Wonderful review/essay. Thank you for sending me back to read more Gallant, and thank you, also, Ann for the update on the latest stage in book banning. Grateful for Bookpost . . .
I am ashamed to confess my first introduction to Mavis Gallant's work was through the pages of BRICK, which published an interview in its Winter 2007-2008 issue. I read the interview because I loved Michael Ondaatje's poetry and prose, and he was the editor of BRICK. From that point, I started to read Gallant's stories, and like Zarin was struck by the theme of exile and transit, a deeply personal matter to me. Gallant struck me as a postmodern Henry James--both in terms of her characters, who are always transiting, hovering over thresholds, in between spaces, moments) and her sentences, which demand conscious attention, a little something that has gone out of fashion.
"I have lived in writing, like a spoonful of water in a river." That line is attributed to Gallant in BRICK's Summer 2014 issue. Zarin notes Tina Brown's unwillingness in 1995 to continue publishing Gallant's stories. Maybe it's around that time that reading devolved into skimming and the most important element of any story became plot, at least in the minds of those who are most ready to make a buck.
You can't skim, you wouldn't want to skim Gallant's sentences, any more than you would James's. As for being exiled, rootless, in transit--those amount to the blunt force traumas of history, states of consciousness rather than a series of plot points. Yet Gallant kept writing and remained true to her choices as a writer. I have to admire that tenacity and courage. I suspect Gallant will be read long after anyone cares to remember who Tina Brown was. (Thank you for a lovely post!)
It’s great that you discovered Gallant’s work through BRICK! BRICK was so good. I love it when a literary magazine makes a big impact someone’s reading life like that.
Wonderful review/essay. Thank you for sending me back to read more Gallant, and thank you, also, Ann for the update on the latest stage in book banning. Grateful for Bookpost . . .
Excellent tour of the landscape--troubled and shining--of talent and the work of writing.
I am ashamed to confess my first introduction to Mavis Gallant's work was through the pages of BRICK, which published an interview in its Winter 2007-2008 issue. I read the interview because I loved Michael Ondaatje's poetry and prose, and he was the editor of BRICK. From that point, I started to read Gallant's stories, and like Zarin was struck by the theme of exile and transit, a deeply personal matter to me. Gallant struck me as a postmodern Henry James--both in terms of her characters, who are always transiting, hovering over thresholds, in between spaces, moments) and her sentences, which demand conscious attention, a little something that has gone out of fashion.
"I have lived in writing, like a spoonful of water in a river." That line is attributed to Gallant in BRICK's Summer 2014 issue. Zarin notes Tina Brown's unwillingness in 1995 to continue publishing Gallant's stories. Maybe it's around that time that reading devolved into skimming and the most important element of any story became plot, at least in the minds of those who are most ready to make a buck.
You can't skim, you wouldn't want to skim Gallant's sentences, any more than you would James's. As for being exiled, rootless, in transit--those amount to the blunt force traumas of history, states of consciousness rather than a series of plot points. Yet Gallant kept writing and remained true to her choices as a writer. I have to admire that tenacity and courage. I suspect Gallant will be read long after anyone cares to remember who Tina Brown was. (Thank you for a lovely post!)
It’s great that you discovered Gallant’s work through BRICK! BRICK was so good. I love it when a literary magazine makes a big impact someone’s reading life like that.