Archive for October, 2007

As a writer, you make some assumptions about who your audience is. In the case of Fantasy in Florence, I imagined that most readers would be over forty and looking for a change in their lives.

Wrong!

Turns out students are reading the book, too. Here’s part of an email from a post-grad student who read the book as a break from her regular studies. I’ve left out her name, faculty and school.

“I just finished reading your book, Fantasy in Florence. I wanted to write to you to tell you how much I enjoyed it! I lived in Florence for 3 months after I graduated university, to study Italian and to experience life somewhere else. Many times as I was reading the book, I could picture exactly where you were writing about, as I had been there myself. I also loved your stories of the people you met while you were there - I think these are the best experiences. One of my favourite memories was a night that my friend and I went to a family dinner at the house of a friend we had made at the archaeological museum in Fiesole!”

That’s how it works in Florence, or Fiesole (which is only a few minutes up into the Tuscan hills), or anywhere else in Italy. You meet someone and they invite you home for dinner. Magnifico!

Andrew Waite’s wonderful installation, Crop, so glowingly described in my earlier post about Nuit Blanche, is on display until November 15 in the Mediterranean Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington.

The name of the McCaul Street gallery where Crop appeared during Nuit Blanche was Prime, not Pride. My apologies to all concerned.

On Sunday, November 18, Sandy and I will be among the honored guests at the annual Writers for Wellspring benefit in London, Ont. This event will feature such well-known writers as Kelley Armstrong, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Heather O’Neill, Maggie L. Wood and Joan Barfoot.

We’re in esteemed company, but I hope the other authors will excuse me for specifically citing Joan Barfoot, who is honorary chair that day. In the 1960s Joan and I worked together on The Gazette, the student newspaper at the University of Western Ontario, and I have fond memories of her fine work way back then. We’ve followed her success with great interest since the 1978 publication of Abra, winner of the Books in Canada Award for first novels. More recently, Luck was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller prize and Critical Injuries was longlisted for the Man Booker prize.

The venue for the Wellspring event, hosted by London Free Press columnist Ian Gillespie, is the Bellamere Winery, 1260 Gainsborough Rd., London. There’s a meet-and-greet reception, brunch, silent auction and interactive panel of authors. A door prize and a raffle promise to make this a fun event for a great cause. Oxford Books will be on hand in case anyone gets the urge to buy a book. For tickets or more information call Wellspring at (519) 438-7379. See you there!

Chapter openings are important because they need to draw the reader in with a promise of an interesting time. The opening scene of October just up and presented itself to me on Via Roma, right outside our apartment, when we spotted Jean Chretien meandering along. Despite the fact we’d never before met, he knew we must be Canadians because we were grinning foolishly at him in the shock of recognition. The former prime minister chatted easily and filled us in on why he was carrying two shopping bags from Tod’s, the luxury leather goods store. Ecco! I had my chapter opening.

Just as chapter openings are important, so too are endings. They must wrap up what the reader has just read and yet urge her onward at the same time. This particular chapter ending is unusual because it’s mythical. I moved from describing the pageant celebrating the 150th anniversary of the municipal police backward in time to the fifteenth century. Well, surrounded by Renaissance art, architecture and costumes, it didn’t seem like such a stretch to me. What do you think? Does it work?

In a personal journal like Fantasy in Florence, it’s always good to poke a little fun at yourself, so that’s why I recounted my experiences trying to learn Italian in the November chapter. People always say, ‘Oh, if you know French, you’ll be able to pick up Italian easily.’ Nonsense! What French I know, I’ve learned during a lifetime. As for a new language, think how long it takes to learn your mother tongue. Parlo Italiano? I got better over time but nowhere near conversational.

In September, readers met waiter Antonio Belvedere. In these two chapters, some of the locals I describe include a couple of expats, one American and one Canadian, who are succeeding in Italy in espresso and food, two national pastimes. As well, I describe climbing the 463 steps to the top of the Duomo, something that many tourists do, and watching the making of olive oil, which is not so commonplace among travelers. That event also gave me an opportunity to write about the creativity and care Italians use in making items. That’s what I tried to do with this book: describe a scene and find a deeper meaning, something more than mere observation. That often required getting in touch with my feelings. That’s a tough act for a Presbyterian boy like myself - but in Italy, I discovered, anything is possible.

Sandy and I taped an interview last night about Fantasy in Florence for Viva Domenica, a lifestyle variety show that will air on Thanksgiving Sunday, October 7 at 6 p.m. Eastern on TLN, the Italian language channel. (Check your local listings. In Toronto, Rogers carries TLN on channel 35.)

I’ve been in a lot of green rooms - as they call the waiting room in TV - but never with a more diverse group. Other guests who gathered to tape their segments included Father John Borean who helps run an orphanage in El Salvador, Mike Marcantonio on home-made wine, Lee Prioriello who was accompanied by some of his 350 challenged young people who participate in Youth Bocce, and soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards who play music from sixteenth century Italy.

Nor have I ever seen more food in any previous green room. In addition to the pizza and soft drinks supplied by the show, there was also a bag of the best McIntosh apples I’ve ever tasted from among the 5,000 u-pick trees owned by Anna and Peter Damato of Country Apple Orchard Farm in King City who were also guests.

To top off an evening of firsts, Daniela Botto is the most delightful television host I’ve ever encountered in my twenty-five years of doing book tours. On the Richter scale of female TV personalities, there are the ice queens on the one end, and the bubbly girl next door on the other. Daniela is in a class by herself: smart, witty, and beautiful, just as you might expect of someone born in Crema, west of Milan.

On the website, the description how we pulled up stakes and moved to Florence says, “To follow your dreams? What courage. Be forewarned that if you watch this interview on Sunday evening, you’ll put your house up for sale on Monday morning.” We had fun and so will you. See you Sunday!

Until very recently, I had never heard of Ann Hamilton. Saturday night we were part of her “listening choir” at Nuit Blanche, the all-night art celebration. Hamilton, who represented the U.S. at the 1999 Venice Biennale, is an installation artist who teaches at Ohio State University. As part of her contribution to Nuit Blanche she led the two-dozen member choir in our offering, which consisted of standing silently, eyes closed, in a line inside the Ontario College of Art and Design, listening to the noises around for twelve minutes. We then repeated the “performance” outside on McCaul Street. Some passersby tried to disrupt our Zen-like concentration but most were just baffled.

The process was meant to teach us how to listen and after a while you could indeed sense a difference in the ambient noise. The banalities of overheard conversations faded away and the sounds of the street took on wave-like aspects. Unusual noises seemed to worm their way through.

Sarah Milroy happened upon the scene and described it in today’s Globe and Mail as a “beatific assembly of tranquil souls in the midst of the hubbub, their stillness was a little startling, calling you back to a kind of mindfulness in the midst of all the hoo-haw.”

The choir continued at other locations, but Sandy and I broke away to see as well as hear. Next stop was Crop, by Andrew Waite, at Pride Gallery. We saw Andrew’s earlier visit to the cornfields in 2004 when he and Sandy were both students in Florence. This version, in aluminum as before, is larger, lighter and more sophisticated. One day, he will represent Canada at the Biennale. See for yourself.

Then it was on to Iconclash in Grange Park where anyone who dared could dance on screen with footage from Cecil B. DeMille. From there, the next visits were all about memory in a series of houses on D’Arcy Street. Covered windows showed playful shadows of previous dwellers moving about, sitting at table, a child playing with a doll. Artist Millie Chen had lived in some of the houses; in this case it was OK to peer into peoples’ lives.

Event Horizon in King’s College Circle was a little too reminiscent of 9/11 for my taste. Emergency Room Recruitment Centre at Hart House was as chaotic as it was meant to be and then, suddenly, in the next room we were amidst the permanent Group of Seven collection and you thought, “Hey, this is the real thing, stop a while.”

DVJ Kriel’s Ground Loop at the ROM was the only disappointment. The projections on the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal were barely visible. But high in the eastern sky was the waning Harvest Moon, eerily embraced by wispy clouds, a reminder that nature is an artist, too.