Novels & Chatter
A sneak peak at the upcoming issue of Spacing about Toronto writers, a conversation about interruptions, and the joys of chatter, street food, and music.
July-August 2023
Reading novels and indulging in chatter are seeming opposites. One is solitary, the other social; one is quiet, the other noisy; one is a deep dive, the other plays on the surface. But both, at their best, are stimulating, engaging, and absorbing. And both can stretch our minds in new directions. They bring us into the moment, and yet simultaneously expand our world. Read on for chatter about writing and writing about chatter.
The Sneak Peek
In recent years, I’ve made a conscious effort to read more novels – I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction in my reading for pleasure. It was a New-Year’s-resolution-ish kind of thing, though not necessarily started in a January. I had read quite a lot of fiction when I was younger – sci-fi and fantasy as a teen, and classic and Canadian novels in my 20s – but I then went through a long phase of mostly reading non-fiction, with only the rare novel thrown in. Getting back to fiction, mostly contemporary, has been interesting – I’ve found it a fairly mixed bag, maybe 50/50 between novels I find satisfying and those I find not entirely satisfying, even if interesting. To my mind, many start off well but then peter out (there’s also novels I start but give up on quickly if they don’t at least spark my interest).
So, with my resolution in mind, it was really interesting to shepherd an issue of Spacing focusing on novelists who write about Toronto (with a dash of musicians who sing about it). Novelists can have a huge impact on how we visualize a city, creating lenses or, to use Instagram parlance, filters through which we view our urban landscape.
Among our writers, we were lucky to have the perspective of two novelists. Anna Fitzpatrick (whose novel Good Girl was very much on the satisfying side of my recently-read ledger) brings an interesting point of view, sharing her efforts to make her setting less identifiably Toronto so that readers would distinguish her protagonist from herself. The saying goes “write what you know,” but what makes it fiction is leavening real life experience with what you don’t know. David Nickle, meanwhile, explores the practical infrastructure the city provides to a writer for going beyond the city’s reality to launch into the realms of speculative fiction – revealing so not so much how a writer shapes a city, but how a city supports a writer.
And there’s more! It’s certainly added material to my reading list. Look for it in stores or, for subscribers, your mailbox, in the next few weeks.
The Tidbit
Last autumn, my friend Sheila came to town and, in a café on Queen Street West (a rare excursion for me to the west side of town that was once so familiar) we had a delightful conversation about conversation – Sheila hosts a podcast about conversation (I mentioned it in an earlier missive). At one point, bursting with ideas stimulated by our discussion, I broke into a brief pause to share them. Sheila noted that I had interrupted her – but as I prepared to apologize, she went in an unexpected direction: she asked if maybe interrupting could be a good thing. And that launched us into even more interesting exchanges.
Months later, Sheila wrote an essay for the Globe and Mail about interruptions, starting off with the story of our conversation! I feel very pleased to have helped inspire such an interesting and original piece. Sheila points out that, as was the case at that café, sometimes interruption is a sign of engagement, of someone listening and being stimulated into having their own contribution they are eager to share.
I am a bit of an interrupter for that reason. Sometimes I even just want to add something to a specific point, before the talk moves on. In those circumstances, I have tried to learn to interject as concisely as possible, and then return the conversation to the speaker – “you were saying ...”
As well, conversation is an organic, living thing – unlike an essay, it’s not structured or predictable (then it would be a monologue or dialogue). I’ve sometimes been frustrated in conversation when I want to explore one idea but the flow veers off in a different direction – but that’s a sign of dynamism, that the conversation has its own messy existence. Conversation is playful, as Sheila says, and part of its joy is it goes off on unexpected, unplanned discursions and you adapt and adjust as you go. Interruptions can be part of what creates that unpredictability and opens up those new channels.
But of course, interruption can also be rude, for example if you change the subject rather than building on it. And there’s a whole power dynamic that’s often raised now, of those with traditional privilege using it to cut down other voices – something I work to be conscious of and avoid. Conversation is a delicate art, as Sheila shows, one that we ideally keep learning and refining over time. But it’s only conversation if there is back and forth.
Read Sheila’s essay, “May I interject? Interruptions can have positive effects on our conversations”
Quotable
“Though I sometimes wish they were a little more fond of chatting, and not quite so sad and earnest and down on everybody”
- Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love
One of the things I most love in this world is reading an entire book all at once – maybe not in one go, but constantly over a day or two until it’s done. You get absorbed in the world of the book, carried along by the narrative, easily remembering the context of each scene and nature of each character. I still remember reading my first Dorothy Sayers mystery, Gaudy Night, all at once on a long train ride in India after all the turbulence of my first two years of university, and the wonderfully grounding effect that absorption had on me. Traditionally this experience has been most associated with novels – as I noted above, I’ve been trying to read more of them – but it can also work for non-fiction – I remember devouring Vera Brittain’s memoir Testament of Youth over a cottage long weekend when I was younger.
But it’s been hard to find the opportunities for many years now. It’s not just that there are other things one needs to be doing, other obligations. It’s also that it’s hard to find books that can absorb you in that manner. It’s possible I’m more particular now that I’m older – I feel like when I was a teenager I fell into other worlds more easily. Even many well-regarded books, I find, often start to become a slog – there’s a point at which I need a break. Whereas for my ideal books, one doesn’t want to take a break.
Recently, we visited friends for an August weekend at a cottage, and I brought with me Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. I’d seen the delightful miniseries, and wanted to read the book. It was, if anything, even more delightful, and I read it over the course of a day and a half on a lounge chair, on a lawn amidst goose droppings, looking out over a Muskoka beach and lake.
The quote above refers to 1930s communists the protagonist Linda Radlett finds herself among at one point, but I felt like it had a very modern application to contemporary discourse, and in particular to the social media formerly known as Twitter. People often focus on Twitter’s political aspect and endless feuds and conflicts, but I realize, as the forum slowly dies under a capricious regime reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen, that what made it so engaging for me was the chatter – fun little discussions, observations, sharing of interests, jokes, from random interesting people I came across but didn’t necessarily know. Even if there was the occasional trolling, snarking, or obscure feud, along with a lot of being down on people (often for good reason), it was appealing because one could indulge in that chatter along with the earnest discussion. Sadly, it’s the chatter that seems to be dying out first, leaving a preponderance of sad and earnest and down on everybody-ness.
Pic Pick
The lineup at Taste of the Danforth for the stand of our local butcher, Ellas. I think one of the reasons Taste of the Danforth, and to a lesser extent other street festivals, are so popular is that they’re one of the only opportunities Torontonians have to eat street food. We don’t really have any, apart from a few sausage stands and food trucks – but there’s something special about picking up food on the street and eating it in public as you stroll, not dependent on finding private space (whether a restaurant or a home). It’s like a picnic, but urban rather than pastoral. We need more everyday street food in Toronto.
The Shout-Out
A few years ago, my wife Molly wrote a wonderful set of blog posts about songs, one a day (mostly) over the course of a December (did I mention she had been a college radio DJ?). So I’ve been really happy that her love of music and of writing, and of writing about music, has led her to start a Substack newsletter devoted to music, on a somewhat less demanding schedule. Some of the music I know well (Style Council – Molly doesn’t mention that “You’re the Best Thing” was our wedding first dance), and some is completely new to me, but each piece gives me a new perspective. It might do so for you, too – have a look and, if it pleases, consider subscribing for further delights.
Check out Molly McCarron’s newsletter A Song a Day (or week or month)
Postscript
I talked above about how I’ve realized what I liked about Twitter as it gradually collapses (that is so often the way – as Joni Mitchell sang, we don’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone. Or at least, on its way out). I’m still using it more than other “chatting” social networks – I have way more connections on it still, and there remains useful and entertaining stuff if I stick to reading the people I follow – but it feels like the writing is on the wall, so I’ve been exploring alternatives. None of them have really stuck yet, but here’s a list of where you can find me.
Bluesky: dylanreid.bsky.social (I have some invites available – you can reply to this email to ask for one) (only visible if you’re logged in to Bluesky, it seems)
Mastodon: https://mstdn.ca/@dylanreid
Spoutible: https://spoutible.com/dylan_reid
Threads: @messyurbanisms (same for Instagram) (only visible on mobile and if you are logged in, it seems)
And of course “Notes” on Substack, where this email is from
I’m testing them out as potential escapes. I’d prefer if Twitter got restored – I’ve spent a decade and a half building up the people I like to follow on Twitter. I wish Musk would just hand Twitter over to people who understood it (to be fair, that’s not necessarily the people who were running it before), but that’s not likely to happen. So I guess we’ll just see how things go, and if you’re on any of these networks, come and find me there.