What's On at the Library

Brian Dennehy –Straight from the Heart

It was a joy to watch actor Brian Dennehy last night at the Appel Salon, as he captivated a full house  during his onstage conversation with Richard Ouzounian.   At 73, he says he has no regrets –he admits to past excesses, but says life is a like a mango –to be seized and “pressed against your face, with all the juices dripping down.”   

 He talked about his early days, -- a football scholarship, a stint in the Marines, and a relatively late start in acting in his mid twenties.  When asked what keeps him working now, he talked eloquently about his need to be involved in acts of creation, a process he called “being in the room.”

 He also said Stratford (where he’s currently starring in two plays) has the best acting company in the world, and that Canadians should be rightly proud.  (He did add however, that although he loved Toronto and New York, Chicago is the best city in the world. Can’t win’em all.)

 Dennehy was among the first events of the Appel Salon fall season.  Tonight we’re welcoming the fire breathing Dragon Kevin O’Leary, and coming in future weeks are Randy Bachman, Karen Kain, Jeffrey Eugenides, Umberto Eco and Alan Hollinghurst.  Don’t forget you need tickets to Salon events.

 

 

 

The eh List: My Canada Includes Metis Fiddling

 

If you were not one of the nearly 350 who were at the Appel Salon for The eh List's Extraordinary Canadians event, you missed a fantastic evening.

Those in attendance were treated to John Ralston Saul and Joseph Boyden in easy - and very engaging discussion about some of Canada's most influential people, Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine.

Saul, Canada's foremost public intellectual, and the editor of the Extraordinary Canadians series (Penguin) took up his pen and provided portraits of the men he argues developed Canada's national character of constitutional democracy, non-violent dispute settlement, public education and most of what we treasure as the hallmarks of our civil society. Saul makes a very good case for these men in particular, and he makes an excellent case for the study of Canadian history for the pleasure of it! And Saul is not just an armchair intellectual: he set about hiring some of the country's leading thinkers and writers to create a series of biographies of 20 of Canada's most extraordinary people.

A case in point is Joseph Boyden's biography of Riel and Dumont. Boyden is one of the country's foremost fiction writers and one of the strongest First Nations voices in modern times. His linked novels, Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce leave many Can Lit lovers breathlessly waiting for a third novel; meantime, we can read his Riel and Dumont biography. Boyden seemed to argue that the Riel Rebellion helped to develop our national conscience, and that the two (Dumont and Riel) provide a remarkable balance between European and First Nations traditions, which remain as enduring aspects of our national character. Boyden's easy charm and Hollywood smile gave him the run of the audience, who listened attentively, asked great questions and lined up for an hour to have books signed.

Bill Hamade and his crew in the Baldwin Room pulled together some fascinating artefacts about the evening subjects, including Baldwin's last - and very personal - wishes, his 'laptop' (portable desk) and Riel's manifesto. Hundreds peered into the display cases to witness Canadian history and biography up-front. All were intrigued.

Add to all this very heady Canadian evening Anne Lederman, one of the finest Metis fiddlers anywhere, and top it off with a short, impromptu, guy-at-the-public-microphone singing a piece of an aria from Harry Somers' opera 'Louis Riel', and you have a Perfect Night Out at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon.

 

Hiaasen and Barclay deliver the goods

Writers Carl Hiaasen and Linwood Barclay hit it out of the park last night at the Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library. 

Hiaasen, a columnist for the Miami Herald and author of classics like Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy and Lucky You, was there to talk about his new book, Star Island, and he was in top form.  The book is his take on celebrity culture --the main character is a hugely untalented singer called Cherry Pye --and he gave the packed house some choice lines about the current crop of celebrity air-heads.  He and Barclay discussed the dubious value of reality television, with Hiaasen offering hilarious riffs on what could possibly make a person a "star" of reality.

He also spoke about the return of a character from a previous book. This would be the highly singular Chemo -- a 7 foot ex-con with a burned face and a weed whacker in place of one hand.  You get the drift...

Although Barclay and Hiaasen had never met before last night, Barclay has been reading Hiaasen for twenty years. In fact, he claims Hiaasen was responsible for getting him through his night shifts at the Toronto Star, because "you can't fall asleep when you're laughing."

Linwood Barclay of course wrote a humour column for the Star for years, before turning his hand full time to his own very successful line of crime novels.

  It was a synergistic combo, and the audience loved it.  If you missed it, check it out on the Appel Salon website in the next week or so. 

An afternoon with Ian McEwan at the Appel Salon

On Saturday, April 18, 2010, a sold-out crowd gathered at the Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library to see an author who has (arguably) combined critical and commercial success as effectively as any other living novelist.

Ian McEwan (author of Atonement and Saturday) read a pret-ty durned hilarious passage from his new novel, Solar, a black comedy about a has-been Nobel-winning physicist’s disastrous adventures in climate science. Afterwards, McEwan was interviewed by Ian Brown about his career, his response to bad reviews, and the pleasures of being surprised by his own writing.

(If you're wondering what you missed, we should have a video of the event posted on our video page sometime next week.)

 

The event was part of the Globe and Mail Open House Festival, which will continue over the weekend of May 1^st with six (mostly sold-out) events at the Appel Salon, as well as a number of events in other locations around the city.

 

 

Keeping Toronto Reading: Really Fun, Actually

What a week. I laughed, I cried - no, really! I did! Not at the same event, mind you.

This was the first week of the 2010 Keep Toronto Reading festival, and I was responsible for two events. The first, Poems We Love (and Know Not Why), was organized by Toronto's Poet Laureate, Dionne Brand, and involved poets Lynn Crosbie, Glen Downie and Paul Vermeersch. (This was the one I teared up at, during Dionne's discussion of friendship and grief in Pablo Neruda's poem, Alberto Rojas Jimenez Comes Flying. Not in a bad way - she's just a very moving speaker, and it's a moving poem - especially when you realize that it's a kind of eulogy for a friend who died young.)

The other poets were great, too; it was an illuminating discussion, with some really insightful questions from the audience after the readings. I was particularly impressed with some of the high school students who were there: they were curious, enthusiastic and smart, and I left feeling optimistic.

The laughs came next, with last night's Book Exchange. Misha Glouberman moderated a panel of local celebrities, including Damian Abraham, Zoe Whittall and Pasha Malla, as they traded their favourite books with a very vocal, feisty audience (including more than a few librarians; librarians rule, especially when it comes to talking about books). I'm not even sure how to communicate how much fun this event was. You know what it's like when you go out with friends and you laugh like crazy, and at the end of the evening you can't remember what you were laughing at, but you know you had a good time? It was like that, only more literary. I think we'll probably do it again next year, if not sooner. You should go.

 Here's a link to a great set of photos of the event by one Tsar Kasim.

Atwood Shows her Funny Side

Margaret Atwood had them rolling in the aisles at the Toronto Reference Library's  Bram & Bluma Appel Salon last night. The occasion was an interview with Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown --part of  the Writer's Room series, where authors talk about their body of work.

The tone of the interview was set with Ian's first question --which had to do with Atwood's having won the prize for humour writing in Sweden.  Atwood drolly quipped that there must be something about the translation process that made her writing very funny in Swedish.  From there, the two were off to the races, discussing her latest novel,Year of the Flood, as well as her other work, her childhood and her method of writing. 

Atwood turns out to be a bit of geek . (Not suprising from the inventor of the Long Pen remote signing system). She has a huge following on Twitter ,and she filled us in on some of the lingo the Twitter community uses to speed things along --"lmoao" for "laughed my own ass off" for instance. 

She also revealed that she is in the process of writing a third companion novel to Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood. When Ian said that Atwood was "famously nervous" about the future of the human race, Atwood pointed out that almost everyone in the room was, and that the great power of narrative and fiction lies in showing people that change is possible. 

If you missed it, video will up next week here.

Coming soon: Margaret Atwood!

It's always fun helping to organize an event when it involves somebody you admire. We've had a lot of those at the Appel Salon since it opened in September: Douglas Coupland, for starters (here he is in conversation with Ian Brown) - as a tail-end Gen-Xer, I've always felt almost indecently close to the characters in his novels. And Edward Burtynsky (talking about a favourite book here), whose photographs actually convinced me to change some of my more entrenched consumer behaviours after I saw Jennifer Baichwal's documentary, Manufactured Landscapes (place a hold on a gorgeous book of his photos here).  

In fact, almost every event I've worked on here has been impressive or inspiring in some way; but Margaret Atwood's onstage interview, coming up on Thursday, March 25 at 7 pm (http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/appelsalon/upcoming-programs.jsp), is a whole 'nother thing. She's loomed over my literary consciousness since I filched a copy of The Edible Woman from my mom's bedside table when I was twelve; I remember wearing the local Jumbo Video's VHS copy of The Handmaid's Tale nearly to shreds in grade thirteen. I even *cough*NERD*cough* had a poster of the cover of Bluebeard's Egg on my bedroom wall. (/overshare). More recently, I've debated the finer points of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood with my more apocalyptically-minded friends.

And now she's doing an onstage interview with us! Well, with Ian Brown, actually. At the Salon! Covering much of her body of work. This is one of those times when I'd like to be able to send a countertemporal email back to my adolescent self's Atari 2600: "Guess what you get to do when you grow up." With maybe a link to her Twitter feed (which is both entertaining and congenial) - I think I would have enjoyed that.

Anyway. I'm looking forward to it.

!!!