The Villanelle

vil·la·nelle \ˌvi-lə-ˈnel\
noun
: a chiefly French verse form running on two rhymes and consisting typically of five tercets and a quatrain in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain

French, from Italian villanella
First Known Use: 1877{1}

- Merriam-Webster

Preface

No this is not a book, but it is pretty darn lengthy, so I thought I’d add a little preface in case it was late and you wanted to skip past the boring bits and get on down to the meat and potatoes of the thing. What follows is an overview of the origins and development of the villanelle form, followed by a section detailing the themes or motifs that seem to predominate in this form, followed by a short section on the structure of, and how to write a villanelle, and finally examples of the form from the late sixteenth century to the modern day.

But before we begin, a few words are in order, beginning with a question – What the heck is a villanelle?

The villanelle form is a bit of a vagabond, not so much an emigrant, but an immigrant, an immigrant akin to those who, seeking the American Dream, arrived at Ellis Island as ‘Skis, ‘Bergs, and ‘Steins, and left as Smiths or Johnsons. If you want a more contemporary, to the minute analogy, the villanelle is like Don Draper from Mad Men, a country rube of the humblest origins that found a new life in a new place with a new identity.

In practice, the villanelle is not a form of French poetry – it is exclusively an English form. This may sound odd, and seem to contradict what you are about to read, but stick with me, and in short order you will see what I mean.

Origins

It is believed that the French villanelle stems from the Italian villanella, and is related to the Spanish villancico, both of which originated prior to the sixteenth century. Derived from the latin words referring to country and house, a villanella (or villancico) was basically a country tune sung by illiterate peasants, usually accompanied by a dance of some sort.

Originally, there was no rhyme or reason (shout out!) to the villanelle, but there was a refrain. As Amanda French states,

to title a poem "Villanelle" would have been something akin to titling a poem "Blues" today. Structurally, the villanella had no rule other than that it usually had a refrain, which was-- as in the popular song forms of any era--a single refrain, not an alternating one. The terms "villanella" and "villanelle" referred to musical distinctions, not verbal distinctions; they were by no means set poetic forms, as the sonnet then was, and even as the triolet and the rondeau were. (21)

Yet somehow, along the way, the villanelle went from being the plaything of uneducated peasants, a staple of the rich oral tradition of the unlettered masses of France, to being something that conferred prestige and respect upon the highly educated elite who practiced this form on the pages of literary journals throughout the English world.

So how did this from get from A to B and only end up including A and B? (Sorry…poetry joke!)

Contrary to what Merriam-Webster indicates {2} the villanelle is over a half a millennium old. But for some reason, the form in its current iteration is believed to be nearly the same age – as if the villanelle was born fully grown, springing from the forehead of Zeus. But the truth is a little different.

That idea that the fixed form villanelle is close to half a millennium old, or older, is actually the result of an editorial decision that ended up changing the known history of the form for centuries to come. In the mid eighteenth century, the French lexicographer Pierre-Charles Berthelin, who had become the editor of the Rhyming Dictionary (Dictionnaire de rimes), got ambitious and wanted to beef up the dictionary by a significant amount, eventually adding about a hundred pages or so by including expanded definitions and exemplars of the different forms of poetry. It’s the sort of thing ambitious editors anywhere might do, and it’s where history, or at least the history of the villanelle, changed

Prior to Berthelin, the villanelle was widely known as the stuff of backwoods rubes. According to Julie Kane, writing in Modern Language Quarterly,

[Pierre] Richelet’s Dictionnaire françois (1680), the first comprehensive French-language dictionary (commissioned by the Académie Française), defines villanelle as a spontaneously improvised peasant song, rather than a fixed and written poetic form. (Kane, 433)

Richelet’s definition remained the definition of the villanelle for some time to come. When Richlet later took a rhyming dictionary created by Frémont d’Ablancourt (Nouveau dictionnaire de rimes, corrigé, 1648) and created his own rhyming dictionary (Dictionnaire de rimes, 1692), the definition he used for the villanelle was roughly the same one he’d used for the Dictionnaire fraincois in 1680 - Villanelle, vieux poëte français—sorte de danse et de poésie, which means, roughly, a kind dance and poetry.

But in 1751, when Berthelin’s edition of the Dictionnaire francois was hot off the press, the definition of the villanelle had changed. More than just changed, it had been transformed. This is how Berthelin defined the villanelle -

The villanelle is a shepherd’s song. Here is one from Jean Passerat…This little poem is divided into tercets, all containing two rhymes on elle and on oi, and the same two appear together at the end, making a quatrain instead of a tercet. One also finds villanelles with stanzas of six lines. (Kane, 434)

Nothing in this definition refers to spontaneity, lack of structure, or even dance. There is a nod to the rural origins of the form as a “shepherd’s song”, but other than that it appears to be a fixed poetic form. The entry even notes an exemplar of the form, Jean Passerat’s “J’ay perdu ma tourterelle”.

So what happened? Did the form evolve and transform between 1692 and 1751? Did a revolutionary new school of poets come along, taking the villanelle out of the country and into the halls of high society, as Percy Grainger did for the folk songs of the English countryside in the early 20th Century? Nope, nothing of the sort. Instead, what happened, or is believed to have happened (meaning that until a working time machine can be built, it can’t be proven) is that Berthelin, well, got lazy.

The ‘exemplar’ of the villanelle form that Berthelin chose, Passerat’s “J’ay perdu,” was actually the only villanelle in existence with that specific form. As Amanda French writes,

…only a single poet of the Renaissance wrote a villanelle by that definition, and he wrote only one. Jean Passerat's "Villanelle," also called "J'ay perdu ma tourterelle" (probably written in 1574), has come to represent a nonexistent tradition of which it is the sole example. (French, 17)

It was a very famous and well known villanelle at the time, which is probably why Berthelin had heard about it, but it was also absolutely 100% sui generis. Like a fingerprint, or your DNA, it was one of a kind. There were scores and scores of lesser known, published villanelles in existence, but only Passerat’s had that specific form.

What is believed to have happened, and this is just pure supposition, but it makes sense in a real, human, Occam’s Razor sort of way, is that by the time Berthelin got down to ‘V’ in his reimagining of the Dictionnaire de rimes, he was getting anxious to finish. “J’ay perdu” was a well-known villanelle, and had been held up by others as an excellent villanelle, so it seemed to make for a good exemplar. Berthelin popped the poem in, and did a basic deconstruction of the form. Since the villanelle form was not being widely practiced in the cities and high society salons of the time, who was to say that Berthelin was wrong? Nobody. And nobody did, for a good, long time.

As Julie Kane notes, “[d]espite Berthelin’s audacity in having silently fixed the form of the villanelle in that year, however, no poet seems to have noticed for almost a century.” (440) In fact, it wasn’t until 1845 that Passerat’s form was ever used again, and then it was used in parody, with Théodore de Banville simply copying the poem “J’ay perdu” wholesale and adding two tercets to the length. By 1867, the total number of Passeratian villanelles totaled four – the two already mentioned, along with another parody by Banville and an attempt at the form by a friend of Banville’s, Philoxène Boyer.

Up to that point, the villanelle as described by Berthelin was not what you’d call a widely practiced form. But then something happened that changed everything.

In 1872, Théodore de Banville included a definition of the fixed form villanelle in his treatise on French poetry - Petit traité de poésie française. Shortly after that, like a twenty-first century internet meme, word of the villanelle began to spread far and wide - and was suddenly being practiced by known and noted writers in France, England, and America. From then on, the Passeratian fixed form villanelle went from being a misconception born of a mistake, to being something known, and something real.

In the first decade following the publication of Banville’s 1872 treatise, the French poets Maurice Rollinat, Joseph Boulmier, and Leconte de Lisle; the British poets Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, John Payne, Emily Pfeiffer, Oscar Wilde, and Andrew Lang; and the American poet James Whitcomb Riley all published original villanelles. The first anthology of fixed-form poems, Gleeson White’s Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, &c. Selected (1887) {3}, contained an astonishing thirty-two English-language villanelles by nineteen poets. (Kane, 442)

At first glance, thirty-two does not seem like an overlarge number, but the Gleeson White anthology was the Norton Anthology of its time. That is, it represented the best of the best of English fixed-form poetry, and at that time fixed-form poetry was pretty much the only game in town. This is what makes the selection of thirty-two examples of the form so remarkable. Will the next edition of Norton Anthology of English Literature include a few dozen notable blog posts in amongst the finest short stories and essays in the English canon? It’s possible, and if it happens, it would be an indicator of how prominent the form has become.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, the villanelle assumed its place on the list of notable English poetic forms, and is still in use in the twenty-first century.

Oh, wait, did I just say the villanelle is an English poetic form? That probably doesn’t make all that much sense, considering the history that has just been outlined has been pretty much all France, all the time. But there it is, nonetheless. The villanelle is an English poetic form. Full stop. Why?

After the publication of the Gleeson White anthology, the villanelle, or at least the prescribed form outlined in the Dictionnaire de rimes pretty much faded from existence in the French literary world, while at the same time, exploded in popularity in the English literary world. Today, were you to canvas professors of modern French poetry, they would be hard pressed to come up with even a single well known example of the form in French.

As for the contemporary villanelle in French, it is not to be found: not in Claude Roy and Michel Décaudin's Anthologie De La Poésie Française Du XXe Siècle (2000); not in Alain Bosquet's Anthologie De La Poésie Française Contemporaine: Les Trente Dernières Années (1994), not in Henri Deluy's Poésie En France, 1983-1988: Une Anthologie Critique (1989). (French, 15)

Indeed, as French contends,

it does seem to be the case that the twentieth-century French villanelle is conspicuously absent—it is certainly nowhere near as thriving as it is in English. Dr. Michael Bishop of the University of Dalhousie, a respected and prolific scholar of contemporary French poetry, is at best dubious as to the whereabouts of any contemporary Francophone villanelle…No professor of Anglophone poetry would need to make such a modest reply…(15)

The 19 line, six stanza structure of the villanelle, the one English poets love and know so well, is really only used in the English language. The real villanelle, the country tune of peasants and farmers may very well still be alive and well, thriving in the countryside of France, Italy, and Spain, but that villanelle is not this villanelle, the fixed form English poem.

Common Themes and Motifs

What originally drew me to the villanelle was the gravitas in the form. My impression, I realize now, was probably entirely due to the fact that my first encounter with the form was through Dylan Thomas’ famous villanelle, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Thomas had written the poem as a response to his father’s terminal illness, and the emotional gravity of the situation is woven in every line.{4} At the time I first read it, however, I did not know the story behind the poem, and instead read it as a broader, more historical or political commentary. It seemed, to me, to be a poem that commented on civilization, and on the perceived inevitability of the decline and fall of all societies. Inspired by “Do not go gentle,” I wrote a villanelle of my own, though in my ignorance, and not fully grasping the scheme and technical details of the form, ended up writing a somewhat different villanelle, which my professor at the time generously (and quite delicately) referred to as an “O’Hearnian” villanelle.

Dawn alights upon the silent morning
Breathing relief at sight of night’s retreat
In my ear I hear the whispered warning

Contradicting disastrous prediction
The day now begins with little friction
A blackened scythe swings forth in angry flight
Then pausing only with the halt of night
Dawn alights upon the silent morning

The Lord I thank with my bellowed laughter
For the great and joyous gift of after
Looking seeing naught that’s inauspicious
Ignoring the signs as superstitious
In my ear I hear the whispered warning

Withhold your joy for this tenuous peace
For ‘tis only the shortest briefest lease
Over the horizon something still awaits
Acting in the stead of the three dead fates
Dawn alights upon the silent morning

We had thought to abide afar and hide
At faults divide we stood with bitter pride
Death and Famine and Plague and Pestilence
Have offered us too many precedents
In my ear I hear the whispered warning

Post a watch e’en though the day is bright
Prepare in advance for the coming fight
For the stout of heart there can be no sleep
Or the cost unknown we shall surely reap
Dawn alights upon the silent morning
In my ear I hear the whispered warning

For some reason (don’t ask me, I can’t fathom what I might have been thinking at the time), I thought a villanelle consisted of an opening tercet, followed by four cinquains made up of sets of rhyming couplets with an alternating refrain, and concluding with a sestet that included both refrains as the final couplet. In a strict, traditional sense as defined by Amanda French, I was probably fine in describing my poem as a villanelle since I did have a refrain (albeit an alternating one), but in terms of the commonly accepted fixed form – I was a bit off.

After learning, to my disappointment, that my villanelle was not actually a villanelle, I began looking at other, real villanelles in order to correct my lack of education about the form. Aside from learning about the proper scheme, what I found was pretty much what Ronald McFarland attests (and in a much more eloquent manner than I) in his treatise on villanelles, "The Villanelle: The Evolution of a Poetic Form." It turns out that villanelles really weren’t all that serious after all.

When English and American poets first began playing with the form in the late nineteenth century, it was more for novelty, as a way to add some exotic flair to their work. And, as all novelties generally are, it was considered to be somewhat unserious. The villanelle of the late nineteenth century was held in about the same esteem as the limerick is today – fun to write, but not really substantial.

The English poets…poems followed the point of view and tone implied by the adjectives which are prominent in [Gosse’s] comments on the villanelle: precious, delicate, dainty. "It requires a peculiar mood and moment" to compose a villanelle…and for many writers that mood and moment involved some form of nostalgia for the Golden Age (often pastoral), for past love, or for passing time (fin de siecle, as often as not). Too often, as subsequent examples will demonstrate, the result is a sort of insipid pathos, a sentimentality which is not capable of being poignant, however it may try. (McFarland, 128)

But something changed in the mid to late twentieth century. All of a sudden, villanelles began to exhibit a different mood and tone – instead of being precious, delicate, and dainty, they were far more serious, respectable, even.

I would argue that theme does not inhere in form, as the mid-century modernists proved by their complete erasure of the villanelle's previous "trifling" reputation.…After Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night," the villanelle was firmly proved respectable. (French, 180)

What happened was, on much a larger scale, pretty much similar to what happened when I tried to write my first villanelle – the mid-century modernists didn’t really know all that much about the form, and what little they did know did not predispose them to think of the form as trifling, which allowed them to take the form more seriously, the result of which led to a reinvented, re-imagined poetic form that could finally stand toe to toe with the august sonnet in the annals of English poetry.

The Structure of, and Writing of, Villanelles

The basic, fixed form villanelles is 19 lines long, and the lines “can be iambic trimeter, tetrameter, or pentameter (or, I suppose, any meter a poet can sutain).” (Adams, 93) The scheme used is A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2.

That said, you might have noted that Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle” does not actually follow a strict metre, which is a characteristic of many modern villanelles. Generally speaking, while modern villanelles might drop the use of metre, they usually attempt to keep the length of line consistent (Though a good many more recent poets seem to enjoy flouting this convention). This is just supposition, but it may be that the strict use of metre may have been part of the reason that nineteenth century poets felt villanelles lacked gravitas.

Villanelles maintain a very fixed stanzaic structure, comprised of four tercets followed by a quatrain. It is possible to add additional stanzas, which many poets have done in the past, but generally those additions follow the structure set out by the scheme, with alternating refrains in successive stanzas.

As for writing a villanelle, it is actually not that difficult. Part of the attraction of the form for the mid-century modernists was the perceved technical difficulty of the form, but as their efforts, and the subsequent efforts of many other poets have demonstrated, writing a villanelle is only difficult by reputation, not in reality.

The first thing to do when writing a villanelle is to come up with the couplet that forms the alternating refrain. The refrain is the both the heart and the backbone of the form.

While it would be unfair to judge any villanelle solely by its concluding lines, Mary J. J. Wrinn is probably correct in advising that the poet must first plan the couplet which will end the poem and will provide the refrain lines. One line, as she notes, "should grow out of the other." If the couplet does not have some peculiar force or appeal, the poem will likely fail. (McFarland, 129)

Once you have written a refrain you are satisfied with, it becomes a simple matter of scaffolding the poem, of basically filling out the lines marked A1 and A2. This takes care of 8 of the 19 lines of the poem. From that point on the poet’s job is to flesh out the story of the poem through the remaining 11 lines as the refrain weaves in and out.

Of course this paint by numbers approach may appear simplistic, but by using it, any apprehensions regarding the difficulty of the form can be shown to be baseless, allowing the poet to both feel free to use the fixed form, and, soon enough, to play with it.

Examples of Villanelles

The one that started it all – Passerat’s “J’ay perdu ma Tourterelle”

J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle:
Est-ce point celle que j'oy?
Je veus aller aprés elle.

Tu regretes ta femelle,
Helas! aussi fai-je moy,
J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle.

Si ton Amour est fidelle,
Aussi est ferme ma foy,
Je veus aller aprés elle.

Ta plainte se renouvelle;
Tousjours plaindre je me doy:
J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle.

En ne voyant plus la belle
Plus rien de beau je ne voy:
Je veus aller aprés elle.

Mort, que tant de fois j'appelle,
Pren ce qui se donne à toy:
J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle,
Je veus aller aprés elle.

The same poem, translated by Amanda French.

I have lost my turtledove:
Isn't that her gentle coo?
I will go and find my love.

Here you mourn your mated love;
Oh, God—I am mourning too:
I have lost my turtledove.

If you trust your faithful dove,
Trust my faith is just as true;
I will go and find my love.

Plaintively you speak your love;
All my speech is turned into
"I have lost my turtledove."

Such a beauty was my dove,
Other beauties will not do;
I will go and find my love.

Death, again entreated of,
Take one who is offered you:
I have lost my turtledove;
I will go and find my love.

A nineteenth century example, Oscar Wilde’s “Theocritus”

O Singer of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in state;
O Singer of Persephone!

Simaetha calls on Hecate
And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Still by the light and laughing sea
Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;
O Singer of Persephone!

And still in boyish rivalry
Young Daphnis challenges his mate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,
For thee the jocund shepherds wait;
O Singer of Persephone!
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Some notable mid-twentieth century modernist examples. First, Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking”

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go

Next up is Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song”

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

And the last mid-twentieth century modernist example, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Now for some twenty-first century villanelles. First, Peter Cooley’s “Villanelle”

What do we take with us when we go?
I'm no John the Baptist: I love my stuff like you.
We won't have time to make a list, you know.

My favorite art tie: Self-Portrait by Van Gogh,
the spear I bought in Paris at twenty-two.
What do we take with us when we go?

Last year my parents died: I had to throw
away most of their seventy years together. Finally, I knew:
We won't have time to make a list, you know.

I lugged home family books I'll hate to read: Longfellow,
Whittier, all of Thompson's The Seasons to get through.
What do we take with us when we go?

My daughters married, moved to New York, Chicago.
They left their childhoods with parents they outgrew.
We won't have time to make a list, you know.

Oh, Love, your body, I have loved it so!
It will leave me like my own. Will you love mine risen, too?
What do we take with us when we go?
We won't have time to make a list, you know.

Next up, is Chad Parmenter’s “A Villanelle to Burn”

I used to light my sheets on fire
at night, to dare my tears to grow
and put it out before I burned.

But crying left these smoking scars.
By pouring water on the coals
I'd used to light my sheets on fire

I made a hissing steam, a storm
that dried the fire and tried to boil
but put it out before I burned.

No burns on me. What power here.
To test it, and to kill the cold
inside, I lit my sheets on fire

a final time. By nursing hurt,
we signal in the miracles.
So put me out before I burn.

They're burning down to fur. Come here
now, God, you crying ghost, before
the I that lit my sheets on fire
is put out, before your eye burns.

Now for Elisavietta Ritchie’s “How to Write a Villanelle”

If you would write a villanelle
Choose two of your most brilliant lines,
Ones you should have jettisoned.

Repeat them till you're bored
And so's your reader if he's stuck
This far through your villanelle.

Do likewise if you find a perfect rhyme.
Have no illusions that you are the first:
Whoever was, he should have jettisoned

All his favorite rhymes and lines.
So should you. Try fancy foreign forms
If you would write a villanelle.

As with new lovers: you repeat a line
Till you are bored and so is he or she,
That line you should have jettisoned,

For soon you may suspect that he's or she's
A villain/villainess who does not care
if you would write a villanelle.
This one you should have jettisoned.

And finally, making fun of the whole form, and taking a shot at Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”, is Campbell McGrath’s “Villanelle”

Bouncing along like a punch-drunk bell,
its Provencal shoes too tight for English feet,
the villanelle is a form from hell.

Balletic as a tapir, strong as a gazelle,
strict rhyme and formal meter keep a beat
as tiresome as a punch-drunk bell

hop talking hip hop at the IHOP - no substitutions
on menu items, no fries with the chimichanga,
no extra syrup - what the hell

was that? Where did my rhyme go - uh, compel -
almost missed it again, damn, can you feel the heat
coming off this sucker? Red hot! Ding! (Sound of a bell.)

Hey, do I look like a bellhop to you, like an el-
evator operator, like a trained monkey or a parakeet
singing in my cage? Get the hell

out of the Poetry Hotel!
defeat mesquite tis mete repeat
Bouncing along like a punch-drunk bell,
the villanelle is a form from - Write it! - hell.

------

{1} Yep, that’s right. It says “1877”. No, it’s not a typo on my part, it’s what they actually wrote.

{2} And people complain that Wikipedia is inaccurate! Merriam-Webster, owned by the same folks as what write that Britannica Encyclopedia is off by a couple centuries here!

{3} I could see Merriam-Webster picking the pub date of the Gleeson White Anthology as the date of origin for the villanelle, but even here the date is off, by ten years!

{4} Listen to it! You can hear the gravitas in Dylan Thomas' voice.

Sources

Adams, Stephen. Poetic designs: an introduction to meters, verse forms, and figures of speech. Broadview, 1997.
http://bit.ly/eD0CFp

Bishop, Elizabeth. “The Complete Poems 1927-1979". Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

Cooley, Peter. New England Review (1990-), Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter, 2002), p. 43
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40244056 .

French, Amanda. "The First Villanelle: A New Translation of Jean Passerat's 'J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle' (1574)". Meridian 12 (2003): 30-37.
http://amandafrench.net/firstvillanelle.xhtml

French, Amanda L. “Refrain Again: The Return of the Villanelle” Diss. U of Virginia, 2004.
http://amandafrench.net/Dissertation.pdf

Jason, Phillip K. College Literature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1980), pp. 136-145
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111324 .

Kane, Julie. Modern Language Quarterly, Volume 64, Number 4, December 2003, pp. 427-443
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mlq/sum.../64.4kane.html

McFarland, Ronald E. Victorian Poetry, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 125-138
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002150

O'Hearn, James. "A Whispered Warning," 2000.
http://jamesohearn.blogspot.com/2009...d-warning.html

Parmenter, Chad. Harvard Review, No. 31 (2006), p. 138
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27569240

Ritchie, Elisavietta. Poetry, Vol. 179, No. 5 (Feb., 2002), p. 270
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20605593

A Book is a Book, No Matter the Form

That's the question that Ann Kirschner poses in her article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The gist of the question is whether reading is important, the story or the ideas, or the format in which those stories or ideas come. Ten years ago this question would have been patently ridiculous, but today it is entirely pertinent.

It struck Kirschner, when she reached up for her old Penguin paperback copy of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, that there were other ways she could experience the story. Were those ways better, or worse? That, she didn't know, so in the true spirit of scientific inquiry, she decided to try an experiment.

As Kirschner states, she "decided to read Little Dorrit four ways: paperback, audiobook, Kindle, and iPhone."

With the paperback version, Kirschner felt that flood of returning memories, a la Ratatouille, when something tangible comes into contact with the senses and sparks a cascade of old memories, locked away for so long. It brought her back to her graduate days, where she first fell in love with, as she says, "the Victorian novel."

To each their own, I guess.

But something she hints at, but doesn't directly state, is that the nostalgia fueled state actually distracts from the story itself. Those memories, those tactile reminders make reading in that manner as much about the reader as the story.

So it was on to the audiobook. I felt much the same way as she, though one particular insight struck me -

Audiobooks also impose a certain discipline. I think of this as real-time reading: The author and narrator control your pace, and it is impractical to skim ahead or thumb back to another section. For Dickens, so naturally cinematic and plot-driven, that can have a breathtaking effect.

By golly, what she is describing is the experience of the story as human beings had known it from the dawn of time. Sure we mostly read now, but I bet you that somewhere deep inside ourselves, programmed into our DNA over countless millenia, is a predisposition for engaging stories in this manner.

Kirschner loved the audiobook format so much that it was all she could to do force herself to the last half of the experiment. And this is where it really gets interesting.

I abandoned the Kindle edition of Little Dorrit almost as soon as I read one chapter on my iPhone. Kindle, shmindle. It does almost nothing that an iPhone can't do better — and most important, the iPhone is always with me. Woody Allen had it right: Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. Yes, the Kindle's reasonable imitation of a book is an advantage, but not enough to outweigh the necessity to carry an extra object and its power plugs

The only time I relied on my Kindle was on vacation last year. All the grown-ups on beach chairs seemed to have one, as if we all had obeyed some secret command to buy Kindles and wear sunscreen. In fact, readers 50 or older are the largest group of Kindle buyers. Therein lies the clue to Kindle's short life. Middle-aged readers think that the dimension of the screen is critical. It's not: The members of the generation that grew up playing Game Boys and telling time on their cellphones will have absolutely no problem reading from a small screen.

In the end, Kirschner's key observation was that while she loved books, she loves reading even more. As she says, it is "the sustained and individual encounter with ideas and stories that is so bewitching. If new formats allow us to have more of those, let us welcome and learn from them."

I couldn't agree more.

You know, while I am an unabashed technophile, I am also a cash strapped technophile. I love the idea of the Kindle, but have no experience with one myself, especially since they don't sell them in this part of the world. I'd love to try reading on an iPhone, but they do cost a pretty penny, and I am afraid to buy one if only because I have a tendency to regularly and forcefully drop my phones on hard surfaces. So I've forgone the pleasure and status bump that owning an iPhone brings, (but I did the second best thing and get an iPod Touch.)

Lack of cool gadgets aside, there are still ways to try out Kirschner's experiment. My own version included the normal book, the audiobook, the e-book in the form of a laser printed sheaf of paper, and the e-book on the computer screen.

Overall, when executed right, I love the audiobook format more than anything. But more often than not the execution is not right, the reading voice or cadence is off, and it is simply impossible to get through a longish short story, let alone a full on novel.

The book itself is still great. Hardcover, paperback, or trade paper back, all have their advantages and disadvantages. When you read massive books like I do, the hardcovers can be hard to read in bed, and hard to carry around. The trade paperbacks don't fit in a pocket easily, and are quite conspicuous when read in public. The paperbacks are my preferred option, but again, when reading those massive epics I face problems. Instead of heft, I have to deal with print size, tilting the book to catch the light since the pages flow into a dark canyon in the center of the book, and doing anything about that only ends up snapping the spine or creating myriad creases that scream "abuse!" This makes the paperback version ultimately disposable, since there is little point in keeping a broken and damaged book laying around for everyone to look at.

Then there is the laser printed sheaf of papers. I got to buying e-books from Baen, or downloading them from Gutenberg.org, and not wanting to lug around my laptop, stuck to a power outlet since the battery only lasts two hours, I would print them out. At first I printed them out one-sided, but quickly found that to be a waste of paper. Even double sided wasn't much better. But when I got to printing them two to a side of paper, I had hit the sweet spot. The text was the same size as that in a paperback novel, but there was more page area, and no dark crevasse in the center. Best of all, a 600 page novel ended up as a 150 page stack of paper, which cost, after ink and paper are added together, only a few bucks, really. Far less than the average $12 to $15 plus tax I was used to spending years ago. And, best of all, you can recycle the paper, which you cannot do for paperbacks.

But that's not all. I found that, when reading a sheaf of papers in public, it looks more like I'm reading a lawyerly brief than a work of fiction. Even at work, I can seem to be "working" when actually I am just kicking back and enjoying myself. To all and sundry it seems like I am reading for work and not for fun, which is an important distinction.

Though I know many avid readers where I work, they all forgo the pleasure of reading as to the many avid non-readers there, opening up a novel smacks of goofing off, and being seen to do so, on the job, can lead to expressions of concern from management. So the avid readers keep their books at home, and spend their time looking busy, and reading, where else, on the computer.

Of the colleagues I have spoken with, I am about the only one who actually does read novels and short stories on the computer. Of course I have a daily diet of gads of web pages, as the constant stream from news sites and blogs lands in my Google Reader account every moment of the day. Due to this, most of the reading I do on the computer is of short, to medium length articles, with a few magazine pieces, though I tend to print out the magazine pieces at home, later, if they go beyond 15 or so pages. There is something about staring, in a concentrated manner, into a constant light source that unnerves me. And while I have read many, many novels on this beat up old Dell, I've never felt physically good afterward. I've always felt a little queasy, with a bit of a headache on the side. Reading a novel is not like reading a blog post. With fiction, if you fall into a state of deep reading, your eyes are basically fixed on the screen for up to hours at a time. It's the visual equivalent cranking the cranking the volume on your iPod every time you wear it. Slowly, but surely, it causes irreparable damage.

So reading novels on the computer really is not something I prefer. Hardcovers are far to expensive and wasteful, since I don;t like rereading books, and I long ago lost my compulsion to display chunks of dead tree to guests who are not in the least interested. Trade paperbacks are the best from a tactile standpoint, but too conspicuous, and paperbacks, long the main for of book I bought, are wasteful. They are eminently disposable, and the only way I have to alleviate the waste that attends after I finish a paperback is to donate the book to my school library. Considering how much less it costs just to print the book off at home, it's like writing a big fat cheque to the library, and my bank account does not currently condone this practice.

So what's the best method I've found to enjoy e-books?

A stack of papers it is. Held together by a butterfly clip, with pages quietly placed disappearing as the story progresses. Until, with a page left, and one page in the hand, it is as if the story itself, now played out, has faded away into the mists.

Or... reading off my new iPod Touch, which is turning out to be a sublime experience in itself.

Game Over, Paper Books!

You know, there's an irony floating about out there, or maybe "cognitive dissonance" might be the better term, if you will, but what it is is that it seems to me that of the people I meet, chat, or message with, the ones who are the hottest and botheredest about the environment, who grit their teeth every time a Ford Explorer drives by, and who have (or totally-would-have-if-they-could-have) chained themselves to a majestic redwood to face down armies of ravenous bulldozers intent on raping mother nature, are the very same people who feel that it is far far better to fill their homes with paper books, which are essentially lumps of dead tree - that had to be cut, transported, processed, bleached, shipped, packaged, shipped, printed on, bound, shipped, stocked, bought, and then transported into a home library - than to download an e-book and read it on something non-organic.

Odd, that.

But no fear, the end of dead tree media is here!

A few months ago, the NY Times finally, belatedly bowed to plain common sense, and is factoring in sales of e-books into their lists.

I think the picture below illustrates the effect pretty clearly.



Now I've heard a few objections to my hypothesis over the past few months, which I'll list out below.

#1 - Promoting e-books only serves to promote e-readers which are often made from "conflict minerals" and from other materials that are both non-biodegradable and toxic to the environment. E-books, then hurt Mother Earth.

It's tru that e-readers aren't made of air, hope, rainbows, or flowers. But the thing is that you only need one.

Every single book that is bought has to go through that long production and distribution chain. If one the making of one book has less of an impact on the environment than the making of one e-reader, the making of ten, fifty, one hundred books does not.

As for electricity, if you were in a mind to be green, the amount of electricity it takes to transfer and read an e-book would take about 10 minutes of turning a hand crank to generate. But if you wanted to make your own hardcover... well that process is s little more involved! :-)

#2 - People prefer the physicality of books. There is no substitute to the feel of the page.

Well, when Armageddon, or the singularity arrive, they will either help us rebuild civilization, or defeat the army of robots attempting to rule the earth.

But seriously...

I used to think I would never stop loving the feel of paper beneath my fingertips, or the heft of a good novel as I lay on my side on the couch, elbow propped up, my thumb nimbly flicking pages in rapid succession.

But like any marriage or partnership that has grown too close, with too little space, for too long, I started noticing the little things - the tiny paper cuts, the unending weekly dusting, the fatigue in the arm and wrist, the social stigma of reading in the workplace (oh, and just forget about bringing one along to the relatives, friends), and to top it all off, when the book was done, it became dead weight in my hand, it's part over, offering no further solace, consolation, intimacy, or joy. It...it just lays there! Ugh! Like it doesn't even know I'm there any more!

So I knew it was time for a divorce, to send 1.0 packing, and ring up 2.0 - bringing in the shiny and the new.

I tell you, my sweet little iPod Touch 4G and I, we shall be together forever.

#3 - Using e-books in schools is difficult because the expense factor prevents widespread adoption of e-readers. Ordinary folk just can't afford to lose an e-reader.

I live in a part of the world where the poorest Canadian would seem almost middle class by comparison, yet somehow even the poorest of the poor here have access to mobiles.

This is an older article (2008) but it illuminates the trajectory in the developing world, and the impact that mobiles are having on everything from commerce, to education, to entertainment.

As the OLPC initiative has shown, where there is a will, there is a way. That said, from a school perspective, schools that issue out e-readers to their students, or laptops in 1-to-1 Districts (New Brunswick has a big program along these lines) can send students their allotment of textbooks wirelessly as they are added or connected to courses they are registered in.

No more textbook shortage, no more "I forgot my book" excuses, no more ratty outdated texts, no more torn or vandalized pages. All of these can be romanticized, but as a teacher who has been on both sides of this issue, I am so very glad I don't have to deal with the headaches that hardcopy school texts bring along with them.

Plus, the advantages for teachers are enormous. Instead of literally cutting, pasting, photocopying, and distributing supplementary materials in class (all of which takes enormous amounts of time), in a soft-copy system, all you need to do is insert excerpts from the textbook into a Word document, add in your exercises, save and send as an attachment (or upload, or put in a public folder, etc).

I've reduced my prep time by 80% by abandoning paper, and I have been able to ensure (literally, and measurably) more engagement with texts, including objective assessments of comprehension. One thing a textbook cannot do is record video of a student reading a text or doing an oral exercise. But in a 1-to-1 environment, you can record and store every stage of a student's progress, over years if need be, that can be instantly accessed when consulting with students, parents, or school admin.

All of this is to the benefit of students, especially those of fewer means.

#4 - Fewer paper books means fewer future yard sales where you can stumble across an old, forgotten treasure. You can't sell e-books at a yard sale.

Well I sure didn't find the entire archive of Chekov's short stories in a garage sale.

I am a lover of garage sales, and nothing draws me like a sale of used books. I used to line up at every library sale in the area. Every year I made a trip to Kemptville to see my grandad and go to "Hey! Day" where there would be a massive three day sale of used books (and everything else) in support of the local hospital.

But more often than not, I notice that, table after table of used books I pass by (and still do, if only out of sheer stubborn habit) there is little I would want to read there.

I remember when my neighbour invited me to go through her basement, through the many boxes of books, and take whatever I wanted. She wanted to clean out her old books. But out of the endless boxes and stacks, I think I found six books I wanted to read. The rest were throwaway romances or Danielle Steele type hardcovers. This kindly old lady was not an atypical member of the general public.

Honestly, I'd prefer not to wade through a sea of Dan Browns or James Pattersons anymore.

To sum it up, I'd say there are certainly books that I will keep, and not give away... My hardcover special edition of Lord of the Rings, my Norton Anthologies, the rare school texts I dug up in the bins of used books stores that date from the turn of the century, etc. These are books that I value for reasons beyond just wanting to read them - they are objets d'art, windows into the past.

Personally, I love digging up old science fiction, pulp paper backs from the forties and fifties that you can still find floating around, with the cheap yellowed paper and the smell of countless sweaty hands all over them. But once I've read them, the moment has gone, the little one night stand is done, and few people I know would really want to pick up my old copy of Olaf Stapeldon or E.E. Doc Smith. On a whim, I decided to read some old Heinlein in e-Book form and I found myself drawn in and absorbed in the same way I had with the old yellowing paperbacks. It turned out that it wasn't the book - the object - that was the needed thing, it was the story itself.

Perhaps I flog the e-book thing because when it comes to paper books, I'm like a recovering heroin junkie, and when I walk into a bookstore all I can see is sweet fine China in every direction, just filling my ear with promises of ecstasy, and all I need do is swipe the credit card one more time to keep on chasing that dragon.

That siren song seduced me every time, until I realized, at a later date, that my addiction to books, my compulsion to hit an Indigo, or Chapters, or Bakka, or any of the innumerable used bookstores I would frequent a couple times a week, and leave with yet another pile of paperbacks or trade paperbacks had put me in a deep financial hole.

I think that writers, especially, reserve a special place for books, a place they do not, and perhaps can not question. It's hard to see books as things, as objects. To us they are invested with a tiny spark of the divine, and thus beyond question or reproach.

But like Po learned at the end of Kung Fu Panda, it's not the dragon scroll that matters, it's the lesson the scroll represents.

Magic and the Fantastic

First published by the New Yorker in 1998, and subsequently included in the collection Pastoralia, “Sea Oak” is a tale of the bottom rung of contemporary American life, but with a twist.

There is a story that when Ben Stiller read “Sea Oak”, he laughed his ass off, and wanted to secure the rights to the story for a film treatment. Indeed, the humour, subtle and otherwise, in this story is one the most praised elements of the tale. A number of reviewers, having taken to “Sea Oak”, saw within it a biting satire of contemporary American life, especially in the way that Saunders takes on and mocks corporate brands. At times it felt that Sea Oak was placed alongside Dawn of the Dead in it’s attack on consumerist society.

Or so they say. Personally, I didn’t really read it the same way. For me, “Sea Oak” represents a different message, a different ethos which can only be properly summed up by the decrepit, dissolving Bernie – to succeed in life, you have to show your cock.

Now, before we get too carried away here, and before you get to wondering why I seem to be reviewing one short story rather than getting on with the presentation, I want you to know that there is a point, and though the road may be long and winding, there is a destination.

So, where were we?... Ah yes, that’s right. Show your cock.

In “Sea Oak”, Saunders creates a world that is just different enough from our own that we readers can effectively step outside the fictive universe and look down on the events as spectators who recognize the symbols, but are otherwise removed from the world of the story. A key reason for creating this distinct environment is that it better facilitates what the author needs for the story to function – the smooth and willing suspension of disbelief. As readers, when reading stories set in our own, known reality, we tend to notice and unfairly focus on the smallest details that intrude upon our sense of veritas, and in the real world, characters as breathtakingly stupid as Jade and Min would come across as caricatures (or as a misogynist projection), which would make the reader’s ability to understand and assimilate the author’s message much more difficult.

But in a world that is not our world, a world that is just slightly off enough to seem somewhat like our own, but clearly distinct and different, then the author has far more leeway to establish norms of behaviour and the rules of the environment, and, conversely, the reader has more leeway to accept those norms and rules.*

A very powerful and literarily awarded example of this is Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let You Go,” where the unreality of the world is enough to keep the reader from being frightened off by the concept, yet enough like our world that the pathos and tragedy can flow through the soul.

All this is well and good, but the question still begs – why? Why would a writer dip into magic and the fantastic? Generally, or at least the reason I have found, is that they do so because they got something to say. That is, they have a message.

All stories contain themes or overarching messages. The difference is the focus. Where in literature a story might address broader themes such as “growing up gay in southwestern Wisconsin”, or “nostalgia, loss, and sisterhood,” stories that delve into magic and the fantastic tend to have far more focused themes. In the case of “Sea Oak” the message is not “corporate/consumerist America sucks, dude” but “dude, corporate/consumerist America sucks, so what are you going to do about it?”

In “Sea Oak”, Saunders elicits the fantastic by slightly caricaturizing every aspect of the story. The characters are extreme (a bit too stupid, a bit too passive, a bit too timid), and the actions and events likewise. At the beginning of the story, in the club “Joysticks”, a worker, with a family and limited prospects, is summarily fired with a callousness that is rare in the western world. In the real world there would be labour laws, or even a sense of decency to draw upon. By opening up with this symbolic summary execution, Saunders is able to illustrate that we’re not in Kansas City anymore, Chief.

Saunders peppers the text with brand names that are clearly made up, but generic enough that what they represent is recognizable. This adds depth to the slight feeling of otherness the text evokes as the story progresses. At first glance, the message that seems to be developing is that this world (which is a lot like our world) traps the people in it (as, I suppose, our world is supposed to also do). Jade and Min are uneducated and stuck at home, too ignorant to care for their kids, too unskilled to have any hope of bettering their lives. Bernice is a caregiver and a doormat, she takes things as they come, and has let life just piss all over her, and did it with a smile. Then there is the narrator, who’s very timidity traps him in perpetual mediocrity. But then something changes.

So far we have the fantastic, the otherness that sets the scene. In “Sea Oak” the fantastic manifests in the oddness of the world. But the other factor, which is what will drive the story forward and the point home, is magic. In stories of magic and the fantastic, magic is the deus ex machina, the big dumb object, the macguffin. In every fairy tale or folk tale with a magical element, magic is what brings about the resolution, it is what allows for the change needed for the story to resolve, or for the point to be made. In “Sea Oak,” Bernie coming home for one last weekend is the magic that drives the story to its conclusion. Bernie’s rage and shame at letting life walk all over her has propelled her from the grave and briefly into the arms of her family, her poor, useless, stupid, deluded family, with a singular purpose in mind – to tell them to get off their asses and get a move on.

The message that Bernie so colorfully and emphatically communicates is that the world is as it is, and nothing is going to change that. But how you take on the world can, and must, change. This very Ayn Randish exhortation is accompanied by decisive action. She shows them how their inaction will directly result in the death of Troy, and in their slow living death in the Sea Oak tenements.

When Bernie sends her thumbprints onto patrons ho would be willing to pay for “extra services” from the narrator at his job at Joysticks, the intent is to show the narrator that the world is full of all kinds, and that there is no upside to being timid when you are stuck on the bottom.

Though the narrator does not follow Bernie’s instructions, by the time Bernie crumbles into mush pushed into a hefty bag and dumped into the back of a K-car, the narrator has his epiphany and finally understands.

Had this story been set in our real, known world, it would have come off like an after school special, or a Sunday sermon - something you would nod your head to, but otherwise not listen to. However, by anchoring this story in magic and the fantastic, Saunders is able to pull us up close and whisper something in our ear -

The moral, the message in this tale of magic and the fantastic is that in life, even if you don’t have much, you have to use what you have. Or, as Bernie would say, you have to show your cock.


* It is a very common, and very effective technique that is most often employed by literary writers who want to go slumming in the genre district, yet be able to hold their heads up high and claim they have done no such thing.

If Not For the Editing

Back when I studied creative writing at York University, one of my profs, Richard Teleky, told us that he felt Nino Ricci was a good writer, but not necessarily a great writer*. The reason why he felt this was that Ricci's debut novel, "Lives of the Saints" was by far and away better then the next two books in the trilogy, mostly because the first book was the beneficiary of a great deal of sublime editing. Ricci had written the novel while earning an MFA at Concordia, and as happens to any MFA student, their major work in a program is never only a singular effort - each student is surrounded by a number of like-minded, intelligent and perceptive writers and editors who all pitch in with helpful suggestions and critiques.

The point of my old professor's illustration was to drive home the point that it was not a great writer who made a work great, but a great editor, and that without the second part of the equation, even the most talented writer would quickly slip into mediocrity. A case in point being J.K. Rowling (bear with me, here), whose first three Harry Potter novels, all heavily edited, polished and slimmed down volumes, were far better then the latter four. When it came time for "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Rowling's sales and recognition were already a world-wide phenomenon, and she was able to resist much of the editorial control she had put up with in the beginning. When it came time for the seventh book, you have to wonder if the editors were even allowed in the same room as the manuscript.

As far as Rowling was concerned, that didn't really matter much. She was a popular writer, the bucks were rolling in, and literary merit, "good writing" and "bad writing" all became moot points. If her name was on the front, people bought it, just as the buy Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Stephen King, Danielle Stelle, et al.

But, if you are the sort of writer whose popularity is derived from the literary merit of your work, as opposed to a character, genre, or place, that sort of slide into mediocrity often quickly translates into a one-way ticket back into obscurity. This is why literary writers often take so very long to complete a novel, and why the editing process is often so drawn out. Great literary writers almost always have a great, and usually a specific editor to work with. In Canada, that meant someone like Ellen Seligman, who, as the National Post declared, [I]"has edited more Giller Prize winners than anyone."[/I]

As Patrick Lane put it "Hands-on doesn't even begin to describe what Ellen does. Ellen inhabited my manuscript. That's the only way I can describe it. She entered into the novel in a way that just stunned me. I was not prepared for the way she climbed inside the novel." As Lane described it, he worked with Ellen for three hours every day when editing his first novel, and at times up to nine hours at a stretch.

When you look at a list of who Seligman has edited, it's a veritable who's who of CanLit - Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry, David Bergen, Leonard Cohen, Elizabeth Hay, Jane Urquhart, Michael Ondaatje, and Anne Michaels.

All of which begs the question - if each of these writers is considered to be a "great writer," yet the common element between them all is the same, doesn't that beg the question as to who, truly, brings that touch of greatness to their works? Is it the editor? According to Seligman "[e]ditors, certainly in Canada, we don't change things. Our job is to make recommendations." So, in other words, no. It's not the editor, it is the author. Case closed, end of discussion, next subject please.

Still, you would have to wonder whether such a statement was true, or editorial boilerplate, a way of obfuscating the process the way a magician does their tricks. Ask any editor, and they would probably say the same thing. Admitting to being a co-author of a work, for editors, would be a breach of ethics on par with a psychologist passing around a highlight reel of their sessions with clients. So the question as to how complicit an editor is in the creation of a work is one that will go unanswered. If the author is successful, they're not going to blab, and even if the author bombed and decided to blab, who would listen? Who would care? Sour grapes from a failed writer are about the last item on anyone's to-do list.

One way for the truth to surface, however, is if the story is told from beyond the grave. This, as it turns out, recently happened in regards to Raymond Carver. As the Times of London has shown, Raymond Carver reputation as a master stylist is about as deserved as Bernie Madoff's reputation as a master investor. As time has told, it was all, in the end, a lie.

Which brings me back to my old prof, Richard Teleky, and the sermon he told his class of half asleep poseurs, most of whom, like myself, allowed words like "craft," "editor," and "editing" to splash off of them and dissipate into the air, deflected by the impenetrable shields named "the muse," "my art," and "talent." Maybe trying the be the best writer the world has seen is not the best use of my time. Perhaps I should start looking for a good editor instead.

-----

[I]*Keep in mind that Ricci has won TWO Governor General's Awards and a Trillium Award. Which means that any aspersions should not be taken at face value.[/I]

Meandering Musings on Race and Racism

In 2005 I married a wonderful young woman named Nerissa D'Souza. Her family is Goan, and though she is Indian by nationality, she spent her entire life in Dubai. When I moved to Dubai in 2006, I moved in with her family, and by 2007 I had become a "traditional" Indian son-in-law, that is, I became the sole earner supporting a multi-generational family.

Embracing my "Indian" identity, I learned to eat spicy curries every day, I fell in love with cricket, I learned to name the major political parities in India and speak at some length about their policies, I became able to hold forth on the differences between the many different religious, cultural and lingual groups in India, and I learned to love Bollywood movies. But even though I am now far more "Indian" than my in-laws will ever be "Canadian," I have only ever been merely tolerated, not accepted by them.

So what does this have to do with race or racism?

Before I moved to Dubai, my wife and I were in desperate straits. Prevented from finding work on account of a visa mix up, my wife had to stay at home while I worked three to four jobs at a go, dropping jobs and getting new ones wherever I could eke out a few more dollars. After our first child was born, and freshly out of university with a mountain of debt, we hit the wall, so to speak. We had no money left, not enough coming in, and could see no way of rectifying our situation but for one - we had to leave Canada.

When I arrived in Dubai, a few months after I had sent my wife and child ahead of me, I was a nervous wreck. With only a couple hundred dollars to my name, living at my in-laws, and upon their kindness, I felt lower than I had at any point in my life. Yet my wife was entirely unconcerned. Why? Because, as she told me, soon after I arrived, I was "white," and we were in Dubai.

Three years earlier, when I had lived in Japan, I had my first taste of what it was like to be a "minority." Words like "minority" and "mainstream" get tossed about so much in Canada, with such specific associations, that it took me a while to see myself as the minority. In Japan I encountered racism every day, from mild examples to extreme xenophobia. But Japan is very homogeneous, and Japan has a long history of fearing and avoiding outsiders, so I didn't think much of what I saw. The racism was never specific, just a matter of those who exhibited nihonjinron (Japaneseness) and those who did not. You were wither nihonjin or gaijin - Japanese, or Foreign.

But in Dubai, when I again found myself in a minority situation, where the locals only account for up to 10% of the population, the dichotomous nature of racism I found in Japan morphed into something more along the lines of a shattered mirror, with innumerable facets reflecting each other, but each being separate and unique. Here it seemed that race or racism as not something widely spoken about or acknowledged as a social ill, but was actually a functioning aspect of the societal fabric, ubiquitous and universal.

My wife's faith proved justified, when, inside of a month, I landed the best paying job I had ever had, a job where in only three years I found my salary rising to a level beyond what I could ever hope to earn in Canada. I chalk it up to luck, and serendipity, but sometimes there is a part of me that wonders if I was the recipient of this bounty not because of extensive credentials or experience, but because of how I looked, and how I spoke. Then again, I had experience in the field, and my employer-to-be was facing a sudden manpower shortage. But still, from some of the comments and attitudes I later encountered from other colleagues, I had to wonder, because regardless of the truth of the matter, it is the perception of that truth that carries weight day to day.

As a Canadian, and a product of that education system, it bothers me sometimes, even though I have proven myself at work over and again since being hired, that others might think I am where I am now not so much because of who I am, but because of what I am. But whatever my feelings are in the matter, the fact is, my situation is accepted as the norm here.

A Keralite colleague of mine was shocked, not too long ago, to find out that not only did I not have any "lands" or "houses" in Canada, but that I had debt. As she told me, she had assumed that because I was white, that meant I was wealthy. She had never questioned why I was hired or my qualifications for the job, and simply assumed that I "should" have that job.

Though she worked the same job as I (but in a different department), and earned the same income, and even though what she earns is ten times what I earn in terms of relative purchasing power parity, she did not even really need the money because her family was very wealthy in Kerala. I, on the other hand, desperately needed that job to support my family, to start to make some headway so that we could build a better life for ourselves. From my perspective, I saw my colleague as being privileged, and felt more than a little envy. Yet even with that in mind, my colleague still felt there was some sort of hierarchy at play, that regardless of wealth or upbringing, race really and truly mattered - that everything aside, perhaps I was the one to be envied.

In Canada, my colleague would be considered the "minority," and I would be seen as a privileged member of the mainstream. Here I am seen as a privileged member of the "minority," and she was seen as just an "Indian." And in there lay the irony.

Few in Canada would know this, but there are about as many Keralites as there are Canadians in this world, even though Kerala is about half the size of New Brunswick. And when you take into account the diasporic nature of Keralite society, there are probably more Karalites than there are Canadians by a good margin. With this fact in mind, in the context of globalization, words like "minority" and "majority" really begin to lose meaning, but what about concepts like "race" or "racism?"

Racism, in the North American conception, is a matter of the privileged actively thinking or acting against the less privileged. In terms of academia, racism relates to the white male patriarchy, and pretty much the rest of society. While anyone can have a racist thought, only a member of the majority can be a racist. That is, only a member of the privileged majority can discriminate or alter their actions towards others due to race (meaning also culture/creed, etc) and have those actions be considered racist. That's because the discourse on race and racism has, over time, devolved to being an issue of black and white (figuratively speaking).

But is that correct? Is that true? If not, then who, really, is a racist? What, then, is racism? What sort of behaviour would qualify as being racist in nature?

When I go shopping with my wife, when we go to a jewelry store, I am often asked to stay hidden, outside, and around the corner. The reason being that if the salesman does not see me, and does not see that my wife has a "white" husband, we will pay half as much as we would otherwise. And when we walk in public, and get into an argument, when my wife yells at me or castigates me in public, I have to restrain myself from replying in kind because to my wife it would appear as if I was talking to her like she were a maid. Why? Because to others, the sight of a white man talking harshly to a brown woman would be seen as such.

Regardless of my being her husband, and the love, children, and experiences we share, the colorblind nature of our relationship falls away the moment we step into public view. We both have to play roles, roles which change and evolve depending on who we talk to or interact with.

By conforming to these unspoken dictates, does that make my actions racist, or examples of common sense? By avoiding being seen by a South Asian salesman in the knowledge that my wife's colour and nationality will help us get a better bargain, I can hardly claim to be "colourblind," because I acknowledge differences in race, and I alter my actions towards other based on those differences, which is what racism is.

Which makes me what?

It's Better to Be a Hack

Whither the writer? That is, what should a writer do? With the market shrinking by leaps and bounds, and reading seemingly going the way of the General Motors car, all doesn't appear to be going well for our literati these days.

I had a few thoughts on this issue, but first I thought I'd mention that I recently came across an old column by Cory Doctorow that says it better than I can. Still, though it's been done better, I've got to give it my try.

Why Should Writers 'Give it Away'?

The idea that we should give something so personal, so valuable away for free is anathema to the spirit of every mama-san ever to drive off young men with a broomstick when they came sniffing around the garden. In almost every other endeavor in life, giving 'it' away for free, be it your labour, your time, or your virginity, has never been seen as the most astute business move. So why is it different with writing?

The basic notion is that you, the writer, are carrying on a conversation with your readers. You can't be a success if no one listens. Meaning that the biggest threat to any writer is not whether someone might steal your work, it is nobody knowing about your work at all. Obscurity is what should be feared.

You know, I think the publishing industry needs a Maple Music type company. Maple Music basically stepped in and became the distributor for independent musicians and groups in Canada, and has, since its inception, gone on to become one of the major players in Canadian music, benefiting the artists enormously. They mostly distribute online, saving in production and distribution costs, with an on demand inventory system, and split the proceeds with the artists themselves. I think it's a 50-50 split, actually.

Why can't we do that as writers? Honestly, when you take a hardcover book, sold at $40, and subtract the cost of materials, distribution, shelf space, and marketing, and the cut to the publisher, what is left for the author? $1, $2 maybe? Imagine getting $5 for every digital copy someone purchased? Sell a few thousand, and that's a year's salary. That's a mortgage paid, and student loan debt serviced. Amazon and others sell the same books for $10, and guess how much of that is pure profit?

All those marginal writers who subsist on meagre earnings could suddenly increase their earnings very substantially this way.

Why is it that there needs to be an agent - publisher - editor - marketer - pr chain for books? If agents are the gatekeepers, selecting for quality, why can't they be the publishers also, or the editors, marketers, and PR people all in one package? The technology is there to radically alter the business, to make it cost efficient, and more effective.

I'm telling, you there's a massive market there waiting for somebody build the model and exploit.

It is stuff to think about especially with news out that Canadian publishing has not only hit hard times, but as the Calgary Herald says (via Bookninja)

Whither CanLit? Or should that be “wither CanLit”? Seems like the latter, after a new Harris/Decima poll came out showing that 50 per cent of Canadians surveyed do not know the name of any Canadian authors, and of those who do, only four were mentioned by more than four per cent of them.

And there is a good reason why this is happening.

Who are these writers? Where are they? For the average person, CanLit seems remote because it is remote. Authors take too long in between books. Then, beyond the book tour and a few readings, how much connection is there really with the readership?

Kids authors get a following. Murder/Mystery authors get a following. Science Fiction & Fantasy authors get a following. Even Oprah gets a following...

How does Oprah fit into this? Well, have you ever wondered why Oprah Book Club authors sell a gazillion copies? Not because everyone realized that author X is actually really good. Nope. They buy the books because Oprah says they are good, and they care about Oprah. She converses with them every day on television, and every month in her magazine. She cares about them, and they care about her, and they care about the things she says they should care about. Thus the books that she features are forevermore placed in a marketable genre. They become Oprah books, and they sell massively to a massive Oprah audience.

I think CanLit needs to become a real genre. When I go into the bookstore, there is "literature" which takes up most of the space, with gads of books on the shelves, and maybe one or two people shuffling past on the way to the tiny cramped little genre shelves that are packed with people shifting around each other to look at the meagre sampling on offer.

There is no equivalent "literature" section for movies. If a film is independent or foreign, it is marketed as such and directed at a crowd who specifically like independent or foreign films. Those are genres, every bit as much as a genre as horror, romantic comedy, or action. They reach audiences because an audience has been created that is receptive to films created for them

But when it comes to CanLit, what do you get? You don't know. The book could be a family drama, it could be about a murder, or a mother's quest to know her son. Who knows. There is no targeted audience, so when the reader looks at the "literature" shelf, there is no expectation, and no expectation, overall, is a bad thing.

Think about it. When you turn on the TV, or go to the cinema, you ask whoever you are with what they "feel" like seeing. If you go alone, you'll think about what you "feel" like seeing. Then you will choose the film that will fit that feeling. You will know the genre of the film, and thus have an expectation about what you will encounter. But with CanLit, is there an expectation? No. It's a mixed bag, and while you might find a gem, it's often a better bet to play it safe and get the latest James Patterson on the shelf.

In order to thrive, CanLit authors need to become regular genre writers. A few years back I spent some time with Robert J Sawyer at his penthouse condo in Mississauga. I was there to interview him, and while I was there, I got to see his massive, gold plated Hugo Award. It was like I was touching the Holy Grail. Well Robert has long had a site filled with freebies for his audience, and he has built up his readership by being there, on the ground at signings, at Word on the Street, at conventions, by writing on blogs, publishing magazines, and beating the war drum for his own books. One of his novels, Flashback, was optioned and is being filmed for ABC as a pilot for a series. His career has been incredibly successful, and while he will never hit J.K. Rowling levels of wealth, he won't ever be worrying about needing a day job for the rest of his life.

As Cory Doctorow says, "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet." And why do readers care? Because they know the writers, they speak to them, see them at conventions, read their blogs, go to their writing workshops, etc, etc.

I think CanLit writers need to take page from the the genre hacks.

Getting All A-Twitter

Twitter is a dichotomy. On the one hand it is the most vapid, pointless extrapolation of the useless small talk paradigm ever put into concrete form. On the other hand, it is the most powerful collaboration tool, and passive information retrieval system ever devised.

Say wha?

Simply put, if you are on your computer or your mobile phone, whatever device, you can tap out a small message of up to 140 characters and send it. That is your "Tweet." Your Tweet goes out there into the world, and finds it's place on your little online Tweet page. But, it can also go elsewhere.

Say you have a circle of friends who like to keep in touch or want to know what's up with you, they can follow you on Facebook by adding you as a friend, and/or they can follow you on Twitter. If they choose the latter, then every time you send a Tweet out into the universe, it will pop up on their computer, or phone, or whatever they use, letting them read what you have said.

Basically you broadcast some trivial thought out to the universe, and certain people who are tuned into that station will hear it.

"I just had some great coffee!"

"Gosh I hate being late to work!"

"These jeans make me look fat."

"Our plane is crashing into the Hudson river!...Wait. Sorry, False alarm. Sweet landing, though."

You get the idea.

So what's the big deal? It all sounds so stupid, really. Like, who would care to tap into the stream of consciousness of gads of people? Well, young people for one. Young people really love it, just as they love SMS. In some countries, Japan for instance, the ratio of SMSs to actual calls is higher than 1000:1. It's like passing notes in class, and eternal activity for youth.

But then, if that is what it is, why would adults, or the Guardian (please note the exclusion from the latter group) take this stuff seriously?

Because of the dichotomous nature of the service, and the sudden, overwhelming ubiquity of data rich portable devices like the iPhone, the Blackberry, and Palm's new Treo. Jeez, even the new Nintendo DSi can get in on this action.

On the part of the Guardian, it is an incredibly cheap and effective way of driving up page views. A small tweet with a clever headline and link can drive a lot of traffic to a specific page. On the reader's part, it's like a mobile news wire, so that you get word of a new story the instant it is up. On the part of the newspaper, they can sell ad space linked with stories carried out by this wire at a premium price since the consumer data being returned is so rich. Think about it like a marketer... say you want adults between 30 - 49 earning $75K+. How do you know those people are reading the Guardian (They're not...but this is just for pretend purposes here)? Normally you don't, since dead tree media doesn't tell any tales. Even a home IP won't give them much because there is no identifying demographic information of much use. But, since Twitter is optimized for mobile media usage, people who click on a link in a Tweet to go to a story, will leave behind a very remarkable footprint. First and foremost, The Guardian will be able to tell what type of device was used, and barring that, what OS or browser, which works out to the same thing. Did 60% of the page views come from Blackberries? Well, the correlation between Blackberries and high income earners is very high, so the Guardian can go to the advertisers and jack up ad rates for this service, with this very specific, concrete demographic detail.

But what about for adults?

Here, here is where Twitter gets good. And I mean, really good.

I'm going to tell a little story here. It's a true story, but a longish one. I just wanted to give fair warning...

I was at a conference two weeks ago attending a presentation on the educational uses of Twitter in tertiary institutes. Nice presenter, decent slides, but what she had stumbled upon just blew my mind.

I say stumbled upon because while the presenter was in EdTech, she had only learned of Twitter half a year earlier. But the incredible impact it had had on her teaching practice and professional development was extraordinary.

The way she put it was thus...

With Facebook, you connect with people you know. With Twitter, you connect with people you want to know.

Think about that for a moment. Imagine being that proverbial fly on the wall, and tapping into Einstein's thoughts? Or Hemingway's? Honestly...what would you give for that?

With Twitter this is possible because it's a stream of consciousness service. It's useful only for short messages, and so easy to use anyone can use it almost anywhere. Following someone's Twitter feed is almost like tapping into their stream of consciousness.

There are amazingly brilliant people out there that you or I will never be close to, will never have a chance to get to know, and would never be able to stand next to for long enough to learn the tiniest fraction about what they think. But with Twitter, you can.

This presenter had identified 50 or more colleagues or authorities in the same field who were at the top of their form. They did stellar work, and were well respected, for good reason. Also, they were all on Twitter. So instead of going to a yearly conference to learn the new and amazing things these scholars dug up, she attended a virtual conference every day. A Tweet would pop up on something mind blowing, and would be incorporated into the next day's lesson plan. What's more, by sending a direct message to the poster of a particular Tweet, she was often able to arrange for an impromptu video conference (via Skype) where the researcher could expand on their finding for her class.

Using this paradigm, she was able to transform her whole program, and make it effective in a way that had never happened before. At first she set her graduate students into research groups using Twitter as their key collaborative tool. But it also became the key to getting them to write. To understand this, I'll give a little background.

Her students are from an area where students do not learn how to write in their own language. They learn grammar, sure, and the mechanics of writing, but not "how" to write. That is, in the Arabic world, writing isn't something students really do. They never write any essays, book reports, or what have you, because that has never been a part of the educational model here. In English class they are expected to write, but with no experience at it whatsoever, in their native tongue, attempts at it in a second language are almost always very poor. I face it every day with my students who had never written anything longer than 100 words before going to high school. The presenter I met faced the same problem, and just was not able to drag any substantive writing out of her students. 3000 words? Forget. Even 500? Not a chance! They just wouldn't do it, and school authorities would back the students up on that. So what to do?

It was obvious to her that her students did write, and wrote a heck of a great deal. In fact, her students, as mine are, are inveterate communicators. They are forever posting on bulletin boards, sending IMs, SMSs, emails, and more. Via writing, they communicate more, I daresay, than any generation in human history. But they don't think of it as writing. This is why Twitter was the key.

A limit of 140 characters is not much. Two sentences, three max. She got her students to buy into posting messages to a group Tweet, and responding to posts. As the project wore on, from what she said, it sounded like these students had tapped more words through that one collaboration than at any other point in their career. They were posting gads of messages each day. Back and forth. Posting, commenting on posts, commenting on comments. Every time someone found an interesting link, they posted it, which set off a flurry of other Tweets as the group looked into the information.

The experiment succeeded beyond any of her expectations.

Which leaves us back at the beginning of this post.

Like with Xerox or the VCR, there are good uses and bad uses. Twitter can be trite, but it can also be transformative. Part of the hype around Twitter right now is that many have sensed just how powerful this tool could be. As newspapers die, and media models crumble, there is a mad scramble for the next model, whatever will arise out of the ashes, and Twitter is in very good shape to make a run at that. During the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the world learned through Twitter long before Reuters got wind of it. When that plane went down on the Hudson, word of it was on Twitter even before anyone walking by as it was happening had thought to take notice. Major news wires have reacted by hiring staff who only monitor Twitter, and pick off breaking stories from there.

For writers , I would say that Twitter is a tool we can all use. Most of us share thoughts, findings, and ask questions of each other here, in the spirit of true colleagues. When we graduate, that will be over for us, but it doesn't have to be. The ability to collaborate with talented people in your field, who you respect and admire, is a precious and valuable thing. Even just to be able to get glimpses of what they are thinking and doing can be informative or inspirational. I've learned a great deal in the short time I've been allowed to frequent these boards, and I am sure that in the next few years as I stretch my time in the program to the allowable limit (you know...budget constraints), I will continue to do so. But hopefully, using some other method like Twitter or what replaces it, I'll be able to continue to do so.

The Long Night

I've been a Catholic for years now, but I had never really known God. The truth is, to me religion was something you did, like going to the supermarket, or showing up at a family reunion. My baptismal certificate says that I was baptized in the United Church. Once a powerful force in Canada, it's been expelled from the Anglican Communion for its permissiveness, and liberality. I never really knew much about the United Church, though, because my first memory of sitting in a pew and praying to God was as a Pentecostal. Everyone was all red faced and sweaty, swaying about yelling "Lord Oh Lord!" and talking in tongues. At that age it all seemed exciting, but though I went to Christian camps summer after summer, somehow never really got what was going on.

Later in life I decided to become an Anglican. Not for any pious reason really, but because there was this girl, you see. It seemed like a good enough reason at the time. Sunday after Sunday I got a ride from her parents, holding that secret hope, that full blown crush, deep within. Only one day that little secret, those hidden feelings, slipped. Red faces, and uncomfortable expressions all made it clear that I had better find God somewhere else.

Through high school, there was a prayer group in the mornings. Sometimes they would invite me to church, but their fierce predilection towards hellfire and brimstone, and fervent stories of three-day pray-a-thons in crowded stadiums, transported by holy bliss all had me heading on, elsewhere. I distrusted that sort of fervency, preferring the safety of my books, my thousand page epics which never failed to reassure me, calm me, and transport me. I believe that the moment I knew I had to move on was when a member of that prayer group told me, in all seriousness, "just tell me your schedule, and I will find you. Wherever you are, any time, day or night, and we will pray together." I'm sure he was quite earnest in his way, but his earnestness and my willingness to have my life taken over by that earnestness were far different things. So I left.

Later, I became a Catholic. No Saul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus conversion for me. Just an Italian girl who told me in no uncertain terms that to marry her, I was going to have to convert. Being in a Catholic high school at the time, it made sense. So every week for a year I went to a meeting with my sponsor, a teacher and mentor from my school, a man who was helping me into the faith, and a man who would later briefly introduce me to the world of Amway, and stadiums filled with the faithful preaching of commerce, God, and family, in that order.

While the Amway bit just wasn’t for me, I stuck with the program, the Roman Cathloic Initiation of Adults, and when Easter arrived, standing in a church full of well wishers and worshipers, I accepted the Catholic faith. The next year I went to university, and a year later that Italian girl and I parted ways.

As my time in university wound to a close, I eventually met the girl I would marry. It turned out she was a Catholic, and would only marry a Catholic to boot. Which, in a way, seemed like nothing more than pure providence. As far as I knew, my membership in the church was still valid, so we went to mass together on Sundays, and I never failed to annoy her with my inability to remember any of the creeds, even though I could sit, kneel, and stand with the best of them.

They say that the young and the old are the most religious because they are the closest to God. There seemed truth in that to me, and being neither very young, nor very old, I couldn't say as I felt close to God at all. Until there came that dark night of the soul that changed it all.

When we had been married for about six months, we learned that our fist child was on the way. But at that time, due to visa restrictions, my wife couldn't work, and the hours at my job had been cut in half, and eliminated entirely a month later. I was scrambling for work, jumping at anything that paid, but it never was enough. We kept falling behind on everything, barley making our rent, just scraping by until the end of the line arrived. It was the 28th of the month, in the dead of winter, January, as I lay unsleeping at night, enduring a level of stress I had never experienced before in my life.

We were broke. Completely and absolutely broke. For myself, being broke was not something new. I'd begun living on my own when I was sixteen, and knew what it was to have little or nothing from week to week, or month to month. Alone, the stress of my situation would not have bothered me much, but I wasn't alone anymore, I had a wife, and a child on the way. I had responsibilities, and I was entirley failing to take care of them. As I lay there, in the dark, I found myself completely debilitated by worry. I had no idea where the next rent payment was going to come from. In fact, we had so little money left, that earlier that day I had to shamefacedly admit to my wife that I didn't even know if we could even afford bread the next day. And that night I could see it all - the car would be taken away, we'd lose everything, and probably end up on the street.

That night I couldn't sleep, feeling overwhelmed, and for the furst time in my life, completely at a loss for what to do. My wife, who had never been in that situation her whole life, whose parents had always taken care of things, even shouldering the full cost of her years at university, was in tears. Her parents were half a world away, in financial straights themselves at that moment, while my parents were either unable or unwilling to lend a hand.

It was just us, alone, and the raging winter winds outside our window.

As flimsy as this sounds, as Hallmark movie-of-the-week as it seems, I swear I found God that night. I began to pray, but as I prayed, I felt like a charlatan, a fake, a fraud. There were so many things, good, bad, and indifferent that I had done in my life, but what haunted my mind most was not what I expected.

When I was five years old, wanting to impress friends, I'd taken my mother's old nickels, coins from around the world that she had collected in her years at the bank. I buried them in the ground in the woods near my home, and drew a "treasure map" and made it look old. I then told my friends I'd found a map to buried treasure. We dug up the "treasure chest," and I tried to act like one of those kids from the Goonies, amazed at what I was seeing. I could sense they didn't believe a word of it, that they thought the whole thing was a pathetic scam. So I took them to the store and used my "treasure" to buy them some chocolate bars.

I remembered my time as a Sea Cadet, in an elite summer program known as PL, or Practical Leadership. Crawling under wire, through the mud, I decided to be a funny guy and make a joke about my commanding officer, standing near by. He heard and asked me what I had said. Mutely I tried to pretend I hadn't heard him. When he told me he'd heard, and just wanted me to admit it, my heart sank. In his eyes there was nothing so pathetic. All I needed to do was admit what I'd done, and he would have judged me a man. But I hadn't, and I wasn't.

Scene after scene of things petty and small, the tiny infractions that one shrugs off as beneath notice, came to me. In that dark night, wife finally asleep, winds unabated outside, those old memories of many failings loomed large before me. The guilt for things so petty almost subsumed me. I saw clearly who I was, and it was someone that I hadn't really known. I'd thought of myself as the kind of guy who tool care of things, was a stand up, straight up guy, but the evidence being paraded before me in the court of my own mind said otherwise.

Shame is what I felt. I wanted to stop praying, feeling a fool for my temerity. But hearing my wife's now steady breath as she slept, and knowing that I had no answers, no plans, no ideas left that could help us, I prayed anyway.

And he answered, or at least I like to think he did. The next day, they very next day, Revenue Canada had deposited my GST rebate in my bank account. It was a sizeable amount, more than enough to solve our immediate problems. Three months later I learned that they they had made a mistake, but we had passed out point of crisis. By then I had four jobs I was juggling, and while we we're still only treading water, we were no longer drowning.

Today, almost three and half years later, living well with a good job, two wonderful children, a third on the way, and a wife who calls me at work every day to tell me all the stories about the sorts of mischief our little ones are getting into, I realized something. I'd been a Catholic for years, but I had never really believed in God.

Now, I think I do.