Read This: The best of Canadian small press
Venous Hum By Suzette Mayr (Arsenal Pulp Press)
In this dark, deft novel, a high school graduating class deals with horrors seldom seen this side of Carrie, though they’re clearly gluttons for punishment as the scene is not their prom but their 20-year reunion. But Venous Hum is far from hackneyed genre fiction—these are characters that I would happily have stayed with for another 1,000 pages, the dialogue sparkles like Salinger, and there are great jokes about wannabe screenwriters, lesbian bed death, and Calgary vs. Montreal. One quibble: the members of the all-important Kugelheim family are not physically described until the middle of the book, so try not to imagine what they look like until then—like in Lord Jim where you find out in the last chapter that he had a moustache all along. —Adam Lewis Schroeder
Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity By Hal Niedzviecki (Penguin Canada)
For years, Hal Niedzviecki has been the dean of Toronto’s alternative culture, kickin’ against the masses and rebelling against the stifling forces of capitalist conformity. But something happened on the way to the latest culture jam, and it struck him that, suddenly, everyone was striking a non-conformist pose, raising the following conundrum: If everyone’s a rebel, then who is left to rebel against? The answer: the new non-conforming conformists, the “I’m Specialites” who have co-opted authentic forms of community and individuality and turned them into a mass-marketed craze of narcissistic karaokefied celebrity worship. In other words, nothing new from Niedzviecki. —Andrew Potter
Cities, Culture and Granite By Edmund P. Fowler (Guernica)
This trim compendium of essays and previously published book reviews captures and communicates Fowler’s concern for the social/environmental impact of our cities and their urban policy. He proposes that the solution to the current pandemic of “cultural separation” lies not with further urban policy from governments, but rather in unique initiatives created and executed by members of the community. Sadly, the insight ends there. Many of the ideas are recycled. Fowler presents himself as an acolyte of Jane Jacobs, indeed the book itself is dedicated to her. Oft complex and self-referential, the essays fail to convey a sense of direction other than an uninspiring call to arms for a general grassroots campaign demanding further increases in green/ public space. —Christopher Sorenson
