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!

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro

  The punnily titled Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? is a historical critique of the author of plays like Hamlet, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, one of if not the most influential writer in the English language has been subject to a number of conspiracy theories. For example, perhaps Chrisopher Marlowe wasn’t actually murdered and his death was all a cover-up that allowed him to be spirited away to write plays under the pseudonym Shakespeare. James Shapiro’s thesis: these conspiracies are bogus. Shakespeare existed and wrote the plays we attribute to him. I’m sure we’ve all heard some conspiracies that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. I even remember that in our high school edition of Macbeth the marginalia suggested that Christopher Marlowe wrote Act 3, Scene 3, and that is why there is an extra murderer that had never been introduced previously. Bunk, Shapiro would say.

Shapiro dismantles a number of common “clues” for Shakespeare’s inauthenticity throughout the book. For example, there’s the common belief that Shakespeare was uneducated because there is no record of Shakespeare attending school. Shapiro suggests, though, that Elizabethan England was not keeping records of the sort, but in fact plenty of people were educated, even if the attendance register is lost to history. The same goes for the argument that Shakespeare couldn’t possibly be as worldly as he presents in his texts. How could he possibly know about life in Italy, for example, if he never even left England? Well, Shapiro argues, often playwrights worked for play houses and were hired to write. The play houses would have their own collections of books that their writers would read and draw from—not that books were inaccessible in Elizabethan England; Shapiro points to some stats of how many book dealers existed. 

Shapiro works through a number of specific theories for alternate identities for Shakespeare that emerged in the years following his death, dismantling each one. He points to records that we do have (like lawsuits that bear Shakespeare’s name), the errors in peoples’ assumptions about Elizabethan writerly culture, famous frauds, and so on. Shapiro documents a fraud where one man wrote a wealth of extra missives, poems, and plays bearing Shakespeare’s name trying to convince others of a different Shakespeare. Even famous authors like Henry James and Mark Twain were Shakespeare skeptics, referring to “the author of the Shakespeare plays” rather than Shakespeare himself. Another prominent theory was that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays—but to what end? Why conceal his identity?

Perhaps most compelling is the undercurrent of Contested Will. Beyond an exploration of who Shakespeare really was, the book presents some reasons that people might buy into conspiracies. In some ways, it’s far more broadly applicable than we might anticipate from the outset. For example, Shakespeare is presented as a unique force; he’s essentially a divine being in the world of literature. Thus, at one point in history, we see the debate rise up to challenge Shakespeare, Shapiro suggests, alongside other forms of divinity worship. At another time, we see the pushes for and against individualism. Scholars examined the idea of Homer being multiple rather than a singular writer; by extension, people then examined the works of Shakespeare as collaborations between a number of unidentified people, again dismantling his singular importance. Alternatively, scholars could not accept that the plays are anything but the work of a singular genius, but that we have identified the wrong person and that we now need to pull someone out from obscurity. We can’t have a Shakespeare that is an upper class figure; we need a scrappy everyday hero. Essentially, Shapiro’s argument is that political, religious, and social issues are the driving force of conspiratorial thinking. I actually hoped Shapiro would put a finer point on it and bring everything into a distinct framework, but the intimation is enough as a starting place.

One of the main arguments against Shakespeare’s identity is that he is so hard to pin down and find documentation of in his time. Shapiro, though, argues against that line of thinking. He notes how the spelling variants make it more challenging to find definitive record of Shakespeare. There was Shak-spar, Shakespear, Shakspar, or other variants before language got standardized in its spelling, so we can’t find or maybe have destroyed records with variations in spelling. One argument against Shakespeare is that people in his time weren’t talking about him—but Shapiro points out that they were. There are references to him as an employee of theatre companies, for example. Sure, he did collaborate on some plays (and Shapiro names the actual collaborators, which is pretty cool), but that was part of the process. Stories were commissioned and workshopped and shifted for different venues. Essentially, Shakespeare was known to others and we do have record of the man and the actors that he worked with.

Shapiro goes into some analysis, for example, of how specific roles may be written for specific actors. There is textual evidence for the specific people who were cast in particular parts. Shapiro also corrects the record on at least some of the order of the plays, which a number of anti-Shakespeare conspiracists got completely wrong in tracking to track Shakespeare’s development as an author and to pair his plays with autobiographical moments of their preferred candidates. (Sidenote: is it appropriate to call these conspiracy theorists Shakespeare birthers? It’s the same phenomenon, sort of.)

One of the most compelling literary arguments Shapiro makes in the book is against biographical criticism. It was interesting to see how previous conspiracists read and misread the plays to match their theories of who Shakespeare was (Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, for example). They would match the characters with real world figures and ensure that each aligned. These biographical readings, Shapiro and other new critics would suggest, fail to do justice to the actual content or logic of the plays. There’s actually a compelling anecdote where Shapiro discusses Helen Keller’s literary career. She is of course known for her life story. What I did not know is that she wrote fiction, too, and Shapiro documents how Keller was frustrated by the fact that nobody was interested in her fiction because her life overshadowed her work. People longed for more autobiographical fiction. Shapiro shows the way in which our society became more invested in an individual talent and why that led to autobiographical criticism and, moreover, demanded a specific identity for Shakespeare.

The book was pretty illuminating. I think it could have been used a little bit more of a push to lock down the frameworks for conspiratorial thinking that Shapiro exposes through case studies. The case studies are effective for showing errors in thinking and gives Shapiro an opportunity to correct the record and challenge the gaps in our own knowledge about the era and about Shakespeare the man. I’m not an expert, but I am persuaded.

Happy reading!

Eating Salad Drunk edited by Gabe Henry

  Sometimes we just need something light. Eating Salad Drunk suits that purpose; it’s a collection of haiku poems by a smattering of comedians and edited by Gabe Henry. The book includes comedians like Mike Birbiglia, Maria Bamford, Colin Mochrie, Bob Odenkirk, Margaret Cho, and more. The haiku works well for comedians because in allows them to essentially share a bunch of one-liner jokes in 17 syllables. There are some great jokes and absurd moments, and some poems that teeter on the edge of actually expressing wisdom.

One thing that’s pretty neat is that the introduction to the book gives a brief history of the haiku form. My perception of haiku is that they are typically about the serenity of nature and the distillation of a profound feeling. Henry points out, though, that there’s a bawdy and bodily quality to a number of early haiku poems. One of the earliest haiku, Henry notes, is by Yamazaki Sōkan: “Even at the time / When my father lay dying / I still kept farting” (XVII). For a comedy book, teaching me something new about the genre is pretty cool.

As a collection, there’s some nice variety in the topics and approaches of the comedian-poets. The poems are grouped, sometimes loosely, under the categories of screen time, food, friends & family, modern romance, struggles, nature calls, entertainment, words of wisdom, and self love & loathing. Several of the comedian-poets have entries in multiple of the categories, and I’m curious how the collection might have looked different if it were arranged by comedian rather than by subject matter. I wonder if it would help to get a better grasp of each comedian’s “voice” or if it would push comedians into some unfamiliar territory in their work.

The book is fun and light. I don’t have much “deep” commentary for the poems, but I will share some of my favourites, which often seem to involve either wordplay or absurdity. The way that the poems subvert expectations are just the best. Without further ado, have a gander at some of my favourites from Eating Salad Drunk:

From Aparna Nancherla:

Got to the end of
The internet. Turns out I

Was dead the whole time. (25)

Framing the internet like a novel with a twist ending has done before (SimpsonsDidIt.gif), but it has a definite charm that the twist ending is solipsistic in nature and also has the double meaning that you were dead the whole time you were surfing.

From George Wallace, with a focus on wordplay:

I’ll eat a skirt steak
While wearing a pair of pants.
I don’t give a shit. (42)

Also in the wordplay file from Myq Kaplan, who gets several entries in the collection:

Cafeteria.

Café plus bacteria?
I will eat at home. (47)

Probably the food poem that got the biggest laugh-out-loud reaction from me due to its absurdity and playfulness:

Oh, Fruit by the Foot.
You flout the metric system.

In a tasty way. (53)

That piece by Jo Firestone and Mike Dicenzo is such a joyful spin. The word “flout” is just perfectly elevated for such a stupid little poem.

Some poems are rooted in the human experience and its own silliness and absurdity. There’s a fair amount that fails to land for me when discussing social media, but Liz Magee has a great joke here about our social bonds:

Happy birthday, friend!
Posted a pic where I look
Great and you look fine. (68)

That is a finely crafted, elegant joke that works for its concept but also the voice. I can just imagine the way a comedian might present the word “fine.”

Drawing on some of Henry’s observations on the lewdness of early haiku, there are a few relationship poems that are risqué but have that same kind of wordplay and cutting humour, as seen in the following poems by Jes Tom and Kelly Bachman respectively:

A “tight five” is a
Stand-up set, or a new name
For fisting. You choose. (93)

My ex eats ass now.
Somehow that hurts way more than
All of his success. (93)

Or even Myq Kaplan’s silly:

Necrophilia
Is not what I thought it was.
I like sex with necks. (96).

So ridiculous and absurd but for that reason irresistible.

Some of the poems are also a little bit sad or stand out as more traditionally poetic through, for example, anthropomorphism, as in Laura Silverman’s piece:

Three in the morning
Refrigerator’s humming.
Must not know the words. (57).

There’s something mournful about that, but also endearing that this poor fridge is presented in its ignorance of the words. Kyle Ayers also personifies Netflix in an odd way:

When I die, someone
Scroll through my Netflix for me.
It likes the scrolling. (24)

Similarly, there’s a funny but dark poem by Aparna Nancherla that goes as follows:

Accidentally

FaceTimed my doctor’s office.
The call was declined. (5)

Or the sad response to capitalism we see in Sierra Katow:

The dogs I follow
On Instagram have better
Lives than most of us. (7)

I imagine lots of people would find a number of poems in the collection relatable, especially with respect to office culture and dating culture. Kyle Ayers writes, for example,

“Per my last email”
Is just me being polite.
Fuckin REPLY NOW. (10)

And the disconnect in communication of situationships, for example, as presented by Karen Chee:

“Sorry, just saw this!”
He says, and I believe him
Because I want to. (10)

Overall, there are a lot of fun poems and silly jokes told in a precise and concise format. Not all of them land or resonate, but there are enough in here that elicit a chuckle to make the book a fun hour long venture.

And that’s my tight five. Happy reading!