“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” – Oscar Wilde
I flunked out of charm school. Actually, since they were so polite, I didn’t really fail. I simply got a weak handshake and a cold, glassy stare. Maybe it was because I didn’t listen when they were telling me how to properly contour my eye shadow or fold a dinner napkin. In my defense, I was too busy looking at a red head applying her lip liner.
Though I abide by my own unconventional code of conduct, other’s rules of etiquette intrigue me. Mostly because one person’s unbreakable tenet is another person’s casually overlooked suggestion.
For example, my Dad was, and still is, always paranoid about having plenty of napkins at the ready for every meal. You would think he was expecting a spaghetti fight, when we were usually munching on a conservative pot roast or our morning cheerios. Compare this to friends of mine, who never have napkins or any sort of mouth-wiping materials in sight. After experiencing a night of hot wings sans napkins, and the awkward salivation and finger licking that followed, I began bringing my own stash.
Unlike me, Toby Ménard, the protagonist of Todd Babiak’s latest novel, Toby: A Man, knows how to fold a pocket-handkerchief so it looks perfectly imperfect. He prides himself on being a true gentleman and will accept nothing less from every other man on the planet. The star of his own television show on etiquette, Toby takes on the unscrubbed, huddled masses, and teaches them the appropriate wait time between taking off their gloves and shaking hands (“the hand must not be bare until precisely before the shake”).
A BMW 335i in his driveway, a gorgeous news anchor at his side and his Blackberry buzzing constantly inside the pocket of his custom made Hugo Boss suit, Toby seems to have it all. That is, until he discovers his Dad in a burning car and saves him from what seems like a suicide attempt. After a harrowing night in the hospital, he seeks solace at his girlfriend’s mansion, only to find evidence that confirms his suspicions that she’s cheating on him.
The next morning, drunk on NyQuil and grief, Toby majorly screws up an interview with a conservative political candidate and consequently gets canned from his TV show. Broke, unemployed and single, he’s forced to trade in his BMW for a cobweb filled Chevette, and moves into his parent’s basement. Then, in a one-night stand gone awry, he ends up in custody of an impressionable 2-year-old boy.
Set in Montreal, Toby: A Man is full of interesting and complex relational dynamics and peppered with Babiak’s signature humour, which some have compared to Woody Allen. Babiak, an award-winning author, journalist, and screenwriter, says that Toby’s journey is really about a gentleman becoming a man, and in the process, redefining for himself what being a ‘real’ man is.
“Toby had given up on family, he thought he didn’t need it,” says Babiak. “He’s tried to leave his background behind, but then he’s forced to come back home. The people he admires are rich, dress perfectly, speak perfect English, perfect French, and know how to fold a pocket square at birth. His parents live in a small house and own three hot dog shops.”
Parts of the book were inspired by real events in Babiak’s life. Growing up in Leduc, Alberta, Babiak was asked why he couldn’t be more like his brother, who was more of a typical “guy’s guy”. His measure as a man was often judged because he was interested in theatre and the arts.
“This idea that our legitimacy is caught up in whether or not we measure up to a certain standard of masculinity is absurd. I hope it’s the last generation of that kind of thinking.”
Babiak has been through his own journey on discovering what being a man means for him personally. After the life-changing events of both losing his father to brain tumours and the arrival of his first daughter, he found a different way to measure success.
“Before my Dad died, I would’ve said that success for me would be about the novels I’m writing, the screenplays that I’m doing, how I feel about them and how the readers feel about them, a sort of selfishness,” says Babiak.
“But being a man is really about dignity and moral purpose which is always about the way you treat other people. When you understand that, the way you act around people makes you either a deeply flawed or a deeply honourable person. If I can fall asleep knowing that I’ve been good to my family, my community, then I am successful.”
A common theme in Babiak’s writing is his exploration of our sense of connectedness or lack of it in society—the good and bad things about the times we’re living in.
“How often do we make eye contact with the person we’re with and have that human connection? There’s something in these moments that we’re missing when we’re staring into our Blackberry.”
As far as Toby: A Man, goes, Babiak opens up an fresh, interesting look at a reverse rags to riches story. If I ever meet him in person, I’ll be sure to look him right in the eye and remove my glove precisely before I shake his hand. Take that, charm school.
