Machi Tawara, Salad Anniversary

Lovely book of poems originally published in 1987. Beautiful and simple fragments of love, longing and everyday life. 

Christopher DiRaddo, The Family Way

The Family Way was another book I picked up at Drawn & Quarterly while in Montreal last month. This novel felt so "Montreal" to me and really reminded me of my mid to late teens, spending a lot of time in The Village, supporting my gay friends as they came out. During this time, we were all starting to discover and seek out places in the city where we could learn how to become ourselves, how to be queer or non-normative/non-conforming, and where not fitting it in the larger sense of things brought about in these spaces a deep feeling of self-acceptance, community and belonging. 

The story was poignant and relatable and all the characters extremely likeable, inducing compassion in the reader and an acknowledgement of the different desires and challenges faced in a (gay) life about love, sex, loss, commitment, life partners, family (planning), friendships and one's chosen family, rejection and becoming who you feel you are. Very smart and tender as well as a compulsive page-turner. 

Yasmina Reza, Anne-Marie The Beauty

One of the books I picked up at Drawn & Quarterly during my visit to Montreal. 

My dad taking a picture of his clogs, 1972

Ohara Koson, Dancing Fox (c. 1910)

Thomas Bernhard, The Loser

Really interesting novel about failure/unhappiness and success/happiness in art and in life, the postwar political climate in Austria and disgust with both government and citizens of all classes, envy, self-sabotage, genius (explored through Bernhard's Glenn Gould character), loss, suicide, satisfaction, acceptance, friendship, memory and reflection, narcissistic and enforced love/admiration/dazzlement. 

I wasn't crazy about Bernhard's writing style, where the whole novel is a single paragraph without any page breaks or chapters nor his repetitive syntax, but thought the story and the dynamics between the three piano virtuosos was incredibly insightful and touching. 

Masahisa Fukase (1934-2012) part 2