Plug for My Journalism Course at UofT Starting Oct.1

Hello. I'm teaching The Freelance Writing Business this fall at UofT SCS. Monday nights, eight sessions, starting October 1. This course is designed to help writers make the transition into full or part-time work as a freelance writer. It's a mix of writing tips and business advice. Fun and practical.

Please visit learn.utoronto.ca for more info.

Chatelaine Part 27

(This was supposed to be published months ago, but I did a draft and somehow forgot to post it. Enjoy my stale, stale jokes.)

In lieu of in-depth and thoughtful commentary about editor Sara Angel being removed from Chatelaine, I instead offer the following pair of Onion-style headlines. I realize that a fake news headline is the cheapest laugh out there, but I'm lazy and I'm tired of chewing on the fat of a dead horse:

• Chatelaine Masthead Now Printed on Dry-Erase Board

• Rogers Media Begins Exhaustive Search For New Chatelaine Editor to Hire, Fire.

I will say, however, that I found the latest issue of Chatelaine quite clever. In lieu of the Editor's letter (since there is no more editor) the magazine published a photograph of all the other editors at the magazine. As if to say, "Sure, we no longer have an editor-in-chief anymore, but we have plenty of editors, plural."

Touche.

C’mon, Tell Us What You Really Think T.F.

From today’s Globe, a book review by T. F. Rigelhof about Michael Winter’s new book, The Architects Are Here:

'The novel can do simply everything," Henry James wrote under the heading, The Future of the Novel, more than 100 years ago. [...] What Henry James wrote then is worth remembering now when you read Michael Winter's The Architects Are Here, because this flamboyant gem of a novel is so wide-angled and crowded with dramatic incident that it's likely to stretch even an unusually generous reader's literate mind and loving heart beyond normal limits.

I think he likes the book. And, apparently, it will blow your mind. Like, literally. You've been warned.

Plug for Someone Who is Not Me

My friend Jessica Westhead launches her debut novel on September 25 at 7:30pm at the Gladstone. I would recommend you check it out.

(link)

Big Ideas in Little Packages

Due to space restrictions, my piece in the Star on Sunday about radical architecture magazines was trimmed slightly. I'm posting the full version here, but the only material that was lost was Ezra Pound talking about little magazines and a quote from Derek Webster's piece on the same exhibit in Maisonneuve.

Enjoy or ignore, as you see fit.

***

Nearly 25 years ago, in March of 1983, novelist Nicholson Baker published an essay in the Atlantic entitled “The Size of Thoughts.” Alternating between wit and lunacy, Baker argues that, “Each thought has a size, and most are about three feet tall, with the level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create a pleasantly striped product.”

Baker goes on to advance three theorems regarding large thoughts. The first is that “All large thoughts are reluctant.” The third theorem is that “Large thoughts depend more heavily on small thoughts than you might think.” But it is Baker’s second theorem that is most relevant to radical journals, regardless of content or stripe, that being, “Large thoughts are creatures of the shade.”

Since the early 1900s, one of the most reliable instruments for the generation of idea shade have been little magazines. Referring to the literary and critical journals that appeared during and after World War I, the term little magazines refers not to the physical dimensions of a given title, but a small circulation publication that spoke with a big, confident voice that belied its size.

Publications such as The Little Review, Criterion, Broom, Poetry, The Egoist, Partisan Review, American Mercury and Blast provided shade for thoughts of various sizes and shapes, from ideas six-feet tall, to mid-sized and subcompact musings – even the floating of an occasional thought bubble. (Sometimes the shade was not sufficient, however – The Little Review was banned for its attempts to serialize James Joyce’s Ulysses.) Writing in The English Journal, in November 1930, Ezra Pound argued that a good little magazine provided a place where “tennis about ideas could be played.” Pound goes on to describe small magazines, variously, as “fugitive periodicals”; “impractical magazines”; “eccentric magazines” and “apparently tawdry and freakish.”

The mechanics of the little magazine remains remarkably stable across decades and genres: give an angry or impatient young woman or man enough shade, and they will try and change the world. Ulysses may have little in common with parabolic arches and crenellated roofs, but during the 60s and 70s, architecture dove into the shade. The result is Clip/Stamp/Fold 2, which is currently being exhibited at Montreal’s Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in a show that runs until September 9. Subtitled “The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X,” Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 was born at Princeton University’s School of Architecture, and is the result of two years of seminars and interviews conducted by Ph.D. students, a project overseen by Professor Beatriz Colomina. The material and research collected by the Princeton students has been augmented by archival material from the CCA’s special collections.

Taken together, the exhibit offers, in the words of architectural critic Reyner Banham, a whole lot of “Wham! Zoom! Zing! Rave!” Banham’s onomatopoeia appeared in issue #3 of New Society in March of 1966, a left-leaning British magazine of social inquiry. Banham went on to explain that “these sound effects are produced by the erupting of underground architectural protest magazines.”

As if to acknowledge the volatile aspects of these magazines, the CCA has chosen to display some of its holdings inside a cluster of two dozen clear plastic bubbles that balance upon metal tripod legs. The bubbles evoke a fire alarm behind glass, and they seem to whisper: in case of architectural emergencies involve stodginess or ossification, smash the plastic and distribute the manifestos, ultimatums and colourful vocabularies of protest within.

The bulk of the Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 exhibit, however, involves an undulated wave of clear plastic that wobbles across the walls of the CCA’s Octogonal Gallery. The long wave serves as a timeline as it displays 70 different covers of key publications, along with contextualizing captions written by the Princeton students. (For a virtual version, visit clipstampfold.com). The covers of these magazines serve as a window into their contents and attitudes toward architecture.

These magazines were avant-garde in both design and content. Issue #8 of the London-based magazine Archigram, for example, contained a Do-It-Yourself “Megastructure Model Kit.” As Dennis Crompton, an editor at Archigram during the 1960s explained in a recent interview for the Clip/Stamp/Fold project, offset lithographic printing allowed small publishers “to take either typewriting or handwriting or sketches or drawings or whatever, and to reproduce them. So small magazines only became possible when the printing technology became possible as well.”

Experimentation became an imperative and these magazines innovated through design, jiggling size, layout, format and typography. Wild colours and fonts abound, along with strange collages. Clip-Kit, a British magazine published during the 1960s, did Archigram one better– the entire publication required assembly. As Irene Sunwoo, one of the Princeton students involved in the exhibit writes, “the magazine was comprised of three installments of A4 pages published over a six-month period. Readers could ‘clip’ the magazine pages into a plastic binding manufactured by M&M Binding Ltd. Company, who paid for advertising within Clip-Kit and provided the editors with free samples of the clip in order to promote the new product to architects.”

Meanwhile, Marxism spilt across magazine pages like so much red wine, along with articles by cutting-edge theoreticians like Paul Virillo, Guy Debord, Umberto Eco, Charles Jencks, Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard. And radical content meant radical editorial approaches. Craig Buckley, another Princeton student involved in the exhibit, writes that the first two issues of the Parisian magazine Utopie “emphasized dialogue: a marginal column ran though the magazine allowing members of the editorial committee to comment upon each other’s texts.” (At the risk of being snarky, it is telling that this innovation did not survive. Attaining utopia under most circumstances is tough enough. Utopia via committee is all but impossible.)

Not only did Utopie (which published its first issue in May of 1967) cut through its own text, it also attempted to cut across disciplines with an editorial board that mixed urbanists, architects and sociologists. Other magazines, meanwhile, debated fine gradations of topics and subtopics, burrowing deep into the shade.

But despite the serious work required to deconstruct mainstream architecture, some of these little magazines found room for humour. The cover of Bau #1/2, a Vienna journal that was published in 1968, included a photo illustration of a huge chunk of yellow Emmenthal that dwarfed the Vienna skyline. As Craig Buckley writes, “If the cubic globular structure of the cheese appears strangely contemporary from our own point of view, the selection of Emmenthal was at the time polemical, literalizing a local expression commonly used to describe ‘bad’ architecture.” (These days, contemporary architects, like Wil Alsop are inclined to take a huge chunk of marble cheese, elevate it with industrial strength toothpicks and leave it hanging over OCAD.)

The Italian magazine Casabella, meanwhile, featured a gorilla on the cover of its July, 1972 issue and two years later published a cartoon of the Chrysler and Empire state building laying in bed, clearly post-coital. And ARse (short for “Architects for a Really Socialist Environment”) was designed to give the Architectural Review a kick in the trousers.

Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 demonstrates that little magazines, be they architectural or otherwise, can act in ways that larger magazines are unable. Little magazines are more nimble and their smaller circulation and specialized focus allow them to fail gloriously, if the occasion demands it. As James Wines, a contributing editor to On Site, wrote in #5/6, the magazine’s final issues, “We were criticized for being too flippant, too serious, too esoteric, too radical, too ambiguous, too funky, too sleek, too big, too small.”

At their best, little magazines generate new conversations, and usher into existence writing and ideas that would otherwise not exist. Little magazines respond to, reply and challenge one another. In so doing they create the shade required for new approaches to germinate. Editors help cultivate ideas until they are ready to be released into a larger arena. The influence and success of little magazines is not earned in spite of their small circulation and relative obscurity, but precisely because of it.

The Clip/Stamp/Fold 2 exhibit also offers the notion that because of the “Zoom” and “Zing” generated by these architectural magazines, professional and mainstream publications also experienced “moments of littleness.” This challenges, in some ways, the notion that little magazines must, by necessity have a limited circulation, but it does reinforce the importance of the attitude and engagement a magazine has with its readers. Sometimes larger magazines and newspapers can offer a good game of idea tennis too.

After spending a few hours with these magazines, it’s hard not to leave the CCA wondering about the state of little magazines today. “Clip/Stamp/Fold demonstrates how implacably economic forces have shaped publishing and architecture from the 1980s onwards,” writes Derek Webster, in the current issue of Maisonneuve. “Just as surely as politics has moved away from idealism, magazines have become leaner, more focused vehicles for advertisers’ needs and readers’ specialized interests.” It’s a valid complaint, but not a particularly new one. Already in 1930, Ezra Pound was complaining that the system of publishing a magazine for less than its printing costs, and recovering the shortfall through advertising, was having a detrimental effect on the culture of ideas. “In the new system the contents were selected rigorously on the basis of how much expensive advertising they would carry,” he writes in The English Journal. “They leave a need for intellectual communication unconditioned by considerations as to whether a given idea or a given trend in art will ‘git ads’ from the leading corset companies.”

Little magazines, it should be pointed out, do not have a monopoly on shade. Nicholson Baker provides no explanation for where large thoughts come from, or how they form or coalesce, but he does observe that, “Small thoughts are happy to run around in their colorful swimwear under the brutalest of noons, but large thoughts really must have sizable volumes of cool, still air.”

What happens when we remove a vital source of shade? Perhaps it is telling that there are no Canadian architectural magazines included in the CCA exhibit. This might help explain, at least in part, the regrettable Toronto architecture of the 1970s. This is not to suggest that shade fixes everything, but a well-placed chunk of cheese can sometimes work wonders.

Ken Alexander Needs a Vacation

On June 24, the Sunday Star published a list of Sizzling Reads as recommended by various “celebrity bookworms.” (Their words, not mine.)

Based on Ken Alexander’s response, I think he needs to take some time off, because overwork and the hot summer sun is taking its toll:

As I have been granted no leisure time; as the barbarians are permanently at the gate; as we have no air conditioning; as the world is spinning on an axis few can behold; and as the children feel entitled to their time, this summer, like all summers, I will escape to a park and sit under a tree’s canopy to read, contraband beer in a brown paper bag by my side.

Get some rest Ken. Apparently the future of the free world depends upon it.

A Few Editing Suggestions

(I wrote this in 2007, but again, neglected to post it.)

I have noticed that the Walrus is working hard to attract marquee bylines. I would be happier about this if the magazine had a stronger mix of up-and-coming writers and the big guns, but what are you going to do? Sure, Adrienne Clarkson might catch the eye on the newsstand, but I’m not going to buy the magazine because of her. (The problem, of course, is that the Walrus target demographic is considerably older than me, and nothing I can say or do will change that.)

There is of course, a danger in soliciting the big names. The danger is that they will say yes. When a writer reaches a certain level of success, a magazine is paying for the name as much (if not more) than the actual content. And in the interests of maintaining a good relationship with the Big Writer, the publication tends to edit lightly, if at all -- even if the magazine is given a less-than-stellar piece of writing from a Big Name Canadian Writer.

As a case in point, I’m going to provide some editing comments on a (not very) recent Walrus piece, a Field Notes. I feel that my editing suggestions are, in fact, reasonable. I’m not trying to be a snotty prig here. Really. If this piece were submitted to a major magazine, I humbly suggest that these are the sort of editing suggestions that the writer might expect to receive back.

[All editing comments in square brackets refer to the sentence preceding.]

QU’APPELLE VALLEY – In the summer of 2006, a miniseries adaptation of my novel The Englishman’s Boy went into production in Saskatchewan. Since half of the drama is set in the American and Canadian West of 1873, it was decided that a crash course in equitation [Editor: Is this the right sort of tone/diction for a light piece about learning to ride a horse?] was necessary for the actors. When I learned this “cowboy camp” [Editor: Why is this in quotes? Not sure it needs to be in quotes.] was being convened in the Qu’Appelle Valley, north of Regina, wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. [Editor: As written, the pun is clear, but the pun is also a cliché. I’m not sure that you provide a sufficient wink or acknowledgement to the reader that this cliché is being used as anything more than a cliche. Might I suggest something like, “In the words of esteemed hirsute philosopher Gino Vanelli, wild horses could not drag me away.”] For males of a certain age, who galloped their mothers’ brooms over backyard ranges in the fifties, holstered cap guns flapping against their thighs, the fantasy of playing cowboy is lethally attractive. [Editor: Somewhat AWK.]

On the first morning of instruction, I arrived wearing a pair of boots I had bought in Dallas fifteen years before and worn only once or twice since. My middle-aged feet had spread like the rest of me, forcing me to mince about camp in a most unmanly fashion. The wranglers in charge of teaching horsemanship were former professional rodeo riders and ranchers – laconic, leathery types given to unfathomable stares, most of which I felt were directed my way. [Editor: This reminds me of the movie City Slickers. Might it be worth making a humourous aside/nod to the film?]

The first course was a safety primer, covering topics such as how to approach a horse from behind without getting kicked into the bleachers, or what to do if you find yourself on a careering runaway. For instance, don’t scream. It might further panic the horse. [Editor: You could combine those two sentences without losing any effect.] Next, each actor was assigned a mount and spent time currying and feeding it and performing other ingratiating services meant to encourage it to, if not like you, tolerate you. [Editor: Somewhat AWK. Could this be smoother?] I lingered hopefully on the fringes like a kid awaiting the call to join a pickup football game. Invitations were not forthcoming. [Editor: Delete final sentence in paragraph – stronger without it.]

By the time the actors were engaged in learning the rudiments of steering, stopping, and accelerating their new four-legged friends, [Editor: cliché/weak style.] I was in a desperate state of unrequited desire. [Editor: ???] Making meek, supplicating motions, I approached a wrangler who had just ridden up and identified myself as the writer. Like Richard III, I abjectly begged for a horse.

“Take mine,” he said and, dismounting with catlike grace, [Editor: I find the animal metaphor jarring, especially since a human is dismounting the horse. The animal to animal metaphor is not as vivid or appropriate as it could be.] left me to claw myself aboard, joints grinding and creaking. This was a mistake. Wranglers’ horses are not like the ones assigned to actors. They are provided with the most docile horseflesh [Editor: Using ‘horseflesh’ here comes across as overwriting.] available, because injury to the talent would be a catastrophe. But what happens to the writer is not a cause for concern.

On the ensuing trail ride, the grin soon melted off my face as I wrestled to restrain my high-spirited steed. If it bolts, I reminded myself, resist the urge to shriek. Better to die in silence than in disgrace.

In the next few days, I found myself aching in places I didn’t know I owned and walking like an animated wishbone. [Editor: Great image. Love it!] Meanwhile, the actors were soldiering on, growing ever stiffer, sorer, and more chafed. They were also learning that horses, like thespians, sometimes exhibit quirks, foibles, and temperament. [Editor: Parallelism seems AWK. Quirks and foibles are pretty strong, so I’m not sure if temperament is necessary.] One morning at breakfast, I asked one of the actors, who sat morosely stirring his fruit cocktail, what was the matter. He blurted out, [Editor: Both ‘morosely’ and ‘blurted out’ appear overly dramatic. At the risk of sounding like an intro fiction professor, try to show instead of tell.] “My horse hates me. He knows I’m from Toronto and I’m wearing pantyhose.”

It was a charged, confessional moment. [Editor: Again, show, don’t tell. If this was a charged, confessional moment, it should be fairly obvious to the reader without you having to guidepost it so heavily.] Only later did I learn that all the other actors had also donned pantyhose. The wranglers had given them a “tip.” [Editor: Again, why is this in quotes?] Hosiery minimized saddle friction, preventing flesh from getting rubbed to hamburger. [Editor: Strong image, great language, light touch. Great work.] They had descended on a womenswear store to get outfitted.

Too soon, I had to leave, despairing at having notched only a single ride. When I returned weeks later, all the actors from Vancouver and Toronto had developed a blasé competence around horses and were now being glamorously referred to as “the posse.” [Editor: Again with the quote marks. I’m also not entirely sure how glamorous this is. I could use more on the masculine mystique of horse riding here. Perhaps a reference to Deadwood? I don’t think references to pop culture solve every problem, especially not in a short piece, but I’d like to better understand your inner hunger for horse riding.] As a Westerner, I seethed at the unfairness of it all. [Editor: This could be clearer and more precise.] But one afternoon, when an actor was somehow occupied and his horse needed to be ridden to a location, I was called upon. “Guy, take Michael’s horse. Go with the posse.”

Michael happens to be considerably shorter than me, but there was no time to adjust the stirrup lengths. Off I went, an overweight, superannuated [Editor: Again, is this the right word or tone? It strikes me that Westerns and novels tend to rely on sparse, clean, clear language. I understand the juxtaposition between the writer and the wild west, but I feel as though the rhythm of the piece is being compromised by word choice. This is, in its essence, a story about a man wanting to ride a horse. I think closely-observed details will carry the piece better than a specialized vocabulary.] jockey, knees hovering near my armpits. [Editor: Great. Funny and clear and simple. See previous note.] At the top of a hill, I halted to take in the scene. By squinting my eyes, I was able to banish the craft-services vehicle and other cinematic impedimenta [Editor: Again, this is too writerly for the light tone this piece should be striving for.] below. In the valley, teepees glistened in glaring [Editor: Delete ‘glaring’ and just use “the sunshine.” The alliteration isn’t necessary here.] sunshine. Raked by a breeze, a grove of poplars flashed silver. [Editor: A perfect sentence. This is great. More of these would strengthen this piece considerably.] Insects hummed in the heat. The posse filed down the slope, costumed and armed. I drank it all in. [Editor: This is a cliché and unnecessary. Delete.] By marrying movie illusion with psychological delusion, my fantasy was fulfilled. At age fifty-five, better late than never, I had become a high plains drifter. [Editor: Ending could be stronger, but I think it’s close.]

Thank You So Much

I suffered through an irritating bout of unproductiveness today, but I cheered up when I saw this CBC story about Eckler suing the makers of Knocked Up (link).

Frank magazine is going to eat her alive. ALIVE!

Good Writing Praised

From Katrina Onstad’s review of S3:

"His most impressive new foe is Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), an ex-con named Flint Marko who wanders into a Particle Physics Test Laboratory – a sweet nod to the innocent logic of comic books — and finds his insides sucked out and replaced with grains of sand, turning him into a gigantic, ill-tempered egg timer."

That is funny and well-written. Onstad's writing is everywhere these days, and our magazines are all the better for it.

(link)

What It Feels Like… to Get Caught Blatantly Ripping Off Another Magazine

I enjoy watching Chatelaine flail, not because I am a cruel person, but because rare is the opportunity to see a magazine so boldly announce to their readership that they lack both a clear visual and a clear editorial mandate. Normally you might see one, or the other, but never both at the same time, and never in a name-brand, highly profitable, marquee publication. There is such a lack of consistency in the magazine from month to month that I can’t help but read it – it’s like a pack of minor surrealists were accidentally hired to run a major publication and are going for broke. It’s never the same magazine twice.

Anyway, my point is that in all the experimentation and whatnot, I’ve noticed that Chatelaine clearly raids other magazines for inspiration. No shame there, plenty of magazines “borrow” ideas from other publications. Generally, of course, the borrower adds their own spin on things. So when Chatelaine started their own version of Domains, the New York Times Magazine feature (link), I wasn’t very concerned, especially since Saturday Night also borrowed the very same idea before they disappeared into the gloaming.

But open your brand new copy of Chatelaine (June 2007) and flip to page 109. There you will find a feature entitled “How it feels …” It’s a series of short interviews with different women who have endured/enjoyed a variety of unusual events or circumstances. It is also verges on outright theft – namely, Esquire’s long-running series of “What it feels like…”

Esquire’s WIFLike is so-well known, so proprietary that they’ve published a book with the same title (link). So why has Chatelaine decided to steal from Esquire (OK, to be fair, they did change one word and delete another) and call it their own? I don't know. What I do know is that I wish I was the one getting paid $60K or more a year to push start on the idea machine (AKA the photocopier).

In lieu of further commentary, I conclude by typing the two titles over and over again.

How it feels…
What it feels like…
How it feels…
What it feels like…
How it feels…
What it feels like…
How it feels…
What it feels like…