The year in books

The most vivid memory I have of this past year in books was the time I momentarily stepped out of the ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel, where the Scotiabank Giller Prize celebrations were in progress, and saw a stunningly beautiful woman in a black gown surrounded by photographers snapping away. It wasn't quite as frenzied as that scene in La Dolce Vita in which Anita Ekberg steps off a plane and the cameramen go bananas, but you could definitely see that the photographers were throwing themselves into their work.

The woman was Lisa Ray, an actress who starred in Deepa Mehta's 2005 movie Water, and who was a presenter for the novelist M.G. Vassanji, one of the five nominees for the Giller Prize. Afterwards, she told the audience, in her capacity as presenter, "The path of the mystic is to see clearly, to recognize and to reveal, and these are the same qualities always found in Vassanji's art."

That may be so, but 2007 was a year notable not so much for Canadian literature as it was for the marketing of Canadian literature. That marketing was more sophisticated than ever, and more eye-catching, like Ms Ray. The Giller Prize dinner marked its high point – the five nominees were surrounded by the same electronic glow as five Oscar nominees.

Even Gordon Pinsent, a familiar face in Canadian film and television, and a presenter for Michael Ondaatje, acted as if he were the second-hand beneficiary of the authors' stardom. "This is going to do wonders for my profile," he told the Giller Prize dinner audience.

Ondaatje, himself, on the video screen described the rigours of actual writing. "I rewrite and rewrite a lot because that first draft often goes in the wrong direction," he said, and then noted that all this was in service of literature – the only important thing. "The rest is publicity."

But what publicity! Booksellers certainly appreciated it. They had many woes this year, including the rising Canadian dollar, but the Giller Prize was, as ever, a tonic for business.

The Governor General's literary awards also did their bit for promotion, although with less Lisa Ray-like glamour. Winner for English-language fiction was Ondaatje, a five-time winner of the Governor General's award and the man whose novel, Divisadero, many thought should have won the Giller Prize.

The announcement of the award was prefaced by a statement that would have made Gustave Flaubert and Jane Austen stare: "Lyricism and whimsy are necessary ingredients of brilliant narrative language."

The award also made it clear that if Vassanji was a "mystic," Ondaatje was no slouch in the spiritual department either. "Grace, after all," the jurors noted, "is the ultimate gift which Ondaatje offers us in Divisadero."

Some readers would have been satisfied with a good novel.

Always a subject of lively conversation among literati, literary awards seemed to be growing in importance in an age where the old-fashioned book tour, with the author hopping from city to city in an airplane, was becoming less and less a staple of book promotion and marketing. For one thing, it seems unnecessarily cruel to make authors endure the increasing discomforts of air travel; for another, the age of email interviews, continuous video loops in bookstores, and other digital forms of communication make the physical presence of authors seem superfluous.

With the advent of the LongPen – a device that enables authors, via the Internet and video conferencing, to meet book buyers and sign their books without being physically present – it becomes even less important for authors to venture beyond their studies. This was demonstrated in October at the World's Biggest Bookstore when Conrad Black, from his Florida home, autographed copies of his Nixon biography for book buyers, including Margaret Atwood and her partner, Graeme Gibson.

It was a night of gentle irony. "Graeme, I know how much you both admired Mr. Nixon," Black said at one point, after Gibson had complimented him. A few decades ago – as Black, of course, well knew – Gibson and Atwood, then ardent Canadian nationalists and antiwar activists, regarded Nixon as slightly less menacing than the Antichrist.

On this night, however, Atwood was the first to have her copy of the sympathetic biography signed by Black. Perhaps the good feelings in the room between Black and Atwood resulted from a bond stronger than politics – the bond of knowing what it is like to be a celebrity in a society with an ambivalent attitude toward celebrities.

LongPen or no, some writers continued to tour – writers with a fan base of individuals who wanted to see their favourite author. Fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, with a new novel, Ysabel, out in 2007, was indefatigable in his travels. Bret Hart, author of Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling – whose fan base did not all consist of voracious readers – also toured successfully during the year.

The writer with the world's greatest fan base, J.K. Rowling, came calling during October's International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront. At a press conference at the Winter Garden Theatre, Rowling confirmed she was through with Harry Potter – for the time being.

"I would like to take a little time from Harry," she said. "I miss him. I really miss that world, but it's healthier, like a marriage breakup, not to see each other for a while."

The biggest question Rowling faced concerned her declaration that her character Dumbledore was a homosexual – a declaration some suspected of being itself a marketing ploy.

Commentators tried to hunt down other instances of novelists outing their characters. None was found. If the late critic Northrop Frye were alive, he would have noted that it was nonsensical to take seriously an author's comment about her fictional characters.

Poets and novelists, Frye pointed out, have no more authority in interpreting their creations than anyone else. To believe otherwise, he argued, displays "an inability to distinguish literature from the descriptive or assertive writing which derives from the active will and the conscious mind, and which is primarily concerned to `say' something."

The real question left by this controversy is not about Dumbledore's sexuality, but about the value of the Harry Potter books as genuine imaginative literature.


http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Books/article/289559