Mainlining the Word
I might as well confess right away that my two favorite literary
forms
are the short story and poetry. Why? It's true that both forms are
under-appreciated, brief, intense, image-driven, and seem to mirror
reality
in an artful way. But I suspect that my preference is also because I
have a
short attention span. Most novels bore me, and I am somewhat of a
literary
snob.
Okay, I'm a geek. I know it. For my birthday, I buy the Best
American Short Stories. I buy the O. Henry Awards prize
stories,
the Best New American Voices (which used to be the Best of the
Fiction Workshops under a different publisher), and I spend countless
hundreds of dollars on literary journals, ostensibly to keep abreast of
current voices in the writing world, but really because I am a junky
for
words the way comic book collectors are for graphic novels. Much of
what I
have been reading lately is stultified anti-writing that seems much
more
content to be clever than good.
I was delighted, therefore, when I received my review copy of The
IV
Lounge Reader in the mail. A collection of short stories and
poetry
predominantly by Canadian authors, it has the structure and feel of a
literary journal without all the annoying essays, interviews, and
letters.
Because it is an anthology of sorts, it also has the feel of a "best
of"
collection. The press, not being mainstream, is more likely to take
chances
(which can be good or bad).
This book really stems from a reading series hosted every other
Friday at
The IV Lounge in Toronto by editor Paul Vermeersch. Inaugurated in May
of
1998 at the Café Za Che Zu, the series was nearly halted just one month
later when the café closed its doors. The building's owner, oddly
enough,
helped to keep the fledgling series alive, even tended bar during one
of the
early readings. Soon after, the venue reopened under the name The IV
Lounge, and the reading series took off, hosting a number of nationally
known authors and a few local favorites.
Although all of the authors have read at the venue, the book,
according
to Vermeersch, is not intended to be a historical document, (in the
sense
that every work in the text was originally read aloud) but rather a
sampling
of pieces read. As a book, the stories and poems are interesting and
varied. The reading pace never staggers or slacks for lack of variety
or
style. Whether it be new realism, surrealism, post-modern, or
language-based work, they're all represented here. No school of
writing
seems to predominate. Much of the work has been dragged kicking and
screaming onto the pages, resulting in a hodgepodge of work that either
succeeds grandly or fails equally as grandly, exposing all of its
wounds and
scars.
As with most collections, there is good work presented, as well as
bad.
I was absolutely floored by the quality of stories such as Tamas
Dobozy's
"When X Equals Marylou" and kristi-ly green's "The Happy Diary" --
easily
equal to any story I've read in a more prestigious collection. I was
captured by the strange surreal poetry of Blaise Moritz, and Patrick
Rawley's plain-spoken, often funny lines made me laugh out loud. Some
of
the work is very bad -- weakly developed, cliche, or transparent -- but
whenever I caught myself groaning at hackneyed endings or poetry trying
to
be too clever, I realized that I was always fully engaged with the
text.
This book, like a jewel made more interesting by flaws, is unique
because we
see authors genuinely struggling with the material so as to make it
work.
It is vital and alive. Paul Vermeersch has done a wonderful job of
assembling a sort of misfit cast of characters whose voices are all
over the
map, and I find myself wondering if the atmosphere of this project has
played a part in fostering such a fresh sense of inventiveness and
creativity. I hope that this is the first in a long and prosperous
series.
