[Crickets Chirping]

..and that was 2012.  Sorry for the silence here.  I’ve been lax about posting links to interviews and other media appearances here (doing so instead on twitter and facebook) — which is bad because a blog is a much better archive.(1)  It’s also not enclosed inside someone else’s proprietary scheme (let us not speak of which moments Facebook’s algorithm chose for me as my 2012 highlights).

This fall was an absurdly busy and surprisingly difficult term in some ways–despite some really wonderful highlights–which deserves a proper autopsy.  In the meantime, I’ve got some grading to finish up and a couple deadlines to hit, so please excuse my return to silence.

One of the nice things about a blog is that you can leave it and come back to it, which is apparently what I do.  2013 will bring some more content as I move into new undertakings.

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1.  MP3 has been getting lots of nice reviews, too (best review title goes to “Music for Cat Heads” in the Dutch magazine Gonzo (circus)) , but I haven’t been systematic in compiling them in part because I have a strange physical aversion to reading them.  My eyes glaze over and I can’t make it through.

 

Baby’s First Quebec Election

This comes a little late but sobeit.  Tuesday we voted for the first time as Canadian citizens.  We’d registered a couple weeks back, and the volunteers there assumed that as Americans we would expect fancy electronic machines.  They warned us, “it’s very old fashioned.”  And it was: we arrive at the polling place (a short two block walk from our home).  We stood in line for a few minutes, as there were about 10 stations spread around a room.  Each station had two or three people checking ID and handling ballots.  They checked my ID, gave me a ballot and a pencil.  Then I went behind a cardboard screen and marked it with the pencil.  There was a single choice on it: which representative of which party I wanted as my MNA.  Then I folded the ballot, tore off a receipt, and dropped the ballot in the box and handed the receipt to one of the women at my table.  It was very old fashioned, and it was the opposite of efficient or automated.  There were lots of people there and everything was done by hand.  Here’s the thing: sometimes democracy should be efficient. It was nice to walk into a room full of people making sure the electoral process happened right.

Tuesday night I listened to the results with one ear as I carved through the deluge of paperwork I’ve got these days (that’s the subject of another post).  It was actually quite exciting in our riding: liberals by 1 vote, then Parti Québécois by 15, back and forth until the liberal candidate took a firm lead late in the game.  But Quebec Solidaire, the left party, actually gave the PQ a run for their money, coming in third, but a close third.

By the time Pauline Marois was making her victory speech, I was done and watching, and yes we saw the SQ cops suddenly remove her from the stage and the insanity that followed.  The whole thing was very, well, American.

The next night I got home and got on Facebook and was blown away by the sniping back and forth.  I can’t believe people are blaming either her or Anglos for a crazy person with a gun, but I guess that’s a version of reductio ad hitlerium on the internet.

Yes the PQ won and yes they are, among other things, an ethnic nationalist party, and it’s not my ethnicity.  Yes, they are separatist, and yes some of their proposals sounded pretty bad.  But others are quite good. So I’m keeping an open mind for now.

Perhaps it’s my privilege of not having grown up Anglo Canadian and not having children in the English-language school system.  I also don’t have the emotional attachment to the separatism issue.  I realize it defines Quebec politics–and it’s a shame, since I think most people care a whole lot more about things like healthcare, education, and jobs.   At the same time, nationalism and language politics are much more complex questions than simply another referendum.   I’ve benefitted some from Bill 101 in the sense of the whole city being like flash cards.  I’ve learned a lot more French than I might have otherwise, and I didn’t know how much I knew until I went to Paris and found it relatively easy to get by (except for all my idiomatic expressions, which were many and useless).  And there are still legacies of Anglo entitlement here and elsewhere in Canada that have to be hard to take.  I don’t look forward to constitutional battles or another referendum (where I would certainly vote against Quebec becoming an independent country).

But I also haven’t appreciated the shrill tone of the mainstream English-language press, which is every bit as much “us vs. them” as they claim the PQ to be, and sometimes moreso. They are just as much the problem as the people at whom they point their fingers.  I joked that as an American voting for the first time as a Canadian, I had lots of practice holding my nose at the ballot box, and in the end, I did as there was no perfect choice.  But that’s organized politics.  For my part, I just hope that the election did not fully co-opt the student movement, and that perhaps other vital social goods like healthcare will be added to the agenda of things for which Quebeckers take a stand in the coming weeks, months and years.

Oops . . . while we were away

I can see I’m going to have to up my game. Since my last post, I’ve had a small bevy of media appearances, which I have dutifully Tweeted and Facebooked, but between travel and too many deadlines, I’ve not posted them here.  I can now see the advantage of that whole Tumblr integrate your online universe thing.

So, some catch-up of where else I’ve been on the internet this month:

Slate Review

Pitchfork Interview (and Wall Street Journal blog post)

Times Higher Education Supplement Review

Times Higher Education Supplement opinion piece on the Quebec student movement, co-authoed with Lilian Radovac

FACT Magazine Interview

and, in case you’re in town:

Montreal Book Launch: 12 September 12, 19.00-21.0-0 at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly

I hope I didn’t miss anything.

More news here as it happens.

Feature or Bug? Ebooks roll out later

Authors–especially academic authors–should always be happy when people want to read their work, and flattered by desire for access. And so please consider me flattered: thanks for reading and thanks for caring enough to tweet about it.

But since Steven Shaviro’s comment mirrored my own confusion about a month ago (and has been making the rounds), and since there’s a more interesting and profound truth to Steven’s post that I can’t get out in 140 characters, I’m taking the time to blog a reply.

Duke University Press originally told me that MP3 would be out in ebook as well as paperback, but as the release date approached, I couldn’t find any evidence of it on kindle or ibooks. I emailed Laura Sell at DukeUP, and she assured me they were coming. It’s just that it takes longer for e-books to come out.

Let that sink in. If you are of the Nicholas Negroponte persuasion–“digital books never go out of print, they are always there” — this makes no sense: analog books are atoms, digital books are bits. Negroponte’s argument perfectly fits my own mindset as a consumer of digital content. Why can’t I have all my digital stuff instantaneously and on exactly my own terms? I remember years ago when Joel Schalit put out a new record on iTunes and I couldn’t get it in Canada because of international licensing agreements. Totally a drag. Let’s not even speak of the new season of Damages. Though of course there are workarounds.

So as a reader, listener–and in this case as an author–I want to believe the promises of ubiquity and instantaneity. Basically, I want Being Digital to be true.

But as an intellectual, I know it’s not.

As an intellectual, I’m not at all of the Negoponte persuasion.* When it comes to content, I’m more of the Tarleton Gillespie persuasion, that digital book services want to cast themselves as platforms, who at once attempt to provide content, shape the user experience, define the market and affect policy. In other words, they work more or less like old media, just with slightly different ingredients in the salad (to mix a metaphor).

So from this perspective, it’s no surprise that the e-books are coming out later than the paper copy. But they should arrive within a month or so.

In fact the whole release date thing is slippery. Amazon said “August 6th,” which was conveniently my birthday. At first I thought someone at Duke had a sense of humour. Then I realized it was random. Then I realized it was meaningless when Patrik Svensson wrote in mid-July to tell me the book showed up in Sweden.

In the meantime, the intro to MP3 is available online, and of course, there’s always the wax cylinder, about which I will have more to say in the coming days.

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*For the record, I’m also of the Matt Kirschenbaum persuasion that bits are atoms.

The Citizenship Ceremony

Yesterday Carrie and I were sworn in as Canadian citizens. Our ceremony took about two hours. First, all 40-odd immigrants (from 25 countries) had to have their IDs checked, and get one last set of questions as to whether we’d been in trouble with the law or immigration since we submitted our forms. We also signed a form with the oath of citizenship on it, which meant (as with marriage certificates and weddings) that we were probably legal citizens at that point even though we hadn’t yet gone through the ceremony.* Then we were all called back into the room. A clerk explained the ceremony (in both English and French), and then a judge came in and spoke to us, mostly in French. She said all the things you’d expect her to say at a citizenship ceremony — it’s our big day, it’s an accomplishment, it’s a responsibility, we should explore Canada, fulfill our dreams, etc. But a couple things stood out.

Her speech had a section that was especially addressed to women. She talked about equality of opportunity for women as one of the defining aspects of Canada. She spoke about being able to be a woman judge. On one level, to the highly educated crowd I run with, this can sound hokey, or even problematic given the way “women’s rights” has been used as a lever in some Islamophobic talk. But on another level it rang true for me as something that distinguishes Canada. Can you imagine a U.S. citizenship judge instructing immigrants on women’s equal rights? And I have to say there was plenty of male entitlement (and not just male privilege) on display in France and Germany when I visited. Sure, it’s still a patriarchy here too, but the sentiment was meaningful given the occasion, and I can think of lots of occasions where there is a greater presumption of equality here than in other places.

Beyond the rights and responsibilities talk, she actually thanked us for becoming citizens. I’ve never seen or heard of an official of a country expressing gratitude to immigrants before. Maybe that’s common, but I found it notable. Also, amazingly, you actually get a decent free gift (not counting the Maple Leaf pin and flag).

After the speech, we had our names called to come up and collect our citizenship certificates and shake hands with the judge.

Then, we recited the oath of citizenship in both languages, and sang the national anthem, also in both languages. Right beforehand, the clerk spoke and said the second strangest thing I heard yesterday**: that he needs to see us saying the oath in order for us to be citizens, and that if he doesn’t see it, they might cancel our citizenship. Besides being utterly bizarre and probably unenforceable (they weren’t looking up photos as we were reciting the oath), it also suggests that they’re playing on people’s experiences in more authoritarian states. Then again, maybe with iris scanning, this will be our future as well. Or maybe not.

People were very happy, many pictures were taken, and yes, I got butterflies right before my name was called to go get my certificate. Afterwards, we went and had coffee at the Queen Elizabeth, with our friend Darin, who had joined us for the event.

Up next: my citizenship FAQ

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* All the interviews, documentation and medical checks happen for permanent residency. For citizenship, they count the days you’re physically on Canadian soil (very 19th century, but with an online “residence calculator”), and then you take a multiple-choice exam, which is really also a literacy test in French and English, and given the multiple choice works, also a test of a certain type of Western-style bureaucratic reason.

** The strangest thing was a pictographic sign on the inside of the bathroom stall doors instructing people to throw used toilet paper in the toilet, not on the floor. They must have had problems.