>>PREVIEW
TODD BABIAK
Friday, October 13
Art Gallery of Calgary
Sunday, October 15
Rolston Recital Hall (The Banff Centre)
Edmonton doesn’t immediately come to mind as the setting for a typical Canadian story, but why not? Life in Alberta is so often portrayed as home of cliché characters the lonesome ranchman and the adulterous housewife. Todd Babiak’s most recent novel, The Garneau Block (McClelland & Stewart, 416 pp.), challenges how we portray ourselves.
Babiak grew up reading cities – London, Paris, New York – the cities that were, in his words, "real enough to be fake," and began to wonder why Edmonton wasn’t confident enough to take its place next to these literary cities.
He was recently in Washington, D.C. for the "Alberta Scene" exhibition, and even there, he was overwhelmed by the ways in which Alberta presents itself to the rest of the world. Everywhere he turned, the topic was oil and the rural life. "The cowboy thing was incomprehensible" to an American audience he says, and all of the presenters were wearing "Alberta at the Smithsonian, 176,000,000,000 barrels" – as if life in Alberta was subsumed by the bottom-line.
When Babiak was approached by the Edmonton Journal to write a serialized novel set entirely in Edmonton, he jumped at the chance to write about the real Edmonton. "Edmonton I know. I don’t know farmers, or high up people in the Conservative Party – but these are the people we see in the newspaper," he says. The Garneau Block was soon serialized in the newspaper for thousands of readers, and Babiak gained a faithful and responsive audience, often receiving 25 to 30 e-mails daily inquiring about his writing and characters.
Babiak was quick to point out that even within Canada, there are cities that create literary myths for themselves, idolizing their own creative space. Mordecai Richler in his St. Urbain's Horseman (1971) – as with many of his novels — defined the cultural voice of Montreal. As Babiak believes, "mythologizing becomes important – we begin to understand ourselves, develop self-esteem. Story is important, we have to hijack story from the massive corporations."
Babiak took as his inspiration Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith (who is also involved in this year’s WordFest) and his novel 44 Scotland Yard, that was also originally serialized. Like 44 Scotland Yard, The Garneau Block concentrates on the inhabitants of a concentrated area, giving focus to the entire city by concentrating on a cross-section of its population.
Babiak believes that "Canadians are being told a global story that has nothing to do with our lives," and that the best way of rectifying that is to begin telling our own tales, creating a fiction which looks inwards, seeks out inspiration in the areas which defy the stereotype, the expectation that "Edmonton is a marginal place, that’s Canada. Canada is fading, we’re being hijacked by marketing."
The Garneau Block elevates the pedestrian of the urban existence into a bitter satire of conservative values and narrow-minded fear of difference. Instead of being afraid to mythologize, Babiak lets his characters – and not the stereotypical prairie writing – define the novel. It weaves an intricate, episodic take on how neighbours discover each other. |
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