Karyn Kupcinet

            On Friday morning I felt a bit raw in my throat and a general feeling like I had a couple of weeks ago of coming down with a cold. But last time it went away before it arrived and so I hope that happens again.

            I italicized all the chords for “A la pêche des coeurs" (To the Fishing Hole for Hearts) by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog and started placing them where they should be above their corresponding lines. 

            I memorized the fifth verse and chorus of “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are just two verses and then two lines added to the chorus left to learn. 

            Around midday I scrubbed another seven kitchen floorboards the length of the width of the stove. In another two sessions I’ll reach the stove and after that the real work will need to be done. I have to wash all the spice shelves above the stove and the wall behind them. 

            I had a can of chickpeas with olive oil and garlic for lunch. 

            After a siesta, by the time I’d posted my blog it was too late to take a long bike ride downtown and back. But I decided I needed the cycling exercise more than a few hip exercises at home and so I got ready for a short jaunt. Once I was ready to go I had fifteen minutes until sundown and so I just rode up to the top of Brock Avenue at Bloor, then turned around and rode home. 

            I worked on researching more of the key terms for my Canadian Literature exam: 

            Embedded narratives are stories within stories. 

            The Enlightenment began with Rene Descartes declaring “I think, therefore I am” in 1637 and ended at the beginning of the 19th Century. There was an emphasis on liberty and religious tolerance. It became the roots of democracy and began to take power away from monarchs. 

            Historiographic metafiction is self reflexive but also draws characters and events from history. By getting into the minds of historical figures it exposes that the sources of history are all somewhat fictional. 

            A nation is a community organized around the things they have in common such as culture and language. Media like the CBC helps to communicate to the members of the nation that live in different areas what they have in common and renews a sense of the nation. Justin Trudeau declared in 2015 that Canada is the first post nation state because it has no mainstream and no core identity. What defines the nation changes from year to year based on the changing demographics of the country. 

            The Industrial revolution was dominated by British developments from 1760 on. Except for the cotton gin in the United States pretty much all the great inventions of the Industrial Revolution came out of Britain. The began around the cotton industry revolutionizing production. Then came the iron industry and the development of the steam engine. 

            Intertextuality includes allusion, quotation, calque, translation, pastiche and parody. Meaning of texts can be drawn not only from text but from what the texts evoke in the reader of other texts that they remember. It is associated with postmodernism. Novels like Ulysses that retell ancient stories in a modern context are intertextual. Other texts like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead expand on older texts. Thomas King’s coyote stories could be seen as intertextual. 

            Kunstlerroman is like a bildungsroman except that the character that comes of age is an artist.

            Land acknowledgement is a type of lip service to Indigenous people by saying that we acknowledge the land we stand on is First Nations territory. If you stand on land you took away from me and acknowledged that it belongs to me you could acknowledge till the cows come home and it wouldn’t make me feel any better. There is also the fact that Toronto has been purchased from the Mississauga and so does Toronto really have to acknowledge the original owners? 

            Master narrative or grand metanarrative is a transhistorical narrative embedded in a culture. A system of related stories with a common goal. The stories in The Marrow Thieves could fit. In Icefields it is not as clear whether the other stories work together but associative thinking can connect anything with a little imagination. 

            Memory work seems to be based on the fact that history does not exist other than as something created in the present. Memory work is a compilation of memories of past events as remembered by members of a community. The interviews conducted for the TRC could be seen as memory work. In some cases the narratives may have contained extra trauma if the people being interviewed understood that more trauma equaled larger settlements. In the day schools class action lawsuit the members definitely knew that there was more compensation if the damage was more severe. This is not to say that the plaintiffs deliberately exaggerated but the promise of reward could work significantly on a subconscious level of how we remember. 

            Metafiction continually reminds readers that they are reading fiction. 

            Regarding mobility in colonialism, in Canada the establishment of reserves curtailed natural mobility of First Nations people. In “Canadian Experience” the only thing that is going anywhere is the subway train that George jumps in front of. 

            I had a potato, a pork chop and gravy while watching The Andy Griffith Show. This was one I vaguely recall having seen when I was a kid. I remember that the hillbilly families popped up in a few episodes over the years. 

            It begins with Hannah Carter and Josh Wakefield coming to Andy in his capacity as justice of the peace for him to marry them. But just as the wedding begins their fathers burst in with shotguns warning that no Carters and Wakefields can ever marry because of their feud. Andy backs down but has to explain his actions the next day to Aunt Bea and Opie. He tells the story of Romeo and Juliet but does so in repetition of Andy Griffith’s own comedy routine from before this show in which he recounts the story in southern vernacular. He says that the problem with Romeo and Juliet was that they were allowed to get married before their families could end their feud. So Andy sets about to go and talk to Jebediah Wakefield and Mr Carter to find out why they are feuding in the first place. Eighty seven years ago the feud started but neither grandfather passed down the reason for the fighting, they just kept on shooting at one another as a matter of tradition. Andy does some research and discovers that in those 87 years not a single Wakefield or Carter has ever been injured in the feud. He concludes that they don’t really want to hurt each other and he tests his theory by setting them up to have an old fashioned duel by standing back to back, taking ten paces and then turning to fire. But while they are pacing Andy fires his gun and they both run away. Later they both admit to being cowards and say that’s why Hannah and Josh shouldn’t get married because they would breed a super coward. But then Hannah and Josh step forward and stand bravely in front of their prospective father in law’s shotguns. Andy argues that this proves they’d have a very brave offspring so the two fathers turn their guns on Andy and force him to marry Hannah and Josh. 

            The credits say that Hannah was played by Tammy Windsor but the IMD says that was a pseudonym for Karyn Kupcinet. One IMD reviewer says Kupcinet did not look like the actress in this episode. Makeup and photography can make someone look very different so I would lean towards this being the same brunette. 

            Karyn Kupcinet had a few supporting roles in films and television before she was strangled to death on Thanksgiving Day of 1963 in her West Hollywood apartment. The killer was never found.