Craig Davidson

Saturday, December 24th

NT Times Review: Christmas Comes Early...

…although if this review is any indication of the sort of yuletide gifts I shall receive this season, I suppose I can expect to find a pile of shit in my stocking.

I had never received a scathing review up until now. A few had been kind, maybe a few TOO kind, but most had a little praise and a little criticism. I hesitate to call this a hatchet job, because I’ve always felt that term is extended towards books by well known writers; I always thought critics sort of held them in escrow for when a writer reached a level of success sufficient to merit or weather one. Plus I thought hatchet jobs were also extended towards works or writers a particular critic had it in for. As I am by no means an established name (and with a few more reviews like this, the possibility of becoming one seems remote) and I do not think I’ve done any personal injury to the reviewer, Lizzie Skurnick, so I don’t think the term hatchet job applies here. It’s just a very, very bad review. That it is my first US notice in the most influential book review perhaps in the world doesn’t make the review itself any worse---but running naked through in an empty field is a lot less embarrassing than running naked through a packed stadium, if that makes any sense at all. Or a bomb detonating in an empty field is a lot less harmful than that same bomb detonating in a stadium.

Anyway, what can you say? Once you’ve written a book it’s not yours anymore, it’s out there in the world and subject to anyone’s interpretation. I have no real problem with being hammered---I mean, it never feels nice, but it seems part and parcel of the deal. And Skurnick makes some valid points: maybe there IS too much gore, maybe the medical terminology IS a little thick, maybe my characters DO sound a little too educated for the lots I’ve given them. But I guess I’m not so keen on the general snarky tone in which it’s all delivered.

I’ve only read the review once (it’s sort of like a huge gaping wound in your gut: you don’t really want to pull the bandages off and look at it), but it starts by lumping me in with the “macho guy writers” pack, which is fair, then makes some back-biting remark involving the New Orleans hurricane. Then the review proper. Then some back-handed remark which can’t even really be considered faint praise, if my memory serves. Something like I'll be "on my way" if I take her advice. Maybe I’m wrong, or being unfair; I don’t plan to read the review again, so perhaps I’ll never know.

Do I feel as though I got a totally fair shake? Well, no. I can’t say she misread it, but I can’t say she read it particularly compassionately, either. But I don’t suppose it’s her job to. I do sort of wonder why you’d get the claws out for a first-time writer. It’s not like I expect to be handled with kid gloves, but if you’ve got utterly nothing good to say…well, what’s the use? A quick internet search brought me to Lizzie’s review page, and I read the first review I saw, of Ellis’ LUNAR PARK, which she killed. But Ellis can deal with it by now---I mean, not Ellis personally, Ellis might be pissed, but his books will do well regardless of the critical attention. But someone like me…well, I guess it’s yet to be seen whether a really bad review in the NY Times is preferable to no review at all. Only time will tell. And in Lizzie’s favor, I’m sure she’s given very good reviews to first books she felt merited them.

Maybe it’s another rite of passage. It helps to think of these things as “rites of passage.” When no people show for a reading, it’s a rite of passage. When you get a shit review, it’s a rite of passage. The rite of passage scenario presupposes a time, somewhere in the future, when I have some stability and success and can look back upon these early trials with a bit of wry humour. This is much better than the alternative---the “this is all you’ll ever have to show for it” scenario.

I’m closing comments to this, as I get the feeling the sort it might inspire: either nasty words for the reviewer, or sympathetic ones for me, neither of which I want. Just read the review, if you’d like, and we’ll leave it at that. I’m not the first writer to suffer a poor review, and it won’t stop me. Quite honestly, it fuels me. I’ve made a career---as short and ephemeral as it may be---out of of taking people’s underestimations and dismissals of me, using them to fuel my fire, and later spitting it back in their faces. Lizzie Skulnick became the latest, but not nearly the biggest, log on that fire.

Merry Christmas, everyone! (even Lizzie!)

All best, Craig.

Craig Davidson on 12.24.05 @ 02:28 PM EST [more..]

Tuesday, December 20th

Best and Worst of 2005

Hi All,

Well, it’s that time of year when everyone assembles their Best Of/Worst of lists. Music, flicks, books, etc. So I figured, Hey, I’ve seen a lot of movies, read a lot of books, listened to music, etc. So here are some of my picks (but remember, I’m behind the times in a lot of things, so some of these are books and movies I’ve read or watched this year; they may not have come out this year).

BEST MOVIE:

CRASH. No contest here. Paul Haggis’s directorial debut, after writing the screenplay for MILLION DOLLAR BABY (last year’s best movie), was a brilliant film. Heartbreaking, intricate, a great cast including Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Terrence Howard (particularly outstanding), Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser (a small role, thankfully), and lots of other, “Hey, it’s that guy!” character actors like Peter Coyote. Also a great soundtrack. Limewire downloads: Bird York’s “Save Me” and Stereophonics “Maybe Tomorrow.”

DEAD ALIVE. One of Peter Jackson (KING KONG, LORD OF THE RINGS) earliest films. I’ve seen it before, but re-watched it this year. It holds up. Known as the goriest film ever made. And yet a surprisingly hilarious film. Plot, such as it is: a vile Sumatran Rat Monkey gets loose in a small New Zealand town. It bites the mother of the main character, and she slowly turns into a hideous bloated zombie. By the end, in the film’s ridiculous bloodbath finale, she’s 2 storeys tall, all sagging and maggot-eaten. Features the immortal line spoken by Father McGruder, the local Kung-Fu priest: “I kick ass for the LORD!” Check it out, if you’ve got the stomach.

WORST MOVIE:

THE FINAL STAR WARS. Saw this up at Banff. What a piece o’ shite. The whole Frankenstein’s monster thing at the end, when Darth Vader cries, “Noooooooo!” and all the test tubes and crap in the lab shatter. Oh, man, what an awful cash-grab that was. I think Ewoks have eaten George Lucas’s brain.

LUCAS, as his brain is being eaten by Wicket the Ewok: “Wicket, what are you doing? Wicket, please, not so rough! Wicket...oh god, Wicket! Oh lord in his merciful heavenly seat noooooooooooooooooo!”
Craig Davidson on 12.20.05 @ 04:38 PM EST [more..]

Tuesday, December 13th

Interview at The Danforth Review

Hi All,

Michael Bryson at TDR interviewed me recently. The interview is up at the site, if you want to check it out. Feel my wrath for the idiotic Flames fan! I have nothing against the rest of the Flames fans; only the idiots. Criteria: if you drove up and down 17th Ave, in Calgary, for two straight months during their remarkable playoff run, honking your horn like a jackass---you're an idiot. You're probably not just an idiotic fan, either: my bet is you're an idiotic human being, and should be sterilized for the health and advancement of the human race.

www.danforthreview.com/index.html

---Craig.
Craig Davidson on 12.13.05 @ 09:18 PM EST [link]

Sunday, December 11th

The Big Bag Full of Stinky Christmas Clothes

Hello All,

I have not yet done my Christmas shopping this year, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. While I’m not one of those crazy Christmas Eve shoppers, the ones frantically careening about the mall at 9 pm on Dec. 24th, picking through very picked-over pickings trying to find something for their loved ones and ending up with, oh I don’t know, a soiled Tickle Me Elmo that had somehow been shoved under a toystore shelf for 4 years and perhaps some sort of canned good with the label torn off.

No, I’m not that bad. But I am admittedly pretty bad. I usually wait until I get to wherever I’m spending Christmas—this year, Calgary—before heading out and picking up what I need. If I shopped earlier I would avoid the crowds—and as I get older and more hermit-like, I don’t really dig crowds—but then again, as the old saying goes, if my aunt had a dick she’d be my uncle. Which is to say, less abstractly, that I am somewhat set in my ways.

Also I enjoy playing out the little yuletide minuet me and my mother have enacted for years, wherein I come back for Christmas with a duffel bag of stinky clothes I’ve been saving up, drop it in the front hall, and wait for my mom to become so repulsed by the smell of them, the very there-ness of them, that, in a fit of pique, she cleans them for me.

Every year we do this, and every year she says, “Just go ahead and leave them. You’ll need clean clothes sooner or later, then you’ll have to clean them yourself.” In this she underestimates my sadist-like willingness to wear my dad’s clothes—I would end up wearing my dad’s mothballed old Hawaiian beachwear before I cleaned those clothes—while simultaneously overestimating her own resolve in letting those clothes sit and mildew. She’ll walk by them a few times, oh sure, but then she’ll start getting a little bit antic, a little frantic, then soon it’s like she’s walking past a steaming pile of dog turds, then a corpse, then she buckles and cleans them and promises never to do it again. A classic case of washer’s remorse.

I wouldn’t make it so hard on her, except that she puts up this tough front, challenges me to a Mexican standoff of sorts, then always caves. It’s really too much fun leaving them there and watching her squirm. It’s like she’s this raging alcoholic and I’ve left a beer on the counter: she’s going, “You can leave that there as long as you want, buster, I’m not drinking it, nosirree Bob and you can take that to the BANK!”

Five minutes later the beer’s gone.

Okay, so it’s changed a bit over the years. Now I’m so happy to have a washer and dryer that I don't have to shovel quarters into that I do it myself. Also, my dad’s beachwear has lost its charm (amusing aside: my dad, charmed that I sometimes steal/wear his clothes, is now always trying to offload them on me. There’s this old Stroh’s baseball shirt I wore for like 3 weeks in high school and now, over ten years later, he still mentions it: “Hey, how’d you like that Stroh’s shirt, buddy? Pretty snazzy, uh? Uh?” I always tell him, “If I like an item of your clothing, you’ll know, because the next time you go to wear it, it’ll be gone.”). Anyway, now I clean my own clothes 75% of the time. I keep that 25% in escrow for old times’ sake.

---Craig.
Craig Davidson on 12.11.05 @ 06:33 PM EST [link]

Sunday, December 4th

Random Acts of Vandalism

Hi All,

I thought that, in addition to my occassional posts about the beatings I've absorbed along the way in this topsy-turvy life of mine, I would also add a new twist: silly acts of vandalism me and my friends have committed over the years. Now I know a lot of you---hell, maybe MOST of you---might not be interested in hearing about these willful acts of destruction; perhaps you think me a kindhearted, evenminded sort and don't want to sully your beatific image of me. Well, that's all well and good; lord knows I'm a damned beatific bloke. But if you're not interested...well, all I can say is the world Wide Web is a sprawling behemoth of useless information, so I'm sure there's something else to interest you out there if tales of vandalism fail to light your fire---I know for a fact this site is fun for about 30 seconds: www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/tetka.html. Look at the poor lass fall over those wacky bubbles! Otherwise there's always porn.

Anyway. Why vandalism? I can't say I know for certain, other than to blame it on modern society, like I tend to blame everything on modern society---mainly because modern society can't argue with me, or fight back:

MODERN SOCIETY: Hey, Davidson, why are you hassling me? What have I ever done?

ME: Shut up Modern Society or so help me I'll wallop you!

MODERN SOCIETY: What is it? Is it the weight loss crazes? Those Segwey scooter things? The deadening sense of aimlessness and ennui?

ME: I said shut your gob!

Hohohohoho! Me having a conversation with Modern Society, how very postmodern. Eat your heart out, David Foster Wallace!

Anyway, I do think that since kids, adults, all of us, don't have to worry so much about the simple day-to-day act of survival, what with all those modern day soda fountains and pizzas with cheese-filled crusts and televisions with cheese-filled crusts and GPS navigation and mechanized cow milkers and cellular telephones with cheese-filled crusts and suchall, all the things that make our lives so manageable and effortless...well, as the saying goes, idle hands are the devil's workshop (or, as principal Seymour Skinner would say, "A curvy spine is the devil's rollercoaster," which really doesn't at all relate to my point). All I'm saying is that if I had to get up every morning as a kid and chop wood and get water from the well and milk the cows and protect myself against hungry wolves and raise barns and so forth I would have had no interest or energy left to head out at night and slash my neighbors' garbage bags---or loosen the bolts on my neighbor's horse-drawn carriage or lay Saran Wrap over my neighbor's outhouse toilet, as the case may have been in those days. But since I led the proverbial Life of Reilly and could eat as many Pop Tarts I wanted I was usually full of energy and on an nasty sugar high by the time the sun set.

{continued in MORE...}

Craig Davidson on 12.04.05 @ 09:13 PM EST [more..]

Thursday, December 1st

Random Update: Radio Review and Upcoming

Hi All,

Been a bit since I've updated, but lamentably not a lot happening at the moment. Novel off with editor, so waiting to see how I should go forward from there. A bit nerve-chafing, but I'm sure that's the case for nearly every writer.

Anyone who wants to hear RUST AND BONE get hammered on Minnesota college radio, go here and download the streaming audio:

http://www.mndaily.com/radiok

Too violent, too nasty, too bereft of hope. Well, as always, I can see people thinking that way. But certainly while I was writing, I wasn't under the impression I was writing hopeless stories. In fact, I tried really hard to leave the reader with an element of hope: dirty hope, maybe, a little sullied, but still some sort of hope. I always thought that if you followed the characters off the last page of each story, if you let your imagination take those characters on with their lives, there would at least be a few that you might see things working out for them. But again, maybe not. In the end, it isn't about what I tried to do, but what every reader thinks of the result. And I think it's a good review, in that it's an honest interpretation of the book, from one reader's perspective.

Got word today from WW Norton, my US publisher, that RUST AND BONE will be reviewed in the NY Times Book Review on Dec. 25th. This is sort of the biggest US review you can get---well, I guess a big splashy cover piece in the NY Times would TECHNICALLY be the biggest you could get, but the fact I managed to squeak my ass in there somehow is still great. Haven't been that many US reviews, so this was good news. Christmas day is a bit of an odd time to get a review, seeing as I don't get to capitalize on the holiday rush, but still, maybe people wil dash out on boxing day with their Barnes and Noble gift certificates.

Other than that, not much to report. Now that the novel is done in draft form, I'm starting to work on other ideas, working up proposals, etc. I've got two: one non-fiction, one fiction. After the collection and the really rough-and-tumble, gross and violent novel, I am thinking about more of an easygoing vibe for the next novel. Hopefully a Nick Horny-esque vibe, if I can manage to keep the characters from having twisted sex with one another and/or punching each other in their faces. It will be tough, I will have to show restraint and keep things on an even keel, but I think I can manage.

Will update shortly with some more highschool memories or random vandalism committed when I was young and headstrong and a big fat jerk.

All best, Craig.
Craig Davidson on 12.01.05 @ 01:45 PM EST [link]