Oh, Canada! O'Connor!

Recently, I somehow found myself in an online tract of Canadian writers' blogs and articles about Canadian literature. After reading a bit, I came to the conclusion that those Canadians are some darn smart folks. Good writers, too. Too bad they lack the American penchant for self promotion, otherwise you'd be reading more Canadian literature. Trust me.

Take this woman for example, Jessica Grant, who wrote Come, Thou Tortoise (<--excerpt here).

[W]riting a novel is not a competition. I would like to make that very clear. You have no competitors, novelist. People will tell you that you do. [. . .]They will act like a book is not a product of an inner life that is immeasurable.

Okay. Say you are competitive. And I don’t mean in a funny, board-game kind of way. I mean say you are competitive in a sad internal way. Also you are not generous. And you are at war with these two aspects of yourself. They cause you great unhappiness.

But say also that there is one area of your life that you have cordoned off, where you are not competitive, one area that is hors concours. That means you participate but don’t compete. That space is inside your book. And inside the books of other people. A book is a place where you practise being human. Look, do not open the cord and let them set up a contest between you and the other novel-hungry Texans. Or the truck-hungry novelists. Or whatever. Don’t listen to them. Because then you will not be able to write. And you will have nowhere to practise being human. If you are like me, that is. And I’m not saying you are.

--Jessica Grant, The Afterword: Postings from the literary world in The National Post

A couple of things: One is that I'd never before heard the word(s?) "hors concours." Probably if I were French, I'd know what it meant just by looking, non? But I'm not French, so I had to look it up in my dictionary. (I love a reason to go and chat with my dictionary.)

Here is what my dictionary told me:

hors concours |ˌôr kô n ˈkoŏr|
adjective
1 unrivaled; unequaled : most husbands are fools, but that one was hors concours.
2 formal (of an exhibit or exhibitor) not competing for a prize.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: French, literally ‘out of the competition.’

How hilarious is that usage example? "most husbands are fools, but that one was hors concours"? That's old school word maven humor right there.

I love my dictionary.

Oh, and the other thing is that the blog that the Jessica Grant quote comes from has a feature called "Buy It or Skip It?" Each entry consists of a paragraph-long review of a newly released book and then the verdict: Buy It or Skip It. Of course, book lovers writing book reviews are going to invariably suggest that you Buy It (although one review suggested that you Wait For The Paperback), but it's still a good idea.

While We're On The Subject

Do you love Flannery O'Connor? For a gimpy, Catholic, backward-walking-chicken-owning virgin, damn that woman could write. Are there any current American writers as good as Flannery O'Connor? Wait, don't answer that. Read this first:

“He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher. Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and suddenly know it and drown.”--Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

Good, no?

And rooting around on the net, I found this description of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor: "[I was a] pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I'll-bite-you complex."

Oh, god. Who wasn't?

And this, too:

"When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax." --Flannery O'Connor

Admit it: You would kill to be a six-year-old assistant to a famous backward-walking chicken, wouldn't you?