Cansville edition by Alan Flurry Arts Photography eBooks
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When Toby Alameda begins a stint as creative director of the Cansville Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, he sets about to reconstruct the story of his boyhood home and the extended family that had lived there. The structure itself had been expanded from a modest farmhouse where his family took in relatives during the Great Depression. By the time the young Toby was practicing archery in his upstairs bedroom two generations later, the great emptied house had so grown into his being that he hardly gave it any thought.
The folly of melding imagination and memory wends through the characters and local actors as the house comes to life upon the stage the transvestite, Grey Calhoun, who will star as his beloved cousin, Virginia; Darling Forrest Nixon, wife of the theatre owner and aspiring muse to Toby; the old, empty LBJ Hotel where he rents a room on the top floor; and Charlotte Brown, maid in the hotel whose piano playing moves the play toward music and Toby toward the play’s completion.
The plot of the novel is Toby's attempt to make up a story he already knows; it builds with the writing of the play and culminates in the day before the premiere of “The Big House.”
Cansville edition by Alan Flurry Arts Photography eBooks
This is a really smart book but was still a hoot to read.I highlighted more quotes to read later than with any other book I've ever read on my Kindle. It's a story about a playwright at work so it offers a lot of insight into the creative process. For instance "..he continued to dare himself to be able to get to the end, then to complete it. He wrote a little each day until he could go a little further, increasingly less amazed and quietly more comfortable at what opened up to me." That just rings true to me and there were so many moments in the book like this where I thought 'Yes, that's exactly how it is." At the same time, the world of the book is a dreamy, almost surreal place, with mildly absurd characters and a timeless quality: I felt a little startled every time some aspect of the modern world appeared in the story. Very glad I came across this one; definitely has a place on my 'To Read Again' shelf.
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Cansville edition by Alan Flurry Arts Photography eBooks Reviews
This review is cross-posted from Papyrus Independent Author Reviews.
As the Cansville's newest creative director, can Toby write the play that will pump life back into the old theatre and its town? Or is the Cansville merely an opportunity for Toby to break away from the icons of his past and enter into the world of adulthood?
There's not really much to the plot of "Cansville". Our protagonist wins a play-writing prize, earning an opportunity to write and direct a new work at the struggling Cansville theatre. Although he meets an eclectic group of theatre folk along the way, I always felt that they were just props - not just for the author to tell the story, but for the main character himself. All his interactions felt like he was staging a drama - a play about writing a play.
That said, I enjoyed the quirky characters and the actual process of creation. It was often amusing and some of the strategies our hero adopted to visualise mood and intent on stage were quite fascinating. And in the meantime, there's some love and lust interests, an aborted sexual encounter and a mountain of internal dialogue.
However, in the end, it's important to understand that the main character is not so much interested in the success of his play from an audience's perspective; it is the process that this play represents which is significant to him. This was made abundantly clear to me by the author's choice of conclusion. I think many readers might feel a little let down by the ending, but once I digested it a little, I realised that the author was actually doing me a favour. He had removed what could have been a distraction from my view so that I could more clearly perceive his intention.
There is only one real character in this story - our hero, Toby. The entire story is his attempt to enter adulthood, to break his ties with his barn-like home and his dependency on his cousin with which he shared it. I believe his ambitions are spelled out in the very first paragraph of the book
The flightless usurper stalked about the yard, unsure but mindful of what would soon befall. If Toby can imagine anything, it's the abundance of himself just outside the room of his teenage years, a war chest in progress that he couldn't wait for but to be over. But the epoch would need to sprout wings, succeed, create a sufficiently destructive storm, even just to begin.
I feel like I understood Toby, but I found him to be a rather delusional character, destined to fail in his attempt to grow. Instead of synthesising the world around him and internalising what it tried to teach him, he threw all of his hopes for development into his creation and consequently, spent most of the novel missing opportunities.
It didn't surprise me to see that the final touch to his play was to come full circle, shooting an arrow into a wall. He remains the same undeveloped youth longing to grow up but not really understanding how, his attempt as staged as his play.
There's no doubt about it, the author knows how to turn a phrase. His prose borders on the poetic and some of the allusions and metaphors are beautiful. However, strangely enough, this strength was a weakness to me as a reader.
I had to work hard to grasp his meaning, at times making the journey more painful than I thought it needed to be. I sometimes ran into a string of paragraphs that I felt were echoing the same thought. What is challenging once, is only painful in redundancy.
I just felt that the story could have been explored powerfully and poetically, with more clarity and less words. This could be saying more about me than about the author and I'll accept that criticism, but without an objective truth, I can only offer my opinion. I felt that reading this book became more of a chore as it progressed, despite any appreciation I gained for the theme and for the author's very obvious talent with prose.
I think in a different situation, I might have enjoyed this book more. It might have benefited from multiple reads and a focused book club discussion. It was clearly a literary work and perhaps giving it more attention than I had time for could have brought out the best it had to offer.
Maybe, like Toby, I just missed my opportunity to grow.
It was wonderful and intriguing with its odd cast of characters who seem at times surreal and almost dreamlike yet at the same time the often under-appreciated people of regular society, people we pass on the streets and never imagine their hidden talents and dreams, who propel the story. The dialogue between them kept it lively and fast paced while the interweaving of Toby's past, his challenges, his reflections make it thought provoking. I really enjoyed reading it and getting to know and root for this unusual cast.
CANSVILLE, Alan Flurry's first published novel, is more than just a strikingly assured and polished debut. It's a seriously provocative and challenging examination of the creative process as an important component of what makes us who we are, and an appealing, compelling read on top of that. After a virtuosic opening chapter establishes the character of Toby Alameda and the seeds of his family history, including his complex relationship with his cousin, Virginia, Flurry plunges into his story of making a story. The characters, most of whom are or may become associated with the Cansville Theatre in Louisville, where Toby has just relocated to become artistic director, are sharply, warmly drawn and unusual without being overly quirky or "eccentric." And Flurry's deeply perceptive narration, alternately flitting and burrowing, is privy to Toby's internal negotiations as he formulates the play - a biography of his own family home, "The Big House" - that will become his first production at the Cansville.
Flurry's essentially simple, direct story vividly illustrates the elusive fact that art and history do more than inform one another they are engaged in a perpetual process of mutual creation that demands to be acknowledged - and joined - by those who hope to contribute to either.
This is a really smart book but was still a hoot to read.
I highlighted more quotes to read later than with any other book I've ever read on my . It's a story about a playwright at work so it offers a lot of insight into the creative process. For instance "..he continued to dare himself to be able to get to the end, then to complete it. He wrote a little each day until he could go a little further, increasingly less amazed and quietly more comfortable at what opened up to me." That just rings true to me and there were so many moments in the book like this where I thought 'Yes, that's exactly how it is." At the same time, the world of the book is a dreamy, almost surreal place, with mildly absurd characters and a timeless quality I felt a little startled every time some aspect of the modern world appeared in the story. Very glad I came across this one; definitely has a place on my 'To Read Again' shelf.
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