Where Have All The Good Writers Gone?
20-01-2010
I just read a really clever interpretive listing of tonight’s show, and it got me thinking about wit and humour in journalistic writing. Particularly in Toronto’s weekly papers (Eye and Now magazines) humour and wit tend to be synonymous with a sort of sarcasm that I find repulsive. They’re typically used to establish the writer’s superiority in relation to the subject, to create detachment, and to justify degradation.
using humour = the subject doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously
Wit doesn’t have to be so ugly, or so cheap; and it’s a shame that it’s become so for a lot of writers. It can also be a playful form of appreciation:
MUSIC | Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra
The Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra is a sextet of talented musicians who are apparently trying to overthrow an unnamed government regime with re-arranged New Order songs and instrumentals about squids. If that sounds too bizarre to be enjoyable, the PRO is adept at bridging the gap between their progressive arrangements and an 80’s inspired pop sensibility and have earned heaps of positive reviews for their 2009 LP The Torture Memos. The group will play some new material tonight for those eager to hear where they’re headed next and they will also be selling squid hats.
The Tranzac, 292 Brunswick Ave., PWYC, 10 pm,
I like that. Have you ever thought how clever you’d have to be to take this piss out of a hyper-serious and humourless artist (like moi) without making light of the work itself or an ass of yourself? Pretty damn clever.
Apparently the talented writers of Toronto are working for BlogTO – who knew?
The bad-writing epidemic is probably cyclical, usually following an inventive period. You’ve heard the arguments that one great work inspires thousands of lemons (Hemingway ruined a generation of writers, Kerouac the next etc); true or not, it seems to be happening locally for real. Eye magazine tried an iconoclast-in-a-can approach with multiple columnists (perhaps in part to separate themselves from Now, a successful enterprise despite a quarter-century of Pennysaver writing), and for the first few years the writing was strong and distinct, producing Donna Lypchuk, Bill Burrill and a few years later Liisa Ladouceur.
Toronto culture journalism has been in the pale-copy racket since this mid-90s talent spurt — it’s distinctly weak everywhere. Columnists and bloggers are either narcissistic (Leah McLaren, Rebeckler, Russell Smith), gratuitously mean-spirited (Joanne Kate/s Taylor) or both (Kathryn Borel). “Wit” means something very different to these douchebag manques. They were likely the only kids in class who saw the humour in jamming a math compass into another classmate’s spine (always from a voyeur’s perspective, Toronto style). Writers are making a living today from this sort of wit, backed up by idiomatic ESL-hip writing.
Of course if they’re none of the above, they can always take the Lightweight for Life exam and go work for the CBC, further burying Toronto in the view of Canadians coast to coast. A kid in Admiral, Saskatchewan will always get to hear Jesse Wente hyperventilating, Jian Ghomeshi opening a Mazola bottle for guests and Stuart McLean blowing Garrison Keillor’s ghost. No wonder suicide is a holiday tradition in rural Canada.
They’re the afterbirth of a Lypchuk zombie apocalypse, a slug trail across the linoleum floor of Toronto culture. The blogger who wrote the above paragraph should come out and take a bow, a wraith among omnipresent no-talents.
Very provocative, my pseudonomic friend. If Russel Smith – or any of the rest of your “iconoclasts-in-cans” – have google alerts for themselves, I hope to see some ugly.