I love Canada. Perhaps it's because I just returned from it with a ton of books for CHEAP, and because I have great friends there, and a whole bunch of other things, but right now I love Canada for Clara Callan. It was a great read, with lesbian characters at the forefront, the lesbian character of note, Evelyn, talking openly in letters about her relationships with the recipients being totally okay with it(and the book takes place in the mid-1930s!). And, Evelyn is cool, she's a writer for radio shows and later film who dispenses advice with a hefty dose of sarcasm and wit. First I thought Canada was cool because I lived there, and then I thought it was cool because Marian Engel's The Bear won the GG in 1976 and it was a novel about a woman's sexual experience with a real wild bear. The Pulitzers are usually so much more demure, and though they offer up an American experience of sorts, it's more mainstream, I find. Canadians seem to push the envelope a little more. Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man is another example of a novel that was a little off-the-map that won. I mean seriously, in Kroetsch's The Seed Catalogue, a book of poetry written around the same time, he writes about fucking a pumpkin...Though Kroetsch is one of Canada's most famous writers, he is far from mainstream...but, I digress. Clara Callan. I got it for a present from Kate and Jean back when I think they were still in Toronto and I was still in culinary school. Kate raved about it, but I hadn't gotten a chance to read it until now...It was so beautifully done, reminding me in terms of its readability of Sandra Gulland's Josephine B. series. Wright's words are fabulous, and his title character reminded me a lot of myself. I liked how the title character was a big reader and into music, and I like how the author situated the characters in the literature and popular culture of the time...talking about the Andy Hardy movies, Gone with the Wind premiering both as a book and movie, the building of the radio business and its prominence in everyday life. I don't have any quotes that I liked because all the prose was so great(and because the one page I dog-eared I can't find now, the dog ear must not have held...)...I also must say though, that I'm surprised that I was able to finish this whilst on my "vacation," during which I also watched 4 movies in the theater! It helped that Chris made me eat dinner in his restaurant AND WAIT FOR HIM FOR ALMOST 4 HOURS, so I managed to plow through this 415 page tome then and finished it between two 1 1/2 hour(3 hours total) ferry rides. I've read a few more of the GG's than the Pulitzer, but I think I like the Canadian choices better overall. Though I still haven't read The Wars, The Tin Flute, and Anil's Ghost...so I may be whistling a different tune soon. I totally fell off the bandwagon today especially with the book purchasing, picking up 8 or 9(I lost count), but all but one have either won a Pulitzer or Governor General(the overwhelming # GG's that my library doesn't even have)so...you know, if I read only 7 more specific books from the GG list, I will have read everything that's won the GG in Canada from present day through 1983(that's Keren's birth year!!)...I still have a lot more to go, though...hmmm...GG's 25, Pulitzers 22...

I have to say it. Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies is one of, if not the best short story collection that I've ever read. Normally I'm not a big fan of short stories and with Keren gone so far away for the week I was looking for some kind of escape reading...I wasn't sure about Lahiri's collection because from the outset it didn't appear to be something that I would be excited about(Indians living both in their home country and as expatriates in the states), but since it won the Pulitzer in 2000, it was necessary reading for me. Boy, was I surprised! It was fucking fabulous. All of the stories were so diverse and each one(only at most like 25 pages)felt like its own well-developed novel. Unlike other entries this one will be pretty short regarding the book, only because I'm almost speechless regarding it. The stories were ALL good, there wasn't one in particular that I liked more than the others. What characters, what descriptions! And what a nice escape during a really busy past few days! As of today I am now officially done at the hell job! And, I'm officially on the payroll and a card-carrying team member of Whole Foods! WHHHHHOOOOO HOOOOOOO! And I'm going to go to Canada and see some people!!!!WHHHHHHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!! 24 GGs, 22 Pulitzers...

I just finished(yesterday, that is), Winifred Bambrick's Continental Revue, which won the GG in 1946, only a year after the war at the onset of which the book takes place. (Wow, grammar anyone?) Anyway, this book has all kinds of interesting things surrounding it which I feel compelled to document in case this "project" of mine ever becomes bigger than me being a thorn in the library's side...(they tell me that they find it fascinating, yeah, at least someone does;)). First, I got an edition that was actually published as Continental Revue, which is how it was published in Canada and other places than the US. There is a US edition of the book called Keller's Continental Revue...which is kind of like that whole Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone deal. But, that's not the end of the somewhat interesting/boring sidenotes to this book. Other notes to remember: this book I received via interlibrary loan, and it came from the furthest away(the book that claimed this title before Laura Salverson's The Dark Weaver, which traveled all the way from Kent, Ohio). Revue came from the University of Pennsylvania library(ironic since I got in there, visited, and chose McGill over it); it was a first edition, and the last person to check it out besides me was someone in 1972! It has been in STORAGE all this time. It's really kind of neat to think that I have the ability to get a book out of storage just for my not always so little of a project.:) Everyone at work et al has told me that I have officially achieved higher dork status than before due to my excitement over the distance this book traveled and the fact that I'm probably going to be one of the only people in this vast country to read this novel this year and possibly the only one to have read it in decades...I don't understand why(the dorkiness, yes, I totally am and I'm even proud of it:)), and it brings up this debate that I've been wrestling with in my head for a long time, one that seems especially relevant given my project. Who decides what books remain in a literary canon? What is the criteria? I ask because due to my interest in these prize winners, I've read both really boring books and really interesting ones. There are some really good and interesting ones that are either out-of-print or really hard to find, and there are some really boring ones that seem to be ubiquitous. I guess, my question is, what makes a book worthy according to the population? And is it the literary population(e.g., people who read voluminously) or is it the general population? There are a few authors that I've read that I scratch my head and say "This person is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of American/Canadian lit...Why?" Hemingway would be a good example of that. He's okay, and I've certainly tried reading him(I finished The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast, and have been subjected to a few short stories), but I don't see what all of the fuss is about. Catcher in the Rye is another fine example of a book that leaves me going, "why is this significant?" It's a decent novel, don't get me wrong, but...My mom once said that she thinks it has something to do with the times, which of course is something I've also heard from college professors...And there are some books that withstand that aspect(the miserableness of the rich in The Great Gatsby to me is a prime example of a situation that though relevant to the time period in which it was written is also particularly salient to any time)...I also must admit that there are books that I absolutely adore that no one else seems to, so maybe we can't just allow my opinion to count for EVERYTHING, (though it should;)) however I know I'm not the only one who dislikes strongly the overly masculine long-winded Heart of Darkness(I did see the point of it, sort of). Okay, I should stop now...I know I'm well-read and pretty democratic about how I approach literature, and I guess that's why there's other prizes out there(the more recent, more pushing the envelope-if you can do that with a national prize-Giller prize comes to mind) to read and be aware of...I can also choose to say FUCK the prizes! But, I've already started, so...All right, Winifred Bambrick and The Continental Revue. Winifred Bambrick was cool, I looked her up while I was trying to hunt down the book. She was a professional harpist who amongst other things, traveled playing for a revue/circus for a few years. Her GG winning novel was, it has been assumed, based at least slightly upon that experience. It was a pretty good book(kind of scary to read because the pages were so freakin' thin), about a traveling circus troupe of around 300 people from all different nationalities, living their lives and performing in pre-WW2 Europe. The book was published in 1946, so it was written when the war was either going on or just completed...and is interesting because it starts with events in 1938 and works forward through until 1940. When this book was published everything was still so fresh. In that regard, it reminds me of Swiss Sonata, which wrote about pre-war events whilst the war was going on. Revue and Sonata were both Canadian award winners, remember. The year that Sonata won (1938), in the States The Late George Apley won, a book about a Bostonian man. The year that Revue won(1946), the Pulitzer committee didn't even give out a prize for fiction...The GG's seem to carry about a little bit of political-ness, and are directed towards that at times. I think that the Pulitzer is highly AMERICAN and it's definitely about an AMERICAN experience, though it definitely favors the white male experience. I believe less than 1/3 of the winners of the Pulitzer are women. The GG's are slightly more women-focused, having 1/3 of the prizes won be by women, however interestingly enough, the GG's have a tendency to award to the same people numerous prizes(Margaret Laurence 2, Gabrielle Roy 2, Alice Munro 3), so I'm not really sure what that says. Okay...needing to wrap this up. Continental Revue took me a really long time to read for me(like over 2 weeks) because of the looking/interviewing for a new job...Auf weidersehen to the crappy one! Though it wasn't because it wasn't good, it wasn't that gripping either, but oh well...Bambrick did a bit of a microcosm of the world with her novel and the fact that there were all kinds of people living in a fantasy world about the upcoming war at that time(not only circus performers, pretty much all of planet Earth)becomes apparent as well. I can't say I was particularly drawn to any of the characters, but they did remind me of types of people that I know...All the acts were interesting too, and to think that at that time it was actually affordable for the everyman to see a show like that(Cirque du Soleil is really pricey)definitely makes one a teensy bit nostalgic. And, the other thing that makes one wistful is that the whole world lost its innocence then(even more than the first war), and we have never been the same as a society since, to be reminded of that through a myriad of circus performers, people who make a living out of creating a show, was at the very least ironic. One quote I particularly liked was a comment made by one of the most "I'm living in la-la land" performers, Mario. He says "'Life is like the weather. It cannot all be nice' (Bambrick 294)." And Bambrick's last line of the novel is good too..."One show is ended, but another is always beginning" (Bambrick 351). Hmmmmmm.....GGs 24, Pulitzers 21...

23 GG's(out of 69), 21 Pulitzers(out of 80)...44/149...I'm approximately 1/3 of the way there.:)