Hidden Pleasures

Can you get a colour like that except from an old copy of a book that long ago lost its dust jacket?

The photo above and the one below were taken moments apart, one a little closer to the window.

It's one of the precious qualities of old books like this. They change with the seasons, or over the course of a day.



This is Du's favourite book. A hidden pleasure. A secret stashed away in his socks and underwear drawer. He doesn't really want anyone to know he reads poetry from 9th Century China. Not so much because he's ashamed of it as he just prefers the secret. He's had the book so long, it's like carrying around an old stuffed bear.

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My friend Carl Wilson had his life turned upside down recently when actor James Franco was stopped on the red carpet at the academy awards and asked if he had any guilty pleasures.

The last thing the interviewer expected was that Franco would mention a book. The cues he offered were The Hills & American Idol (I know I know, that last link doesn't really go to American Idol, but how could I resist?)

And he prefaced the question by holding forth on the highbrow nature of the Oscars, begging for a little lowbrow with his highbrow.



(Saying the Oscars are highbrow — no matter how much they might want to be — is like saying that US political discourse covers the spectrum from left to right. They aren't. It doesn't.

(But that's a tangent.)

After struggling for a few seconds, and further encouraged by the questioner (who assured Franco that he would 'wait all night') the actor finally gave up searching for the sort of answer that was expected of him and mentioned a book. He mentioned Carl's book. Not so much because Carl's book was a hidden pleasure for Franco as the question itself brought to mind the themes of Carl's journey to the end of taste.


Epigraph for Sunflower Splendor.

I was going to embed the video here, but I feel that a youtube screenshot will clash with all the digital photos of an old book. So I'll let you go find it here. Or here, where you'll also find Carl's own impressions of the experience.

Franco's choice of a book instead of a TV addiction did not so much reveal a guilty pleasure as a hidden pleasure: a hidden love of learnin' was unexpectedly displayed on the red carpet for the Academy Awards, shocking the questioner and spurring perhaps the first book review that has ever happened there.

Beyond the red carpet though, I suspect Franco isn't the only person who would choose a book for his hidden pleasure.

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The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is partly a book about the love of books. A few of the characters have precious favourites that have been with them so long, they would never even think to share them with anyone, much the same way as you wouldn't share a favourite pair of shoes, say. They're secrets.

In one case, the secret is actually a blog, but in all the others, it's a book. Even the ten stone cuneiform tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh were once a secret — the longtime favourite of twins Runner and Ruby Coghill. But then Ruby died and so Runner revealed them to the book club, demanding that they read them for the next book, despite the small problem that none of the members knew how to read the ancient language.



But other characters have their secrets too.

Du's is a book called Sunflower Splendor - Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. His particular favourite section of this eight hundred page book is the small collection of poems by Yu Xuanji, translated by Jan Walls and Geoffrey R. Waters.

There's a reason for his obsession with this particular poet, but you'll have to read the book to find out what it is.



Here's her biography though, from the old book, written by one of the translators, Jan Walls, (who is himself briefly interviewed by Jennifer and Danielle in their writing of the Lacuna Cabal's last days):

Sidewalk Friendship Test

Looks like something Missy Bean might have dreamed up in soliciting membership to the Lacuna Cabal. Except funny might have been just as much trouble for her as too smart.

[Cough, cough...]

Tweet

I have a Tweetdeck rigged to find references to Gilgamesh. Some of these are really sweet, like a recent tweet from Kaypee who first wrote, 'is Gilgamesh, mostly god but still human,' and later amended it to, 'is akin to Gilgamesh, mostly a goddess but still human.' Or, regarding the colour of his hair, sokaiokyoon wrote, 'this purp so epic I might have to call it the ... !'

Others complain about what dreck the story is, tweeting sentiments like, 'who even cares about Gilgamesh anyway?' Once, when I tried to engage with someone who hated the story, they ignored me, choosing instead to write, 'All because I mentioned Gilgamesh? Awkward.'

Then there's SuperSanko, who is adventuring on line under the name Gilgamesh the Great.


Gilgamesh Trailer - Celebrity bloopers here

But the vast majority of Gilgamesh references allude to a TV animé that takes place in the future, features a sky like a mirror and centres around a pair of twins making their way in a noirish world. I have no doubt Runner and Ruby would be delighted.

Postscript to musicians: don't forget to enter the contest.

Song Song Song

CONTEST CONTEST CONTEST

There's a song in The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal.

It's called We're In the Movies, and it's about the common experience of feeling like we're the stars of our own movies, ipod buds blasting the soundtrack while walking to the corner for a soda.

I have a version of the song here. My friend Michelle Girouard has another here. I'll be discussing in a later post what the connection is to the novel of The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, including what possessed me to write a song for a novel in the first place.

But for now, the important thing to report is this: There's a contest for the song, being sponsored by the Other Press. Aspiring performers are being asked to record their own take on it, for a prize of 500 dollars and a copy of the book. I'm really looking forward to this, especially since I like the song but I'm not particularly fond of my own singing voice.

Enter by May 1, 2009, by joining the Lacuna Cabal group on YouTube and uploading your video. The top star-rated videos will be judged by a panel, apparently including me, to determine the semifinalists. Semifinalists will be announced on May 9, and the Grand Prize Winner will be announced the week of May 19. Official contest rules are here. There's an age restriction: 13 and above with parental consent. Otherwise 18 and above.

Sheet music here if you like, a bit anally rendered perhaps (by me) and with maybe a few errors. It will probably be easier to learn it by ear. And feel free to change the key.





Caveat: This song was never meant to be performed by me with a long-neck banjo and a stripy toque in a youtube video on the internet. Aside from it being mildly embarrassing, the point was for the singer to be young, not old.

But I'll get ot that in a later post. And anyway, it works either way. Still, I hope you can do better.

The video above was filmed and edited by my wife, filmmaker Katerina Cizek. James Thomson appears on bass.

Edible Books

Definitely a subject of interest to the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club.

To Those Who Would Follow the Leads Provided by Torture...

... which is a subject that is always relevant, but particularly these days to Canada's CSIS...
I would point to a quotation I heard recently in this documentary:

Why do you search so diligently for sorcerers?
Take the Jesuits - all the religious orders - and torture them. They will confess.
If some deny, repeat it a few times. They will confess.
Should a few still be obstinate exorcize them, shave them, only keep on torturing. They will give in.
Take the canons, the doctors, the bishops of the church.
They will all confess.

-Friedrich von Spee, Jesuit priest of the early 17th Century, with regards to the Inquisition.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE FOLDING OF A THYROID BUTTERFLY

by Neil Coghill

(N.B. Instructions in italics are not absolutely necessary for the completion of the origami (thyroid) butterfly. They will however assist with certain other matters.)

1. Clear off a work surface as near as possible to an oriel window. Don’t pick the window with my campsite though. I’d rather you chose another. But preferably a south-facing one, with a view of rue St-Gabriel. Still, if you must choose my window, since it’s view is the best, try not to step on my sleeping bag.

2. Place a square of paper, colored side down, on your work surface so that its point are facing up and down, left and right. Look out at the cobbled stones of rue St-Gabriel. Take a few deep, calming breaths.

3. Bring the left point of the square over to meet the right point. Crease and unfold. Think of your little brother, your responsibilities toward same.

4. Bring the top point down to meet the bottom point. Crease and unfold. Imagine how with this sheet of paper, you are caring for your own embattled thyroid.

5. Locate the center of the square by determining where the crease lines made in 2 and 3 intersect. Ask yourself, ‘Have I taken all my medicines today? In their correct dosages?’

6. Bring the top point down to the center of the square. Crease and leave folded. Ask yourself, ‘Have I eaten properly today? More than just a bit of Ichiban here and there?’

7. Repeat Step 5 for the remaining points of the square. Turn the model over. Imagine a separate course for each fold. Soup course; entrée; salad course; dessert. Make sure to imagine foods that you like. Otherwise you might as well not bother. Eating is a pleasure to many people, you know.

8. Bring the top point down to the center of the model (use the intersection of crease lines as your guide again). Crease and unfold. Repeat with the remaining points. Or just do whatever you like.



9. Turn the model over and open out all the flaps. See if I care.

10. Position the square so that its edges are facing up and down, left and right. Bring the top edge to the center of the model. Crease and leave folded. Repeat with the bottom edge. You will now have a rectangular shape in front of you. Really, imagine it’s just an origami, if you like. Just don’t make that joke about the pipe. It’s a stupid joke. Of course sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.

11. Push the top left point of the rectangle towards the center of the model, in between the two layers of paper—the corner should collapse along crease lines made in previous steps. Repeat for the remaining points of the rectangle. The resulting shape (seen in the crease lines) should resemble a square with triangular shapes extending from the left and right edges. Turn the model over. But consider that you were the ones—both of you—who taught me how to use this imagination you so impugn as a tool of persuasion.

12. Bring the top edge of the model down to meet the bottom edge. Crease and leave folded. Your model should now resemble a boat.  The top left corner and the top right corner should now have three layers of folds. Unless your problem is just that these instructions are too hard…

13. Pull the top layer of the top left point down so that the model collapses along the left side of the upside-down "v"-shaped crease extending out from the top center of the model. In the process of bringing the left point down, the top left point of the model's second layer should automatically be brought over to the center. Repeat with the right side of the model, which should now be shaped like a triangle, long edge facing away from you. Turn the model over. That these instructions might be having the opposite of their intended effect.

14. Bring the left point over to meet the right point. Crease and unfold. Turn the model over. If that’s the case then I’m very sorry. If that’s the case and you still want the butterfly, just take a few more deep, cleansing breaths and wait for me to get home. I should be home soon, I tend to get home at a quarter to four, as you probably know. And then you’ll have your butterfly and a hundred more where that came from.

15. Place a thumb and forefinger at either side of the model's center, vertical crease line, at the top edge of the model. Bring the right half of the model over the center crease line just enough so that the bottom point of the model separates into two wing-like shapes. Crease and leave folded. But, on the other, hand, I really bet you can do it.

16. Turn under the loose corner that was brought over the center crease line. Re-crease the center portion of the butterfly to secure the folds. Imagine you are the great goddess Inanna. You can do anything! For example, here you will have recreated your own thyroid in the image of a butterfly, healthy, powerful and resolute, but delicate. Well worth the effort. Well worth it.

Gilgamesh & US Hegemony

Speaking of how a leader can be taught how to be good to his people...

I often think George W. Bush would have been a perfect Gilgamesh if only he could have met his Enkidu somewhere along the line. Don’t you think? He had the perfect lack of self-awareness.

As it stands, he only gave us the first half of the story though, submitted his people to an Ius Primae Noctis of sorts, throughout his presidency.

And then the middle part of the story seems to have handed the role of Gilgamesh to Saddam Hussein, who spent months wandering in the wilderness. I know he was an awful tyrant, but a face like that does make me wonder whether his style of leadership might have changed after such an experience. Like Gilgamesh. During his reign he suffered from terrible hubris. I wonder if life in a hole in the ground can wash any of that away, the way it does in the movies.

So Bush tag-teamed Saddam in playing the part. But nobody bothered to give us the ending, where we find the leader older and wiser and more compassionate. No ending. Everyone plundering and blundering through history, forgetting to give the people an ending. Unless Obama is the ending...



He sure looks tired here though.

But this is all very rude of me, perhaps. I am, after all, only a Canadian. Shouting from the wings, as it were.

Today of all days, though, I have the right to look south of the border with a critical eye. Because I see someone has been talking about me behind my back.

Runner & Ruby Coghill

There’s a book by Hillel Schwartz called The Culture of the Copy. It’s a beautifully written, seemingly influential, phenomenological approach to the idea of facsimile over many centuries of human culture (one example: he attempts to locate the origin of the phrase The Real McCoy and learns that origins themselves are legion.)

In the last century, we have been unable to escape the age of mechanical reproduction. It fills my own days more than I usually realize, from the moment I might see an image of the Mona Lisa in the newspaper to a comic routine on youtube or a real-time conversation with my brother on Skype.

Shwartz’s book makes the case for the copy being itself a symbol of post-post-modern-modernism etcetera ad infinitum… It’s the world that the members of the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club are living in when they encounter one of the oldest stories in the world. Their retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh is a modern mirror image, a copy of a copy of a story someone once told. Carved cuneiform in clay at play in the modern world.

It also brings the modern world to a stop.



It’s possible to be both a copy and an original. Runner and Ruby Coghill, the twins that preside over The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, are by no means copies of each other. One of them isn’t even alive anymore.

When I read The Culture of the Copy, I had already decided that the book was only going to tell the story of The Epic of Gilgamesh on the surface. Its undertoad might actually, (I thought), croak out the tale of two Sumerian goddess sisters, Inanna and Erishkigal. One was the goddess of fecundity, the other the queen of death. They never saw each other. Theirs was, in Runner’s words, ‘the best and oldest story of twins.’

Runner tells the story better than I do.

It’s about Inanna, goddess of life, descending to the realm of her sister Erishkigal, because it was the only place in the universe that she had never been, and she was curious. So she went. To get there, she had to pass through seven gates. As she went through each, the guards would make her remove a piece of her garment, until when she came before her sister Erishkigal, Queen of the Dead, she was … naked and ashamed, and then her sister struck her dead and hung her body on a nail. That’s how they tell it: hung her body on a nail. Erishkigal was jealous of her sister’s primacy in the upper world, and wanted her to stay down there. These two women, though. They were so close as to be almost the same person. When Inanna’s servants came down to claim the body, they found Erishkigal moaning and doubled over, as if she herself were experiencing the physical pain of her sister’s death. And she wouldn’t let her go. It was like they had to be together, the two sisters, but also they couldn’t be together, and the only way Inanna could be returned to her place in heaven was if someone she loved would come and take her place.
Gilgamesh himself is a character who is caught in the universe of these two sisters — a universe some of us are familiar with, in which death follows life and is itself eternal. One wonders why it can’t be the other way around? As it is, for example, in the Christian universe, wherein we might as well just up and bleed the world, drop a few bombs and hasten our way to the afterparty?

The Sumerians, in short, were saner with their religion than we are. And they had a saner way of demonstrating to a leader how he should be good to his people.

And Runner and Ruby Coghill preside over the universe of the Lacuna Cabal just as Inanna and Erishkigal do with the Sumerians.

Which is not to say I like the idea of this book being presented in the genre of metafiction. No way. All these characters — Missy, Emmy, Coby, Du, Romy, Aline, Priya, Neil (though their names have been changed to protect the innocent) — are masters of their own destinies. The narrative does not govern them (despite what the Coach House book jacket might say). Rather, it is their love for the narrative that governs them. This distinction makes all the difference in the world. It’s something that can happen to real people, Don Quixote being a perfect example.



Not that Don Quixote is a real person, but you know what I mean.

To paraphrase the narrators, Jennifer & Danielle (whose names have not been changed to protect the innocent): Anyone who think we’re making metafiction can just fuck off. Maybe later we’ll let our convictions in this matter get a bit sketchy, but for now…

I will however confess to the presence of a little bit of the supernatural though. I recently read an interview with a Canadian playwright whom I admire, who said she just can’t help believing that ghosts belong in serious fiction. It's because she’s Irish, she said.

I'm Irish too. At least partly.

Which is how I can bring my twin sisters back together in the realm of serious fiction, even though one of them is dead.

And then there are the narrators—the so-called anti-twins—Jennifer and Danielle, who feel they are not worthy of telling this story yet are the only ones who can.

The reader might be surprised to read all these highborn claims connected to what is after all a story of shallow little book club being told by a pair of unscholarly girls.

But it’s my hope that the reader won’t make the mistake of confusing the narrative voice (humble, self-abasing, attempting to prove at every turn that they are neither worthy or bright, like the copiers of the Gilgamesh Epic for the library of the great king of Nineveh, Ashurbanipal, who conducted their work in chains)

... for the authorial voice (which asserts that, yes, J&D are worthy. and yes, J&D are bright; and yes, J&D can achieve the grace that comes from steeping oneself in great literature.)

These storytellers aren’t like the tweeter whose post I read on Twitter the other day, a teenage girl who wrote that she would rather claw her eyes out than ever be subjected to the Epic of Gilgamesh again. J&D’s approach is somewhat more adventurous. And they take their task so seriously that they seek to track their own growing awareness in the telling.

Gilgamesh is a longtime obsession for me

I adapted the epic of Gilgamesh once before, in a very long spoken ballad with musical accompaniment, as part of my play Aerwacol, written over a decade ago. Why Gilgamesh is a subject for another post, but the song grew to be so long that I felt compelled to present it in three parts over the course of the play. I have long suspected this to have been a cop-out on my part, and that perhaps I should have edited instead...

Recently though I had the pleasure of seeing a new production of the play, in St. Louis, Missouri, and I found that the journey of the song (and the songwriter) through the play turned out to be one of its strongest components. Along with the fact that they answered the script's call for a manual railroad cart with the real thing.



An added bonus of the St. Louis production was this review, by Richard Green, on a regional news site called Talkin' Broadway.

... a band of slightly gob-smacked Canadians, broken by recent tragedies, sets out across the plain. They roll along on a railroad push-cart (a "jigger"), only to meet with unwelcomed success. Gradually, they disband until we reach an ending that still defies explanation, in my mind ... Aerwacol is a masterpiece of the commonplace, the desperate, and the impossible.

The whole cast is remarkable, natural and polished. We are led into the wilderness without a map, just as Christopher Harris (as a pig farmer) is led through the woods and ditches in the opening minutes by his delirious wife (Donna Parrone). And in that flight, she says the absolutely unspeakable, instantly rising to mythic stature...

It would probably be boring to read about every little unexpected bit of naturalistic humor or stagecraft that makes Aerwacol so transcendent, but you'd be surprised at what magic can arise from small things: a fine mist from stage left catching the cool white rays of dawn; a country cottage that snaps open like the end of a long fever-dream; and an odd chicken-wire shell surrounding the top of a mine, creating echoes of mysterious depths whenever its platform is struck with a shovel or plank. Taken all together, it makes you think there may still be a couple of centuries of good theater still ahead of us.

I'm old enough now to know that a notice like this doesn't mean I'm en route to Broadway, but it's a nice thing to see, fer sher.

Here's the ballad from the play. It focuses in on a detail in the Gilamesh story — his encounter with the barmaid, Shiduri.

Sources close to the Mayor conceded last night,
Callyhoo is not up to the task.
He lost his brother last month in a skiing accident
And he’s no longer up to the task.

This was clear yesterday when, found by the river,
Still swollen from last week’s flood,
He’d lost his shoes and his socks and his hat and his Pride;
His renown is unfortunately now stuck in the mud.

The distraught Callyhoo stumbled into a bar
For to try and catch his breath,
The barmaid looked at him straight in the eye
Said don’t waste time with your challenging Death.

Don’t waste time with your challenging Death my man
Let your days be untroubled and free
Pay heed to the little ones that hold you by the hand
And the touch of a woman like me.

Of each day make a feast of rejoicing my love,
Let your people be a comfort to you,
So when you pass on they’ll remember, they’ll say
That man new life. That Mayor Callyhoo.

But the Mayor said “No!” “No!”
He had to learn on his own.
He had to wander the roads of the earth
To fill the hole that was there in his heart with a home.

For awhile Callyhoo went with Wild Bill's Fair
On display for the leering crowd
For awhile he worked on a high scaffold
Where he shouted his questions at God out loud

In his travels he found hearts ravaged as his
Were numbered as stars in the sky
So he founded a town where they could all lie down
Where all were welcome to come lie down and die

Now people came to this town from miles around,
By the hundreds or more, to be dead.
Callyhoo lay there living for 99 years
Then he stood up again and scratched the top of his head.

He thought he recalled something that he had once heard
That seemed in a flash to make sense
And a damn sight wiser than all this lying around,
So he addressed all the supine ladies and gents

He said let's not waste time with this pretense of death,
Let's make our days untroubled and free
pay heed to the little ones that hold us by the hand
And build up a town for you and for me

A town with fresh water and plenty of wine
And land all around for to make
A garden of Tears that would reap Happiness
In our Village of Early Awake.

"Each day must be full of rejoicing and love
For the people are a comfort to you.”
He proclaimed all this and said "When I pass on
Tell them that man knew life – The Mayor Callyhoo!"

Keep Calm and Carry On

There's a poster shop in my neighbourhood that sells one in several different near-primary colours. It looked like a vintage design, so I looked it up and found that it appeared all over London in 1939, courtesy of the Ministry of Information.

I recall reading how this was also the manner in which Londoners responded to the Underground bombings in 2005. They kept calm. They carried on.

Missy Bean

This is the bookplate for Missy Bean, founder and president of the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club. When we workshopped the play at the National Theatre School in the winter and early spring of 2003, the part of Missy was played by Kate Hewlett, who complained to me at one point that she thought the character was too much of a bitch.

I felt really bad about the notion that I had created a character that was so unsympathetic that it caused trouble for the actor (esp given my priorities), and tried to counter in rehearsal that Missy was just a frustrated leader, and that if everyone in the book club was more inclined to listen to her advice and follow her directives, like, to the letter, then no one would consider her to be a bitch at all.

As advice goes, it didn't really help, esp since the play didn't offer Missy any opportunity to show anything other than these alleged thwarted leadership abilities.


In preparation for transforming Missy into a character for the novel, I recall purchasing Wonder Woman, the Complete History, by Les Daniels. I grew up with the TV series, thinking she was a less-than inspired character. But, as with other such American cultural icons, I had my mind changed by the range of admirers Wonder Woman had. And experience has taught me that keeping up appearances while saving the world is not such a dissable notion. Not for Wonder Woman nor for Missy Bean, nor for me.


Since writing The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, the name 'Missy Bean' has come to represent a default moniker for me indicating a mask or a false personality covering something up. Currently I'm creating a character who tries to create a disguise for herself so she can seek revenge on someone. She's trying to become Missy Bean but not doing a very good job.

My Own Attempts at Cover Art

My UK publisher partnered up with the Saatchi Online Gallery to sponsor a contest for the book cover. More than a thousand submissions were made, including a few that inspired debates as passionate as anything that had ever been tabled by a member of the Lacuna Cabal. My own mini-essay on the whole experience is here.

I prepared a cover of my own to be used just in case people were reticent about submitting. That did not turn out to be a problem, so my submission was never viewed. I'm still proud of it though. It makes use of one of Alison Rossiter's beautiful book images (recorded by placing a book on its end directly on top of the light-sensitive paper and underneath the enlarger), along with the UK edition's butterfly paragraph-divider, and makes me think of Romy's hair, Runner's vulnerable thyroid and the full-on intensity of the LC as a whole.

The other two are from way back, when we were trying to come up with a cover image up here (over here? down here?) in Canada. The ghostly building in the top image is from the background of a digital photo I took of the Royal Vic at night.



And the last one is a hexapod (swiped from the Internet) being chased down by one of the members of the Lacuna Cabal, as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci. Of course.



I made many, many more, before my Canadian editor finally shouted Stop!. But these are my favourites.

The Play (I)

Antoine-Jean Gros, "Sappho at Leucadia"

I began this book as a play. In the summer of 2000, my friend Chris Abraham (unrecognizable in the dark) told me to think fast and come up with an idea to pitch to the Montreal Young Company. He expressed the preference that the setting of the play be their own city.

Like many companies devoted to mounting works from the classical rep, the Montreal Young Co. was crowded with larger-than life actresses who had very little to do, most of the great parts in such plays (Shakespeare excepted) having been written for men.

So I decided I would write a show that would restore the balance of work in this particular rep, eat up their hours and provide a full evening of hoofing it on stage. My goal was for the girls to feel, by the end of the night, that they'd dug their ditches as deep as the boys.

The ways and means of the girls who saw everything in the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club arose from that necessity.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I will reveal that my first pitch had actually been an adaptation of Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, but that's more or less another story. 'More than anything else, I dislike muchness' was the essence of the author's response to my treatment. And it was true. I had definitely offered her muchness, my top priority having always been fun for the performers. I could not help myself in that regard. Everything else was secondary. Perhaps that doesn't ultimately make for powerful playwriting. The collaboration described in the link appears to have served Ms. Carson much better than I would have.)



I'd always wanted to write an oratorio of The Epic of Gilgamesh for a Toronto choral ensemble called the Boys Choir of Lesbos. Why Gilgamesh is a subject for another post. Why the Boys Choir was because I had seen them put on a wonderfully terrible over-the-top performance adaptation (sans singing) of The Lord of the Flies — a glorious celebration of women playing the roles of violent innocent boys. I loved every minute of it. I wanted to harness that energy and bring it to the telling of Gilgamesh — with singing too — in a full blown oratorio.



The inherent contradiction (oratorios are essentially stand-and-deliver singing performances) did not seem to have occurred to me. I don't know what I was thinking.

And of course the Montreal Young Company was not the Boys Choir of Lesbos. They wanted a play, not a static opera, no recitatives allowed. So I set out to create a scenario wherein the actresses of the MYC would have reason to be as passionate and devil-may-care committed/crazy — as godlike — as the Boys Choir in their dirt-smeared, topless, war-paint wail of a William Golding reenactment. That was really how the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club was born.

The Monkey's Paw

Toronto has a newish bookstore on Dundas Street that caught my eye recently while I was on my way to meet some friends on Ossington. I looked in the window and this is what I saw.

Alleged Author

The girls of the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club have tried very hard to make their author look fake — applying black and white, doing away with depth of field, adding cartoon colours, overlapping a very poor image of nose & glasses, and, finally, giving him a Greek fisherman's cap that he wouldn't be caught dead wearing in real life.

Perhaps they believe an author must wear such a cap in order to be taken seriously as a Canadian producer of what they believe to be literary nonfiction. Or perhaps the Greek cap means they harbour the hope that their alleged will one day become a bona fide Nobel laureate.

But maybe they only wish he were from what was considered to be the birthplace of Western civilization before Gilgamesh came along (rather than from a city in Canada that isn't even their favourite), where it's a lot warmer than it is here right now.

Bonus. Here's a picture of the author with his brother.

Official Bookplate

This is the official bookplate for the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club. It was designed by Evan Munday, based on my own tinkerings with a 1930s bookplate made for Alpha Delta Phi at Cornell University.

'Manus Multae Cor Unum' means 'Many Hands One Heart'.

I don't live in Montreal anymore. I was there as a student, and I still miss the city and visit it as often as possible.

I'm not sure I really understand the term psychogeography, but I believe I hold the geography of Montreal in my psyche. I wrote The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal so I could turn over and examine all the detritus of my memories of the city.

Like many students I was cash poor, and one of the few things I could do for entertainment was walk through the streets and look at the people and their fashions and the architecture and the statuary. The parks and the churches. The mountain. The city is full of icons. St. Joseph's Oratory. Farine Five Roses. The old city by the river. This city is possessed by both a mountain and a river. In fact, it's an island on the St. Lawrence River.

Island, mountain, river. Is there any other city in the world like that?

Some of these icons are literal. Montreal is populated by winged statues. One of them was swiftly sketched by Evan from a photograph for this bookplate.

-not this beauty (my favourite) which overlooks the old port of the city and graced my computer desktop all through the writing of the book,

-nor this one, which graces a gravestone in the Côte-des-Neiges Cemetery, where the Lacuna Cabal once convened,

-but rather this one, which stands on a high pillar at the foot of the Montreal Mountain, near where the tam-tams have their jams on weekends.

You may ask, what do Montreal angels have to do with The Epic of Gilgamesh?

As a starting point for this novel, I wanted to devise a pantheon for the world of the book. I needed a way to believe that the gods of ancient Mesopotamia could be present and walking the streets in Montreal, the way a Sumerian might imagine them.

I took inspiration from these stone angels that peek up into or gaze down over the urban landscape of the city. They represent the closest thing to a quotidian version of such gods.

So I decided to imagine the girls of the Lacuna Cabal as a group of minor deities in a world that would give them a certain amount of control over one another (depending on who was in charge in a given instant) and complete control over the men in their midst.

I also felt, given the boys' overall powerlessness, it was only fair for them to exert a modicum of control as well. So Coby, one of the unfortunate male characters, got to build a hexapod for the Haptics Lab at the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University, which was designed to scuttle away from the light and into the shadows.

Coby gets a bookplate as well, as does everyone who joins the (now defunct) Lacuna Cabal, even if, as is the case with boys, they're only half-members.



Unfortunately, over the course of the novel, Coby loses control of his hexapod.

Ahem...

The author of The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is not alleged. At least for the purposes of this blog. He's not an automaton. He's real, and he's going to start posting.