To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
nation, yes, but singing a siren song of
empathy I cannot resist."
The siren song of Ondaatje's texts is one
point at which Barbour's method fails—he
cannot convincingly account for Ondaatje's
appeal and success. Because Barbour is
using dialogism as the measure of excellence
he surrenders the sensual appeal of
Ondaatje's images. It may be true, as
Barbour claims, that violently paradoxical
images "argue the end of metaphor" in
foregrounding writing and textual structure.
And it may be true that there is emotional
appeal in the collapse of metaphor, or in
the failure of coherence. But I don't agree
that Ondaatje's appeal lies there; I think it
is in the images themselves. And I think
Barbour recognized this problem when The
English Patient, in many ways less disjunctive
than Ondaatje's earlier works, got raves; he
praises its poetic sensuality and treats it
merely as an afterword, since it was hot off
the press as his book was going to press.
Typically Twayne, the volume is well produced
and reads smoothly, despite American
spelling and a few typos. The bibliography of
primary works is useful; the secondary bibliography
covers only selected articles and
book chapters, but is perceptively annotated
and scrupulously fair. The tone is scholarly
if bland, but heats up a bit in the footnotes
where critics like Mundwiler, Lee and
Nodelman are faulted for their blindness in
reading Ondaatje's texts as monologic. So
this book is an interesting and valuable
study of Ondaatje's work up to The English
Patient. Barbour hasn't convinced me that
Bakhtin is the key to Ondaatje's work, but
his own reflections and insights are truly
helpful and engaging.
Saints Alive
bplMichol, with Howard Gerhard
Ad Sanctos: The Martyrology Book 9. Coach
House Press $14.95
bpNichol, ed. Irene Niechoda
Truth: a book of fictions. Mercury Press $14.95
Reviewed by Stephen Scobie
Ad Sanctos, the Latin phrase used as the
title for Book 9 of bpNichol's The
Martyrology, may roughly be translated as
"To the Saints." But that English phrase
contains an ambiguity which the original
Latin doesn't allow for. "Ad" sanctos means
towards the saints, in the direction of the
saints; if one wanted "to the saints" in the
sense of an attribution ("This book is dedicated
to the saints"), strict Latin grammar
would require the dative case with no
preposition: simply, "sanctis."
Nichol's text in fact encompasses both
meanings. It takes the form of a libretto for
a one-act opera, featuring an assortment of
characters. Some of them are named functionally
("a writer," "a reader"), some
pronominally ("i," "she," "we"), and some
by names which have already appeared in
Nichol's linguistic hagiography ("st. orm,"
"st. ranglehold"). These characters are moving,
literally, ad sanctos, towards the saints:
they are seeking out a saint's tomb, at which
they propose to sit in contemplation until
they die. Since they are a quarrelsome lot
(somewhat reminiscent of the Players in Tom
Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead), this meditative outlook never
seems likely, and it finally collapses when
they find not one but two possible sites for
the tomb of St. Valentine (ad sanctos, to the
saints). Some choose one tomb, some
another, and the final three (i, agnes, and
ranglehold) choose neither. As Nichol's
Preface puts it, "If the heart is divided even
here, then this is a sign. There is no peace
in escaping into death. The three turn and
head off, back into the world."
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