Benjibopper

Labels: 2010, love junk, nova scotia, Poetry

Hi folks, I usually try to do this in January but it's been that kind of year already. But, here they are, 10 records that blew my mind in 2010. As usual they didn't necessarily come out then. That's just when I fell in love with them:

The Hitchin' Post, Heather Kelday - She played at my book launch and everybody sang along even though most of them had never heard her play before.

New Train, Paul Pena - This is the guy who wrote Big Ole Jet Airliner, but the body of his work is far better than that. I saw him in Genghis Blues, a documentary about his trip to Tuva to compete in a throat-singing contest, a skill he learned listening to the ham radio.

My Hands Are On Fire and Other Love Songs, Old Man Luedecke - I love every song this guy writes.

Self Titled, Charms - It's bluegrassy, folky, catchy and ridiculously harmonious. These two sound like they've been singing together since birth.

Dirt Farmer, Levon Helm - He's back, he's farming, and his voice is still powerful.

Son of a Rudderless Boat, Kev Corbett - Half bard, half musical genius, Kev's become one of my favourite songwriters.

Best of, Townes Van Zandt - My housemates used to love this guy and last year I was finally able to give him a good listen. Possibly the best, and saddest, country songs ever written.

Sunset Sea, Danny Michel - I love every song this guy writes.

Wake Up! John Legend & The Roots - Old political soul music reborn by the best male voice in pop music, and about the best backing hip hop band there is.

Where I Need to Be, Kim Wempe - If there is a yin to John Legend's yang it just might be the wall-shaking voice of Kim Wempe. [Her new album, Painting With the Tides, is great too, but I didn't get to it until 2011.]

This is the Sea, Sarah Kenvyn - Pretty much stole the show at my book launch and I pretty much haven't stopped listening to this disc since.

Labels: 2010, best of

It's time for my annual "Best Books I Read Last Year" list, this time featuring a dozen works of poetry, novels, nonfiction and anthology. As usual, these books didn't necessarily come out in 2010; that's just when I read them. This year, you should too. Happy reading!

Chris Benjamin



Poetry:

George Elliott Clarke is a master of story and language; Whylah Falls is drama in guttural verse, suspenseful and rhythmic to the last page.


Nonfiction:

Our world is losing cultural diversity as fast as it is losing biological diversity. In The Wayfinders, Davis eloquently tells the story of what we're losing, and how it will cost us more than we know, based on decades of work with hunter-gatherer peoples in regions across the globe.


Thomas F. Pawlick is an Ontario farmer and investigative journalist. His writing sears with anger, fueled by frustration at the amalgamation of the food industry into a giant, unhealthy, unsustainable corporate funnel, squeezing out the traditional, small family farmers in the process. He tells his story from their perspective.


After reading the Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan I can better appreciate why he's a hit with foodies, environmentalists and word nerds. This is the history of our relationship with four distinct foods, told with an astute sense of wonder. Those stories illuminate what it is to eat, how we're doing this simplest of life functions wrong, and what we have to gain from food thoughtfulness. Fiction:

Tariq Ali wrote the best analysis of religion and politics I've ever read (Clash of the Fundamentalisms) so I was anxious to begin his Islam Quintet with Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree. It didn't disappoint. The writing is straightforward and formal, perhaps to convey the feel of his 1499 setting. It worked well enough and the story, the slow buildup to an inevitable massacre of a culture by an emerging colonial empire, was riveting. They ending was horrifying, but true to history.


I didn't realize how funny Philip Roth was until this year. The closest book I can think of to Portnoy's Complaint is Lenny Bruce's autobiography. If you're wondering, his complaint is the 20th-century New York Jewish condition, particularly with respect to family.


As I wrote on the Advent Book Blog: Halifax has been largely overlooked in Canlit (excluding books on lighthouses and the Halifax Explosion) but it is a vibrant city, and more multicultural than most Canadians realize. Anna Quon’s Migration Songs tells the story of a Chinese-Canadian woman’s hyphenated experience, her search for place and meaning to counter her overwhelming sense of detachment.

Kenneth Oppel has written a lot of young adult fiction, and I guess Half Brother fits that category. But as a 35-year-old fascinated by human-other animal interactions I couldn't put it down. Although it was a plot-first story of a teenage boy whose university-prof parents "adopt" a chimp and raise him as a human, I think Oppel's subtle analysis of how we exploit animals in our misguided attempts to better understand ourselves is spot on.


In satirizing Soviet Communism's "New Soviet Man" Bulgakov was, perhaps unwittingly, satirizing civilization itself, and the false believe that we can rise above our animal impulses. This bizarre story (a novella really) of a mangy dog cum revolting man via mad science turns the whole notion of humans residing on a higher plane than other animals on its ear.


Chad Pelley has said he specializes in literary page-turners, and that's certainly the case with Away from Everywhere, his debut novel. It's a heartbreaker that explores the depths of human folly and then, spurred on by schizophrenia, goes even deeper into despair. Yet, to borrow from Leonard Cohen, his losers have the beauty to buoy the reader through the pain of empathizing with people who are destined to fail.


Ian Holding's first novel, Unfeeling, is a taut, horrifying read about white Zimbabweans desperately clinging to their farms as a brutal and corrupt government reclaims the land for black citizens. The work would have greatly benefited from more diverse perspectives - i.e. that of black Zimbabweans. But it gives the perspective it gives very well; it is a perfectly paced, complete story with well-timed reveals, and a fully engaging read.


Anthology:

Descant's prison issue is just that: an issue of a literary journal, but it's so good I had to include it. [Full disclosure: I have an essay in this one, which may bias me, but whatever, this issue really was amazing and you should read it.] It includes fiction, creative non-fiction, illustration, poetry and essays, and I don't think a single one was a miss. A diverse array of perspectives is provided, from short-timers, mass murderers, drunk tank delinquents and academic outsiders. Hurricane Rubin Carter writes of how he spent much of his sentence in "the hole," completely isolated and cut off from humanity. But it isn't all bleak - the resilience of prisoners shines through nearly every page.

Labels: 2010, best of

I have a short piece of holiday fiction in today's Coast. Thought I'd share it and wish all happy holidays. Click the image below to read the story.



May we have peace, love, joy, justice, sustainability, creativity and healthy communities in 2011.

-Chris Benjamin

Labels: 2010, Africa, Fiction, love junk, publishing

Then UGH! - UGH! - UGH! from the bathroom. And I’d stare at my father waiting for him to solve the problem somehow. The man solved problems for a living. He was some kind of PR monkey with the government. I was sure his chewing routine was just a delay tactic, or a meditative thing that would help him find a solution.

But it was Mother who found the solution. I really don’t know how - maybe Jesus found her - but one day I got sent home from my private junior high school early for beating both Sissy Jannah’s eyes black and saw a two-foot Jesus-on-crucifix on the piano. Above it was Jesus in profile, turning the other cheek I presume and looking serene.

Mother ran from the kitchen in a flour-covered apron and hugged me. I stiffened my body and hung my arms straight at my sides. "Whatever it is I forgive you," she said.

Since then she’s been on a mission, volunteering at the food bank, raising money for the church, even letting Christian refugees stay in our basement. She doesn’t cry anymore.

So, I’d love to find that Jesus of hers, or have him find me. And I look too. I spend 23 hours a day in this cell and all I do is look for Jesus. I've looked at every brick. I’ve looked under my bed and under my mattress, and under my roomie’s mattress and bed when she was getting her hour in the yard. All I do is sleep and look for Jesus. Before I sleep I pray he’ll come find me, because I don’t see him anywhere, and I don’t dream anymore either.

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

But the whole world’s a heartache and most people seem to have smiles chiseled into their faces, so none of that, nor all those UN statistics or crime-page newspapers explain my anger, do they?

It just feels good to let it out sometimes, and when I was little I guess it got me what I wanted. It was easier to give the kid a treat than hear her scream. Mother couldn't stand to see me suffer even a little bit. She still can't, and that’s why she won't visit. She sends me letters that read like Jehovah's Witness pamphlets. The word 'Jesus' appears so frequently I started counting. Her last letter, a four-pager, had 46 'Jesus'es, and 16 'pray's.

And I try. I’m not just humouring her either. I remember how she was before Jesus. She cried all the time. Never in front of people. She'd excuse herself from the dinner table and go to the bathroom and let rip these heaving, gutteral sobs in stucatto bursts. It sounded kind of like Eddie Murphy's laugh.

Father completely ignored it. He'd cut into his steak or pork or whatever and pop a little piece into his mouth and chew like his teeth were on fire. He probably counted his chews - 50 or a hundred times or whatever. He'd swallow with an exaggerated gulp and yell, "Honey! This is delicious. Truly extraordinary!"

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

Something very new I'm working on:

I thought my anger would place me well in this angry world. But like two magnetic norths the world and I could never quite come together. I swung at it and swung at it and never caught anything but air, landed on my face as often as kept my feet.

Dr. Hattie is always at me about where the anger comes from, and I just tell her, "Inside." She calls bullshit and I know it is, but it feels that way at the time, like a car wreck inside of me, an exploding Hollywood car wreck only you never see it coming from the outside. Inside there’s a buildup, two different drivers at a party having a few too many. But fuck me if I know how it all got started. Dr. Hattie might as well ask me how the big bang got started.

"Inside," I say again, and she calls bullshit again. "Outside then," I say, but she just frowns at me. I frown back. Outside is the God’s honest truth. I don’t want to giver her my sob story. It's a cop out isn’t it? Or maybe that’s what she wants. I can tell her about Dad’s drinking, Mum’s born again high-handed bullshit preaching after years of openly cheating on her husband and letting daycares and schools raise me. Would I be this angry if children's aid social workers had taken me away?

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

Hi folks, I have been swamped, working on a nonfiction book called Green Souls (coming out Fall 2011). Thought I'd share a little teaser from the first chapter, see what you all think:

Michel Desjardins' first major life lesson was about excess. "My father has never liked excess," he tells me. "To be excessive is to waste, and therefore to abuse the resource."

The way to avoid that abuse, according to Dr. Desjardins the senior, is to take care of the resource yourself. Despite being a busy professional, the good doctor has always taken the time to tend his own garden and cut his own wood.

"That had a tremendous influence on me," Michel says, "though it took me a long time to appreciate the lesson."

His second major life lesson, passed down from his grandparents, was this: get ahead, find a better life than this tough one we toiling farmers have. Be a skilled professional, not an unskilled labourer. Make your fortune in the knowledge industries and take the world, not just the good earth, into your hands. Buy a bigger house and a better car.

These were the contradictory lessons that were eventually passed on to young Michel, so it is no surprise that his midlife crisis, brought on by the political defeat of his employer, left him soul-searching. Even though his father was a simple man, Michel Desjardins was raised thinking he had to do better, to carry forward the legacy of an optometrist. To get the letters of a legal professional, and to shape his city’s and then his province’s destiny in the new economy. He hadn’t taken the time to look back.

Labels: 2010, Canada, non-fiction, philosophy, publishing

Exciting news all - Drive-by Saviours made the Canada Reads longlist of "Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade."

And we the people will decide which books make the top 10 list. You only get one vote.

If you want to vote Drive-by Saviours, just go to Canada Reads and click the circle next to Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin, scroll down and click the vote button. You have until Nov 7 - but really why wait until Nov 7 what you could do right now?

Btw, here is the Top 40 list, and there are some damn fine books there. What say you, dear reader? What books should have made the list but didn't. Any on the list that you don't think are so hot?

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Conceit by Mary Novik

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

Elle by Douglas Glover

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Far to Go by Alison Pick

February by Lisa Moore

Galore by Michael Crummey

Heave by Christy Ann Conlin

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

Moody Food by Ray Robertson

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Room by Emma Donoghue

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

The Birth House by Ami McKay

The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.

Unless by Carol Shields

Thanks,
Chris Benjamin

Labels: 2010, Canada, publishing

We left Lachutes in what we thought was plenty of time. But we hit Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic at the outskirts of Montreal. "City squirrels go to the cottage and their kids come back from school," Jeff said, his fingers tapping frantic rhythm on the wheel.

We crawled another hour-and-a-half to our turnoff, then bolted through downtown as the rain hammered everything. We drove by the Canadian Pacific sign and scanned the streetscape with stretched eyes until Jeff pulled the truck into the drop off. We fist bumped; I grabbed my bags and ran, glancing at the gates I passed until I found Campbellton and flashed my ticket. "Moncton?"

"Yep. Hurry down and just say 'Moncton' at the foot of the stairs."

From my seat I texted Jeff. "Made it."

Seventeen hours later, the red-headed Hertz guy picked me up at the train station and drove me 20 minutes to the airport for paperwork. He's a Moncton lifer, spent time in the states but after 9/11 things got too weird there and he came to the small town he knows and loves.

We were all set to go until I gave them my wife's credit card - no can do. And mine was in Halifax. No cash deposit. I was stuck at Moncton airport, two hours until my reading in Fredericton. The Hertz guy (another one) asked the Budget girl if they cioiuld rent me a car on cash deposit. Nope, but Delta could, back downtown.

Tristan needed to get some fresh air anyway, he said. He's a Nova Scotia boy, north shore, stuck in Moncton too long. "I hate it," he said. "It's a giant industrial park that people happen to live in. It's ugly and there's nothing to do." I found the outskirts pretty anyway, with the fall colours, but he hopes to move to Halifax as soon as he can.

Delta was empty. I knocked on the glass and a guy came out with a broom and dustpan. "You the one who called?"

It was an all paper, no computer business, with a mandatory vehicle walk-around, and several spots to initial on the long form. He put my cash deposit in an envelope, sealed and signed it, had me check to make sure the tank was full, pointed me to the highway and I was gone, red-lined to Fredericton, only 10 minutes late for the reading.

It was a small group but I sold a few books and met a women who'd already red Drive-by Saviours and is recommending it to her book club. And I met Corey Redekop, author of Shelf Monkey - soon to be on Canada Reads top 40 must-read list. We bantered on canlit and the mneed for authors to embrace our inner pimps - be self promoters that is.

I nabbed a few hours sleep at an old friend's place, a suburban household of 11 - her stepdaughter, several international billets, a visiting German family of five, and me. "I'll take the ISBN and get it back in Germany," the mister told me. "They'll order in anything for me!" And that's how the book tour pays off, I think, the face-to-face that gets your book in a German store before it's even translated.

Labels: 2010, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

I'm writing from Lachutes, Quebec, about 40 km northwest of Montreal. A good friend of mine is Superintendent of a golf course here and he's putting me up. Tonight, (Thurs Oct 14), I read at 8:00pm in Montreal, at Argo Bookshop, 1915 Ste Catherine W. There will be three writers reading tonight, starting at 7:30 pm. Also up will be Susan Gillis, author of Volta, and Claudia Coutu Radmore, author of A Minute or Two/Without Remembering. Hopefully more authors means more people, more energy.

Labels: 2010, Canada, non-fiction, Travel

I met Ivan Prokopchuk the other night, in person. He's long been one of the most colourful personalities I've met as a blogger, and a character who consistently captures my imagination.

But there he was in the Lula Lounge, in full colour, three dimensions, in the flesh, across the table from me with his book, The Fire in Bradford, in hand. "I'll show you mine if you you show me yours," he grinned.
But with Another Story Bookshop on hand selling Drive-by Saviours I didn't have any swap copies. The swap had been my suggestion, but with all the insanity of travel, visiting family and friends, organizing book launches and an Eastern Canadian book tour, I'd forgotten. I promised to send Ivan a copy in the mail and he gave me his book, shook my hand and heartily congratulated me. And he was gone, making way for the next in line.

It was one of a series of surreal encounters I've had lately with old friends. The support has been overwhelming - people I haven't seen in years, people I've only met online, have come out to my two book launches in Halifax and Toronto to celebrate my accomplishment.

And now, writing from a friend's home in East Toronto, planning to head up to Kent Bookstore in Lindsay Ontario in a few hours for another reading and more old friends (and to meet a boisterous one-year-old), I'm feeling a deep easy happiness in that willingness to celebrate what others among us do.

At the same time, I ache for my wife and son, who flew back to Halifax yesterday morning at about crack o'clock, and I long for my own bed where I could properly nurse this worsening cold. Suddenly I'm a lone drifter again, something I missed and didn't expect to experience again so soon. Last time I was a young man, full of abstractions and equipped with an eager pen and ink-hungry notebooks. It all seems a little more businesslike this time - I'm a drifter with a mission, a product to move. I feel like a huckster with a money-bulge in my pocket.

That's not a complaint. I'm loving meeting people, sharing my art with them, and experiencing their kind and enthusiastic responses - their questions, comments and cash. Living the dream for me has moved beyond sloganism and into reality.

Labels: 2010, love junk, non-fiction, Toronto

I was given $100 by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission to spend on anything I wanted, as long as I documented the experience publicly. I, naturally, chose books. Here's a video (shot by my wife, edited by me, with music by my brother) of the experience:

Labels: 2010, non-fiction, nova scotia, politics

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, publishing, subway novel

Labels: 2010, Fiction, publishing, subway novel

Desire is seed.
Your arms
snychro-waving in the dark,
flashing across the dance-cave.
My stillbirth reborn.
My feet walk themselves over.

Tears lubricate my body over;
Tetris pieces withhold seed
until ancestors are reborn.
Telephone chords mimic arms
poorly, cold as caves,
desiring touch in the dark.

Tree pastors towering dark,
our shivers gratefully ruled over.
The sauna a geothermal cave,
where idealized eternity sows seed,
across the arc of the other’s arms;
tradition is repetition reborn.

Desire is reborn
in the deepest dark,
stillborn with too few arms;
hungry voices’ journey over.
Our spinning globe scatters seed,
frees us from the cubicle cave.

365 exploration of continental cave.
365 labours daily reborn.
Restively flailed seed,
unharvested from the faraway dark;
ocean’s gravity heaves vagabondage over.
Ancestors require our arms.

Hands in sand and legs as arms,
an inverted tower till elbows cave.
Reunion summer’s over.
Old routines reborn.
In cavernous downtown funkitecture’s dark:
A desire, an egg, a seed.

With his birth we’re reborn
in a solitary cave.
Desire is seed.

Labels: 2010, love junk, non-fiction, Poetry

Hi folks, here's a trailer I made for my novel with some help from my brother:

Labels: 2010, Fiction, Indonesia, subway novel, Toronto

I've been quite busy with the novel lately (it's coming out in September), first doing final edits then thinking marketing. To that effect, I've created a myspace page and put up a clip of me reading from the novel there, as well as some fusion-y music my brother created for a trailer we're working on. Click my face below to listen to those:I've also created a website for the book. Below is what the cover will look like. Click on that for the website (not a lot of content there yet but stay tuned for some video I'm working on regarding the book):


The publisher, Roseway (an imprint of Fernwood), also has a website for the book. Click the Fernwood logo to see that site. You can read a longer excerpt there:

Labels: 2010, Fiction, publishing, subway novel

I was late to the clinic and
my adjustment counselor was pissed.

Wasn't that just like me?
On account of my oppositional complex.

I just had to stop for that quick hit
in the drive-thru alley with the junkies.

But if Daddy hadn't screwed up my order
I wouldn't have had to shoot up twice.

I'd sleep on a feather mattress
instead of this old gym-mat.

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, Poetry

As the honourable member for East Sinsancto power-reads the Cautious Liberal amendments for a bill altering the unethical behaviours of all elected representatives, those officials snicker chat and spitball each other.

The Ever Forward Conservative representative of Nova Bay South next offers his party's amendments as the honourable member from Lower Downtown Pugington whispers sweet something-or-others into the ear of his assistant.

Finally the Chair, who backbenches the Ruling Central Left Leaners, submits his own written amendments and winks his deferral to the morning's 1st coffee. Relieved laughter ricochets as the sun threatens the west-facing windows.

Labels: 2010, nova scotia, Poetry, politics