Muffins

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“Real Rooke, real vinyl, real rock ’n’ roll!” says the blurb on
the cover. It is talking about a slick marketing gimmick of releasing
one Leon Rooke short story accompanied by a scratchy vinyl 45-rpm record
of the author reading the same story (or, at least, most of it) to a
live audience.

Muffins is a hilarious account of a family squabble between middle-aged
parents and their teenage child. The catalyst is a pan of muffins baked
by the daughter, a purple-haired, bulimic bohemian with a thing for
lizards and Heidegger.

The 45 is undeniably real vinyl. Unfortunately, only two-thirds of
Rooke’s reading fits onto the record. Alas, the limitations of a
medium created in the 1950s. The issuing of a partial story on a 45 is
delightfully camp, but is it rock and roll? Spiritually speaking, yes.
Rooke’s recording, cut in a Toronto bar, has all the boozy
effervescence of a one-man tour band. In an age when some writers
attempt to take themselves seriously as performance artists, Rooke
responds by sending out a bootleg recording of one of his own beer-hall
jam sessions.