There is enough to grind a bibliophile these days. Publishing has become mass production of feel-good entertainment. Independent booksellers have been replaced by mega-box stores. Serious reading appears to be in freefall. Something must be done. How far would you go for literature?

In Redekop’s debut novel, Shelf Monkey, Thomas Friesen is a lapsed Mennonite and a failed lawyer. Barely staying afloat of depression, Friesen takes a job at a bookstore, READ, “the first circle of Hell, literary limbo, a publisher’s wet dream, the author’s nightmare. A vacuous, arid, vile product of bottom line economics.” Floating above the shelves is a big head, the plump likeness of Munroe Purvis, talk show host, publisher and promoter of the worst kind of sentimental drivel. What Purvis endorses everyone buys. And as Page the manager says, “The customer is always right.”

Thomas feels fortunate to meet kindred literary spirits among the employees. Aubrey is the guru of the Shelf Monkeys, a secret ’book club’ to which Thomas gets invited. “Some books are simply a waste of paper, a waste of effort both to write and to read.” The flaming cover of this novel is sufficient clue to the book burnings that ensue, inspired by Fahrenheit 451. Books burnings, by the literate?! Only for books deemed not worthy by the members’ code. “We meet, we debate, we burn. It’s therapy, really.” Things escalate quickly and darkly, Lord of the Flies style, and Thomas is compelled to choose between his loyalties to his friends, literature, ethics, and his sanity.

Crafty transitions keep the reader vigilant. I found it odd at first that a novel sympathetic to literature would be written in fragments – news clippings, transcripts, emails – but these forms transition into narrative, especially the emails to real-life writer Eric McCormack (whose novel The Dutch Wife has a character named Thomas; I haven’t read it). Early on I found Thomas to be a disagreeable character, a sorry sort wallowing in his self-created misery. But then he asks his therapist, “You ever get lost in a book, Dr. Newhire?” It is the first hint of an inner depth. The novel is instantly Canadian, replete with references such as Tim Horton’s, Timothy Findley, and the Giller prize. In the face of the expressly American Munroe Purvis, the gentle literate Canadians are terrorists, declaring jihad on the worst of capitalism and publishing. I caution the reader, Redekop can take you into damn frightening places.

Shelf Monkey poses a troublesome question to book lovers and the arts in general. The insanity of book burnings is a no-brainer. Rather, I am talking about setting one type of art above another. I have enjoyed some of the ’trash’ that gets burned in the novel. Even Aubrey had a copy of The Celestine Prophecy in his collection. Thomas struggles with the snobbery of the Shelf Monkeys. Who is to say which book is good, and which one is bad? As a recent library sciences graduate, Redekop must be familiar with Rosenberg’s motto, “Never apologize for your reading tastes.” As I see it, no one can ever tell what book will speak to a person. Even so, can we never assert a standard of quality?

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Stories are our First Clue to the Existence of Others

Empathy is often mistaken for sympathy. Sympathy is about loving your neighbour, while empathy is about loving your enemy. Nice idea, but is it possible? In The City of Words, Alberto Manguel shows how stories are our first clue to the existence of others, and how the creative use of language allows us to understand those quite different than ourselves, enabling us to work together to build a civilized society.

According to legend, Cassandra had both the gift of prophecy and a curse that no one would believe her. No one heeded her prediction of the fall of Troy. Such is the state of storytellers across time. Their language suggests ideas that do not conform to the current Zeitgeist. The poets were excluded from Plato’s republic. The literate were persecuted in Nazi Germany. Outsiders. But we need these stories. They serve a vital purpose in unfixing inapt labels and animating lifeless dogma.

One of our oldest stories, that of Gilgamesh, tells of the discovery of “other.” Gilgamesh is a tyrant king who discovers a wild man, Enkidu, outside the city walls. Gilgamesh brings him into the city, and they become brothers, together more powerful and wonderful than before. We see our evil twin, or doppelganger, in many things, including the technology which we fear will supplant us. If we can imagine a way to integrate these perceived evils, we can create a better society.

In the story of Babel, a plan to build a tower to heaven was thwarted by God when he confused the tongues of the builders. Language began as a tool to identify things and keep stock, and without a common language it is difficult to work together; ask the foreigners who come to our cities. But words are not simply our tools; they often take us places we did not expect. It is imagination that gives a sense of hope, progress and the future. Writers create stories in which readers find a hopeful reflection. Their interest in turn creates writers to tell more stories. The presence of many tongues can be a blessing, bringing new stories. It may be better to think of the future as an unending stream of stories than a single project or conclusion. Don Quixote is a tale of a hero who does not necessarily win his battle but moves us with his aspiration.

The theme of the evil foreigner who must be destroyed plays itself out in other stories, often with a chilling outcome. In Jack London’s The Assassin’s Bureau, the assassin’s own rules eventually force him to kill himself. In Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey 2001, the computer Hal is forced to see the spaceship’s occupants as obstacles that must be killed. In our society, advertising is the new storytelling, the book industry has become business not culture, and the consequences are becoming clearer. The machines of our economics are zeroing in on us. Manguel warns that literature is essential to disrupting this narrow path, to allowing other futures to be imagined, and a better society to be built.

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“It was the kind of meal that, when the plates were clean, led some to dark corners to sleep with the hushing of the wind, and others to drink mulled wine until our voices had climbed an octave and finally deepened, in the small hours, into whispers.”

The 100-Mile Diet begins in a cottage with no light, fridge, car or hot water; the kind of place I dream of\ when too immersed in the hectic daily business of life. Most of us would starve out there, or so we believe. After an inspired meal gathered only from the wild, Alisa and James launched a year-long diet of food only found within 100 miles of their home. They found themselves returning from their cottage not starving, but with armfuls more food than they arrived.

Why would anyone limit themselves to eating locally? How does that help anyone? Doesn’t it deprive third-world farmers and truckers of their livelihoods? There are several persuasive reasons. Local foods have fewer pesticides and more nutrition. Seasonal variety is good for developing immunity. Unprocessed foods represent a real solution to the obesity problem. Distant foods are only affordable through cheap oil, arguably enforced politically. Sparing the miles reduces the carbon emissions that cause global warming. And about those third-world farmers: when the 1994 free trade agreement was signed, subsidized corn from America overwhelmed Mexico’s two million small farmers and their 5000 varieties of corn. The collapse of a local industry due to economic deals (or a train derailment spilling ten thousand gallons of caustic soda into the river and killing half a million fish) is merely one disaster in a global economy in which we can always go elsewhere. In a local economy, we are reminded that such events are a catastrophe.

Works for me. But how does one go about eating locally? And can it be done without a “depression style diet of beets, cabbage and potatoes?” Alisa and James started simply, eating seasonally from the farmer’s markets. It is not tough to find these in your area. They sensibly used up supplies like salt that were already in their cupboards, but when they ran out, they improvised, e.g., refining salt from the ocean. They used honey instead of sugar. I have got to get some of that pumpkin honey. The great revelation from local eating is the immense variety of tastes that can be found. It reminds me of my half-dozen batches of home-brewing I did a couple years ago. I started with simple recipes but then discovered real flavour by adding freshly rolled grains and hops.

I went grocery shopping when I was reading their book. I read the source of each product on its label. Local apple juice replaced California grapefruit juice, and blueberries replaced my sultan raisins from Iran. I had no idea that carbonated water came all the way from Italy or Germany; dropped that. I have not replaced coffee yet, but I am thinking about herbal tea. I am sure olive oil can be exchanged for a healthy local vegetable oil. And local vegetables frozen when fresh are always a good choice.

Turning over a local leaf can get quite philosophical. Their diet was not vegetarian, and this raised the question of whether the animals had been fed locally. They lived near the US border; should they break the law by taking local foods across it? Inevitably, you must ask yourself if you are doing this because you believe the world is falling apart. When Alisa and James were shucking corn in their apartment they felt like part of some apocalyptic cult. While it is hard not to wonder at times if our fast global culture can sustain itself, I must count myself with them among the non-believers. Instead, I see progress as something that is not always linear; sometimes we must take a few steps back to pick up something we missed. A few weeks ago, I read an objection to slow food on the grounds that women would likely have to do most of the work. Both Alisa and James worked hard, but James did most of the cooking. Perhaps we had to step away from slow food for awhile to advance women’s rights, but now may be a time to return to it for our health and that of the planet.

Alisa and James are journalists by trade, but they know how to have fun with language; they “scuffed over to the farmer’s stand” and ate strawberries “superlatively sun-sweetened to the brink of sweet booziness.” The edge in their relationship was of no more interest to me than it appeared to be to James as they alternated narration by chapter. I wondered if Alisa was simply missing some nutrient in her diet. I much preferred the drama of their quest for wheat: the disappointment at the ruined bag, the discovery that wheat had been grown locally in 1890, and Alisa’s delight when she declared, “I found a wheat farmer.” With a little effort, everything was possible.

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Conceit tells the story of Pegge, daughter of the seventeenth century poet, John Donne. The common sense of conceit is excessive pride; of that, so this telling goes, Donne was not innocent. But Donne the poet is historically known for his use of the literary conceit, the juxtaposition of unlike things to surprise and reveal. He used a open compass to depict parted lovers still joined at the soul. The story is about partedness, both parted love and duplicity, and eventual consummation.

The elderly Dr. Donne is dying, or so he hopes. The great love of his life, his wife Ann, is long dead. He is now Dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, eager to take his seat with the saints. He has already preached his funeral sermon and commissioned his effigy. But he lingers; “I am not alive, but God will not kill me”. Donne is prudish and vain but cares genuinely for the welfare of his children. Of all his children, only Pegge shows the spirit of a poet. It does not suit her for marriage or for the writing of Donne’s memoir. Instead, a credulous Izaak Walton is employed to handle Donne’s notes. Walton is a beautiful young man, the object of Pegge’s desire. A secret meeting has Pegge removing her scarlet bodice to help snare a massive carp that Walton cannot quite manage. The extended overlay of fishing for mirror carp with lovemaking might have gone badly in the hands of a lesser writer, but Novik delivers it deliciously.

Pegge’s family awaits her first period so she can be married off, while Pegge’s tears for her “childish, reluctant womb” quicken the ghost of Ann. Ann becomes narrator, telling how the young Donne persuaded her to risk her father’s wrath and poverty by marrying him. He loved her sincerely. He promised they would lie together in life and death, even had it carved on her gravestone. But now he plans to be buried with the deans in St. Paul’s and not with her. He will not be able to abandon his vow so easily. “At the exact moment that your soul springs from your body, I will be there to trap it with a long, devouring kiss.” Donne’s dying dreams send him ravishing Ann’s ashes.

Donne dies at last. Ann and God are there, and while the claim on his soul seems decided, the most fervent part of the story is still to be told. Until now, Pegge’s life seemed overshadowed by her parents. While they knew great love and contended with God, Pegge appeared as a little girl with a crush. During her father’s life, she failed to wrest answers about love from him. In death, he still dominates her life. She marries the man Donne chose, or nearly so. William Bowles is a kind and true husband, but he does not understand the possession that takes hold of Pegge, summoning the writer in her to reveal Donne the man, freeing him from lies and sainthood. “How hard it is to have a wife who loves the smell of ink and paper!” The great fire of England that began the story ends it too, with Pegge deciding Donne’s ultimate fate.

The story is a sensual one, shaped by Donne’s poetry. It is an extended love poem with language, characters and feelings the reader will want to savour one page at a time. How this one could have slipped the Giller shortlist I do not know.

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