Can't Lit

Description

In 1995, Canadian novelist and critic Hal Niedviecki started publishing Broken Pencil, a magazine dedicated to the zine scene, the independent and alternative arts community that had been boiling below the surface of Canada's culture. Broken Pencil's mandate was (and is) to bring the submerged cultural urge into Canada's collective consciousness, to help lift it up and lend it legitimacy. And this includes promoting writing, from writers within Canada and outside it whom nobody here had ever heard of or wouldn't touch, that was too weird or uncomfortable for the

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554908967
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

can ’t lit

edited by richard rosenbaum

can’tlit fearless fiction  from broken pencil  magazine

CàN’TLIT

CàN’TLIT FEàRlESS FIcTION fROmBroken Pencil MàGàzINE EDITED BY RIcHàRD ROSENBàUm

Copyright © Richard Rosenbaum,2009

Published byECWPress 2120Queen Street East, Suite200, Toronto, Ontario, Canadam4e 1e2 416.694.3348/ [e-mail]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Can’t lit : fearless fiction fromBroken Pencilmagazine / [compiled by] Richard Rosenbaum. “A misFit book”. isbn9781550228960 1. Short stories, Canadian (English).2. Canadian fiction (English)—21st century. I. Rosenbaum, Richard,1979Title Broken pencil. II. PS8321.C3852009C813’.010806C20099025280

Editor: Richard Rosenbaum Copy editor: Emily Schultz Cover design/images: David Gee Text design/typesetting: stef lenk Illustrations: Winston Rountree Printing: Webcom 1 2 3 4 5

The publication ofCan’tLit: fearless fiction fromBroken Pencilmagazinehas been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by theomdcBook Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp).

Printed and bound in Canada

tabLe oF  Contents

7Foreword: The Case Against Literature |Hal Niedzviecki 9Why Can’t Canada Read? | Introduction: Richard Rosenbaum 12The Worst of Us |Sarah Gordon 17| Lindsey Golda Fried 21Natural Selection |Martha Schabas 34Crazy Glue |Etgar Keret 36Camp Zombie |Ian Rogers 45What Sara Tells Me |Ethan Rilly 46LOVE |Greg Kearney 49The Southwest Rapist |Leanna McLennan 56One Kiss on the Mouth in Mombasa |Etgar Keret 59Another Young Lust Story |Craig Sernotti 60Gynecomastia |Janine Fleri 65Nine Ball Tourney, Lotza Prizes |Karen McElrea 66Some Kind of Betrayal |Matthew Firth 68Little Wite Squirel Angel |Christopher Willard 73Superboy |Paul Hong 74Randal Isaac’s Suicide |Josh Byer 79Scarlatina! |Derek McCormack 82Rabbit in the Trap |Paul Hong 84The Jesus |McKinley M. Hellenes 88Too Much Mean Me |Geoffrey Brown

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90 The Napoleon Difference |Julia CampbellSuch 94Check Mate |Zoe Whittall 97Giraffes and Everything |Joey Comeau 104Last Winter Here |Emma Healey 108Into Collapses |Robert Benvie 111Four Stories |Geoffrey Brown 114Amsterdam at Midnight |Graham Parke 121Beaverland |David Burke 128Summer |Golda Fried 130Retard |Grant Buday 134Things I Don’t Remember |Sandra Alland 137Parade |Sarah Gordon 139Flame Retarded |Kate Story 144Rats, Homosex, Saunas, and Simon |Josh Byer 147Yes Man |Charlie Anders 152Parking Her Car in Michigan Theatre |Jake Kennedy 154Panties |Greg Kearney 159 Hands Held at Religious Angles |Kevin Spenst 161Sickness |Jessica Faulds 168Dandruff |Joel Schneier 171My Lips Are Sealed |Esme Keith 177The Sweet Taste of Slavery |Christoph Meyer 178Band Names |Tor LukasikFoss 186Small Game Hunter |Joel Katelnikoff 197Some of This Is True |Janette Platana 205(Never) Fade Away |Federico Barahona 208Some Dead Guys |Dave Hazzan

209Contributors 217AboutBroken Pencil 218Acknowledgments

6| TàBlE Of cONTENTS

Foreword the Case against Literature Hàl NIEDzvIEckI

Broken Pencil’s first fiction editor was Ken Sparling. Sparling’s a maverick —a brilliant writer and an editor who despises convention. He doesn’t care what your name is, where you’re from, or who’s published you. He only cares about what you’ve written. Does it hurt to read, the pain sticking around like a perpetually oozing tattoo you never should have gotten, but you were a little drunk, and a little stupid, and a little hopeful that those words, etched into skin, might actually end up mattering? Sparling only wanted the words that mattered. So that’s what we published. Many of the stories in this book were originally chosen by him. I took over from him determined to carry on the tradition of using only the most desperate writing, only the stuff that got kicked out of the house before limping over to our office with no place else to go. These stories are outcasts. They don’t fit into traditional CanLit (which I’ve been railing about since I started out as an editor and novelist), and, in most cases, they don’t even resemble the contemporary short story we’ve come to know and love. They are antiliterature. By and large, they read ragged, lacking the refinements of metaphor, magical realism, and perfect epiphany on the prairies. A few of them might even be badly written. On purpose? By accident? Who really gives a fuck? This isBroken Pencil. We’re not trying to win awards, launch the writers Oprah wants you to read, or really do anything at all. The words do the work. Their ink seeps past the skin and on into the flesh. I carry these stories around in my heavy heart, clogged arteries, chest cramp laughter, sharp pain an insistence that things still matter despite all evidence to the contrary.

fOREWORD |7

Richard Rosenbaum, who has worked with me as associate fiction editor for several years now, took on the challenge of editing this collection, choosing from among the ten years of stories we’ve published. He found out that some of our contributors have disappeared, seemingly fallen off the face of the earth. Others have gone on to bigger and better things, and refused to appear in this book on the grounds that their early writings were unrefined, silly, and sick, and weird. Whatever. It’s the words that matter, that we’ll remember, that refuse to dissipate no matter where you are, or who you think you’ve become. To the many fine writers whose stories appear in this book, I say thank you. I say I am proud to have worked with you. I say the cheque isstillin the mail so get used to it. To those about to read this collection, I say don’t blame us for what lies ahead: we’re just the messenger, lonely couriers who etch words in our skin, so the wind and the rain and the snow won’t erase what matters.

Hal Niedzviecki Broken Pencilfiction editor Spring2009

8| fOREWORD

introduCtion why Can’t Canada read? RIcHàRD ROSENBàUm

CanLit sucks. There. I said it. Now allow me to clarify. CanLit isawesome.

Canadians are producing some of the best, most creative, provocative, boundarypushing fiction in the world. The problem is that not enough of it is getting published, and whateverisgetting out there is not, by and large, being very widely read or sufficiently appreciated and encouraged. You may have noticed that the writing we tend to prize most highly here in Our Home and Native Land—the novels that sell all of, like, twenty seven copies to become bestsellers, the stories that win the big awards— is the cold, dull, pastoral stuff. Little girls growing up in small towns or old women dying in them. The stuff written by people named Margaret. You know what I’m talking about. The writing that’s polished and pitchperfect, but says almost nothing. It feels weighty, but it’s only dense; it seems serious, but it’s really just baroque. It’s not relevant or meaningful. It’sbanal. Maybe we want to distance ourselves from the perceived brashness and ascendancy of our American neighbours, I don’t know, but whatever the reason, in this country we’ve made a habit of celebrating the inoffensive and the mediocre. We’ll barely acknowledge the existence of homegrown writers who haven’t already gained international acclaim, then once they do we’ll permanently brand them as immortal icons of CanLit. Regardless of the actual quality of their work, we’ll add them to the canon to collect

INTRODUcTION |9