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Reading the blues >> Montreal's new international literary festival by JULIET WATERS
While Blue Metropolis may not necessarily be the over-the-top festival of Laferrière's dreams, at least the name is meant to start the imagination rolling. "It's a name that I made up about two and a half years ago," explains novelist and festival organizer Linda Leith. "It refers to an imaginary city, a city we'd like to live in. A kind of utopia. People can project whatever they'd like onto it. It's like a Rorschach test. There's a book by a great American writer, William Gass, On Being Blue. It's a very good short book about the various meanings of blue, which can range from eroticism to the bluebird of happiness to blue skies, blue collar or blue blood. It's a colour that has a very wide range of meanings. I like the name Blue Metropolis because instead of locking you into a meaning it is opening up possibilities." Of course, when you put blue in the name of a festival in Montreal it may evoke for some people the image of writers reading from a stage on the corner of Jeanne-Mance and de Maisonneuve with a Labatt Blue blimp overhead. But while Blue Metropolis is the most ambitious international literary festival launched in recent memory (if one concedes that Salon du Livre is more of a trade show), its scale is more suitable to a gathering of thinkers than performers. The opening gala, held last night (Wednesday, April 21), was not a masked ball (sadly missing an opportunity to hold something that could only be called a Blue Ball). But Leith has obviously made an effort to make her festival more provocative than the standard parade of readers. Take, for instance, the panel discussion on Writing and Gender. As the program points out, it's already a minefield of a topic; some might say a subject that's been over-discussed. But with the fearlessly un-PC Laferrière as the host and a panel including Québécois feminist literary critic Nicole Brossard, Canadian Writer's Union activist Myrna Kostach and anthropologist Lionel Tiger (The Decline of Man), there's a good chance there'll be a few explosions. Nevertheless, the aim of Blue Metropolis isn't to provoke, despite event titles like The Telling of Lies (and later in the festival, The Telling of Lies II), Words as Weapons and Wannabe Nation: Miswriting of Native America. Blue Metropolis is also the name of a non-profit corporation Leith set up a couple of years ago to promote understanding and communication between French and English writers. The primary goal of the festival is to create a weekend of bilingual events that would bring writers from a variety of genres, as well as countries, to Montreal. Which brings us to the next major difference between Blue Metropolis and other Canadian festivals. Its focus is as much on literary non-fiction as fiction, playwriting and poetry. Events such as Telling Stories Through a Rear-View mirror will include writers of popular history. Writing From Elsewhere presents writers writing about other countries or cultures. Visions and Divisions is a reading and discussion lead by four young writers from Northern Ireland. Add to those events about 25 others, including about 80 writers, 30 of them from out of town--writers as well known as Russell Banks, Amitov Gosh, Lorna Crozier and as up-and-coming as Moira Donaldson and Elyse Gasco--and you have as much a festival of ideas as of writing. And as for who'll end up coming out of whose hotel room at what hour... For that we'll have to wait for our imaginary first issue of Allô, Poéte! Blue Metropolis runs to Sunday, April 25 at Hotel Europa, McCord Museum and Montreal Press Club. Info: 487-4126
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A few years ago I interviewed Dany Laferrière (Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer, Eroshima, Le Goût des jeunes filles) en route from Toronto's Harbourfront literary festival to his second home in Miami. Harbourfront was a bit dull, he complained. Like most literary events, it lacked glamour and intrigue. The festival of his fantasies, he claimed, would open with a big masked ball with paparazzi and ridiculous gossip in the tabloids. An example he gave: what was Dany Laferrière doing coming out of Nadine Gordimer's hotel room at 6 a.m.?