Evie Christie

11's

2012-01-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

Most of the books I read have not come out the year I read them. And most are not Canadian.

Here are two that are or were or did.

Matt Rader's A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno. It's so good.

Stuart Ross' Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. Also so good.

Excited to read David McGimpsey's L'il Bastard. Like so excited.

And in my first installment of 'books that give you a boner when you see them in the shop': Martin Amis' Larkin Selected (Philip Larkin Poems, Faber). Sure, we all have these poems in some form. And Sean O'Brien wants to remind us to feel like dorks for buying this product of Christmas marketing but... it's so good looking.

2011-07-06T18:40:00.001-07:00

2011-06-30T06:15:00.001-07:00

2011-06-27T10:24:00.001-07:00

2011-06-27T10:21:00.001-07:00

NOBODY'S GONNA GO TO THE PICTURE

2011-06-24T17:58:00.001-07:00

I genuinely love people who say, "it's a free country".

2011-06-24T17:34:00.001-07:00

ANDROMACHE

2011-05-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

Is coming. So soon.

MATT BERRY (IS SO DISGUSTING BUT I STILL WANT TO HAVE HIS BABIES)

2011-05-07T22:42:00.001-07:00

COME

2011-03-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Modern Takes on Old Stories
Luminato 2011 examines modern takes on old stories, from its commission of One Thousand and One Nights, to Evie Christie’s adaptation of Racine’s Andromache, to Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s production of LU XUN blossoms. Join One Thousand and One Nights’ director Tim Supple, author Evie Christie, artistic director Dean Gilmour and renowned Columbia professor Muhsin al-Musawi, an expert on One Thousand and One Nights, for a rich discussion on the craft of adaptation and interpretation.

Modern Takes on Old Stories takes place on Saturday, June 18 at 4:30 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West. Free.

MAGGIE HUCULAK

2011-02-12T23:18:00.000-08:00

(Justin Rutledge and Maggie Huculak, Theatre Passe Muraille)

I attended Necessary Angel's Divisadero (Brooks & Ondaatje) this week and while I'm no critic (and am associated with the company) I have to say I was blown away by Maggie Huculak. She gave a beautiful performance and I think everyone fell a little in love with her as Anna that night.

EVERY WOMAN LOVES A FASCIST

2011-02-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I never had a 'Plath Stage' but Nick Mount gave me Ariel when I was finished writing my first book. I think he had an extra copy on his shelf.

I'm reading Track & Trace (Zach Wells) and come across Kaddish which riffs on Sylvia Plath's Daddy and is thankfully also very much its own poem. What I love about Plath's poem is what I love in this poem, the lean lines are engorged with violent, blooming sounds and levelled with domestic and physical imagery.
If Daddy speaks to those primal anxieties, that mess of identity, language and its inevitably frustrating brethren--innaccesability--Wells' Kaddish measure up the same fat cut with insights turned on their head, self knowledge busting the margins. The foriegn "Ach, du" becomes the clear-as-can-be "you" and the brute is the speaker, the man himself wears the shoe Plath's speaker didn't dare sneeze in for fear.
Plath has been criticized for her appropriation of history, her use of Aushwitz (Dachau, Belsen, the entirety of Third Reich imagery!). Wells' speaker, being "a bit of a Jew" (Plath) shrugs off the victim motif and realizes himself in the "stubborn, wicked and true" man his grandfather was. There is a full fledged understanding of being, a certain powerlessness of will in the act of recognition--Plath's Daddy died too soon for the speaker to kill him whereas Wells' speaker needn't have known the man in life to know he is the very brute he's been told about in the family lore in which we're all subjected.

I'm so sold on those sounds: the "clear beer", "an Arab, a Jew", "Achoo", "Boohoo", the sounds in "threaded in her like a screw" and "chuffing me off like a Jew" are enough for me to have read and re-read these poems all week while I was supposed to be doing other things.

GETAWAY (WITH BOOK AND SKATES)

2011-02-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

PRETTY ON THE INSIDE

2010-12-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

The 2010/2011 Necessary Angel Program has arrived. And so pretty.

BOOK LOVE

2010-12-29T13:55:00.000-08:00

Just got this book from my Prof. the other day. He's so brilliant and funny, more here...

AUDIOFILES

2010-12-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

2010-12-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

Join in the bookish voyeurism!

NATIONAL POST REVIEWS THE BOURGEOIS EMPIRE

2010-12-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

"The most striking thing about Evie Christie’s unconventional debut novel, The Bourgeois Empire, is its point of view — not because of its use of the second person, which is a formal device that Christie is willing to let slip on occasion, but for the withering cold eye it casts on masculine stereotypes... That the book works so well is testament both to Christie’s wonderfully alert writing and the way she maintains a perfectly balanced moral tone throughout."

Read more! (If you want to, of course).

A NICE SONG

2010-11-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

BROKEN PENCIL FEATURE

2010-10-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

More here...

AGE OF CONSENT: STACEY MAY FOWLES ON THE BOURGEOIS EMPIRE FOR BROKEN PENCIL

2010-10-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Age of Consent
Stacey May Fowles eagerly explores Evie Christie's corrupt new novel The Bourgeois Empire
By Stacey May Fowles

I haven't read this yet, I did answer a few questions in haste.

AMIS ON LARKIN ('S WOMEN)

2010-10-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

"Larkin's life was a failure; his work was a triumph. That is all that matters. Because the work, unlike the life, lives on."

I can't imagine there are many men I'd like to read/read about more. Though I'm not certain any of them is in fashion anymore.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL REVIEWS THE BOURGEOIS EMPIRE

2010-10-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

"Christie crafts short, feverish chapters of radiant prose. In their whirlwind series of images and ideas, they blur the lines between the imaginary and real worlds, entrenching the reader in a surreal and slightly sinister landscape."

Read the whole review here!

TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL REVIEWS THE BOURGEOIS EMPIRE

2010-10-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

Told as a second-person narrative, Evie Christie's debut novel is brutally brilliant. The protagonist is a man - "oldish, hot, tired and in the throes of an impressive existential failure" and hopelessly in love with a 15-year-old girl. Christie puts you in the shoes of this despicable man, but ties the laces with compassion. "This is you, your one life ... And this is it?" writes Christie, judging you more for wasting your time as a businessman than your pedophilia. This is a man whose bourgeois empire life hardly mattered. His deviant behaviour is framed as a sad, hopeless answer to what you want from life: "something different. Not really better, just something else."

NORTH OF SUPERIOR

2010-08-17T20:10:00.001-07:00

2010-08-15T16:29:00.001-07:00

HITCH (AND AMIS)

2010-08-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

DELIVERANCE

2010-07-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Mister Good!

FIRST GUESSES (GO ON AND BLEED)

2010-07-28T21:23:00.001-07:00

SAY THE WORD (AND I'LL JOIN YOUR CULT)

2010-07-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

THE REAL REASON

2010-07-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

people (or not creepy men) buy my book. In case I thought otherwise!

MY ELIOT

2010-06-30T04:50:00.000-07:00

Alessandro Porco's My T.S. Eliot (some surprises here, there's a stamp involved...) is well worth a read. Oh, and "Rhapsody"! The best medicine.

FINE

2010-06-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

FRANCO (NOT QUITE) REVOLUTION

2010-06-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

BUT a nice story in "Just Before the Black".

IF THEY GLEAM IN THE SUN

2010-06-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

Sent to me this weekend. A fine reminder that you should date thugs in your lifetime--if only for the music (I don't mean this ironically).

3 HEARTWARMING THINGS

2010-05-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

And unrelated products, yours for ordering now.

Apparantly we need 4 pints of blueberries a day which have a street value of 10 dollars a pint. There's a blueberry scientist involved.

Pancake Puffs. Someone needs to make that 'cake'.

Perfect Fit, no one will ever know... (Basically a custom tailor at your fingertips).

MORRIS SPACE

2010-04-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

The wonderful Christopher Morris (of Human Cargo and necessary Angel fame) graces DESK SPACE this week.

THE POETRY FORTUNE TELLER

2010-04-12T18:09:00.001-07:00

This is the kind of thing that inspires me to be a cooler person.

CURIOUS EXCESS

2010-04-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

Michael Lista, Dani Couture and Susan Holbrook read the entirety of their latest work on Julie Wilson's Seen Reading!

STILL BALLIN'

2010-03-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

Polaroid is back and I'm in love.

BUY ME

2010-03-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

Buy Bourgeois! Early!

VOTE FOR STUART

2010-03-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

Because too much not voting for Stuart Ross can make you go blind...

You can vote everday for the wondrous collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog on the Alberta Reader's Choice Award site.

SOME BIG UPS

2010-03-08T07:42:00.000-08:00

On poet/essayist/editor Alex Boyd's BOYDblog this week via his essay Comfort and Canadian Poetry. Thank you, Mr. Boyd!

2010-02-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

WHAT PAUL SAID

2010-02-27T18:06:00.000-08:00

Vermeersch, on my book. Via Open Book Toronto today!

SWEET TALK

2010-02-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

One day my next book will come, I swear. But for now I live for such sweet words. Thank you Mr. Jonathan Ball on Ex Machina fame. Oh, and the forthcoming Clockfire (Coach House, 2010).

SMILING THINGS

2010-02-25T22:45:00.000-08:00

amis novel‏

To: eviejade@hotmail.com

Hey Evie,

The new Amis novel is out in the UK

It comes out here in May here, but I’ve ordered us both a copy from the UK

Can’t wait!

JUST LIKE

2010-02-21T20:12:00.000-08:00

GET POSSESSED

2010-02-21T18:52:00.000-08:00

by Elif Batuman! Now!

“She’s the kind of reader who sends you back to your bookshelves with a sublime buzz in your head. You want to feel what she’s feeling. . . It’s tempting to keep quoting from her book forever.” ---New York Times

PRETTY BIRDS

2010-02-16T19:12:00.000-08:00

(applies to the bunting and Miss Brenda)

24 HOUR PSYCHO

2010-02-04T13:52:00.000-08:00

Don DeLillo profiled, excerpted, reviewed!

2010-02-04T07:59:00.000-08:00

CROSS DRESSING AND POISON TIPPED UMBRELLAS

2010-02-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

I've always had a pretty serious crush on Ehud Barak and missed his visit to Sde Nehemia by a mere two days. Now more so than ever, semantics aside. What will Bibi have to say?!

MY FAVOURITE EVIE CHRISTIE

2010-01-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

Hands down!
I've happily received a message or two from this cool kid in the past regarding our namesake.

OPENING NIGHT

2010-01-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

of Hamlet, a while ago. From photographer Eric Malette's coverage of the evening.

MUGGING

2010-01-23T14:28:00.000-08:00

If this mug were only on the market! blackmark is my most favourite ever blog. It's just so sparse and beautiful.

FEBRUARY 17TH

2010-01-17T08:09:00.000-08:00

Is where it's at today. Listen in! I'm just imagining the Hughesian miracle of wool and collars and neckties in the room.

"Of all the mistakes a lamb can make the worst is having got himself conceived inside a rather small mother, then to grow too big before being born."

NP'S MOST ANTICIPATED OF 2010

2010-01-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

Mark Medley's list includes at least one of my own most anticipated books in Michael Lista's Bloom and of course there's Don DeLillo's Point Omega to dream about.

And Amis' The Pregnant Widow gets some love from Andrew Anthony in The Observer. Just when I thought I was the only one still reading.

THE THIRD DEGREE

2010-01-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed by the talented Mr. Jonathan Ball for his 8 Ball series. Read on for my awkward and ill-informed responses!

LATELY

2010-01-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

I'm so into Mr. Campbell's blog. Also my most anticipated Desk Space right now...

"When the Tories were slowly imploding in the run up to our first landslide victory in 1997, former minister Alan Clark called me to bemoan his party's fate.

As my diaries show, this fellow diarist phoned me rather a lot, more than his party whips and apparatchiks appreciated."

STUART ROSS: 2010

2010-01-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

You can fit it in a phone booth.
It phones god.

Read on!

TONIGHT, WALKING HOME (PRETTY WINDOWS)

2010-01-05T18:02:00.000-08:00

SHANE MACGOWAN'S BEAUTIFUL BLOODY MOUTH

2009-12-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

BECAUSE BRUNO NOW HAS EVA

2009-12-16T23:05:00.000-08:00

READING, RE-READING OR ABOUT TO BE READING

2009-12-15T14:33:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Ball's Ex Machina

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood

Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness

Ted Hughes' Seneca's Oedipus

And reading new installments of The Minutes on Augustine in Carthage.

2009-12-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

A GOOD CAUSE

2009-11-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends, Colleagues, Ex-girlfriends, Distant Family Members, Bus Drivers,etc,
I am very pleased and attractive to announce that The Fifth Annual Mustaches for Kids mustache growing contest and fundraiser is under way! Last year our devoted mustachees, raised $20,000 for Make a Wish Eastern Ontario.

But Adam, i don't like personal interaction with you!
That's OK! I understand. Really. I have to be around myself all the time, and I know it can be painful. Even though I will be coming around and asking you for a donation, this kind of personal interaction can be avoided. Simply go to the Mustaches for Kids homepage, where you can choose to sponsor me via PayPal.

LABOUR CAMPS, CALIFORNIA, MERLE HAGGARD

2009-11-12T17:19:00.000-08:00

MCLAREN TALKS HAMLET

2009-11-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

Graham McLaren interviewed by the Harbourfront folks for Necessary Angel's Hamlet

DOUBLE GUITAR

2009-11-07T11:37:00.000-08:00

Steve of this video, you are great.

ISSUES

2009-11-05T23:29:00.000-08:00

The Taddle Creek Winter issue launches on Thursday, December 3rd, at El Mocambo, 464 Spadina Avenue (second floor) at 8pm.

Here's my poem, Handful (after Roddy Lumsden's Hard Work) and an excerpt of Nathaniel G. Moore's work-in-progress, Savage.

AMIS ON TITS, ROTH ON DEATH (OF THE NOVEL) SAME OLD...

2009-11-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Still, I'd take one arrogant, apocalyptical, bit-of-a-dick novelist over ten sweet blogging careerists. Same goes for real life. Doubly so!

TODAY

2009-10-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

Work

Something other than work

CHRIS CARSON: SIMPLE MATHEMATICS

2009-10-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

This makes me smile. I met this talented young man on my boyfriend's film.

NECESSARY ANGEL

2009-10-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

Necessary Angel in today's Globe and Mail:
New works by Michael Ondaatje, Daniel MacIvor and John Mighton, plus a pared down, "sexy and brutal" production of Hamlet headline Necessary Angel's 2009-2010 season...
The season rounds out with three development workshops: Brooks and Mighton teaming up to continue work on their joint venture Risk; a new English adaptation of Brigitte Haentjens's Tout Comme Elle; and a modern adaptation of Racine's Andromache by McLaren and poet Evie Christie.

And a piece in Theatre Mania

And here's more on Andromache!

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS KNOCKS TWICE

2009-09-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

and sometimes he brings pretty stuff for me

STAY IN BED AND READ LARKIN ALL DAY

2009-09-15T15:59:00.001-07:00

It's a goal. Right now I'll settle for a Letter to a Friend about Girls.

YEAH

2009-09-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

I totally remember listening to Brothers In Arms over and over. Geek out...

GENERATION :(

2009-08-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

"A generation gets the culture it deserves..."

Kind of funny piece in the Guardian Books Blog by Ben Myers
the comments are also pretty great

IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN

2009-08-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

LITERATURE AND THE NATION STATE

2009-08-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Michael Lista takes on Ken McGoogan

PLAY THAT BUILDING

2009-08-09T18:08:00.000-07:00

Playing the Building III. In London.
David Byrne is a genius isn't he?

IN MY BED

2009-08-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

My friend Adam's new video!

1! 2! 3! 4!

2009-08-09T10:34:00.001-07:00

ON NOT GETTING INVITED TO THE BEST PARTIES

2009-08-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Alex-not-a-bad-person-Good on negative reviews in today's Globe and Mail...

PETER DARBYSHIRE'S PORN HABITS

2009-07-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

Exposed!

TALKING DESKS WITH BRIAN JOSEPH DAVIS

2009-07-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

In the Globe Books blog, In Other Words.

OH JOY

2009-07-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

My short story, Leisure is up on Joyland. Swoon. That and Wilco's You and I have made my day.

GOOD AT COMPUTERS

2009-07-14T14:08:00.000-07:00

GRACE STREET CHURCH

2009-07-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

Watch Michael Lista Reads Leonard Cohen's "Teachers" in Drama | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

"It's not EXACTLY like masturbating in public, but it comes close"

2009-07-04T08:21:00.000-07:00

--Steven Beattie- Writer, Blogger and Cultural Critic
From Lauren Kirshner's Open Book Toronto piece on Writing in the Hometown.

Revue Review

2009-07-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

My little review of The Velocity of Escape is up. I first read Johnstone’s poems from the CBC Poetry Prize. Having met Jim since I know that the new book, Patternicity is coming sometime soon. I'll look forward to it.

WHAT HAPPENS

2009-07-01T13:43:00.001-07:00

Suddenly you're standing there, dressed like that, playing Shelter From the Storm like you've never even heard Blood on the Tracks.

Guys who have fashion/philosophical phases are awesome like the awesomest of girls.

THE KILLING OF

2009-06-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

If you don't love Cassavetes (or Jeff Buckley) you're probably crazy--Faces destroyed me.

MARRY ME

2009-06-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Seriously.

Rilke was a great poet, so he was probably right.

2009-06-12T00:44:00.001-07:00

A Nice Poem

2009-06-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

on CLM--broke my awful little heart

This

2009-06-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

is the new book I'm most looking forward to reading right now

ANYTHING

2009-05-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

Is what I'd give to be ignored and/or ridiculed in Martin Amis' class this summer. (Seriously.) Now I need a week, more money and the ability to deal with workshops.

LATE NEWS

2009-05-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Michael Lista, Nick Mount and Taddle Creek--up for National Magazine Awards this year. I know, whatever, this news came out a long time ago.