February 26, 2024

Final Words

.



“My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the US airforce, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine!”



.

February 21, 2024

Sometimes it seems to me that the process of rehearsal is simply a process of emotional armouring...


 


A quote from my book Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART. As posted by Lucy Bellwood on Tumblr:

https://lucybellwood.tumblr.com/post/728466340736827392

“Sometimes it seems to me that the process of rehearsal is simply a process of emotional armouring: we will make everything absolutely perfect so no one will ever see who or what we really are.”



.

February 2, 2024

Ten years ago I thought this was never meant to happen....

.



I've been thinking a lot about how Polyamorous Love Song came out ten years ago. How it was a moment that, in some ways, really changed my life. The first time it had occurred to me my books could have any sort of readership. I had always assumed I would be a writer without a readership. I had always been told my books were too experimental for very many people to ever read them. And here was one of my most experimental books, being read by far more people than had read anything I'd previously written. I partly assumed the success of Polyamorous Love Song had something to do with the last minute title change, that the title itself drew people to the book. But, much later, a friend said the quality she most liked about it was its “surrealist polyvocality,” and this quality was one of the main reasons for its success. (When I was young I think I wanted to be some sort of “cult writer.” But now that I am in fact some sort of cult writer, I have the strange feeling that people don't even really know what that is anymore.) Ten years is both a long time and not such a long time. Sometimes I have the feeling I will never write anything people like as much again. But, I suppose, every time one puts out a new book there's a chance something unexpected might, once again, occur.

You can read an excerpt here.
You can find out about the original title here.

Plus some reviews of Polyamorous Love Song:
Shannon Tien at Cult Mtl
Liz Worth at Quill and Quire
Jade Colbert at The Globe and Mail
Featured book in Maisonneuve
Lesley Trites for the Montreal Review of Books Blog
Letters we wrote to friends after reading Polyamorous Love Song

February 1, 2024

Percival Everett Quote

.


In my writing my instinct was to defy form, but I very much sought in defying it to affirm it, an irony that was difficult enough to articulate, much less defend.” 
– Percival Everett, Erasure



*


[Fascinated by the idea that they’ve made an Oscar-nominated film from Percival Everett's Erasure. As is often (but not always) the case, the book is considerably better. But I was intrigued by just how Hollywood they managed to make it while at the same time maintaining something of its original essence. Between American Fiction and Poor Things, I find myself wondering if turning experimental novels into Hollywood films has become something of a momentary trend.]


.