February 27, 2004

Subject: Kane X. Faucher’s reviews

To whom it may concern. I will be honest. I know Kane's work and I think it is wonderful. For me, a good review is almost impossible to imagine and I once told a young phony writer that reviews "ought to be written by psychiatric patients and prostitutes." She, the young writer in question, put my comments in a paper she was writing for the factory that was she then attending. Well, anyhow, back to Kane Faucher. I barely read reviews, and it came to me, after I heard all this fuss and muss, that I had better snoop along here, and check things out, and what do I see, but a bunch of whiners chipping away at something energetic and positive. And as usual all the forms of eleganace are called upon to defend the indefensible -- Opinion! 

Ah, Opinion thy name is vanity! and what Kane does is not Opinion but good old polemic and mud slinging . And that ladies and gentlemen is a fine tradition dating back to the 18th century and the good old wars of the grandest reviewers and writers of the 19th century . I am thinking of Hazlitt and others.. . I am not , by the way, comparing , dear Kane to Hazlitt or for that matter to anyone, but his own dear deterritorializing self. Let good readers bear the brunts of text as it wipes out the "Blaise" bull. Because what he says about Blaise's prose bullion is so true! and it's not just the Blaise bullion that needs hazing, it is the whole of Canadian literature as you fancy to call in the country of Candadaddada. But we are so polite and we must spell properly as well, mustn't we now. So back to the trade and postlapsarian craft of reviews. 

George Steiner, a writer one does not want to read too often, suggests in Real Presences that we imagine a city of anonymous reviewers and non critical editions of novels, of poems and so on. Well, why don't we do that? Or is the Canada Council too cheap to fund anonymity and is it so proud and strung up by those already in the Establishment that it needs to keep repeating the same old crap year in and year out? I mean let's be more honest, we know funding goes to those who toe the line! and that goes for reviewing bodies as well. 

And so go ahead and say I am paranoid, and accuse me of being bittter! I am not bitter I am a rich man with independent means and don't rely on the Canada Council for my books and their institutionalization. No Sir, this must end. We have to take back our work. Writers must live by the pen and not the buck! Reviewers should review and if you don't like what they write, well dear fellow turn the page! How many weary nights have I spent flipping past hundreds of pages, oh those days when I worked in Enland and did allthose dotty jobs of reviewing! O Lord they were dreary nights!

So as for Kane and the free spirit of literature and opinion that he expreses I say let it all come breakdown. Let it roll, and think of what he says about Mister Blaise's book -- which I too find boring and unreadable and not at all "about" the city it claims to portray . However I don't wish to bash a book which has already been utterly forgotten in the dust of time, and its electronic fancies,I have no desire to recall how the economy of any writer is not something which remains outside of the economies of everyday life. No sir, this I do not wish to engage in. That would be spite and treachery and trafficing in false morals!

Let me rest my case by saying that I, as an outlaw poet and a desire machine maker support Kane in whatever he does. I am not sure it is correct for me to Him Him and for all we know he Kane could be the pen name of a famous Canadian ballerina in peddling her wares in the market place of review writing now that the bad days are on her....

To summarize, let me say
Vive the Reviews of Kane Faucher. And his or her charming pen name!!

*

Dear Danforth, I have made the following corrections to the email I sent regarding Mister Faucher.

The last paragraph should read as follows.
_________________
Let me rest my case by saying that I, as an outlaw poet and a desire machine maker, I support Kane Faucher in whatever way he chooses to write. I'm not sure that it's right for me to call Him Him, and for all we know, Kane could be the pen name of a famous Canadian ballerina peddling her wares in the market place of review writing now that the bad days are on her....
_________________
Need I add that I too am a nongendered person and becoming such a one, I traverse the planes of desire constantly.

And so I tip my hat to Mr?Miss Mrs Mz G Faucher. One final note; I suspect that this young writer is possessed of genius and that because of this he writes with a burning flame and not the banal prose of expository prose.

Your truly,
Verlainelefou
Heloise and Abelard.