The Book of Grief and Hamburgers by Stuart Ross

  Stuart Ross was a mentor to me in my undergrad and, at the time, I charged through several of his poetry collections (shout out to You Exist. Details Follow.). Strangely, I never branched out into any of his ‘novel-esque’ projects and much less his memoirs. Well, that ends today (technically last week when I finished it, but what even is time?)一here we are with The Book of Grief and Hamburgers.

The Book of Grief and Hamburgers exemplifies the masterful happy-sad tone of some of Ross’ best works. The central conceit is that when Ross writes poems that are getting too heavy, he throws in a hamburger. Hamburgers are delightful, they’re a surprise, they’re funny. They displace / replace feelings that are too difficult to deal with. Despite the apparent silliness of Ross’ poems sometimes, there’s also a tenderness and sadness that feels even more powerful precisely because of the apparent silliness. He walks the razor’s edge between whimsy and sorrow wonderfully.

The Book of Grief and Hamburgers in particular operates—somewhat—as a “research” exercise (Ross himself uses that term loosely). Ross scans through poems looking for references to hamburgers as a form of consolation and, often not finding them, instead writes hamburgers into famous poems, historical quotables, and novel lines. It’s a fun, silly surprise. Try it. “It was the best of hamburgers, it was the worst of hamburgers.” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the hamburger.” “I saw the best hamburgers of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical bunless.” The motif of seeking hamburgers and creating hamburgers is a source of amusement, but again, reinforces the sadness at the core of the book.

Indeed, death permeates the pages of the memoir project. Ross recounts the loss of several of his family, his friends and fellow poets, his dog. There’s such a human approach to addressing the challenges of grief (what is grief, anyway?), including reconciling political tensions with estranged siblings briefly before their passing and doing the ‘death math’ of the proper sequence of death. Ross notes that, in his family, he is the only one that will die in the ‘right order.’ In a particularly moving section, Ross describes the passing of David W. McFadden, another notable poet that I had the privilege to see do a reading. Ross describes McFadden’s Alzheimer's, which is absolutely tragic, but also McFadden reading love haikus at Ross’ wedding, which is absolutely beautiful. After his passing, McFadden’s remains were buried in a Dilbert cookie jar, and the specificity of that image will resonate with me forever.

Many of Ross’ losses are described as vignettes, as short stories. In one, a poet friend rages against the dying of the hamburger—I mean, rages against the euphemisms we use for death. Not pushing daisies, not passing on, not succumbing to illness. He dies. When asked about arrangements for his death, he continually replies: “I don’t care, I’ll be dead.” Does he want his “collected works” to be published posthumously? He doesn’t care: “I’ll be dead.” There’s a bleakness in the repetition spread out throughout the vignette. After his gradual decline, he’s eventually asked again about having works published after his death and provides a slight nod. It’s a beautiful character study that, I hope, brings Ross some consolation.

This book-length essay on grief explores what grief is, how to feel it, what it means to grieve. A conclusive definition continues to elude us, but the exploration takes readers on an emotional journey where Ross demonstrates his deep appreciation and love of those he has lost. It’s quite an achievement in memorialization.

Add to this Ross’ voice. His tone, certainly, and that careful blend of sadness and extra pickles, but his literal voice, too. I listened to The Book of Grief and Hamburgers as an audiobook and it’s a delight to hear Ross’ reading voice. He has a distinct reading style, and it made the book feel all that much more personal to hear that reading voice again, probably for the first time since around 2012.

I really liked this longform essay. Even in its brevity, it captures the feeling, hard to describe, of mourning. It offers beautifully crafted narratives and moments replete with happiness and sadness, all while offering elegies to some of Ross’ loved ones. “Don’t ever tell any hamburgers anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

Happysad reading!

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation

        I have a vague recollection of commercials when I was a kid that repeated the line “Sega does what Nintendon’t” and the frantic discordant shouts of “SEGA!”. Blake J. Harris’ Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation explores that moment in pop culture, approaching the story from the context of journalism and historical analysis. It’s a nice companion to Jason Schreier’s Blood, Sweat and Pixels or Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry. The books collectively explore the ups and downs, the rivalries and tribulations of a burgeoning industry, recreating the drama of the era.

Console Wars in particular explores the key figures in the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega, documenting all the underhanded plays (mainly by Sega) to tackle the industry giant. Nintendo presented a more wholesome and family-fun image to Sega’s more irreverent and wildly juvenile approach. The tactics are pretty entertaining, and if you’re interested in advertising and marketing I imagine that the two of them present a case study replete with do’s and don’ts.

What is most surprising about Console Wars is how precisely it recounts the conversations for key figures. In that respect, the book is novelistic. For instance, the book opens with an account of Tom Kalinske on vacation at the beach with his family when Hayao Nakayama, the president of Sega Enterprises, approached him and asked him to fly back to Japan with him. Harris reproduces the conversation Tom had with his daughter and future colleague in its full tenderness and drama.

In fact, the book follows that approach consistently. It feels like every business meeting, sales pitch, public outburst, resignation, promotion, marriage proposals, etc. is provided with a word-for-word reproduction—so much so that at times it feels outright unbelievable. How would anyone possibly remember the exact words they shared in the heat of a conflict? Perhaps it speaks to the thoroughness of Harris’ research and creativity in style. Some details, I imagine, are recorded in official records—recorded speeches at E3, for example—while others would only be verifiable through multiple corroborative interviews. If a bit implausible, Harris’ approach is nonetheless compelling as a narrative.

In terms of the details, the ground Harris treads isn’t exactly new. A number of people have given their accounts of the famed console wars—it’s kind of amazing that the whole book spans only about 6 years in real life; a whole career seems to be crammed into a short half-decade. The strength of the work is in its depth. Harris covers a lot of detail, including specific campaigns and movements. The book documents the highlights of different generations of consoles and the public response. From Super Mario to Donkey Kong Country to Sonic the Hedgehog to Night Trap to Mortal Kombat, the book runs the gamut of gaming landmarks. Harris documents the drama of developing a Sonic sequel and the internal conflicts between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, with the latter sandbagging the marketing gimmicks to the frustration of poor Tom Kalinske.

The book uses the console wars as a jumping off point to examine broader industry movements, including the legalities of violence in games and the push to create the ESRB rating system. It also documents the formation of Nintendo Power and the inaugural E3 conference. It’s compelling to see how the strife of the time period led to creation and flourishing of an industry, despite these rivals essentially trying to ruin the market share of one another.

Overall, the book isn’t anything groundbreaking. It doesn’t revolutionize the way I think about gaming, exactly, but the colourful cast of characters and the novelistic approach is very engaging as a story. It’s light, fun, and pretty informative. It hits the nostalgia buttons but also pulls back the curtain on how cutthroat and wild these fun colourful pastimes really were amongst adults while kids picked up the controller and demanded another try.

Happy reading and happy gaming, whichever side of the console war you fought for.

Strangers by David A. Robertson

I’ve been on the hunt for a new Indigenous novel that would work for a grade 9, which led me to Strangers by David A. Robertson. It has an engaging premise: a teenage boy returns home to his reserve after a decade of living in Winnipeg, summoned by his old friend via a series of urgent texts. The novel is framed as a murder mystery, but has a number of other layers, including a pandemic, a conspiracy, and supernatural beings like omniscient shapeshifting coyotes and ghost girls on fire.

I’m sorry to say that, ultimately, Strangers disappointed me. Expecting a murder mystery, I was waiting for a series of clues to unfold and then be pieced together in a way that recontextualized the story. Instead, the reveal of the killer fell flat because there was no previous connection to the character. There was no way I could have pieced together the string of deaths on my own, and by the end of the book the genre has shifted and the novel becomes a super hero origin story, setting us up for a trilogy (I think), which also left elements of the mystery unsolved. I wouldn’t teach this one, if for no other reason that the ending fails to satisfy. The motivations for the conspiracy remain unclear.

To back up a bit, Strangers focuses on Cole, a controversial childhood hero in his community Wounded Sky First Nation. At seven years old, his school erupted into flames. He rushed back into the building and, somehow, miraculously, he lifted a fallen wall off the ground, freeing two of his best friends. Tragically, the other children passed away. He was then swept away to Winnipeg, partially to protect him from the controversy: a fair number of people hate him because he didn’t save their loved ones, a fair number of people hate him for leaving and never reaching out. At the prompting of his old friend, he returns to Wounded Sky for a memorial, but there’s a catch. Not only does he seem to bring back a pandemic that kills people within twenty four hours, but it seems like every time Cole spends alone time with a friend, that friend ends up dead. Oh, there’s also a trickster coyote figure that is guiding Cole and forcing him to take action in secret, blackmailing him with a purgatorial ghost girl who died in the fire.

Part of my frustration with the novel is its implausibility. After one of Cole’s friends is shot and killed in his arms, the police let him roam free, which I can maybe forgive, but when Cole is the last person to see a second victim alive and is free, it seems totally implausible that police would not take him into custody. I can accept the magical realism element, but the police procedural elements give no good reason for Cole to be free. Also, towards the end of the book, Cole needs to donate his blood and a group of teenagers figures out how to do a transfusion, essentially—thank goodness a real doctor steps in, but it’s again pretty implausible.

Another issue I felt the book suffered from was a bloated cast of characters. The first fifty pages introduce a ton of characters—friends, family, community members. This would not be an issue if the conventions of a mystery novel were followed more closely. If we had a large cast of characters to suspect and deduce the true killer, it would add a fun dimension to the book. Instead, it feels like we just need more people to have conversations with—and those conversations are repetitive. At the risk of being an insensitive jerk, I was pretty irritated by Cole’s mopey attitude. He suffers from survivor’s guilt over the event at his elementary school and experiences doubt, guilt, shame, etc. I wanted him to just get over it. He did what he could to help—he saved two lives; he was seven years old, what does he or anyone expect him to do—save everyone? It’s reasonable to explore that survivor’s guilt for a bit, but we wallowed alongside him too much.

There are some moments when the characters have a nice connection, but there are some of the YA tropes that drive me crazy and feel nothing like the students in my room. The childhood friend that Cole is in love with is probably the best case for a sincere and authentic connection. Amongst the friends of the book, their personalities and dialogue just don’t quite register as being substantially different from one another (which is another factor in making the cast feel too bloated).

The book wasn’t all bad, but it did make me feel cold. By the end of the book, I was just waiting for it to come to a close. There were some fun action sequences, but they were really hindered by the crawl of the wallowing. Incidentally, there were the strange tonal shifts throughout the text. The subject matter is deeply serious but the omniscient coyote guide makes jokes throughout—and worse, outdated jokes that no teenager today will understand and that parents might find cute in their tongue-in-cheek way.

Anyway, it was worth trying out Strangers to keep the curriculum fresh and engaging, but sadly I don’t think this one is going to work out for my class.

Happy reading!