Bookworm, no. 62
Alexander Sallas on the origins of poutine. Caroline Noël reviews Walter Scott’s “The Wendy Award.” A page from Munir Hachemi’s “Living Things.” Poetry by Ockert Greeff. Inside the October issue.
Poutine Procedure
Poutine: A Deep-Fried Road Trip of Discovery
Justin Giovannetti Lamothe
Douglas & McIntyre
224 pages, softcover and ebook
In Poutine, the journalist Justin Giovannetti Lamothe and his father, a retired fromager, travel across Quebec to solve a long-standing mystery: Who first combined fries, cheese curds, and gravy? The ingredients for Canada’s national dish are simple, but the backstory is more complicated.
Two likely candidates are restaurateurs who claimed that they created poutine in the late 1950s. Jean-Paul Roy of Drummondville aimed to satisfy “somewhat pickled” customers who craved late-night sustenance. Fernand Lachance of Warwick fulfilled a regular’s unusual request to mix fries and cheese curds. He dubbed the creation une maudite poutine (“a bloody mess”). Some Quebecers believe that a family restaurant in Princeville first offered the dish and called it mixte. Others look to Sherbrooke or Victoriaville. Regardless of the evidence available, this good-natured debate “likely won’t end anytime soon, if only because it’s so enjoyable to so many people.”
While Lamothe insists that he is not a food writer, his descriptions of the dish serve up some of the book’s tastiest parts. An intoxicating gravy is “dark and thick, its fragrance heading straight to my brainstem.” Perfect, squeaky curds recall “a bicycle stopping in the rain.” Lamothe samples poutine in Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta before trying it in New Zealand, his wife’s home country. Adaptations incorporate sweet gravies or thick-cut fries, and a version inspired by Buffalo wings arrives slathered in hot sauce. In the end, none live up to the classic that the author devoured as a teenager in Trois-Rivières. Others may be technically better—fresher fries, richer gravy, firmer curds—but there’s more to food than meets the tongue.
—Alexander Sallas
Art Attack
The Wendy Award
Walter Scott
Drawn & Quarterly
248 pages, softcover and ebook
In 2014, the cartoonist Walter Scott published Wendy, his first graphic novel about a talented twentysomething artist from Montreal with a drinking problem. In The Wendy Award (the last hurrah of what became a series of Wendy books), the troubled but now established party animal must decide whether her craft is worth more than her sanity.
At first glance, Wendy has succeeded. She has moved to Toronto, fans regularly approach her for autographs, and Regional Art has announced her as a finalist for the National FoodHut Contemporary Art Prize. But she feels constrained by the hostile industry, where only politically correct expression earns corporate funding. Then a journalist exposes her acclaimed comic strip as a thinly veiled account of her friends’ lives. Soon after, nasty takes trickle online, among them “The amount of unchecked privilege this artist flexes I am literally shaking” and “More cis-woman nonsense.” Dejected, Wendy gets plastered. Will she ever get on the straight and narrow? Is there such a thing as a balanced life when you create art for others’ sake?
Scott dutifully captures the contemporary art scene, where self-righteous critics and internet trolls reign. Common woes, such as rent hikes, climate change, and masking (or not), appear on the periphery. His black and white illustrations avoid straight lines and rigid proportions, with a frenzied style that matches his characters’ moods. In other words, this is a relatable and endearing book.
—Caroline Noël
Book Tasting: Living Things
Alejandro claims that in current times—bringing everything back to current times is a trait I admire in his thinking—writers don’t need a good memory; sometimes it even gets in the way. G is smoking in silence. I say Funes would concur, but something about his reasoning doesn’t sit right with me. He asks what, and G looks my way. It takes me a while to reply because I’m embarrassed, but in the end I admit to having a lot of insecurity around my bad memory (long-term; my short-term memory is exceptional). For a minute we all fall quiet. Ernesto walks out of the caravan holding a pot of coffee, looks around, and sits down with us. I tell them that the writers I admire—more than anything, it’s the tacit confession that I want to be a writer that most embarrasses me—either have or had great memory: Piglia, Borges, Bolaño, etc. They also share a gift for the quick retort, a brilliant use of irony, and the witty, cutting note. G says all three are white and male. I’m not sure what he’s implying—or rather I can think of several things he may be implying but struggle to zero in on a single one (I’m still struggling as I write this). Alejandro makes a point I find oddly comforting: he says that what all three have in common is success and a certain aptitude in the field—these are his exact words—but that the field has changed; we live in the age of Google, our Absolute Memory (he says it like that, capitalized), and in our day and age it’s the nimble writer who will prevail, the writer who can fashion a persuasive argument out of a handful of facts, the anti-Google. I’m about to say you could use that same argument as a rebuttal, but I’m hypnotized by his apocalyptic tone and decide not to interrupt. G intervenes. He asks if Álex has read Byung-Chul Han. I take advantage of the fact that he can’t reply—Ernesto just passed him a joint—and cut in again. Maybe I’m unconsciously jealous of these white men’s fame. “But,” I say, “all I would need to reject that fame is knowing I’ve written a single memorable page. Even if I couldn’t sign my name to it. It’d be enough to write one page like Borges.” It dawns on me that I’ve been sincere: the pleasure of good writing trumps the business of success. G says I’m being idealistic. He isn’t wrong. And yet, I was being sincere.
I worry these reflections could serve literature as an entry point to my story. Yet, my elaborating on them here still counts as a form of sincerity, given that all my thinking is being done through that yellow notebook. Keeping a journal is a perilous thing, and we should be warned against it as children. In a way, fixing the past and referring back to that past means becoming enmeshed in the dense thicket of memory.
—Munir Hachemi
Excerpted with permission from Living Things (Coach House Books). Read more about Munir Hachemi’s book, translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches, in a physical copy of the latest Literary Review of Canada.
Poet’s Corner
But Their Soft Insides Spill Out
As they reach with blunt limbs
Forward
Into space unknown
Leaving shallow trails—
Sticky tears
That follow as they go.
—Ockert Greeff is a South African Canadian poet and drummer in Montreal. Find more of his work in a physical copy of the latest Literary Review of Canada, on newsstands now.
Inside the October Issue
“Where and when did this conflict begin?” John Lorinc on the history of Palestine.
Kayla Penteliuk reviews Never Been Better, a novel by Leanne Toshiko Simpson.
“It presents an important writer on the cusp of greatness.” Sharon Hamilton reviews We Were the Bullfighters, a novel by Marianne K. Miller.
And much more!
Election Reflection
On September 29, the magazine’s editor, Kyle Wyatt, will be in conversation with David Marks Shribman at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and frequent Literary Review of Canada contributor will discuss how readers can wade through the sea of United States election coverage yet to come. Get your tickets today!