April 21, 3.20 AM
If I write “I remember Doug Coupland telling me that…” whoever the recipient of this confidence might well think that between DC and me are the tender, possibly tortured, strands of connection, that we are intimates, routinely in touch, one with the other, sharing ideas and gossip and opinions about the world and how it turns. I am about to to write “I remember Doug Coupland telling me that…” because it is something that Doug Coupland did, in fact, once tell me, and I do, in fact, remember it, but it was on the one and only occasion I spent social time with him, a visit to his home, for dinner, a long time back. (This came back to me recently because of a really beautifully written, loving obituary for his mother. It made me laugh out loud a couple of times, which all obituaries should do. It wasn’t signed, and it may not have been DC’s sole work, might have been concocted collaboratively with his brothers, but my guess would be that he had a significant hand in it.) Anyway, not to labour the story more than I already have, I was a guest for dinner, it was a beautiful meal at a beautiful table in a beautiful house. There was evidence of art projects underway, here and there; one involved making something sculptural from the pages of his books, which he papier-mached by chewing them, after the fashion of nest-building wasps. This mastication was done while watching television. Who thinks of such a thing, and then does it and actually creates something worthwhile and lovely from the process? I was amazed. Anyway, get ready for it, I remember Doug Coupland telling me that when he sets out on a writing project he knows exactly where he’s going, has a starting point and ending point and stops along the way in mind. There’s a plan, a map, an agenda. Again, I was amazed. (I think I was amazed a lot over the course of that evening, amazed to the extent that I didn’t have much to say, which, sadly, is usual for me.) I never have a clue. I set out on a path with nothing in my knapsack, only a hopeful val-de-ree, val-de-ra on my lips, which are probably chapped. Most of these excursions are like the one I took the one time I ran away from home, age 4, having packed my cherished things in a pyjama bag, cunningly made (without benefit of chewing) in the form of a dog — I called it Valentine, because on its white back was a black heart, much like the one that now beats, barely, in my chest — with a quilted, pink interior. I got as far as the neighbours, two houses down, and they were having a barbecue, and I stopped to investigate, and they must have tempted me with a hotdog, and that was enough to make me reconsider my plans. I forgot why I was mad. I went home. Most of my adventures end, as it turns out, in chewing, and most of my writing ends a house or two away from where I started, which is a place I never intended to go.
This is just by way of saying that I have no map in mind, here. It’s early in the morning and I’ll soon be going to work and I’m starting out, seeing where I get, word processing away, if you were here with me the only sound you would hear would be self-indulgence getting chewed to ribbons. Ribbons. That’s something I don’t miss about actual typing, at an actual typewriter, the ink-staining business of changing it out, the ribbon I mean, the little diagram on the inside of the case that was the map of how to do it and that I could never quite read, the same way I can’t reliably interpret the stovetop schematic that shows you what knob activates what element. I miss the physicality of it, though, the resistance of the keys, the progress-measuring ding of the bell, the whack of the carriage return, the satisfaction of removing the page and adding it to the pile or, more often, crumpling it up, maybe even chewing it, for whatever was on it had been a waste of time. It’s the sound I miss, most of all. It happens every now and again (that’s a phrase I overuse, “every now and again,”) that I’ll be out walking and will hear, via an open window, the tell-tale clickers clack of someone at work, it’s as rare and as arresting as hearing someone practicing scales, or playing a movement of a sonata. Someone doing something worthwhile, with an end in view, not just walking, walking, no plan in mind. Rebukes are everywhere.
Mavis Gallant, MG, never owned a computer — or so I believe. She had a Smith-Corona, that was her typewriter brand of choice, and — I think I remember reading this, somewhere — eventually succumbed to an electronic step-up, one of those typewriter / computer hybrids, but never warmed to it, it gave her trouble at a time in her writing life when trouble was the last thing she needed. In “Virus X,” her story from 1965 about which I started writing yesterday — and about which I intended to say more today, but look, here we are, this is what comes from not having a plan — there’s a minor character — if such a thing can be said to exist — a poet — ex-military, half-mad — who is heard before he is seen. He’s in the same hotel as Lottie and Vera, the two young women from Winnipeg who are the story’s principals; he’s two doors down from Lottie, between them is an empty room, it acts as an echo chamber. Lottie, who is meant to be in France further exploring her studies in sociology, but who can’t make herself actually get down to it, hears him, hard at work. Rebukes are everywhere.
Writing, if you get down to it, is, or can be, about creating a community. I write this diary for myself and for whatever friends of Mavis — FOM — might find something of interest. I’ve been grateful to hear, by way of comments to these entries or via private emails, from people who have read them; some knew MG and have stories to tell about her — fantastic to hear those — and some connect to one observation or other. I was writing yesterday about how “Virus X,” can be read, in part, as an homage to Katherine Mansfield, one of the writers MG venerated. Lottie and Vera go on a day-long excursion to visit KM’s grave, and reference is made, later in the story, of observations attending the 30th anniversary of her death, in 1923. Jenny Shaw, who was once my neighbour — Jenny, I am naming you here without asking, I hope that’s ok, I’m not saying anything that’s not fond! — and who, like KM, is from New Zealand, and who attended the same school as KM — their time there separated by many years, of course — posted a comment about how, in the 80’s, which was about the time we were neighbours, she gave readings in different bookstores, of Katherine Mansfield short stories. As well, she pointed out that Vera and Lottie (Lottie, short for Charlotte) were names that appeared in Mansfield short stories. Vera and Charlotte were, as I learned, the names of two of KM’s sisters — Vera became Vera Bell, wound up in Canada, died in 1972, and is buried nearby Ottawa.
Writing can be about creating a community, and one of the ways a writer does that is by way of inviting in the like-minded, readers on the same wave-length, readers who will, in effect, get the joke. I’m not deeply steeped in the writing of Katherine Mansfield, have scarcely paddled in her shallows, and I didn’t know about Lottie and Vera. I felt, I have to say, on learning about them, and on seeing what MG was up to, a little like I’d let her down, MG I mean. I didn’t get the joke. Damn. I am not fit to join the club, not fit to sit by the fire and chew the pages, and yet, here I am, hammering at the door. Let me in. Let me in.
Well. THIS has been a waste of time. This is why a map’s a good idea. 4.44 — a pleasing time to write, if not to experience — and I’ve got to get to work. It’s good to know, actually, that there are layers and layers to peel back, the stories repay reading and re-reading, that there’s more, always more, to discover, to guess at. Sometimes you have to persist, to make your way into the community, the enchanted circle doesn’t necessarily open just because you wish for it, just because you present yourself as willing.
When I was teenager, and starting to read more widely, I went through a Wallace Stevens phase. It was intense, for a while. I can’t believe I’m going to admit this, but I remember that it was so, that, having noted his death date as August 2, 1955, and my birthdate as August 11, 1955, I began to fantasize that between us was a cosmic connection, that somehow our two ethers commingled as he was leaving and I was preparing for my glorious advent. My fantasies may have extended as far as reincarnation, allowing for some Bardo like phase that would have made such an imprint possible. Lord. I should have been bound wrist to ankle and left in the snow for the wolves. That said, I wonder if MG might have felt some connection that wasn’t necessarily rational to KM, who died so shortly after MG arrived on the planet, August 11, 1922. In the character of Lottie, in “Virus X,” she invents someone who is obsessed with her health, who sees herself as intrinsically weak, who is fascinated by her own fragility, who relies on it as a trump card. Did MG, an unapologetic KM fan girl, ever wonder what KM was doing on the day of her birth, which was just a few months before KM’s exit? Did she seek out and read the letter KM wrote to her father on August 11, 1922?
My dearest Father,
I have delayed answering your letter - which I was most happy to receive - because I felt there was a possibility that I might be forced, for reasons of health only, to make a little change in my plans. I hoped this would not be necessary, but it is. To "come straight to the horses" - my heart has been playing up so badly this last week that I realise it is imperative for me to see Doctor Sorapure before I go on with my Paris treatment. As I am due to begin this Paris treatment on September lst, I have decided that my best plan is to come straight to London next Tuesday, arriving Wednesday, 16th. Until I have had an opinion on the present condition of my heart I am really a thoroughly unsatisfactory companion. I could neither go about with you and the dear girls, nor add to your enjoyment in any way. And to sit with me in the bedroom of a foreign hotel would be extremely small beer indeed! And I could not forgive myself if my disquieting symptoms became aggravated in Paris and caused you uneasiness. You know what a heart is like.
She sounds, it must be said, EXACTLY like Lottie.
Guesses and surmise. None of it proves anything. But, as noted earlier, proof isn’t what I’m after. I’m here for the absorption, here for the fun, here for the ride, here for the community. I’m here for the stories. I’m calling this a diary, but it’s really a letter, newsy and free-ranging, written, with love, to whoever reads this far. Mercy save us. I have teeth to brush, a face to wash. Work beckons. 5.03. So much time gone, so little said. So little to chew on. xo B
Inspired by my early morning reading of Bill William Richardson’s Substack, ostensibly dedicated to Mavis Gallant, and he mentions Wallace Stevens.
I always liked the poetry of Wallace Stevens, especially this one, The Emperor of Ice Cream.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
BY WALLACE STEVENS
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
I especially love the fact that Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive for most of his life, and married for 46 years. Whether this admiration stems from the verisimilitude of his servitude to actuarial tables, or his persistence in his relationship is not clear; I am about to work this weekend at a trade show in my professional life, not be be confused with my artistic endeavours. One pays the rent and one feeds my soul.
And like Nicolas Cage’s two headed snake, one head tries to eat the other, attempts repeatedly to climb into the others head, pushing out thought, reason, and ambition, replacing them with shards of poetry, meringues of lemon potential, bad notes and soft heads. Oh fontanelle, afraid I would plunge my hands inside your tender pre-formed mind, afraid of my own strength, afraid to jump off the ledge.
Bill writes his letter daily, before he goes off to stock the shelves at Whole Foods. I love the Whole Words that Bill concocts in the dawn, getting them down, getting it out.
I have to go get ready for my day, so my thoughts on what constitutes cancel culture will have to wait. But consider this, was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History an answer to the cancel culture of history, the ritual forgetting of actual events that shaped our existence, banned by the forced narrative of the majority?
I am barely awake, leaving discussion ps of what Woke really means for another day.
On the strength of your writing about her I went out and bought Plath's The Bell Jar this morning. 12 holds on it in the library system here, I found one copy at a local book sellers. I look forward to connecting with Plath again on paper, as with you, through these diary pages.