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Loading... The Pornographer's Poemby Michael Turner
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  SmithSJ01 | Mar 23, 2008 |  The narrator, a young boy recently graduated from high school, gives and account of his life to an unnamed interrogator. He tells about his friends, and especially his long standing friend Nettie, and the new friends he makes including Robin who takes a particular liking to him; and the enigmatic Flynn. He also tells of his remarkable elementary school teacher who introduces him to film making; and the new neighbours, an open-minded young couple. When he catches his new neighbours supposedly in the privacy of their own garden enjoying one another, he uses his movie camera, a gift from his school teacher, to get a better view, but he can only use the zoom while depressing the shutter. What he unwittingly captures on film turns out to be quite outrageous, especially when the family dog joins in! It is this film which in turn determines the subsequent events in his life, as the story reveals. The unusual format of the book coupled with the quality of the prose makes for most interesting reading. As the young narrator explains himself we are never quite sure how much is truth, how much is exaggeration, how much is dreamed or just pure invention. Some of his descriptions, reflecting his interest, are in film script format, some are in fact dreams. At times he is very frank and explicit, and here the prose can be quite blue, yet such passages are somehow neutral and detached. The conclusion reveals the true situation, but it is not until the last few pages, if then, that one even has so much as a glimmer of what is really happening. To say more would spoil the story, and if my review seems somewhat vague, please forgive me, but to reveal any more (and there is a great deal more) would be unfair to potential readers. (  ) Bembo | Nov 1, 2007 | Well Alanna, this book did make me think about you. But beyond that: the sneer, Michael Turner, the turtleneck, the twelve-year-old kids talking about Dutch Colonials immediately make me think we're gonna have trouble here. Those are not people of a kind who exist. Or if they are, they're not people of a kind whom I want to know anything about. That said, the beginning section captures cusp-of innocence quite perfectly. The middle is bullshit--I mean, whose names are you dropping, dick? This is a novel and they are fictional characters and you are a grown man so stop trying to sell us on punk auteur. And then the last section has a mystery but more importantly a mystical ouroboros thing where instead of letting credibility rest on the token unreliablenarratoring provided throughout by the question sections (which do not sustain that credibility on their own) you say okay, I know, this kind of thing only works by disappearing up its own asshole because once you're "The Pornographer's Poem," you either stay that forever, become it again and again, or leave it behind completely. So yeah: artists do get trapped by their personae. That, and the kids in Grade 7, and sex, gets you your 3.5. Just barely. (  ) booksfallapart | Jun 18, 2007 | A strange little book, mixing a variety of storytelling methods (from interviews to movie scripts to unfinished letters to diary entries to lists...) to tell the story of just how a high school kid ended up making and selling amateur porn in Vancouver. I enjoyed it the first time I read it, but I've never been able to read it over again, I always get stopped up somewhere within the first 50 pages or so. ( ) holdyourspin | Jan 6, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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In this stunningly original novel, Michael Turner, the author of the punk rock collageHard Core Logo,and the hilariously sobering American Whiskey Bar, proves himself to be one of Canada's most dazzling and innovative contemporary writers.
The Pornographer's Poem is a first-hand account of the life of an unnamed pornographic filmmaker. At the age of sixteen, the narrator gets his first taste of adult cinema. Shortly before that, he shoots his first adult film, surreptitiously capturing his neighbours having sex on their back porch. From these linked experiences, he realizes that through representations of sexual activity he can comment on that which he finds both painful and confusing. In the films that follow, the narrator imagines in positions of dominance those who are disadvantaged in their everyday lives, now sexually belittling those who have once held them down. Nettie, an idealistic poet and the one person with whom the narrator genuinely connects, sees in pornography the opportunity to do something artistic, liberating, and socially relevant. She pushes the narrator to make films that subvert the way the world is constructed. Ultimately, despite his radical intentions, the narrator falls into a world of greed, delusion, and hypocrisy, the same world he once rebelled against.
Investigating the ways in which lives are remembered and reconstructed, Michael Turner works backwards and forwards in time with unerring attention to subtle shifts in voice and experience. But this is not a wistful recounting, for the retelling of the protagonist's story is affected by the interrogations of an authoritative, unforgiving tribunal.
As he tests the lines between pornography and art, between exploitation and exploration, Michael Turner continues to push the boundaries of the literary form. The Pornographer's Poem is an intelligent, funny, impeccably crafted work that challenges not only the way a novel should be written but, most importantly, the way it should be read.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English
A weird world unfolds, completely surreal but easy to fall into. A bizarrley enjoyable read where we are made to feel (and be?) accountable for EVERYTHING we have done in life. Could this be a metaphor for our first encounter with God?
Not every going to be the best book I've read but worthwhile. If you are reading the book based on the blurb - 16 year old recording his neighbours - then you will be disappointed as this is a media crux I beleive to get you read it in the first place. If like me the title caught your eye you won't be disaappointed. (