Catching Up With “Canada’s Charles Bukowski”
The Dirt On Author Matthew Firth
>>BY Nathaniel G. Moore>>PICS by Andrea Firth

Matthew Firth is a Canadian fiction author, father, and occasional hockey player. But that is just the press release talking. He is the author of two previous books of fiction, which we’ll get into later. His latest book, Suburban Pornography, just came out with Vancouver’s Anvil Press, a publishing experience Firth claims was “as smooth as just Zambonied-ice.” I caught up with Firth to discuss his new book, the writing life and other calamities. Originally, as most writers have experienced I’m sure, Firth thought the book would never get published. According to the author, individually, the stories have been rejected by countless magazines and journals and anthologies.

“Sometimes I needed to go lie down for a while after spewing these stories out. But then again, not that odd. I switch gears quickly from one part of my life to another,” Firth muses from his home in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. Between shitty day jobs and “changing shitty diapers,” Firth wrote these stories over the last four years.

Recently at The Danforth Review, Michael Bryson said Firth “takes a starker stance than others; [his] narratives of Canadian inner-city dwellers, low-end job workers and drifting men are darker, harder, perhaps more perverse or at least more directly sexualized than arguably any other fiction in Canadian history.”

I asked Firth if he thought that men and women approached writing about sex in different manners: “Not sure it’s this cut and dry, this easily compartmentalized. There’s enough variety among and between men and women and how they write about sex and love that the spectrum or flavors of writing is quite broad. It’s sort of like how we like to have sex: again, broad spectrums. He likes it this way; she likes it that way. He likes it missionary position once a week with the lights out, she likes to dress him up like a pony, lead him around by the bit and kick his furry ass. And everything in between. I don’t want to generalize based on gender. It’s not a wise thing to do, plus I don’t think it’s possible.”

And how well does Mr. Firth know his readers? Does he “get” his audience? Do they “get” him? Does he care?

“I’ve been at this a while now. I’ve learned my readership is broader — in terms of who they are, what they do for a living, where they come from and live and all of that — than you might think. Old ladies read my books. So do young urban hipsters. And factory workers. And people in between. Not in the thousands, mind you, but still, the variety is greater than you might assume. They’re drawn to something, but what that ‘something’ is I don’t know.”

When compared to the UK or US markets, the Canadian publishing market is extremely small. But Firth feels like things are getting a little bit better for the small presses — “But the mainstream book-buying culture still doesn’t see the big picture. It’s opening up a little, but anyone writing outside of the mainstream is marginalized to micro and small presses. Ninety-nine percent of Canadian lit is boring, middle class, academically-biased drivel. It is safe, mainstream, inoffensive, comfy, and, in the end, always well resolved so that no doubt could possibly linger. It’s predictable. It’s riddled with institutional problems. I refer to ‘CanLit’ as the Ministry of Literature — feeding the middle class reading public palatable prose to keep them steady and grinning throughout their workday and quiet evenings, nothing more. It’s like lawn care: an opiate for the masses, except it’s not the masses, it’s just the middle class, book-buying, CBC-radio-listening public.”

When asked to name Canadian authors he thought were doing something that people should pay attention to, Firth mentions Tony Burgess, Dereke McCormack, Sal Difalco, Clint Burnham, Charles Tidler, and Chandra Mayor as being “raw and adventurous writers.” But again, these are writers who are by-and-large marginalized to small and micro presses, “so readers really have to search out this type of fiction because you won’t find it stacked high or faced-out at Chapters.”

Firth’s first book was Fresh Meat in 1997. “I wasn’t thinking much about any of it back then. I was surprised to have a book. I fondled it, then looked at the picture of the nearly naked babe on the back cover masturbating and thought, hmmm, what’s mom going to say about that? That sort of stuff. The launch of that book was a blast. There was almost a fight between a friend of mine (who can really throw ‘em — was a renowned brawler in the Senior A lacrosse loop in the late ‘80s) and a drunk heckler who was pissed his local pub was being invaded by semi-literary arseholes. Can’t blame him, really. Fresh Meat got a bad review in the Toronto Star but when I thought about that, about being reviewed in a big, daily paper, I was shocked.”

Firth’s next book was Can You Take Me There, Now? with Boheme Press: “My expectations were higher. The stories were different, longer, broader. And I changed the title from Minimum Wage and Other Stories. That was a big mistake, in retrospect. It had something to do with the masturbating chick on book one. I thought I should tone down the book cover, change the title, go for something more obscure. It was stupid of me.”

Beyond his own creative fiction landscape, Firth has also been running a micropress for 13 years. Black Bile Press publishes chapbooks such as a small fiction sampling from Christina Decarie called  Nemesis Girls and the mainstay literary rag “Front & Centre.” Firth says it’s among his favorite accomplishments in the literary world without receiving a cent from “any silly government arts funding agency.” Firth loathes writers who have “a sense of entitlement, thinking someone somewhere should prop up what they do. That’s a sack of bourgeois, middle class rubbish.” Firth’s dedication to the small press aesthetic is admirable, and seems to be a good situation for everyone. Firth has published writers he feels wouldn’t necessarily otherwise get a shot.

“Within that micro press accomplishment is publishing fiction from probably 100-plus writers who might not otherwise have been given a chance to see their stuff in print.”

Nathaniel G. Moore is the Canadian author of Bowlbrawl (Conundrum, 2005). His next book is loosely based on his relationship with the Roman poet Catullus, Let’s Pretend We Never Met (Pedlar, 2007). For more information visit www.notho.net