|
Sunday, October 30th
Dispatch on the Toronto Festival + The Recipe for Tahiti Treat
Hi All,
Back in Iowa after a week in Toronto for the International Festival of Authors. A great, great time. Got to see so many people I hadn't seen in awhile. Awesome to see my bro and barrister supremo Neil, Ryan and Shauna and their buddy Steve, Tom (Thom?) Bryce, m'man Brett, Ryan Webster and Matty. Cheers to Supereditor Helen, Superpublicist Colleen, Superagent Sarah, Superphotog Mathieu. Also to all the other great people from Penguin: David and Diana and Debbie and Debby and Karen and Charidy and Lesley and many others. HUGE thanks to Matt Doherty of the National Post for the great article, and to Florida Jack for letting us do a photo shoot at his gym (Home of the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame!). Cheers to all the cool folks at the IFOA and to head honcho Geoffrey Taylor for putting on such a kick-ass show. Jeers to a certain douchebag small-press publisher who possesses a singular ability to drag any spirited dinner conversation to a grinding halt with maudlin soliloquies on the state of Canadian publishing. Cheers to Richard Bachman and Brian Prince, a great pair of booksellers. Met so many writers: Rabindranath Maharaj, Michael Crummey, Paul Glennon, Daniel Alarcon, Melissa Bank, Lisa Moore, Michael Winter, Uzo Iweala, Nick McDonnell, Mohammed Naseehu Ali...well, the list could go on an on...and will! Joseph Boyden, David Bergen, Joan Barfoot, Donna Morrissey, Philip Marchand, Antanas Silekas. Okay, that's enough.
The reading on Saturday went well. A good turn-out. I read from the dogfighting story, as promised. I think one or two people walked out, which didn't perturb me at all. In fact, I sort of dug it. I signed a few books afterwards, but did see a few people carrying RUST AND BONE who did not come to the signing afterwards. That's totally cool if they didn't want it signed, or maybe they got a pre-signed copy, but hopefully I did talk to everyone who might've wanted to bask in my awkward and unstylish glow for as long as it took them to feel uncomfortable and give me the ole, "Hey, what's the over there?" and run away. But seriously, I hope nobody's worried about approaching me or any writer for a bit of a chat. It's pretty much the only time we get to crawl out of our hovels, away from our glowing computer screens, to interact with other sentient carbon-based lifeforms.
I was very lucky to get a few TV and newspaper mentions the past week. Hopefully it will get some attention for the collection. But a certain aspect of my physical makeup has come to my attention: I have a MASSIVE chin. We're talking shades of Jay Leno, here. Every time I see a picture of myself, I see that snowshovel chin of mine. Like I said somewhere else: if you grabbed my legs and tilted my chin at an angle to your driveway, I think you could clear your drive with my face in a half-hour. I'm not really all that upset about it---as a former 250-pound butterball, I'm still basking in a prolonged 8-year euphoria of not being rotund anymore---but man, that is some chin. I like how the National Post piece described it as "an imposing chin." What a pleasant gloss, huh? Like saying The Elephant Man had "a unique bone structure and individualistic features," or that Hortense the Mule-Faced Woman was blessed with "a sturdy handsomeness not often glimpsed." Thank god I've got my new/old deerskin jacket to take some of the heat off my chin.
My brother came down Saturday and we went to a pub off Yonge and watched the Leafs get their asses handed to them before heading back to the hotel bar and meeting my pal Neil. Got pretty ripped---the other two rummies were drinking "dirty gins": martinis with olive juice---and then we sat around making fun of each other, as is our wont. We headed up to the hotel room at 1 or so to hit the sack. The view of my hotel room is pretty much the saddest in Toronto: a strip of filthy water, then Captain John's seafood restaurant (this floating roachtrap of a restaurant on an old freighter), then a parking lot, then the Redpath Sugar Factory. I'm guessing a homeless person might take a gander at that view and say, "Jeez, you wanna talk about depressing. If you don't mind, I think I'll go sleep in a Dumpster tonight." So anyway, Neil's looking out the window and Graham goes, "The ole Redpath sugar mill." And Neil, for no reason I could see, took real issue with Graham's choice of words.
"Mill?" he went. "It's not a mill. It's a fucking factory."
Graham said, "Mill, factory---what's the diff?"
"A mill?" Neil said. "Does that look like a mill? It's a factory. A sugar factory. They manufacture sugar there!"
I heard this all from the washroom where I was taking a piss and quickly chose a side (I chose Graham's side, precisely because it was obviously wrong: it was probably more a factory). So I saunter out of the pisser, set my hands on my hips and go, "Quite a view, boys---the ol' Redpath sugar mill."
"It's not a mill!" Neil screamed, drunk as a dirty lord on dirty gins. "It's a factory! It's a goddam sugar FACTORY! Who MILLS sugar? I'll tell you who: nobody! If anyone did, they'd go out of business in a week! You don't mill sugar," he said. "You...FACTORIZE it."
"Yup," Graham said like he hadn't heard him. "The ooooole sugar mill. Just like pappy used to work at."
"That's right," I said. "Milling that good sweet sugar like a true sugar miller. Good honest work for a good honest dollar."
"Remember when pappy used to come home from the sugar mill?" Graham said. "The cuffs of his overalls tasted sweet."
"You're a couple of idiots," said Neil. "I'd like to see you two start up a sugar mill. See how far you'd get."
Silence for a few moments. Then Graham: "The ooooooooooooole sugar mill."
A few minutes later Neil gave us the secret recipe for concocting Tahiti Treat. I don't know how this came up, exactly. My best bet is that sometimes, when you are very intoxicated, you---and by "you" I mean, in this specific case, "Neil"---tend to make wild assertions, like how to make a soft drink that has been off the market for 5 years. For those of you who don't know what Tahiti Treat is, a quick explanation: it was a soft drink, bright red, that was sold in Ontario and maybe other parts of Canada. The bottle had a picture of a palm tree and a little character who kind of looked like the Hawaiian Punch mascot---except I think he was wearing a grass skirt instead of bermuda shorts. Anyway, it went off the market years ago. Why? Presumably because it wasn't really good, or perhaps it caused anal seepage or rickets or who-knows-what. Anyway, some people must really miss it, and will do just about anything to get their hands on it---or a reasonable facsimile.
So here's the recipe: 1/2 cream soda, 1/2 orange soda = Tahiti Treat.
Neil swears this is true. He cannot stress enough how important the ratio must be: "Exactly HALF cream soda," he instructed with his face drunkenly half-buried in a hotel pillow. "And the other half EXACTLY orange soda. There you have it." His tone suggested he'd bestowed upon us a great favor: an elixir for eternal life, perhaps.
I can just imagine him at the 7-11 soda fountain, dressed in a white lab coat, mixing sodas together while some gum-snapping cash clerk eyes him warily. And when he finally comes upon the proper mixture in its proper balance, he takes a sip and cries, "Eureka! I've done it! I've cracked the Tahitian code!"
Try it yourself folks. Half cream soda, half orange soda. Experience the taste sensation. Tahiti's greatest export since the tiki torch, so deliriously delicious they had to stop making it---persumably because Neil was the only one buying it.
---Craig.
Craig Davidson on 10.30.05 @ 10:39 PM EST [link]
Wednesday, October 26th
My New (Old) Deerskin Coat
Hi All,
Here in Toronto, ensconsced at some swank digs. Feel like a big redheaded mop-top rockstar. Well, not really.
Things have been going good. Got in Monday, was soon joined at the hotel by Matt, and old uni buddy. Then my brother Graham showed up and the wheels started falling off. Many beers were consumed, then it was off to the festival gala, where we were met by my buddy Ryan. We ate many canapes and hors d'ouevres, and many more beers were consumed. Graham had a good drink going by then---hell, we all did---and started yelling "Rust and Bone!" at intermittent points in the evening. It was great: my own cheering section. Met a few big honchos of the Canadian publishing world, including M&S editing chief Elaine Seligman, who said M&S had been "thiiiiiiis close" (here she narrowed her fingers together so that only a few air molecules remained between) to taking Rust and Bone when it was making its intial rounds. This struck me as information I could've comfortably gone my whole life without knowing, but still, it was nice to meet her. Met David Bergen again, Joseph Boyden, and---yes, yes indeed---Zadie Smith. She seemed very nice, albeit totally drained from her tour schedule, and unfortunately she was still married. I was just about drunk enough to climb up to the second florr, jump out, grab the chandelier, swoop down and take her in my arms like Errol Flynn, then maybe the two of us could've vanished out the window into the blustery Toronto night...then I was like, What am I, an idiot? Colleen, Penguin publicist extraordianaire, lined up a photo op with myself and a graphic artist named, uh, G something...G-Dot? G-Rub? G-Killa? Anyway, to my total drunken shame I did the "tongue stuck out/rock and roll devil's horn" pose; Graham stood in the background flashing the "West Coast" finger sign, hollering "Rust and Boooooone!" God bless my brother.
I've got a new coat. In fact it is an old coat. It's my dad's old coat, a deerskin jacket, which he wore when he was around my age---a time fondly known as his "Starsky and Hutch" phase. He drove a Dodge Cougar at the time, and I imagine him driving down the road in that, wearing his deerskin coat with his red hair blowing int he breeze must've been quite the transfixing sight. I found it hanging down in the basement, unworn in 2 decades, the deerskin all crackly and brittle like an old coccoon hanging there. But I broke out the mink oil and rubbed some life back into the deerskin while watching a few episodes of Nip/Tuck (show rocks). My dad sat nearby, smiling proudly, glad to see me finally inherit my destiny. Like he was passing on some treasured family hierloom or something. "Now," I heard him whisper, "my son is a man."
Anyway, I wore it to TO. I love it. Great coat. Well worked in. But then my brother saw it and was like, "Shit man, that's not dad's old deerskin is it?" I was all like, "Indeed it is." He was all, "You've got the fashion sense of a caveman." I was like, "I won't dispute that." He was like, "Do you EVER want to get laid?" I was all defiant: "On my own TERMS, baby! Love me, love my deerskin---we're a package-fuckin-deal!" Graham: "You're a turd burglar." Me: "So it would seem."
I know some people don't like the idea of wearing animal skin, but I can assure you---or at verty least I get the sense---that the deer that made my jacket was, in point of fact, an evil deer. Quite possibly the most evil deer that ever lived, a carnivore deer who ate rabbit and perhaps even stray children who might've wandered into the forest. So I think, all in all, it was good this particular deer is gone. Of course, this brings up the odious prospect that I am now in possession of a CURSED deerskin jacket, and that in all likelihood some most terrible misfortune will soon befall me: my hair will turn white, I'll be struck with a rampant case of brain parasites, my cow's milk will turn inexplicably sour. But these are the burdens one must bear in the pursuit of high fashion.
Long live the deerskin!
---Craig.
Craig Davidson on 10.26.05 @ 10:49 AM EST [link]
Saturday, October 22nd
Harbourfront Festival of Authors
Hi All,
I will be setting off early, EARLY Monday morning for Toronto to participate in the Harbourfront International Festival. Looking forward to seeing my brother and buddies and agent and Penguin folks and everyone else. I will be there for a week, Oct. 24-29.
My readings dont come up until next weekend, and they are:
Round Table Discussion:
The Short StoryE
Friday October 28th 7:00 PM
Brigantine Room, with Daniel Alarcon (War by Candlelight), Melissa Bank (The Wonder Spot), and Lisa Moore (Alligator).
Reading :
Saturday October 29th 12:00 PM
Lakeside Terrace, with Daniel Alarcon, Mohammed Naseehu Ali (The Prophet of Zongo Street), and Nick McDonnell (The Third Brother).
I may be the graybeard of that second event, at the ripe old age of 30. Im not sure how old Mohammed is, but I think Daniels young and Nick is 21and this is NOT his first book! Should be a good time.
Ive decideddefinitely, irrevocablythat I will NOT be reading any of the softerEbits from the collection anytime soon. I feel like its false advertising, in that some people may come away from a reading thinking the book is full of warm and fuzzy stories about precocious kids and loveable rodents. Anyone whos read the collection knows this is not the case, and so Ive decided to go for some of the harder-edged stuff. I had a short interview with the Globe and Mail the other day, and below is an excerpt from the article. It gives you a sense of what can be expected at the reading:
From THE GLOBE AND MAIL: The Crowd Pleasers,Eby Steve Smith:
Craig Davidson's new thought on readings is this: Forget the warmth and succour, maybe it's time to punch things up.
"I did my first reading in Fredericton a couple of weeks ago," the first-time author was saying this week from his home in Calgary. "I wasn't really sure how to approach it. I got different advice. I ended reading some fairly, I guess, softer parts."
The thing is, the stories in Davidson's Rust and Bone aren't soft; they're hard. They're full of boxers, blood, suppositories, dogfights, sex addicts and broken penises.
"Yeah, I think it's time to get up there and read some of the more brazen parts," Davidson said. "I went to a Chuck Palahniuk reading once where someone in the audience fainted. Maybe if someone comes up and socks me in the face, I'll know I've made an impression."
Davidson will get his chance next week when he reads in Toronto. He is just one of 70-odd writers, artists and an erstwhile Governor-General who will be taking part in Toronto's annual International Festival of Authors (IFOA) through Oct. 29.
E love that Steve worked the phrase broken penisesEinto the article. Big props to Steve for that!
So, yes, anyone who comes to the readingand I hope anyone whos got the time or interest to spare will make their way overcan expect an excerpt from either A Mean Utility,Ethe dogfighting story, or else from Friction,Ethe sex addict story. Perhaps even the aforementioned broken penisEscene, along with the always crowd-pleasing exploding penis pumpEscene as well. Either way, theres not going to be any furry rodents. To hell with furry rodents, I say!
On the press side of things: apart from the newspaper and radio stuff, I will also be filming segments for Bravo TVs Writers Confessions,Eand on Tuesday will appear on Off the Record.ESo if you want to see me debating hot-button sports issues, if that really turns your crank, tune in on Tuesday. And please, nobody else email me with requests that I punch Michael Landsberg in the facethree people have made this request of me already (Michael provokes a lot of ill-will, for whatever reason), and I really dont think I can oblige you on this front. Id do almost anything for a friend or a reader, but hammering a national sports-TV host in the kisser is out of my wheelhouse.
Ill also be doing a reading at Different Drummer Books in Hamilton (Thursday, Oct. 27, at 7:00), with Michael Crummey, Paul Glennon, and Rabindranath Maharaj. Thats at 231 Bay Street North, in Hamilton. So if you can make it out to that, sweet! Crummeys great, and Ive read Maharajs short story collections, so he rocks solid, too.
That, I do believe, is all she wrote. If youre in Toronto and have a chance to make it out to my event, feel free to come up and challenge me to a fight during my reading if you object to the subject matter. I think it would be a badge of honor on my part if I continue reading, somehow soldier on, while a disgruntled audience member is throttling or pounding upon me. And if that doesnt suit you, well, there are readings by such literary luminaries as John Irving, Zadie Smith (someone at a Calgary reading told me shes already married, thus scuttling my marriage proposaldrats!), Jonathan Safran Foer, David Bergen, and many many others.
Should be a great time, and I hope to see you out there. If you do come out, please stop by and have a chat.
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 10.22.05 @ 12:49 PM EST [link]
Thursday, October 20th
Library Journal Review
Here's a review I was sent recently. It's from the Library Journal. I'm happily surprised that a reviewer with the name of Prudence found something to enjoy about the collection. Perhaps I can expect to receive fan mail from all the Hetties and Gertrudes and Betsies and Helgas and Brunettas out there as well? That would be the living end! I shouldn't be like that: I'm sure Prudence is a lovely woman, and I thank her for the nice review.
LIBRARY JOURNAL:
Davidson's forceful debut collection arrives like a jab to the jaw from one of his colorful characters. Sometimes masochistic, always muscled in the diction of the men who people them, the stories are impossible to ignore. Davidson brings us hard menalcoholic fathers, sex-addicted porn stars, boxers, a repo man, a magician who deserts his two childrenwithout patronizing them or their extreme conditions. He is as adept at the humorous interplay of personality in a sex addicts anonymous meeting (in Friction) as he is in describing a vicious dogfight (in the excellent A Mean Utility). There are also quiet moments of grace, particularly in An Apprentice's Guide to Modern Magic and On Sleepless Roads. Even when Davidson pushes the limits of what a reader can stomach, he never loses our attention or our empathy. Recommended as a young writer to watch.Prudence Peiffer, Cambridge, MA Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Craig Davidson on 10.20.05 @ 08:07 PM EST [link]
Tuesday, October 18th
Various Beatings I Have Taken
Hi All,
Sorry it's been awhile since my last post; no computer access, I'm afraid. But I'm back, I've got a computer, and I'm pissed as hell and not going to take it anymore! Well, I've got a computer in any case.
Wordfest update: a great time. Great seeing Holly, Erin and Brandon, Greg and Naomi, Kim, Lorie, Ian, Shelley from Riley, and many others. Got to spend a night with Sheila Heti and Joseph Boyden, chatting about books and writers and trapeze artists and I ate a damn good steak. Thanks go to Cathy Tippet, publicist extraordinaire, Robin, Patrick, Jeff at CBC, Deborah at 103.1basically, anyone I met while I was at Wordfest. Celebrity sighting: Dan Ackroyd at the Palliser bar. A wonderful fellow, certainly quite jolly, and it was nice to bask in his celebrity glow for a few moments.
The readings went quite well. Both were well-attended. Thanks to Dr. Smith and Angus, the MCs. A few books were bought, so that was very cool. I wandered around to some bookstores in Calgary, where I signed copies. So if you live in Calgary and haven't grabbed a copy yetwhyever not?there are some signed ones floating about.
Actually, the whole walking-into-bookstores-signing-books thing was a bit of a pride-swallowing experience (one of many such experiences recently; I haven't eaten in days, as I'm constantly full from swallowing so much pride). Most times I'd find my book in the store and bring the copies to the front cash, where some gum-popping highschool guy or gal would say, "You want to sign them? Yeah, well, what the hell?" As I stood there signing, they might ask me what the stories were about, and when I told them they would often go, "Oooooowwwwhhhhhh-kay," drawing the word out while giving me this look like I'd just farted in their soup bowl. Then again, they were highschoolers, and the stock in trade for many that age is to be disenfranchised and cynical about everything. I may well have gotten "Oooooowwwwhhhh-kay," had I said book was about anything, except perhaps precocious wizards or a zany professor who'd discovered an anti-zit remedy. In any case, I left one bookstore feeling, as Joe R. Lansdale might have written, "Lower than a snake's dick in a wagon-wheel rut." But I'm still glad I did it.
A funny thing has come to my attention. I think it is because of the nature of my book, or the author photos Penguin is using, or some other factor beyond my reasoning, that people, when they meet me, frequently seem surprised to find me well adjusted, cordial, decently well mannered. Its like they were expecting me to behave like that old wrestler, George The Animal Steele, hoping perhaps Ill take a bite out of a nearby chair or something, piledrive random passers-by. And while Ive been known to piledrive strangers every once in awhile (actually, one night me and my buddy drunkenly suplexed one another off the hood of his Nissan Micrabut that, as Hammy Hamster would say, is another story for another day), I really AM a well-adjusted person. And they also ask me about my background, particularly as it relates to boxing. While I did train for a time as a boxer, I took it up at a late age, and my intent was never to fight.
But I have been in quite a few fightsalthough the results have rarely favored yours truly. This has something to do with the opposition Ive settled upon. I seem to be somewhat snakebitten in this regard. I possess a preternatural ability to pick fightsor rather accept the challenges ofa rogues gallery of psychos, nutzoids, and wolves in sheeps clothing (or wolves in wolves clothing, but Ive been too idiotic to pick that up).
So, to that end, Ive decided to occasionally post ruggedly journalistic accounts of my more cinematic beatings. This accomplishes the dual purposes of establishing I am really not a tough guythough, just for taking the lickings Ive taken, youll have to agree I am, at very least, TOUGHand also allowing me to come to grips with my past through these acts of cathartic re-enactment.
So.
BEATING #1: Craig Davidson vs. Jason Luke.
Read on if youd like to hear about this ill-fated tussle. Beware: it gets bloody.
Craig Davidson on 10.18.05 @ 08:08 PM EST [more..]
Monday, October 10th
A few cool books recently read; Next tour stop
Hello all,
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian brethren. Happy Columbus Day to my US compatriots.
Just thought I would recommend, for anyone looking for a cool book to read, you could do a hell of a lot worse than CUTTER AND BONE, by Newton Thornburg. I won't go into the story itself, other than to say its main characters are a 30-something beach-bum gigolo and his Vietnam Vet buddy, who's missing an eye, an arm, and a leg. There was a movie version, starring Jeff Bridges, called CUTTER'S WAY. It's a sensational read. The sort of book that gets its claws into you, sinks them right into your brainpan, and won't let go. How's that for an endorsement? Well, if that's the sort of endorsement that appeals to you---you know who you are---then CUTTER AND BONE will blow you away.
Have also been reading some kid's books. Loved LIZARD MUSIC, by Daniel Pinkwater. Have also been re-reading a lot of Roald Dahl's stuff: THE WITCHES, THE BFG, DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. Wonderful stuff. I forgot how much I loved Dahl. I'm still working on the kid's book, but as I've got this novel deadline---now Dec. 1---I've had to lay off it a bit. But hopefuly I'll be able to get back to it shortly. Certainly a nice change of pace from the visceral, blood-n-guts of the novel.
TOUR STUFF:
I'm off to Calgary Wednesday morning for Wordfest. I'm doing two readings.
1) TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN
October 13, 2005, 7:00 pm
7 - 8 pm, Banff Book & Art Den
Craig Davidson, Douglas Glover & Sheila Heti
So for this one we're up in Banff, at this great little wood-paneled bookstore at the end of the main drag. Douglas Glover won the Governor General's award for ELLE, and is an Iowa graduate; Sheila Heti is a young wunderkind who will be reading from her first novel, TICKNOR. I'm thinking about reading the last section from A MEAN UTILITY, the dog-fighting story. I figure it's about time I start shocking the audience.
2) WRITE FROM THE ROOTS
October 14, 2005, 12:00
The Fiction of the Future
Noon - 1 pm, Art Gallery of Calgary
Craig Davidson, Jenny Erpernbeck, Sheila Heti & Melanie Little
This one is in Calgary. At noon on a Friday, so I'm not sure who'll be there. Still, a cool line-up. Check it out if you can.
Looking forward to seeing my folks and all my friends back in Calgary, as well as those coming in from out of town. Also looking forward to seeing David Bergen again, and meeting Joseph Boyden and some of the other writers who I will most certainly act like a drunken fool around. I consider it a tune-up, really, for the Harbourfront reading series in Toronto, where I plan to (a) ask Zadie Smith to marry me, and (b) challenge John Irving to a wrestling match. Humble goals, in my opinion.
All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 10.10.05 @ 09:38 PM EST [link]
Saturday, October 8th
Hugely Embarrassing Update
I was just unpacking my bag from Fredericton, getting some clothes ready for the laundromat.
On my first night in Fredericton, Mark Jarman gave me a copy of the Summer Fiction Fiddlehead. Some great writers in there: Sean Johnston, Ed O'Connor, Barb Romanik, Bill Gaston, others. I grabbed it out of the bottom of my bag, thought I'd give it a read.
Something was stuck in the middle of it.
Stuck there like a bookmark...
...but thicker.
Sort of the size of a...passport.
What an utter TOOL you are, Davidson.
I do it to myself, I swear.
---Craig (with egg all over his face)
Craig Davidson on 10.08.05 @ 01:57 PM EST [link]
New Review
In the interests of fair and unbiased reporting, I'll make a point to post all the reviews I can find here on the blog. The glowing reviews and the stinkers, in order to give you all a fair and unbiased spectrum of readerly reactions. This one, I must say, might fall into the latter category.
This is from KIRKUS, the US review:
Kirkus Reviews
Stories of blood, guts, dog-fighting and sex addiction. Opening with a story about a broken-handed ex-prizefighter who watches his nephew fall through thin ice, and moving into a story about an alcoholic father who puts all his hopes on an estranged son's basketball game, Davidson's debut collection engages the Hemingway-esque tradition of terse prose describing toughened men who suffer while hiding their scars. The characters, wounded, and often wounding others and themselves, rarely seem to get what they want. Often they seem to frustrate their own ambitions: A man who loses his leg to a shark holes up, masturbates and then tries and fails to find love with a pretty young woman who has lost her arms. The dog-fighter turns out not to be able to have children with his wife, and in a midnight frenzy throws himself to his own dogs. The sex addict remains terminally addicted, imagining walls of genitals, attending orgies, unsure he can love even his own child. In the midst of these uncomfortable stories lurk certain fragmentary hopes, and a few reflective insights. At one point, the battered prizefighter claims: "Reach a certain experience level, you don't fight without reason. You've seen to many boxers hurt, killed even, to treat matches as dick-swinging contests." Nevertheless, these characters seem always to be fighting, swinging dicks and plowing ahead, hurt and hurting. Thick with bleak characters and thin on redemption, Davidson moves from one unsavory battered character to another. The relentless, unforgiving nature of these difficult worlds makes for heavy reading.
I can't argue with the review---my feeling has always been, if someone's cool enough to read the book, they have the right to say whatever they want about it. But a few things, that anyone who's read the collection will know: it wasn't a shark biting off anyone's leg, but rather a killer whale. And the character in A MEAN UTILITY, the dogfighting story, doesn't do what this review seems to suggest he does. Still, I can understand the reviewer's reaction. Not everyone's cuppa tea.
I'll post more as they become available.
---Craig.
Craig Davidson on 10.08.05 @ 10:38 AM EST [link]
Thursday, October 6th
Fredericton Follies
Great to see so many friends. Shouts out to Dave (who had a runny nose, which, I suspect is a symptom of a raging case of chicken fever), Nancy, Shannon, Boobie Tassels Troy, Mark, Ross, Erin, Len (sorry I didnt get to see Sue), and meeting new people like Lauren Davis, Catherine Bush, Rebecca, Heather, Paula, James, and others.
Got in late Monday, met by Mark Jarman at the airport. Headed to the bar for a few Burns Scottish ales, then back to Marks for a few Propellersthis, for those who dont know, is a local New Brunswick beer; Mark and I werent giving each other drunken helicopter spins. Spent the next day recovering. Found Daves office after a long search; Dave the salarymanwho wouldve believed it? Hung out at the Grad bar for a bit, then dinner downtown, then the reading. A nice little crowd. Read a bit from Rust and Bone, then took too long answering a boxing-related question. Then after back to the Grad bar for reminiscing and whatnot. A good time, and great to see everyone again.
The bad partmy trying to get BACK here to Iowa CityI will chronicle below. An example of the anything that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong sort of day I thought only existed in movies.
Read on if youre having a bad day. Or if you're having a good day but love to revel in the misfortune of others. Or if youre simply curious.
Craig Davidson on 10.06.05 @ 11:55 AM EST [more..]
Sunday, October 2nd
Off to Fredericton
I'll be getting up early tomorrow to take a series of flights---Iowa City to Chicago to Montreal to Fredericton---to get to the maritimes. I'm reading at Memorial Hall at the University of New Brunswick, 8 p.m. on Tuesday, with author Lauren B. Davis. Should be a real barn-burner of a time, as I intend to do my reading three sheets to the wind wearing a pirate costume.
Okay, so that's not happening.
But please, if you're in the area, feel free to come on down and check out the reading. Or else you can hang out in the audience and heckle me. You don't see a lot of hecklers at readings, but I'd love to be the first writer I know of to get viciously heckled.
ME: "Thank-you all for coming out tonight. It's a great honor to be back here at the University of New Brunswick, where I---"
HECKLER: "You suck!"
ME: [pretending I didn't hear]: "---where I learned a great many things about writing, and made many wonderful friends, and---"
HECKLER: "You suck! You suck HARD!"
ME: [irritated]: "Yes, well, that's your opinion. Thanks for sharing, sir. Now, as I was saying---"
HECKLER: "You suck worse than Sinbad! I want my money back!"
ME: [baffled]: "This is a FREE event, sir. You didn't pay a dime."
HECKLER: "And yet I feel totally gypped---how can that be?"
At this point, realizing I am intellectually outclassed, I would probably challenge the heckler to a duel of some sort: drawn swords, pistols at daybreak, something like that.
So, in any case, if you're around and you want to come out, hang out, heckle me, engage in a spot of dueling, whatever---I'll be there.
---Craig
Craig Davidson on 10.02.05 @ 06:15 PM EST [link]
Saturday, October 1st
Globe and Mail
This review ran in the GLOBE AND MAIL. I hope I can post it here. If not, it may be yanked down shortly. I fall back on my total ignoarnce of all things relating to posting of published material.
Anyway, it's overall a very kind, and very honest review. I agree with it, especially the Jones comparison. You see, in the book publishing world, it's important for first-time writers to be compared to other writers; sort of like, if you like so-and-so, you should like this person, too. Which is all fine and good, and I understand the sense in it, but for me, who thinks Thom Jones is one of the top-5 writers I've ever read and a huge influence to boot, it's a rough ride. You're constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to say, "Well, how DOES he stack up in comparison?" It's like you've got a master watch-maker and his apprentice watch-maker, and off in the distance someone's saying, "Hey, they're a lot alike! Heck, they're almost the same---take a look; you'll see!" And the apprentice looks at his watch---which is a decent watch, okay, sure---then he looks at the master's watch, which is much more refined than his own. But still, off in the corner, the voice: "Take a look...compare...trust me, you won't be able to tell them apart!" And the apprentice is sitting there going, "I don't think I'm nearly as good...really, I don't...I never thought that." But anyway, that's the biz, and I'm just happy to be in the mix.
I was fortunate enough to trade a few emails with Thom Jones regarding his first publishing experience, and discovered he was forever being compared to Ernest Hemingway. Whoa! So I guess it's something every first-time writer needs to go through.
If you haven't read anything by Jones, I again reccomend him without reservation. THE PUGILIST AT REST (National Book Award finalist), COLD SNAP, and SONNY LISTON WAS A FRIEND OF MINE are his collections.
Also the reviewer, MT Kelly, wrote a great boxing book called SAVE ME, JOE LOUIS. I read it a few years ago, and was very impressed.
---Craig.
Those who cannot heal
By M.T. KELLY
Saturday, October 1, 2005
Rust and Bone
By Craig Davidson
Viking Canada, 256 pages, $30
The stories in Craig Davidson's Rust and Bone belong to a tradition: the book about those on the edge of crime and desperation, like Newton Thornburg's Cutter and Bone and Flesh and Blood, Jim Christie's attempt to journey into the heart of boxing. Comparisons will inevitably arise with the work of Thom Jones in The Pugilist at Rest, though there is nothing in Davidson's work to quite compare with Jones's masterpiece, Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine; the characters in Rust and Bone, for all their vulnerability, are not as sensitive as those in Jones's work.
There is no room for decent fathers or kind girlfriends in Rust and Bone, as there certainly is in Jones's great story, though Davidson obviously cares about young people. Overall, the characters in Rust and Bone, hard men in trouble, are looked at with, if not compassion, certainly grave concern. His vision is described as "dark," but it is not hopeless. No one who puts pen to paper sees the world, and all the chaos and difficulties of living in it, as completely black.
The unity of Rust and Bone depends upon a controlling consciousness: There is not much gap between the author's, and the narrator's, voice and that of the people he writes about, giving the stories a powerful familiarity.
The title story begins with a boxer's problem. "Twenty-seven bones make up the human hand. . . . Some primates got more." The thing is, however, "Break an arm or leg and the knitting bone's sealed in a wrap of calcium so it's stronger than before. Bust a bone in your hand and it never heals right."
Not healing right is a problem not only for Eddie Brown Jr., the protagonist of this story, but for nearly everyone in the book. Brown's hand gets "badly broken: knuckles split and flesh peeled to the wrist, a lot of blood, some bones." Brown is heroic in that he shatters his hand "like a china plate" in trying to rescue another. He is tragic in that he can't forgive himself for having failed. His guilt over the incident when he broke his hand, trying to rescue his nephew who falls through the ice, are almost like hallucinations that occur while boxing, where the story begins, ends and offers its only salvation: "I'm torquing my shoulder, throwing everything I've got into it, kitchen-sinking the bastard, and, for a brillant splitsecond in the centre of that darkening ring, we meet."
There are eight stories in Rust and Bone, and their titles define their themes: A Mean Utility, The Rifleman, Rocket Ride, On Sleepless Roads, Friction, An Apprentice's Guide to Modern Magic and the especially aptly titled Life in the Flesh.
The ride in Rocket Ride is when an orca trainer gets his leg bitten off by the supposedly tame killer whale he is putting on a show with. Davidson is good on broken bones. "Nishka's mouth opens. My left leg slips inside. Thigh raked down a row of teeth, shredding the wetsuit. Rocketing upward, faster now. My crotch smashes the crook of her mouth and something goes snap." What has snapped from the "immense pressure" is the trainer's tibia below the hip. He loses his leg, and nearly all of his psychic composure, if not sanity. Yet Davidson plays on this primordial force to come to a moving resolution: "Nishka's dorsal fin dips below the surface. Give yourself over to the current, its power and possibilities. A locking sensation, all things in balance."
Life in the Flesh is another powerful story, although so macho as to seem surreal. The narrator, who is the most sensitive person in the piece, begins his tale: "Two months shy of my twenty-eighth birthday I beat Johnny 'The Kid' Starkley to death in Tupelo, Mississippi." The story takes place far from the United States, however, in Thailand, and concerns brutal Thai boxing, involving kicks as well as punches. The narrator is robbed by a protg he trains, but like all of Davidson's characters, he is reconciled to it.
All of Davidson's stories of fighters, sex addicts, a policewoman who accidentally shoots a child and "fighting dogs" present a world without obvious hope. Yet they are all so carefully crafted that the prose itself offers some kind of redemption. Sometimes so tough as to be volcanically sentimental, unreal, sometimes acutely accurate and tender, they represent a powerful debut.
M. T. Kelly's novel, Save Me, Joe Louis, deals with, among other things, boxing.
Craig Davidson on 10.01.05 @ 10:17 PM EST [link]
|
