It was at the Foothills Hospital earlier today, where I was accompanying my mother who was to receive minor foot surgery, that I first noted that the time was 11:11, my mother’s most beloved and cherished numerological synchronicity, and then the two of us discovered together that poet and classicist Anne Carson, who is my favourite living Canadian writer, has just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Fresh on the heels of Alice Munro in 2013. My response to the announcement of Carson’s receipt of this esteemed but also bizarre prize was so extreme I think we’d have to call it giddy or gleeful. I supposed you’d have to ask my mom. In my home I have a deeply cherished portrait of Carson by Mecca Normal vocalist and one-woman portrait industry Jean Smith. What would A.C. do? I often pause to consider. Upon bumping into her by accident in the dark I may have occasion to find myself softly moaning. Pleadingly, you might say.
One of my favourite quips in 70s cinema comes from Thomas McGuane’s adaptation of his own novel 92 in the Shade (1975). During a scene that finds Peter Fonda in the bathtub with Canadian Margot Kidder, who was at that time married to Thomas McGuane, Fonda asks her why they make soap on a rope and Kidder quickly and caustically replies that it’s so you can retrieve it in case you sallow it.
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