Ass

            On Thursday morning I published "Barcelone” by Boris Vian on Christian's Translations. 

            I sang and played my translation of “Disk Jockey" by Serge Gainsbourg, uploaded it to the blog and began the editing process. 

            The new B string on my guitar tuned a bit better than the old one did yesterday but it still went out of tune a lot more than a string should. Maybe it needs to stretch, in which case it should tune easier in a day or so but I don’t recall having this much trouble keeping a string in tune and so I suspect there’s a problem with the guitar. I won't have time to take it to Remenyi until December and so I'll have to wait and hope it gets better by itself. I guess I could change my E string too since that has also been going off. Maybe they effect one another but again it seems to me like it’s a guitar problem and not a string problem. 

            Just before 11:00 I logged on to my Introduction to Canadian Literature tutorial. 

            Kelly’s audio went off for a few seconds.

            We’ve met the deadline for forming teams for the Ask the Author assignment. It must not be on the same topic as either team member’s final essay. 

            The outline for the final paper is due between October 22 and November 3 on some kind of rotation. 

            I asked how to contact my partner and she said the link is on Quercus. 

            Kelly asks for smiley faces as affirmative responses to her questions such as "Can you hear me?" 

            She asked for general comments about Austin Clarke’s Introduction to Nine Men Who Laughed and his story “Canadian Experience”. I said that a story that requires an introduction to explain it is flawed. I also said that I think Clarke is using the Introduction to cover his ass. Kelly stopped me and said, “Let’s keep the language appropriate!" 

            In my twelve years at U of T I have never been called out for saying “ass”, "shit" or any other language. People have been saying "ass" on prime time television since at least the early 80s. What is this? High school? I wonder if this is just that Kelly is conservative or if there is a new trend that U of T is sinking into. 

            So I said that I think that Clarke is covering his “behind” because if the story were to be taken without the Introduction it might look like another man treating a woman like crap. I wanted to say “shit" but I figured she'd have another anti language attack. I said that if we are to take the story in the context of the introduction and accept that Pat represents Canada as a woman then everything else in the story must also be a big metaphor. George must not be just one man from Barbados but maybe all black men from the Caribbean or all black male immigrants to Canada. The rooming house must not be a rooming house but perhaps some sort of immigration limbo and George’s jumping in front of a subway train may not be a suicide but rather him making a decision that results in the death of something else such as perhaps his own cultural history. I added that maybe it just means he got a job at the TTC. 

            The only thing that I'd said that Kelly addressed was whether or not an Introduction makes a story flawed. She said that all story collections have introductions. She missed my point. I said not all story collections are dependent on their introductions to convey crucial elements of meaning in the story. She just dismissed me again and said she disagreed and did not think that was the case. 

            I said it is obvious that George had sex with Pat because she was comfortable with him walking into the shared bathroom while she was naked. Kelly disagreed with that as well, as did other students. I don’t know how many of them have lived in rooming houses. This story was published in 1986 and so it was written at least a year or so earlier. I lived in rooming houses in the early 80s in Toronto with shared bathrooms and I never came across any women that would just be okay with a man walking in if they weren’t already intimate. People just think they are allies. 

            Someone compared the story to “Joker". 

            I suggested that the significance of Pat being an actor, if she is also a personification of Canada might be that Canada tries to be all things to all people and takes on different identities. 

            The opening of the story has George looking at himself in the mirror but he is cut off at the neck. I wondered how he could see his suit and his eyes. Kelly answered in what seemed like a condescending tone to me that he is cut off from the neck and so he can see his necktie. 

            Kelly really pushes for things to follow certain lines of thinking. It’s a striking contrast to Alexandra's tutorials for British Literature in which she encourages all viewpoints and holds them up as possibilities. 

             At the beginning George looks in the mirror and sees four eyes. I guess in his mind’s eye he sees his own and then his reflection. When he jumps in front of the train he sees his own eyes and the driver’s eyes making four. 

             At the end they talked about the title in terms of it being a Canadian experience. I said I thought it meant Canadian experience for employment. Kelly said that meaning was mentioned in the story. 

             I don’t think that Kelly likes me. After every tutorial she posts a report on what we discussed and nothing that I bring up is ever mentioned. 

             For lunch I had potato chips and salsa and strawberry yogourt. 

             I tried to take a siesta but I was upset over the tutorial and so I couldn’t sleep and just laid down for an hour. 

             I boiled my ear syringe but forgot that it was on the stove until the water had boiled down and it was severely blackened on the tip and one side of the bulb. I’ll have to get a new one but meanwhile this one still works. I cut off the black part on the tip and it doesn’t leak so I can still use it until the next time I pass the drug store and buy a new one.

             I finished all my reading for next week. The British Lit readings all consisted of sonnets and Elizabethan poems, including some poems by Elizabeth I. One of her sonnets wasn’t bad. The Canadian Lit reading for next week was a story that I’d read a few years ago called “Squatter” by Rohinton Mistry. 

             A guy from India makes a promise that if he can’t become fully Canadian in ten years he will return to India. He is able to accomplish all of the Canadian attributes but one: He can’t shit while sitting down and still has to squat. He desperately tries everything, except for an implant that opens the bowels with a signal like for a garage door. The ten years are up and he gets on a plan to go home. On the plane he is finally able to poop sitting down but it’s too late and re resigns himself to return home where he leads an unhappy life because after ten years everything has changed and all his friends are elsewhere. 

             I had a potato, a chicken breast and the last of my gravy while watching Interpol Calling.

             A former art thief named Frederick Pimm is threatened by a disreputable art dealer named Wolf Barstrom. Barstrom tells Pimm that he will notify the British immigration authorities of his criminal past and get him deported if he does not steal some old masters from the private collection of Sir Isaac Splender. Pimm successfully does the job and delivers the paintings to a house boat where it turns out that Pimm’s daughter Nina lives. Pimm is surprised and upset that Nina and Barstrom are lovers. Nina and Pimm have been estranged for many years because of his alcoholism. Nina is an abstract painter and proceeds to cover the rare paintings with her own using a special kind of paint that doesn’t let x-rays through but can be later removed without ruining the masterpieces. Barstrom successfully transports six of them to New York. The old frames are dumped in the river but the police later find that Pimm has been killed and dumped in the river. At Pimm’s home they find a special camera that Pimm had used to stake out and rob Splender. They learn that Pimm has a daughter with a boat upriver from where her father’s body was found. Nina is picked up but she won’t talk. It is discovered that six of her abstracts are disguised Rembrandts. To catch Barstrom Duval has the paintings put up for auction. He flies back to London to bid on them but Duval had Splender bid for the paintings until Barstrom bids against him and he is arrested. 

             Nina was played by Moira Redmond, who was part of the London nude revue “The Windmill Girls” in the 1940s. Her most successful work was on stage in period dramas but she co-starred in the film The Winter’s Tale” and the TV mini-series “Melissa”.