Barry Webster's Blog

I`m delighted that The Lava in My Bones is a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award.

That means I get to go to two different galas in two different months in New York City, one of my favourite places to visit!

I was interviewed by Dina Del Bucchia on Canada Arts Connect. She asked some great questions. Here's the link if anyone is interested.
http://canadaartsconnect.com/magazine...

I just finished Spencer Gordon's book of short stories called "Cosmo." It just blew me away. He writes in this high-energy baroque style. And he covers such a wide range of subject matter for such a short book. The book put me in a delirium. This is the kind of fiction we need in Canada. More on him and this later.

Now that the holiday season is over, I should start to write in this blog more regularly.

I recently came across an interesting article on the feminist aspect of "The Lava in My Bones". http://artthreat.net/2012/11/lava-in-.... I thought the review was quite perceptive. To be frank, a while back I was quite nervous about how the whole gender issue would be interpreted in this novel. Stereotypes of men and women are satirized throughout the book, but there is always the danger that the reader won’t get the joke and instead think that I mean to reinforce these problematic gender categories. In the Ice section for example, Franz’s inane comments about women (and Veronika) are there to ridicule misogyny rather than partake in it. Sue`s shame at her own body early on in the book is a result of her inadvertently accepting the centuries-old view of women`s bodies as the source of sin—-an attitude she fervently rejects later in the book. I wonder though, what if the reader stops reading at Part Two? Won’t she or he get a false understanding of what’s intended? The wicked stepmother in Part Five reverses this traditionally misogynist character in that she's not a stepmother at all and Sue creates her own birth-mother in the sky. In any case, I was reassured by the many insights in Morgenstern’s critique.

OK now that it's snowing for real, I guess it means Christmas really has arrived. I`m off on a train trip to Toronto. The train is not merely the only transport unaffected by Canadian weather, but it is the most reader-friendly mode. I`ve packed three novels along with me. Today I`ll be reading Corey Redekop's "Husk" and Garry Thomas Morse's "Minor Episodes/Major Ruckus." I`ll alternate between them, maybe switching each hour (it`s a long train-ride). I doubt I`ll be doing any writing over the holidays. "Lava" took over seven years to write and involved over a dozen rewrites (I have half of a filing cabinet full of the printed drafts). To be frank, the whole idea of ever starting another novel seems such an exhausting prospect. Reading is the best thing to be doing.

Last weekend I gave a reading in French! I live in Quebec (obviously in the French-speaking part of Canada), and I`ve always been interested in literature in other languages. A while back, just for kicks I translated the first page of "The Lava in My Bones" into French. I wanted to see what it sounded like in the language of Molière. Translating just one page was not easy. I speak French daily here in Montreal, but writing literary French is a whole other story. It took hours of checking grammar books etc. to make sure I got everything right. Then preparing for the reading was the next step. I underlined the difficult words and practised them over and over so I didn`t flub them in public when I got nervous. It`s the damned r's and the difficult "u" (like in "tu" or "rue") that always trip me up. In any case the event was really enjoyable, and I was happy with how my reading went. All the authors and spectators there were wonderfully tolerant of my heavily accented French. It`s great to meet francophone writers as well, many of which are largely unknown in English-Canada.

I`m very happy with the lead starred review of "The Lava in My Bones" in the December issue of Quill & Quire. It ends with: "A joyous fairytale about familial dysfunction and our connection to Mother Earth. Webster writes halluncinatory prose with zany gusto ... This is an exhuberantly written novel. We need more like it in this country." Thanks Quill & Quire! That's surely the nicest Christmas present I could get!