HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-12-12, Page 20THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2013. PAGE 5.
There are three rules for writing a novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
– Somerset Maugham
The business of writing fiction for a
living is altogether strange. The fiction
writer is not like the farmer with his
seeds, the soldier with his rifle, the teacher
with her curriculum or the violinist with her
Stadivarius. The writer has only what’s
between the ears – and whatever can be
coaxed to bubble up and be set down on the
page.
And even if the fiction writer strikes
literary gold, there’s still the chancy, grubby
business of getting it published. I know of one
writer who toiled for years over what he
thought was his masterpiece, only to be
metaphorically kicked in the teeth over and
over again.
He couldn’t even find a North American
publisher at first, so in desperation he sent his
manuscript to an agent in Britain. He got the
book published alright. Quite a nice job
actually, in three handsome volumes.
Unfortunately, the publisher managed
to somehow lose the ending of the book
– the epilogue – which rather ruined the
effect.
Not surprisingly, the British critics were less
than kind.
“An ill-compounded mixture of romance
and matter-of-fact,” wrote one. “The idea of a
connected and collected story has obviously
visited and abandoned its writer again and
again in the course of composition. The
style of his tale is in places disfigured by
mad (rather than bad) English; and its
catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely
managed.”
Harsh words, but delicious to the ears of
North American literary reviewers who
reprinted the British reviews without bothering
to, you know, actually read the book they were
trashing. The bad press was disastrous; the
author was deeply in debt and praying that the
book would earn enough money to placate the
bill collectors.
But to be absolutely fair, the book he’d
written was a bit...odd. It was written in highly
stylized, at times baffling language with
dollops of symbolism and lashings of
metaphor. It dealt with, among many other
themes, madness, murder and mass slaughter,
of both men and animals.
At times, the author printed stage directions
as if a play was being performed. His main
character was an animal, for heaven’s sake –
an albino, in fact, which thought and acted like
a sadistic human stalker.
Stephen King might be able to pull off a plot
like that, but this author wasn’t Stephen King
and the times – the mid-19th century –
certainly weren’t propitious for such an
outlandish and unlikely tale.
Nevertheless, the author – unfamiliar with
the rules of novel writing – persisted and
finally found an American publisher who was
willing to take a flyer. In 1851, Harper and
Brothers of New York published a North
American edition.
The book was a dud – mostly because of
those critical British reviews. The author, they
say, never really recovered from his failure and
died an unhappy, debt-ridden failure.
Pity he didn’t live a little longer. The
author’s name was Herman Melville and his
book, Moby Dick, is now considered a classic.
Strange business, writing fiction.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
So you want to be a writer Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
For a lot of people there is a sight or an
activity that signifies the start of the
Christmas season, but, for me, it’s been
all about the olfactory and gustatory.
Maybe that speaks to the fact that I’m
incredibly near-sighted and not as involved
with decorating as other people, but for me it’s
always been about the smells and tastes of the
seasons.
Discarding the short-sightedness and the
fact that decorating has never really been my
idea of a Saturday afternoon well-spent, I
think the smells and tastes of Christmas are far
more influential and create far richer
memories than a snowy landscape or the thrill
of tobogganing down a hill. (And not to ignore
my other senses, I’m not really big on
Christmas music. I don’t hate it, but there are
no sounds that I can point at and say, “Yep,
that’s Christmas,” in a positive manner).
Don’t get me wrong, some of my favourite
memories involve my old Harley Davidson
GT-style snow racer and a hill near a certain
Goderich golf course. That said, when I think
of Christmas, my mind always gravitates
towards a few key things.
Apple Pie: Sure, apple pie is certainly not
something that is relegated to a Christmas
treat. You can usually find it at pretty much
every bake sale and special occasion
throughout the year. That said, those pies, with
all due respect, have nothing on my Grandma
Golding’s apple pie.
Every year Christmas would be when the
time it took to load the car up with presents
and get our snow gear on would only be
matched by the 20- to 30-minute trip from
Goderich to Seaforth and it was all made
worthwhile not by the presents and not by the
time spent with family (I was a kid, forgive my
lack of sentimentality), but by the apple pie.
While I’ve changed my tune a bit and love
catching up with all my relatives, that apple
pie is still number one on my list and any
Christmas it isn’t there just feels wrong.
Just in case you’re wondering, this wasn’t
pie and cheese or pie à la mode, this was such
a great apple pie that putting anything else
beside it just paled in comparison.
Gingerbread: I don’t know when and
where gingerbread really entered into my
Christmas mindset. I don’t recall making
gingerbread houses in my youth, though I’m
sure it must have happened at least once or
twice at home if not at school, but since time
immemorial, it’s been something that
reminded me that the Christmas season is
about.
Maybe the birth of my two youngest, very-
redheaded siblings, who are a decade younger
than I, has something to do with it, but I doubt
it.
The taste of gingerbread is something that
just feels a little out of place when there isn’t
snow on the ground and the promise of time
with friends and family on the horizon.
I would go so far to say that, aside from the
Christmas season, gingerbread is just
something I can’t stomach en masse.
Something about Christmas (or maybe
something about the next item on the list) just
makes it easier to enjoy.
Eggnog: Unlike gingerbread, I have a
definite memory that makes this seasonal
drink the best thing since chocolate milk.
In my youth, we made our own eggnog. The
smells of the ingredients filled the house and I
knew, then and there, that Christmas was on
the horizon.
The store-bought kind is great, don’t get me
wrong, and I’ll buy more cartons of it than I
really should, but to me the best-tasting kind is
the kind that I used to make with my younger
sister Tory and parents at home (this particular
practice predates the birth of my other
siblings).
Eggnog just makes everything else about the
Christmas season better. Apple pie tastes a
little better when you pair it with the ’nog and,
as previously stated, you can eat more
gingerbread when it’s paired with this perfect
Christmas beverage.
Cinnamon: I don’t know if you noticed, but
pretty much everything I’ve listed thus far
contains (or can contain) some amount of
cinnamon.
I’m not saying I eat cinnamon here. I, unlike
many of those people out there who were
perfect poster-childs for Darwinism, did not
participate in the Cinnamon Challenge (trying
to swallow a spoonful of the potent stuff).
Unlike the previous three entries on the list,
this item is purely for the olfactory enjoyment
it provides.
Gingerbread has the tinge of ginger and
cinnamon, apple pie is great with a dash of
cinnamon on top and if you make your eggnog
without cinnamon, well then you’re just plain
nuts.
Some of the other items, further down the
list, also contain the super spice. The smell of
cinnamon might as well, in my mind, be the
official smell of Christmas.
Apple Cider: I do love apples. Sliced
apples, whole apples, apples with caramel
drizzle, candied apples, deep-fried apple chips
(my own creation fueled by not having any
potatoes one Christmas eve in school), apple
pie, apple crumble... I’m like the shrimp-
obsessed character in Forrest Gump, except
with apples.
Apple cider is the perfect spacer for eggnog.
Eggnog is great but, in mass amounts, it can
lead to some stomach churning so you need to
space it out.
A glass of apple cider, just brought to a boil
in a deep pot on the stove, stirred with a
cinnamon stick is a great way to limit your
’nog intake and is just great on its own.
It also fills a house with a smell that I would
surround myself with year-round if I weren’t
worried it would suddenly lose its allure.
Meatballs: Okay, this one may seem a bit
out there but my father, as well as members of
his family, usually make meatballs for
Christmas.
Don’t ask me what kind, the recipe is a
mystery to me and, sometimes, a mystery to
my father.
Anyway, the smell and taste of the meatballs
and the sauce in which they’re cooked for
hours in a crock pot has just become
synonymous with Christmas for me and it
always messes with my head a bit whenever he
makes them at any other time of the year.
Fire: Okay, so this is new, but sitting in front
of a fireplace, despite my family having one
for several years, never appealed to me until
recently. The smell of the heat in the air, be it
from a gas fireplace or a wood stove, just
reminds me of Christmas. I hope it continues.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
It’s beginning to smell a lot like Christmas
Adult supervision
Often when I cover local council
meetings, I can safely respond with
“same old, same old” when somebody
asks me what happened. Last week, however, I
experienced a true first, albeit one that will be
remembered, for me anyway, for its infamy.
Local Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)
officers were required to keep order at the Dec.
3 meeting of Huron East Council. To the
surprise of nobody who has followed Huron
County politics in the last five years, it was
wind turbines that caused tempers to flare and
people to get out of control.
Wind turbines have been the county’s top hot
button issue for the last number of years, and
as many projects get closer to being realized,
frustration for many is boiling over.
So as council attempted to debate several
proposed agreements with two different wind
turbine companies at the meeting, it was met
with a chorus of heckling from members of
Huron East Against Turbines (HEAT), an anti-
turbine group that has been opposing a wind
turbine development in St. Columban for
several years.
Unsure of his options and with HEAT
members failing to follow meeting procedure,
Mayor Bernie MacLellan threatened to
essentially close the meeting to public, while
allowing members of the local media to attend
the meeting in the hall’s back room.
While this seemed, at the time, as something
that would be frowned upon from a
transparency standpoint, I couldn’t help but
wonder what I would do in that situation.
As the mayor of a municipality, running a
meeting of an official political body,
MacLellan should have the power, since he
was elected by the people, to have a meeting
free of interruption and disturbance.
While members of the public are, of course,
allowed to attend council meetings, at what
point do they lose that right? After repeatedly
stomping on meeting regulations that ban
public interaction and ignoring direct requests
from the mayor himself to stop interrupting the
meeting, when have those in the audience done
enough to lose that privilege?
MacLellan’s seat was certainly one I
wouldn’t have wanted to be in that night.
Thankfully, as OPP officers arrived, a
compromise was reached and the meeting
stayed open to the public.
I do find it disheartening, however, that
police intervention is required for an event like
a council meeting, which is supposed to be a
formal and civil meeting of elected
officials. As the son of a retired police officer,
I can’t help but see it as a waste of police
resources.
With all of the crime and wrongdoing going
on in the world, two police officers having to
spend time babysitting two groups of
adults who don’t see eye to eye seems like time
that could be better spent elsewhere.
I don’t have a horse in the wind turbine race,
but it has certainly proven to be an issue that
has brought out the worst in people, both
proponents and opponents alike.
Over the years I have covered Huron East
Council, HEAT members and councillors have
had civil conversations and they have had
heated exchanges that have devolved into
yelling matches and now, even worse.
My hope is that when the proposed
agreements next come to council at the Dec. 17
meeting, cooler heads will prevail, though I
fear a calm exchange between the two parties,
at this stage in the game, could prove to be a
bridge too far.