Winston interviews Steven W. Beattie
Steven W. Beattie is a writer and critic in Toronto. He is the Reviews Editor at the Canadian publishing magazine Quill & Quire, and has published in the Vancouver Sun, the Edmonton Journal, Canadian Notes and Queries, and elsewhere. Beattie’s online home is the popular literary blog, That Shakesperian Rag (www.stevenwbeattie.com).
Beattie is also a critic-in-residence of sorts at This Is Not A Reading Series, where he helped kick off the 2009 season by interviewing Priscilla Uppal at the launch of her novel, To Whom It May Concern. He was a panelist at the notorious Salon Des Refuse TINARS event last summer. Beattie recently sat down with his fellow literary journalist, Winston, to discuss the state of Canadian letters.
W: There are acres of books published every year but the Review section of The Quill & Quire is only a few metres long. How do whittle down the stack, to the titles that will receive coverage?
B: There are a number of factors that contribute to deciding what goes into the review section each month. Obviously, there are certain titles that have to be included. We can’t decide not to review the new Margaret Atwood, for example. There are a number of brand-name authors who, like it or not, are important enough to warrant inclusion on the basis of their name alone.
Beyond that, I try to ensure that there is a healthy mix of subjects and publishers represented each month. Where fiction is concerned, I don’t want to focus exclusively on literary novels at the expense of short story collections, genre books, or graphica. Similarly, I don’t want the non-fiction section to tend too heavily toward any one subject, although there are trends that need to be followed in order to stay relevant (eco books are hot right now, for example). I also want to ensure a healthy mix of smaller and regional publishers get their books promoted alongside the multinationals.
One difficulty in this regard is that, being a trade publication, we need to get ahead of the curve in terms of what we review, which means I need to receive advance materials three or four months before the actual publication date. In many cases, smaller houses are hamstrung by limited resources in the way of staff and budget, and can’t afford to produce ARCs and galleys. This tends to give the larger, multinational houses something of an unfair advantage, and I think it’s important to recognize that and work to mitigate it as much as possible when putting the section together.
W: Have you ever vehemently disagreed with the assessments of your contributors? If so, how did you handle it?
B: Of course. I’m a pretty opinionated person, and there are certainly going to be times when I disagree with something one of my reviewers writes. The only time I ever have a problem is if there seems to be an error of fact in a review, or if the opinion seems to come so far out of left field that I feel the need to question it. Otherwise, the reveiwers’ opinions are their own, and I can’t dictate what they write about any given book. So long as they’re reasonably intelligent and are able to back up their opinions, I have to defer to them.
Unless I disagree with them really vehemently, in which case I have enforcers on the payroll to take care of the problem.
W: Where do you stand on that perennial conundrum: rock, paper, scissors?
B: Scissors. I’m an editor.
W: Given that the Canadian publishing world is a series of small concentric circles, it is a virtual certainty that you will find yourself in the same room as someone whose book you just reviewed. How do you cope with that social pressure when you are writing a review?
B: I don’t feel it as social pressure, and I’ve never been accosted by an angry author at an event, although I suppose it’s only a matter of time before that happens. In most cases, though, I find that authors (contrary to the way they’re often portrayed) are fairly reasonable when it comes to reviews. The good ones know to take them as one person’s opinion rather than divine fiat, and so long as the review is intelligent, the vast majority of authors don’t seem to have a problem. It’s important to remember that a review is – or should be – an analysis of a piece of work, not a person’s character. It’s like a performance review, only the review is conducted in a public forum. Most authors understand that. The ones that don’t become belligerent. Just to be on the safe side, I’ve started taking mixed martial arts classes at a local gym. So far, I haven’t had to break out the whoop-ass, except in print.
Now, if you’re asking whether I temper my opinions in a review because I’m nervous about someone’s reaction when I meet them, I’d like to be able to say no unequivocally, but there may be some of that going on subconsciously. I try to be honest with my opinions, but I don’t go out there to deliberately hurt people’s feelings. I agree with Martin Amis in the introduction to The War Against Cliché, when he writes, “Enjoying being insulting is a youthful corruption of power.”
W: Who is your favourite character on Sesame Street? Why?
B: Oscar the Grouch, who taught me everything I know about being a critic.
W: If you could put one literary trend on ice, what would it be?
B: The trend in Canadian fiction that favours backward-looking, lyrical, pseudo-poetic novels written in a kind of ersatz Victorian style. This seems to be the default mode for Canadian novelists, and to my mind it’s responsible for our national literature being mired in a kind of perpetual adolescence. If you look at the novels being produced in practically any other country, you’ll see writers taking more risks, experimenting with different styles, and being more innovative in their use of language than we are here in Canada. Where is the Canadian equivalent of Haruki Murakami, José Saramago, Ali Smith, Roberto Bolaño, Mary Gaitskill, Michel Houellebecq? They don’t exist, because we’ve been trained to believe that the only kind of fiction that is valid in this country, the kind that gets reviewed in the national press and wins the Giller each year, is a hidebound, sclerotic variety of the well-made novel. As a result, our literature tends toward tedium and blandness. There are Canadian writers out there who are trying to buck this trend – think of Stephen Marche, for example, or Kenneth J. Harvey, Stacey May Fowles, Rebecca Rosenblum, Mark Anthony Jarman. But they don’t get the same attention as people like Ondaatje, Urquhart, and Vassanji, in large part because they don’t write the proper kind of books. And in Canada, the proper kind of book is ponderous, serious, and earnest. God forbid a Canadian writer should challenge us, make us laugh, or appear to be having any fun at all. How un-Canadian that would be.
W: What books are currently on your bedside table?
B: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme by Tracy Dougherty
Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
Dandy in the Underworld by Sebastian Horsley
Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag
W: That Shakespeherian Rag is often ‘actual tears’ hilarious, but, also, let’s face it, downright merciless. Do you ever feel that you should tone down the vitriol in light of your day job?
B: Not really. TSR is my own voice, and people seem receptive to that. Everything I write there is attributed to me, and I think it’s understood that the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Quill, or of anyone else, for that matter.
Having said that, I’m always amused when people use words like “merciless” to describe my site, because I really don’t think that it is. I’m fairly outspoken, but I try to avoid ad hominem attacks, which have no place in literary criticism, and I try to keep things fairly tongue-in-cheek most of the time. But I have never felt the need to self-censor or to pull back from saying what I think. Which may come back to bite me on the ass at some point, but there’s not a lot I can do about that. I’ve built up a readership that knows me and knows my voice. I don’t think I could change now, even if I wanted to (which I don’t). If that makes me the Bob McCown of the literary community, so be it.
W: Does the “W” in your name stand for “Winston?”
B: Sadly, no. It stands for Wiley. Yes, as in “coyote.”
W: What songs would you put on a mixtape CD for a bookish girl you were courting?
B: “Romeo and Juliet,” Dire Straits
“Dance Me to the End of Love,” Leonard Cohen
“For You,” Bruce Springsteen
“Bleeding All Over You,” Martha Wainwright
“San Diego Serenade,” Tom Waits
“Make You Feel My Love,” Bob Dylan
“Sexy Results,” Death from Above 1979
