What Are They Currently Reading: Rona Maynard

A Husband and Wife, at Grant Park food court, on their way to Rona Maynard, on What They Are Currently Reading:

Husband: We've both been studying a lot about Sweden, because right after Rona Maynard we're moving there tonight.

Me: Tonight? This is a momentous occasion. What are you reading about Sweden?

Wife: Mostly we're reading about the language, counting, simple phrases, cities and towns. Actually kind of boring stuff.

Me: Are you reading other stuff, too?

Wife: Oh yeah, some here and there. Of course I'm reading Miriam Toews, in a certain way she's the best in Canada. Also because I'm of French Metis heritage I still always turn to Gabrielle Roy and lots of historical information on Louis Riel. I read some late French Symbolist poets, like Paul Valery.

Me: Valery, don't you think he was sort of ruined from over-canonization by T.S Eliot?

Wife: No. And I like going to the Manitoba Archives and checking out the trading records of the Northwest and Hudson Bay Companies.

Me. Pretty impressive. Nice selection. And you, good Sir?

Husband: Well currently reading alot about Sweden. Also, because I've got the travel bug, I've been reading alot of Alvaro Mutis, the friend of Marquez, who has that fascinating character named Maqroll.

Me: Whoa, slow-up, I'm trying to write!

Husband:I'm actually halfway through a Scandanavian saga - I'm trying to get the feel for northern Baltic culture - The Saga of the People of Eyri. I guess for the same reasons I've been reading up on Ibsen, just the less famous ones, like The Master Builder. Oh, and lots of Knut Hamsun, from whereever he's from somewhere up in the cold there.

Me: Knut Hamsun, the Nazi sympathizer?

Husband: I would debate you on that, Sir.

Me: I would likely concur to your side of the debate; still, it does hang over his body of work.

Husband: Well, no use debating now, we have to finish our Pad Thai, then getting packing after Rona Maynard.

Me: True. I wish you the best of luck on your journey and I can only hope you bring your spark of erudition to learned people of Europe.

Husband: Please leave.

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J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.