Summer stops here

I’m on the bus without a captivating book it’s either this or pick fights on social media.

Sean C. shared an article by some well-meaning fussy britches complaining that kids today care more about Kermit the Frog than they do about Mordecai Richler. As someone who last month dragged my family through the sweltering streets of Montreal, off the Main, away from the chi chi thrift shops with espresso bars and vegan lunch counters, so that I could get a selfie on the steps of Richler’s childhood home, all I can say is good.

It’s been over 25 years since Mordecai Richler put out a new novel, but Kermit, powered by the cryogenic corporate brains at the Dizz, keeps pumping out the content. And where’s Richler’s meme game? Kermit features in at least three basic memes you see every single day if you’re even halfway extremely online. There are some very meme-able MR photos floating in cyberspace if anyone gets the itch. Might help.

I was browsing in a used bookstore before my trip, never mind which, and a woman was asking out loud if Mordecai Richler was a Montreal writer. The store staff was otherwise occupied so I eventually confirmed, yeah he is. She said she wanted to get a book by a Montreal writer for her 50yr-old daughter. I mentioned that St. Urbain’s Horseman was one of my favourites and then suggested maybe a more contemporary writer might be more relevant and more enjoyable. I pulled a Heather O’Neill book off the shelf. She bought both.

I like old books. I like great books. I’ve been on a tear lately of cheap Penguin Classics and NYRB Classics from the library. I’m never disappointed. But I’m moved to read new fiction. I’m crazy for current voices trying make sense of the world I’m passing through right now. Sometimes they stink. Sometimes they’re boring. Maybe that’s part of the appeal, that imperialist impulse of my ancestors softened into something more benign.

More than anything, its contemporary writers who maker want to write. Melville, sure, okay, good point, but my current project is at least as the result of my Moby-Dick soaked brain reading Christine Lai’s Landscapes and Andrew Sullivan’s The Marigold. Premed Mohammed’s The Butcher of the Forest, Matt Bell’s Appleseed, Kevin Chong’s The Double Life of Benson Yu. These books churn in an active part of my brain. I enjoy classics, a lot, but I also feel like it’s a more passive enjoyment.

I dunno. Make memes, read new fiction.

Talk later,

Emmet