Against Despair

A recent facebook post by a grad school friend about her favourite Timothy Findley book, Pilgrim, inspired me to pick up my favourite Timothy Findley book, Headhunter today. (I haven't read all of Pilgrim. It was a bathroom book at my parents' house for a long while, and I really can't think of anything less suited to be a bathroom book.) Headhunter is, in many ways, deeply uneven--but it is also magical and inventive, and thoroughly engrossing.

I had lunch with my mother in Huntsville last week, and we wandered around downtown, and spent sometime poking through the antique shops there. (Sadly, the downtown is mildly less exciting since the yarn shop moved 25 km outside of town.) I was surprised by how many Royal Family-related antiques there were until my mom reminded me of who used to populate the Muskokas in the summertime--anyone who was anyone in Toronto owned land there, and summered outside of the city. And, naturally, anyone who was anyone in Toronto would be a staunch Royalist. In Headhunter, Findley describes this attitude as "more British than the British", which I think works quite well.

The cat would like to say hello. We've been travelling so much these past few weeks that he's been a bit lonely, and is a bit sucky as a result.

I still have to collect my thoughts about Frost/Nixon, but I think I'm closer to formulating exactly why it doesn't work all that well for me--or at least, why it doesn't work as well as I want it to.