who is john galt? (aka schizophrenic book club)

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the titles in my parents' book shelves. The Gulag Archipelago. Anna Karenina. Ship of Fools. Canadian Realist Paintings. Atlas Shrugged. For some reason, the last one seemed especially interesting. Maybe it had something to do with the cover. While I've gone on to read many of those titles in the intervening years, I never got around to Ayn Rand. Until I started watching Mad Men and my interest was re-ignited. Somehow between Cooper's recommendation and a brief internet search I got it in my head that the premise of the book is that all the artists and innovators, inventors etc agree to go on strike to prove to the world how useless everything would be without them. Well, 100 pages or so in and I'm beginning to realize, that's not quite what it's all about. Oh well, I'm committed now. Never let it be said that this left leaning socialist lover isn't open to alternate ideas.... wish me luck.

Maybe it has something to do with all the changes in the air in my own life, but my night table is definitely beginning to resemble something of a schizophrenic's book club these days.

In addition to Ayn Rand, I've been reading pretty much any Richard Yates story I can get my hands on. It all started with watching the film Revolutionary Road. His utterly unredeeming tales of suburban angst and resigned hopelessness have a kind of Mad Men feel to them.



Add to that Corinne Maier's witty and urbane call to arms No Kids: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children - a must read for all thinking people - parents or not - and Apexart's Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating and you have yourself a pretty good glimpse into my frenetic state of mind these days.



Oh, I almost forgot - just arrived in the mail is the latest work from my man Tom

tom on my mind

I've been working away in my studio on a new body of work that's based in equal measure on riverside grocery store and the marvellous tom robbins. how you may ask, do the two relate? Well friends, if you have to ask, then you haven't yet got your hands on the right libretto. You'll just have to wait until January at the yukon arts centre to find out.

In preparation for the series I've been re-reading a number of Tom's classics and am struck by how relevant his writing remains "in these troubled times". First there's Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas set during the calamitous aftermath of a stock market crash. Then, Skinny Legs and All, where Tom waxes poetic on art, the hidden life of inanimates and the rising threat of evangelical christianity (bring on the rapture y'all yee haw). I've just moved on to Jitterbug Perfume, a time bending tome about our collective obsession with immortality, the origins of scent and the death of the mystic at the hands of organized religion.

here are a few lines from the opening paragraphs:

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot.The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes."

In other news, I've been experiencing an ungodly craving for borscht of late.