Reviewed by Mark McCawley

"There should be some kind of special literary award for spending five years getting tense every time someone creaks across wooden floors in the middle of a reading," muses Alex Boyd in his introduction to I.V. Lounge Nights, an anthology celebrating the tenth anniversary of the I.V. Lounge reading series -- started by Paul Vermeersch in 1998, and then handed off to Boyd in 2003. 

Describing the format of the reading series -- and musing that "literature shouldn't be an endurance test" -- three readers with breaks between each, no open stage, no cover charge, and run entirely without grants, Boyd feels well within his rights to blow his own horn (if not trumpet the accessibility of the reading series as a whole). 

Any reading series that lasts ten years, and which produces two anthologies, should be considered a raging success should it not?

Indeed, my first instinct was to criticize the editors for not recreating some aspect of the reading series itself, in some form. But how could they, really? Is it even realistic of a reviewer to ask this? This anthology is not a public reading and should only be judged for the format the editors have chosen. 

As such, I.V. Lounge Nights, much like the reading series itself, is a product of a particular place (largely Toronto) and a particular time (the present) in Canadian literary history. Though not distinctively historical or documentary in nature -- a mix of poetry and fiction by new and established writers -- this anthology uniquely documents the increasing urbanization of much contemporary fiction and poetry.

The underlying allegory of this anthology seems to be the illusionary nature of present urban reality: each writer, in their own fashion, discusses and reveals how the hyper-real (the illusion, the image, the fiction) replaces the real in our post-realist culture. Everything becomes a fictive reflection of our hyper-selves, our hyper-reality. In Steve McOrmond's poem, "Donut Shop", "It's the hole that fascinates. So many customers / buying what isn't there." 

In Alexandra Leggat's story, "Kid Airplane" the protagonist, Gem comes to prefer the image of the man she's met: "liked him better when he didn't seem real." In Evie Christie's poem, "The Nights We Spend With Others" male lovers become faceless "so that our slim lists / fatten when we've had a few -- we recount duct tape / and the ties that bound anything that moved...Time alone makes a woman / do things, think things, would scare you stiff." 

In Michael Bryson's story, "The Adulterer", a man finds he can't find sexual pleasure with women "unless they are married". In Sharon McCartney's poem, "Dorothy" the petite, innocent image from The Wizard of Oz is transformed into a 21st century vixen: "I fancy the mettle of his metal / between my thighs, red poll of his hatchet / raised high. Nail me in a field of poppies! / Bend me over the emerald throne! Why / don't we do it in the yellow brick road?" 

In Emily Shultz's "I Love You, Pretty Puppy", a woman can only fall in love with someone uglier than herself: "I had never been attracted to anyone like him, had never seen the circumstances of our lives being as hard as those of our birthrights. How golden his life must have been, and then to have it all yanked away, scalding ... How far down his body did those bone-like scars go?"

Or in Karen Solie's poem, "Pathology of the Senses", the poet creates something akin to an autopsy of the city, and her place in it, examining from her mind's eye the city's routine and her own: "My mood / this day is palpable and uncertain. Our smoke // rises but does not disperse. The air hairy as a fly. / In fly weather...Rats come out to sniff the garbage blooms / in rat weather...We are as any microbes / inhabiting an extreme environment, surviving / in the free-living or parasitic mode."

Indeed, I.V. Lounge Nights is more than just a snapshot of a vibrant reading series, but also a collection of writers and poets I'm quite certain we'll be hearing from again and again in the future (perhaps at a reading series near you).

Note:

As of August 23rd, 2008, The I.V. Lounge officially closed it's doors, thus putting an end to one of Canada's longest running reading series.