| It’s the wrong time of the year to say so, but sometimes there’s nothing more superficial, repetitive and tedious than the quest for something new. Most often, what gets labelled "new," isn’t. That new Woody Allen film, the new boy band/girl singer, the new cocktail bar – so often they are, in fact, the old film, band or bar, with the slightest alterations to distract you from what you’re really enjoying, which is familiarity.
Really new things take hard work to enjoy. And it’s still a little early in 2004 to get back to the hard work. So here are a few books that satisfy the novelty criterion, simply by having the word "new" in their titles. Many of them are far from new, but they may be fresh to you.
Although it’s been available for, oh, 700 years now, Dante’s Vita Nuova is not just about the start of a new life (after seeing his young muse Beatrice for the first time) but also about developing a new style of writing in late-14th-century Italian. If you can handle so much that is old and new together, find yourself a copy of this ultra-romantic Renaissance autobiography with poems.
For something far more down to earth, jump 500 years ahead to one of the biggest publishing hits at the end of the 18th century. The Newgate Calendar offered (supposedly) morally improving stories of highwaymen and assorted terrible criminals – sort of like an "England’s Most Wanted" of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Rather than inventing something truly new, thieving novelists like Charles Dickens and Henry Fielding pilfered these popular stories for their plots.
Who loves the word "new" even more than everyone else? Canadian anthology editors, that’s who. Turnstone Press recently supplied fans of the macabre with Fresh Blood: New Canadian Gothic Fiction, edited by Eric Henderson and Madeline Sonik. TSAR Publications has A New Chinese Canadian Anthology, edited by Lien Chao and Jim Wong-Chu. Way back in 2001, Vancouver’s Raincoast Books published Write Turns: New Directions in Canadian Fiction. Even if the directions are no longer new, they may still lead you someplace memorable.
And if you’re really looking to extend your imaginative frontiers, Calgary’s own Red Deer Press offers Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction, edited by Claude Lalumière. Published just last August, it really is new.
So put on some old music by New Order, or maybe Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and enjoy. |
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