Black Ink

I’m currently on a weeklong leave of absence from my day job to spend more time on my book.  Initially I thought I was going to start off this writing week with the removal of the small cyst that moved in and started living on the back of shoulder, but I realized last night while looking at my appointment card that my surgery is scheduled for next week Tuesday, not today.  This works out, as I certainly didn’t want to write with a sore shoulder, but I still found myself creatively stifled.  I managed to churn out a few pages today, which wasn’t at all what I expected, but I suppose this was better than procrastinating all day like I’m so easily tempted to do.  Tomorrow will be better.

So the schedule for Montreal’s Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival has finally been released.  I immediately went searching for the list of authors to get an idea of the types of faces I’d be tempted to go see at the festival.  I’m sad to report that there will be no presence of Jamaica Kincaid at this festival, which is an absolute bummer.  There’s supposed to be a big tribute of sorts to Montreal writer Michel Tremblay.  I’m already trying to make plans to see the discussion between Writers and Company’s Eleanor Wachtel and the fabulous West Indian poet Derek Walcott.  This on-stage interview is scheduled for Saturday April 8.

On the same day, Donna Bailey Nurse is expected to be at the festival and she’ll be hosting the panel Black and White.  Now this is supposed to be a panel of black writers talking about the experience of writing in a white world, but I wish the organizers at Blue Metropolis would stop with the title and the whole theme itself.  Firstly, this isn’t a “white world.”  Secondly, as one black novelist stated on the panel last year, why is it that no one asks “what it’s like for Jews to write in a Gentile world?”  Thirdly, Nurse has just published an anthology on black Canadian writing.  The book has 29 contributors from which to choose.  You’d think this would be the perfect time to assemble a panel of black Canadian writers and give them a platform to discuss the state of black writing and publishing in Canada.  Why the hell didn’t they put together a panel of black writers to discuss blogging or urban literature in North America?

I was excited about the Black and White event last year.  Now I feel as though it’s going to be a lazily organized repetition of the same discussion that was held one year ago at the festival.  Derek Walcott will be one of the guests and probably the highlight next to Nurse.  They’re also going to have an Indo-Canadian writer on the Black and White panel.  I’m going in to this event with no expectations.

Thankfully, the organizers have actually succeeded in putting together a hip-hop literary show, which will feature the likes of UK hip-hop writer Patrick Neate, Montreal poet Kaie Kellough, and UK poet Luke Sutherland.  Blue Met has even tapped the boys from The Goods to take care of the music.  Now this sounds promising.

If I'm a lousy writer then an awful lot of people have lousy taste.
-Grace Metalious

Earlier this morning I went to my local medical clinic to have a sebaceous cyst removed from the back of my shoulder. It’s actually not as bad as it sounds, but my shoulder hurts like a bitch right now, which is making it painful to type. Anyway, while sitting in the waiting room I decided to sift through the clinic’s magazines and read up on all the glam going on in Hollywood. I started reading the overrated Vanity Fair issue with Tom Ford and a couple of famous naked white women on the cover (who look like they could use a few sandwiches). Much to my delight I found an article on Grace Metalious, author of the scandalous and explicit 1956 novel Peyton Place. I was even more excited to discover that the life of the New Hampshire author is coming to the big screen. Sandra Bullock, who is also producing the flick, will play Metalious. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m really excited about seeing this movie. Hopefully, it’ll be done right:

"Peyton Place" came out in September 1956 from Julian Messner, a small publisher that was willing to take a chance on its scandalous contents because it also saw the possibility that those contents would cause it to take off. Which it did. Rather quickly, helped by an Associated Press interview with the author, word of it got out and it began to climb the New York Times best-seller list.
On Nov. 25, it reached No. 1, the first of two separate stays, totaling 29 weeks, at the top spot. It remained on the list for almost a year and a half. In the fall of 1957, a paperback edition came out…

A daughter of French Canada who had always lived in the small, poor towns of New Hampshire, she apparently was less able to cope with the stresses of success than with those of poverty. Besides "Return to Peyton Place," she published two other books, "The Tight White Collar" (her own favorite) and "No Adam in Eden," before dying in February 1964 of chronic liver disease.

(via The Washington Times)