The Great Wednesday Compare 2: Margaret Laurence VERSUS Alice Munro

The winner of last week's Great Wednesday Compare (Charlotte Brontë Vs. Margaret Laurence), with a final score of 9-6, was Margaret Laurence.

As I suspected, the voting for last week seemed to be based primarily on which side of the border one lived. There were some exceptions of course, and as Ripley said, it wasn't all homegrown pride that was coming into play. Most non-Canadians seem not to have any familiarity with Laurence while everyone has at least heard of the Brontës. I'm still deciding which Brontë I'll start with.

I hope having another Canadian contestant this week doesn't completely alienate my other readers, but I couldn't resist this one. For such a long time now, I've considered Atwood, Laurence, Shields and Munro the four queens of CanLit-- based more on popularity and their prolific careers than anything personal. Atwood, Shields and Laurence have all had their turns at the Wednesday Compares, I figured I might as well round out the lot.

Remember, vote simply by adding your comment below, base it on whatever merit you choose, voting does not end until Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. (May 27, 2008), and please spread the word!

Who's better?

Margaret Laurence or Alice Munro

And for an additional bit of fun, assuming Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Carol Shields, and Alice Munro are the four queens of CanLit, what would their respective roles be in a deck of cards? Would one of the Margarets be the Queen of Hearts? Who would be the Queen of Spades? I'd love to hear your casting call and why!

Reader's Diary #359- Katherine Anne Porter: The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

Short Story Monday

A couple weeks ago I posted a link to a Sporcle game that asked how many Pulitzer Prize winning books I could name. I also posted my abysmal score (10/55). Making matters worse, when you all posted your scores, it turned out I was lowest in the class! Well, if I were to take that test again today, I'd get 11.

One of those 55 books, one of the ones I missed, was a collection of short stories by Katherine Anne Porter. So, after a little bit of searching, I found one of her stories online, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall."

Before you rush off to read it, assuming you haven't already, be forewarned that it's about death and might be a little depressing. Recently I reread a meme that I'd done a year ago which asked me to name 8 random facts about myself. My second fact was this:

I'm 30 years old and since I've been born, I've never had anyone in my family die. Not a grandparent, an uncle, aunt, cousin, no one. Might sound like a morbid thing to throw out there, but it sits in my mind more and more. I wonder if I'll deal with it okay. It will happen someday of course and it scares me a lot. It's starting to feel like we're defeating the law of averages. And I hope this doesn't jinx us all.

While I don't really believe I cursed the family, since then there have been two deaths in my family. One of my grandmothers died shortly afterwards and just two weeks ago my aunt died from leukemia. To answer the question I posed last May, I have coped fine. It hasn't helped keep death from my mind obviously, and now it's hard not to imagine my own inevitable moment and wonder how I'll cope with that.

Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" puts us in the mind of someone on her own deathbed: we are thinking our final thoughts via Granny Weatherall, an eighty year old whose lived perhaps a typical life, despite having been left at the alter years ago.

Told in a stream-of-conscious, I think I'm finally able to pinpoint what my reservations are with that style. Other stream-of-conscious works that I've read (Faulkner jumps to mind), have been more like wild rivers, ones that jump the banks and flood the whole forest floor. Realistic a representation as they might be, I find them next to impossible to follow. Porter's, fortunately, is more stream-like. It's easier to follow and I can see how one thought leads to the next. Even when Granny begins to lose her lucidity (she imagines her pillow rising and floating beneath her), Porter still controls the story and keeps it readable.

There are a lot of cliches in "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall": the cranky old woman, the patronizing doctor, even the final death scene. But, since we all die in the end, we're all cliched. While fortunately (or unfortunately for some, I guess) not many of us have been abandoned on our wedding days, that we have had pain in our life is a given. Granny tries to convince herself that things have worked out for the best, and to make peace with her life that was. Hopefully, we'll be more successful than her.

("The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" was also a made-for-t.v. movie in 1980.)

Feedback Please!

What do you think or feel about this?

Reader's Diary #358- Paul B. Janeczko (Editor) and Chris Raschka (Illustrator): A Kick In The Head

I was about to review A Kick In The Head by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka. Then I Googled it and found it's already been done for Poetry Friday many, many times. I hope it suffices to say that I loved it. Recently I lamented not buying my own copy of In Fine Form, an anthology of Canadian form poetry. A Kick In The Head, though aimed at children, will help tide me over. I hope these links to other reviews, re-written in some of the forms found in Janeczko's book, will help tide you over.

Found Poem
from Susan's comments left at Chicken Spaghetti

I did not like Janeczko's
A Kick In The Head
very much. I know. I'm one of the few.
It struck me
as a book for an adult writing group,
not a book for kids.

Epitaph
from Fusenumber 8

Here lies Fusenumber 8--
She discovered the book,
but was it really too late?

Riddle Poem
from Charlotte's Library

Enthusing about this book is fine
Since she has none of these--
Should she take you out to dinner
ask her to make some please.

Haiku
from Blog From The Windowsill

Inaccessibly
strange depictions of people--
Not quite perfection.

Acrostic
from Miss Rumphius

Has
Inspirational
Thoughts

Couplet
from Kelly Fineman

Praise for an excellent collaboration
Leads to Janeczko celebration.

You may have noticed that I picked short forms. In the book you will find longer forms like pantoums, villanelles, sonnets and more. For better poems than the ones I posted here, check out the book. You'll find classics by Shakespeare, Robert W. Service, and others, as well as more contemporary works by such poets as Joan Bransfield Graham and Gary Soto. For better reviews, check out the links above.

Read The #@%&*! Instructions

As a follow-up to last week's question about writing manuals, this week's BTT Question is about manuals in general:

Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?

Do you ever read manuals?

How-to books?

Self-help guides?

Anything at all?

It'll be interesting to see if there's a correlation with participant answers from last week to this week.

For myself, I now read the supporting documentation with those complicated gadgets. Especially the ones we need to put together. After an incident with a vacuum cleaner and a runaway base that kept blowing dust up into the air while I chased it with the bag/handle, my wife decided for me that the instructions weren't "merely suggestions."

Other than that, I'm not big on the "how-to" books. I remember getting an "Idiot's Guide To Being A Groom" as a present when I first announced to my family that I was engaged. The only thing I remember from it was a suggestion to watch The Godfather to relax on the day of my wedding. I didn't do either.

Oh wait, do cookbooks count? Doesn't get more "How To" than that. I do use those on occasion.

Self-help guides? Not so much. I don't trust advice from someone that doesn't know me or my circumstances. Not to say readers can't adapt what's applicable and what's not, but they're just not for me.

And I'm not sure where travel books fit in, but I have bought a few of those over the years as well. My most recent one was a guide to family vacations. Can't wait to try some of those out.

The Great Wednesday Compare 2: Charlotte Brontë VERSUS Margaret Laurence

The winner of last week's Great Wednesday Compare (Charlotte Brontë Vs. Emily Brontë Vs. Anne Brontë), was Charlotte Brontë with 9 votes. Anne brought in 6, Emily had none.

If I surprised anyone with a three way contest, I was surprised in return with the results-- not so much that Charlotte won, but that the race ended up between her and Anne. Emily had 0 votes! Until doing this match, I hadn't even heard of Agnes Grey or the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. But who hasn't heard of Wuthering Heights? Though judging by some of the comments from last week, hearing of a book doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Though, as I said last week, I haven't read any of these authors. Now I'm as confused as ever as to which one to start with.

I suspect this week will divide voters between Canadian or other. Admittedly, it's a bit of a survey on my part to see who's heard of this week's contender outside of the Canadian border.

Remember, vote simply by adding your comment below, base it on whatever merit you choose, voting does not end until Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. (May 20, 2008), and please spread the word!

Who's better?

Charlotte Brontë or Margaret Laurence