Yann Martel has attempted to join Annie Proulx in the prestigious circle of successful novelists to publicly crawl up their own asses on the internet. So outraged that Stephen Harper’s government didn’t increase arts funding enough (they didn’t cut it or keep it the same, mind you, they just didn’t http://punchdrunksoul.com/start-a-coaching-business/ increase it enough), and didn’t stop the gears of parliament to acknowledge his precious self, he launched a petty, idiotic crusade against Harper. Apparently, he plans to send letters and books to the Prime Minister until the man stops doing his actual job of running the damn country and sits down to work his way through the reading list Martel has assigned him. Good luck with that, Yann.
His essay from the Globe and Mail has got to rank as one of the most elitist, arrogant, clueless things I’ve ever read. Certainly, ever read from someone I formerly respected.
Do we count for nothing, you philistines, I felt like shouting down at the House. Don’t you know that Canadians love their books and songs and paintings? Do you really think we’re just parasites feeding off the honest, hard work of our fellow citizens? Truly I say to you, there are only two sets of tools with which the rich soil of life can be worked: the religious and the artistic. Everything else is illusion that crumbles before the onslaught of time. If you die having prayed to no god, any god, one expressed above an altar or one painted with a brush, then you risk wasting the soul you were given. Repent! Repent! But I have no talent for spontaneous prophecy. Besides, guards would have landed upon me like football players and I would have been hustled out, bound for Guantanamo Bay.
Thank-you, state-subsidised millionaire Canadian novelist, for saving us from becoming soulless automata. No, your sacrifices have not been in vain. Is it too soon to start calling you Yann “Book Jesus” Martel?
- Link. (via Nathan Whitlock)
Kurt Vonnegut died last week.
Has a ship ever been more appropriately named than the HMS Terror? A mortar-launching bomb vessel converted to icebreaker, she sailed to Antarctica (a massive frozen volcano, Mount Terror, is named for her) before setting off with her sister ship, the HMS Erebus, on the 1845 Franklin expedition to chart the Northwest Passage. Terror and Erebus became frozen into the ice west of Baffin Island, where the crews slowly starved and froze to death over the course of two horrifically cold winters and thawless summers before making a desperate and doomed trek south. Only years later were a few traces of the expedition found, the bodies showing signs of lead poisoning, murder and cannibalism.
My me-time this past weekend wasn’t a total waste for the rest of humanity. I made a lot of changes to the site, and worked on the redesign. Tough questions were asked, like do I put a picture on my front page like an nerdy academic, or remain faceless, like a trendy blogger? In the end, I compromised, by putting up a picture that doesn’t look all that much like me. I’m a bit more of a CHUD in real life.