NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Aleksandar Hemon on reading:

" I was still living with my parents then, which, besides threatening my rightful privacy and personal sovereignty, made reading with sustained attention pretty hard—my parents were prone to designing elaborate chores for others to accomplish. But in our cabin I could read for eight to ten hours a day, fully in charge of my own time, which I regimented like a monk. I interrupted my monastic mission only to attend to the needs of my foolish body, which, in addition to food and coffee, demanded some occasional exertion. Hence, I went for long hikes up the mountain, to the harsh, barren landscape above the tree line. I avoided other people and delayed for as long as possible my trips on foot to the supermarket, a couple of miles away.

For weeks before leaving for the mountain, I would be assembling my reading list. There were all kinds of books on it: from John le Carré’s Smiley novels to scholarly works on the origins of the Old Testament myths; from anthologies of contemporary American short stories to the Prince Valiant comic books. At the top of the list were the thick classic novels that I couldn’t focus on in the city, what with my parents’ choral nagging and the daily temptations of urban life.

In the cabin, I would enter a kind of hypersensitive trance that allowed me to average four hundred pages a day. The book would become a vast, intricate space in my head where I stayed even when eating, hiking, or sleeping. It took me less than a week to read “War and Peace,” for example, and Bolkonsky and Natasha showed up regularly in my dreams. And while I was reading “The Magic Mountain,” on my hikes I conducted conversations with imaginary partners, not unlike the ones between Castorp and Settembrini in Thomas Mann’s novel.

In my twenties, I was prone to anxiety and depression, which I experienced as a depletion of my interiority, a vacuum of thought and language. I went to the mountain to replenish my mind, to reboot its language apparatus. My reclusion worried my parents, and my friends thought I was crazy. But I loved the silence cushioning me while I read. At night, the only sounds came from the bells of roaming cattle and the branches scratching the roof. Excited birds would bid me a good early morning, and I would start reading as soon as I opened my eyes. The controllable austerity healed whatever hurt I had carried up the mountain."

It’s clear that there is passion here. We talked about this in our conversation last fall at the IFOA in Toronto. Please listen here:

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Mr. Wikipedia tells us: "Rain Taxi is a Minneapolis-based book review and literary organization. In addition to publishing its quarterly print edition, Rain Taxi maintains an online edition with distinct content, sponsors the Twin Cities Book Festival, hosts readings, and publishes chapbooks through its Brainstorm Series. Rain Taxi’s mission is “to advance independent literary culture through publications and programs that foster awareness and appreciation of innovative writing.” As of 2008, the magazine distributes 18,000 copies through 250 bookstores as well as to subscribers. The magazine is free on the newsstand. It is also available through paid subscription. Structurally, Rain Taxi is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. It sells advertising at below market rates, much of it to literary presses."

Rain Taxi’s website tells us that the publication is a winner of the Alternative Press Award for Best Arts & Literature Coverage that runs ‘reviews of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with an emphasis on works that push the boundaries of language, narrative, and genre. Essays, interviews, and in-depth reviews reflect Rain Taxi’s commitment to innovative publishing.’

I dined and conversed with RainTaxi editor Eric Lorberer , indoors, recently in Minneapolis. We talk here about the state and nature of today’s book reviewing business. Please excuse the abrupt ending.

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John Metcalf is a highly regarded author who happens to have edited many of Canada’s foremost short story writers including Lisa Moore, Alice Munro, and Michael Winter. Born in Carlisle, England, and educated at the University of Bristol, he emigrated to Canada in 1962. In addition to his own writings (novels, stories and essays), he currently holds the unsalaried post of Senior Editor at the Porcupine’s Quill of Erin, Ontario and is the editor of Canadian Notes and Queries. He resides in Ottawa, Ontario with his wife, Myrna.

We talk here about the role of the editor, game playing, the placement of words and punctuation, manipulating emotions, unclogging channels between writers and readers, diplomacy, nouns, hammers, electric current, anti-Americanism, ignorant Canadian nationalists and inferiority complexes.

Copyright © 2006 by Nigel Beale

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