IFOA: Farah & Gowdy

In which our fearless heroines Zesty and Ragdoll, ponder renovation and pasta overload, only to battle biting cold, flagrant line budders and a driveway crying fit.

Last Wednesday, I attended the IFOA at Harbourfront. I can admit it. I’m an addict.

Ragdoll and I met at Il Fornello for a long overdue dinner out. Having suitably noshed and talked, we then headed across the ice filled parking lot to York Quay’s Brigantine Room. Damn you March. Damn you and your incessant wintering to hell.

I had to line up and get a ticket, however, when we inquired at the desk, we had to go to the other side because the agent’s printer wasn’t working. At some point, a woman ended up standing next to Ragdoll and of course budded in front of me. I would have said something, but I had the sense that she really just wouldn’t have “gotten it” if I had.

Sigh.

Now to be frank, I must note at this point that the Brigantine Room leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a nice space, but the chairs are awful. I know that Harbourfront is on a budget but plastic chairs? C’mon y’all. My ischials were screamin’ for mercy by night’s end.

The first reader of the night was Somalian author Nuruddin Farah. He read from his most recent novel Knots, which is apparently the second novel of a trilogy that began with a previous book entitled Links. He read a passage that featured a central female character returning to her home, only to find that in post war Somalia it has been invaded by strangers.

Farah’s reading style is very measured and completely in tandem with how he writes. The excerpt was deceptively simple at first, but it would seem that Farah is a prosaic bricklayer of sorts, deliberately creating his scenes with measured precision. By the end, I was anxious to hear more and find how his protagonist was going to reclaim her home.

The second author of the night was Barbara Gowdy who read from her latest book, Helpless. Helpless is the story of a nine year old girl’s abduction and the harrowing experience of her single mother who has to contend with it. But this novel has the added element of presenting the viewpoint of the abductor, Ron. In fact, the segment Gowdy read pertained to an episode from Ron’s childhood. It was a segment rife with great dialogue, humour and piercing observations of familial dynamics. Having not read the book, I was shocked to find that I’d been sympathetic towards a pedophile, that in fact he had been humanized for me. I had at first, assumed the excerpt was a flashback pertaining to the abducted girl’s father.

In fact, the second part of the evening consisted of Ms. Gowdy being interviewed by the always exceptional Susan G. Cole, and Gowdy mentioned that male reviewers seem to be uncomfortable with such a humanizing characterization of Ron. They want those with a sexual interest in children to be monsters, and they are uncomfortable when they’re not presented as such.

Having done some additional research since last Wednesday, however, I find the interview ever more disappointing. We seemed to get a lot of the same lines Gowdy used in her Maclean’s interview [which to her credit she acknowledged at the time] and one discomforting point she made was that essentially in her childhood days, there were always “funny” men in the neighbourhood and that essentially the difference between then and now is that more than likely the girl would live.

Pardon my language, but that’s bollocks.

Ragdoll sent me an article by one of my favourite columnists, Heather Mallick, which essentially sums up my feelings on the issue. To Mallick’s point, kids have been raped and killed in the past as they are now, you just didn’t always read about it in the papers. I tend to agree. Frankly, if the “funny” men only fondled little girls and boys, it’s because that’s all they were interested in doing.

In fairness to Gowdy, I should say that I’ve never read one of her books. But from what I have surmised, her work seems to focus on the more macabre and isolationist aspects of life. That’s not my cup of tea and I’ll freely admit that I admire the bravery of writers like Gowdy who “go there”. I don’t want to. To my mind, there’s more than enough horror in every day life such that I feel no need in my writing to investigate it further.

But I think that what I found somewhat disingenouus was that Gowdy said she essentially had to make Ron more human to make the book bearable. She also referenced Lewis Caroll’s pedophilia and that he was “heroic” because he never acted upon his feelings.

Uh, excuse me but since when is not being a totally selfish a**hole an act of heroism? I find this kind of reasoning symptomatic of society’s discomfort in dealing with the subject of pedophila in general.

And this reasoning is essentially the inverse of Chris Rock’s killer riff about people who pump themselves up and make it a point of pride to proclaim that they do the things that, well, you ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, as in “I pay my child support.”

It’s pretty simple. If you’re an alcoholic, don’t drink. If you’re a pedophile, don’t mess with children. Why? Because the damage you do in engaging is such acts is immeasureable, to put it politely. Gowdy had to humanize a pedophile for the simple reason that pedophilia itself is inhumane.

Maybe it was the mood I was in, but between this and Gowdy’s proclamation that she found writing to be “torturous”, I basically had had enough by the time Ragdoll and I left. I’d trade places with Gowdy any day. “Torturous” is working in a coal mine. “Torturous” is going to work day in and day out, year in and year out, getting your intelligence insulted for the privilege and despite all your efforts to enact the contrary, seeing no change in your situation.

I ended up walking out of the reading quite shell shocked. That’s what good writing and challenging subjects should do I suppose and I’ll give Gowdy her props on those counts. But it’s probably why I’ve put off posting this blog entry for a week. I had to let things settle, because I have little threshold for anything having to do with child abuse in any way, shape or form. Neither does Barbara Gowdy by her own account.

I dropped Ragdoll off that night and headed home. As I pulled into the driveway, the song “If” by Bread was playing. I don’t know if you know this song, but part of the lyrics are as follows:

“If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show the you I've come to know.
If a face could launch a thousand ships, Then where am I to go?
There's no one home but you,
You're all that's left me too.”

I just burst into tears when I heard this because the song reminds me of a winter walk I had with my Dad and our dog Gussie when I was about 12 years old. This walk has always stayed with me. We were talking about many things, but my Dad brought up this song at the time and sang it to me, mentioning how nice he thought the lyrics were.

And after an evening’s discussion about such a horrible topic, it hit me with full force how vulnerable I was as a child and how much my father has always been there for me, how he has always loved me and protected me and how I have never once, as a child or adult, questioned my safety with him at any time.

I’d like to say I’m going to read Helpless, but frankly, I just don’t know.