Year: 2012

Lessons Learned from Lawrence Hill

~ Michal ~ 1 Comment

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One of my few fond memories from high school is the Yukon Young Authors’ Conference. For two days you could con your way out of classes by submitting a short story and sit in for workshops with Canadian authors who’d come up for the Live Words Yukon Writers’ Festival. Other schools across North America have had similar programs, but thanks to our remote location, rugged beauty, and relative ease in funnelling arts funding from the government, Live Words has attracted more respectable writers than most. Previous years saw Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje make their way to the great white north, and the folks at FH Collins High School were able to convince a few of them to spend some time with teenage writers to help along with their craft—which must have taken a great deal of persuasion and a substantial honorarium, because this really doesn’t sound like a fun time for the writer.

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Farewell to 2012

~ Michal ~ 1 Comment

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The year draws to a close, ‘tis a time again for reflections. And of course, I’ll focus on writing and literature, because that’s how I roll.

This has been a rather bewildering year. I began it as a Legal Assistant and end it poised for my second term in the McGill History Master’s program. I enjoyed that term immensely, though I’m afraid it hasn’t benefitted you readers all that much because a) I haven’t been posting very often and b) my non-academic reading dropped off to nil. So the obvious thing to do during my winter break was to read for pleasure again and to get back to writing fiction.

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More from Manguel: Language and the Limits of the Imagination

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After The Truth about Stories, I re-read The City of Words to once again focus my mind away from such questions as “why does milk taste funny after eating a slice of pineapple?” This marks the third time I’m writing about The City of Words on this blog. There’s just so much there to discuss.

In this case, I want to share some of Alberto Manguel’s thoughts on stories, the state, and the publishing industry, and discuss how they relate to fantastika. Manguel works from the following premise:

Language lends voice to the storytellers who try to tell us who we are; language builds out of words our reality and those who inhabit it, within and without the walls; language offers stories that lie and stories that tell the truth. Language changes with us, grows stronger or weaker with us, survives or dies with us. The economic machineries we have built requires language to appeal to its consumers, but only on a dogmatic, practical level, deliberately avoiding literature’s constant probing and interrogation. The endless sequence of readings of Gilgamesh or Don Quixote opens realms of meaning on countless subjects…all of which may at some point entail a questioning of power and call for the resolution of injustice. To sustain the run of the machineries, those in office will often attempt to curb and control this multiplicity of reading in many ways[…] This censorship…takes place in many ways, from the most dramatic to the most covert. […] In every case, its aim is to prevent the telling of true stories. (125)

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Review: The Truth about Stories

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It’s Massey Lecture review time again! I’m on break in Whitehorse without my own internet connection (I’m sending this from the public library), so I’ve had all the time in the world to catch up on reading the books I want to read rather than ones I have to read. It’s been a welcome change. After repeated recommendations, I’ve gotten around to reading Thomas King’s The Truth about Stories: a Native Narrative (2003). I remember listening to King when he was a cast member on The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour on CBC radio, but I missed the lecture itself, something I need to rectify by pulling it off the Ideas website in the near future.

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Tolkien on a Budget: A Review of Hobitit (1993)

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I have a penchant for seeking out obscure adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, if you haven’t noticed. First was my quest to play every pre-film trilogy computer game remotely related to Tolkien’s work. Then there was my long-time interest in a Finnish television series from 1993 called Hobitit (The Hobbits) based on The Lord of the Rings. I was first made aware of its existence back in The Tolkien Forum’s heyday, when one user made an offhand mention. Those were the days of my high school Tolkien obsession, so when I got wind of this, I just had to find it.

There was a problem. The series aired on Finnish television all of two times, and was never released on VHS. Because of the huge cost of the license after Jackson’s films, it’s not likely we’ll ever see a DVD release. Thus, I immediately met with frustration on trying to find it, and once my willingness to hunt after these sorts of things wound down, I stopped looking. But never fear, the internet has come to the rescue and finally sated my curiosity: the entire series is now available on YouTube, complete with English subtitles. Would it live up to the mystique that slowly built over the years due to its rarity? Or would it be like the Soviet adaptation of The Hobbit (i.e. “What did I just WATCH”)?

Warning, there be spoilers ahead. This review also assumes you’ve read the book, because hey, why else would you seek out an obscure Finnish adaptation like this?

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A Discoverie of a Final Researche Topick

~ Michal ~ 1 Comment

A quick update:

As this is November, blog posting has been sparse.  There is too much academic writing to do and not enough time for side-projects such as this.  However, I thought I’d inform you about my final major research project.  It involves this guy:

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More precisely, I will write a comparative study of witchcraft trials in England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the seventeenth century.  The topic is is rather out there in terms of current witchcraft historiography, but I think it’ll do.  And if your reaction is, “What could these places possibly have in common with each other?” then all I have is this response:

More than you might think.

Furthermore, I will be flying back to Whitehorse in December and will not have any access to the internet beyond the occasional visit to the public library, so blog posting will be thin in the near future. 

Night Arrows

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I distinctly remember this scene in the 2003 film Timeline (based on the novel of the same name by Michael Chrichton):

Evil Englishman besieged by the French in his castle, after several volleys of flaming arrows have been exchanged:

Night Arrows!

(He puts on an evil grin, and the Englishmen proceed to use unlit arrows.)

Me: …They’re just called arrows.

The chivalric code never stipulated that you needed to light your arrows on fire at night just so your enemy could see them coming.  But what’s galling about the scene is that loosing regular, unlighted arrows on the enemy is seen as some sort of innovation, and the French are routed by the aforementioned “night arrows.”

I read the book in high school, and I do remember that there were, in fact, “night arrows.”  I don’t remember if they were just ordinary arrows or if they painted them black or something.

However, I do know a way to improve this scene.  We just need to add this beforehand:

Baldrick: I have a *clever plan*, m’lord…

Tehanu Revisited

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First things first, updates will be a bit slow on this blog since I’m currently working on a Masters Degree in History at McGill University in Montreal. Life has been hectic and the move from one side of Canada to the other has been less than smooth. Side-projects like this blog tend to fall to the wayside when you’re in the process of settling into a new city, reading a boatload of academic texts when you get there, and writing papers at an alarmingly early point in the school year.

Case in point, I meant to write this post while I was still visiting my sister in Edmonton (my midway point between Whitehorse and Montreal). While I was there I read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tehanu, “the last book of Earthsea”—two more books were to follow, but Le Guin didn’t know that at the time. This one came a good many years after the initial Earthsea trilogy, and until now, I didn’t recommend it to others. That is, I distinctly remember not liking it as a teenager after reading the first three, to the point where I didn’t finish it.

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Episode 3 – Dragons in Top Hats!

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In an amazing turn of events, Marie & I are in the same place together, and although slightly buzzed, still manage to babble about Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw.

Download the Podcast

Marie’s Youtube Channel

Source of our Theme Song (“It’s Dragon Tales” by Butterfly Tea.  Rather fitting this time, don’t you think?)