Étienne's Alphabet James King
(published by Cormorant Books Inc.)
What the judges said:
"Artist, orphan and creative genius, Étienne Morneau is a protagonist defined by lists and routine. In Étienne's Alphabet, his story moves from Montreal to Toronto and takes the reader along with each magnificent detail in an astonishingly rich telling of a life set in mid 20th Century Canadian history. Étienne's story is revealed through objects, mapped into chapters titled with letters of the alphabet, starting with A and ending with Z. Each chapter begins with a literary etching of a letter, which moves well beyond description and architecture to personifying, celebrating and at times, reviling. The book is a wonderfully unique narrative gem a testament to King's gift for taking the seemingly mundane and bringing it to life with poetic detail."
Étienne Morneau is a man of few friends and even fewer words. A recluse, the only way he can make sense of the world is to compile lists and stick to a routine. Yet in spite of Étienne's unique perspective, or perhaps because of it, he is secretly a creative genius. His art is infused with a strange beauty, and his journals — organized in the form of a dictionary — reveal an innocent soul yearning to take part in life and all its small glories. Étienne's Alphabet is proof that all it takes to make the world remarkable and new is a “different” set of eyes.
James King
(photo by Julie Thompson Photography)
James King,distinguished University Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University, has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of four previous novels: Faking (1999), Blue Moon (2000), Transformations (2003), and Pure Inventions (2006). He is also the author of eight works of biography, the subjects of which include Margaret Laurence, Jack McClelland, and Farley Mowat. His biography of Herbert Read, The Last Modern, was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award. James King lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
Excerpt from Étienne's Alphabet Note: As the book is written in dictionary format and moves from topic to topic, the following are three entries that are evocative of Toronto.
The Coliseum: My favourite Toronto landmark. When it opened in 1921 in the west end of the city near the lake, it was the largest building under one roof in the world. It is supremely ornate — a structure that is proud of its elaborate facade and its turrets. Although it looks like a structure built to rule the world, its main purpose is for the exhibiting and judging of livestock at the Canadian National Exhibition at the end of summer and the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. I like the CNE and have visited it at least a dozen times. The exhibits seem inordinately proud — self-satisfied bulls, cows, horses and pigs — but they probably feel an obligation to live up to the nobility of the building constructed for them.
Forty-Six Yonge Street: This building on the southwest corner of Yonge and Wellington streets has had, like every human being I know, its share of ups and downs. That modest-looking building began life as a hotel, then it became the emporium of J.G. Joseph, the city's finest jeweller and silversmith in the 1860s and 1870s, then it became the head office of the now defunct Standard Bank, then of the Trader's Bank (also defunct), and, presently, it is a store called National Wholesale, which proudly announces, "Selling Directly to the Public." We are all in flux - our lives but mere grains of sand in a vast desert.
A tale of two cities: In Dickens' view, a contrast between violence-strewn, ruffian-filled Paris and heady, freedom-loving London. In my mind, the disparity is between the grey cityscape of Toronto and the boisterous, beautiful boulevards of Montreal. The former is built upon day-to-day knowledge whereas the latter is the creature of memory and, of course, romanticized and therefore distorted. There are no Montreal drawings. In my cityscapes, Toronto has a complicated personality: cheerful, capricious, sombre, sullen, seedy and, sometimes, majestic. Like any person, a city has good and dark sides accompanied by a wide variety of moods.
James King
James King