An acquaintance of mine recently posted this on her wall:

“MFA thesis defended!”

These are the comments that followed:

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Congratulations!

Way to go, Sloan!!

You did it, you’re the best!!xoxo

Awesome. Just awesome.

It must feel great to accomplish something so useful!

Congratudonlences!

That’s great, hopefully the debt won’t be too crippling!

You’re going to be a poet, I hope! A nation really can’t have too many of them!

That’s eight years spent in academia that you can be damn proud of!

So. Fucking. Brave.

Very sorry to hear this. WHAT NOW???? At least your mother died believing that you’d never finish that degree!

Thank God somebody is finally going to give some attention to Gender Dichotomies in the Kitchen: Feminine and Masculine Qualities of Spaces and Artifacts as exhibited in Queer literature of the 1990’s! It’s been a long time coming! You rawk, Sloan!

Idiot.

Hopefully after all those years you committed to that institution, you have a good relationship with them and they might offer you a job as a diversity officer or something!

Sloan, you have just taken your Blog to the next level!

So, so, so sorry to hear this. Big hugz!!

My ex works at the Starbucks on College and University, and I am sure he can get you a job there while you write your novel. Private message me.

Fantastic news! You must be super proud! See you at the Slam Poetry workshop on Sunday!

First of all, before I write my message, I want to thank Mother Earth for all the resources that she allows us to use, and honour all First Nation, Métis and Inuit people whose land we settlers now stand upon. We ask your forgiveness. YOU ARE THE BEST, SLOAN, YOU MUST BE SO PROUD!!

Have you told your psychiatrist yet?

As many of you know, I’ve been engaged in a running feud with Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood for quite some time now.

Typically, the landscape for this war has been social media and chance encounters in our shared neighbourhood of Toronto, but about a month or so ago my mother

turned up the weird by writing Atwood a letter of apology on behalf of my family (  http://michaelmurray.ca/my-mothers-letter-to-margaret-atwood ), as I had refused to so so myself. After a few weeks had passed without my mother getting a response, she wrote to Atwood again:

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Nov, 9, 2017

Dear Ms. Atwood:

Hi, how are you?

I am fine, but oh, my sinuses were just awful last week! I don’t know what it was, maybe a change in the barometric pressure or the wind, but honest to Betsy, I just wanted to climb under a rock and die! Even chewing gum was excruciating! It’s at such times when you really need a friend– just so you know that people care and that they’re grateful for all the little things you do for them, like sending hand-sanitizer because you don’t want them to pick up a nasty sinus bug like you did. By the way, did you get the hand-sanitizer I sent to you? I hope so, but you never know with the post office!

Have you got all your Christmas shopping done? I don’t even know where to begin, I’m still trying to catch up on all my cards from last year!

Oh, I think I hear Frito meowing!

That can only mean one thing—he wants his dinner, so I better go!

Yours sincerely,

Barb Murray

PS: In case you did’t know, you can now get a flu shot at Shopper’s so you don’t have to go through all the bother of going to a doctor’s office!

Nov, 13, 2017

Dear Ms. Atwood:

I know that you are a very important person and are probably very busy with your various hobbies and commitments, but that’s still no excuse for being rude! I don’t know how you were raised or what sort of morals you Hollywood types have, but where I come from you write a thank-you note if somebody sends you some hand-sanitizer. It’s just common decency.

I hope you remembered to buy a poppy this Remembrance Day. My father fought in WW II.

In the trenches. There was no hand-sanitizer there. Just death and foot disease. But my father endured all that hardship to help make the world safe for people like you, so I hope you always keep in mind the sacrifices he made for you.

I have been thinking a little more about my son’s behaviour toward you. It’s true that Michael has his issues, but I always taught him to be considerate. If you drop him off at a bar,  he will thank you, and if he gets a present, you can be sure he will send a thank-you note to the person who sent him the hand-sanitizer. Sometimes when he’s tired or anxious or hasn’t been attending his low carb support group meetings, he can get very crabby, so it’s crucial for him, and all of us, to maintain our routines (especially regular BM’s!) and get plenty of sleep.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Barb Murray

PS: I have included an article that I clipped from the paper that I thought you might be interested in on Vitamin D. It’s very important that we get enough of it, especially in winter. Osteoporosis is a silent killer. I was a nurse, so I know.

PPS: Did you get many trick-or-treaters for Halloween? We only got two, and they were both teenage girls! And the way they were dressed, my Lord! I thought I should be handing out clothes instead of candy!

PPS: Do you have any children or were you barren?

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Me: Hi! I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us, and add what a personal honour it is for me to be speaking to a woman with with such a dizzying literary capacity. You are truly one of the greatest writers in the entire world.

Atwood: That’s very sweet of you, thank you.

Me: I think an awful lot of people would be surprised to learn that you played Fantasy Baseball.

Can you tell us here at The Knuckler how you got into it?

Atwood: As people may or may not know, I’ve always been very interested in speculative fiction, and when I heard about Fantasy Baseball, I thought it was in the same vein. You know, like Fantasy Literature, so I looked in to it. Alas, it was not, but I became fascinated by it and all the marginalized, impotent men that play it so obsessively. It’s role playing, really, where all these limited, in many cases arrested men, bond together and pretend that they’re something much more powerful than they are in the ordinary dirt of their relentlessly disappointing lives.

It’s like a religion for them, I think, a little treehouse they can retreat to and act as supreme ruler of a secular male kingdom. I have always thought that without Fantasy Baseball there would probably be an awful lot more mass shootings. Anyway, I got involved in order to research a character for one of my books and have been playing ever since.

Me: Oh.

Atwood: And I have to say, I’ve done very, very well.

Me: Good for you.

Atwood: I’m sorry, are you being sarcastic?

Me: Oh no, a marginalized, impotent shooter-type such as myself wouldn’t have a clue how to do that!

Atwood: I see.

Me: I guess you’ve just been a very lucky player!

Atwood: Lucky?

Me: Plucky. A very plucky player.

Atwood: Really?

Me: Well, let’s not get side-tracked with semantics here. So, I’m sure all of The Knuckler’s readers would love to hear what your Fantasy Baseball team is called!

Atwood: The Blind Assassins.

Me: Oh.

Atwood: Mister Murray, I have to say, you sound disappointed.

Me: Well, coming from a “literary genius” you’d expect something a little more imaginative and eloquent. It seems lazy and nakedly self-promotional to name your team after one of your own books, especially if it wasn’t good enough to be an Oprah Pick or made into a movie.

Atwood: What is your team called?

Me: Mike’s Mashers.

Atwood: That’s very clever. How are they doing this year?

Me: They’ve been savaged by injuries I’m afraid, so it looks like I’ll be rebuilding again.

Atwood: Again, eh? So, how long have you been playing Fantasy Baseball?

Me: I don’t know, 25 years?

Atwood: Have you ever won?

Me: Ha, ha, ha! Have I ever won? What a funny question! Let me tell you, I’ve more than held my own.

Atwood: But have you ever won? Have you ever finished in first place? Have you tasted the sort of victory that for a moment erases all those memories of being the last pick, of being mocked for throwing like a girl, of all those many, many times of being over-looked by the more talented and beautiful?

Have you ever had your revenge, Mister Murray?

Unfortunately, I suffered an asthma attack at this point during the interview and we had to suspend our chat.

This inhibits his writing, and in an effort to figure out young people and how they work, he recently fostered an 11 year-old Iraqi orphan named Naseefa for three months. Franzen insisted that Naseefa keep a journal, and what follows are excerpts from that journal.

Day 15:

It is morning and I had just woken from another nightmare full of the bombs and the screaming of the torn and dead. As I open my eyes I see Master Franzen staring down intently upon me. He has been watching me in my terror, he says. “Naseefa, what were you thinking as you slept?! Tell me!!” I say to him that I do not know how to put my thoughts into english words and Master grows frustrated. He hits at things in his apartment, saying bad words, and then he runs off and begins to type.
Day 18:

Today Master took me to Fantasy Forest amusement park. “Go,” he said, “act naturally.” Master then bought a hotdog, arguing briefly with the vendor about technology, and then sat on a bench with his notebook. I went on the Merry-Go-Round and as it was just starting up Master ran to me, “Little boy,” he yelled, “why did you choose this horse? It’s missing a hoof, does it remind you of the carnage of war? Does it summon memories of a family member having an amputation? Why not the lion, does it frighten you because it summons images of your abusive uncle having sex with your mother while your father worked?!”

I did not know what to say so I began to cry. Master Franzen scribbled in his notebook and then started to argue with the hotdog vendor about technology again.

Day 19:

Master seemed depressed today, spending hours in front of the mirror rearranging his hair.

Day 24:

Today Master forced me to open a Twitter account. He wanted to observe as I interacted with the outside world through the use of technology. However he keeps interfering, insisting that every hour I Tweet something about his new book Purity. Without saying a word, he hands me a little piece of paper with the words I must Tweet.

“Franzen is a giant who looms over the American landscape.”

“Purity is a complex and beautiful meditation on what it means to be alive.”

“We are blessed that not only is Franzen the greatest living writer in America, but that his best novels promise to be before him.”

“Just saw an interview with Jonathan Franzen! Not only is he brilliant, but sexy, too!”

Day 38:

Lasagna for dinner again. Master said that his fans worship him and make food for him all the time, and then he laughed a dry, mean laugh.

I am frightened in America.

Day 43:

Master returned to the apartment in a bad mood today, as his tennis lessons did not go well. “The backhand bedevils me!” he exclaimed, before throwing his racket at his transistor radio.

He stared at the broken pieces on the floor for a long time and then suddenly he spun around and shouted at me, “What are you thinking?!”

He made this comment a couple of weeks ago after Kanye had said something Kanyesque about books. This was the quote:

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I am a proud non-reader of books.”

People, primarily white, middle-class people, as far as I could tell, rushed to their social media channels to denounce and mock Kanye yet again, portraying him as an illiterate, entitled child who lacked the intellectual capacity for long-form reading. However, in so doing they completely over-looked the fact that what he said wasn’t stupid at all, and could easily apply to the vast majority of the population.

Novels were once the castles in which everybody wanted to live. To write one was considered the highest artistic and intellectual aspiration, and all that was profound in culture and human experience was transferred– as if by holy passage– through them. Well, that’s simply not the case any more. The world has changed and we consume our culture and entertainment in very different ways than we did 50 years ago.

The experience I used to get reading a novel, I now typically get following specific TV shows. For me, the scope, intellect and cultural penetration offered in shows like Breaking Bad or Transparent (you could name dozens more), and the continued richness of experience and evolution of circumstance they present, simply outstrips what is available in novels. Other people will make similar arguments using graphic novels, Blogs, gaming communities, sports or more traditional forms like cinema, dance or music as examples. (I would also argue that we are much more participatory, almost partnered, in what we consume now and much less the passive receptacles we were in the past.)

Novels, particularly literary novels, have traditionally been written by a very specific group of people, and it’s never been a diverse group. The expression “Dead White Males” might pop to mind here, and although there’s much greater diversity in writing than there ever has been before, it still speaks loudest in the privileged, virtually aristocratic fields of MFA’s.

Naturally then, the experience of reading novels is an alienating one for the vast majority, and with so many other, and superior options available, why on earth would somebody like Kanye spend his time reading books that don’t speak to him, instead of creating art and pursuing his passions?

Earlier in the week a video purportedly made by bored hacktivist group Anonymous was released targeting Kanye. It was ridiculous– like a Prog Rock video from the 80’s. In it, a Guy Fawkes masked figure, in a condescending British accent, chided Kanye for all manner of untoward behaviour. It really sounded like the gripes of a 15 year-old who was angry with the cool kid in school who got all the attention.

What people want with Kanye, I think, is to keep him in line.

They want him to remember his place in the hierarchy, and every time they raise their voices to ridicule something he says or cry foul at a taboo he’s broken, they remind us not of his boundless ego, but of their inability to live in a world– now so different from the one they grew up in– where a man like Kanye might confidently assert himself and speak for an unheard majority that they’re no longer a part of.

They were about the same age and had a host of similarities, none more striking than that they were both deeply engrossed in a book. Held up in their palms right before their faces, their other hand clutching a railing, the books seemed like silver trays from which they could just blow a puff of words into the other’s face.  It was kind of comical, actually, to be so intimate, so open  in posture, to be in the midst of so much ready potential, yet to be willfully oblivious and inward in the face of it.

Buffeted about by this train, I will stand and try to read snatches from my book instead of making eye contact with you.

I found them magnetic. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. They were made for one another! Why couldn’t they see that? Why did they deny it? They were practically in the same sleeping bag!

I could contain myself no longer and said to them, “You two have a lot in common.”

The woman ignored me and the man looked at me the way you’d imagine a man would look at a stranger saying something weird and inappropriate on a subway.

“I just mean the books,” I continued, “you’re both reading so intently, so close together, it looks like you’re sharing the same book. Really, you may as well just hook-up.”

The man looked nervous, shaking his head in the face of a crazy, but the woman seemed amused.

“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” she said.

I shrugged, “ I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

The man looked up from his book and at me, “Maybe you should just mind your own business.”

And then from three seats over a guy piped up. “Dudes right, man. It’s like you two are married, just lying back in bed before going to sleep, reading your stories. Shit, you should be together, you won’t find anything better on no eHarmony.”

It was a slightly awkward, if validating situation, and I wasn’t sure what to do so I introduced myself to everyone.

I then asked the man what it was he looked for in a partner. He sighed through his nose.

“I like intelligence and an open-mind. I need loyalty.”

I then asked the woman.

“Oh,” she said, “ I hate those qualities in a person. All I want is somebody who’s a Scorpio!” And then she smiled the smile that would bring the man out of his shell.

“Well that’s funny,” he said, “because I’m a Scorpio!”

The guy from three seats over then said, “Yeah, yeah, and you both listen to CBC radio and like animals. Just go on and fall in love,” and then he motioned to me to come and sit with him and leave them alone, and so I did, and when I got off the subway a few minutes later, they were still talking.