Notebook on Cities and Culture

In a pub in Toronto's Swansea, Colin Marshall talks with novelist Craig Davidson, author of Rust and Bone, The Fighter, Sarah Court, and most recently The Fighter, all under his on name, and author of horror fiction under the pseudonyms Nick Cutter and Patrick Lestewka. They discuss Toronto's distance, geographical and in sensibility, from Niagara falls; his potential attraction to desperate settings; modern man's longing for "the test" to be put to; how he came to write books containing no pursuit more genteel than factory labor; Niagara Falls' national bisection, with the black-and-white divide on one side and red-and-white on the other; the effects of the possibility stream into which we each are born; his use of pseudonyms, and whether readers cross over from one to the other; his writing, no matter under which name, novels of the visceral; what Stephen King knows about putting the grotesque right up next to the mundanities of the working class; the decline of boxing, and its continued importance as a stage for pure conflict; the way a fight lets you answer the question "Who am I?", and what he learned when he lost two of them in the name of promotion for The Fighter; the 90-percent female fiction-buying audience, and how he writes for the other 10 percent; how we love wrestling as kids for its moral clarity, then come to see "the general patina of gray"; what counts, in his books, as purely Canadian; and the one simple thing you must do if you don't love your job.

At the University of Toronto, Colin Marshall talks with Mark Kingwell, professor of philosophy and author of such books as A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism, The World We Want: Restoring Citizenship in a Fractured Age, Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City, and most recently the collection Unruly Voices: Essays on Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination. They discuss how the "ongoing argument" that is Canada manifests in Toronto; the University of Toronto's thorough integration into the city itself; why outsiders think of Toronto as a kind of idea of the city made concrete; the many parallels between Toronto and Los Angeles, including the derision both cities draw; a "walking city" as a city where you can walk not just in but between places; where the Torontonian's perception of distance doesn't quite match the geography, as in the crossing of the Don Valley; what got him thinking about the city as a problem of consciousness; the "great stumbling block" of the "world class" designation, which probably means nothing; how to use philosophy and cities as nexuses of subjects, and the benefits of dispensing "mind candy" like Simpsons references in the process; public spaces from the impossible-in-this-century Central Park to the counterintuitively functional Nathan Phillips Square; the Toronto sub-industry of assigning grand names to alleys; quasi-public private space, and how the nicer you dress, the more of it you find; America's legal piety versus its misbehavior; Canada's respect for authority versus its explosions of passive-aggression; what you don't see when you walk through Toronto, such as any element of the erotic; this city as "a whole bunch of silver medals that add up to a pretty nice tally"; the distinction between politeness (which he doesn't actually find among Canadians) and civility; why Torontonians think Rob Ford became mayor; whether a city needs a center, and whether that center must be a public space or a monument of some kind; what it means that the CN Tower represents Toronto; and whether Toronto will keep playing its role as the "real archetypal city."

In Toronto's Christie Pits neighborhood, Colin Marshall talks with Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic, who also writes for such publications as Dwell, Wallpaper, Toronto Life, and Spacing. They discuss whether Honest Ed's has any architectural significance to go with its social significance, and what its imminent disappearance says about the urbanism of Toronto's future; its Los Angeles-like interest in becoming a "more walkable, more urban, more interesting" city; how it nevertheless went high-rise early on, even in its suburbs; the cognitive dissonance of Canada, an urban country that insists upon its rurality; whether the critics of downtown condos have it right when they call them dull; the ways Jane Jacobs' spirit still animates Toronto; its reputation as a city of "great second-rate buildings"; the deal with the Castle Frank station; whether Frank Gehry counts as more of a Torontonian architect, or more of an Angeleno architect; what it means that Toronto will soon get its own high-profile Gehry project, commissioned, no less, by the family of Honest Ed himself; the struggles of a new-wave coffee shop to get permission to open in a "quiet" neighborhood like Christie Pits; how he got interested in both architecture and the city itself at the University of Toronto; what to keep in mind for an architecturally rich view of the city; whether Canadians believe their culture, cities, and neighborhoods more fragile than they really are; what he learned from his time in New York, the city where "public space is the most robust"; the "anti-urban resentment" that holds back Canada and other countries as well; who fights for the preservation of the Sam the Record Man sign; the nonexistence, in Toronto, of "a magical place you drive to"; Toronto as "a bit of a mess," aesthetically; the important difference between prettiness and vitality; how Toronto has only just entered its "greatest point of relevance"; and how complaints indicate a city's greatness.

Out with the raccoons on the closed second-floor balcony of a Toronto bar, Colin Marshall talks with Keith McNally, the podcast auteur behind the shows XO, I Have a Ham Radio, and The Vinyl Countdown. They discuss the function and imminent disappearance of Honest Ed's; podcasting as a 21st-century means of hanging out with "friends" and having man-to-man conversations; why he felt such elation at leaving New York, and how a combination of Keith and the Girl and Ayn Rand drove him there in the first place; how he felt/feels that, in Canada, "we're just not driven"; what forms ambition does take in Toronto; his discovery of the disorder known as misophonia, his own probable misophonia, what misophonia does to urban life, and how he came to make an elaborate podcast about it; Toronto as a 20-percent Japanified New York; his hometown of Frederickton, New Brunswick, how it now looks like a disused movie set, and what it means when you start calling it "Fredeekton"; how his projects run the gamut of podcast production, from tossed-off to made like a watch; which of his fixations have become XO episodes; the lowbrow manner in which he discovered the tragic tale of Roger Swan, an American in Japan; how and why he turned Adam Cadre's piece of interactive fiction Photopia into an XO; his attraction to extremely personal works that he can convert into his own, even more personal works; Youtube bodybuilder Eliot Hulse's advice about getting over a breakup; the Canadian secret about Nickelback; how "there's no shortcut" out of hard work, so you "might as well do what you want to do"; and the search for mementos mori that keeps on drawing him to the stories of those who die young.

In Toronto's Junction, Colin Marshall talks to Amy Lavender Harris, geographer at York University and author of Imagining Toronto, a study of the city as depicted in its literature. They discuss the psychedelically-illustrated, Toronto-centric poetry of Dennis Lee with which so many Torontonians grew up; how it took her thirty years from her Lee-reading days to come to understand the full scope of Toronto literature; In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje's much-named, little-read novel of city-building; how she first went about creating a university course on Toronto literature; her "personal fetish," the narrative of place; multiculturalism as Toronto's foundational myth; why Torontonians falsely believe the United Nations declared their city the world's most diverse; the "eternal haggle" of life here; how she's come to agree, at least halfway, with the description of the city as "a place where people live, but not where things happen"; why, in Canada, everyone has a hyphen; her non-Canadian-born husband's appreciation of the country as one where "people have nothing to declare"; Torontonian manifestations of Stanley Fish's "boutique multiculturalism" and Charles Taylor's "inspired ad-hocing"; why hating Toronto became such a literary and social tradition; no longer talking about achieving "world class" status as a sign of having achieved it; what about Toronto architecture makes people call it ugly, and why buildings that make people talk have already succeeded; the significance of the ravines in the Torontonian consciousness; 1960's suburban satire The Torontonians and the Canadian "flourishing of cultural production" that would come later that decade; Canada's thoroughgoing urbanness against its imaginary self-conception as a rural country; and the important elements of Toronto — remaining, vanishing, and gone — identified in one particular Dennis Lee poem.

Near the University of Toronto, Colin Marshall talks to Alana Wilcox, Editorial Director of Coach House Books and author of the novel A Grammar of Endings. They discuss the past twenty years' boom in Toronto writing; what factors, including an embarrassing mayor in the nineties, made "mythologizing our own city" possible; why Coach House prints right there on premises, "giving cultural producers access to the means of production"; the technological palimpsest of Coach House's offices; the origin of their uTOpia series, which envision the Toronto of the future and which began when "you simply didn't publish about Toronto"; the broadness of the ideas about the city that surprised her, as well as the number of its "civic nerds"; how Coach House pushes for "adventurous" writing, such a recent book on surveillance, a novel about Andy Warhol's Sleep, and Christian Bök's Eunoia; their shifting relationship over the years with the printed book; how she got interested in Toronto herself; what she shows students who turn up on field trips; her lack of worries about the future of the printed book, and how she finds readers process information differently depending on the physical medium of the text; their paper equivalent of 180-gram vinyl; how dominant bookselling chains have persisted in Canada, and the effects of that; Coach House's own books involving the city, like Maggie Helwig's blind-photographer novel Girls Fall Down and an upcoming study of the Ward, Toronto's first slum; her first novel, the second novel she put away, and what writing taught her about publishing; Coach House's "Exploded Views" series, which includes Shawn Micallef's book on all-consuming precarity The Trouble with Brunch and David Balzer's Curationism; shopping by publisher, and how she started doing it herself almost right away, acting as a consumer on her "publishing crushes"; how much of an enemy to consider Amazon; the literary figure from whom Coach House's bpNichol Lane takes its name; her lack of fascination with "CanLit"; the multiculturalism she doesn't see in Toronto; and how the city has lately tired her out.

In Toronto's Kensington Market, Colin Marshall talks to Corey Mintz, author of the Toronto Star column "Fed" and the book How to Host a Dinner Party. They discuss what makes a dinner party a Torontonian dinner party; the city's "uptight" reputation; how he bottomed out in his initial cooking career, winding up working the kitchen at a dinner theater; how he converted to writing and also found a way to take a friend's advice that he "should host dinner parties for a living"; the time he made lunch for Ruth Reichl, and what his editor appreciated more about the blog post he wrote about it than the actual column he did; his dinner party with the disgraced head of the District of Toronto School Board, pre-disgrace; what it means when some like what you do and some dislike it for the same reasons; the art of mixing personalities at the table; why to recognize that "important people can be blowhards," and indeed that blowhardiness often makes them important in the first place; how he keeps the smartphones in peoples' pockets; "Toronto" versus "Toronno"; how he came to regularly invite the city, whatever the pronunciation of its name, into his home for dinner; his food-paradise neighborhood of Kensington Market, which through accidents of history now exists "outside reality, a little bit"; his questioning of his Councillor at dinner about why the neighborhood doesn't have trash cans, and what he learned from the attempt; how Torontonian multiculturalism translates into food; what took him into the secret VIP room of a suburban Nigerian restaurant; and whether he considers his dinner parties the revival of a lost art.

In Toronto's Church-Wellesley Village, Colin Marshall talks to Shawn Micallef, editor and co-owner of Spacing magazine, Toronto Star columnist, and author of such books as Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and The Trouble with Brunch. They discuss his first "long, deliberate" walk in Toronto, which happened by accident; what, exactly, caused this trouble with brunch; his youth in Windsor and his discovery of the middle class in Toronto, which brunches routinely; the death threats his anti-brunch stance has drawn; the difficulty of knowing what class you fit into in the 21st century; choosing flights over children; how Oz-like Toronto looked from back in Windsor; those who stayed behind for the "good money," and what potential they may not have realized as a result; how he began "unpeeling the layers" of Toronto, and how he discovered that infinite peelability defines a great city; the "magical lightness" he discovered upon leaving his car at home; how Toronto doesn't quite know what it has, thinking of itself as a midwestern city more along the lines of Indianapolis; how he developed his obsession with Los Angeles (and how Toronto's 401 freeway surpassed any of Los Angeles' for congestion); why Torontonians insist upon Toronto's and "do not own their Toronto-ness"; Toronto and Los Angeles as cities without stories written in stone, because their people write them even now; the ten-year project behind Stroll; why he finds strip malls the most interesting places in the city, and what drove "actual multiculturalism" out to them; Rob Ford as the "kick in the ass" Toronto may have needed; what you learn when you explore a city at walking speed; and his personal mission to get to know his hometown again, not by car, but on foot.

At Toronto's Queen and Logan, Colin Marshall talks with Denise Balkissoon, co-founder of The Ethnic Aisle and writer on a variety of Torontonian subjects from multiculturalism to real estate for publications like Toronto Life, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and The Grid. They discuss her reputation as an astute observer of the multiculture; what happens at the intersection of multiculturalism and real estate; the wealth flowing into downtown, and the resulting push of "racialized communities" toward the periphery; the formerly working class neighborhood around Queen and Logan and its current, rapid gentrification; the appeal of "tiny little backyards"; how the real estate market's "ferocious competition" made it an interesting beat, but may yet make it boring; on what levels Toronto has lived up to its multicultural promise, and on what levels it hasn't; what her Trinidadian family of engineers, lawyers, and medical professionals thought of her choice to go into journalism; exploring neighborhoods through one's own social links to them, or, alternatively, through the oft-joked about "festival every weekend" Toronto offers; the city's reputation for a lack of physical beauty, and what preservation problems have to do with it; what you find "out there" in the suburbs, an essential part of modern Toronto's multicultural experience; the nature of "Toronto's moment," including but not limited to residents' newfound happiness living there and their enjoyment of the Malaysian, Uighur, and Tamil cuisine on offer; what count as things truly Torontonian, if anything does; the always-personal nature of Toronto's appeal, and what a moment like her husband not eating the heads of shrimp and getting made fun of for it says about that; the Toronto articles she fantasizes about writing, such as studies of housing as a whole, a look at the emergence of "generation rent" as a political force, and the interactions between different waves of immigrants; and whether, after the election, people will still feel like they live between "two Torontos."

In Toronto's Bloordale, Colin Marshall talks with Russell Smith, author of such novels as How Insensitive, Noise, Muriella Pent, and Girl Crazy, as well as style and culture columns in The Globe and Mail, the book Men's Style: The Thinking Man's Guide to Dress, and the e-book Blindsided: How Twenty Years of Writing About Booze, Drugs and Sex Ended in the Blink of an Eye. They discuss whether characteristically Torontonian style choices exist apart from women with business clothes and incongruous running shoes on the way home from work; what got him writing about his cases of retinal detachment; how and why, years before that, he became the novelist who defined young urban Toronto in the 1990s; the internationalist element of Toronto that still remains "electrifying"; whether anyone still longs for the crack-dealing days of gentrifying neighborhoods like Bloordale; the effect of a Starbucks location on house prices (and his own presence as an indicator of coming price hikes); how he got from the academic track, writing on "feminist approaches to symbolist poetry," to the nightlife track; his brief time as a "terrible restaurant critic"; his readers' eagerness to hear him correct common men's style blunders; how much the Toronto of 2014 resembles the one he first came to from his native Halifax; the rise of private, members-only clubs in the city and the importation of "wealthy urban anywhere"; Toronto as Canada's magnet, challenged only by Montreal at first and only by Vancouver now; his view of thus "spectacularly ugly" city and his years in the presumably more attractive Paris; why he thinks hipsters inspire such ire; fiction's near-entirely female readership, and the problems that poses for the "ardent heterosexualist"; the unwritten Toronto books he'd like to read; and what stories don't get told because of the "prim politics" instilled in university-educated writers.