Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Arts and Culture

Media Credit: Gabrielle Venturi From right to left: Halfdan W. Freihow, Janette Turner Hospital, moderator Vit Wagner, Larry Gaudet.

I attended this year's International Festival of Authors (IFOA) because I like to pretend I'm literary. As a fourth year English student at a college that has a building named after Northrop Frye, the granddaddy of Canadian literary criticism, and a student pub named after a Margaret Atwood novel, this is kinda my thing. But, as I eagerly scanned the website of this year's IFOA, I realized I was only familiar with a few names, one being J. K. Rowling. What's even more depressing is that, thanks to some kind of subconscious, anti-bandwagon motivation, I haven't even read the ubiquitous Harry Potter series.

Therein lies the rub for most liberal arts students: we're very well versed in what has come, but know nothing about what is. The sprawling UofT campus seems so integral to, yet in some ways so detached from, the greater city. We never leave our safe ivory tower to explore intellectual items that have not yet caught the attention of some eager grad student, and after being picked apart thesis by thesis, been absorbed into that illustrious "literary canon." Nothing is worth our time in university if it is not a part of the established canon, right?

Well, I happen to think not. And this is where my claim to being a Literary Smart Ass falls off the map. I know nothing about what is good, modern literature (and by modern I mean in the last five years, not modern-ist). I spend all my writing time producing critical essays (and the occasional Strand article), not constructing the next contemporary masterpiece.

Hoping for a little inspiration, I secured my tickets to different events at the festival. Because the IFOA has the generous student price of free, I decided on two round-table discussions and two readings.

The first reading on the night of October 19th caught my attention because Michael Ondaatje would be reading from his latest, Divisadero. This is one name in CanLit that has definitely achieved canonical status, but clearly not for his less-than-stirring live readings. The same can be said for Margaret Atwood, who read at the The House of Anansi Press's 40th Birthday Party on the night of October 20th. Like fellow Vic student Johanna Gröenberg says, "An Atwood book reading should be the motivating punishment for prisoners in Guantanamo Bay." After politely enduring a monotone twenty minutes, I wholeheartedly agree.

Other authors who possessed a sense of public performance stole the evening. The House of Anansi celebrated its 40th year by compiling The Anansi Reader, a collection of works from various authors published since the independent press started its avant garde operations in 1967. My original aspirations for attending the IFOA were satisfied as A.L. Kennedy walked to the microphone. A tiny, spirited Scottish woman, Kennedy immediately mumbled something witty and innuendoed about riding ponies, and the one-woman show was off and running. She read from one of her older works, a satirical and hilarious mash-up of a story about feeling lonely and the surprisingly sensual side of hamsters (you had to be there). Perhaps it isn't everyone's style of literature, but I was elated at finding an author whose narrative voice was entertaining, relevant, and contemporary (hamsters notwithstanding).

In a surprising delight of the evening, the deeply loved Roch Carrier read from his short story, "The Hockey Sweater," whose opening sentence can be found on any Canadian five-dollar bill.

The round-table entitled "The Reluctant Muse" was a personal highlight. Halfdan W. Freihow, Larry Gaudet and Janette Turner Hospital discussed their relationship with their craft. Gaudet, who claimed he was illiterate until the age of 30, described being a professional writer as somewhat masochistic: "It's like you wake up and there's a wall in front of you and run at it day after day."

The most interesting aspect of the author's discussion was the element of unpredictability. Every author claimed to not really know where the story was headed until it was nearly finished. They described the process as starting with some idea or spark of inspiration and slowly fleshing it out on the page until, after countless hours and cups of coffee, it all comes together. If only my essay writing could be so free…

The Anansi Birthday party even had a little something for Toronto's indie music crowd: a new book about the history of Broken Social Scene and an acoustic performance by none other than Jason Collett. Stuart Berman, the music editor at Eye Weekly, is currently putting together an oral history of BSS and the communal style of indie rock in Toronto. Anansi is set to publish the text this fall.

The 29th IFOA will happen in the fall of next year. In the meantime the IFOA group resumes its weekly reading series at Harbourfront on November 20th, tickets for students are free and the schedule can be found on-line at www.readings.org.

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