All posts by keithManager

Fact and Fiction: The Making of a Political Roman à Clef — Cancelled

When:
March 31, 2020 @ 7:30 pm
Where:
Westmount Park United Church
4695 Maisonneuve West
Cost:
Free for members of the SJLS, $12 for non-members
Contact:
Sam Browman
514-484-0146

Based on his transatlantic white collar crime thriller, Acqua Sacra, novelist Keith Henderson will discuss the relationship between news, political research and the making of fiction. Key examples will include SNC-Lavalin, Heenan-Blaikie and Montreal’s infamous “Sixth Family” Mafia bosses. Acqua Sacra will be appearing in German translation (Synergia) in August of this year.

New publication from DC Books: Kate Wake, a novel by Mariianne Mays Wiebe

DC BOOKS IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE PUBLICATION OF KATE WAKE
A novel by Mariianne Mays Wiebe

Kate Wake is a tender and deeply engaging novel from a distinctive new voice.

Blue Hills is a haunted place. Katie fights to reclaim her life from the grip of a profound psychological crisis, tracing back a maternal thread through a stumbled-upon and uncertain family history at the nearby, now-abandoned prairie mental asylum. As she seeks to rehabilitate the present by understanding the past, her fate becomes imaginatively intertwined with that of her great-grandmother Kate Wake, an enigmatic, independent-minded artist with a remarkable story of her own.

This variation on the Eurydice-Orpheus myth reconsiders, with a fresh, unsentimental vision, the roles of trauma, mental illness, creativity and memory in relation to art and literary form.

Sharply realized and fortified by a fierce, poetic grace, Kate Wake testifies to the timeless, urgent power of art and music with a delicately experimental, multi-genre story that unfolds its narrative mystery to reveal a shocking core.

Ask for Kate Wake at your local independent bookseller.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR KATE WAKE

Mariianne Mays Wiebe writes poetic prose that burns with a magical intensity. Her deeply empathetic imagination makes contact with so many kinds of experience at fever pitch that I would have thought were unsayable. Everything in this continually surprising novel attests to Mays Wiebe’s fiercely exacting quest for truth and a leavening mercy. Precise, funny, haunting and wise, Kate Wake is a debut novel of stunning force. It also has the rare distinction of being quite unlike anything I have read before.

—GEORGE TOLES, AUTHOR OF A HOUSE MADE OF LIGHT AND CURTAINS OF LIGHT

Mariianne Mays Wiebe’s novel is a multi-faceted, intricate conjuring of what she calls the “dream etiquette” of art-making. She exposes the thin membrane between the rational mind and the destructive capacities of creation. In this novel you’ll experience the solitary visions of the artist, the poet, the outlier, all risk-takers, courageous in their vulnerability. A beautifully written, complex weaving of history, vividly imagined and rendered with fine, delicately powerful urgency.

—MARGARET SWEATMAN, AUTHOR OF WHEN ALICE LAY DOWN WITH PETER AND FOX

Here in her debut novel, Mariianne Mays Wiebe tells the stories of these artists with grace, grit and astonishing honesty. Poetic, impressionistic, pushing the boundaries of conventional narrative, Kate Wake explores love, betrayal, ambition and searing loss as it gathers together and gently untangles the threads of two lives that are generations apart, yet intimately connected.

—CATHERINE HUNTER, AUTHOR OF AFTER LIGHT AND LUNAR WAKE

If you have an inner life, you must read this novel. It feeds the dappled self with a belief in art and an insistence on beauty. Kate Wake pries open the novel form to interweave poetry and script,all the while offering stunning commentary on history, visual art and music.

—CHRISTINA PENNER, AUTHOR OF WIDOWS OF HAMILTON HOUSE

KATE WAKE (A novel)

284 pages
List price $21.95

ISBN 9781927599464

Binding Trade Paper Size 140 x 216 mm

Publication Date: December 05, 2019

Giuliana Pendenza
T: 1-514-943-9310
E: dcbookscanada@gmail.com

www.dcbooks .ca

DC Books is distributed by Fitzhenry and Whiteside. www.fitzhenry.ca

DC Books at the 2019 AELAQ Pop-Up Book Fair

The Association of English Language Editors of Quebec will hold a Book Fair Saturday Nov. 30 and Sunday Dec. 1, in the Atrium of the McConnell Building at Concordia University, 1400 de Maisonneuve West, metro Guy-Concordia.

Hours are: Saturday: 11-5 PM and Sunday: 11-5 PM.

A number of DC Books authors will be in attendance, ready to greet, chat, and sign great books! A selection of Railfare DC Books train books will also be on sale at substantial Christmas discounts.

Catch DC poet Greg Santos: 12-1:30 pm, 4th Space: Getting Published in Quebec. Sponsored by Concordia University Department of English and Creative Writing

Lineup:

Saturday 11 – 1: poet Eleni Zisimatos, author of Nearly Terminal.

Poet and co-editor of Vallum, Eleni Zisimatos

Saturday 1 – 3: poet John Emil Vincent whose Excitement Tax last year was nominated for the Concordia First Book Award by the QWF.

John Emil Vincent, poet

Saturday 3 – 5: poet Steve Luxton, whose The Dying Meteorologist has recently appeared with DC Books.

Steve Luxton, poet

Sunday 11 – 1: novelist Kenneth Radu, author of Earthbound, Butterfly In Amber, and the recently published collection of short stories, Net Worth

Novelist Kenneth Radu reading at the Montreal West Public Library from his recent DC publication “Net Worth”

Sunday 1 – 3: poet Greg Santos, author of The Emperor’s Sofa, Rabbit Punch!, and the soon to appear collection with DC Books, Ghost Face

Check out Poetry Pause – The League of Canadian Poets: http://poets.ca/2018/11/22/in-the-new-republic-of-poetry-by-greg-santos/

Throughout the Fair: novelist Keith Henderson, author of Sasquatch and the Green Sash and Acqua Sacra

Sasquatch at Montreal Rampage

MONTREAL NOW: The Art of Conversation

Posted on April 4, 2019. Written by Zsolt Alapi

Mark Jenkins Remix. Arsenal Gallery. Photo Marlene Wilson.

 http://montrealrampage.com/montreal-now-the-art-of-conversation/

So, I’m sitting in a café with my friend, Keith Henderson, conversing about matters of the spirit. Yes, that’s right. Keith is a writer of exceptional talent, a former professor of English at Vanier College, a political pundit, and managing editor of DC Books Canada, one of the oldest and most revered of Montreal’s small literary publishing houses.

We are speaking about Keith latest book, Sasquatch and the Green Sash, his contemporary retelling of the medieval romantic epic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Keith has reset the story in Canada’s Far North and has incorporated elements of the original poem, cleverly blended with myths of the Dene Nation. The story is an allegory of virtue, nobility, and a coming of age tale of sexuality and romance, and I ask Keith the obvious question:  How can such a story play to an audience so far removed from symbols and the use of the imagination, an audience so hooked on social media and the communication resources so readily at their fingertips? Keith pauses before answering. This is one of the things I love about good conversation, for he is an artist of discourse as well—the ability to reflect, to ruminate, to respond to complex ideas and to lead his listener on a journey into his literary imagination. Ours is a dialogue of give and take: he listens to my insights, and I relish his. If he weren’t so conscious of equally sharing thoughts, I would be completely content to sit back and listen to him for hours.

As if in quiet mockery of our discussion, a young lady at the table next to ours looks at her laptop, annoyed. Perhaps it is her irritation at listening to two older men discussing ideas, so animated by this very act — two men who are perhaps disrupting her attention so clearly focused on her open Facebook page or Instagram offerings. But no matter. We are democratic, perhaps more open minded than she is, caught up in our own space, time, and moment, leaving her to hers.

And what a moment it is! Keith speaks of the allegory of the original medieval poem and how it is a fitting symbol of our own troubled age, which he sees as devoid of spirituality, morality, and honor (not just in the chivalric sense, but in the greater context of personal virtue). He tells me how his former students, themselves striving to come to terms with their own sexual desire, found an affirmation in this old poem with a surprisingly contemporary message, an affirmation that seemed to give a direction to their lives.  He tells me of the “message” of the poem, based on the precepts of our Judeo-Christian tradition, and how the truth of that vision still resonates to this date. Keith has written his own allegory that is founded upon a natural archetype, something that he and I believe are in danger of being lost in our not only secular but also anti-intellectual world.

Keith is a man of intellect, a man of great moral honesty and persuasion, and I can only be thankful for my encounter with him, for being in this place and time, for sharing things of the heart and the mind. Ours is a discourse that is all too quickly disappearing in our world where we speak in sound-bytes and abridged phrases that can fit on a cell phone screen or a Twitter feed.

So on Monday, April 15th at 6:30, Keith Henderson will be launching his book, preceded by a conversation at the Thomas More Institute.

keith-henderson-launch.png

The TMI, as it is known, is a secret jewel in the intellectual life of Montreal. It was founded many decades ago for the purpose of sharing ideas and dialogue with like minded individuals. They offer courses in music appreciation, art history, sociology, and literature (among others), and their modus operandi is based on the premise of Socratic discourse where the animator is less of a lecturer and more of someone who poses questions that provoke a thoughtful response.  As the Director of TMI told me recently, they seek to ask questions that will demonstrate how the process of complex thinking works and to track that exceptional moment of intellectual discovery.

Anne Fitzpatrick, former English professor, long-time Dean at Marianopolis College, and one of the original founders of the Institute will be animating the discussion with Keith Henderson. She has taught a multitude of courses over the years at TMI, and she is currently animating a discussion of Milton’s Paradise Lost, one of her many interests. Anne, a good friend and former colleague, is also a great conversationalist. I recently had the pleasure of her company where we spoke at length about education, literature, writing, and (again) matters of the spirit.  She has also graced my life over the years.

If you wish to experience the magic of profound discourse, the excitement of ideas, and the connection we can still make to a grander heritage, to a time when ideas and beliefs mattered, treat yourself to an evening that is so rare and precious in this day and age. 

Buy a copy of Keith Henderson’s book; afterwards, share a drink with people who have the commonality of loving ideas and good writing, and be welcomed into the company of like-minded souls.

Check out the launch on April 15 at 6:30 p.m. at the Thomas More Institute (3405 Atwater Ave).

John Emil Vincent at Argo Book Shop

Konchan & Vincent Reading
Thursday January 24 | 7:00PM – 9:00PM

Please join us for an evening of poetry by Virginia Konchan and John Emil Vincent! We will have their books available for sale and signing.

Virginia Konchan is the author of a poetry collection, The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018); a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017); and three chapbooks, including Empire of Dirt (above/ground press, 2019). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and elsewhere.

John Emil Vincent is the author of Excitement Tax (DC Books, 2018), which was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize. His second book, Ganymede’s Dog, will come out from McGill-Queen’s University Press in Fall 2019. He presently teaches at Concordia and Marianopolis College.

Argo Bookshop
1915 rue Sainte-Catherine ouest
Montreal QC  H3H 1M3
Canada
Phone: 514.931.3442
Email: info@argobookshop.ca

The Pagan Nuptials of Julia on Montreal Rampage

MONTREAL NOW: Why Good Writing Matters

The Pagan Nuptials of Julia

I am a voracious reader, one who often reads books simultaneously.  So it was that last week I was working on a book recommended by several people, Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and a book I had picked up at the QWF Book Fair at Concordia this past weekend, Keith Henderson’s marvellous collection of short stories, The Pagan Nuptials of Julia.

First off, Palahniuk’s “novel” (and I use the term loosely) is crap. Sure, it takes on the theme of how men have innate violence within, but so what? Critics say this is “edgy” writing with a voice and tone that is purportedly slick, “hip” and “original,” but to me the book reads like a poorly written Trump Tweet.  I stopped reading after 75 pages and flung it into my recycling bin to take to Renaissance.  Life is too short.

And then I opened Henderson’s collection and was immediately captivated. Here was an original voice and sensibility that stopped me in my tracks.  Henderson is an intellectual in the truest sense: he makes no apologies for presenting complex ideas, occasionally erudite references, and multi-lingual commentary.  His is writing that demands work and engagement on the part of the reader—engagement that is richly rewarded.  The stories in The Pagan Nuptials of Julia are multi-layered and present characters as complex individuals, enacting their lives in confusion, yet always accessible through their passions and longings.

In the title story, he relates the tale of a woman who has returned to her birthplace in Italy to attend a family wedding with her Canadian lover. Ian, the lover, marvels at the beauty of the countryside, at the warmth of the Italian relatives, at how they can discourse learnedly about angels and how Julia, the woman in his life, can so easily emote within this context. At the wedding they attend, Ian realizes that Julia’s “homecoming” is a return of the heart, and his “pagan” imagined marriage to her is the acceptance of this communion. The story ends with a wonderful scene in a cemetery where Julia, Ian and a relative gather with the dead, and suddenly the story swings into an allegory about love, loss, and mortality, all rendered with an effortless and deft touch by the author.

“Less and Less Human” presents two divergent points of view:  a husband who presents a classical view of the world, loving music and art that conveys the profoundest and most enduring of human emotions, juxtaposed with that of his ex-wife, a modern composer, whose vision embraces the seemingly absurd through her empirical scepticism.  At the conclusion, Henderson presents a poignant story of Holocaust survivors hearing the “healing” music of Bach, while his wife denigrates his interpretation, suggesting that modern art is predicated on chaos, not human feelings that could possibly endure.  Here, Henderson’s vision becomes apparent to the reader: someone who bemoans the loss of a humanistic connection that has served as the basis of our culture.  A most powerful warning for our age where we have abdicated spiritual values.

It is hard to pick a favorite story from this excellent collection, but two especially stand out.  “Heaven for Pyromaniacs” (such a wonderful title!) and “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. In the former, the main character, Alison, is travelling from Montreal to the funeral of her mother, who has died in Ontario.  The journey, while physical, is really more a passage through her memories, her past, and her feelings about family and loss.  Henderson has the ability to move from the mundane recounting of an event to its core meaning.  For instance, he talks about the reality of people who have fled Quebec after the election of the PQ down the 401 forOntario (the “uni-directional migrants”), yet manages to turn this amusing insight into a metaphor for profound loss as in the following passage: “Bodies moved away from each other in this expanding universe of intimate life.  That is what time and death did.”  Despite the seriousness of the theme, this story is replete with subtle humor and wonderful irony.  At the end, as she and her siblings are removing her mother’s belongings from the nursing home where she had died, Henderson has a startlingly laugh-out-loud moment depicting the elderly residents of the home watching in “delight” and amazement since “unless they were dead or very blessed, they did not move out.” Great writing indeed.

The story though that sticks with me the most is “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” perhaps because this is also my favorite painting by Hieronymus Bosch. How Henderson manages to fashion an allegory about the protagonist’s tainted raspberry patch leading to his subsequent illness and the interpretation of the Bosch painting is a marvel to behold.  He writes about a scene in the  painting of a man surrounded by the “permutation of human evil” and another figure glancing at the world “with wistful despair at the pleasure of the tavern he has just forsworn:  a drunken lout pissing against a wall, a tattered roof, a Dutch whore beckoning from a shutter-buckled window…. Perhaps it was the sense of plague that gave so skeletal a quality to the life of those times just as the sense of holocaust has to our own.”  Juxtaposed with this is his own disease from eating the tainted berries that he states is of a “far less spiritual nature.” Again, an encapsulated summary of what has happened to our notion of suffering humanity.

It is at this point that I wan tto conclude with why such writing matters. Henderson’s vision in these stories reflects the loss of value in our post-modern world, a world of quotidian, material concerns and empty longings.  Gone are the grand themes of art from our lives, he suggests, and we are much the poorer for this.

Besides Henderson being a master of style, it is because of such insights and affirmation that this is good writing—one that makes no apologies and is unremitting in its endorsement of the human spirit.

Keith Henderson’s collection The Pagan Nuptials of Julia is a welcome reminder of what good books once were and hopefully may once again become.

Excitement Tax at the 2018 QWF Awards Ceremony

About Excitement Tax jurors at the 2018 QWF award ceremony wrote:

John Emil Vincent’s special talent is that these really are poems, not just prose in the shape of a poem. He really plays with language. The result is poems which at first glance seem like nonsense, but a closer reading brings us closer to: well, we’re not sure what — but it is a kind of nonsense that makes sense. . . profound nonsense that comments on everything, including language itself.

After putting down John Emil Vincent’s book, you are still ‘in’ his book.

EXCITEMENT TAX is funny. Sardonic; deeply witty in fact. What a relief. And of course it’s quite sad at the same time. An awful lot like life — especially the confusing part.

Net Worth Reviewed on Montreal Rampage

MONTREAL NOW: SHOW ME THE MONEY

Net Worth

The recent book fair held on November 24-25, sponsored by the QWF (Quebec Writers’ Federation), took place in the Atrium of Concordia University’s McConnell Building.  In attendance were all of Montreal’s major English language publishers, affirming that Montreal’s Anglo literary scene is still alive, well, and kicking.  In addition to a fiction and poetry presentation moderated by Montreal writers Kenneth Radu and Harold Hoefle, among others, publishers were there to display and sell their wares.

As I managed to attend on both days, it was an opportunity to purchase new books, meet established and emerging writers, and to rekindle and form new friendships.  The highlight of my weekend was meeting up with Keith Henderson, managing editor of DC Books, an old friend from our days together as teachers at Vanier College, and meeting and getting to know Kenneth Radu, who is fiction editor for that press. I managed to score signed copies of both of their collection of stories:  Henderson’s The Pagan Nuptials of Julia and Radu’s latest, Net Worth. My week’s reading was now complete. Operating within a word limit, I can only do justice to what will surely amount to an incomplete review of one of them, so I have chosen to take on Radu’s collection first.  On Henderson’s work, more to follow.

At the front and centre of Radu’s Net Worth is money:  how we deal with it, covet it, miss it when we don’t have enough, and how it consumes so much of our lives.  Who would think this is the stuff of literature, but through Radu’s deft prose, it becomes a symbol of our most profound emotions ranging from joy to despair. The first story in the collection, “Lottery,” chronicles a day in the life of a woman in her early middle age, Annie, who has discovered that she has won the lotto jackpot of $42 million. Her initial surprise and happiness quickly dissipate, alternating between perplexity (how to spend the money), obligation (how to fairly dispose of it and how to manage it) and paranoia (how to secure her own safety now that she is so wealthy).  The story creates a genuine sense of discomfort as Radu catalogues every possible scenario one could imagine about instant wealth.  But the story doesn’t end there.  Instead, Radu takes a gigantic literary leap and transforms the tale into an allegory about personal happiness.  After meditation on her “good fortune,” Annie reflects on her life and what makes her happy, coming to the inevitable conclusion that money won’t.  Thus, she decides to dispose of the ticket, but in a way that is hilarious, shocking (so much so that the reader cringes, wondering how anyone could do this), yet redemptive.  Radu’s ending is wonderfully original.

“Trust Fund” tells of a woman who discovers her husband’s secreted fortune in the basement after his death and how she arrives at a wrenching epiphany about their marriage and life as a couple.  Yet another, “Personal Injury,” presents the ironically parallel stories about a woman who has just lost her job and the beggar to whom she has given some money as she is late for work, the very cause of her dismissal.  “NetWorth,” the title story of this collection examines the tragic life of a single father who is desperately seeking work in recession times to support his child, yet whose self-worth is tested by the inhumanity of our capitalist system.  “Residential Requirements” is the story of a factotum, Darryl, who works in a nursing home and exploits the elderly for their money, including providing quasi-sexual favors.  This is the “edgiest” story in the collection, cringe-worthy in its dissection of the protagonist’s deceit, ye tRadu manages to make him a compelling character despite Darryl’s low actions.

The best and most “literary” story  in this fine collection is the last one, “Keats Walk,” a tale of an older man who has lost his wife and who is on a journey toward death as he travels to England and traverses “Jane Austen country,” walking along the same paths that the Romantic poet John Keats would stroll while conceiving his ballads, sonnets, and odes—  Keats who died in his 26th year  and who wrote some of the most profound odes to mortality and love ever penned.  In this complex and multi-layered story, Radu’s literary voice is transcendent as the story is simultaneously jarring in its directness, frank in its relentless examination of ageing and loneliness, all the while presenting the heart-wrenching pathos of ageing, all of this skillfully crafted without slipping into sentimentality.  Radu is able to convey great emotion in the muted thoughts of the protagonist as he reflects on his wife’s death (her) “still warm body clad in purple silk pajamas” almost absently remembering that “she had never liked flannel”.  Brilliant.  At the end of the story, after taking stock of his own life and preparing for his death, the “voice” changes into a poetic rendering as the story becomes a true “ode” to the tragedy of living, of love, and of loss.  This story belongs in any anthology of great Canadian writing.

Kenneth Radu told me recently that the goal of any writer is to create a connection with his reader, a connection of the mind and heart. As someone who has labored throughout his career at the “sullen art” of writing, he knows the loneliness of the human soul and dissects this in his prose with humor, irony, and bitterness, but, above all, with warmth and compassion.

He tells us that there is truly no price one can place on the soul and that our true “net worth” is so much more than a bank balance. For this timely reminder, we the readers should be grateful.  For any lover of good writing, Radu’s book is a must-read.