By Shane Neilson
Like all writers, I’m aware of the impending apocalypse. I’m aware that reading paper is a fading pastime and that the screen reigns. I watch people in airports, that former stronghold of novels, and I note with dismay the handheld devices that people lovingly caress. I pull out a novel, the biggest and most flatulent one I can, and I defiantly read it, pretending I’m bailing out the Titanic. (There’s no hope for books on planes anymore. The in-flight Hollywood numbification system has taken care of that.)
I read The Winnipeg Review issue on the ebook and its effect on reading culture. Shortly after the release of that issue, I learned that my last book of poetry, Complete Physical, was just made available for sale in electronic format. The ebook was priced at $5.00.
I didn’t mind that the book was made available in this way because I knew the likelihood that anyone would buy it was zero. I would never buy a book of poems for consumption on a screen, and I think people who read poetry feel the same way. We’re the most conservative consumers out there! But I did wonder at how the publisher really felt about making the book available in this format, for the truth is that the book is exquisitely produced. Tim Inkster spent a lot of money making the book look and feel like it came from another era, when books were made to be beautiful and rich and we weren’t aware that the future was the medium is the message.
I travelled to Saskatchewan from Pearson airport. I brought along Elspeth Cameron’s flatulent biography of Earle Birney. As an act of reading defiance, it’s pretty mild. But did I ever sneer at the Angry Birds gamers!
The Festival of Words in Moose Jaw spent a lot of money making a mere poet comfortable. I was met at the airport by a driver. I was dropped off at a 4.5 star hotel. I had a choice of four events to attend at any one time. The writers seemed earnest, and people from all over the province were in the audience. Running for fifteen years, it was a well-oiled machine.
The end of the day brought a panel discussion moderated by the prairie writer David Carpenter. It’s worth mentioning that his last book was titled Welcome to Canada. It’s also worth mentioning that it too was produced by the Porcupine’s Quill. Carpenter introduced the panel, which consisted of Kenneth J. Harvey on the far left. Johanna Skibsrud sat next to him, Sandra Birdsell next to her. Allan Casey was in the middle, and Charlotte Gray sat to the far right.
Some easy questions were lobbed to the writers as preliminaries. The topic of the discussion was “Running The Writer’s Gauntlet” and the gist of same was a discussion of rejection and awards. I was very cognizant of the fact that each of the writers introduced were award-winners, for Carpenter made sure to mention the most salient of these. He lightheartedly said that the writers assembled here had enough awards between them to resemble a reunion of distinguished generals should they decide to dress in uniform. As he said this, he pointed to his own breast.
Carpenter then asked the question that would cause the prairie canola to whip in a sudden wind. Up to that point the writers made minor noises about the difficulties they faced in a threatened industry. He asked the assembled writers if they would continue to write should the publishing industry cease to be. Would they continue to write if there was no way to publish books?
Kenneth J. Harvey quickly said that he didn’t care because he had “already stopped writing.” The audience laughed nervously, until Harvey clarified his point: he described the publishing industry as being “terrible.” His eloquent assessment was that it was “messed.” He said that he had worked with almost every publisher in Canada, having published nineteen books. He said that he had to always fight with someone to get a book published. He said that he had spent over twenty years in a darkened room typing, and that he craved something more collaborative, something that got him talking to actual people. He had decided to write scripts for films,
Charlotte Gray, a world-class writer of historical non-fiction, called out Harvey for his grandstanding (“You’ve just detonated a perfect nuclear bomb in the middle of a writer’s festival”) but fell fatally into the trap of engaging Harvey. In fact, all the writers on the panel pandered to Harvey. They all tried to figure out if Harvey was indeed serious, and when it became clear he was, albeit confusedly so, they tried to convince him that writing books was still worthwhile.
Harvey gleefully antagonized everyone. He called writers “civil servants,” which is actually hard to argue against. He said that without the federal government, there would be no publishing industry. He namedropped J.M. Coetzee, telling the audience that Coetzee was shocked when Harvey described to him the subsidization of publishing in Canada.
He then, with a straight face, said he was giving it all up for Canadian films. Still a branch of the civil service, last time I checked, and also one that has an even smaller market than the publishing industry in this country. The last Canadian film you watched? The last Canadian book you read?
Harvey wasn’t finished. He described his own activism in the CanCult wars. He outlined an occupation he did of a bookstore many years ago. This happened in the distant past, and it’s quite a quaint idea. Imagine— occupying a bookstore! Let’s make it even harder to sell books! Such a thing would only be acceptable these days if it were a Chapters occupation. But then Harvey is a publicity hound, and admitted as much on the panel. This is a guy who once included his own skin with each copy of one of his books.
One of the writers said that the people of Newfoundland would be “shocked” if they knew that Harvey had stopped writing books. At this point the panel had stopped being about the state of publishing in Canada and more about Kenneth J. Harvey on the state of Kenneth J. Harvey. I knew that the other writers should just move on, should talk about their own thoughts about writing without the shadow cast by Harvey’s manipulative showmanship. But Carpenter doggedly pressed on, pointing out to Harvey that screenwriting is much more “severely collaborative” than the writing of books. Harvey responded that this was exactly what he was looking for.
I find this naive, as it seems to me that Harvey is not good with other people. Again, he admitted that he fought with someone with every book. A writer who switches houses with each new effort can’t win a popularity prize, because there’s a reason for such behaviour.
The poor people of Saskatchewan, some of them nascent writers, tried to convert Harvey back to the cause. They asked him questions that expressed their chagrin about what they had heard to that point. Remember, collectively they had asked him to be a part of their festival. He agreed, even going so far as to be part of a panel, and he took the opportunity to insult the sense of people still holding fast to an irrelevant art.
The subject of poetry came up. Harvey was asked if he thought of himself as a poet. I thought of the original question, that which went along the lines of whether a writer would continue to write if there was no hope of publication. A poet would answer yes, for all the poets I know had written long before they could have hoped for publication. They wrote poems compulsively, habitually. It was their practise to write. It’s hard to justify the effort involved in the generation of a novel without the promise or potential of publication, but it isn’t difficult to breathe with poetry.
Harvey denied that he was a poet at all. He said he was a novelist. He was challenged that he indeed did write poetry before and had published it in book form. Harvey said that he left poetry behind, though there was a “lot of poetry in what I write now.” Notwithstanding his declaration that he had stopped writing, mind.
The next day I went down to the book table that was staffed by volunteers. I noticed that Harvey’s latest novel was on the table, but also that Kill the Poets: Anti-Verse was too. The people of Saskatchewan had bothered to import one of his books, from 1998, and he essentially disowned it onstage. But such was the pattern: Harvey bites the hand that feeds him. Maybe he really is a poet after all.
Things got funnier when Harvey claimed he loved it when he derived money from sites like Amazon when, through a series of “clicks,” he could get a cut from the purchase of Madonna’s music when customers went through his portal. (I’m a bit confused by what’s involved in this heist, but the basis of it is that Harvey gets a kick out of obtaining money from listeners of the Material Girl.) In the midst of discussing money he made a point of mentioning that he was published in over twelve countries and was a bestseller in Russia and Italy. He then insulted Canadian tastes. It’s important to mention again that next to him sat Skibsrud, gifted a Giller upon the publication of her first book of prose. It’s also relevant to mention that the subtitle of the Harvey-created Relit Award is Ideas, not money.
It was in the baths that I realized something. The Temple Gardens Mineral Spa Resort Hotel in Moose Jaw pipes in mineral water from over a kilometre away. The water is 37 degrees Celsius in the main part of the pool. The pool continues outdoors and the temperature in this area is 42 degrees Celsius. Patrons are instructed to get out of the water at twenty-minute intervals and take “cool down” showers. In snowstorms, locals are known to pay to enter the hotel solely for the purpose of entering the baths. They change into speedos and bikinis, enter the water, and wade to the outdoor section. They are also wearing toques. They stand outside, their bodies submerged save for their eyes peering above water level and the toque covering their foreheads and ears. Around them the snow is swirling, the temperature as low as -30 degrees. (This is an apt metaphor for the publishing industry. Boiling your balls and freezing your brains at the same time.)
I was simulating this activity (it was plus 31 degrees outside) when I realized that the best part of the Harvey story was that he was leaving the books business, just not yet. He still needs Saskatchewan and the book-buying public for a while. He has two other books in the can, and he needs those to be released before he can be free. The real answer to Carpenter’s question, then, is that Harvey will continue to release books, just not write them.
I suspect that all of this will prove to be temporary, or is just a joke. Harvey enjoyed taking a position to its logical and extreme end (what, the book business is threatened? I’ll threaten it right back!) as either a trick designed to provoke the sanctimonious crowd, or he will learn what Faulkner learned and he’ll come back to books, chastened and bitter that the producers always win, and that there will be a pig that can talk in his next script. Either way, Harvey will still write books, and I suspect he’ll still be published. He has a knack for finding suckers.
Brenda Niskala and I were the last writers to man the signing table at the Festival of Words. Brenda pulled out a copy of Compete Physical to my complete surprise and admitted that she had no idea who I was, but because she was sight-challenged she loved the feel of a good book and so she pulled it from the stacks and bought it the day prior. I bought her book in return and I made a show of opening it in the Regina airport. I also looked up at the television screen hanging from the ceiling in the Tim Hortons past the security checkpoint, but only when Kim Kardashian flowed across it.
Independently wealthy… now where did I hear that before? Right. It was at Harvey’s reading the next day, when the emotions from the panel discussion spilled over to his own reading. He read from the Latest Lite Controversy book and when done deflected a question about his motivations for writing scripts as a bid to earn more money. Harvey said he was “independently wealthy” and that he really just wanted to let a little light in his life by writing for film types.
On the plane, I tried the onboard entertainment system for the first time in my life. To my surprise, I discovered that one could indeed consume Canadian films. Until that moment, I thought we were talking about unicorns.
The Festival of No More Words
Articles
By Shane Neilson
Like all writers, I’m aware of the impending apocalypse. I’m aware that reading paper is a fading pastime and that the screen reigns. I watch people in airports, that former stronghold of novels, and I note with dismay the handheld devices that people lovingly caress. I pull out a novel, the biggest and most flatulent one I can, and I defiantly read it, pretending I’m bailing out the Titanic. (There’s no hope for books on planes anymore. The in-flight Hollywood numbification system has taken care of that.)
I read The Winnipeg Review issue on the ebook and its effect on reading culture. Shortly after the release of that issue, I learned that my last book of poetry, Complete Physical, was just made available for sale in electronic format. The ebook was priced at $5.00.
I didn’t mind that the book was made available in this way because I knew the likelihood that anyone would buy it was zero. I would never buy a book of poems for consumption on a screen, and I think people who read poetry feel the same way. We’re the most conservative consumers out there! But I did wonder at how the publisher really felt about making the book available in this format, for the truth is that the book is exquisitely produced. Tim Inkster spent a lot of money making the book look and feel like it came from another era, when books were made to be beautiful and rich and we weren’t aware that the future was the medium is the message.
I travelled to Saskatchewan from Pearson airport. I brought along Elspeth Cameron’s flatulent biography of Earle Birney. As an act of reading defiance, it’s pretty mild. But did I ever sneer at the Angry Birds gamers!
The Festival of Words in Moose Jaw spent a lot of money making a mere poet comfortable. I was met at the airport by a driver. I was dropped off at a 4.5 star hotel. I had a choice of four events to attend at any one time. The writers seemed earnest, and people from all over the province were in the audience. Running for fifteen years, it was a well-oiled machine.
The end of the day brought a panel discussion moderated by the prairie writer David Carpenter. It’s worth mentioning that his last book was titled Welcome to Canada. It’s also worth mentioning that it too was produced by the Porcupine’s Quill. Carpenter introduced the panel, which consisted of Kenneth J. Harvey on the far left. Johanna Skibsrud sat next to him, Sandra Birdsell next to her. Allan Casey was in the middle, and Charlotte Gray sat to the far right.
Some easy questions were lobbed to the writers as preliminaries. The topic of the discussion was “Running The Writer’s Gauntlet” and the gist of same was a discussion of rejection and awards. I was very cognizant of the fact that each of the writers introduced were award-winners, for Carpenter made sure to mention the most salient of these. He lightheartedly said that the writers assembled here had enough awards between them to resemble a reunion of distinguished generals should they decide to dress in uniform. As he said this, he pointed to his own breast.
Carpenter then asked the question that would cause the prairie canola to whip in a sudden wind. Up to that point the writers made minor noises about the difficulties they faced in a threatened industry. He asked the assembled writers if they would continue to write should the publishing industry cease to be. Would they continue to write if there was no way to publish books?
Kenneth J. Harvey quickly said that he didn’t care because he had “already stopped writing.” The audience laughed nervously, until Harvey clarified his point: he described the publishing industry as being “terrible.” His eloquent assessment was that it was “messed.” He said that he had worked with almost every publisher in Canada, having published nineteen books. He said that he had to always fight with someone to get a book published. He said that he had spent over twenty years in a darkened room typing, and that he craved something more collaborative, something that got him talking to actual people. He had decided to write scripts for films,
Charlotte Gray, a world-class writer of historical non-fiction, called out Harvey for his grandstanding (“You’ve just detonated a perfect nuclear bomb in the middle of a writer’s festival”) but fell fatally into the trap of engaging Harvey. In fact, all the writers on the panel pandered to Harvey. They all tried to figure out if Harvey was indeed serious, and when it became clear he was, albeit confusedly so, they tried to convince him that writing books was still worthwhile.
Harvey gleefully antagonized everyone. He called writers “civil servants,” which is actually hard to argue against. He said that without the federal government, there would be no publishing industry. He namedropped J.M. Coetzee, telling the audience that Coetzee was shocked when Harvey described to him the subsidization of publishing in Canada.
He then, with a straight face, said he was giving it all up for Canadian films. Still a branch of the civil service, last time I checked, and also one that has an even smaller market than the publishing industry in this country. The last Canadian film you watched? The last Canadian book you read?
Harvey wasn’t finished. He described his own activism in the CanCult wars. He outlined an occupation he did of a bookstore many years ago. This happened in the distant past, and it’s quite a quaint idea. Imagine— occupying a bookstore! Let’s make it even harder to sell books! Such a thing would only be acceptable these days if it were a Chapters occupation. But then Harvey is a publicity hound, and admitted as much on the panel. This is a guy who once included his own skin with each copy of one of his books.
One of the writers said that the people of Newfoundland would be “shocked” if they knew that Harvey had stopped writing books. At this point the panel had stopped being about the state of publishing in Canada and more about Kenneth J. Harvey on the state of Kenneth J. Harvey. I knew that the other writers should just move on, should talk about their own thoughts about writing without the shadow cast by Harvey’s manipulative showmanship. But Carpenter doggedly pressed on, pointing out to Harvey that screenwriting is much more “severely collaborative” than the writing of books. Harvey responded that this was exactly what he was looking for.
I find this naive, as it seems to me that Harvey is not good with other people. Again, he admitted that he fought with someone with every book. A writer who switches houses with each new effort can’t win a popularity prize, because there’s a reason for such behaviour.
The poor people of Saskatchewan, some of them nascent writers, tried to convert Harvey back to the cause. They asked him questions that expressed their chagrin about what they had heard to that point. Remember, collectively they had asked him to be a part of their festival. He agreed, even going so far as to be part of a panel, and he took the opportunity to insult the sense of people still holding fast to an irrelevant art.
The subject of poetry came up. Harvey was asked if he thought of himself as a poet. I thought of the original question, that which went along the lines of whether a writer would continue to write if there was no hope of publication. A poet would answer yes, for all the poets I know had written long before they could have hoped for publication. They wrote poems compulsively, habitually. It was their practise to write. It’s hard to justify the effort involved in the generation of a novel without the promise or potential of publication, but it isn’t difficult to breathe with poetry.
Harvey denied that he was a poet at all. He said he was a novelist. He was challenged that he indeed did write poetry before and had published it in book form. Harvey said that he left poetry behind, though there was a “lot of poetry in what I write now.” Notwithstanding his declaration that he had stopped writing, mind.
The next day I went down to the book table that was staffed by volunteers. I noticed that Harvey’s latest novel was on the table, but also that Kill the Poets: Anti-Verse was too. The people of Saskatchewan had bothered to import one of his books, from 1998, and he essentially disowned it onstage. But such was the pattern: Harvey bites the hand that feeds him. Maybe he really is a poet after all.
Things got funnier when Harvey claimed he loved it when he derived money from sites like Amazon when, through a series of “clicks,” he could get a cut from the purchase of Madonna’s music when customers went through his portal. (I’m a bit confused by what’s involved in this heist, but the basis of it is that Harvey gets a kick out of obtaining money from listeners of the Material Girl.) In the midst of discussing money he made a point of mentioning that he was published in over twelve countries and was a bestseller in Russia and Italy. He then insulted Canadian tastes. It’s important to mention again that next to him sat Skibsrud, gifted a Giller upon the publication of her first book of prose. It’s also relevant to mention that the subtitle of the Harvey-created Relit Award is Ideas, not money.
It was in the baths that I realized something. The Temple Gardens Mineral Spa Resort Hotel in Moose Jaw pipes in mineral water from over a kilometre away. The water is 37 degrees Celsius in the main part of the pool. The pool continues outdoors and the temperature in this area is 42 degrees Celsius. Patrons are instructed to get out of the water at twenty-minute intervals and take “cool down” showers. In snowstorms, locals are known to pay to enter the hotel solely for the purpose of entering the baths. They change into speedos and bikinis, enter the water, and wade to the outdoor section. They are also wearing toques. They stand outside, their bodies submerged save for their eyes peering above water level and the toque covering their foreheads and ears. Around them the snow is swirling, the temperature as low as -30 degrees. (This is an apt metaphor for the publishing industry. Boiling your balls and freezing your brains at the same time.)
I was simulating this activity (it was plus 31 degrees outside) when I realized that the best part of the Harvey story was that he was leaving the books business, just not yet. He still needs Saskatchewan and the book-buying public for a while. He has two other books in the can, and he needs those to be released before he can be free. The real answer to Carpenter’s question, then, is that Harvey will continue to release books, just not write them.
I suspect that all of this will prove to be temporary, or is just a joke. Harvey enjoyed taking a position to its logical and extreme end (what, the book business is threatened? I’ll threaten it right back!) as either a trick designed to provoke the sanctimonious crowd, or he will learn what Faulkner learned and he’ll come back to books, chastened and bitter that the producers always win, and that there will be a pig that can talk in his next script. Either way, Harvey will still write books, and I suspect he’ll still be published. He has a knack for finding suckers.
Brenda Niskala and I were the last writers to man the signing table at the Festival of Words. Brenda pulled out a copy of Compete Physical to my complete surprise and admitted that she had no idea who I was, but because she was sight-challenged she loved the feel of a good book and so she pulled it from the stacks and bought it the day prior. I bought her book in return and I made a show of opening it in the Regina airport. I also looked up at the television screen hanging from the ceiling in the Tim Hortons past the security checkpoint, but only when Kim Kardashian flowed across it.
Independently wealthy… now where did I hear that before? Right. It was at Harvey’s reading the next day, when the emotions from the panel discussion spilled over to his own reading. He read from the Latest Lite Controversy book and when done deflected a question about his motivations for writing scripts as a bid to earn more money. Harvey said he was “independently wealthy” and that he really just wanted to let a little light in his life by writing for film types.
On the plane, I tried the onboard entertainment system for the first time in my life. To my surprise, I discovered that one could indeed consume Canadian films. Until that moment, I thought we were talking about unicorns.