My novel.

Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 3:58pm
A few years ago I wrote a novel called Year of the Cock. At the time it was what I considered to be a groundbreaking endeavour. It was an attack on conventional structure, a post modern explosion that was going to change the way people wrote over the next century. But of course no one would publish it. Since then I've come to appreciate that perhaps I need to tone it down a little, so I'm in the process of making it a little more market friendly, without losing any of it's overall context. Anyway, thought I might share some of it with you. First, the deetz. Its basically about living a Punk/Headbanger Bohemian lifestyle in the late 80s early 90s. All of the chapter titles are taken from song titles by punk and metal bands of that era.
The first chapter, which I'm about to show you the first page or so of, takes it's name from a Dead Kennedys song.

Anyway here it is.

This Could Be Anywhere, This Could Be Everywhere
(or The Paris of the Prairies)

They call it the Paris of the Prairies. They are fucked. It might be a lot of things, but Paris it is not. Compared to the absolute void beyond its limits, Saskatoon might be Parisian, but Paris is in the eye of the beholder. At some point in history a Toronto reporter must have taken a train to Saskatoon. After bumping and jostling across 3000 miles of barren shield and burnt prairie, through Sudbury and Brandon and Moosomin and a dozen more upstart shitholes like that he finally arrived. Exhausted, hungry, maybe even a little bit delusional, he was overjoyed at being alive and seeing deciduous trees and a valley, an actual valley. The only place on Earth (in his suddenly delirious and civilization starved mind) to even compare to the luster and splendor of Saskatoon would naturally be the City of Lights, Paris herself. And so the Paris of the Prairies was born. Though not the only city to ever bill herself as the Paris of the Prairies, (at times Calgary, Brandon and Winnipeg have all laid their claim to the moniker) Saskatoon has had the honor conferred on it by the highest possible authority.
"I've immortalized this place in words: Paris of the Prairies, baby," Gord Downie once said, quoting from the song Wheat Kings, which he wrote for his band the Tragically Hip.
It’s a song that well befits the city, rife as it is with high school nightmares, gross injustices and rusty breezes whispering that things may not always be as they seem.
Of course it’s all about perspective, and Saskatoon’s beauty must be taken into perspective. Its beauty is the beauty of decay, the abstract and unplannable lines of time versus man versus nature. It does have art and culture and character and style, this much is true. Compare it to the faceless sterility of the glass and steel obelisks that make up any other North American urban center and it’s got character, but it’s only got that character because there has never been any new to tear the old down for.
In the summer Saskatoon might be like Paris but I’ve never been to Paris so I wouldn’t really know. In summer the city rests Van Gogh gold under blue/white Michelangelo skies. There are bridges, lights, cafes, colleges, galleries, museums, buskers, beggars, ice cream stands and hot dog carts scattered in heavy pastels against the green and the gold and the heat. The sun is always shining and hot and the skirts of young women are lifted by the breeze and young men lounge in the sun praying for more breezes. There is the great green river and it lies on its friendly canine back in the summer sun with tongue lolling. Fat lazy happy panting it waits in half sleep for the cosmic tummy rub of star blinding prairie night. And at the banks of the happy canine waterway are walking paths all tree-lined and green humid hot where young lovers woo by day and fags cruise by night.
People smile at each other in the summer. If a bum stops a passerby on the street, it’s quite likely that passerby will stop. He may not relinquish a handout, but the mere act of stopping keeps even the street scum human. If the beggar should die in the cold freedom of homeless night it still makes the news in the Paris of the Prairies. While it’s difficult to go hungry and homeless in Saskatoon, it’s not impossible