Creative Commons photo by flickr user ecstaticist.

“It has been some time now that I have wanted to speak to you about the youth gang. Since July there has been much conjecture about how the youth gang started, and when, and where, and what exactly the youth gang is, and who belongs to it, and whether its members wear ‘colours,’ and which weaponry they carry, and how to best protect ourselves—Kevlar vs. chainmail, house alarms vs. hounds, landmines vs. prayer— and whether the youth gang represents a simple gap in generational understanding, or a malevolent shudder in the collective morality of humankind, or the death of love, or a mirror, or a warning, or the end.

“But here we are, October, with no real progress or understanding to speak of. Three months of terror have passed and still the youth gang holds us in its clutches. And while we continue to ask how, when, where, even what, no one in our close-knit multicultural community, in which not a soul wants for anything and everybody knows your name, has ever asked why we have a youth gang. And before you go throwing your hands up in despair, Mrs. Heinz-Mercer, and muttering to one another, Sheikh al-Shabazz and Mother, about who the heck does this woman up there think she is, I pose a further question, one that requires serious introspection, analysis, and honesty. Consider: Who created the youth gang if not all of us?

“Grumble, fine! Sometimes the truth is difficult to hear. Although to those, Father Power and Rabbi Berkowitz, preparing to storm out in a huff, hold on. I am willing to acknowledge—okay, confess—something you’ve no doubt been waiting for. (Though have you never considered that I’ve wanted to say it, too, but merely lacked the courage, or the impetus? And sure, maybe yesterday’s tar-and-feathering of the entire security force at the factory outlet mall has provided exactly that.) A solution begins, I think, with each of us accepting responsibility. In that spirit, let me be the first to do so.

“Listen to me now: the youth gang is largely, if not entirely, my fault. Had I not founded the youth group, no youth gang would have ever mutated out of it. It is that simple. And I’m sorry.

“Thanks, Sardarji, nice to see you sitting back down— you, too, Nakamura-san. So there it is, what I’ve wanted to get off my chest since the BuskerFest swarming back in July. Mea culpa. But fault me not for good intentions! Honestly, I believed it was the right thing—following consensus, reached at a town-hall gathering very much like this one, to get the youth off our streets.

“But now I wonder: were the youth ever on our streets? Prior to the first youth-group meeting at the recreation centre, weren’t they mostly in our basements with computers? And also, technically, this subdivision doesn’t even have streets. There’s an abundance of crescents, courts, and cul-de-sacs, two wide and beautiful tree-lined boulevards, a trail, a path, and I for one live on a place, and there are other places and drives and avenues and ways and passes and even roads—but streets? No. Not one.

“So we had a logistical or at least semantic problem from the get-go. But, people, streets or no streets, it’s insignificant now, when every night our chimneys are being stuffed with fertilizer and the word PWNED burned into our lawns with bleach. What matters is how to stop the menace—the menace of the youth gang. And to do this we need to come together. Now, I know that several of you (Mestre Appleton-Bannerjee, the Honourable G. A. Sabatini, Comptroller Choi, others) have booked the Hall tonight at 8:00 for capoeira practice, so I’ll do my best to be brief. And I’m sure the members of our local roda would appreciate it if everyone helps stack the chairs on their way out. Thanks!

“I’ll add, too, that what follows is not meant as an affront to the Nguyen-Orloffs, whose Reading Instead program happens weekdays from 3:30 to 6 p.m. in the Bookmobile. I see a lot of confused faces. Really? No one knows about this? You’ve never wondered about the repurposed RV up on blocks in the cemetery parking lot? Well, it’s a fine, fine initiative, with as many as six kids diverted, or at least temporarily distracted, from joining the youth gang. As you may have noticed, an empty salsa jar is making the rounds for donations. Please give generously, and now you know what they’ve been up to, let’s give Minh and Jack a round of applause for their efforts.

“Great. Now—Mother, stop muttering—everyone, please listen: in times of communal confusion, truth gets lost amid the clatter of voices—each straining to be heard, each deaf to one another. (You and your research fellows heard me, Dr. O’Connor; no need for the eyebrow raising.) This is how gossip becomes mythology. Much of what you think you know about the youth gang—that they sleep in caves underground and eat small dogs—is spurious and absurd. Remember the

hysteria about the youth gang recruiting babies from the natal ward at Jewish General? In truth only one baby was approached before the youth gang realized they could make their own babies, babies born into the youth gang and as such members for life—though this is perhaps equally worrying, for different reasons.

“Rumours cloud judgment and preclude reason. Please allow me to detail an accurate history of how the youth gang formed and evolved, and explain where they are now in their organization. I’ll conclude with a potential course of what I’m calling ‘proaction,’ contrasted with a picture of what the future may hold for our community if things continue on their current trajectory (i.e., more incidents like the urine-balloon bombing at last Sunday’s Fall Harvest Festival.)

“Here’s how it all began, last June, at the rec centre. About 15 minutes into the first youth-group meeting, through diversionary tactics and trickery, the youth locked me in the supply closet and, commandeering a staple gun, affixed the head lifeguard, Florian Henderson—hi, Florian—to a spinal board by his trunks. That led to a handful of youths unleashing a skunk into the retirement home next door, while another faction spray-painted a lurid mural of male genitalia, mid-climax, in the library parkade; still others stormed CROG FM and, holding the hosts at bay with gardening tools, broadcast a burping contest for the entirety of Rick and Tina’s Commuter Hour.

“Sure, there had been signs of dissent. The youth group was no happy commune, all smiles and sunshine—actually, if anything disorients the youth, it’s sunshine. When I first herded them out of their basements into the Youth Group paddy wagon, generously donated by Captain N’diaye’s 32nd Precinct, they staggered like so many pubescent moles into the light of midday summer, blinded and lost. For a moment my heart leapt at the sight of them, so vulnerable and confused— that is, until I discovered a note (I’m a try-hard fatty) affixed to my back with chewing gum. Oh, that’s just great—laugh it up, Mother. Everything’s so hilarious to you, isn’t it?

“Since June I have dropped 17 pounds, most of it over those traumatic four days locked in the rec-centre supply closet, subsisting entirely on powdered sports-drink concentrate and unpopped popcorn kernels. Through a ventilation shaft I listened to the youth, over a succession of daily ping-pong tournaments, morph from group to gang. By the time I was rescued by the centre’s long-time caretaker, Donato DiFruscia (who promptly fled for the ‘old country’), the youth, in a horde of all-over print hoodies, were descending upon BuskerFest— an episode the talented singer-songwriters whose CDRs were stolen, recorded over with flatulence, and promptly returned, will never forget.

“I don’t think I need to detail the humiliating months that have followed: the toilet paperings, the drive-by Slurpeeings, the teabaggings, the hijackings of decency and Segways. We have learned things. If, for example, a flaming paper bag appears at your front door, get the hose. A sign announcing ‘Free Beer’ accompanied by a series of chalked arrows leading to an alleyway is best ignored. For those duped out of their RSP savings by the space tourism/all-you-can-eat surf ’n’ turf scam, my heart goes out to you.

“But enough, I say: enough! Enough shame and terror. Enough peeking out at the world through our mail slots and doggie doors. Enough flights of journalistic fancy such as—with due respect, Karen—Miss Behaviour’s op-ed of September 12, ‘Anyone Know a Good Exorcist?’ Enough tribunals and sanctions, which only waste community picnic funds. Enough vigilante posses prowling the neighbourhood in backcatcher masks with rolls of quarters in their fists—yes, Mme. et M. Letourneau, I’m looking at you. Enough booby-trapping the woods. People, the youth gang don’t even go into the woods; they abhor nature and distrust trees.

“Let’s admit our complicity. We put the youth in tennis lessons, and what was once a forehand buggwhip is now a tire iron smashed through the windows of Fetisov’s Ceramics Boutique. We paid for the karate classes that equipped the youth with the very roundhouse kicks used to destroy, to use a convenient example, the entire back stock of Fetisov’s Ceramics Boutique. How worrisome, then—for all of us, not just you, Mr. Fetisov!—that the video games we bought the youth teach strategies for storming buildings with assault rifles and gunning down rooftop snipers. Thank God for our community’s strident firearms laws—at least for now.

“Friends, neighbours: how can our creation also be our enemy? The youth gang comprises our sons and daughters, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, our paperboys and girls; these kids used to bag our groceries and flip our burgers, rip our tickets at the movie theatre, and, sometimes, even fill the classrooms of our schools. (Where are they now, you ask? God knows. They may even be in this room— it’s impossible to tell, since the hide-and-seek we encouraged has made them so adept at subterfuge.) My point is this: as its architects, aren’t we also part of the youth gang? In this war against the youth gang, whom are we fighting, essentially, if not ourselves?

“Quiet, please. I’m not finished. So what then, some of you ask, if not a punitive response? I suggest talks, dialogue, tolerance, patience, understanding. I have faxed one of the youth gang’s representatives, and she seems willing to negotiate— though who knows for what, and under which terms. But a lull in hostilities is the first step to reconciliation and, perhaps, even a truce. What does the youth gang want, besides crafting scenes of prurient orgy with our garden gnomes and sailing looted futons down the river? Does anyone know? This was a rhetorical question, Mother; please put down your hand. You are a thousand years old. There is no way you have any idea.

“People, we have one week until Halloween—that means Devil’s Night will be upon us in only six days. Does this worry anyone except me? Oh, wow, everyone? I’ve got a whole page here of ‘worst-case scenarios,’ but maybe—right, I’ll skip it. Okay. I hope we can turn anxiety into action—or proaction, as I mentioned earlier. And quickly. If I can broker talks, everyone here needs to participate, albeit, of course, calmly, without shrieking or finger-pointing or the petulant feet-stomping that certain also-rans in last spring’s 5k Jog for the Cure seem to think passes for sportsmanship. And, please, people, no spitting. This has never, ever been okay. Do you hear me? Ever.

“I thank you for your time. Let us do the right thing, let us extend the olive branch—and be prepared that we might be handed roadkill in return. We must persevere. The youth gang is our doing. It is all of our faults. And it is up to us, as those responsible, to work with the youth, to show them the way out of their misdeeds, toward a new path. And as for what this path might be…”

The speaker trailed off. Looking out over the crowd, she flipped through her notes. The room was silent. Everyone waited for her to conclude, to provide definitive and clear instructions. The air had gone brittle with expectation. But instead of saying anything, with shaking hands the speaker plucked from behind the lectern a bottle of Vitamin Water, which she tipped back and drank—the entire thing, rapidly, in a single, open-throated gulp.

One of Book Madam & Associates' online comics.

The words “book” and “fan” don’t really fit. Music and fan, sure. Sports and fan, you bet. But when it comes to books, you’re a reader or a lover, rarely a fan. Maybe it’s because fandom has little place in an industry infamous for its cynicism and curmudgeonly attitude, its scything insults and ivory tower. Or maybe it’s because the word suggests an uncritical appreciation that doesn’t quite match up to the way we feel we should appreciate books. Imagine calling yourself a fan of Borges. It just doesn’t fly. When it comes to books, “fan” falls flat.

Enter Book Madam & Associates, professional book fans. Based in Toronto, with outposts in Vancouver, Montreal, and Halifax, BM&A are professional appreciators—not critics or influencers, just people who really, really like books and the publishing industry. They spread their appreciation through blogs, tweets, and occasional podcasts, events, DJ playlists, and online comics clumsily drawn in Microsoft Paint.

Julie Wilson, a.k.a. the Book Madam, describes the group as a bunch of enthusiastic lateral thinkers: “We have a wide range of interests, along with a desire to connect people across those interests.” They’re what you could call enablers, fuelled by the underlying belief that people want to connect to books, but often don’t know how, and that there’s an ever-growing list of media tools that can enable this connection.

Wilson started on the road to professional fandom in 2006 with her blog Seen Reading, which she describes as an “esoteric spy journal.” On the blog, Wilson logged what she saw commuters reading while in transit. Each entry includes the location of the spotting, a description of the reader, the book being read, the passage Wilson imagines the person is reading, and her riff on that excerpt.

An example, from October 7, 2008:

Spadina streetcar: Caucasian female, mid 20s, with short blond hair and black-framed glasses, wearing skinny jeans, pink striped T-shirt, and green cargo jacket.

The Withdrawal Method, Pasha Malla (House of Anansi Press), page 87:

In The Human Body we learned a little about all the tubes you’ve got inside you— Fallopian tubes and whatever, all those tubes like canals and rivers carrying stuff back and forth around your vagina, or wang—depending on what you’ve got. And right then, right when I’m thinking that—I swear—the clouds break up a bit and even though she’s gone so tiny Mom the moon comes smiling down into the water at the bottom of the hole, lighting the puddle up silver.

The muted voice offers gentle guidance from behind an inch of hollow door, all that separates this embarrassing and gymnastic feat from the perfumed cheek of the woman who bore her. She sits defeated on the toilet, applicator in hand, and calls her mother in.

Since 2006, Wilson has logged more than 800 entries: a curly-haired woman wearing a white backpack reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote; a Hispanic teenager reading Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi; a black man in his fifties wearing a forest-green sweater reading A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. Recently, Seen Reading went global via Twitter, gathering sightings reported by literary voyeurs in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Halifax, and Singapore, and in spring 2012, Calgary-based Freehand Books will publish a book based on the project.

Wilson sees Seen Reading as “an impressive, open-ended display of anecdotal evidence that proves people still read, still read paper books, still read in public as entertainment.” She’s made influencers of readers who, though they may not know it, are producing culture through the act of reading. Considering the publishing industry’s current troubles, BM&A’s unflagging enthusiasm is heartening. A new returns policy instituted by Indigo Books & Music will soon see Canada’s largest retail book chain sending books back to publishers 45 days after they’ve been ordered, slicing in half the long-standing 90-day returns term. That means some books will have only a month and a half to make an impact on readers, an impossibly small window in a very busy season. Some larger publishers, like McClelland & Stewart, who just released Michael Ondaatje’s new novel, The Cat’s Table, have less to worry about. Others, whose fall lists centre on newer voices, may have more of an uphill battle.

“In all your other relationships you’d practice more care, but publishing you truly can’t ever stop trying,” says Wilson of book marketing today. “You’ll turn that book into whatever you think the reader wants: ‘You want a blonde? I can be a blonde!’” As bricksand-mortar bookshelves disappear, some advocate for a re-emphasis on book criticism as a way to keep the conversation going. The reality, though, is that the space available for book reviews in major media outlets doesn’t allow for the considered criticism the New York Times Magazine’s Sam Anderson refers to as the “ground zero of textuality.”

The idea of a professional fan may not jibe with notions of how we receive books. But in building a book community that explores the manifold ways people interact with books, BM&A is doing readers and the publishing industry a great service, reinvigorating the lives books have off the shelf.

Another way Wilson is accomplishing this is through work with the Canadian Bookshelf project, a government-funded database of Canadian books. Its goal is to build community around Canadian titles through customized portals aimed at the general public, film and television producers, teachers and librarians. Wilson blogs about books and authors, and runs a personal-shopper program that matches readers with books based on five self-submitted descriptors, filling the gap left as more curated independent bookstores disappear. The realm of professional book fan keeps growing.