Hullo Kids,

It's happening!

I'm going to be a no-show for the opening night Tony Burgess-and-Derek-McCormack-and-many-more themed festivities, but having scrutinized the Scream schedule, I feel I can properly plan my way through the upcoming two weeks. My absence from certain events has more to do with work requirements than taste. If it was up to me, I'd see em all. If only this "Death of the Book" festival could arrange all its literary content into some sort of portable word-storage device that I could bring with me and read on the subway. Oh well, until such a thing it reinvented, here's what I'm going to:

July 5th, 7pm. Incidental Reading: Melvil Dewey fights back
From what Aaron Tucker has told me, this will be not unlike the scene in Ghostbusters where the librarian gets her hair blown back by Slimer. It's inspired by Martha Baillie's The Incident Report, which I haven't read but I hear is the bee's knees. The layout is essentially this, a bunch (like, eleven) readers are all spaced around the Yorkville Library like some sort of talking statuary exhibit, and you basically get guided around. Fun? I think so. And I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the eleven.

July 7th, 7pm. Five Manifestos in the Book
This one is shaping up to be the intellectual heart of the festival. Five people with their own take on the the state and fate of the book spar it out in a big five-way talkin' fight. One of the five is Big Festival Cheese Bill Kennedy, and we already know what Bill thinks here: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2009_scream_edition/artic.... I expect I'll come home all aflutter over these supermodern thinkers and their supermodern ideas, and want to pen a rebuttal, because a lot of this stuff reminds me about how we are all going to be driving electric cars by 1985, at the latest.

July 8th: 8pm. The Joyland Joy-athon
Brought to you by the feverish soul of Canadian online literature, www.joyland.ca, this looks like a busy night of short fictioneering. Readers include Claudia Dey, Rebecca Rosenblum, Kevin Connolly, Zoe Whittall, and Carl Wilson.

July 10th, 7pm. If Hope Disorders Words: Dennis Lee Reprised
I'm affording to go to this $40 dinner because I promised to help serve food. So, if you like $40 dinners with thumb prints in your steak, you'll love this. But seriously, Dennis Lee is the great folk-hero of contemporary Canadian poetry. I've said all I can think of on this subject already for Open Book Toronto, so just go there if you're not already convinced: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2009_scream_edition/artic...

July 11th, 8pm. Til Death do us Party: The Scream Gala
It's a party. I'm probably not going to go because I'm shite at parties, but you should. The band is called The Bandiniband, which is exciting, because if the main character from those Fante novels had a band, it would be really great.

July 13th, 7pm. The Scream in High Park
Mainstage, baby! Oh man. I'm so excited about this thing it hurts. There is literally nobody on this bill I don't already love. Lisa Foad's new book is occasionally staggering. Jeramy Dodds is the real deal, that rare hyped-to-the-gills new poet that deserves the hype. Ryan KAmstra is maybe my favourite Toronto poet. And there's like ten more. This stuff sells itself.

See you out there, kids! I have a thing to go do. I'd like to apologize now for any lapses of grammar or non-words that appear above.

-Jmm