The reader is forewarned. A book that declares itself in the title to be “a manifesto” is not out to entertain or to fulfill a need for escapist literature. David Shields’ Reality Hunger is a book that wants to challenge us and potentially change the way we think. About what, you ask? Reality TV, James Frey, Oprah, fact vs. fiction, collage, sampling, Marcel Duchamp… Shields tackles the current cultural landscape, jumping from subject to subject, creating a jigsaw puzzle of ideas. And, as with a jigsaw puzzle, the reader must piece together the disparate elements to form a larger picture.

The message of the book is, in part, directly embedded in its structure. It is composed of 26 chapters, from a to z, each of which is broken into shorter numbered segments. The segments consist of diverse thoughts—from lists of book titles and authors, to reflections on the birth of jazz—that together examine our attitudes toward truth and authenticity, and the role of art and literature in society. Many of these texts are quotes from other writers, quotes that Shields has occasionally modified and that mostly go unattributed in the text.

This rejection of convention is intentional, as Shields explains in the appendix: “A major focus of Reality Hunger is appropriation and plagiarism and what these terms mean. I can hardly treat the topic deeply without engaging it.”  While many may disagree with this bold statement (this reviewer included), it does allow Shields to question our allegiance to convention and expose the difficulties in dealing with appropriation and plagiarism, especially in the age of digital technology. (Some readers may derive a certain amount of pleasure in trying to guess where the quotes come from, until they discover that in deference to his publishers, Shields has included a list of citations at the end of the book. Shields urges the reader to ignore the citations, but once found, it is hard to resist a peek to see who wrote what.)

The manifesto that somewhat incoherently emerges from this intellectual playfulness focuses on a few main points: the novel is no longer a useful form of literature for the world we live in; our insistence on truth in literature is misplaced; and the great need for a literary form that reflects reality. So if we are to throw out the novel and other literary conventions, what does Shields espouse? The lyric essay, memoir, and literary forms that bend genres, or, in Shields’ own words: “a literature built entirely out of contemplation and revelation.” It is here, with his insistence on “entirely,” that Shields is most at risk of losing allies. Although our society may suffer from a surfeit of entertainment and a lack of contemplation, we are not all ready to give up a good story.

Shields certainly succeeds in being thought-provoking, but in the end the form of the book may be its undoing. A good collage must transcend its separate parts; Reality Hunger remains a work in pieces.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche. (www.carte-blanche.org)

On Tuesday, May 23, 1989, Lu Decheng, a bus mechanic from Hunan province in China and his two friends Yu Dongyue and Yu Zhijian made their way to Tiananmen Square. Throngs of student protesters had been gathering there for days. The three men positioned themselves in front of the giant portrait of Mao hanging at the north end of the square, unpacked the paint-filled eggs they had carefully prepared, and took aim at the portrait.

This was more than an act of vandalism: it was a gesture of defiance, meant to inspire the student protesters to continue the fight for democracy. Instead, Decheng and his friends were arrested and imprisoned with the help of the students they had sought to inspire.

Denise Chong’s Egg on Mao tells the story of Lu Decheng. Chong goes back and forth between the events at Tiananmen Square and their aftermath to Decheng’s earlier life, all the while weaving the narrative into its larger political and historical context. It is a daunting task, one that might overwhelm a lesser writer, but Chong succeeds by keeping the story focused on the people and the details that bring them to life on the page. The book begins with a beautifully simple vignette from Decheng’s childhood: boys having a pebble-throwing competition at the side of the Liuyang River. Chong writes: “Decheng, confident of having a better throw in him yet, plucked another pebble from the sand. He tested its weight, arched his back, and unleashed.” It is an innocent gesture, parallel to the one Decheng makes in Tiananmen Square so many years later.

Chong has a strong ear for these narrative echoes, and uses them to anchor the story in the past. She tells the story of the love between Decheng and his first wife Qiuping, and how it sustains Decheng through his first years in prison. We learn about Decheng’s paternal grandmother – designated a martyr’s widow – who teaches Decheng about the value of being his own person and laments her own son’s conformity. We also learn of the death of his mother, when Decheng was nine; his contentious relationship with his father and stepmother; and of the loss of his and Qiuping’s first child. Piece by piece, Chong paints a portrait of a brave and thoughtful young man who is at odds with the difficult and rigid society in which he lives.

Chong has referred to Egg on Mao as “the biography of a gesture.” By the end of the book, she wanted readers to understand what led Decheng and his friends to risk their lives throwing paint-filled eggs at a portrait of Mao. And we do. We also understand that Chong herself has achieved something courageous and important in the writing of this story. Decheng and his friends did not succeed in bringing democracy to China and they spent years in prison for their actions. Thanks to this book, their gesture continues to reverberate around the world.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche. (www.carte-blanche.org)

A collection entitled The Best Canadian Essays begs the question: what, exactly, is an essay? Our anthology editors borrow a definition from British writer Ian Hamilton: “An essay can be an extended book review, a piece of reportage, a travelogue, a revamped lecture, an amplified diary jotting, a refurbished sermon. In other words, an essay can be just about anything that it wants to be…”

The editors take Hamilton at his word and present 14 diverse pieces of prose, including a critique of Canadian theatre by Kamal Al-Solaylee, theatre critic for the Globe & Mail; an exploration of unconventional mourning, by journalist and author Katherine Ashenberg; and a reflection on feminism and porn by feminist porn awards pioneer Alison Lee.

What the editors overlook in their desire to be inclusive is that while an essay can take many forms, it does not follow that any piece of prose is an essay. Anthologists and editors have been grappling with the definition of the literary essay since Michel de Montaigne invented the form in the 16^th century. While there may not be consensus on the definition, there are a few characteristics that crop up with relative frequency: the strong presence of the author in the work (implicit or explicit), a certain depth of inquiry into the subject, and an underlying honesty, especially in the case of the personal essay. It is these characteristics that, for this reader, are the heart and soul of the form.

Many of the works contained in this slim volume do not feel like essays. “Lost in Translation” by Nicholas Hune-Brown, about censorship in Chinese-Canadian newspapers, makes for interesting reading, but the author’s voice is largely absent. Ashenburg’s piece is similarly missing a distinctive voice, although it too is interesting and informative. There are pieces that are more idiosyncratic in nature – the aforementioned theatre review, the reflection on women and porn, a personal essay by Alberta musician Kris Demeanor – and even some that approach this reviewer’s idea of an essay, (e.g. “Where the Muskox Roam” by Jessa Gamble and “The Return of Beauty” by Nick Mount), but overall the context does the work a disservice.

Also missing from this anthology are two ingredients one would hope to find in the “best” of anything literary: humour and innovation. The collection is sombre in tone and conservative in structure. (The most imaginative piece in the anthology is “Helen Koentges,” Chris Koentges’ tribute to his mother.) The lack of humour seems to have been a conscious decision on the part of the editors who reassure us in the introduction that here we will find no navel-gazing, but writers who “addressed themselves directly, and fearlessly, to serious subjects.” A little levity among these serious subjects would have been welcome.

In an article in The Globe & Mail, co-editor Alex Boyd writes that the essays included in this book were “stubbornly objective.” This, perhaps, is the root of the problem. Stubborn objectivity is something we want from our journalists, not from our essayists.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche. (www.carte-blanche.org)

On August 30^th, 2005, Abdulrahman Zeitoun woke on the second floor of his house in New Orleans to the sound of running water. The flooding of the city by Hurricane Katrina had begun. Water was flowing into his yard, and up around his house. Zeitoun had not been expecting this. He had surveyed the damage from Katrina the day before, and while it was bad, it had seemed no worse than after previous storms. But by that Tuesday, the city’s levees had failed, submerging huge sections of the city.

Dave Eggers’ nonfiction book Zeitoun tells the story of Abdulrahman and his wife Kathy, and what happened to them in the aftermath of Katrina. We learn who they are, how they met, and how they built a business and family together (they have four daughters). Kathy is a convert to Islam, which has alienated her from her family. Zeitoun is a hardworking contractor who went from casual labourer to running his own business. They both believe in family, religion, and a strong work ethic.

The book begins gently, with a scene from Abdulrahman’s childhood in Syria, of him learning to fish for sardines with his older brother Ahmad. Water, it seems, is part of Zeitoun’s heritage. When he first confronts the water filling his house, he can’t help but be “momentarily struck by the beauty of the sight.” In those first days after the storm Zeitoun paddles around in his canoe, giving out supplies, rescuing people stuck in their homes, and feeding abandoned dogs. Kathy had already left with the children to seek refuge at her family’s home in Baton Rouge. She worries about her husband, but he tells her that he is fine, that he is helping others. He feels that perhaps it was destiny that he chose to stay behind.

It is hard to treat Dave Eggers as just a writer. Launched by his post-modern memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Eggers became a kind of literary wunderkind. He had as many detractors as admirers, the former dismissing his memoir as a feat of egotism rather than literary innovation. (Although this reviewer did not fall completely into that category, she did find A.H.W.O.S.G. somewhat exhausting, like a witty dinner guest who has overstayed his welcome.) If Eggers’ critics still harboured any doubts after the skilfully written What is the What, he has shown in Zeitoun that he is more than capable of literary innovation and powerful storytelling.

The buildup of the book is slow but deliberate. In beautifully clear prose, Eggers captures the quiet of the watery city and Zeitoun’s travels through it. We know we are heading toward something terrible, beyond the storm itself. It is not giving away more than the reader can guess to tell you that the story becomes a stark illustration of the follies of the war-on-terror politics that dominated post 9-11 America.  Eggers is careful not to use rhetoric or political language. He does not need to. The literary wunderkind has taken a backseat and let the story tell itself.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche.

“Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife.” So starts Rivka Galchen’s first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, plunging the reader headlong into the unstable world of New York psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein, the narrator of this incredible and convoluted tale. Liebenstein is convinced that his wife Rema has been replaced by an imposter. This other woman (referred to from here on in the novel as “the impostress,” the simulacrum, the dog lover, and a host of other monikers) looks and acts a lot like the “real” Rema, but for Liebenstein there are countless small and essential ways in which the two women differ.

The story leads us on a protracted journey to find Liebenstein’s real wife, involving a trip to Argentina, a scientific institution known as the Royal Academy of Meteorology, and conversations with a dead meteorologist, Tzvi Gal-Chen. (The latter, according to a review in the New Yorker, is a tribute to the author’s father, a meteorologist who died in 1994.) Further complicating Rema’s disappearance is the story of Harvey, one of Liebenstein’s schizophrenic patients, who is also missing. It is through Harvey that we are first introduced to the Royal Academy, and to the mysterious and evil 49 Quantum Fathers, an underground group that runs “self-interested meteorological experiments.” Galchen does not explain the premise or let us in on what is behind Liebenstein’s apparent delusion. Instead, the reader is left to try and read between the lines, to guess at what the narrator does not want to or cannot tell us.

In Atmospheric Disturbances Galchen has created an elaborate and playful world that is alternately humorous and disturbing. As the story continues, Liebenstein becomes convinced that he will find Rema through the works of Tzvi Gal-Chen and the Royal Academy for Meteorology: “I decided to look again more closely at Tzvi’s research paper, ‘A Theory for Retrievals,’ a work that claimed to be retrieving ‘thermodynamic variables from within deep convective clouds,’ but that I suspected—or hoped—might be about quite a bit more.” The more involved Liebenstein becomes in his search, the further removed he seems from reality.

Underneath Galchen’s playfulness and Liebenstein’s clinical language is a story of love and of loss. Liebenstein can no longer see his wife as the woman he once adored: “The real Rema wouldn’t have put her hair in a bun. She wouldn’t have held my wrist so tightly. … She would have commented, in at least some small way, on my as yet unshaved morning handsomeness.” That his delusional state is not a response to a sudden betrayal or rupture, but rather to small actions and trivial details, highlights the profound sense of alienation that can grow between two people.

Although the emotion of the story is occasionally lost at the expense of cleverness, Galchen leaves Liebenstein and the reader in a state of uncertainty about our ability to know ourselves and recognize the ones we love. Liebenstein is not an easy character to sympathise with, but it is this seed of doubt that eventually endears us to him and makes us feel for his wife. Atmospheric Disturbances is an uneven book, but one that in the end may win your heart.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche (www.carte-blanche.org).

Sophisticated readers know that book flap blurbs are not always to be trusted. (Just think of the word rollicking and how seldom it applies to the reading material it describes.) A reader who picks up Merry Wiesner-Hanks’ The Marvelous Hairy Girls could, however, be forgiven for thinking she was going to read “the extraordinary story of three sixteenth century sisters who, along with their father and brothers, were afflicted with an extremely rare genetic condition that made them unusually hairy.” These three sisters are, after all, the “marvelous hairy girls” of the title, and the assumed subject of the book.

The women in question are the Gonzales sisters—the daughters of Petrus Gonzales, a native of the Canary Islands whose body and face were covered in hair. Petrus was brought to France as a boy and served in the court of Henry II and Catherine Medici in 1547. He eventually married a “normal,” or non-hairy, woman and had three daughters, Maddalena, Francesca, and Antonietta, all of whom were hairy like him, and at least two hairy sons.  

Wiesner-Hanks is a historian and she faces a historian’s dilemma. She has the makings of a good story but, as she herself admits, few sources of information. To overcome this obstacle, she takes the following approach: “By taking a few steps backward and widening our scope … we can see and hear a great many things about the times in which [the Gonzales family] lived.” 

Throughout The Marvelous Hairy Girls, we do indeed learn many things about sixteenth-century Europe and prevailing attitudes toward natural curiosities. Explorers brought home stories of unusual (most often mythical) beasts, which, together with local tales of monstrous beings, fed into common beliefs about how the natural world worked. For example, it was thought that children born with deformities were the result of their mothers being frightened or otherwise affected during pregnancy. (Being frightened by a hare could cause harelip, and so on.) Curiosities, such as the Gonzales family, were things to be collected, not only by the medical and scientific communities, but also by the wealthy and powerful.  Antonietta Gonzales was given to the marchesa of Soragna as a gift, and her brother Enrico was given to one of the Duke of Parma’s brothers.

Wiesner-Hanks covers everything from attitudes about women and childbirth to medical marvels and art history, as well as the politics of the time. Despite this, the book remains unsatisfying on the question of the “hairy girls” themselves. We are barely introduced to them, and there is so little information about them that Weisner-Hanks relies heavily on phrases such as “of course we will never know” and “but that remains speculation.”

The Marvelous Hairy Girls would have been a more successful book if it had been billed as a history of natural marvels in the sixteenth century instead of a portrait of the Gonzales sisters. Instead, the book leaves us, like Wiesner-Hanks, to speculate about what life would have been like for these three hairy women.

Maria Schamis Turner is a writer and editor based in Montreal. She is the editor of the literary magazine carte blanche.

Early in the morning on May 9, 1992, a mixture of methane gas and coal dust exploded in the Westray coal mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia. Twenty-six men were killed. Later that day, Nova Scotia journalist John DeMont got a call from his editor at Maclean’s assigning him to the story. As DeMont learned about what happened at Westray, he had an epiphany of sorts: “… somehow and somewhere in those grim days after the disaster I had a vision of the black residue that coal has left everywhere in this province.”
It is this residue that DeMont sets out to illuminate in his ambitious new book Coal Black Heart, by taking us through the story of coal from its geological, social, and political beginnings to its impact on present day Nova Scotia. Woven into this vast undertaking is the story of DeMont’s family, who were drawn to Cape Breton from the “farmlands of Scotland and England’s industrial heartland” by the promise of coal in the new country. “So the story of coal is my story too,” writes DeMont, “which means the best way to understand my family’s storyline is to understand the history of that soft, sooty black mineral in this province.”
The book is full of historical detail, and some of the time DeMont succeeds in bringing it to life through his own explorations and imaginings, and apt comparisons with the present. Writing about twelve-year olds who worked in the English mines in 1836, DeMont compares their average height, four foot four, with that of his own (average) twelve-year-old son: over five foot two. It is a telling comparison. At other times, DeMont’s chatty interjections are jarring. About a street in Sydney where his family once lived, he writes: “In 2007 at least it’s leafier, the overall vibe a bit more settled.” Similarly, and no less incongruous with the tone of the book, is his description of a Scottish clergyman: “Mister Fun he was not.”
DeMont has done his research (there are over 30 pages of notes detailing his sources). We learn about geologist Sir Charles Lyell’s trip to Nova Scotia to see the fossil-rich cliffs of Joggins, the rise of coal baron Henry Whitney who came from Boston to run the Cape Breton mines, and even the lyrics of coal-mining songs. But it is the facts, in the end, that overwhelm the story. There are too many characters and the story goes in too many different directions to form a cohesive whole. DeMont’s family tale, which could have given the book a strong narrative thread, is not compelling enough to hold these disparate pieces together. It is a shame. As evidenced by the many tantalizing bits and pieces that DeMont gives us, there is no shortage of fascinating characters behind the story of coal in Nova Scotia, and any number of them could have been our guide through this period of Canadian history. A history that—DeMont reminds us at the end of the book—is not yet over.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche (www.carte-blanche.org).

Daniel Mendelsohn writes with the television on. Donald Antrim “lurches” between periods of writing and not writing. Nino Ricci writes when he is not engaging in his habits, which, apparently, include playing computer games. Only Catherine Mavirikakis, the odd woman out on the Saturday afternoon panel discussion on “Why I write,” said that she writes every day.

Maybe because writing is such a solitary activity, hearing about why and how someone writes is like having a magician show how the card trick works. Except that in the case of writing, the trick never loses its mystery. Book in hand, the reader is once again seduced by the story and the writing process becomes a puzzle all over again.

But for those moments while we were in a room hearing Antrim talk about his writing anxiety, or Mendelsohn about his unhealthy attachment to Battlestar Galactica in the face of deadlines, we got a glimpse of the magician standing in front of the mirror practicing his tricks.

“What interests me is listening to people,” announced Laure Adler, French feminist, historian, author, journalist, and, she informed us, “psychiatre manquée.” Happily for those who saw her interviewed by Radio-Canada’s Christiane Charette on Friday, Adler also likes to talk. (Close to the end of the evening she even excused: “Excusez-moi, je suis trop bavarde.”)

With a background in radio and television it is not surprising that Adler tells anecdotes with practiced spontaneity. She excels at digressions. Her account of being named conseillère culturelle to François Mitterrand in 1989 began with an explanation of how her parents came to visit her in Paris once a year, and went on to her hanging up the first two times Mitterand had one of his staff call her because she thought it was her son playing a practical joke. The story ended with la président de la republique paying a visit to her hospital room after she had given birth to her daughter.

It was an evening of gossip and memorable quotes. On Mitterand: “Il était tout petit, en fait.” On how her parents feel about Mitterand: “He’s dead, but they still hate him.” On Sarkozy: “How does Carla Bruni do it? She’s so beautiful and so nice…” Re the current state of feminism in France: “Hélas, il n’existe plus.”

As Christiane Charette said at the beginning of the event, we were all there for the same reason—to see, or rather listen to Laure Adler. And why was Adler there? “J’aime le ciel à Montréal,” she said.

“Vamos a hablar de un poco de todo.” We’re going to talk about a bit of everything. There are around 25 of us at Volver, the café on avenue du Parc that has been converted into a venue for Blue Metropolis, or, in tonight’s case, Metropolis azul. This evening’s discussion is about contemporary Argentine literature. The panelists are Pablo de Santis, Cecilia  Pisos, and Daniel Castillo Durante, all Argentine writers, although Castillo Durante lives in Ottawa and writes in French.

I am surprised that it takes almost half an hour before someone mentions Borges. but once he has been brought up, he stays in the conversation. Like many panels at Blue Met that I have seen over the years, the discussion is interesting but not very coherent. Talk ranges from children’s literature from Argentina and around the world; the legacy of Borges and Bioy Casares; Argentina’s predilection for literature of the fantastic; writing as a “trans-linguistic phenomenon;” and the effects of globalization on the world of publishing. My guess is that the majority of the audience is Argentine. There is an intimacy in the room as if everyone knows what each other is thinking, or at least what language they are thinking it in. The youngest member of the audience is just four years old, but she is not to be underestimated. According to her grandmother, she already speaks 4 languages. The spirit of Borges is alive and well and living in Montreal.

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“Like any good party,” said founder Linda Leith at Blue Met’s opening ceremony, this one is “ full of people you know and people you would like to get to know.”  Indeed, within a few minutes of arriving I spotted several of each among those milling about waiting for a free glass of wine and a good A.S. Byatt anecdote. Among those in attendance: Montreal landmark Phyllis Lambert, looking well-coiffed (“She is an architect,” someone said. “She has great structural integrity.”); the power-translation couple Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott; local grand dame Ann Charney; the indomitable Eleanor Wachtel; literary critic and co-host Jean Fugère; and, of course, Dame Antonia herself who was there to receive this year’s Grand Prix. The usual hubbub of idle chitchat … what, someone wondered, does the “S” in Byatt’s name stand for? (Susan).

After the speeches, jokes, and overviews of festivals past and present, Dame Antonia ascended to the stage and treated us to a few personal stories, including the sad news of the death of her translator, Jean-Louis Chevalier, who, she said, “died just before Christmas, on the shortest day of the year.” She read first in French from one of Chevalier’s translations, and then in English from her new novel, The Children’s Book. The audience became silent and still, like children falling under the spell of a bedtime story. She received a standing ovation.

The Idler’s Glossary is a small book.  This is not a judgment on its contents (more on that later) — the actual book measures roughly four by six inches and is less than half an inch thick.  It is, thanks to its size and to the lovely design and illustrations by Seth (author of the comic book series Palookaville), cute.  And as with all things cute, The Idler’s Glossary should be approached with a certain amount of suspicion.

Is there a book hidden inside this charming little package or is it merely a gimmick, designed to be left on the coffee table as a sign of sophisticated whimsy?  The short answer is: both.  The book is divided into two parts: an introductory essay by Mark Kingwell, the University of Toronto philosopher known for his forays into the non-academic media world, and a glossary compiled by Boston-based writer Joshua Glenn.  An exercise in etymology that aims to redeem idleness from its reputation as an instrument of the devil (see IDLE HANDS and IDLENESS), Glenn’s glossary subverts, redefines, and reflects upon some 300 terms, phrases, and cultural references that are in some way related to idling.  The result is part personal essay, part philosophical treatise, and part exercise in idling itself.  Idling, that is, as Glenn defines it: “a rare, hard-won mode in which your art is your work, and your work is your art.”  The glossary is illuminating (aestivate and limpsy are among the new words learned by this reviewer) and often funny, but it is almost forced, by virtue of the form and the approach, to be a bit too clever.  See PLAYBOY: “Playboy, a turn-of-the century descriptor for ‘a man who lives a life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure’ has come to mean, thanks to the porn magazine, ‘a man who lives a life devoted to the pursuit of women with enormous breasts.’”

Likewise, Kingwell’s introductory essay, “Idling Toward Heaven,” covers an impressive amount of material in defence of idling, from Kierkergaard and Kingsley Amis to Kafka and Georges Bataille, but occasionally sounds like an elaborate excuse for Kingwell to show off his education.  I was not convinced, for example, by his proposition that Kafka’s Joseph K. “is a sort of failed idler,” even taking into consideration Kingwell’s own admission that it is a “surprising possibility.”

An aside: there is a conspicuous lack of female idlers, or philosophers of idling, in the Glossary. Hannah Arendt and Ginger Rogers both make appearances, but the book is largely dominated by male laggards, lubbers, and slugabeds.  To be blamed, perhaps, on history, rather than on any oversight on the part of the authors, but it begs the question: is idling an equal opportunity occupation?

Beyond being clever and cute, The Idler’s Glossary takes a firm stand for doing nothing.  In these times of economic uncertainty, when life is at risk of being reduced to terms of cost and efficiency, idleness may need all the defenders it can get.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche (www.carte-blanche.org).

SOME TIME OVER THREE MILLION YEARS AGO, our early hominid ancestors began to walk upright. As a result, writes Mary Soderstrom, the bodies of modern humans are engineered for this activity. We are, quite literally, made to walk.

In her ambitious new book, The Walkable City, Soderstrom attempts to define the elements — cultural, social, and economic — that are needed to create cities where walking is both a practical method of transportation and a pleasure. Driving her quest for the walkable city is Soderstrom’s belief that it is an endangered entity we can ill afford to lose. With the rising price of fossil fuels, the threat of climate change, and increasing rates of obesity in North America, Soderstrom suggests that walking and walkable cities may be essential to our future.

Soderstrom begins her exploration with Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the 19^th century French civic planner who tore down parts of Paris to create wider streets, parks, and new buildings; and Jane Jacobs, the popular urban thinker best known for her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Soderstrom uses the two thinkers as her guides through the history of urban planning as she takes the reader on walks through a diverse selection of the world’s metropolises. “Together, their words, taken from their writings and interviews, may help us make sense of things,” she writes. Her invocation of Haussmann and Jacobs allows Soderstrom to compare her own observations to their quite different theories, and she maintains this occasionally elaborate conceit throughout the book.

As on a good walk, Soderstrom allows herself to follow enticing sidetracks, and some of her most evocative writing is in these asides, as in her description of a 1954 photograph taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson of a boy carrying two bottles of wine down the rue Mouffetard in Paris: “As it is, he is frozen in time with his scabby knees showing below his shorts, his feet sockless in his sandals and his undershirt sticking out where his nearly-outgrown sweater is too short to cover his belly.” But some of the digressions are distracting. I did not need to know, for example, that Jane Jacobs once modelled maternity clothes for the Russian edition of Amerika, or that Robert Redford, mentioned in passing for his role in Barefoot in the Park, was once named one of Time magazine’s environmental heroes. These references only serve to clutter a text already crowded with information.

The more I read, the more I wanted to hear of Soderstrom’s own theories and discoveries as she roamed the suburbs of Toronto or admired Singapore’s housing developments, and less of the real or imagined thoughts of Jane Jacobs. Soderstrom obviously admires Jacobs, but in her admiration she occasionally gets lost in explications and repetitions of Jacobs’ ideas instead of building on or critiquing them. Fortunately, Soderstrom plans to keep on walking so there is hope that this is not her last word on the subject.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche (www.carte-blanche.org).

YOU ARE ON THE WESTERN EDGE of the Painted Desert in Northern Arizona, 93,500 acres of colour. The sun is about to set and the light is hitting Roden Crater bringing out hues of red and black. There are over 400 craters in this place, making up the San Francisco Volcanic Field, a natural phenomenon that geologists think might have been created by a tectonic plate moving over a hot spot deep in the Earth’s mantle. Geologically speaking, this crater is young – about 380,000 years old. It was just one of the many craters in this field until 1973, when American installation artist James Turrell chose it to be his portal to the sky.

Turrell spent seven months flying a small plane over this land, sleeping under the wing of the plane at night, and looking. He looked until he found this place where he could shape the space and gather the light. This is what James Turrell does. He says he “makes spaces that apprehend light for our perception.” Light is both his medium and his subject. Inside the crater, Turrell has hollowed out spaces that reflect the light, spaces that sift or blend the light from the stars and the sun and the planets until the sky changes colour. Roden Crater is young but it can draw in light that is three and a half billion years old, light from beyond our galaxy and older than our solar system, light that you can almost reach out and touch. Astronomers now talk about Roden Crater as one of the few places on earth where certain celestial events can be witnessed. Turrell is bringing the cosmos down to the earth, and creating a space where we can receive it.

Picture yourself in this place with the light from the stars and the planets and the sun. You are there, cradled by the crater, looking at the sky and feeling the light and you know that you don’t have to say anything, or tell anybody, because this place that James Turrell found, this space that he created, says it already. It is his gift to you and it is almost enough just to imagine it.

James Turrell has been working on Roden’s Crater since the late 1970’s. It will not be open to the public until 2011 … or whenever it is finished.

Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche (www.carte-blanche.org).