HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-09-05, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2013. PAGE 5.
One of the head scratchers about
English literature is the number of
famous books around that nobody
reads. Did you read last year’s winner
of the Man Booker Prize? Neither did I.
Do you even remember who it was? Same
here. A lot of people, myself included, bought
a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.
Did you ever try to read it? My begrudging
compliments to the psychopathic mullahs
who laid a death threat on Rushdie for
writing it. Whatever their sins they
managed to read enough of the book to be
outraged.
James Joyce is lauded as a prose master but
if you threw a party for everyone who honestly
made it past page 14 of Finnegan’s Wake, two
large pizzas would probably cover your food
requirements.
Most writers appeal to a narrow slice
of the audience. Ezra Pound’s Cantos are great
fun for literati who savour a Greek pun
leavened by a medieval Italian aphorism while
Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) satisfies
readers who move their lips when they
read.
Very few writers are good enough to please
everyone – book snobs and bellhops; genius
and jerk. Dickens comes close, but he wore
too much purple and never met an adjective
he didn’t like.
In the end, I can think of only two. One of
them died nearly 400 years ago; the other died
last month.
William Shakespeare hardly needs an
introduction. Sixteen tragedies, 10 histories,
12 comedies plus a raft of poems, all culled
from his teeming brain with a quill pen on
parchment. Though the English language has
since morphed and evolved, his works are still
performed in his original words every year all
around the world, from the London stage to
Australian Outback music halls; on a beach in
Vancouver and under the white lights of
Broadway.
The other master writer? Elmore Leonard,
a Detroit boy, dead of a stroke last month at
87. He wrote more than 40 novels, most
of them about crooks, but it would be a
mistake to dismiss him as a ‘crime writer’.
He was as The New Yorker said, “one of the
best writers who happened to write about
crime”.
It took the world a while to catch on. He
didn’t make the best seller list until he was 60
and his first crime novel, The Big Bounce, was
rejected 84 times.
But he was world famous long before he
died – and largely unmoved by it. Critics raved
about his ‘ear for dialogue’. Leonard
shrugged. “People always say, ‘Where do you
get your characters’ words?’ And I say ‘Can’t
you remember people talking or think up
people talking in your head?’ That’s all it is. I
don’t know why that seems such a
wonderment to people.”
But wonderment it was in Elmore’s hands.
His fans are legion. One of them wrote of the
novel Glitz: “This is the kind of book that if
you get up to see if there are any chocolate
chip cookies left, you take it with you so you
won’t miss anything.”
A chap named Steven King said that.
As for writerly advice, Leonard kept that
sweet and simple too. “Don’t go into great
detail describing places and things” he
advised.
And my favourite: “Try to leave out the parts
that readers tend to skip.”
Writers, there you have it. Now go and write
a classic.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Read up, you might learn something
After years and years of listening to
music, I have found that when given
the opportunity to glimpse into the life
of a favourite musician, I have often come
away disappointed.
What I mean by that is that when you hear
about someone who has made a ton of money
making music, it’s about them buying a multi-
million-dollar mansion, or some other sort of
selfish act.
This is not always the case, there are many
musicians who are very philanthropic, but for
every story of Jack White paying to refurbish
and old Detroit baseball field, there is another
of rapper Kanye West spending $750,000 on
gold toilets for the home he shares with his
wife Kim Kardashian.
So naturally it was a breath of fresh air when
I went to see the British band Mumford and
Sons in the Ontario musical hotbed of Simcoe
late last month.
The band stopped in Simcoe as part of its
second annual Gentlemen of the Road tour. A
tour like none other, the tour is comprised of a
handful of two-day festivals in small, yet
vibrant towns, where local food, drink and
craftspeople are on full display, much to the
town’s benefit.
In an interview on the CBC’s The National,
the band’s lead singer Marcus Mumford said
that he and his bandmates wanted to make a
complete U-turn from the traditional idea of a
music festival where a band “rapes and
pillages” a community for the benefit of money
and their music.
The concept behind the Gentlemen of the
Road shows was to target a community that has
been on the ropes economically and give it a
huge lift by way of the concert.
Mumford and his bandmates visited Simcoe
earlier this year and decided that the town of
just over 14,000 people would be the perfect
spot for the band’s first Canadian Gentlemen
of the Road stopover and brought local
businesses along for the ride.
Knowing the concert, and its merchandise,
would be a huge money-maker, the band
authorized the use of the concert’s logo to any
local business that wanted it.
This resulted in local clothing stores
producing locally-made shirts supporting the
event. It even resulted in a local brewery hand-
crafting thousands of cans of a special ale
made just for the concert, being sold in a can
bearing the Gentlemen of the Road Simcoe
logo. Local businesses were instructed to keep
any profits they realized from Mumford and
Sons-related sales – that the only catch was
that they had to donate 10 per cent of the
profits to a charity of their choice.
In his interview with the CBC, even
Mumford said the band’s approach was a
breath of fresh air. He told the interviewer
horror stories he had heard of music festivals in
the United Kingdom where bands would, after
a festival, send representatives to local
businesses, such as gas stations, asking for a
“cut” of the proceeds, taking credit for the
increased traffic, and therefore sales.
So yes, there is hope after all that not all
musicians are self-absorbed and money-
grubbing and that they do have a social
conscience.
The whole experience made me think of
concerts in a different way. I pictured Blyth or
Brussels hosting such a festival and instead of
looking at all the ways it couldn’t work, I
began to see all the ways that it could. A
change in mindset that could go a long way to
changing the landscape of concerts going
forward.
Big band, small town
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
As a journalist I spend a lot of time
wondering about where my career
path will lead me.
In my field there’s really two ways I can go:
I can either continue to cover the news or I
could start making it.
I could hone my skill over decades and then
leave for greener pastures as a politician or
continue to work hard to bring the news to
people.
Most of my wondering about the future
comes at one of two times: either as I sit in a
municipal council meeting hearing politicians
speak or as I sit there and read news stories
about Justin Trudeau, Stephen Harper, Barack
Obama and their contemporaries.
Most recently, I sat in a meeting with
members of North Huron Council as they
decided to support 14/19 in two ways;
financially as long as it benefitted Memorial
Hall and with in-kind or non-monetary support
in other ways.
The conversation quickly changed to
something that I have heard (almost ad
nauseam) at meetings about Blyth Memorial
Hall and its courtyard.
The discussion became North Huron
shouldn’t change the courtyard or the exterior
of Memorial Hall.
No councillor came right out and said
those words, however one came very close
by saying that it is an idea opposed by
many.
I decided then and there (as I have before),
that politics is probably going to be where I
end up because I know that, if I sat there, I
would have burst out and said something along
the lines that great prosperity requires great
change and great change is always opposed at
the beginning.
Maybe I’m out of line here, but, being
essentially a unicorn (a mythical beast that
doesn’t exist) by being a youth who wants to
stay in Huron County, I have to say that this
kind of attitude couldn’t be further from what
is healthiest for the community.
I sit here, week after week, month after
month and year after year (up to five and a half
of them now) and listen to nearly every
municipality and every local governing body
say they need to attract and retain young
people. They need young people to go away to
school and come back and ply their trades in
Blyth, in Goderich, in Exeter, in Seaforth and
in every area around it.
They all say this, but when it comes time to
change things, to create new spaces that might
attract those young people, they balk.
I’m worried because, as a 28-year-old,
it won’t be long before I’m no longer one
of those young people. I’ll lose my horn
and go from being a unicorn to a plain old
horse.
However, as I still am young in my own
mind, I have to say that looking at the
courtyard in front of Memorial Hall, it’s time
for a change.
People say everything changes and you have
to embrace that to succeed. I say they’re
wrong. Some things inevitably do change, but
true change has to come from forward-
thinking individuals leading the way.
We have those forward-thinking individuals
in the way of architect firms that have
suggested changes and yet, we want to ignore
them.
Instead of having space for outdoor
performance to attract young performers,
instead of having a place where we could have
outdoor movies and musical talent that is
visible from the road and could be intriguing
enough to draw people in, we have people
begrudgingly standing against change and
saying leave it the way it is because I had a
part in making it that way. We have people
suggesting we keep the courtyard, which
isolates the only true performance area, and
makes it less than inviting (in my opinion, of
course).
I know it’s going to be dangerous taking a
side in this debate but Blyth needs to adapt if
it’s going to continue to grow.
Regardless of whether it’s 14/19, the Blyth
streetscape plan or whatever the next initiative
is that is placed before council and the people,
support is what is needed, not second-guessing
and naysaying.
Maybe, in 10 years, we’ll look back and say
it was a mistake. That, however, is the great
thing about making changes. You can always
make another.
It’s far better to look back and say it was a
mistake than to look back and say we should
have listened to those professional opinions
instead of standing against progress and
against change.
Now, I’m not, for one second, suggesting
that these changes should come despite the
concerns of the community. I am, however,
stating flatly that if you have the support of a
group like the Blyth Legion (which is
involved in 14/19 and has been since day one),
you shouldn’t second guess what’s going on in
committee meetings.
Of course final say to any municipally-
owned building needs to be approved by
council. That would go (or should have gone)
without saying.
However, before the plans are laid out,
before any designs have been suggested,
before any concrete evidence of a change is
present, councillors are already putting the
brakes on.
Maybe it’s time for a changing of the guard.
Maybe it’s time for the community to speak up
(and if they speak up and I’m in the wrong,
I’m okay with that. I’m open to change, that’s
kind of my whole spiel here).
Whatever the eventual outcome is, I think
we need to be a fluid community that moves
forward, not a stagnant one that balks at
suggested change before we even know what
the change is.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
You can’t stand against time or tide
“Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all
distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no
force of character, can make any stand
against good wit.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Final Thought