sour grapes in the tone of this piece; maybe I’m just plain wrong. And if you think that’s the truth of the matter feel free to leave a note telling me so.

But I don’t think I am.

If you’re a fan of the ‘Project Runway’ program with Heidi Klum then you’d love the latest incarnation of the style in the show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. In this reality series, a group of artists face new challenges every week, where the worst work of art results in the dismissal of the artist until there is an ultimate winner who will have their own showing at the Brooklyn Museum.

Last night was the perfect challenge for a writer to watch. The contestants were to create a new cover for one of the following classic novels; The Time Machine, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland or Frankenstein.

The ultimate aim for almost any writer is to see their book in print, slick in a perfectly designed new dust cover, sitting gaily on the shelf of a book store with strangers picking it up and taking it to the check out. Because when a writer has a story idea, they often slave over the work for months, sometimes even years. From little more than a random thought of “I wonder what would happen if…” they have written and then re-written sentences until they don’t even resemble the original version. They had agonised over the placement of every comma, colon and full stop. The characters have become so real in their heads that sometimes phone calls and emails from people in the actual world are ignored because the flow of the story is such that it demands a writer’s full attention.  Finally, an agent falls in love with the story; send it to one of their numerous contacts in a publishing house and JACKPOT! You have sold your story and it’s going to be published so that people everywhere will be able to read the fruits of your imagination – the goal of every hour of work you put into writing the story in the first place.

So it comes as a little bit of a shock that as a writer we will have no say in the cover art of the story. I’m imagining that’s something akin to telling a mother that she has no say in what her new born child is going to wear home from the hospital. Someone (a stranger!) is going to create a cover that is supposed to represent your years of work. They are going to create what will be the first thing a person sees, and sadly, will probably judge whether or not to buy your story. And it’s this reality that made the episode three, “Judging A Book By Its Cover” such an incredible one. The ultimate prize for the winning artist was for their work to grace the cover of the Penguin version of whatever classic novel they had pulled out of the hat, or paintbox as the case maybe.  As you would expect in a show with 12 artists of various abilities and specialities, some of the results were amazing and others… not so much.

The artist Miles Mendenhall confessed that he hadn’t read the book he had been assigned (Dracula) and calculated that it would take him four hours to read. Taking four hours out of a seven hour work period to cloister himself off to read a book so to better portray the story in his artwork impressed me as an author. Just as watching Jaclyn Santos, working on a cover for Pride and Prejudice, admitting she had only read a synopsis of the book before embarking on creating a work that had herself on the cover, half naked with a top hat in one hand, frustrated me both as a writer and fan of the author. And let’s not get into the whole deal that she spelt Austen with an “i’ like the Texas city.

Given the choice between the two artists, as an author I would hope for a Miles to be assigned my book cover – an artist who respected my form of art enough to take the time to represent my work whole heartedly. I would hope for an artist who saw taking the time to get to know the story as vital to the portrayal of the story in the cover.  And it reminded me that the old saying on not judging a book by its cover is sadly very true. 

And just for the record, if anyone in the States just happens to know the eventual winner personally (John Parot, LA, California – The Time Machine) and he is willing to sign a copy of his front cover…please – feel free to hook me up!