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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

July 23, 2009


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2009-07-23

Transcona re-imagined

Jon Paul Fiorentino's latest effort is multi-faceted comic novel

STRIPMALLING
by Jon Paul Fiorentino
(ECW Press, 2009)

The question Jon Paul Fiorentino is most often asked is whether his writing is autobiographical or not.

Never mind the fact Stripmalling is clearly described as "a novel by..." on its title page. Nor the fact that Fiorentino has publicly stated several times that he writes nothing but fiction. He still gets the question.

It could be because the strip mall of this book's title is in Transcona, where the author grew up. It might be because the protagonist is an aspiring writer named Jonny. It may be because Fiorentino uses the names of his real-life friends and family members throughout this novel. Or that he reprints old hockey photos of himself in his Oxford Heights Community Club hockey uniform.

Regardless, Fiorentino is a writer of fiction. But he's clearly a writer who revels in blurring the lines between imagination and reality. He also enjoys pushing the boundaries and blurring the lines of what constitutes a novel, as this short but wonderfully entertaining work is essentially a scrapbook. Its story is told with diary entries, reports from girlfriends, a series of mid-life crisis check-ins, several deliberately bad poems, some even-worse comic strips (wonderfully drawn by graphic novelist Evan Munday), a creative-writing assignment (complete with mark ups from a fictitious classmate), and a few episodic narratives combined with asides to the reader.

Stripmalling tells of bored Jonny, a pot-smoking nerd of a gas bar attendant and, later, Hypermart employee in the wilds of Transcona. Jonny wants to be a writer but his life is complicated by his slacker infatuation with the carnival of strip mall life, his girlfriend Dora and the arrival of their baby. Jonny eventually ends up in Montreal, where he teaches English and creative writing (as does the real Jon Paul).

The narrative arc of this book isn't its focus, though. What's important is the fun Fiorentino has delivering his stories with such multi-faceted glee (Hypermart discipline reports are even imagined here).

Stripmalling enthusiastically plays with notions of place and character, and it's chock-full of witty and subtle asides and observations that'll have readers thumbing back through the pages to read and re-read again and again.

Winnipeggers will be especially struck by Fiorentino's local references and characterizations.
— John Kendle

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