Monkey reviewed by Pete Huggon

This is from the September 2005 issue of Word.
Thank you, Pete Huggon and Word, very much.

You can find Word here:

Word

A great book to ease into this snake-eating-its-tail kind of writing, Michael Boyce's Monkey is one I've recommended to quite a few of my friends-the literary set, the read-just-for-fun set and even the unabashed-geekery set-which isn't to say it's lightweight at all, although it is light-hearted, charming, and at the same time hypnotic and subtle.

The story is told in a floating point of view that evoked for me a bombastic narrative in a pub-all intimate confidence and over-the-top ejaculation, weird asides and strangely astute observation.

It revolves around three characters who aren't so much simple as pure - they have singular motivations that consistently inform all their actions, yet are richly drawn. Through them, Boyce renders a multi-faceted rumination on morality, but with the tropes of kung-fu movies as his palette. Gloriously original.

Making Monkey 01

How I started it.

It started with a voice and it didn't really start that way. It is important that it started with a voice. But it didn't really start that way. Except it really did get going in that way, and because of that, it does seem that I really should be telling it that way that it really did get started then in that way with a voice. It started with a voice.

At first, there was an interest and a question about how to make it be and how to get it done. And then the next thing that I knew there was a voice. It came to me quite suddenly. And any time a voice like that has come to me quite suddenly I just cannot ignore it.

I think of it as though it was like anyone who heard the voice of god and had to write it down and tell someone. When anybody heard the voice of god and had to write it down and tell someone, I am sure they had to do it right away and they did it right away, and it didn't matter what it was that otherwise they might be doing or be expected to be doing, because they were compelled to write it down right then right now and right away. And then they had to tell someone.

Well I think it was a lot like that for me. It wasn't maybe like it was the voice of god, but it was like a voice divine, because I was consumed with it, and it was going on, and I had to get it down - I had to write what it was saying.

It was saying "He is strong and he is fast, and that is how he is."

This might not seem remarkable, not that much to anybody else, but it really was remarkable to me, because clearly this was what was first. It was the first thing that was being said, and was the first thing that I would write down, and it was clearly the beginning.

It was the beginning of the novel. And I knew that everything would flow from there. Not because the line was something in itself, but because it was the voice beginning with a way that it would speak and a way that it would speak about someone, the way that it would speak about the monkey.

It still gets me excited when I read the line because it means a lot to me. it might not mean a thing to anybody else. It might mean something to someone who thinks about the way that novels start. It might and it might not. But to me it means that it's the start and the way it starts is how it's going to go and it is the introduction of the voice, and it all began with that and it kept it going all the way. So it is important to me in that way.

It was my voice of course, but it also was a voice that had a presence of its own. It was the voice of writing Monkey. It was not an unfamiliar voice. I just never thought that it would be the voice of writing Monkey. It was the voice of writing other things when I was sometimes using it. But this time it was using me, so to speak. Which is to say it felt like that. And I liked the way it felt like that because I knew that it would be like that, like something that would make it all appear, and I would follow it. I liked the thought of that. I always like the thought of that, when it comes to making anything, that is the way I like it best. I think that's inspiration. And I like to write like that.

Reading Monkey at the flywheel EXPERIMENT

Thursday June 8 - 7 pm

There was a reading at McNally Robinson in Calgary, Alberta. There is a regular reading there under the auspices of the magazine Filling Station. The reading was billed as Filling Station presents the flywheel EXPERIMENT. The idea is to get readers to read each other's work. I read work by William Neil Scott. Mark Hopkins read from Monkey. Samuel Garrigo Meza read Mark Hopkins' work. William Neil Scott read a poem by Samuel Garrigo Meza and his own work based upon that poem. Ryan Fitzpatrick was the host. He determined who would read whom.

I am grateful that Mark and Ryan did invite me. It was very interesting.

I like to read and I like to read somebody else's work. It was an interesting thing to do for me because I found I was invested in delivering the work a certain way. It might be a little bit like what an actor might go through, if an actor had an interest in delivering the work in a certain way, and being recognized for delivering it well that way.

Calgary is very dry, so reading made me dry. I drank some beer to help. I also drank because I felt conspicuous, and I hoped that it would help me not to feel that way. I'm not sure that it worked. I don't usually or normally when I am reading feel that way - conspicuous, that is. But usually I'm reading work that is my own, and that's a different thing because I don't then feel responsible for making sure I do it right, because I know that I will do it right, because after all, it is my stuff, so any way I do it is alright by me, for the most part anyway.

I met the guy who's stuff that I was reading. None of us were going to know, supposedly, which one was going to be reading us until Ryan introduced us to the audience.

After I was done, William Neil Scott, didn't say a word to me about what he thought of how I read. I didn't talk to William Neil Scott again that night. I don't know what that means, but it did feel funny to me. It could mean anything, and not mean much at all, but it did feel funny to me. But I am not the type who does not say a thing about anything to anyone who read my stuff.

I was there with Sandra and we were sharing different kinds of cake, one of which was chocolate, a special kind of chocolate that wasn't even on the menu, and the other one was lemon coconut, and they happened to go very well together, and I said as much and she agreed. Of course cake always does taste different after you have read from how it tastes before you read. I was eating it before I read but I couldn't really eat it properly because I was too much waiting for the moment when I would be reading. It isn't good to eat when you are not able to just eat and not think about some other thing - I don't like to do it anyway.

I wasn't worried about how anyone would read my stuff. I was interested in how they would, and I was interested in how I might think that it would sound. I had a feeling Mark might read my stuff. I was first and he was second and I had a feeling he would read my stuff.

I do know Mark a little bit, and I do like Mark, so I was well disposed and interested when he was introduced as who it would be as the one who would be reading stuff by me. He read right after I did. I read first. I do prefer to be the one who does read first, and so this was agreeable to me. Even though my friend Larissa who I did hope would be there, was not yet there, but she did end up being there, soon after I had read, just as Mark was reading, so I was happy she was there at least to hear my stuff being read by Mark, and because I wanted to see her and I was happy she could hear somebody reading Monkey who was different from me.

She has heard me read from Monkey. She read with me when I did my launch in Calgary. Before I launched in Calgary, I launched in Montreal, and before I launched in Montreal, my first launch was in Toronto, but I didn't read at that one, but it was an interesting one, and there is a picture that was taken there of me with Bess Follet who's my publisher from the awesome Pedlar Press.

When I launched Monkey here in Calgary it was at Pages on Kensington. My first launch was at the Rivoli but presented there by Pages that's on Queen Street in Toronto, but there isn't a relation, but I like the symmetry. She was launching her reissued novel called When Fox Was A Thousand, by Larissa Lai, which also has cover that is beautiful that was done by Myron Campbell, who is our friend and is amazing.

Myron's trying to do an illustrated version of a story that I wrote and haven't published yet because I don't wish to try and publish it until he's finished illustrating it.

In any case it made me happy that Larissa made it to the reading from the dentist where she had to go for an appointment, for heaven's sake. Chris Ewart and Sandy Lam told she was on her way, but first she had to see the dentist, for Pete's sake. When she got there, you would never know that she had been to see a dentist. The dentist does good work. And I would like to see this dentist, because apparently the price is also right, and you know with any dentist that is rare. I had a dentist that I like to go and see in Montreal, but that is far from Calgary, at least as far as I'm concerned it is .

It was very entertaining and was very interesting to hear Mark read my stuff. He read it very well. I thought he read it very well. Others thought he read it very well, as well. One guy came up afterwards and said to him he thought that Mark had done an awesome reading, and then he turned to me and said he guessed he thought the writing must be good as well. I thought that it was very funny that he said that in the way it seemed that he was saying it, like he thought that he should say that to me seeing as because evidently I was sitting there and saw and heard him say to Mark he thought his reading was just great and there I was beside Mark sitting there and I think he thought it was the right thing he should say.

And it made me think again how doing this was something like it might be for an actor, and how anyone who writes a film, and perhaps sometimes a play, or TV show, must be struck by with how funny it can be to have people really love the ones who say their text and only think about who wrote the text a little later on, and not be really as excited about the one who wrote the text as they are about the one who said the text.

I was very happy with the way that Mark had read from Monkey. I gave a part of Monkey to be read that I had never read before out loud. He said that he had seen me read the two times I had read from Monkey here in Calgary and he took a cue from me of course, and then he said that he consulted with some actor friends of his, and I thought that it was very interesting that he did that.

I have read from chapter one, and I have read from chapter two, but only Mark has read from chapter three on my behalf.

Monkey can be hard to read - I think it can be hard to read if you only try to read it quickly, like you might do with any book that you don't pay that much attention to with respect to any way that it is written, but only care to get the story. There are books I read that way, and there are books I read more carefully to get the way that they are written. Sometimes I like to say the writing to myself out loud to help to get the way that it was written - in that way of saying how it's written means the way that it might sound, for instance, when you're saying it out loud.

There are a lot of ways of saying things, and Monkey likes to say things in a lot of different ways, and each time that it is said, it makes it be a little different - and Mark was very good at registering all of that. His reading made me laugh. Monkey made me laugh.

What was really good was how he made it so that I could hear it. I still could hear him reading it, but still I heard it none-the-less - and I think it can be hard for anyone who writes something to hear what they have written like as though it had been written by somebody else. There were moments when that happened, and that can be one of my favourite things to happen to me when I make something - when I can be an audience to what I make and then forget that I have made it in a way - not entirely, but in a way.

So, that happened to me now and then when I was listening to Mark. I felt a little foolish laughing at the things that I had written. I don't know why exactly laughing at something that I found funny that I wrote should make me feel more funny than any other thing I felt except of course it is more obvious to anyone that I am listening to what is being said as if I am admiring my work, and that is vain, and anyone can think that being vain is mostly unacceptable, and so of course, I was aware of that, because of course I was not really comfortable, not really in myself nor in the place that I was at being there like that.

Oh well, what can you do. It takes a while sometimes to find yourself being comfortable in somewhere.

I was very curious to know what Mark might think about the reading of his stuff. And I thought that we would maybe talk about that later when everyone was finished and we all went for a drink. But it didn't happen quite that way because me and Sandra and Larissa, we all went back to my and Sandra's place and had some wine and had a visit with Larissa who was going to Vancouver where she lives now since she moved to there from here quite recently. She was here for her defense, her phd defense. I did one of those one day before, and perhaps one day I'll speak of that but not right now. Hers went well and now she is a doctor too like me. I have some thoughts about what it means to be a Philosophiae Doctor, which I will talk about sometime - but not right now.

Anyway I didn't get a chance to really ask what Mark had thought about the reading of his stuff that was done by Samuel Garrigo Meza, or what Samuel Garrigo Meza might have thought, or what William Neil Scott had thought. Ryan Fitzpatrick said he thought that it was interesting the way I read it differently from how William Neil Scott has read himself before, and I was happy that was so, because although I didn't know the way that he would read it, I was interested in reading it the way I wanted to, and I was glad and interested to know I read it differently.

Mark had read me in a way that was very similar to how I read, but still was very different - and that is also very interesting to me. He did very much perform it in a way that was himself, and inflected with himself and that was very interesting to me, and very entertaining too. And yet I recognized it as the way that I also make an emphasis, and in that way he read in way that's similar to how I read it too. It was similar and it was different, and I like that very much.

I also really liked the way that Samuel Garrigo Meza read the work of Mark. I don't think I have ever heard the way that Mark reads Mark, but I liked the way that Samuel did read Mark. When Samuel did read Mark, it was Samuel reading Mark and it was the work of Mark, and that I think is something good about the reading Samuel did of stuff by Mark. I could understand why that guy would come up to say to Mark that he was really great because both Mark and Samuel had a way of being there and making a performance that was them but which also was the work. I don't know if I did that.

The work of Samuel and Mark and me is all a lot like poetry can be, especially the work of Samuel and Mark, which is really like the way that anyone can see is poetry, and the work of me, of Monkey that's to say, is in many ways a lot like poetry can be - although I guess that's not for me to say - but I could say it quite a lot and say a good deal more about the way that is very much like poetry, but it is important that I note that I am saying that it is a lot like poetry but is not poetry, and it could take a lot of time to sort the difference out, and I don't wish to do that now, not right now, anyway.

Anyway, the way the works of Samuel and Mark and me can all be said to be like poetry, or in their case to be poetry, and in mine to be more like poetry than really poetry - the way that this is so makes all these works something that anybody can perform when they are reading them. Any work can be performed when anyone is reading them. But some works are much more likely to be read like a performance in this way than other works are likely to be read like that.

I did perform the reading of the work I read a little bit, but really not that much, because I didn't really think of it as poetry. I mostly thought of it, mostly I did think of it, as being like a story, and although I did perform the reading of it in a way, I was more inclined to try and tell the story it was telling and to try to make the story clear and to make each person in the story clearly made out to be evidently who they were. Which is a thing that does require that you do perform the work a bit, but not in the same way.

Anyway, William Neil Scott read one poem by Samuel Garrigo Meza and it went by so fast, I didn't really get a sense of Samuel's work. I interestingly more did get a sense of Samuel's work when he was reading Mark's stuff to us, just in the way that he was there performing in a way, and making us all see a kind of personality. It was very interesting. He was very interesting in how he had a way that he was being who he was, and I was understanding how his work might be, by how he did still read Mark's stuff to us. But anyway, the reading of his poem by William went too fast for me to really get a sense of it. Then William read a piece that was his own, that was he said it was a writing in response to the specific poem he read.

He had said that he had wished to read some poetry because he couldn't write the stuff. So then he read a poem and then he read a thing he wrote which a story, which was prose, as you might usually say, and was in response to the poem that he read.

This was interesting to me because here he was now reading his own work that I read a little earlier, and it made me interested to know if it was similar. And I could see that I could tell that it was like it was his work. I could hear it was his work. And then I tried to see if I could tell the difference between his work and his work that was a work that was responding to the poem by Samuel that he had read. But all I could remember from the poem that he had read was the line about the pancakes at the end, so I kept on waiting for some recognition of the pancakes. It was like waiting for the one song that you know by the band you've gone to see. This is not a common thing for me at any reading.

Anyway, that was all of it. It was interesting. I like the way it was a reading that I did that I didn't really do. It made me think that I would like to hear other people reading Monkey. And it makes me think about those books that you can get that are read by different people - often those people are celebrities or actors of some kind - who read the works of authors who are popular, but whom never or quite rarely ever seem to read their work themselves for this specific service - the talking book - the audio book it's also called. There can be any reason why. But it made me be a little bit more interested in hearing books by other people reading other writer's words. Why not?

That was the fourth official reading, except it wasn't really - and I really do like that - I really like the fact that every time this reading is referred to as the fourth official reading, that it must be qualified.

Maybe I will find some interesting people to read out parts of Monkey, and I shall, now and then I shall, post them up here for a while. That may not happen for awhile. But I would like to do that. Maybe some actors could do that, and maybe some people who don't usually do that could do that too. I will look into that.