\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

\s m YevtewELECTRONIC ADDITIONANDREW H. MALCOLM, The Canadians. Fitzhenry& Whiteside, $24.95.ANDREW H. MALCOLM is an Americanjournalist who joined the New YorkTimes immediately after graduation fromNorthwestern University and since thenhas worked continuously on that newspaperin positions of widening responsibility.In 1978 he opened the Timesbureau in Toronto and remained thereuntil 1982. His book, The Canadians, isboth a distillation and an expansion ofthe hundreds of stories he wrote or projectedduring these years.Malcolm is an accomplished journalist.He pursues facts with passion anddelight. He loads every rift with statistics.In the middle of a vivid description ofNewfoundland, he will remind us thatthe province is closer to Liverpool thanto Toronto; into a historical survey ofManitoba he will insert the informationthat the name of the province is a combinationof Sioux and Assiniboine wordsmeaning "prairie water." To some extenthe seems to approve the theory that truthcan emerge from an accumulation offacts and quotations, that, like the computer,the journalist can get the rightanswer by electronic addition.But Malcolm is not always contentwith facts. The Canadians is also a deeplypersonal book, a voyage of discovery intothe writer's past, to some extent an autobiography.Both Malcolm's father andmother were Canadians, who had goneto the United States during the desperate1930's; and in early visits to the Canadianhome of his grandparents, youngMalcolm rediscovered his Canadian heritage.This is the burden of the finalchapter called "My Canada," and thischapter is written with an imaginativeglow closer to the novelist than to thejournalist.The heritage that he rediscovered andto which he still clings is a fusion of nostalgia,the glamour of the remote andthe persistence of fundamental humanvirtues. It has its roots in frontier society— in the frontier that his Scottish grandfatherknew during the late nineteenthcentury when he homesteaded in Manitoba.For Malcolm that frontier stillremains in the Yukon and the NorthwestTerritories, and much of his most colourfuland vigorous writing is about his owndiscovery of the far north. "The mostmemorable Canadian" that he knows isan illiterate trapper in the north, NapoleonSnowbird Martin, who is preternaturallywise in the ways of the land.Others of the same company are a judgeand a mountie who patrol vast, sparselyinhabited areas in the northern parts ofthe prairie provinces, an adventurer whoruns the hotel on Baffin Island, and amissionary who has devoted his life totranslating the Bible into the languageof an obscure Indian tribe. Even hisdescription of his grandparents' home inthe countryside near Toronto has a curiousfrontier quality. It has the virtues ofsimplicity and compassion, and an atmospherethat is quaintly Victorian.But the personal and romantic elementsof the novelist and autobiographerare subordinate to the factual and statisticalapproach of the journalist. Theemphasis of the book is on the economy,ада the chapter on that subject takes upalmost one third of the book — an interminablechapter of one hundred andfifty pages. A good deal of this is contemporarybusiness reporting in themanner of Peter Newman, who is frequentlyand admiringly mentioned. Malcolmbelieves, along with many young144

BOOKS IN REVIEWCanadian historians, that power belongsin the board rooms of large corporationsand not in the Prime Minister's office orthe committee rooms on Parliament hill.Malcolm's easy familiarity with recentCanadian business activity is reinforcedby a historical perspective, in which twogeneralizations predominate. The first isthe familiar one of the segmentation ofCanada. The book begins with impressiveaccounts of the regionalism decreedby a fierce and intractable geography.Whereas the United States is a riverflowing steadily and ever more powerfullyto some distant goal, Canada is aseries of ponds, some stagnant, somebursting with life, but all condemned tohopeless isolation. Insofar as they haveexternal relations, these are with Americanregions to the immediate south, andnot with sister regions in Canada. Thisseparateness is encouraged and emphasizedby the current infatuation withmulti-culturalism, by which new immigrantshave been given the status ofprivileged visitors who are urged to followtheir traditional ways.Against this pull of regionalism thenational will is powerless. In a key passageMalcolm writes: "so there is aprovincial political system representingnarrow provincial needs and priorities.And there is a federal political systemwith its different focus. The two levels'leaders meet in occasional summits, andthey routinely argue over money — howmuch is the federals' share of risinghealth insurance costs, for example. Butthere is not the constant interplay oflocal and national ideas and perspectivesthat there is all along the interconnectedpolitical career ladder in the Americansystem, even with all its own faults."From strong regionalism and a weaknational drive comes the great Canadianmalaise — a desperate search for a recognizedidentity that always eludes thesearch, a deep-seated consciousness offailure, a pessimism about the future,and a worship of and (at the same time)a righteous contempt for Americanenergy and self-confidence.There is much in this analysis that isaccurate and illuminating. But I wouldsuggest two caveats. He overemphasizesregional conflict. His four years in Canadawere an unusually bitter period ofinternal conflict. He was here duringClark's brief government, then duringthe return of Trudeau with a policy oftough nationalism, which stimulatedbitter opposition. It was a period whenregional passions were at their highest,inflamed by Trudeau's cool, nationalapproach towards the nature of the Canadianstate.My second caveat is more serious.Malcolm does not recognize the persistentstrength of Canadian national ideas.For instance, he sees the pattern ofCanadian immigration through the yearsreinforcing Canadian regionalism. Therewas, he points out, no continuous movementwestward, as there was in theUnited States, but a series of discretemovements, each with its own characteristics.He is right in his observation thatthere was no continuous surge of Westernmovement. But he ignores the movementof a homogeneous group from theMaritimes and Ontario to the West — agroup that played a disproportionatelyimportant role in establishing social andcultural priorities. In general, this groupbrought to the west ideas and attitudesderived partly from loyalist sentiments,partly from a devout protestantism. Theybelieved in the power of education inunion with sound moral principles. Theywere likely to establish a church or aliterary society before a saloon (althoughthe saloon came in good time), and theyhad a passion for education. One of themost remarkable facts about westerndevelopment was the celerity with whichuniversities were founded. The bill creat-145

BOOKS IN REVIEWing the University of Manitoba waspassed in 1877, seven years after theprovince was formed. British Columbiatook similar action in 1890. Alberta andSaskatchewan were even more prompt.These two provinces were created in1905, carved out of the Northwest Territories.In 1906 Alberta passed a universityact; in 1907 it had a president, H.M. Tory (a Maritimer), who was to bea dominant figure in Canadian highereducation for the next four decades.Saskatchewan followed in identical sequence,one year behind at each stage. Ittoo chose a president, W. C. Murray(also a Maritimer), who was to givestrong leadership both to his own universityand to Canadian higher education.An austere frontier society thus coexistedwith an advanced educational establishment,and it was the latter that createdthe significant national associations. Malcolm'sbook has nothing about universities,although he clearly relied on academicsfor direction and advice.Malcolm finds few national symbolsto which Canadians can respond. Heechoes Goldwin Smith's rough jibe aboutthe national capital; "Ottawa is a subarcticlumber village converted by royalmandate into a political cockpit." Ottawa,says Malcolm, "remains a cold, oldcanal town" — a casual rejection of thecity's magnificent site and of its role as ameeting place of French and Englishcultures. Sir John A. Macdonald is dismissedas "a door Scot and alcoholic." Iassume he has not read (or has not beenimpressed by) Donald Creighton's greatbiography, in which Macdonald is portrayedas an artist who could assimilateopposites —- cool and logical, yet emotionallyattached to the past and sensitiveto symbols; pragmatic and astute, yetdevoted to certain fixed ideas; witty andeloquent, but disdainful of the elaboraterhetoric of his American contemporaries.Despite Malcolm's thesis of fragmentationand national weakness, he nowsees Canada emerging in the financialworld as a formidable power, indeed a"voracious tiger." The voracious tigerranges most widely in the jungle of theUnited States. The chapter on the economybegins with two paragraphs inwhich Malcolm describes how an averageAmerican family could be subtly butpowerfully Canadianized, working in askyscraper built by Canadians, driving acar built in Canada, watching TV programmeson a cable system owned byCanadians, and even reading a Canadiannovel purchased in a book store ownedby Canadians. This massive Canadianimperialism is the theme in Malcolm'sbook that has aroused most interest andcomment. It depends, as Malcolm himselfpoints out, on strong national interventionon, for instance, the federalrestrictions on Canadian banking, so thatthe twelve authorized Canadian banksare giants compared to their fifteen thousandAmerican, state-anchored counterparts.He might have made a similarpoint with respect to the recent efflorescenceof Canadian culture, which he dealswith casually in a name-dropping footnoteto his chapter on "The People." Forthe last three decades the Canada Councilhas supplanted the CBC as a nationalcultural agent and symbol (Malcolmmentions the Canada Council only once,and then obliquely, although it precededthe analogous American body and was, inpart, a model for it).The fragmentation Malcolm emphasizeshas, then, been accompanied by astrong national drive. This nationalismexists side by side with an anti-nationalism,which takes the form of the selfdeprecationthat Malcolm repeatedlyemphasizes. But that self-deprecation isbecoming, especially in our literature, amature irony. As Marshall McLuhan hasargued, this muted nationalism encouragesobjectivity and disinterestedness. We146

BOOKS IN REVIEWstudy in Lacanian criticism and incidentallyexplains much about Aquin's ProchainEpisode, mentioned by none butclearly hovering on the horizon.IXE-13's mission, dictated by Col.Smiley, the father-superior ostensibly embodyingnational security but actuallysymbolizing the hero's sublimated homosexualanxieties, involves one of severalscenarios relating to the opponent ormale adversary: acting/preventing theenemy spy from acting; acquisition/destructionof someone or something; capture/escape.His female partner, necessarilywife rather than mistress in prc-1 960 Quebec, both helps and hinders theaccomplishment of his mission — goodspies love none or many, but not one.Gisèle functions as spy or wife but notboth : the hero must marry, and yet marriagetransforms her from ally to lovelyenemy. When Gisèle suggests that IXE-13 leave the Service to become an "agentlibre," the submerged Freudian conflictwith Smiley arises to throw into questionthe identity of Jean/IXE-13.A thousand or so episodes, rangingfrom World War I through the cold warto early star wars, encompassing thedeath of his son and his return to theService, allow for ample investigationand counter-investigation of the adolescentmale ego as it evolved alongsidemodern Quebec society. Perhaps unreasonably(interviews are alluded to), Ifound myself wishing for informationabout Rita's role as I read Denis St-Jacques' insightful closing contributionon "L'Idéologie dans le Texte" — Daignaultwas probably more willing to confessthat he obtained his stories fromPlotto than from his wife.Les Aires de La Chanson Québécoiseis more of a grab-bag collection, reflectingthe strength and weaknesses of workin-progressby people writing independently.Jacques Julien on the typology ofpopular song, and Robert Giroux on theWestern and the counter-culture lyric asthe two poles of Quebec music, characterizethe book's general aim : to bridgethe gap between classical music and thetraditional folk song as the exclusivefocus of musicologists and folklorists inQuebec. Buried within this larger aimeloquently defended by Jean-JacquesSchira's essay on the need for soundarchives, and a title that I suspect isdirected at a recalcitrant body of orthodoxscholars, are two important essayswhich articulate new responses to Saussure.Robert Giroux's second essay, "LeDépôt sonore, trois fragments d'un livreà venir," alone would justify the publicationof this book, exploring the "sujetmusicant" and the "sujet non-musicant"in relation to the "sujet parlant," andmarrying scholarly methods to personalexperiences. Everyone within a society isa speaking subject; few are musical subjects— as with poetry, the McLuhanesquepassive majority define via feedbackthe common denominator. Whereastechnology accelerates the evolution ofmusic as system, language evolves relativelyslowly, simply because it functionsas a given manipulated by all in an indefiniteseries of unique combinations.Musically speaking, , Québécois youthcan be compared to second-generationimmigrants who lose the mother tonguein their eagerness to assimilate but whoretain a nostalgic command of folkmusic, i.e., of dance and of "emptywords." Empty words do not equal musicwithout meaning, and the same adolescent'semotional identification with theyouth culture of American rock, alsoexpressed viscerally through a languagebarrier, is an equally significant focus foridentity as well as leisure. Giroux frameshis contribution with a humorous yetstrangely moving confession of his fixationon Elvis Presley and of a taping episodewhich resulted in a powerful sexual148

BOOKS IN REVIEWencounter for the "unsuspecting" musicologist.Referring to many things, heconcludes wryly if not paradoxically:"Encore un texte d'inachevé."Jacques Julien's essay "Le Maniérismevocal ou la voix porteuse," studying thesignificant and self-conscious parody of aCharlebois or the insistence of a "bad"voice such as that of a Tom Waits,opposes these to the fetishism of voice inthe institution of opera, arguing for improvisationand a direct interaction betweenthe author/performer and hisaudience. Equally compelling and knowledgeablein music history and voicetheory, it joins Giroux's essay in spirit ifnot in style. Renée-Berthe Drapeau'sessay, less theoretically rigorous but historicallyand bibliographically sound,seems to summarize the unevenness ofthis nonetheless valuable collection in itssurvey of "yé-yé" or televised hit-paradetranslations of top ten American tunesprior to the emergence of native composer-performersin 1975. Her lists ofshort-lived combos on the music show"Jeunnesse d'aujourd'hui" triggered anaural memory of my childhood in the1960's, a mental sound archive (TheClassels!) which I had forgotten I possessed.At their best, each of these importantbooks strikes a balance betweenBarthes and life.MICHELE LACOMBETWO DIMENSIONSА. к. DEWDNEY, The Planiverse. McClelland& Stewart, $12.95.The Planiverse is A lot of fun. At thevery least it is an entertaining combinationof science fiction and two-dimensionalphysics. At most it is a thoughtprovokingessay on creativity and the linebetween physics and metaphysics. ThePlaniverse opens in the computer lab ofa university that one can not help butassume is the University of WesternOntario. A computer simulation into atwo-dimensional world is absorbing thewriter, a professor of computer science,and his brightest students. The project isgrowing, semester after semester, gettingmore sophisticated and more fantastical.Suddenly, something totally unexpectedhappens. Something that, from a computerscience point of view is impossible.A strange character appears on thescreen. Communicating with the studentsby means of their printer, he tells themthat his name is Yendred, and that he isabout to begin a quest for a deepermeaning, for the Presence.Yendred's quest takes the readerthrough the universe of Arde, and showshim everything from two-dimensionaltravel, through two-dimensional sport, totwo-dimensional romance. The ideas ofhow this all might work are mindstretching.The students and their professorare at first astounded and fascinated,then, eventually obsessed. Theytry to remain detached from Yendredand his search, but their capacity to seethe "third dimension," invisible to Yendred,gives them God-like powers in hisuniverse. They feel a moral responsibilityto help Yendred, and at the same time,a moral responsibility not to interfere.Meanwhile, outside pressures have causedthe fictional professor Dewdney and hisstudents to conceal what is going on inthe computer science lab. If word gotout, they fear they would be the laughingstock of the university — and theirlarger world. As Yendred gets closer andcloser to finding the Presence, the observersare under increasing pressurefrom the chairman of the department,and the president of the university, todiscontinue their communications withthe world they have discovered. Thestudents' project has run away withthem, and no one is sure how it will end.149

BOOKS IN REVIEWofficial insanity, it is a step toward overcomingit." More specifically, THESCREAM addresses the "co-opting ofnuclear stress," the culpability of bureaucrats,the vulnerability of the young andsensitive whose only escape from victimizationis suicide. "WHY SCREAM?" avoice asks : "Wake up / Look around /If you need help / Dial-a-Prayer." Furthermore,as the group's self-explanationsuggests, THE SCREAM wants to be anaffirmation of life and creativity. InCormier's words, "First Draft is like beinga child again . . . The group bringswith it an energy that obliges me toexplore my creativity."Laudable as these goals may be, andhowever sincerely invoked, it is at thejuncture of intention and accomplishmentthat I hesitate. Too often the resultfalls short of the expectation, the imagesare corny, the juxtapositions crude oraffected, the biographies too familiar, thepoetry trite, or simply bad. ("To admitthe lure of manmaiden coiled / of surrenderto your entropie eyes" makes mewant to scream.) Although it is difficultto comment on (take the music, for example)because the entire group, multimediaenterprise, rather like a play, losesa great deal when it cannot be experiencedlive, I will venture two evaluationsof the text as a catalogue, a programme,for a performance. First, there is no trulyaccomplished, fresh poetry here ; the best,to my ear, is Morton's "Migrations,"which is a simple elegiac narrative (notan expressionistic tour de force) thatseems out of place amidst the visualdynamics. Second, there is no visual workthat can stand comparison with Munch'slithograph; the best, to my eye, are "TheFlapjack" and a drawing by nine-yearoldVincent Bonin which recalls theexpressionists' love of so-called "primitive"art. I am happiest with the text asiconoclastic parody, as rambunctiousgood spirits, as meta-text because thetextual gymnastics seem inconsistent withthe declared serious purpose and becausethe talents of the group do not rise tothe horror of its apocalyptic vision.Artistic ability notwithstanding, thechallenge faced by First Draft is thatfaced by many members of the avantgardein the 1980's. Believing withClaude Dupuis that "the entire historyof art is a storehouse of retrievables,"many contemporary artists retrieve(Kandinsky's word was "revive," andthere is an important difference) expressionistmethods and images. Some ofthem, perhaps emulating Die Brücke orDer blaue Reiter, work in interdisciplinarygroups like First Draft, or on groupshows and collaborative enterprises suchas the ecclesiastical expressionist paintingsin St. Gerard-Magella church inLarouche, Quebec executed by threeyoung Quebec painters. In many ways,THE SCREAM bears close comparisonwith a work by the Cologne group MulheimerFreiheit, The Second Bombing( 1 983 ), which also combines narrative,biography, drawings, reproductions, andphotographs (of a devastated 1945 Cologne)in a text — part send-up, partmanifesto — that catalogues their 1983-84 show while it gestures towards moraland political issues. What is true of TheSecond Bombing is true of THESCREAM. In order to respond to thepressures of history, nuclear threat, alienation,violence, and social injustice in anindifferent or numbed world, these neoexpressionistsare retrieving forms andattempting to revivify them with personalinsights, anger, or rebellion at atime when the issues are too complexand global to be framed by individual,or group, response. What is lacking inmuch neo-expressionist work that I haveseen or read is the urgency and power tomove, the sort of power that still strikesme in a Schmidt-Rottluff woodcut, aBarlach sculpture, or a Kaiser play. As154

BOOKS IN REVIEWJohn Bentley Mays put it, in a reviewof the exhibit of German ExpressionistPrints in the McMaster University Collection:"The difference between thenand now is in the quality of defiance,compassion and vigilance."And yet... although neo-expressionistscourt comparisons with their forerunners,it is, perhaps, a mistake to look for thesame urgency and idealism in their art.Perhaps by doing so the critic, not theartist, falls victim to the desire for Kandinsky'sfirst type of similarity. Perhapsby looking for the reassurance of thecomparatively confident Expressionismof the past, we reveal our own failures.Certainly I believe it wrong to say, asRobert Hughes did in "Upending theNew German Chic" in Time (1982),that the expressionist revival stands fornothing more than the artist's ability "tomultiply saleable relics" of the self.What encourages me about THESCREAM, and neo-Expressionism generally,is not its label, its promotion, oreven its revival of an earlier art. What isvaluable is its energy, audacity, promise.This art is meant to be paradoxical,parodie, and ironically self-reflective;that is why it turns upside down orscreams. To read First Draft's SCREAMat all is to be forced to re-think expectationsabout genre, decorum, artistic influence,and moral parameters of art — allold questions, of course, but ones of perennialvalue, especially in Canada whereart pundits can confidently dismiss neo-Expressionism as insincere because, unlikethe Germans, Canadians have nopast and no present cause for anxiety!THE SCREAM may not be great art,but neither is it "stillborn" retrieval. Asan example of 1980's neo-Expressionism,it casts an ironic eye on itself and uswhen, in a gesture parallel with Baselitz,and utterly unlike Munch, the "collaborators"remind us that after THESCREAM "what you make of the ensuingsilence is up to you."SHERRILL GRACETHREE MOVEMENTSJOAN MURRAY, ed. Daßodüs in Winter. TheLife and Letters of Pegi Nicol MacLeod,1904-194g. Penumbra Press, n.p."OWNING A WORK by Pegi Nicol is likesmelling daffodils in mid-winter" (GrahamMclnnes). Letters reveal their creatoras few other genres can do. Thepersonality, and something deeper, lurksin and between the lines. The letters ofPegi Nicol MacLeod show us a vital,warm, and exuberant spirit who becamea mature artist, yet always remained achild.This carefully edited volume consistsof a short biography, plates of fifty-eightpaintings in black and white reproductions,photographs, notes, and a lengthybibliography. It forms a solid introductionto the life, the letters, and the art ofa painter who deserves to be betterknown. MacLeod was a small-town girl,born Margaret Kathleen Nichol in Listowel,Ontario. She grew up in Ottawawhere she blossomed as something of anexotic in the staid, civil service city. Herbohemian spirit evoked her mother's hostility,and Pegi left home at nineteen forMontreal. In a solid, forty-page Introduction,Murray traces the life throughMontreal, Toronto, New York and Fredericton,to the early death from cancerin 1949. Pegi studied first at the OttawaArt School under Franklin Brownell,then at Montreal's Ecole des beaux-artswith Edwin Holgate. Friends and fellowstudents included Prudence Heward, LillianFreeman and Marion Scott. InMontreal in the 1920's, Pegi was part ofa lively circle of intellectuals and artistswhich included the Scotts (Frank and

BOOKS IN REVIEWMarian), Wilder Penfield, Eugene Forsey,David Lewis, André Bieler, and KingGordon. Pegi and King were lovers inthe early 1930's before she met (andeventually married) Norman MacLeod.MacLeod was an engineer and a radicalleftist, a macho man with little regardfor art. Pegi tried to enter his world, buthe never embraced hers.The paintings, even in small black andwhite reproductions, form a better introductionto the artist than do the letters.Three self-portraits (1925-35) show agamin face with a wistful, rather hauntingexpression and enormous eyes. Menfound her fascinating. Some women consideredher ugly. Her face, like her paintings,has the beauty of animation, anexuberance and vitality which is echoedin the writing style. Nicol is an actionpainter, a realist who reflected the lifeshe saw around her, yet transformed itwith her imagination and vision. Thetitles of her paintings reflect her subjectsand her scope: Ottawa Street Scene,Tapisserie des Vaches, Chinatown Toronto,Suburban Sunday, New YorkTenement, School Garden Ottawa,Streets of New York, CWAC BeautyParlour, Pigeons, Slum Children, JaneReading.Jane was Nicol's daughter and onlychild, a source of wonder to the artist.The marriage was stormy, with longseparations and a chronic shortage offunds. The cost of painting suppliesalone, as Murray notes, must have beenhigh. In 1938 Nicol writes to Eric Brown,Director of the National Gallery, tothank him for introducing the Masseysto her work. They became her first patrons:"I would be glad if you wouldaccept to the Masseys for me, I put sucha heavy hand on any deal. I couldscarcely sleep when your letter arrivedand kept spending the money all nightlong, on paints and canvas and Jane.When morning came I had a pile of toysa mile high and roll after roll of canvas,all hand-prepared."Murray compares the charm of theletters to the way Nicol entered a room,"ebulliently, with an appealing, unstudiedfreshness." Certainly the writingis fresh — sometimes trivial, but nearlyalways charming. In 1941 Nicol writesto a friend in Fredericton, a city she hasjust left to return to New York:I still feel awfully full and haunted by N.B.. . . This is the German Section, a contrast,to the village — prosperous, domestic, anorgy of shops, restaurants, lots of sausage &beer and faces older than Methuseleh, earlyGerman paintings, Memling, Cranach, old,old, old. After Canada where children arejust bland healthy lumps, these over-civilizedcrones of seven are amusing. So insteadof a sort of fairy tale existence, potterys,universities, in and out of Smith'sShops, I'm a hausfrau again. Can't say Imind.The letters catch Nicol's moods, fromjoy and high spirits to loneliness and depression."The sky is a hostile post cardblue and I feel rather depressed," shewrote to the Scotts in 1932. They alsoexpress her love of language. Of herwriting in general, Frank Scott said thatit "wove through its grammar like a stemthrough stones." Nicol was a poet andessayist as well as a painter. She describedher work as "a search for essentialbeauty within reality."Murray's critical and biographical Introductionhas its own charm. The languageis lively and very readable. Herassessment of Nicol's achievement is bothsympathetic and shrewd. Daffodils inWinter is balanced, thorough, and rarelydull.PATRICIA MORLEYI56

CHAFE AND JARRICHARD JONES, ed., Poetry and Politics: AnAnthology of Essays. Macmillan, $14.95.DAVID MGFADDEN, The Art of Darkness. Mc-Clelland & Stewart, $12.95.RAYMOND sousTER, Jubilee of Death: TheRaid on Dieppe. Oberon, $12.95.PABLO NERUDA ONCE WARNED that youngpoets should never begin their careers byattempting to write political poetry."Political poetry is more deeply emotionalthan any other except love poetry,"he explained. "You must have traversedthe whole of poetry before you become apolitical poet." Even in North Americansociety, where political poetry seems suspectand less highly valued than in Southor Central America, poets have sensedthe wisdom of Neruda's rule. Speakingof the early 1960's, Adrienne Rich observedthat "I think I began at this pointto feel that politics was not something'out there' but something 'in here' andof the essence of my condition." Why,then, do many readers and critics haveso much difficulty conceiving of a poetrywhose energizing spirit may be both personaland political?Richard Jones' anthology, Poetry andPolitics, from which I drew my openingquotations, seeks answers to this andother questions which are no less vital tothe cause of political poetry. Are literatureand language inherently political?American poet Carolyn Forche, likeGeorge Orwell before her, would respondwith a resounding "yes." Where does thepoet's primary duty lie? With the language,as T. S. Eliot claimed in his 1943address "The Social Function of Poetry"?Or with the people, as committed poetsNeruda and Forche insist? Finally, doespoetry ever make a difference in thepublic sphere? Auden felt that poetryhad lost whatever power to influencesociety that it held in ancient Greece —BOOKS IN REVIEWand yet he is one of the foremost practionersof political poetry in our century.Stanley Kunitz cautions us not to "deceiveourselves: a poet isn't going tochange the world with even the mostpowerful of his poems." Nevertheless,the founding principle of Poetry andPolitics is the belief in social change; theanthology is partly based on the "PoetsAgainst the End of the World" readingwhich took place on 26 May 1982 inNew York, with participants such asDenise Levertov, Robert Bly, EtheridgeKnight and — ironically — StanleyKunitz.Such debates are not at all foreign toour own poetry, in spite of our unfortunatereputation as the moderate, "beautifulCanadians" (to borrow MargaretAtwood's phrase from Bodily Harm). Inthe 1930's, modernist poets began toquestion their rigorous aestheticism in thelight of political reality (Auden's developmentfinds a corresponding Canadianversion in that of Dorothy Livesay).This conflict between aestheticism andpolitical consciousness raged in Canadainto the 1940's, in the passionate debatesbetween the Preview and First Statementpoets, and it is still simmering today.Atwood, for instance, writes politicalpoetry which is both acerbic and moving(see her poem for Carolyn Forché,"Notes Toward a Poem That Can NeverBe Written" in True Stories), yet mostof us remain uncomfortable — as poets,teachers, critics, readers — with politicalpoetry. Why?Two recent collections of Canadianpoetry, Raymond Souster's Jubilee ofDeath and David McFadden's The Artof Darkness, provide some answers, forneither collection reveals a mastery of thepolitical poem. Souster's collection is themore overtly political of the two; it retellsthe story of the siege of Dieppe fromthe perspective of various participants."Retells" is a key word, for the collec-157

BOOKS IN REVIEWtion reads less as a series of poems thanas one long prose redaction. Therein liesthe problem: how can one make vital,absorbing poetry out of the minute detailsof the movements of battalions?Another element of Souster's collectionwhich renders it less effective as politicalwriting is his choice of speakers. For themost part, they are high-ranking commandingofficers in the Canadian andBritish armies, arguing back and forthacross history about whose fault Dieppewas, and who was following whose ordersand how willingly. Although such bickeringillustrates Souster's point that war isoften a confused mess indeed, it does notengage the reader for long periods oftime, nor does it say a great deal aboutthe individuals caught in the verbal andmilitary crossfire. Souster attempts to redressthis balance between individual andcollective experience — a crucial factorin political writing — by opening the collectionwith a private's thoughts onviewing Dieppe forty years later andclosing it with the poet's view of a shellshockedDieppe survivor (the mosttouching moment in the collection). Yetthese framing devices, promising thoughthey are, cannot sustain the rest of thecollection, and seem (ironically) at warwith it.David McFadden turns his attentionto a contemporary dilemma in The Artof Darkness (a collection whose titlepunningly evokes perhaps the most famousof political tales). Like Neruda,Rich, and Conrad, McFadden seems tograsp the important dichotomy between"inner" and "outer" politics. "At first,"he claims, "I thought it [the title] referredto some kind of Conradian Africawithin, but now I see it refers to ourcurrent global dilemma."Like Souster, McFadden experimentswith political "framing" poems; in theopening and closing poems, "Night ofEndless Radiance" and "Country of theOpen Heart," he takes up the challengeof writing about the unthinkable: anuclear holocaust. Although critics haveoften deplored the lack of poetry writtenabout the bomb, I tend to agree withDenise Levertov's analysis of the effectof imminent global destruction on poeticcreation: "Sometimes I wonder how wecan write at all, under that shadow.Sometimes I wonder how we can writeabout anything else." In McFadden'sresponse to the subject, one senses bothuneasiness and urgency. His evocation ofa world gone mad with savagery can attimes be frighteningly sombre :poetrya process for stabbing the heart withheart-felt linesof icy darkness, poetry the art of darkness,and tiny people swim for the furthestshore.... . . each frantic swimmer and entireuniversehoping not to die . . .At the same time, however, one sensesMcFadden's cynical attitude toward theenterprise of creating political poetry. Inboth these poems, he experiments withchance composition; a flip of the coindetermines the number of lines and"everything that is in the air goes intothe poem." In "Country of the OpenHeart" especially, this kitchen-sink approachreduces both the political andaesthetic impact of the poem. In fact, thelast line of the collection is a sardonicswipe: "You need another line here.That'll do." In a poem dealing withglobal chaos, such nonchalance unfortunatelyundercuts the real issue — the realheart of darkness. I do not mean tosuggest that the poet must be entirelysure of his or her affiliations and priorities,for stirring political poetry has beencreated out of the tension between actionand contemplation within the poet. AsAtwood writes, "Each time I hit a key /on my electric typewriter, / speaking ofpeaceful trees / another village explodes."158

BOOKS IN REVIEWA second aspect of McFadden's collectionwhich concerns me is the lack ofintegration of his "art of darkness" withthe shorter lyrics which display the macabrehumour and wit familiar to readersof his earlier work. In "How I'd Liketo Die," McFadden gives us an outrageousand blackly comic list of possiblemeans of death which recalls the earlyOndaatje: "I'd like to be swallowedalive by a giant anaconda." The last line,however, completely and awkwardlyshatters the tone of the poem: "I wouldnot like to die in a nuclear holocaust."Bombing the reader seems a relativelyineffectual way of promoting disarmament.In the final analysis, neither McFaddennor Souster creates in his poetry theimpact that a reading of Carolyn Forché'saccount of her experiences in ElSalvador (in Jones' anthology) does, orthat Timothy Findley's tale of globaldestruction, Not Wanted on the Voyage,does. But lest we despairingly assume thatthe current global madness may only becaptured in expository prose or fiction, Ioffer the following lines from RobertLowell's "Fall 1961" as a moving argumentto the contrary :All autumn, the chafe and jarof nuclear war;/we have talked our extinction to death.I swim like a minnowbehind my studio window . . .Our end drifts nearer . . .DISPLACEMENTLORRAINE M. YORKRICHARD APPiGNANESi, Italia Perversa: PartOne: Stalin's Orphans. Montreal BookCentre, $19.95.THIS AMBITIOUS AND dense novel opensin Montreal at the funeral of the oddestCanadian "franco-anglified" immigrantto appear in our literature to date:Pierre Orson a.k.a. Piero Orsini a.k.a.Piero Ossaf raghi — child musical prodigyand Stalinist Quebec revolutionary, witha vision of international terrorism called"Destroying America." Everyone in thisnovel partakes of the immigrant's linguisticand referential displacement, foreveryone has many names: Piero's wife,Madeleine (a.k.a. Madlena) Castigny deNichel, is nicknamed by her father MamselleDirty — a name that sticks ! Thenovel's theme of the immigrant as orphanbegins to take on a firmly Oedipal structureas Piero is portrayed as the one whohad to find —• and destroy — his roots,be they ideological (his Swiss tutor) orfamilial.In the second section, "Vienna," weactually meet Piero, alive but ailing, inthe city of Freud. Not surprisingly, theformer prodigy and Stalinist terrorist isnow revealed as a psychiatric researcherand neuro-physiologist on some sort ofmysterious quest. He even turns out to bedirectly related to the subject of one ofthe cases in Freud's Psycho pathology ofEveryday Life. Aside from this, the novelstresses that neither Piero nor Madlenahas any idea why they are in Vienna.The implied search for the roots of hispaternal past, clearly linked to Oedipalguilt, will probably lead Piero to Zagrebin the promised sequel to this novel. Butin this one, his involvement with a bizarrecabal offers but few hints as to themeaning and function of its mysticism,politics, dramatic productions, and possiblesexual victimization. One suspectsthat some point is being made about thebody/spirit relationship and about therelation of the past to the present, butthis is only a suspicion.The problem is that there is too muchmystery for this reader. Piero the prodigymanages to be unconvincing in his boredbut relentless searching; the mysteries arewithout purpose (so far) ; entire episodes159

BOOKS IN REVIEWand stories told are without clear relevanceto plot, theme, or characterization.Perhaps the next volume will clarifysome of these points, but is that enough?The implied parallelism between the fateof Quebec and of the Jews in the lastwar requires a little more explanation toavoid accusations of overdoing a commonvictimization. The novel is alsoburdened by ponderous pronouncementslike "What is confession, but a pun thesoul transforms into truth?" In short,this is a learned and, given the material,a potentially fascinating novel, but muchof that material feels undigested. Muchis left up in the air. I know that a sequelis coming, but this novel does not standon its own with any force. I find myselfhoping that Richard Appignanesi, authorof the wonderfully witty and clear Freudfor Beginners, will bring to the next volumeof Italia Perversa the clarity andincisiveness of his previous work.CULTURALALTERNATIVES?LINDA HUTCHEONMEREDITH CAREY, Different Drummers: AStudy of Cultural Alternatives in Fiction.Scarecrow, $20.00.NEIL BissooNDATH, Digging Up the Mountains.Macmillan, $16.95.AUSTIN CLARKE, When Women Rule. Mc-Clelland & Stewart, $12.95.CAREY'S CRITICAL STUDY purports to examinethe cultural alternatives offered thereader by fiction devoted to the lives ofpeople "who don't fit in." Her systemwould probably classify the short storycollections by Trinidadian-born Bissoondathand Barbadian-born Clarke, bothCanadian residents who write of dislocatedimmigrants in Canada, under herchapter title "Ethnic Alternatives" — ifit could be stretched beyond her limitedfocus on English and American novelswritten by women.But Carey's approach would providevery little guidance for understanding thedifferent dynamics of these collections.Her book is a simple-minded thesis-stylesurvey about the theme of "living differently"in a host of books that have puzzledstandard criticism. Her initial premiseis convincing: "It is inevitable thatthe major reputations go to works whicharouse 'the usual feelings,' since traditionalliterary history embraces the'usual' values and enforces them underthe banner of versimilitude. We cannotexpect traditional literary historians todescribe a novel of social alternativeswhen traditional criticism does not recognisethat such a novel exists." But itturns out that Carey is not interested insocial or cultural alternatives either, butonly in the same old celebration of bourgeoisindividualism — extended to womenwho her study claims are the trueindividualists. Carey's theme enables herto ignore the exigencies of time andplace. She describes fiction written overa 300-year span by nineteen womennovelists to argue that all these novelsdescribe people who are "free to be unusual."Freedom is a much more complex andfragile state in the two story collections.Bissoondath and Clarke more often describepeople who are condemned to beunusual, men and women trapped byforces beyond their control into actingout dramas they would rather have nopart of. Digging Up the Mountains isthe more impressive collection. These arefinely crafted, haunting stories that seldomstrike a false note. When WomenRule, on the other hand, shows Clarkefar from his best. But both collectionsshare an overpowering ambience ofhelplessness.When Women Rule would more properlybe titled "When Money Rules."160

BOOKS IN REVIEWClarke's inappropriate title shows theconfusion of values that mars thesestories. Women rule in none of them, butto men insecure about their manhood ina new northern setting, their womenappear to rule because they remind themen of how little control they have overtheir own lives. In each of these stories,Clarke's men feel their manhood threatenedthrough lack of ownership (ofhouses, cars, or women) and lash out atthe nearest targets — usually women —in self-destructive despair. The melodramaticendings — a murder and twofires — show how all this frustrationleads to violence, but also reinforce thereader's feeling that Clarke is not reallyin control of his material. In a defianceof logic, his narratives, as well as hischaracters, equate the authority of thegrandmother in the Caribbean home withthe authority of the law, the job and theschool in Canada. A real hatred forwomen sweeps through these pages, yetthe capitalist bureaucracy that dehumanizesall his characters would seem to bethe chief object of his criticism.Digging up the Mountains shows nosuch confusion. Whereas most of Clarke'sstories share the perspectives of the"down and outs" — the unsuccessfulgamblers and drunkards who live incheap boarding houses and collect bottlesfor cash — Bissoondath's stories maintaina middle class perspective, from whichClarke's characters are seen to be anundifferentiated, threatening mob. Asthe book's blurb promises, Bissoondath"brings vividly to life the human side ofthe stories we read every day in thenewspapers." But this is only partiallytrue, and only partially a virtue. Like hismore famous uncle, V. S. Naipaul, Bissoondathwrites of "the human side" ofthe capitalist threatened by labour unrestor an insurrection of the unemployed,small enclaves of carefully preservedsecurity invaded by the insecuritysurging up from the slums. In "The Revolutionary"this bias becomes offensive,with its Reaganite implication that anyoneseeking any kind of change must bea dangerous fool, but in the title story,and in "There are a Lot of Ways to Die,""In the Kingdom of the Golden Dust,"and "Counting the Wind," his touch isfaultless. These are brilliantly movingstories, rivalling the best of Naipaul. Andunlike Clarke's his women are sensitivelydrawn. "Dancing" and particularly "TheCage" provide memorable insight intothe ways gender further complicates livesalready torn between alternative culturaltraditions.Neil Bissoondath is an important newwriter and Digging Up the Mountainsprobably one of the most accomplishedCanadian publications of the year, yet itsexcellence remains marred for me by aquality I can hardly identify. Like Naipaul,Bissoondath writes of the ThirdWorld and particularly of his own islandTrinidad, for a foreign audience, carefullyincorporating explanations of alllocal references into his text. There isnothing wrong with this, of course. Itmay even be valuable in facilitatingcross-cultural communication. But hereit seems to go along with the author'sassumption of authority more generally.Neil Bissoondath writes with authority.His kind of writing makes it very easyfor the reader to enjoy his stories andnever to miss what has been excluded.All foreign elements — different culturesand revolutionary violence — are "explained"by being brought within theauthorial value system — a system characterized,as the blurb explains, by "aremarkably mature understanding and astout refusal to take sides."But Bissoondath does take sides. Bynarrating his stories from the perspectivesof characters who perceive revolutionaryviolence as mindless outbreaksand who see themselves as helpless vic-161

BOOKS IN REVIEWtims of events beyond their control, hereinforces conventional beliefs in theseparation of our public from our privatelives. Like Carey and Clarke, Bissoondathwrites within the framework of aliberal humanism that assumes that individualism,even in countries where povertyis endemic, is the most importanthuman value. Clarke and Bissoondathcannot share Carey's naive Americanoptimism about marching to "differentdrummers." Their emphasis falls onhow thoroughly our hands are tied bycultural, political, and economic imperatives.But in their own ways, each ofthese texts reinforces traditional assumptionsabout human beings and the onlyways they can live together in society.These stories provide many insights intowhat it means to be human in the latterpart of the twentieth century. But despitethe promise of Carey's subtitle, andthe apparent variety of subject and settingin Clarke and Bissoondath, thereare no cultural alternatives here.IN DISTRESSDIANA BRYDONBRIAN FAWCETT, Capital Tales. Talonbooks,$8.95.ÑORA KEELING, chasing her own tail. Oberon,$11.95.THREE IMPULSES DRIVE the nineteenstories in Brian Fawcett's Capital Tales.The first and most powerfully realized isa desire to present the arbitrary violence,the flat grimness, the dull domesticdespair of small-town life in B.C., or inthe bush, or working on mega-projectsup North. The second, less successfullyachieved, is the need to expound thedepredations of capitalism and consumerismas these forces have operated historicallyand have now laid waste theWestern world. The third and most selfindulgentimpulse is to pronounce onthe art of fiction as practised by BrianFawcett in his (quite real and believable)struggles to become a writer inthis, the most benighted of all the agesof man. Labouring under the often incompatiblestrains of these impulses,some of the stories threaten to fly apart;others bog down in admonitions to thereader to pay attention to what and howand why they mean what they might;and only a handful succeed in breathingbeneath the weight of Fawcett's theseson the connections — pronounced uponmore often than made manifest — betweenfiction, history, and life.The best of the stories is "The Ghost,"which explores the seemingly violent andchaotic life of a character driven bywhims and generally disruptive socialbehaviour. Counterpointing the Ghost'santics are his first cousin Roger's rationalefforts to preserve a stable family and astable worldview. The story's implicationsextend beyond its small-town ambiencewhen the Ghost returns soberedfrom Vietnam, preoccupied with buildingin Roger's backyard weird mechanicalcontraptions which might explain or enactthe workings of an unbalanced world.In a suggestive reversal, the Ghost andhis contraption survive a closing spateof internecine violence that destroysRoger, his parents, and the Ghost'sparents. The Ghost marries Roger's wifeand perfects his contraption, which thenarrator envisions as "enormous blossomsin a garden that had been made asutterly coherent and connected as it waspointless and crazy."Too many of these stories are marredby Fawcett's compulsion to lecture hisreaders, to instruct their reading. All ofthe stories are told at least in part fromthe first-person point of view. Consider,for example, the following excerpt from"The Franz Kafka Memorial Room," astory which draws a compassionate por-162

BOOKS IN REVIEWtrait of the "Doctor," a character whomight be a charlatan, an artist, a saint,or all three. After toying with a numberof answers to readers' imagined questionsabout the Memorial Room, thenarrator demurs :I can't give you the correct answers tothose questions. No authority exists thatcan, and I'm convinced that such a conditionof uncertainty is now the true one forme to be in as the writer of the story andfor you as the reader.But this is depressing theoretical stuff,you might be saying to yourself, and whylay it on me here, in what is supposed tobe an occasion for fiction. I mean, what isthis? A lecture or something?It's no lecture. I'm trying to tell my storycorrectly, and I want to set you up to thinkcarefully about what happens to storieswhen nothing in the world is going anywhere.What is supposed to happen in astory? What does narrative involve?I can imagine a reader answering, "Whynot let me decide what I'm going tothink carefully about when I read? Youdecide what is going to happen, whatnarrative involves. You write the story;I'll read it."The seven stories in Nora Keeling'schasing her own tail impress first withtheir meticulously crafted sentences.Keeling's vocabulary is as incisive as it isprecise, and her language conveys moodswith economy and real power. Herstories' major focus — which is so unremittingas to become unnervinglymonochromatic — is on the intenselyordered isolation of older women as theycreate and then endure the routines oftheir days, husbands either dead, banished,or simply absent, children gone,cats and dogs providing a strand of connectionto the natural, vital, but eminentlydangerous world beyond the women'sterribly lucid self-awareness. Men'sappearances in these women's lives havetheir own grim routine : sex is usuallymechanical and perfunctory, and men'sdealings with women in general are disruptive,intrusive, presumptuous, selfabsorbed.The five most powerful storiesin the book —• the title story, "agathe,""george's eyes & the red ball," "bigherb," and "mine," isolate women's figuresin sharp, stark, chilling portraits,usually drawn from the inside; typical inits language, tone, and mood is thisopening meditation of Katie's, the womanat the centre of "george's eyes & thered ball":I do not like to go out even though attimes I must. There is just too much spaceout there and I might even get lost in it. Ido not like to invite acquaintances to myhouse for tea: they might overstay theirwelcome. But I do not like to be alone,especially in the evening, because I like tohave someone with whom to share the settingof the sun, a phenomenon that I goupstairs to my bedroom to observe everyevening that there is one. It is not a smallthing. I could even consider it to be myfavourite hobby.The two remaining stories, "the littleaxe" and "berthilde's holiday," deal withthe trials in the relationships of twoyounger couples. They are less successfulstories, perhaps because Keeling has notfound the language through which torender these characters' inner lives asacutely as she has done with her moreisolated and solitary figures. But Keelingdemonstrates convincingly in this bookher remarkable talent for evoking boththe pathos and the pathology of loneliness.NEIL BESNER163

BOOKS IN REVIEWMETIS HEARTBEATRICE CULLETON, April Raintree. Pemmican,$9.95·BEATRICE CULLETON, Spirit of the White Bison.Pemmican, $6.95.PERHAPS THE MOST pernicious and destructiveweapon the colonializers andimperialists had was the policy of "TabulaRasa." Existing indigenous culturewas at best ignored, at worst activelydestroyed. The children of the "conquered"were educated to believe theirforemothers and forefathers were ignorantsavages and that everything goodhappened only because of the dominantand dominating ideology. In Canadachildren were physically removed fromtheir families and put in residentialschools where they were given the mostminimal of educations. Oh, they weretaught their catechism, but grew upknowing there was no chance for themto be priests, nuns, ministers, teachers, oranything other than the most poorly paidof manual labourers. The residentialschools were abominations; child abusewas common, punishments often vergedon the very borders of insane, and childrenwere forced to do much of thejanitorial and custodial work. The foodwas even worse than that served in Britishboarding schools, even though theadministrators of these schools couldpresent receipts from dairies, butchers,and bakeries "proving" they had boughtthe finest quality. Perhaps they did, but ofall the friends I have who attended residentialschool, nobody ever remembersgetting any of this fine food.One of my dear friends, so close for solong we call each other "cousin," madethe mistake of speaking her native language.After all, she was only five andhad no idea what was going on! All sheknew was she had been bodily carriedfrom her weeping mother, put in a floatplane with a dozen or so other kids, andflown to a residential school. She askedwhat was happening. She asked whereshe was. She was overheard and takento the office of the principal where shewas sternly warned, in a language shedid not understand, then taken back intothe hallway and left. More confused thanever, she repeated her question. And wasagain overheard. Again taken into theoffice and this time she was yelled at andher hand slapped. She had never beenhit in her life, and still had no idea whatwas happening. Back in the hall, weeping,she again asked other, older kidswhat was going on. where she was, whypeople were being so mean.This time she got taken to the gymand was made to kneel across a broomstick until hours later her legs werenumb and she was unable to stand orwalk. This terrified little girl grew up tobecome a woman who remembers practicallynothing of her years in "rezzy."Her adult life has been hell. She laughsand says that alongside the night on thebroom stick, anything is easy. "I'm nothere for a long time, anyway," she tellsme, "I'm just here for a good time."And she drinks. Heavily. Often.The residential schools are gone, forthe most part. What we have, instead,are foster homes. Every year or so anothernative kid finds a way to end thehell that is supposed to be "life." Lastyear a young boy hanged himself and thecountry recoiled with shock, a lot ofsmall-1 liberals loudly demanded "somebody"should do "something," and mostof Canadian society claimed to be unawarethings like that could happen.Native groups have long insisted communication,publication and educationare loaded against them. They have alsoinsisted the truth can't be fully or properlytold unless native writers are givenpublication and distribution WITHOUTbeing edited to death by Anglo academics164

BOOKS IN REVIEWwho are part of and thus support thedominant ideology.Beatrice Culleton is a Métis. Shemissed "rezzy" but experienced fosterhomes. Pemmican Publishers have notimposed an academic editor on eitherThe Search For April Raintree or the revisedApril Raintree. The result is a bookthat comes from the heart and from theguts, a book full of gentleness, love, trust,and hope, a book full of anger at theblind stupidity of the past, a book full ofpain because of the precious lives wastedand lost as a result of bigotry and abuse.Academics will have much to criticize.The structure is flawed, the writing uneven,there are grammatical errors, andmuch of the dialogue is preachy andpolemic. It is the work of an apprenticingwriter, it is the work of a person whohas much to learn of her chosen craft.The improvement in writing skill from InSearch of April Raintree to the revisedApril Raintree shows that this writer ismore than willing to pay her dues andimprove her skills.The story is incredible and has thesame stark and unapologetic honesty asMaria Campbell's excellent autobiographyHalfbreed. Beatrice Culleton hasnot wasted her time writing this book,and you won't waste your time readingit, and re-reading it. This is what we'veall been claiming we have been workingto find and perfect, this is the voice ofour country, this is part of that CanadianIdentity we all claim to cherish.This is a book that dares us to think, toconsider our past ignorance and move totake responsibility for our personal andnational inaction. "Those who will nottake responsibility for and learn from themistakes of the past are doomed to repeatthem."We are a culture which places littlevalue on the lives of our children; wepay lip service to ideals while ignoringreality. This book is a result of that dishonesty,and should be required readingfor everyone who will ever, in any way,deal with the education and well-beingof children. I suppose it is too much tohope that the schools of social work anddepartments of education will use thisbook as a text, but even if the administratorsprefer to ignore it, those who arein teaching positions should recommendit to their students. Beatrice Culleton'stwo older sisters, raised in foster homes,committed suicide. Beatrice has writtena fine book.Spirit of The White Bison is a children'sstory which outlines, through theeyes of and in the lifetime of one buffalo,the decimation caused when, for politicalreasons, the great herds were annihilated.At a time when the B.C. government ispaying wildlife biologists to ride aroundin helicopters shooting wolves from theair, at a time when acid rain is killingour lakes and pesticide and herbicideoveruse is rampant, at a time when boththe Atlantic and Pacific coast fishingfleets are in serious trouble and our fishstocks are seriously endangered, this bookchallenges us to examine our past andrethink our future.Are we to sit complacent and stupidwhile everything follows the buffalo?Will we unthinkingly accept the idea theprofessional foresters can be trusted withthe last of the trees in the country? Willwe wait to see if Meares Island can survivethe logging companies, will we doand say nothing while poison is sprayedon our food, or will we wake up beforethe nightmare has moved on to its ownillogical and insane conclusion.Little children will be quite upset bythis book; older children will probablysee more clearly than adults what ourchoices must be. Again, there are flawsin the structure and grammar; but assomeone once said, there will always beroom in the world for someone with agood story.165

BOOKS IN REVIEWBeatrice Culleton is a writer who obviouslyhas many good stories. I wait withanticipation for her next work. Theshelves are full of beautifully craftedpieces of highly educated and trainedwriting done by people who don't haveanything at all to say. It is a relief and apersonal vindication to find two books sofull of honesty, commitment, and love.CONTE & MEMOIRANNE CAMERONDAVID WATMOUGH, Fury. ОЬеГОП, $12-95.JACQUES FERRON, Selected Tales of JacquesFerron, trans.$9-95-Betty Bednarski. Anansi,THESE TWO COLLECTIONS insist on verydiverse responses from the reader. Watmough'scharacters are mostly British,Ferron's mostly Québécois. Ferron'sstories are variations on the traditionalcontes of rural Quebec, and many thereforehave a broad element of fantasy.Watmough's stories are realistic, close attimes to documentary naturalism, so theyoften read like personal memoirs. Watmough'sstrongest regional attachmentsare Cornish; his is an old world identity.Ferron's regional identity is split betweenurban and rural Québec, but is unmistakablynew world. And while Ferronusually looks out upon the world andtries to explain it, Watmough seems justas eager to explain himself to himselfand us.Perhaps I should have said Watmough'snarrator explains himself, but inFury one is never aware of the significantdifferences between David Bryant andhis creator, David Watmough, if thereare any. Here is how the book begins.Note how Davey documents his territory.The Mile-End Road is a broad thoroughfarerunning due east out of the City ofLondon, from Aldgate toward Stratford-atte-Bow. Its foundations knew the feet of theRoman Legions and in the late nineteenthirtiesits sidewalks were familiar withmine. In 1937, when I first attended thevenerable institution known as The Coopers'Company School (founded 1535), thatroad seemed far wider to my eleven-yearoldlegs than it does now to my middleagedones. And the fears it evoked were ofa dimension I am rarely subjected to nowadaysin the calm of Western Canada.And here is how the story "The BicycleBoy" ends. Note once more how he documentsthe place. "We phoned Blake'sTaxi Service from that bright red phonebooth close by Tretawn, which Mr. Yeofarmed, and George Blake came intwenty minutes, put the bikes in thetrunk and drove us home." Blake's taxiservice, the phone booth, where Mr. Yeofarmed, and George Blake himself: theseare signposts of Davey's memory, notsymbols, not material introduced earlierin the story so that Watmough coulddramatize it or in some way exploit it.We see these items here, virtually for thefirst time. In a similar way, Grove photographedand catalogued much of hisexperience (also as an immigrant) in theWest.Some of Ferron's stories also have thefeel of the personal memoir, "The Ladyfrom Ferme-Neuve," for instance, andseveral pieces in which the narrator, likeFerron, was a physician. But when Ferronrestricts himself to realistic reportage,he automatically restricts the range ofhis imagination and often, thereby, hispowers of invention. Watmough is therealist, Ferron the fabulist.By far the best book is Ferron'sSelected Tales, not simply because this isa selection of some of his best work, butbecause the tales themselves bespeak arich imagination. Rich and bizarre. In"Mélie and the Bull," for example, wehave a bull calf who wants to be a poet.He is the sole delight of his mistressMélie, wife of a habitant. Instead of166

BOOKS IN REVIEWpursuing his poetic calling, however, ourbull becomes a lawyer. But Mélie summonshim back to the farm and his truevocation, and he returns, every ounce abull, full of libido and poetry. In thenovelette "The Dead Cow in the Canyon,"a much less ambiguous bull falls inlove with a dead cow. Spurned by herghost, driven mad by his yearnings, hegores his present mistress Eglantine, andher baby is born. These bulls are variationson old myths, but they bear Ferron'sabsurdist signature. They look forwardto the amorous bulls of Hodginsand Kroetsch in works such as The Inventionof the World and What theCrow Said almost two decades later.Magic realism, flowering as it didamong the writers of South America inmid-century, has not been the healthiesttransplant up here, but to Ferron, thismode seemed almost second nature, andhe latched on to this vision of things wellbefore the English-Canadian writers ofthe 1970's began to benefit from thelessons of Borges, Marquez, and theircolleagues. Ferron seems to have inheritedhis brand of magic realism fromabsurdists like Ionesco.I must admit I wrestled my waythrough both collections, but again forvery different reasons. Watmough's bookwas badly edited and proofed. Duringone dialogue his narrator switches tenseat least four times. During another, oneof his characters, whom we are to takevery seriously, lapses time after time intoembarrassing stage Irish ("Oi — Oi Imusn't go too far. 'Twould be a terribleprice Oi'd be payin' if they was to foindout." ). The prose is sometimes sloppy :"The truth was it was a girl's bike and Iwonder if you can imagine how thatmade me feel as I pedalled the inertlump of rusty metal, with its chromiumparts flaking, as I pantingly strove tokeep up with Fred . . . and Sandy .. . asthey sped down . . . (italics mine)." Theprose is sometimes laboured :I nodded. But my curt acceptance concealeda quite ridiculous spurt of wellbeing.It was Jimmy's easy recognition ofmy profound unsettling wrought by thatplace and his taking over of the social helm.The way he instinctively belied his juniorityand took the weight of responsibility fromme as delicious as the time, a year or soearlier, when a waitress in a candlelit restaurantin Montana had asked me for anID before she would serve us wine.Sometimes the combination of old worldforms and new world content grinds likethe remittance man prose we used to readover here at the turn of the century:For some ten minutes we endeavoured tochat. Even taciturn Fred lifted himself sufficientlyfrom his Indian silence to profferthe odd monosyllable in answer to a question.Simon thawed out to the extent ofribbing Jimmy about his carpet-pissingpuppy while the latter, when not summoninga riposte to the taunts of his Whitefriend, busied himself in indicating to methe possible sites where violence mighterupt at any moment.These annoyances of style, which sometimessound condescending, could havebeen eliminated by a sharp-eyed andperhaps tyrannical editor, the kind mostserious prose writers need.Because Watmough does have talent.It shows most clearly in the fast-pacedadventures. "Incident in the Forest," forexample, is the story of Davey's pursuitof a rapist. Since the story is seenthrough the eyes of the older Davey recallingthe younger one (and his friendDanny), the rapist himself never quitetakes on a human dimension. He is ahideous pervert, there as a scapegoat forthe boys' own righteous, repressed sexuality.He is the bogeyman who must bestoned. Davey and Danny do not hesitateto cast the first stone: "When the heavylump of clay, thrown by Danny, hit thebastard in the back, the pleasurablespurt I felt was well-nigh sexual." The167

BOOKS IN REVIEWrapist is flayed by the boys, and his victim(Mrs. Bulmer) is secretly avenged.One reads this story with lurid interest.It is mean, unrepentant, fast-paced,unmeditated, and atavistic. One alsoreads "Fury" and certain parts of "DarkMurmurs from Burns Lake" with someof that lurid interest. Davey's bloodcrazedferret (whom he names Fury)and Big Nancy of Burns Lake hold thesame fascination for Watmough. Theyare the violence at the heart of his lonelyuniverse, though in the Canadian story("Dark Murmurs"), the violence is morepervasively disturbing. In it, Davey comparesthe squalor he knew in Cornwall tothat of Burns Lake :No, the difference here was that violencewas a pastime! Here, Indian and Caucasianraged against each other in an unholyantidote to boredom. Violence and hatred,I perceived, sitting there listening to therise and fall of voices, sensing the crackleof tension at table after table, was somethingthis arid population was deliberatelyinducing through its wanton consumptionof alcohol.I mentioned that I also struggledthrough Ferron's book. This has nothingto do with Watmough's biggest problemin Fury, the overload of unexploited detailswhich tyrannize imagination. But Istruggled for several reasons. First, in theshortest of the narratives, his charactersare often only constructs; it is difficult toempathize with a construct. Also, Bednarski'sprose fails to carry with it themyriad nuances of Québec life embeddedin Ferron's prose — not becauseshe is an incomplete translator, but becauseshe is an anglophone. In English,for instance, Cadieu, according to hisfather, is a "good-fer nothin'." In Frenchhe's a "vaurien." In English, Mélie'sbeloved bull is "Littl'un." In French, heis her "petit." For me, good-fer nothinsand littl'uns invoke images of the AmericanWest. These words tend to extractCadieu and the bull from their ruralQuébec context. Some of the contes turninto essays and the prose becomes soallusive that Bednarski must footnote itsmore esoteric references (which she doessparingly and admirably). Or less often,Ferron's concerns narrow into his ownvery particular constituency (Québec intransition), which (let's admit) is notmine. But sometimes I struggled becauseFerron's mind is frustratingly and (uponre-reading) admirably complex on thesubject of modern civilization.Some of my frustrations can be explained,perhaps, by a look at the Martineseries, "Martine" and "MartineContinued." The first I liked. It is atwelve-part account of the sordid life ofa girl who is a victim of rural innocenceand urban slums, a tomboy who clings toan insecure boy-princess named Jeannot.It is sad, compelling, sordid, and compassionate.The story moves forward withgreat economy in a series of vignettes,and with no explanations or moralizingabout the squalid condition to whichMartine's family has succumbed. "MartineContinued" is a poem for voices,and it tries to explain Martine's dilemmawith parables, poetic meditations,and philosophizing. Sometimes the proseis beautiful, the parables well turned,though the various voices are disconcertinglysimilar. I am not sure Martine needsto be explained to us or to be turned intoan exemplum, nor can I get away fromthe feeling that a sound story in Part Ihas degenerated into a chorus of tragicwarbles in Part II. No story, onlywriting.In the best of these contes, the confusionis deliberate, rich, the chaos justified,the re-reading full of rewards."Chronicle of Anse Saint-Roch" providesa typical example. It is the story of howtwo Gaspé fishermen, Sules CampionThomette Gingras, settle down and marrytwo daughters of an English minister.With questionable motives, one of them168

BOOKS IN REVIEWmurders the girls' father. The motherhas already died of the plague. A thirddaughter is gang-raped, becomes pregnant,loses her child and her sanity, andis sent to a convent. Here is how thestory and the book end :This chronicle records facts that mayappear unseemly, but life itself is not alwaysseemly. What counts is that in theend events all fall into place, and aroundthe wild, forsaken bay, little by little, thegentle customs of the old country triumphover pagan fear, softening the cries of thebirds that pass in the gusts of wind thatsweep down off the land.This final statement is true, within theterms of the story. It is also false, becausesimplistic; it belies the chaos set inmotion perpetually by Ferron's people.I read somewhere that certain talesare sublative forms. Myths, for instance,subíate the truth they embody. As Hegeluses the term (from the German verbaufheben), myths subíate by both destroyingand preserving a certain truth.The myth bodies forth the contradictionsin a story without completely negatingor reconciling them. I think that inFerron's work, this sublative elementcomes into play. His many philosophicalassertions crackle with irony, and we mustargue with his assertions while at thesame time accepting them as the onlykind of truth in the pays incertain.DAVID CARPENTERHEMINGWAYESQUEs. L. SPARLING, The Glass Mountain. Doubleday,$17-95-I ENJOYED THIS stylish little romance,despite my misgivings that the charactersare woefully sketchy. In her firstnovel-length book, S. L. Sparling hasidentified a world that I had not beenaware of prior to reading this wellmanneredtale. Chloe Delaney is a concertpianist who aspires to star billing.Her career, however, depends on heravailability as the replacement when thename-act cancels but, under the umbrellaof a manager who is also one ofher lovers, Chloe is making a name forherself.Sparling, it would seem, knows theworld she writes about. She documentsChloe's environment — from the kind ofart adorning her rooms to the fashionsshe wears and the food she wants on hertable. The narrative is economical, yetrich in specified tastes and surroundings.Sparling tells Chloe's story in a discontinuousnarrative which presents pictures— stills — of her characters at selectedmoments. Chloe's family is at the centreof the narrative. The cast includes aHemingwayesque grandmother with herpast of loves betrayed and chased, ahomosexual cousin who turns out to beChloe's brother, a 1960's piano teacherwith his hair down, and solidly placed,monied parents who adopted Chloe andare out of synch with her artistic predilections.Of the bunch, only Chloe isan original. Sparling follows her throughmusic summer camps and subsequentlove relationships, but her narrative stylenever compensates for gaps in the chronologicalgrowth of the character. Thesegaps are a major failing in the booksince, while we can see Chloe in herworld, we never really get to know her.The narrative frames the story insidea psychiatric clinic. Chloe has admittedherself for treatment after Cosimo, themost important male figure in her life,dies. She only learned that Cosimo was,in fact, her brother while he was on hisdeath bed. She has grown up admiringhim and believing herself adopted intothe Delaney family, with Cosimo nothingmore than a cousin. Sparling holds backthe precise relationships between thecharacters — although hints abound —until late in the book juggling the time169

BOOKS IN REVIEWperiods by means of flashbacks. Therevelations are more or less surprisingwhen they occur, but the narrative doesnot pull into focus the dramatic sequencesof the narrative. For one thing,almost everything of interest happensoutside as it were, and is related in dialoguebetween the characters. Even potentiallypoignant deaths are related byrecollection. Chloe's emotional difficulties,for all Sparling's intelligent understanding,do not create much action. Forinstance the author spends far too muchtime building up a failed sexual assaultat a summer camp, forgetting altogetherto show how the relationship betweenGhloe and a male student at the campcame about.So it is that Sparling fails to capitalizeon her most successful achievement:Ghloe Delany. We see what Ghloe hasdone, but we do not get a coherent senseof why. As for Sparling's male characters— Chloe has only one female relationshipfor some reason — they arewithout exception abysmally flat. Themen in this book are drawn from longacceptedstereotypes. Chloe tells the manshe lives with : "Men think they're beingso magnanimous, 'allowing' their womento work. Even when I was living withyou it was your work that was serious.As far as you were concerned, my involvementwith the piano was quasidiversion... It was almost easier livingwith Laurence. He only expected me tobe decorative." This type of declarationwas topical and expected from womenwriters a decade ago. Today the roledifficulties impairing mutual self-expressionby husband and wife, male andfemale egos have been accepted as behavioralnorms. Sparling doesn't add anythingto our understanding of the difficutiestwo people have in working outco-operative relationships.Sparling's characterization of Chloethrough much of the book is as a passivewoman who mirrors the ambition of themen moulding her. It is difficult toimagine Ghloe having the capacity tospeak as she does late in the book. Wedo not know why she is inhibited whenit comes to dealing with her own aspirations.We can only speculate that it hassomething to do with her upbringing,but there is too little detail to point toany specific cause. If anything, Sparlinghas been too economical in omitting thelogical connections. I found myself wantingto know more about Ghloe Delaney.And that can only mean there is a lotmore Sparling should have told me.WOMEN'S VOICESROBERT S. DIOTTEFRANKiE FINN, Out On The Plain. RagweedPress, $7.95.SUSAN KERSLAKE, Penumbra. Aya Press,$9.00.THESE WORKS FLUCTUATE between realisticdescription and surreal images;both use several of the core myths ofGenesis; both show women being"islanded" in various ways; and both uselight/dark imagery to demonstrate extrememental states. The narrator ofeach novel is a woman. Yet they are verydifferent works. Finn's book balancesliterary theory, diary-commentary, andbrief passages of narrative. Kerslake's isa novel in which the story wanders inand out of the narrator's consciousness,altering its focus through a series ofdream images.As a work of feminist theory, Out onthe Plain consciously establishes politicalissues, particularly as these issues influencecreative writing. Some of the devicesused are quite contrived. Thenarrator, who is also the author, imaginesherself in conflict with two maleacademics, allegorically named Mr.170

BOOKS IN REVIEWSmith-god, the distinguished professorwho is constantly telling the narratorhow a novel should be written, and Mr.Jones, "the eager and youthful intellectualtype with the very pointed nose,pointed fingers and a fondness of pointsin general," who does his best to preventthe female writer from choosing wordsfreely. In spite of these two types of maleacademic, Finn's words do get put downon the page; the characters are vital andthe author manages to develop a distinctivevoice.The book begins with an introductionestablishing some of the text's centralissues. The major theme of the book isrebirth (attempted rebirth is also a themein Kerslake's) ; it is a theme that characterizesmuch contemporary women's fiction.Finn, a British citizen who studiedin Canada, finds that the most importantcurrent Canadian writers are women.And she fully embraces feminism:"Feminism is the route I take because itaffects my life so deeply that, in fact, Ihave no choice." She discusses the importanceof voice in fiction, stresses heruse of the lyric mode, approves of women'semphasis on domestic imagery(especially with symbolic overtones), andpoints out that she has "invested a greatdeal in the reader/writer relationship."Finn's return to a partially oral traditionis noticeable throughout the text, wherethe author allows her projected reader tointerfere with the development of stories,with the description of characters, andeven with the words used. Finn's attentionto the reader allows her to make useof what she insists is "the active, creativepotential of reading." Most important,Finn stresses that, as a feminist, shewants to get away from rigid genreboundaries, and from closed texts: "Iwished to adopt a listening attitude,listening rather than imposing, openrather than closed."The story that follows this introductiondemonstrates in a sometimes didacticmanner the points made. The authorassumes her reader to be another womanwho, like herself, is in semi-darkness, althoughconnected to the old womanwhose stories comfortably encircle all theother stories told. Again and again, thecharacters find themselves out on a plainwhere direction is unclear and whereeach seems as disconnected from narrativeas from the concrete articles ofeveryday life. Allegorically, this plain isthe blank page of the book on whicheach character, as well as history itself, isbeing recreated. Such remaking infuriatesthe men who enter the text to givethe writer instructions that would helpher to write a proper story — that is, amale one.The images used are female images,and are seen from female perspectives : ablack cat sinuously winds its way throughthe various tales; the Garden of Eden'sserpent becomes a positive figure, and afeminine one; the sea is maternal. Femalesubjects dominate the content:abortion, nurturing, housecleaning, relationshipsbetween mothers and daughters,and female friendships. Rather thanbeing connected by conventional narrativedevelopment, the women are "connectedonly by threads of sound," emphasizedby the occasional introductionof poetry into the prose passages. Thebook is also visual; reflections impressthe doublings that occur, and the authoremphasizes the ways words mirror events.It is no easy matter to write such anobviously contrived book. Yet in spite ofits flaws — a tendency to repeat prosaicallywhat has already been demonstratedimaginatively; a sometimes forcedwit —the book is peculiarly disarming.For example, just as the reader is becomingmost exasperated with the allegory,the author allows her into the text sothat she can voice the criticisms : " 'I'm171

BOOKS IN REVIEWnot going to read anymore of this!' shesays. 'And if I were you, I wouldn'tbother to write anymore, either! It's soincredibly precious and one-sided. Allthe faults you ascribe to Mr. Smith-godand Mr. Jones you commit yourself.' "The author's capacity to laugh at herown pomposity, to make fun of "all thisintensity, this bond between women, thishysterical swooping among the stars" isrefreshing, although, as she admits, theartifice of entering the narrative can become"precious." The book's self-consciousness,while making it probably lessappealing to general audiences, makes itwonderfully suited to courses on feministtheory.Penumbra, Kerslake's second novel(she has also published a collection ofshort stories, The Book of Fears), mapsa different kind of terrain. In an essayon Middlewatch (published in 1976 andnow out of print), Keith Maillard definesthe novel as magic realism, usingGeoff Hancock's description: "Magicrealists place their extraordinary featsand mysterious characters in an ordinaryplace, and the magic occurs from thesparks generated between the possibilitiesof language and the limitations of physicalnature." Penumbra also places extraordinaryfeats and mysterious charactersin an ordinary place. It is told by ayoung woman just emerging from childhood,who lives on the Maritime islandof Lune with her father, mother andyounger brother. An asylum dominatesthe island's mental and physical terrain,so that madness interferes with narrativeline, causing abrupt shifts from chronological,outer event, to disconnected,dream-like inner event. The island'sname and the novel's title emphasize thehaze, madness, and other-worldlinessthat make fact and fantasy often indistinguishable.Also, throughout, recollectionsof other stories interject themselves,most notably Shakespeare's The Tempestand Melville's Moby Dick.Space dominates the organization ofthe story and the characters are oftenperceived as locales. The narrator'sfather begins as "a safe place," hermother as solid and dependable. Thelunatics on the island seem insubstantial;Hebel, the madman who brings aboutthe father's imprisonment, is namedafter the Hebrew Abel, meaning air.Caught between substantial objects —her parents and her brother — and theinsubstantial mad people of the asylum,the narrator struggles to find her ownspace; a young sailor, either actual orimaginary, helps her find that space.Often, she longs to escape from the confinesof the island, but when she visitsthe outside world, she imagines theisland as vast and timeless, the place ofdreams that are, finally, the only freedomavailable. The narrator understands thatbecause the lunatics cannot dream, theyhave "lost the paths of escape."Gender issues arise throughout, althoughnever in a didactic way. Thenarrator differentiates her mother andfather, her brother and herself. Hermother is religious, social, and trapped;her story that, along with the father'sstory of his early life, Hebel's story, andMarcy's story, make up the narrative,demonstrates despair. The mother's tearsbecome a leitmotif of the narrative. Andthe narrator's dreams differ from herbrother's. Like the lover about whom shefantasizes, the young brother desires thesea, the life of the whaler. He dislikes"magic interfering." These men need toleave behind women as they leave behinddry land.The novel tells of a daughter's love forher father. Unlike the sailors, the lunatics,or the farmers, the father seemssingled out from the usual man; profoundlynurturing, he has a peculiarsensitivity to borderline people that de-172

termines his choice of career as keeperof the island asylum. The narrator relieson him. As the novel progresses and shebecomes conscious of her femininity, sheunderstands her mother better. But thestory is really an explanation written toa father whom she has lost. He hashelped the mad Hebel kill himself, andhas consequently been incarcerated.Penumbra is, then, a daughter's effort to"talk" to her father, words "squeezed outof darkness."This is a moving, if occasionally tooconsciously obscure, novel, written withconsiderable sensitivity. The balance betweenthe real and the dream-like ismaintained successfully throughout sothat the language and imagery are poeticrather than prosodie. Unlike Out On thePlain, with its often comic vision, itsshifts of genre, and its theoretical underpinnings,Penumbra assumes a tragicperspective that condenses the mad andthe sane on an island of dreams. Thus,in spite of a number of thematic similarities,and their self-consciousness aboutwomen's, as opposed to men's, lives, thetwo works present quite different visionsof the imagination. Finn is concernedonly with the female imagination; Kerslakewith a much more general aesthetics.Kerslake's is the more moving book.Yet Out on the Plain deserves seriousattention, not least because it simultaneouslyannotates and demonstrates, withconsiderable wit, a variety of problemsimportant to the current gender revolution.LORNA IRVINEINITIATIONSBOOKS IN REVIEWLESLEY CHOYCE, Billy Botzweiler's Last Danceand Other Stories, blewointmentpress,$7-95-HUGH COOK, Cracked Wheat and OtherStories. Mosaic Press, $7.95.LESLEY CHOYCE'S Billy Botzweiler's LastDance is both a unified and an unevencollection. The setting plays a unifyingrole, although it is not particularly foregrounded:the stories seem to be set inor around Halifax. Then, too, all theeight stories (including the three whichare not written from a first-person pointof view) focus on male protagonists confrontedwith problems attending youthand early adulthood. The texts seem tobe arranged according to the presumedage of the protagonist. So readers willfeel they are following a particular typeof character from his appearance in thecontext of a male peer group of roughyoungsters and in the father/son relationishipin the first story, through hisunsettling initiation into sex with anolder, married woman, his experiences ofdrugs and drinking, of jealousy and unrequitedattraction to stories showing theprotagonists against the background oftheir work and in their problematicrelationships to their lovers or wives. Thebook builds an atmosphere of increasingweariness and frustration.Other preoccupations of Ghoyce'scharacters include band music and cars,quarrelling and fighting, courage contestsand bragging contests. Such topics, aswell as the attitudes and conflicts Choycedeals with, are well-known, perhaps toowell-known. They will appeal more tothe younger than to the more sophisticatedreader. Several of the stories usean adolescent voice (not necessarilythose stories which deal with adolescents). The weakest of the pieces includethe title story, "Local Heroes," and173

BOOKS IN REVIEW"Prying Loose." Other stories, too, willdisappoint a demanding reader.Let me concentrate on stylistic mattershere. Repeatedly the writing is not quitesuccessful: the diction tends towardsoverexplicitness, and hyperbole ("Carl isone hundred percent opposed to airingdirty laundry in front of friends"; "shepolishes hers off with lightning speed") ;the humour is often strained ("Vincentgives himself three and a half years beforethe top of his head looks like a TV 7commercial for floor wax"). Where thehumorous touch involves a particularapproach to life and to people, the adolescentvoice sounds again ("We allstarted doing terrible in school and oursocial standing improved dramatically";"Chuck is loaded and in good form";"Vince has surveyed the mental realestate of half the unhitched under thirtyfemale population of Halifax and founda lot of empty lots, vacant floor spaceand not much hope" — would such languagebe used about "unhitched underthirty" males?). The metaphors andsimiles are occasionally far-fetched oroverly drastic ("It's damn cold in therewhat with Davd [sic, for "Dave"] openingand closing the door all the time anda frigging blizzard boiling like a sonofabitch";"a door opens and an arcticseventy-degree derailed freight train ofair crashes into the chamber") ; the writingcan be sloppy ("on a wet, spongy,dismal spring day") ; clichés abound("My father would have a heart attackif he had to buy me new goggles again").Even the partly unimaginative titles ofthe stories match this style ("Major Repairs,""Local Heroes," "Dancing theNight Away," "Family Protection").Finally, some of the characters and narratorsseem to delight in scatologicalterms, which crop up in all sorts ofexpected and unexpected contexts, notonly as a means of characterization but,more often, merely as a catchy stance.One would hope for a language lessclichéed, more varied, more subtle, moreinteresting. Such undifferentiated writingmay have the virtue of suiting thecharacters, but then some of Choyce'scharacters hardly seem to deserve closerstudy.But there are stories and passages inthe book where the author's talent becomesapparent. The best story is "ThePaper Route." It has depth, the charactersare successfully drawn, style andvoice contribute to the reading experience.No other story in the collectionreaches this sustained quality. In storieslike "Major Repairs," "Breakage," and"Family Protection" we see Choyce'stalent for plot construction and for effectiveendings. Over large parts of suchstories his writing can be energetic,graceful, funny, even moving. Then themetaphors tend to work, and the humourdoes not leave a bad aftertaste.Choyce is at his best when he presentscharacters who can do without raffishantics, and when he steers away fromthe adolescent voice.The title of Hugh Cook's Cracked-Wheat and Other Stories gives the impressionthat this is a series of tales set inthe prairies. The cover shows a field ofwheat and the emblem of a wheat sheafprecedes each of the ten stories. But onlyone of the stories ("First Snow") has aprairie setting; the others are set in Victoria("Cracked Wheat"), Vancouver,the Fraser Valley, and on Lake Erie.What holds the stories together is notsetting, but the voice of the impliedauthor — whether the stories are told inthe first person or in the third person.This voice is evenly balanced and reserved,yet effective, and contributesmuch towards the success of most ofthese stories. Another unifying element isthat all the stories include characters ofa Dutch-Canadian background (HughCook's family came to Canada when he174

BOOKS IN REVIEWwas seven). The protagonists have immigratedmore or less recently; some of theprotagonists know Holland mainly fromthe stories told by parents and grandparents.Two of the four stories with animmigration theme belong to the lesssuccessful tales in the collection: "Exodus"and "White Rabbit." In these, Cookrelies too much on the basic immigrationtheme to carry significance. The actionof the stories is too obvious and ratherthin; the characters and their portrayalare partly in black and white, and thusof minimal interest. In "First Snow" theplot turns on the — mechanically rendered—• question of why a particularmember of a Dutch congregation inAlberta has not turned up for churchone Sunday; the denouement consists ofthe information that Tjepkema simplymixed up Sunday and Monday.But the title story is a fine story, andfive others are skilfully done. In theseCook shows himself adept at characterizationand plot construction (the endingsand the subtle preparations for themare effective). In "Easter Lily," the onlystory in the collection not previouslyprinted, Cook experiments successfullywith a multiple point of view, one ofthem that of a mentally retarded youngman who is instigated to violence throughthe silly behaviour of vain girls (thefemale sex altogether does not fare verywell in Cook's collection). "Pisces" includesan experience reminiscent of Surfacing;"Clown" impresses through itshaunting characters and the clever deviceof its ending. "Cracked Wheat" (insome ways similar to Choyce's "ThePaper Route," but with significantly differentbehaviour on the part of theyoung males) is a moving story about astudent in a conflict between his stronglyreligious, moralistic background and thehuman requirements of everyday lifeoften at odds with rigid principles;characteristically for this collection, religionand morals seem to keep the upperhand, even if rather primly and at timesridiculously. All in all, Cook presentssome fine stories. But in order to reallyget through to them don't start the collectionwith "Exodus" — start it with thetitle story.REINGARD M. NISCHIKPSYCHOLOGICALDRAMAFREDERICK CANDELARIA, Poems New andSelected. Goose Lane Editions, $7.95.JOHN STEFFLER, The Grey Islands. McClelland& Stewart, $9.95.FREDERICK CANDELARIA is a likeable poet;the personality reflected in his writing isbright and engaging. His carefully-aimedwork is modest in scope. The intellectualbalance that enables Candelaria to maintaina wry distance must derive at leastpartially from his early training for thepriesthood, a training he abandonedfirmly, as we learn in many of the poems :and Christfor all his mercyis deadthe Lordsof lifeare ghostsCandelaria uses Latin phrases from theMass in many places. His strong interestin wordplay and insidious rhyme ironicallyremind one of the work of the greatCatholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.In Hopkins' case the turning to formalquestions, the experimentation with assonanceand "sprung rhythm" came fromthe religious faith that answered for himmany of the questions that provided richground for other writers. In Candelaria'scase the faith clearly is not there andyou begin to suspect other limitations. Infact, despite the occasionally close paral-175

BOOKS IN REVIEWlels with Hopkins, "each wave slowlysurely unravels / in its rolling the unsteadyrocky earth." Candelaria's workseems incomplete. Not that we expectsolutions; poetry would hardly requirethat. But ambiguity can be worth delvinginto, and the rewards of such explorations— let alone the attempt — are inshort supply here. Even when they dosurface, the very ambiguities themselvesseem closed off, lacking even that senseof wonder which is central to the explosiveaffirmations of Hopkins.The question of the poet's lost faith isan important one. You would expectthat any writer who entered into andthen abandoned religious training wouldfind in the experience a gold mine ofself-revelation. And indeed Candelariareturns to the experience again andagain, not only in the present volumebut to an even greater degree in previousbooks, such as Liturgies in 1975. But heseems to have trouble coming to gripswith it :I left the altar of Godruins of Romehaunted by whispersholy wordsthat fell like leadbetween the pews of my mindwhereI prayedbefore tabernacle doorssubmittingfor seasons to silenceuntil my tongueand the hinges brokerevealing the voida tear lost therehas no echoWhose tear? It is as if Candelaria hasbeen so bruised that he has withdrawncompletely into the world of the intellect.He gives us finished products of thiswithdrawal, skirting around the livingprocess where the real interest lies. Eventhis poem gives more insight than mostof the "religion" poems. Everything isfrozen into stasis, and Candelaria approachesthe living soul like a mapmakeror landscape painter.The same problems occur in the restof the work. Details are undifferentiated,the author's centre of interest obscure.Being likeable is not enough, it seems. Itcan even make things worse. Where Candelariahas trouble getting us interested,John Steffler is at his best. The GreyIslands is a piece of genius, a psychologicaldrama in poetry and prose whichtells the story of a Toronto man's retreaton deserted islands off Newfoundland'seast coast. The islands really exist, andSteffler's effective description makes itclear — at least to this armchair traveller— that he has actually been there, althoughI doubt he has exposed himselfto the gruelling isolation that his narratordares. The main reason for the book'ssuccess is Steffler's dazzling ability tointerweave imagination and reality, topeople the empty physical space of theislands with the narrator's fertile imaginationin what really amounts to a dramaticnovel.Strifler's balance and control are extraordinary.This is a tightrope act, whereany η Γ the elements could easily havegone out of control. There are the poemstherrat.lves, which are carefully wroughtin simple and effective language. Sosimple is the language that it is doubtfulwhether any of the poems could surviveon their own, and not simply becausethey are parts of a story. Steffler haswritten them carefully enough that theydo not ruin the flow by taking too muchupon themselves. At the same time theyare more than narrative :on the linewhere three of the world's walls meetwhere the sky is deaf and the waterthe land come crashing in rubblethe sandpiperon legs no thicker than stems of grass176

BOOKS IN REVIEWskitters after the surfleaping aside when a breaker falls,nervousbut perfectly focussed into his worksoundlesslyweightlessly darting his needle beakquick and busyas though the rest of the worlddid not existStories crop up frequently. These are"genuine" stories, such as any visitormight expect to hear, and Steffler is sogood at capturing the flavour of the localspeech and the hardships of the tellers'lives that it is hard to believe the storiesare entirely invented. Even when thenarrator's imagination starts to play alarger part in the tales, the voice remainsthe same and the line between imaginationand reality is subtly but effectivelyblurred, especially in the recountings of"madman" Carm Denny, the islands' lastinhabitant, removed to a mainland asylumbefore the narrator's arrival.Steffler explores the relationship between,and reciprocal influence of, physicalspace and human psyche. The narratorinitially thinks Carm Denny is still onthe island:A madman is living alone out there. Theone inhabitant left. Holding out in theruined town. Holding the whole island inhis head. Thinking it into reality, everystick, every bird. And god knows what else.Through the stories told by the localsSteffler introduces the existence of ghostsof some of the original islanders. Ghostsare perfect embodiments of man as natureand nature as man, neither whollyone nor the other. The expectation ofsupernatural encounters imparts a wonderfultension which Steffler handles skilfully,letting us expect but deferringpayment. Near the end of the book thenarrator moves into Denny's abandonedcabin, cranking the tension up anotherfew turns :I decided to move into Garm's cabin yesterday. . . It's like standing inside the head ofsomeone who knows the place.Steffler handles his material like aprose writer, shunning wordplay infavour of a straightforward relating ofdetail. Some may find the language ofthe poems unremarkable in itself (youcertainly can not say that about thestories) but Steffler knows what he isabout, taking aim and writing with absolutediscipline to attain that aim. For allhis care and discipline, and despite theadmittedly restricted use of language,Steffler has charted in The Grey Islandsa rich, elaborate personal odyssey. Watchfor him in the future.ECLECTICISMANDREW BROOKSJAN FIGURSKI, The Stevensdaughter Poems.Third Eye, $6.00.jiM SMITH, One Hundred Most FrighteningThings, blewointment, n.p.ROBERT EADY, The Blame Business. Ouroboros,$6.95.MICHAEL BULLOCK, The Man With FlowersThrough His Hands. Melmoth/Third Eye,$7.50.JOE DAVID BELLAMY, ed., American PoetryObserved. Univ. Illinois Press, n.p.ONE VALUABLE DEVELOPMENT in recentCanadian poetry is the long sequencedealing with a real or invented character—• The Piaf Poems, Lampman's Kate;The Journals of Susanna Moodie is perhapsthe archetype. Jan Figurski's typicallynamed book, The StevensdaughterPoems, deals with a fictional Polish immigrant,Stephany, who suffers throughWorld War II and a displaced persons'camp before coming to Canada. Whilethe book contains some good poems, it istoo thin in development to be satisfying.Figurski is trying to recapture some ofthe possibilities of narrative and characterizationthat poetry abdicated to prose177

BOOKS IN REVIEWearlier in this century, but he does notgo far enough. We learn a little aboutthe life of an immigrant in rural Canada,but this is the country that producedTraill and Moodie — we expect more.The break-up of Stephany's marriage isdescribed sketchily, so that a fine dramaticopportunity is lost, along with thechance to say more about the alienationof the character at the end of the book.The style is generally flat, with occasionalmetaphors to enliven the brief lines. Thelives of immigrants, especially DP's (theterm is almost extinct) would make agood subject for a more documentaryapproach. Figurski's narrow focus on thepersonal reduces his subject to a skeletalcase history.Jim Smith's One Hundred MostFrightening Things contains some gimmickylist poems, like the title piece.More interesting are his two sequencesthat deal with real people. "Mayakovsky:The Philistine Reefs" is the best. Smithhas thought hard about Mayakovsky andhis contemporary relevance. Mayakovskyis a superb poet to learn from. He managesto combine a winning manner —exuberant, highly personal — with theFuturist interest in machinery, progress,and technical experiment. Futurism isone of the schools of modernism that theEnglish-speaking literary world has notassimilated. Symbolism, Laforguian irony,surrealism, these have been fruitful, butthe English and American moderns hadno enthusiasm for the Futurist vision.Smith is fascinated with Mayakovsky'sconception of language and art as modesof production, and he explores this viewmetaphorically, describing the page as asky in which poems are built like skyscrapers.He also ponders the industrialmisuses of language in the contemporaryworld. The playful side of Mayakovsky isechoed in a letter to the dead poet — towhich Mayakovsky replies. Less interestingthan the Mayakovsky poems is"Bommi," a set of reflections on thememoirs of the German terrorist, Michael"Bommi" Baumann. Baumann andhis friends found themselves carrying outoperations with the encouragement andassistance of a police provocateur, andtheir methods contradicted their aims.Smith's sequence never really goes beyondthe materials in his source: thereader might as well go directly to Baumann.But the Mayakovsky poems havesome original comments on life in Canadaand some insights into the place oflanguage in society. Smith's political andphilosophical concerns give his poetry anunusual perspective. If he can steer acourse between political jargon, whichweakens some of his poems, and a whimsicalstyle (he is as arch and self-consciousas Gregory Corso at times), hewill add something refreshing to Canadianpoetry.Robert Eady's The Blame Business, isalso politically concerned. But he providesmore indignation than analysis, exceptin the Swiftian satire of the titlepoem. He is commendably against warand damage to the environment. Hisbook is dedicated to the Polish poetZbigniew Herbert, an impressive model.Herbert's poems have a mythic resonancesimilar to Kafka's and a ferociousirony that reflects the pressure of theappalling history of Eastern Europe.Eady's prose poems do not have the sameimpact. They tend to be surreal in apredictable way. There are bizarre causeand-effectrelations and concepts like"Jobs" can become living beings. Here is"Fear of Science" :The doctor's IQ tests smell of ether andconvulsions. A saw and mallet are producedfrom assorted carpenter's tools.A thousand miles away an afternoon sunriseturns an iron tower to a mirage. Soldiers'boots crack the desert that has turnedto glass.The poem is, of course, discussing nu-178

BOOKS IN REVIEWclear testing, though the role of the IQtest is not clear. An excessive didacticismmars some of the poems. Eady's "MooseRestoration" is less effective than W. S.Merwin's "Unchopping a Tree," a prosepoem that uses the same device: ecologicalwaste is satirized by giving elaborateinstructions for restoring what has beenirreparably lost. But Eady draws out hismoral much more than Merwin does.Sometimes Eady reflects another directionin the prose poem tradition, a lovingattention to detail that I find moreconvincing than the use of surrealism.Poems like "Mclntosh Apples" and "TheFlorida Orange" are sharp and evocativeat the same time. Eady's skill with wordsis impressive.Michael Bullock's The Man WithFlowers Through His Hands, a collectionof fables in prose poem form, also suffersfrom predictable surrealist techniques,especially bizarre transformations. Aplough turns into a ship, a detachedhand goes searching for another hand, acushion flies through the night lookingfor a chair, a man with burning hairturns to powder when he is doused(never fear: he comes back to life).There is something arbitrary here. Thesepoems are meant to be vehicles for theimagination but they resemble NationalFilm Board animated shorts. Many ofthe fables are about the act of writing,others convey a vague metaphysicalanxiety. The cumulative effect is numbingrather than quickening, in spite ofBullock's excellent prose style.These books show what Dennis Leewould call the eclecticism of recentCanadian poetry. Writers draw freely onEuropean surrealism, Russian Futurism,Canadian social history, accounts of terrorism.There is no dominant ism, schoolor leading figure. We have some trendsbut no strong movements. Joe DavidBellamy's excellent collection of interviewswith twenty-six leading Americanpoets, American Poetry Observed, showsthat the situation is not unique to Canada.There were two strong movementsin American poetry since i960, "confessional"poetry and surrealism. The confessionalapproach has been absorbedinto the mainstream. Surrealism was beginningto bore some writers in the1970's, judging from several of the interviews.Donald Justice was complainingabout vague mysticism and cloying inwardnessin the surreal school back in1975. I was surprised to read condemnationsof "light verse surrealism" in RobertBly — the man is disowning his progeny.And Marvin Bell objects to the"frivolous associationalism" of muchAmerican surreal verse. The finest surrealwriting aims at profound revelationsabout the unconscious or the nature ofreality. Too easily the surreal methodcan turn into a mannerism.Bellamy has gathered his interviewsfrom many sources. The quality is high,though not generally up to the classics ofthe genre (and it has become a genre)published in Paris Review and New YorkQuarterly. Canadian writing would benefitif a literary magazine were to undertakea series of first-rate, craft-centredinterviews. Good interviews are conductedof course, but too many aregossipy or reveal little preparation by theinterviewer and subject.BERT ALM ON179

BOOKS IN REVIEWCHINESE JARSGARY GEDDES, The Terracotta Army. Oberon,$17-95-PATRICK LANE, A Linen Crow, A Caftan Magpie.Thistledown, $8.95.180A CONTINUING INFLUENCE on western artand poetry for more than a century hasbeen that of the orient, particularly thepainters, craftsmen and poets of Chinaand Japan. Poets especially have enviedorientals their calligraphy, the visualpower of the written characters, whichallows a poem to be a picture. Inherentalso in the written language is a tendencytoward minimalism and a relianceon picture-making. The oriental poem islikely to be non-linear, and to force onthe reader abrupt connections, which canturn out to be profoundly imagined.Oriental art links with the classicism ofour own tradition, with restraint, with amystery contained in order, with theunderstated or non-stated which is neverthelessexpressed in elegance of line, inpurity of diction, in the moving firmnessthat Eliot celebrated: "a Chinese jarstill/moves perpetually in its stillness."Eliot's line realizes the reaching towardperfection it celebrates, a reachingin this case toward pure poetry. PatrickLane and Gary Geddes in these two excellentand different books are reaching inthat direction. The books have in commonan acknowledged easternness. The TerracotaArmy takes its primary matter fromthe life-size pottery figures made for thefirst emperor of China, which were uncoveredin 1974 and later encounteredby the poet himself. In A Linen Crow,A Caftan Magpie, Patrick Lane, whoalso visited China, describes the particularform he has created as "a compositeof the haiku and ghazal, a resemblanceand nothing more, perhaps more orientalthan accidental." To be less tentativethan he is in that statement would requirea knowledge of himself and his artthat no twentieth-century artist who hasbehind him a number of traditions aswell as countless individual influencescan have. But the tendency is there inboth books, toward a purity in poetry.What is pure poetry? The question islike asking Jack Spratt "what is purebacon?" Poetry is language. Language isphysical and metaphysical, opaque andtransparent, static and dynamic, discreteand continuous. So how can somethingmade of language aspire toward purity?It can through guises. There is the guiseof transparency — the poet says, "Look,I'm telling you straight." There is theguise of opacity — the poet says, "Look,I'm not telling you anything." There ispure poetry, poetry stripped (as far as itcan be) of music and metaphor. Thepurity lies not in the manner or thematter, both of which will often risefrom generic roots — lyric, dramatic,narrative or meditative — but in the impulsetoward fullness of realization, completeness,poetry that of its kind is to benothing but itself.In The Terracota Army, we have thelean of poetry. The form is dramatic,consisting of twenty-five monologuesspoken by various originals named accordingto their function or rank in thestate and its army. The monologuesthemselves are not dramatic in Browning'ssense, nor are they, strictly speaking,dramatic soliloquies. I would callthem choral pieces, overheard perhapsbut carefully rehearsed in their speakers'minds and spoken (for the most part)from the periphery of the drama. Thespeakers are not strongly individualizedby voice. All speak a measured, restrained,formal language, each piececommenting on the general situation —the state, the emperor and his policies —and on the particular occasion — Bi thepotter's carrying out of the emperor'scommission. The speakers enliven their

BOOKS IN REVIEWchoral observations with remembered incidentsand quotations. Discipline, thediscipline of imperial power and the disciplineof the craftsman, is evident in thefact that each representative is given nineunrhymed couplets in which to speak.There is no room for rhetorical flourishes,for tropes, for sweet music. Thetones are dry and resigned, often ironic,sometimes disturbed or angry, sometimescynical, but not allowed to depart markedlyfrom the rule of careful understatement.These speakers are guarded.Which is not to say that there is noindividualizing of the voices. In lettingeach have his say as representative andindividual, the poet allows each his ownperspective, preoccupations, and perceptions,which necessarily order and colourhis speaking. Personalities do emerge —forthright, cunning, naive — in thevaried tones and rhythms. But individualizingthese choral voices is not thepoems' main work. The individualizingthat does occur is of the central figure,Bi the maker, who speaks within some ofthe monologues, but has no piece of hisown. His pottery is the stage for theempire-wide drama:It was not so much the gossip thatattracted meto Bi's pottery though there was plenty ofthat:news of the latest atrocities against thepeople,rights and property abolished, heads ofchildrenstaring vacantly from terraces, dismemberedcorpsesturning slowly in the current along thenorth bankof the Wei. Rather it was a sort of clearinghouse,a confessional, where our greatest fearswere exorcisedpiecemeal through the barter of objectivedetail.The polarity that creates the dramatictension is between the potter and theemperor, who is also portrayed throughoutthe monologues, but who too joinsthe chorus in disguise to speak the finalpiece. The polarity shows everywhere asthat between brutality and rigiditygrounded in fear and failed idealism andthe subversive power of an imaginationfully realized in craft. The protean Biwith his cynicism, pragmatism, shiftingmoods, impatience with fools and charlatans,his earthiness, his insight into thehuman tragedy he is part of, emerges asstronger than the emperor, who himselfacknowledges :I joined the potter in his rest.I broke his ranks but could not break hiswill.The universality of the poem and itsissues comes not from any effort to allegorizebut from staying close to theimagined voices conjured by the terracotaarmy itself. As do Eliot's lines in aChinese-jar, this poem realizes in its ownmeasures, its own craftiness and purity,the kind of art it celebrates. The bookwith its fine paper and its setting of eachmonologue on its own sheet facing itscalligraphic title (done by Shuai Lizhi)is appropriately handsome.Patrick Lane's A Linen Crow, a CaftanMagpie suggests in its title, asGeddes' title does, artifice, the imaginedand the imagination as having primacyover the literal-actual. It also suggestsmore arbitrary and radical departuresfrom mimesis or mirroring. To callwhat's inside its covers, by way of completinga symmetry, the fat of poetrywould be to falsify. Lane's lyrical meditationsare in their way as lean as Geddes'monologues. Each of the forty consists offour unrhymed couplets set on its ownsheet faced and surrounded with whitespace, which enhances the sense of apartness,of austere withdrawal from themundane.181

BOOKS IN REVIEWBut there is no austerity in the assuredfreedom of a mature maker that PatrickLane asserts in these poems, or morerightly, this poem. The structure of eachpart is gnomic, consisting in its eight linesof thirteen, fourteen or more discretesentences. These sentences or bits of sentencesplay together and apart, linkingon the page and in the mind, but oftenappearing to be more broken than whole.As each meditation takes its form, sodoes the whole sequence, the poem, eachshort, discrete interval finding or forginga place in a continuum. The illusion isthat of a mind withdrawn, suspended, inwhich are allowed to form thoughts,half-thoughts, images, feelings, that goand come at their own will.To say what the poem says is impossible,except by quotation. But to saythat there is no logic, no real continuityin the physical sequence, is to miss thecraftiness of the maker and the disciplineof his meditation. The poems are aboutexistence — about death, about love,about art. The seasonal images are predominantlythose of late fall-early winterwith here and there in the later lyricsintimations of spring. The mood issombre looking toward old age anddeath. The effort expressed in the poetryas craft and in the poet's persona is tofind a way, which is essentially to find aline, a form. The making of a linethrough discrete and contradictory sensations,ideas, feelings, is at once the processand subject of the poem:The line is doubtful. The meaning is clear.Endure.We remember a boy in wind, a bell in anopen field.Full Moon. I love you, your rising andyour falling.The cedar wax-wings are drunk. Frost onthe berries.Give of your grace. The sun forgives.I am afraid of nothing. Blow wind. Thebell is lonely.The new world. The anvil. Water in deepwell.Between your hips the only parasite is me.These books exemplify a maturity thatleads to daring, a testing of the means.Both stretch toward purity, but neitherreally dispenses with the means of theother. If Patrick Lane's meditations representpure music and metaphor andgnomic wisdom, Gary Geddes' monologuesare themselves a large metaphor,and his lean, disciplined line is after itskind as musical as Patrick Lane's.ROBERT GIBBSHAÏKUS ET LETTRESDOROTHY HAYWARD & ANDRE DU НАШЕ, eds.,Haiku: Anthologie canadienne / CanadianAnthology. Editions Asticou, $17.95.LISE GAuviN, Lettres d'une autre. L'Hexagone/ Le Castor astral, n.p.ON SAVAIT QUE la pratique du haïkus'était répandue chez les auteurs canadiens-anglais,suffisamment pour que paraisseen 1979 Canadian Haiku Anthology,de George Swede. Deux ans plustard, Gerry Shikatani et David Aylwardrecueillaient dans paper doors les haïkuset autres textes de poètes canadiensjaponais.Dans ce sillage, Haiku: Anthologiecanadienne / Canadian Anthologyvient à point nommé en ce qu'elle adjointaux productions des deux groupeslinguistiques précédents les haïkus d'auteursfrancophones. Le grand mérite dece dernier ouvrage tient à ce qu'il réunitdes haïkistes de ces trois groupes et inauguredes échanges dans la conscienced'une appartenance commune à un moded'écriture.D'autres éléments du travail qui a étéfourni sont tout aussi louables. D'abord,d'avoir recueilli pour la première fois deshaïkus d'auteurs francophones dans unmême volume. Ensuite, d'avoir présenté,182

BOOKS IN REVIEWen plus des haïkus déjà parus en anthologieou en recueils, un grand nombre detextes jusqu'alors dispersés dans des revuesspécialisées ou inédits. Enfin,d'avoir donné une édition bilingue,chaque texte étant suivi de sa traductionfrançaise ou anglaise, les deux versionsaccompagnant les textes en japonais, euxmêmesdans l'original idéographique eten translittération. L'éventail des auteursest fort large : 43 anglophones, 11 francophones,et 11 canadiens-japonais. Deuxhistoriques fournissent une introductionopportune à l'évolution du haïku en anglaisen Amérique du Nord et du haïkuen français (France et Québec). Lesnotes bio-bibliographiques sur chacundes auteurs ainsi qu'une bibliographied'ouvrages de base sur le sujet guiderontles lecteurs dont l'intérêt aura été éveillépar cette anthologie.La grande variété du contenu donneun aperçu des formes multiples et concurrentesque prend le haïku contemporain,du modèle japonais traditionnel àson adaptation en 17 syllabes, du versunique aux expériences typographiquesvisuelles.Sous cette diversité formelle demeurentces constantes qui font dugenre ce qu'il est: la condensation extrêmede l'expression et la juxtapositionde perceptions et d'impressions — coïncidencesou conjonctions que saisit unesensibilité attentive à l'unicité de l'instant.La plus grande liberté étant acquise, ilsemble difficile d'établir les paramètresde ce qui se donne néammoins pour ungenre particulier, et les définitions qu'onpeut lire du haïku ne cernent au mieuxqu'une partie du champ de la pratiqueréelle qui en est faite. Dans le cas d'uneanthologie, laquelle produit nécessairementun effet de consécration, il sembleraitutile d'expliciter les critères qui ontpermis de regrouper l'ensemble des textessous une même étiquette. L'absence detels critères n'est pas sans laisser le lecteurà sa perplexité devant certains textesdont seule la brièveté semble les rattacherau genre. C'est ainsi qu'il faut peutêtreimputer au souci de préserver quelqueéquilibre entre les groupes linguistiquesreprésentés la présence de courtspoèmes en français dont les rapportsavec l'esprit et le mode d'écriture duhaïku sont pour le moins ténus, sinoninexistants. Par ailleurs, à vouloir tropinclure, la marge entre l'enthousiasme etla complaisance est aisément franchie etl'on voit mal ce qui a pu valoir à desplatitudes du genre "Cunt smell / in mywaking beard," qui étaient jusqu'alorsinédites, de ne pas l'être restées, à moinsque liberté et laxisme ne soient devenussyonymes. Fort heureusement, la qualitéde la majorité des textes fait oublier detelles faiblesses.Les traductions sont très acceptables,parfois ingénieuses et poétiques. On remarquecependant, dans la version françaisedes haïkus en anglais, outre certainscalques et impropriétés, une tendance unpeu trop prononcée à l'ellipse qui donneà la simple juxtaposition syntaxique uncaractère répétitif et fait perdre auximages intiales leur dynamisme (en particulier,l'effacement des particules anglaisesà valeur cinétique, qui gagneraientsouvent à être traduites par desformes verbales, lesquelles semblent avoirété proscrites). Quant aux traductionsdu japonais, elles donnent parfois lieu àde curieux écarts entre les versions anglaiseet française, ainsi de ce haïku deNishimara: "Sur le sol gelé / hoquets /du boyau du camion d'huile," alors quela version anglaise se lit "The eartharound me / frozen / the oil hose /breathing," cette dernière différant elleaussi de celle qui était donnée danspaper doors : "... breathing in / whilehose pumps / breathe out / the smell ofoil."Au-delà de ces menues bizarreries,cette anthologie demeure une étape qui183

BOOKS IN REVIEWse devait d'exister et qui mènera certainementà des rencontres plus diverses et plusriches entre haïkistes ainsi qu'avec unpublic qu'elle contribue considérablementà informer et à conquérir.Treize lettres qu'envoie entre l'été1982 et l'été 1984 une jeune Persaneétablie à Montréal à une amie demeuréeau pays natal et dans lesquelles elle faitpart de ses réflexions au gré des expériences,des lectures et de l'actualité, telleest l'armature des Lettres d'une autre deLise Gauvin. Le procédé hérité de "l'illustreprédécesseur" n'y est d'ailleursqu'un prétexte commode au service del'essai et, sous le voile de Roxane, étudiantede maîtrise en lettres québécoises,les traits du professeur de littératurequ'est l'auteur se devinent trop aisément.Le profit que permet d'escompter leprocédé est celui du jeu du regard dédoubléet de la distance à un soi à la foisindividuel et collectif, mais encore ce jeune saurait-il être qu'au prix d'un effort.Or, si le truchement d'un personnageaussi proche de sa condition propre permetà Gauvin de s'octroyer d'entrée dejeu un poids d'authenticité, il lui faitperdre certaines des possibilités de ceteffort de distanciation par rapport à soi.Cette perte n'est nulle part plus visibleque dans le style, lequel a tous les tics dece micro-sociolecte par quoi s'identifient,au sein du discours universitaire et intellectuel,ceux qui se rattachent aux étudesfrançaises et québécoises. Style des séminaires,des congrès, des articles, qui, àl'extérieur de l'enceinte professionnele oùil sert de tenue de rigueur, prend partrop l'apparence d'un plastron empesé.Ces pages qui se lisent comme autant decatalogues de lectures, agrémentés pourchaque auteur d'une caractérisation qui atoute la résonnance du creux, n'en sontque l'exemple extrême. Ceci dit, le livren'est pas sans qualités: les observationssur l'attitude des Québécois (es) enverseux-mêmes sont nuancées, évitent l'écueildes généralisations, et débouchent surune sorte de métacritique de cette autocritiquepermanente, ambivalente etmultiforme par quoi se caractérise auxyeux de "l'autre" et mal-être québécois,d'autant plus manifeste qu'il tente de semasquer, en cette période de l'aprèsréférendum.L'exaspération pointe, provoquée,plus encore que par les mythesentretenus sur le Québec et le sort verslequel se dirigent les francophones auCanada, par ce qui est perçu comme unedémission de la part des Québécois, voirecomme une complicité. Exaspérationaussi devant les refuges de la lassitude etdu dénigrement de soi, et devant lesmots d'ordre d'une modernité intellectuellequi se fige. Ce sont d'abord lesclichés et les stéréotypes que véhiculentles Québécois eux-mêmes qui sont dénoncés,les facilités de ce qu'il convientde penser et de dire selon les modes dumoment, et ceci pour entretenir l'immobilismeet la fausse sécurité dans le sentimentd'un progrès acquis qui dispensed'aller plus loin ou plus profond. Il enva ainsi de la condition féminine toutautant que du linguistique, du culturelet du politique, bien que ce soit quandmême chez les femmes, celles qui écriventdu moins, que l'étrangère perçoitune énergie, un renouvellement continu,un refus du lieu commun.Néammoins, si cette critique est d'intentionsalutaire ( Qui bene amat . . . ),il est plus douteux qu'elle permetted'échapper à cela même qu'elle dénonce :l'auto-critique au second degré ne conduitpas nécessairement à une libérationet l'on sent parfois la prescience d'uncercle vicieux. Par ailleurs, s'il est toujourshonorable de vouloir pourfendremythes et lieux communs — et surtoutceux qui sévissent en milieu se disant intellectuel— on risque de ne crever quedes baudruches qui s'étaient déjà d'ellesmêmesplus qu'à demi dégonflées. L'humouren cette arène demeure l'arme de184

BOOKS IN REVIEWchoix, mais en l'occurence, celle-ci manquaità la panoplie.MICHEL PARMENTIERMAGIC MAESTROVICTOR cowiE & VICTOR DAViEs, TheTrumpet. Turnstone, n.p.MagicIT IS HEARTENING to see the publicationof The Magic Trumpet (a 1969, threescenemusical comedy for children, ages4-11 ), not only because it is a good children'splay but also because it is a children'splay. So few publishers are willingto risk publishing plays for children. Thisplay, though first produced in 1969, wasnot published until 1984. Yet Children'sTheatre in Canada and elsewhere is dependenton some form of play publicationand distribution. Turnstone Press is,therefore, to be congratulated for itsunique and courageous decision to publishchildren's plays.The Magic Trumpet, first presentedby the Manitoba Theatre Centre, containsthose elements which, if artisticallycombined, should result in a successfulchildren's drama: humour, suspense,spontaneity, audience participation, fear,delight, music, song, emphasis on theimagination, and colourful characterswhose names bespeak their oustandingcharacteristics. In the Introduction, theplaywrights point out that they want themusical comedy to be entertaining, butthey also want children to understandthe theme as a "quest to achieve a justand happy world." The dramatists aredirecting their attention to adults as well.So often adults dampen children's spiritsby belittling the highly imaginativegames children invent. Victor Cowie,playwright, and Victor Davies, composer,are attempting not only to present astimulating play for children, but also tosuggest to adults that they try to retainthose childlike qualities of wonder anddelight so inextricably a part of childhoodbut often lost to the world ofadults. In so doing they will be betterable to understand the powers of theimagination upon which children drawfor their entertainment.The plot of The Magic Trumpet issimple and easy for children to follow.The play opens with Mayor Mumble'sannouncement that school is closing andthe summer holidays have begun. Mrs.Mean is incensed because of the noisethe children will make while playing.She threatens to force the Mayor to openschool again. At this point, Magic Maestro,a circus magician, appears and enticesthe children, all but Simon Small,into the forbidden forest where, withtheir consent, he changes them intocircus animals. Given a steady diet ofwater and hay, they soon long for regularfood again. Meanwhile Simon Smallfinds them and learns that to turn themback into children again he must find theTalhuiq Tree who has the Magic Trumpet.Eventually, after some amusing incidents,Simon finds and blows the Trumpetwith the help of the audience, andsets the children free. The play endshappily for everyone.Throughout The Magic Trumpet themusic and lyrics are delightfully appropriateto the story. The characters, plot,and music all blend into a harmoniouswhole, making The Magic Trumpet amusical comedy to be enjoyed by all. Theplay can be mounted with a minimum ofsets and costumes. A complete musicalscore is available from Lily Pad Productions,102 Lyall Avenue, Toronto.GERALDINE ANTHONY=00=185

BOOKS IN REVIEWTHREE PLAYSDÉNIS SALTER, ed., New Canadian Drama 3.Borealis.THE New Canadian Drama series, underthe General Editorship of Neil Carson,has made available, within the past fiveyears, several contemporary plays by seasonedwriters, as well as the occasionalplay by a newcomer on the scene. Thisvolume is the most ambitious thus far inthat all three playwrights are newcomersto Canadian theatre. Their first playshave been produced within the past fewyears. Salter remarks that the commonground for selection was the fact that allthree writers are "in the early stages oftheir very promising careers," and theplays selected "are linked by a numberof shared themes, subjects and aestheticpreoccupations."It is left for the reviewer to assess thequality of the plays chosen and hence thejudgement of the editor who selectedthem. Are these plays of sufficient meritto deserve publication? Would the playwrightsbe better served if these playshad been left to mature with time, toundergo further productions, to be submittedto more critical appraisals, and tobe reworked until the final product is asnear to perfection as the playwright canachieve? All too many Canadian playsare given uncritical publications, cloggingthe market with an embarrassing arrayof mediocrity. Dramatists who eventuallyreach a measure of success in their work,will, no doubt, be uncomfortable aboutthe publication of their early work.The three plays in this volume areFrank Moher's "Down for the Weekend,"Kelly-Jean Rebar's "Checkin'Out," and Gordon Pengilly's "Swipe.""Down for the Weekend" received itspremière performance in 1980 at NorthernLight Theatre in Edmonton and wasfirst published by Playwrights Canada in1861981. Frank Moher remarks in an Author'sNote: "I have made a number ofrevisions of that text for this anthologyedition." "Checkin'Out" was first producedby Northern Light in 1981, andthen by the Great Canadian TheatreCompany, Ottawa, in 1983. A note onp. 49 tells us again that this is an "extensivelyrevised edition." "Swipe" was givenits professional première by NDWT TheatreCompany at Toronto Free Theatrein 1981 after being workshopped at theBanff School Playwrights Colony, andpresented with an award and productionby the amateur Walterdale Theatregroup in Edmonton."Down for the Weekend" is a traditional,realistic slice-of-life about the menwho work in Fort McMurray's oil fields.The dialogue is sharp and naturalistic.Flint, Dirk, and the Kid are returningfrom work by bus, with their fellowworkers, for a weekend in Edmonton.The action revolves around the relationshipbetween young Flint, his wifeDebbie, and her old Ukrainian grandfatherGido. The values of the old world— happiness achieved by steady, hardwork on the family farm which is handeddown from one generation to the next —are contrasted with the new, superficial,get-rich-quick, and move-on attitudes ofthe younger generation. Flint and Gidoare polar opposâtes, symbolized by the socalledtreasure hidden on Gido's property.Flint is obsessed with the idea thatthe treasure is money — the key to hishappiness. Gido knows that the treasureis merely a bag of seed symbolizing thereal treasure — the land. Debbie is thepawn between the two. Will she capitulateto Flint and go off with him toVancouver on another useless spree lookingfor easy money, or will she acceptthe real values of her grandfather andcontinue the family farm heritage?Moher has a talent for creating localcolour — the Ukrainian's simplicity, the

BOOKS IN REVIEWoil worker's vitality, the drifter's superficiality.He paints a lively picture of thecontemporary Edmonton scene. Moher'scharacters, although not as rich nor asdeveloped as one would like, are sufficientlywell-rounded to become individualsin the theatregoer's imagination. Thecontrast in setting between the cheap,highrise apartment, and the settled oldfarmhouse is also sharply defined. SceneThree depicts the casino and the Wheelof Fortune, where Flint and Dirk losetheir hard-earned salaries. Here, theaudience is treated to the lively ambienceof the contemporary gambling scene.Another contemporary scene of false glamouris the Drive-in Movie where starshipenters the black hole while Dirkwatches Emanuelle out the back windowwith the soundtrack off. Moher has asharp sense of satire. Dirk and Flint'slives are like the meaningless scenes onthe screen."Down for the Weekend" is wellnamed as the main character is on a fastmovingslide that promises no return.The play ends as it began with Flint,Dirk, and the Kid. They are singing"Alberta Bound" and the final trite remarkis Dirk's as he regards his MacdonaldsQuarter Pounder and reflects onbecoming part of history when the Macdonaldssign changes from thirty-four tothirty-five billion sold. A nice touch to aplay contrasting the real with the superficial!The "sense of history" at the endharks back to the beginning when Flintexplains coin collecting to Dirk as givingone "a sense of history." The only historythey share is the monotony of the oilworker's life.The second play in this anthology isKelly-Jean Rebar's "Gheckin' Out." Anotherfacet of Canadian life is depictedhere — the check-out counter girl in astore in Southern Alberta. With a typicalprairie town as setting, Rebar attempts,like Moher, to reproduce a slice of life,but with far less success. The charactersin "Checkin' Out" are one-dimensional;the dialogue is artificial and erratic, apparentlyconceived for the sake of dialectalone; the confrontations are illogical,boring and anti-climactic. What Rebar isattempting to do is certainly worthy ofthe effort, but she obviously lacks theexperience to put it all together in onecoherent, artistic unit. "Checkin' Out" isa play about one young woman's attemptto find herself and to establish a meaningfulcareer and life. Both she and herhusband marry too young and for thewrong reasons — a fact which we discoveronly at the end of the play, whenwe find it logically impossible to accept.Bob, the town's most popular hockeyplayer, is offered a hockey scholarship toUniversity; Lindsay is the girl acceptedfor University because of her grades. Insteadof going to university, they marryand remain without education or careers— she as a store clerk, he, as a smalltown hockey player. Within a year theyseparate. The play bumbles along untilLindsay goes to Edmonton with seventeen-year-oldDonny to open her ownboutique. Bob eventually goes in searchof her and finds her living with Donny.There follows a deplorable confrontation— deplorable because the playwright hasnot yet learned the art of confrontation.The dialogue does not lead naturally andin a well-balanced way to a climax. Thereader is irritated and bored by theclumsy construction of this confrontationand by the climaxes and anti-climaxes.Fortunately, for both characters andreader, the play ends shortly thereafter.Here is an example of a play whichshould not be published until the playwrighthas gained far more experiencein writing. Indeed the play needs to becompletely revised. It would appear thatthe playwright may have been in theprocess of learning how to write regionaldialect. Indeed the regional dialect187

BOOKS IN REVIEWthroughout the play is so obvious thatthe reader is overwhelmed by it andloses track of character and plot development.Rebar creates very poor Englishfor the character Lindsay, throughoutthe play, "I run my pannyhose, I neverhad no time to put my make-up on." "Iwere goin' in for bein' a English teacher."Unaccountably Lindsay steps out ofcharacter by using such words and expressionsas: "conflict," "discreet," "indecision,""mass hysteria," "remotely,""I'm not amused," "unexpected trepidation.""Gheckin' Out" is, in short, a mediocreplay, failing in its use of character,plot, and dialogue. No doubt Kelly-JeanRebar has talent, and is, as Denis Salterpoints out "in the early stages of [a] verypromising career," but it would seem tooearly yet to publish her work."Swipe" is a delightful fantasy whosecharacters are reminiscent of, amongothers, Gulley Jimson and Sarah Mondayin Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth, andthe American riverboat characters inMark Twain's Huckleberry Finn andLife on the Mississippi. In "Swipe," thecolourful folk characters are a Canadian'scontribution to this genre. Worm,Duke, and Guppy, a bag lady and twotramps, chant in verse and speak in proseof Clancy Dougal, their hero and erstwhilecompanion, the captain of thieves,who went to the moon some fifteen yearsago, promising to "return with revelationand inspired blueprints to gather hisbrotherly crew." Clancy promised transcendenceand these remaining trampsare looking for just that. Now PeckWoodstick, the captain of tramps, hasprophesied Clancy's homecoming. Thetramps have always dutifully broughttheir stolen booty to Peck but have failedto see Peck swipe anything. The art ofriver robbery belonged undeniably toClancy. Hence, "the screws of their discontent"are put on Peck. They talk incosmic terms. Worm says: "If we don'ttranscend soon we're gonna be all washedup fer sackin' the Universe!" Peck promisesto go to his cave-in-rock to try toconnect with Clancy. In actual fact Peckis fooling the gang. When Clancy, fifteenyears earlier, tried to take over Peck'sgang, Peck murdered him and spread thestory that Clancy had transcended thisplanet for the moon. Now Peck mustmake good his prophecy that Clancy willreturn. Peck turns to his faithful youngRooster: "He's got redhair like a shootin'star, flyin' feet like the wind, stickyfingers like a atomic glue."Into this folk plot walks Becky, ayoung lost tourist — someone from theouter world. She encounters Roosterwho remarks "Ev'rybuddy gets lostaround here." Meanwhile Peck has concocteda story that Clancy is returning."Hope is feelin' and feelin' is believin'and believin's gonna bring Clancy outathe cosmos with moonbeams on the brimof his hat and all the secrets of the universein his sack."Gordon Peugilly has created in"Swipe" a delightful fantasy, completewith colourful folk characters, poetic dialogue,rich imagery, a fascinating plot,and an old riverboat setting in a lushlagoon. The seedy old tramps offer somesignificant comments along the way, suchas Peck's remark: "If yuh open up a canof worms, the on'y way to get 'em backin is to use a bigger can." Or Twinker'sstatement: "The truth come quickestwhen simply told." "Swipe" is a playdeserving production and publication.The volume is clearly printed with onlya few errors. The cover design andgeneral appearance of the book is satisfactory.The idea of selecting plays fromone geographical area is a boon to researchersof regional drama. The editor'sintroduction is stimulating and perceptiveespecially in its comments on theimagination.GERALDINE ANTHONY188

FIRST STAGESUSAN STONE-BLACKBURN, Robertson Davies,Playwright. Univ. of British Columbia, n.p.they began to inform his work in the late1950's. Her analyses of General Confessionand Question Time seem especiallythorough, drawing as they do on aknowledge of Davies' wide reading andof his exploration of the same ideas inthe novels.But it is exactly here, where Stone-Blackburn's techniques of literary analysisare brought to bear so impressively,that I am most conscious of the limitationsof her study. The essentially thematicapproach adopted throughoutleads the author to an insoluble dilemma— if she is right, then Canadian directors,actors, critics, and audiences mustbe wrong. For the paradox of RobertsonDavies the playwright is that while he isone of the most erudite, cultivated, andgraceful authors to have written for thestage in this country, he has had practicallyno lasting effect on the developmentof our drama. Therefore to discussGeneral Confession as a "masterpiece,"although the work has never been performedand has been consistently turneddown by theatrical managements, is toexhibit a peculiar kind of critical bravado.Indeed, Robertson Davies, Playwrightillustrates vividly the malaise affectingmuch published discussion of Canadiandrama. The academics who do most ofthe criticizing and assessing of plays arewoefully out of touch with the artistsresponsible for producing and performingthem. Scholars like to get their informationfrom books, and Canadian actorsand directors (unlike their British coun-THE UNIVERSITY OF British ColumbiaPress continues to demonstrate a commendableinterest in Canadian drama.The present volume follows RenateUsmiani's survey of the alternative theatre,and appropriately enough begins anexamination of what the "second stage"was reacting against. If there is a playwrightin the country with some claim tohaving helped create our "first stage,"Robertson Davies is that dramatist.Davies is probably the closest we haveto a "Dean" of Canadian letters, a positionhe has deservedly won by dint of anastonishingly varied career. Older readersremember him as a kind of "Fleet Streetintellectual," a literary Jack-of-all-tradeswho could turn his pen with equal skillto essays or journalism, and serve aseditor, teacher, or academic administrator.Younger readers know him as theauthor of the Deptford trilogy and oneof our most skilful novelists. Stone-Blackburn's focus on the plays remindsus that Davies' first love was the theatre.The book is arranged chronologicallyand begins with Davies' youthful fascinationwith the visiting British companiesthat toured Ontario with productions ofShakespeare, Goldsmith, and such nineteenth-centurymelodramas as The Countof Monte Cristo. It deals with his Oxfordyears, his contact with scholars suchas Neville Coghill, directors such as TyroneGuthrie, and his own experiences asterparts)actor at the Old Vic. It describes hisearly unsuccessful attempts to write forthe West End, and his triumphantachievements in the amateur and professionaltheatre in Canada in the 1950's.Perhaps the most valuable part of thebook is Stone-Blackburn's analysis ofDavies' interest in the ideas of Jung asBOOKS IN REVIEWrarely express themselves inprint. Stone-Blackburn is to be commendedfor interviewing a large numberof performers involved in the productionof Davies' plays. But the comments ofthese performers have been filteredthrough an essentially literary sensibility.There is no discussion in the book of thetechnical problems presented by theplays. What are the characters like to189

BOOKS IN REVIEWact? How do audiences respond to them?Why is it that when Canadian dramaand theatre began to develop morequickly in the 1970's Davies suddenlyseemed old-fashioned?It is not always a disadvantage for aplaywright to be at odds with the currentcritical assumptions. In this centuryChekhov, Pirandello, Ionesco, and Beckett(to name only four) radically reshapedthe drama of their day by thepower of their vision. Davies' failure toconvert Canadian actors, directors, andaudiences to his opinion of what a playshould be is one of the significant andpuzzling facts of our dramatic history. Ihave my own ideas why he failed. I amsure that members of the theatre communityhave theirs. The question is ofgreat interest. But it is one that thepresent book scarcely raises and certainlydoes not answer.NEIL CARSONCOMIC GHOSTSROBERTSON$6.95·DAVIES, High Spirits. Penguin,WHAT DO QOEEN Victoria, William LyonMackenzie King, Sir John A. Macdonald,Albert Einstein, and Bishop JohnStrachan have in common with LittleLord Fauntleroy and a failed Ph.D.student? High Spirits tells how the ghostsof these — and many more — appearedto Robertson Davies at Massey Collegeduring his eighteen years as Master there.Each year from 1963 until 1981, Daviescontributed a ghost story to the entertainmentat the college's Christmas party,and High Spirits is a collection of thesestories. Davies' affection for the supernaturalshould come as no surprise toany reader of his last four novels, alsowritten during his years at Massey. Hetakes his ghost stories seriously, not asliteral truth but as psychic truth. However,his stories are designed for amusement,and he achieves a light-heartedghost story with a delightful parody ofthe traditional serious style.In the first story, "Revelation from aSmoky Fire," Davies' study is occupiedby the tenth Master of Massey College,who thinks Davies is the ghost. By 2063,the first Master is recalled with difficultyonly as someone who left the office undera cloud after a very short term. Thesecond story, "The Ghost Who Vanishedby Degrees," is wonderfully appropriatefor the original audience and obviouslyanother sample of psychic truth. Theghost of a graduate student who hadcommitted suicide after failing his Ph.D.oral thirty years earlier appears to insiston re-examination. He produces a thesisthat is in Davies' field but on a subjectso obscure that Davies knows next tonothing about it. Davies bluffs his waythrough the exam, magnanimouslyawards the ghost a pass, and then finds,to his horror, that the ghost has preparedtheses in every field from fine artsto physics and demands that Daviesexamine him in them all. Davies fakeshis way through the lot, deflating thedignity of academe as he goes. Twoothers among the best stories, "DickensDigested" and "The Cat that Went toTrinity" (both published in One Half ofRobertson Davies, Macmillan, 1977) alsofeature students. One charges Dickenswith vampirism, with living off graduatestudents. The encouragement Daviesoffers a languid student, "I was certainthat if once Dickens thoroughly tookhold of him, he would become absorbedin his subject," is comically, horribly,literally realized. The other is a parodyof Frankenstein in which a studentnamed Victor Frank Einstein undertakesthe creation of an ideal College Cat."Dickens Digested" fits another pattern,dubbed "ectoplasmic elitism" byDavies, in which ghosts of famous figures190

BOOKS IN REVIEWappear, often to mark some appropriateoccasion. In 1979, Davies' story featuredboth Einstein on the centenary of hisbirth and Little Lord Fauntleroy in TheYear of the Child. In 1967 the centenaryof Confederation evoked the spirit of SirJohn A. Macdonald, and the Universityof Toronto's sesquicentennial in 1977raised the ghosts of King George VI andBishop John Strachan to quarrel overwho made the more significant contributionto the birth of the University. Daviescharacteristically gives the victory toKing George, championing The PleasurePrinciple, over Bishop Strachan's stodgyWork Ethic.The Davies enthusiast will enjoy thesubstantial amount of self-revelation andself-parody in Davies' stories, which arein this respect similar to the earlierMarchbanks diaries with the Marchbankspersona eliminated. "Oh, don't be sopompous," the wife of the UniversityPresident reproves him, and he is similarlypunctured by many another dignitary,living and dead. The Davies scholarwill find a couple of interesting connectionswith Davies' novels. The 1969 story"Refuge of Insulted Saints," in which amultitude of saints seek refuge at Massey,is clearly related to Dunstan Ramsay'sfascination with odd saints in Fifth Business,and the 1978 story, "The Xerox inThe Lost Room," contains a sketch forJohn Parlabane of The Rebel Angels.Most interesting of all is the aspect ofpsychic truth in the stories. As the firstreveals Davies' trepidations about whathistory will make of his showing as firstMaster of Massey College, the last showshis attempt to cope with his reluctanceto step down. The whole is in keepingwith his lifelong emphasis on psychicbalance; the stories minister to this needin himself and his audience. The frequentappearance of ghosts at MasseyCollege he claims is easily attributable tothe fact that it is "a Temple of Reason.""There is in Nature a need for balance,a compensating principle which demandsin our case that where there is too muchrationality there should be occasionaloutbreaks of irrationality." Not just Massey,but Canada, Davies claims, "needsghosts, as a dietary supplement, a vitamintaken to stave off that most dreadfulof modern ailments, The Rational Rickets."The supernatural and the comicblend with the elite and the erudite toproduce High Spirits.SUSAN STONE-BLACKBURN*** MARIA LEACH, ed., Funk & Wagnall'sStandard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology,and Legend. Fitzhenry & Whiteside, $43.95.This paperback reprint of the 1972 editionis welcome, despite the drawbacks of date(there has been much formal analysis of folklorein recent years that does not get acknowledgedhere). Like comparable dictionaries thiswork provides rudimentary identifications ofnames and titles and terminology — everythingfrom "Selene" to "The Princess and the Pea"and "reductio ad absurdum." The net is wide.Curiously, absences occur where one wouldexpect solid information: coyote and manitouare there, but I looked in vain for D'Sonoquaand for Damelahamid, for example — indeedWest Coast Indian culture is ill served indetail. But one strength of the work is therecurring series of general essays on themes,forms, and social contexts of mythology indifferent societies. Eugenie Voegelin on NorthAmerican Indian Mythology provides a widerangingoverview, of the sort that could leadreaders along productive comparative paths —if only the dictionary supported the generalwith a wider range of specifics.

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} hdesPOPULAR CULTUREIN CANADAissAc BicKERSTAFF, Mariposa Forever. Stodidart,$9.95.VAL CLERY, Ghost Stories of Canada. Hounslow,$9-95-DIANA COOPER-CLARK, Designs of Darkness:Interviews With Detective Novelists. BowlingGreen State Univ. Popular Press, $9.95.MARIÓN CROOK, The Gulf Island Connection.Crook Publishing, $9.95.BILL GUEST, Canadian Fiddlers. LancelotPress, $7.95.DAVID GURR, An American Spy Story. McClelland& Stewart, $18.95.DON HARRON, Debunk's Illustrated Guide tothe Canadian Establishment. Macmillan,$19-95-JEAN HOWARTH, Treasure Island. Penguin,$6.95.KENNETH HUDSON, The Language of theTeenage Revolution. Macmillan, £15.00.MARGARET ANN JENSEN, Love's Sweet Return:The Harlequin Story. Women's EducationalPress, $9.95.BILL MCNEIL, Voice of the Pioneer. Vol. 2.Macmillan, n.p.VLADIMIR PROPP, Theory and History of Folklore.Univ. of Minnesota Press, $19.50.JOHN REEVES, Murder Before Matins. Doubleday,$14-95-JOHN REEVES, Murder With Muskets. Doubleday,$17-95-JOHN SEWELL, Police. James Lorimer, $6.95.EDWARD STARKiNS, Who Killed Janet Smith?Macmillan, $24.95.TED WOOD, Murder on Ice. Charles Scribner's,$18.95-IT IS VERY TEMPTING at this point toconsider my work done. Popular cultureis such a theoretical morass that it oftenseems "your guess is as good as mine" isabout the best assessment of boundariesone can hope for. In this case, I havebeen asked by the editors to write a pieceon popular culture. To aid in my endeavoursthey have sent a variety of booksto consider. Since they are the ones whowant the article and they are the oneswho sent me the books, the books themselvesdefine popular culture in the viewsof the editors. Ipso jacto, the list of booksis my article.But ipso facto, being Latin, is not popularculture (at least not our popularculture, although it might be that ofancient Rome [or it might be part of ourpopular culture if it is misused — as myLatin usually is ... you see my problem]).And in any case, the editors probably willnot regard my casual bit of bibliographyas what they had in mind. So to continuewhere Charlie's Angels would fearto tread .. .I presume I was offered this assignmentbecause of an article of mine whichwas published in Canadian Literature,No. 104. There I presented a means ofdividing culture into four classifications:folk, popular, mass, and elite. Folkloristsstate that folk culture is artistic communicationin small groups. This definition,however, includes many thingswhich the majority of us would think farfrom "folk." Common usage would furthernarrow the definition to pre-industrialmaterial handed down through tradition.Mass culture is a much simplermatter : that purveyed primarily throughthe mass media. Elite culture is quitedifficult to define but we all know whatit is. Phrases such as "serious music,""serious literature," and "high art" providesome of the boundaries.Within this frame, popular cultureslips in at the edge. My suggestion is thatthe term is most useful if it representsthe small group reflection of mass culture.Thus, the local rock group doingimitations of the Rolling Stones is notmass culture, neither is it folk culture. Idoubt that any of you thinks it is elite193

OPINIONS AND NOTESculture, no matter what kind of Stoneophileyou might be. It is thus popularculture.But now the confusion. What is theessential difference between that and alocal string quartet which performs compositionswritten by the cellist? Andwhat is the essential difference betweenthat and the folk musician performingsome Child ballad? Of course, the latterrepresents the old favourite of anonymoussong transmitted through oral tradition.But was the first performer of thesong thus not a part of folk culture? Andwhat happens with all this material whensomeone records it and puts it on theradio? Is this really a transformationfrom popular/elite/folk to mass, throughwhat could be seen as just a means ofpreservation?As Alan Fotheringham would say,"Has the good Doctor Foth misfused theobfuscation?" Ah, thank God, you say.At last he has reached a concrete, Canadian,example. But is it popular culture?In light of my definition above, certainlynot. But what if I come down from myhigh taxonomic cloud and accept anotheraspect of common usage, and employpopular culture and mass culture assynonyms? Macleans might seem a massmarket periodical but is it — in the senseof People or better still The NationalEnquirer or Teenbeat? Fotheringhamclearly has some intellectual pretensions.Does this deny his column's right to becalled popular culture? In this day andage when educator after educator complainsthat "People don't read!" can anythingin print be popular culture?Let's stop there. I presume I have nowconvinced you of my basic premise : definitionsare of value only as stimuli fordiscussion. Even more than such oldfavourites as "What is poetry?", thequestion "What is popular culture?" isunanswerable. None of you would claimthat the artifact now in your hands, anissue of Canadian Literature, is popularculture. But a "normal" university quarterlywould be unlikely to publish anythingas unstructured and unscholarly asthe piece you are now reading. If I maybe allowed a short, slightly scholarly,break to comment on my own style,there is a pseudo-orality about the dashes,parentheses, and underlining which reflectsmuch popular culture in print.Harron's highly contrived Charlie Farquharsondialect is an extreme example.Thus could we say that CanLit (may Icall it that?) is more popular culturethan many other periodicals? We thenget into the realm where a term such aspopular culture really functions, in comparisons.Such a shift is necessary here,if only because none of the texts providedto me for this review really seemsto be popular culture, either in the senseof my definition above, or in the broadergrouping which includes mass culture.None of these books is likely to have thesame interest in that context as a songby Michael Jackson or an episode ofDynasty.You notice that I choose two Americanexamples. If, for the purposes ofdiscussion, we accept mass culture aspopular culture, we must see it as generallyAmerican. Hugh Garner once lamentedthe passing of low-brow Canadianmagazines. I can't recall the exactstatement but a reasonable paraphrasewould be : "I learned to write by writingjunk for such magazines. And manypeople learned to read by reading thatjunk. It was junk but it was our junk,Canadian junk." Today very little inpopular culture has a Canadian stamp.If you wandered into a bar in Montanayou would have difficulty convincingyour drinking mates of some quintessentialmaple-leaf-ness in Donald Sutherland,Margot Kidder, Neil Young, orBryan Adams. When Canadian becomes

OPINIONS AND NOTESpopular culture, voilà, no more Canadian.So there is a very important sense inwhich we are not discusing popular culturehere, except, perhaps, a very eliteend of it. This is generally true of detectivestories and mysteries in any case.The curling lip and raised eyebrowwhich used to be seen at any suggestionthat the works of Raymond Chandlerand Dashiell Hammett have literarymerit are now mere memories of a Leavisitepast. Even those who haven't quitereached the true popcult reverse snobberyof "The Semiotics of Daffy Duck:a Discourse Analysis" know that it is farmore embarrassing in intellectual gatheringsto forget Nero Wolfe than to lookblank at the mention of the other Nero—• you know, the guy with the violin.You would be hard-pressed to findanyone who has heard of John Reeves asa novelist who would dismiss his workdisdainfully as "popular culture." Or,peace to my editor, many who would callit popular culture at all, in its delightfulerudition about monastic life or grandopera. Some ten years ago I heardReeves give a talk in his guise of CBCradio producer. In the question andanswer period following he describedtelevision as "radio for morons." That isnot the voice of popular culture.But could CBC radio itself be popularculture? Which would make Reeves' firstmystery, Murder by Microphone, a bitcloser to our ostensible subject matter. Ihave a sense that the recent revampingof CBC radio is an attempt to becomesuch. It seems as if someone "up there"thinks that a devotion to what I wouldcall the vacuous middle-brow might stealan audience from the middle-of-the-roadstations (missing the obvious pun thatMOR is less). Good luck. Some yearsago I did some commentary for a nationalarts show on CBC radio. The producer'sdesire was that I be tremendouslywitty on the worst aspects of primetimeTV (anything which suggested a lowerIQ than The Dukes of Hazzard). I amquite willing to admit that I failed andwas axed. But more important was theproducer's comment that what she hadreally wanted was "Good material forlisteners to use at cocktail parties."Which is perhaps the essence of my discussionhere. And my Daffy Duck referenceabove. To sound as high-minded asyou can about the lowest thing you canfind. Folklorists have a name for this.They call it "folkloristics," the scholarlypractise of analyzing folklore. The Proppvolume which was included in my packageis a classic in the field. If there is aconcept of "popularistics" I haven'theard of it. There should be something,if only because Bowling Green Universityhas devoted so much of that debasedmedium of print on paper to its practice.It is interesting how they have wordedthe title of their publication arm, as usedin the Cooper-Clark volume. Because itisn't a very "popular" press, in the senseof Bantam or even of say General inCanada. But as a publisher of "popularistics"it can call itself popular.Bowling Green has also attempted toconvince us, in contradiction of my observationabove, that there is a "CanadianPopular Culture." I suppose so, indribs and drabs, such as "Timber Tom"on the Canadian Howdy Doody or anythingto do with Margaret Trudeau, asshe once was called. Bill Guest's volumecould be better seen as an example ofthe culture of local publishing — andthe absurd nonsequiturs which the noneditingsometimes leads to — but it is ofsome interest to me in neglecting all butone Newfoundland fiddler, includingmany who have commercial recordingsavailable. I suspect regional griping is animportant part of Canadian popularculture.Don Harron sometimes seems to be

OPINIONS AND NOTEStrying to grab as large a part of Canadianpopular culture as possible, particularlyin his guise as Charlie Farquharson.Harron's constant punning, once moreon display in Debunk's, could provide aninteresting analysis for someone with adesire to assess his intended audience,and how "popular," in the sense of beingfor "the masses," the Farquharsonoeuvre is. What readers are required by"You take that Raw Bare Burns hoo wasin Reamy Leveckyou's first cabinet"?How do they compare to those neededfor the less sophisticated but more agespecificpun Charlie twirled in an earlierwork: "All them Hindoos in themDeana Durbins"? Issac Bickerstaff performsin a somewhat similar vein. Still,any book which only succeeds if thereader has read another book, in thiscase Leacock's Sunshine Sketches, seemstruly to be stretching the limits of popularculture, no matter what the definition.My favourites among this package arethe Reeves novels but I have already saidthey don't count. After them, I amdrawn to one of the examples of popularistics,Margaret Ann Jensen on Harlequins.Perhaps a bit diffuse and lackingin the theoretical scope of recent studiesin both feminism and popular culture,the book still provides a very interestinganalysis of all aspects of the Harlequinchain from society to author to publisherto seller to reader and back tosociety. At one point she states,Although most academics reject popularculture, a few scholars enthusiasticallystudy movies, comic books and roller coasters.Perhaps in reaction to the condemnationsuch topics usually receive, thesescholars uncritically embrace their subjects.I am suitably chastened. But then againI was already warned a few years ago. Ireceived in the mail a number of Harlequincovers as advertisements so I putthem on my office door at the university.One of my students hesitantly asked mewhy. I replied, merrily, because I thoughtthey were funny. She said that she andher friends had assumed that I mustwrite them.I don't feel compelled to remark individuallyon most of the other books. BillMcNeil's collection is an absolute delight,as was the first volume, as has been theradio series, but I would feel more comfortableplacing it in the oral history binor, as a folklorist might suggest, in thecategory of personal experience narratives.Another popularistics volume, theHudson, is primarily interesting as anartifact. The one British book here, itseems a rather lightweight example ofwhat sociolinguistics can do, but I amfascinated by its list price, $60.00 Canadian.For 137 pages. Can elite culturesurvive?The impossibility of making globalstatements about culture or mass cultureshould in no sense deny their importanceas fields of study. This is very much howwe live. When mainlanders ask me whatit is like to live in Newfoundland, I sayI drive my Toyota, buy groceries atDominion, hardware at Canadian Tire,and underwear at Sears. In between thatI watch CBC television (CTV when I'mslumming [The Sports Network whenI'm visiting a rich friend with Pay-TV])and take my daughter to her Suzukiviolin lessons.Extra-national uniformity is a bit morelimited but similar. I can find no reasonableway of convincing my six-year-oldNewfoundlander of the incongruity whenshe sings along with Bruce Springsteen's"Born in the USA." I consider myself anardent nationalist but, as Garner lamented,when dealing with mass culturein general, as opposed to elite culture orregional examples of mass or popularculture such as a local character or event,the battle against the Americans is notonly unwinnable but unbeginnable. As196

OPINIONS AND NOTESfar as the greatest part of mass cultureis concerned, and especially rock music,she was born in the USA.A number of people have writtenabout the popular culture of the middleages and some others have replied inopposition. The latter claim that we justdon't know enough about the period todescribe its popular culture, no matterhow often we peruse arcane records orhow much new archaeological data isuncovered. The same could be said of socalledprimitive peoples, although a newbranch of study called ethnohistory isdoing what it can to reconstruct an overallportrait of their lives. See any ofBruce Trigger's brilliant books on NorthAmerican native peoples.So we must retain and consider. I pitythose museum curators who are in chargeof areas with names such as "PopularEphemera." You try to collect plasticshopping bags with advertising on them.But can you realize how important suchitems are in understanding how our ownprimitive culture works?Sadly, there is not much in these bookswhich is relevant to this importance. Thepopularistics books (I hope I have notcoined another bit of jargon — that isnot what popular culture needs) are useful,particularly Jensen. McNeil's book isvaluable, but more for the popular cultureof an earlier age than for today.None of these books will compete withTom Wolfe's Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. If you understandjust the title, you know the 1960's,in Canada as well as in the States. Orwith an Australian example, Hit & Ms,by Kathy Lette. In the first piece in thiscollection of newspaper columns, she describesthe latest game for women atSydney cocktail parties, "Spot theHetero." If we forget the nuances ofthat little phrase, its comments on feminism,gender orientation, parties, slang— and newspapers, we will forget the1980's. Let's not.TERRY GOLDIEMICHEL BEAUL1EU1941-1985MICHEL BEALIEU EST MORT en juilletr 985, en plein été, d'une crise cardiaque.Son dernier livre, avec sa couverturebleu sombre et son titre, Kaléidoscope(Le Noroît, 1984), prend alors une significationinattendue, une épaisseur que jene lui aurait peut-être pas accordée àpremière lecture. Ce qui est moins connu,c'est le sous-titre qu'il a choisi à son(dernier) recueil, un sous-title digne derendre compte non seulement de cessoixante-quatre textes ici réunis maisaussi de l'ensemble de sa production littéraire:"Les aléas du corps grave."Ce recueil parle d'écriture, d'amour etde villes quasi-imaginaires dans lesquellesle lecteur est convié à un soliloque bavardsur la quotidienneté, sur le monderêvé à l'échelle des faits et gestes familiers,non pas cette ville de la quincailleriemoderniste ou rockeuse à la mode,mais plutôt ces lieux où vagabonde larêverie, ces lieux où l'on s'abandonneaux souvenirs plus ou moins insignifiantsdes va-et-vient d'une poète doux, sensible,rarement seul et un peu fatigué deconstater encore et toujours l'inconsistancedu temps qui passe, la minceur desrelations amoureuses, la petitesse des passions,la sévérité du jour qui tombe:et tu le disqu'elle te suivrait au boutdu monde si seulement tule lui demandais tu regardesau loin les arbres bruissentde l'autre côté du terrainde stationnement les motsdans les deux cas d'une langueabominée vous échappentbrèves rafales où les doigtssuppléent à la bouche bientôt197

OPINIONS AND NOTESremplie d'un baiserla fenêtre capte le bruitDans ce recueil, Kaléidoscope, la mortsemble avoir été prévue. Avant le silence,il a fallu rappeler les principaux titres dumême auteur et inclure une courte biographie.On y apprend qu'il est né àMontréal en 1941, qu'il s'est occupé trèsactivement du Quartier latin, journalbihebdomadaire des étudiants de l'Universitéde Montréal, que la bibliothèquefamiliale était bien fournie en poésie,tant française que québécoise, qu'il vafonder les éditions Estérel dès 1965, là oùvont paraître les premiers titres deVictor-Lévy Beaulieu, Nicole Brossard, etRaoul Duguay (donc de futurs écrivainsqui feront leur marque au Québec et quidéjà ne font pas école, ce contre quoiMichel Beaulieu s'est toujours défendu,cet esprit de chapelle ou de ghetto) ; onsait également qu'il va quitter le comitéde rédaction de La barre du jour pourfonder, en 1967, avec quatre autres confrèresdissidents, l'éphémère revue Quoi,puis, après quelques années consacrées àl'édition et au journalisme (à Perspectives,au Devoir, au Jour), il participe àla fondation de la revue Jeu en 1975,réussit à faire radiodiffuser une quinzainede pièces dramatiques à Radio-Canada et à faire monter son uniquepièce de théâtre au Quat'Sous en 1976:Jeudi soir en pleine face, co-produiteavec l'équipe du Théâtre de la Manufacture.Enfin, à partir de là, son travailconstant d'écriture poétique se voitdoubler de celui de la traduction, de lacritique littéraire et de lecteur (à larevue Estuaire). Michel Beaulieu s'estégalement mérité beaucoup d'honneur:ses poèmes ont été traduits en plusieurslangues et lui ont valu de nombreuxprix: Variables lui a valu le prix de larevue Etudes françaises en 1973, Desseinscelui du Journal de Montréal en 1981, etcelui du Gouverneur général avec Visagesen 1982.Les lecteurs de poésie viennent deperdre un excellent écrivain. Sa voixm'a toujours paru un peu éteinte, dans lesens qu'elle n'est pas de celle des grandsténors de la littérature ni de ceux quibousculent. Eteinte, cette voix n'en estpas moins porteuse, efficace, porteuse depromesses sans cesse poursuivies :tu vois à l'oeil que le poèmen'entrera pas en son entierdans le cadre indifférentà tant de raturesC'est ainsi que l'écriture se manifeste àchaque virage de la rêverie, chaque foisque l'occasion d'écrire se présente. C'estparfois un peu agaçant mais le rythmeest maintenu, la passion toujours prête às'inscrire, mais toujours tenue à distance.D'ailleurs, le "tu" est de rigueur danstout le recueil, un "tu" qui n'est autreque le sujet même du soliloque qui semet à distance, qui se réfléchit, qui semire dans mille et un détails d'un réeldiffracté. Il arrive que le "tu" soit uninterlocuteur autre que lui-même, fémininle plus souvent, ce qui permet deslibertés et des fuites, des ricochets d'impressions.Une voix éteinte : elle joue sur le modemineur, tiraillée entre le découpage métrique(quoique libre) et le respect de lasyntaxe (jusqu'à la soumission pure etsimple), porteuse aussi d'une imagerietrès peu audacieuse, mais efficace dans cerespect même du mode, du ton, susceptiblede maintenir une ambiance, uneattention "grave" et distante aux paysagesqui s'y trouvent évoqués.MARIAN ENGEL1933-1985ROBERT GIROUXTHOUGH THE DEATH of Marian Engel,on 16 February 1985, after a long strugglewith cancer, was not totally unexpected,198

OPINIONS AND NOTESit was felt in the literary community likea sudden withdrawal of current, a dimmingof lights. This consciousness of theloss of a distinct vitality is still with us.Marian did not go gently. There was nofolding up of tents here, but rather thefeisty determination to be taken, if at all,in midsentence, to leave her voice stillringing. She has left those of us whoknew her and respected her work with acontinuing regret for a life too early, aunique voice too soon interrupted.Born in Toronto in 1933, Marian Passmorewas raised in various towns in Ontario,where her father worked as a highschool teacher. She managed to takeevery course in English Lit. which Mc-Master University offered and stillemerge with a degree in French andGerman, in 1955. At McGill Universityshe completed a thesis on CanadianLiterature under the guidance of HughMcLennan, and received her M.A. in1957. Subsequently, she taught at AcadiaUniversity, Montana State University atMissoula, and The Study School in Montreal.In 1961 she attended the Universityof Aix-Marseille at Aix en Provence,on a Rotary Scholarship. For a periodshe taught in private schools in England,and worked as a Financial Translator.In 1962 she married Howard Engel,with whom she travelled to Nicosia,Cyprus, where she taught at the St.John's School. On their return to CanadaMarian eventually gave birth totwins, Charlotte and William, and settledin to the hectic life of a mother andhousewife who is also a socially consciousand political human being, as well as,beyond all this, but permeating all, aconstantly working writer. She exploredgenres, writing in the third floor attic ofthe house on Brunswick, often able tofind time to work only at night. Once— viscisitudes of motherhood — she describedto me the night when she lookedup from her work and saw outside theattic window, hanging from the roof,little son William grinning in at her.In those early years she wrote plays,radio documentaries, journalism, children'sstories, and finally found her preferredforms in the novel and short story,though she could still turn her hand, inneedy times, and produce craftswomanlyprose in whatever form required. In 1968she published No Clouds of Glory (sincere-issued as Sarah Bastard's Notebook),in 1970 The Honeyman Festival, Monodromos(since re-issued as One WayStreet) in 1973, and Inside the EasterEgg in 1975. These early works are strikingparticularly for the crisp elegance oftheir prose and the surprising depthswhich she could suggest beneath the apparentlyordinary surfaces of the heroineswho carried the burden of her stories.At this period Marion Engel was playinga key role in the organization of TheWriters Union of Canada and became itsfirst Chairperson. She spearheaded thestill continuing battle for writers to receivecompensation for library use oftheir works. A staunch member of theNDP she was active in civic politics andon the City of Toronto Library Board.Separated from her husband, she wasfinally divorced in 1977.The 1976 publication of the brilliantnovel Bear won her at last the seriousattention she deserved. This fable ofmythic proportions, realistically dressedfor maximum viability in the Canadiancultural climate, brought her a certainamount of notoriety as well as the GovernorGeneral's Award for Fiction in 1976.Daring in conception, masterful in stylisticcontrol, perfect in pitch, it establishedthe mature craft found in her next twonovels, The Glassy Sea ( 1978) and LunaticVillas ( 1981 ). The former is a seriousexamination of female isolation and spiritualneed, and the latter a kind of unbuttoned"Tempest"-like mature comedyof a large hearted and slightly

OPINIONS AND NOTESfuddle-headed collector of stray childrenwho lives on a street in Toronto wherepalpable, if zany, people conduct theirlives with a sense of magic and possibilityalways hovering and sometimeseven descending to illuminate their dayswith small, bearable miracles. The varietyof these two works hints at the worldswhich Marian Engel might yet have createdfor us.The last time I saw Marian, in herhome some four days before her final tripto the hospital, she said to me suddenlyjust as I had risen to leave, "You knowI've figured out why I haven't been ableto finish my novel. I'm afraid that whenI finish it I'll die." And then veryquickly, with a mischievous grin, "SoI've begun to make notes for my newnovel."I was so grateful that she'd given mesomething to be enthusiastically encouragingabout that 1 left with the convictionthat the gambit could even work.There was so much vitality here that shemight indeed be able to pull that novelfrom the teeth of the ultimate brute.And then why not another? It was thecocky line of an indomitable lady, butDeath had not the imagination to playSultan to her Scheherazade. And we arethe losers.ADELE WISEMANPERSONALCOMPUTERS &PERSONAL PROGRAMSTHE ADVENT OF the personal computerhas created two quite distinct opportunitiesfor the people who buy them. Thefirst opportunity is symbolized, in effect,by a large software industry that producesa myriad of computer games,learning programs, word-processing programs,and so on. The second opportunityis symbolized by the personal computeritself sitting fresh and new on one's desk.An issue of personal freedom arises inthe context of this heady market, anissue that is rarely (if ever) aired innewspapers, magazines, or journals. It is,moreover, an invisible issue becausepeople, especially new consumers ofhome computer hardware and software,are most hynotized by what might becalled the hardware/software mystique:if the average consumer is unable singlehandedlyto produce hardware as sophisticatedas a modern computer, then heor she must be equally inept in the productionof software. The attitude isslightly overstated but it results in a conditionof creative bondage that can onlybe called software slavery. To make mattersworse, there is little incentive towrite programs of one's own when seeminglyevery conceivable program for homecomputers has already been written. Thisis very far from the truth, especiallywhen personal computers are viewed asvehicles of personal expression. It isprobably overly optimistic to suggest thatan era of personal programs is about tosucceed the era of personal computers.For one thing it is hardly in the interestof the home computer software industryto encourage consumers to write theirown programs. Given the by now traditionalinterdependence of the hardwareand software sectors, one cannot expectsalvation from the producers of hardwareeither. Finally, learning to writeprograms is not an easy task.Two years of experience as the authorof Scientific American's (apparently popular)Computer Recreations column hasbrought the existence of software slavesto my attention. Every time I describeda programming project that producedspectacular visual results or spurred fascinatingintellectual quests, there wereletters from hundreds of readers asking200

OPINIONS AND NOTESwhere they might get a copy of the programdescribed. Would I be kind enoughto send them one? Did I know of acompany that distributed the program?To all my answer was a firm "No." Thissounds harsh, perhaps, but I was actingout of pedagogical instincts; they wouldlearn only by doing. They would do, ofcourse, only when they learned how easyit was to write the programs I was suggesting.But how to break out of thisvicious circle? As an experiment I wrotea special column in the April 1985 issueof Scientific American entitled "FiveEasy Pieces." The article featured fiveeasy programming projects. The first wasso easy that a person of average intelligencecould have written it within anhour or two of picking up a BASICmanual. The mail from that column hasso far totalled approximately 3000 pieces( all of which had to be answered ), morethan twice the amount produced by anycolumn before or since. The great majorityof letters concerned the first easypiece: I had asked readers to write aprogram that simulated the firing of acannon at random into a round pondoccupying the middle of a square field.After taking a thousand shots, they wereto count the number of splashes, so tospeak, and divide the sum by 250. Theresult would be an estimate of pi, thefamous transcendental number expressingthe ratio of a circle's circumference to itsdiameter.Naturally, the program was describednot only in these colourful terms but interms of the few commands that wouldbe needed actually to write it. I do notknow how many of the readers respondinghad just written their first programbut, judging from the almost patheticallypleased tone of their letters, I think agreat many of them must have.Sherry Turkle, in her book TheSecond Self, outlines the steps by whichchildren acquaint themselves with computers.The mystery of the machine isfollowed by mastery over it. In the process,the child's world view and selfimageare reflected in the computerthrough the manner of interaction withit. There are "hard masters" who revelin the sense of control over the machineand "soft masters" who are led to explorethe machine's potential by movingfrom one satisfying experience to thenext. Among adults one finds similartendencies. Historically, it was the hardmasters who set the personal computerrevolution in motion during the 1970'sby making computers out of kits andthen writing various systems programsthat expanded the capabilities of theirmachines. This school continues to dominatethe many computer magazines stillin print; one sees endless ads for newhardware, technical reviews, articles thatdescribe new ways to store files, communicatewith other computers, compileprograms, and so on. All of this representsa turning inward of the computerupon itself with seemingly no awarenessof the vast world of ideas open for exploration.An apt analogy involves theyouth of the 1950's who so enjoyed tinkeringwith his roadster that he nevertook it for a drive. Countless potentialsoft masters have been turned away fromtheir birthright by the casual perusal ofsuch magazines at the newstand. Frightening.Complex.This article is not only about personalprograms but soft masters. The world ofthe hard master is very limited comparedto the universe of ideas and issuesthat can be explored with a personalcomputer. For each model currently onthe market there are friendly, companionableprogramming manuals (often notthe ones supplied by the manufacturer)that offer instruction and advice on avariety of levels. Unfortunately, thereseem to be very few books that supplyworthy projects for future soft masters.201

OPINIONS AND NOTESWe await their coming, books that initiatepersonal explorations in word manipulation,planetary motion, drawing facesthat change expression, simulating predator-preyecologies, composing sixteenthcentury counterpoint, tracing the intricateshape of simple formulas, testing technicalstrategies in the stock market, analysingwriting style, generating story plots,playing go-moku, operating an antcolony,. . . (The list is apparently endless.My article-generating program continuedfor two more pages before I realized thatit might never stop. )A. K. DEWDNEY*** JACK KAPicA, ed., Shocked and Appalled:a Century of Letters to the Globe andMail. Lester & Orpen Dennys, $19.95. Americanswrite their Congressman when they'reshocked and appalled; Canadians write theEditor of their local paper. I'm fond of aletter that appeared recently in the Sun, fromsomeone who justified the postal rate increaseon the grounds of its being a storage fee. Thereare letters that sting, letters that amuse, sensibleletters, and letters that explain everythingby referring to the approximate shape of theearth. This collection of addresses to theGlobe & Mail (from the 1880's to the 1980's)turns into quite a miscellany. The letters concernRiel and rebirth, declare that "There isnot a Canadian literature because there is noCanada," and attack the poetics of a versetribute to Sir John A. ; they offer sketches ofEgypt, correct spelling, complain that "obey"has been dropped from marriage vows, objectto the idea that the peony should replace themaple as a national emblem, and offer awhole series of suggestions for the NationalBird: junco, goose, sparrow, owl, stork, chickkadee,robin, jay, dove, grouse, hawk . . . (andbeaver?). J. E. H. MacDonald writes onpainting, Merrill Denison writes on the wilderness,Stephen Leacock writes about theCBC's general manager, Norman Levine abouthidden censorship, Hugh MacLennan on separatismand American annexation, MurraySchäfer on loons and the national soundscape.There are letters from David Helwig andPierre Berton, Eugene Forsey and Hugh Hood—• and by a host of other people. The book isan engaging glimpse of the issues that reallyget people going; it contains many of the realvoices of Canadian culture, and (like the"Letters" columns of the local paper) it is adelight to read.**** JEFFREY SIMPSON & GED MARTIN, TheCanadian Guide to Britain, vol. 1. Macmillan,$24.95. The title is slightly misleading:Wales is included (Scotland will be the subjectof vol. 2). But the substance of entries inthis directory of Canadian connections withEngland is fascinating. There are brief commentson Lowry and Leacock, Carleton andMurray, Frobisher, Francis Dickens, and scoresof others — but the most engaging momentsare the unexpected ones: the recipe for SnailTea, a medicinal concoction Mrs. Wolfebrewed up for her sickly son, James; or thecollege song for a Borstal school that sentboys to Canada ("Australia and Canada thrillwith our fame, / And the kangaroo leaps atthe sound of our name..."). This is pophistory for the inquisitive traveller, wellresearched(if incomplete), and ably told.W.N.A set of reference works particularly valuableto literary historians and aficionados of thebook trade is the group of Gale works devotedto commentary on literary journals. The LiteraryJournal in America to 1900 ($62.00),The English Literary Journal to 1900($62.00), and English Literary Journals, 1900-1950 ($60.00) combine discursive reflectionson periodical history with specific data (concerningdates and editors) about listed journals,and with annotated bibliographic listingsthat bear on each journal. Journals such asScribner's and the North American Revieware listed — periodicals that attracted a numberof nineteenth-century writers; the bibliographyamply aids research into this (oftenephemeral) territory.W.N.*** Fingerprints. Irwin, $12.95. A collectionof tales by the Crime Writers of Canada,this anthology offers a generally sprightly collectionof mysteries, thriller, political intriques,and tough romances. Most impressive are thetwo Iron Curtain stories — riddled withironies both structural and political — byAnna Sandor and Josef Skvorecky. The oneother standout — for its chiselled prose, itsartful control of time — is the story by SandraWoodruff.2O2

OPINIONS AND NOTES** BERNARD GUNN, The Timetables of History.General, $25.95. This book is an extendedversion of those "time-lines" that alwaysappear in a survey-of-English-literaturetext. Under a set of columns (labelled Literatureand Theatre, History and Politics, Religionand Philosophy, Science and Technology,Visual Arts and Music, and Daily Life), itlists events and publications, setting out, over700 pages, who did what concurrently — from5000 B.C. to A.D. 1978. It's a wonderful idea,and it's a handy resource book for anyonewho can't remember offhand the names ofBach's contemporaries in science and literature,or who wants to trace changes in humanattitude and experience. The volume is international— by which I mean it does refer toAsian history, but the focus is European andculture does come off as something of a Westerninvention. When you probe a bit more,other unstated biases appear. "Science" in thetwentieth century, for example, is constitutedprimarily of people who won Nobel prizes —prizes frequently awarded for a lifetime's research— which means that for recent decadesthe new "discoveries" of any particular yearare not noted at all. Similarly, History andLiterature in the twentieth century are primarilyAmerican; we find out the date andtitle of a book by Dwight Eisenhower, forexample, and there's lots of data on ChrisEvert, the Dallas Cowboys, and other worthiesof contemporary culture. But while literaturecrosses the Atlantic, it has difficulty withother borders. Patrick White appears twice,yet only after he won the Nobel Committee'sendorsement. And nowhere is there any mentionof a Canadian writer — no Lowry, noFrye, no McLuhan, let alone Atwood andHébert. The bias is even more deep-seated.To look up the entries covering the War of1812 is to find that the Americans won thebattles at York and New Orleans. No mentionof the fact that Canadians defeated theAmericans at the battles of Queenston Heightsand Châteauguay. "Chrysler's Farm" appears,but not "Crysler's," as it should be. This isnot revisionist history; it's just history blind tothe fact that the use of the word "world" in aphrase like "World Series" is an Americanusage, and that it only means "world" to anAmerican mind. For everyone else, there aredifferent perspectives.** CLAIRE HOY, Bill Davis: A Biography.Methuen. It may be that as people politiciansare not radically different from others,but their biographies are certainly in a classof their own. With writers and artists, forinstance, where the process of creation is oftenongoing until death, it is debatable whetheran effective biography is possible until the lifeis ended and enough time had passed for thesubject's repute to settle like an old house intoits final shape. Books like Elspeth Cameron'slife of Hugh MacLennan inevitably have atentative feeling, since there is no knowingwhat the subject will do to change or expandour final view of him. With politicians it isdifferent, since their lives are dependent onthe tides of political fortune; they are interestingwhen they are in power. But who thinksof them again when they retire into privatelife? How often, for example, does one give athought now to Pierre Trudeau? And for thisreason a biography of a politician before hisdeath is entirely appropriate, and it is best ofall either when he is at the height of hispower (as was the case with Trudeau whenRichard Gwyn wrote The Northern Magus)or when he is just on the point of departure,which prompted Claire Hoy to write his biographyof Bill Davis. Bill Davis conveysadmirably the kind of inspired ordinarinesswhich often makes the most successful politician.Intellectually, Bill Davis is no greatshakes, but he is shrewd, pragmatic, and hehas never let principles get in the way ofgathering votes. His long rule proved thatone does not have to be a philosopher — kingor not — to hold on to power, and holding onto power, despite all pretences to the contrary,is the politician's main objective. As a pictureof a man, Bill Davis is not very interesting,because successful politicians automaticallysubmerge whatever real selves they have behindtheir public masks, but as a study ofpolitical manipulation, which is what reallyinterests one in the former master of the BigBlue Machine, it is a knowing and interestingbook.LAST PAGEENTERTAINMENTS : I like the Fraggle RockCalendar (CBC Enterprises, $7.95) for BruceMcNally's splendid illustrations, but the textsof Fraggle readers (The Radish Day Jubileeand others) pale beside the speed of the programmesthemselves : the stories need the visualaccompaniment, and sound, to be of anymore than passing interest.203

OPINIONS AND NOTESThe books of cartoons by two of the mostsuccessful of current Canadian cartoonists —Jim Unger and Lynn Johnston (both publishedby Andrews & McNeel) —are marvellousprecisely because they manage so shrewdlyto marry visual nuance with cultural observation.Unger's Herman, you were a muchstronger man on our FIRST honeymoon ismore astringent than Johnston's It Must BeNice to Be Little. Unger relies on the exaggerationand bureaucratic denseness, Johnston onthe normative nature of domestic chaos; betweenthem they lay open a good many of thefoibles of contemporary life. Unger portrays aman with a bow tie on his head, looking likerabbit ears; an Official Person says to him,"We've had to remove your brain for a coupleof days, so just try to relax." Art criticismcomes in for its own, too. An Unger characterlooks at a Roman bust and says, "Was he asshort as that in real life?" Johnston's characteris less phlegmatic, but no more in control: "Idon't care what you saw at the art gallery," shesays, " — from now on you make your snowmenwith their clothes on." I also like TrevorHutching's cartoons in Funny Things, Computers(Lorimer, $6.95) : Merlin the magiciandiscovered using a home computer, a dogbarking at electronic mail. But the line betweenfunny and schlock is sometimes toothin, and Hugh Brewster and John Forbes'The Complete Hoser's Handbook (Prentice-Hall, $8.95) crosses it: "The Shrine Monumentto Maria Chapdestick in Kakatoque,Quebec" is a Nudge joke that never got outof the "Wouldn't it be funny if?" stage . . . theanswer is no.W.N.REPRINT SEASON is recurrently upon us:everything from Terry Sturm's admirablyedited Portable Christopher Brennan (Univ.of Queensland, $25.00; pa. $14.95)an dAndré Siegfried's Democracy in New Zealand(Victoria Univ. Press, $I6.5ONZ, with notesby David Hamer) to Joy Cowley's strikingnovel The Growing Season (Oxford, $10.95)and Bill Scott's The Penguin Book of AustralianHumorous Verse ($9.95). Scott assemblesa motley stew of bush songs and contemporaryparodies — "The Ballad of Bloodthirsty Bessie"is here, along with a version of Horace onBondi Beach, C. J. Dennis's "The Australbloodyaise,"and a Bruce Dawe Beatitude thatopens "Blessed are the files marked ACTION inthe INWARD tray. ..." Sturm delves bravelyinto the work of a poet more widely admiredin Australia than outside it, but manages togive Brennan a more interesting face thanusual by selecting instructive passages from hisletters and reviews to accompany the lines ofverse. Siegfried, the French political analystwho also visited Canada at the turn of thecentury, turns a hopeful but shrewd eye onsocial structure and social behaviour in theBritish Dominions, and his comments are stillrelevant today.Reprints, selections, autobiographies, obituaries: so often the eye is cast back over timeto retrieve person and history, and to sustainthe person and the present. M. H. Holcroft'sThe Way of a Writer (Cape Catley, $19.95)is a rather woodenly told set of personal recollections{then, then: meetings and partings);Graham Greene's Getting to Know the General(Lester & Orpen Dennys, $16.95), bycontrast, lives up to its subtitle ("The Storyof an Involvement"). It is a memoir of apolitical and personal drama, a dramatic accountof Greene's encounter with Panama inthe 1970's and with its leader, Omar TorrijosHerrera; it is at once a tribute to a friendshipand a testament to the intricacies of powerand connection in Central America.Vincent O'Sullivan's play Shuriken (VictoriaUniv. Press, $7.50) looks back at WorldWar II, and at the Japanese military code, inorder to examine the issue of culture conflict,to consider how public expectations as well asovert structures influence misunderstanding.Lauris Edmond's Selected Poems (Oxford,$14.95) traces the poet's "exact and judiciousmagic" of imaginative creation; most characteristically,Edmonds responds in tranquilityto observed scene, remembered event. TheRemembering of the Elements (Wai-te-Ata,$6.75) is more personal still — the last poemsof the late Judith Lonie, the whole collectionstruggles with images of framing (being "putin the picture") and of disintegration; amongthem is a chilling four-line verse called"Loneliness" : "Mother's looking pale andthin : / God put baby brother in the rubbishtin. / Daddy says nothing but his eyes aregrim / / I'm the only one didn't want him."Even in memory there is separation.Many works of biography and criticism areacts of memory, too, from Kristin Brady'scompetent attempt to come to terms with TheShort Stories of Thomas Hardy (Macmillan,$20.85), resurrecting a world-view from thepages of Hardy's Tales, to Bill Pearson'sMacmillan-Brown Lectures, Rifled Sanctuaries(Univ. of Auckland, $11.45), a splendid accountof early Western literary responses tothe Pacific Islands: Pearson lays bare the204

OPINIONS AND NOTESviews of the Utopianists, the Evangelical aspirers,and the erotic novelists who made ofPolynesia a militant playground for prurientdomination, Jan Morris's Journeys (Oxford,$'5-95) collects essays on Miami, Australia,and a dozen other places, demonstrating bythe liveliness of phrasing, the pertinence ofdetail, the personality of connection, just whyshe is one of the finest travel writers today.Clement Semmler writes an extended biographyof the life and times of Australia's"Robert Service," A. B. Paterson, in TheBanjo of the Bush (Univ. of Queensland,$25.00) ; Geoffrey Dutton, in Snow on theSaltbush (Penguin, $9.95) —a book thatCanadian literary people ought to read andabsorb —· reflects on the significance of literaryexperience to the character of Australianculture: "life and times" for Dutton refers notonly to politics and persons, but also to thequarrels and coincidences that connect popularpresumptions with academic pursuits. Duttonreflects on the roles of editors, quarterlies,the popular press, little magazines, schoolreaders, patrons, bookshops, and all. It's aremarkable achievement.Shamsul Islam's Chronicles of the Raj(Gage, £15.00) is a brief account of Forsterand Masters and others who observed thedecline of the Imperial Notion. A. W. Baker'sDeath Is A Good Solution (Univ. of Queensland,$37.50) surveys the field of convictliterature, and is particularly valuable for itsappendices, schematically coding various elementsin factual and fictional British criminalbiographies from the 1790's to the 1860's.And Janet Davidson's well illustrated ThePrehistory of New Zealand (Longman Paul,$39.95) is an act of scholarly memory, usinggeological and archaeological evidence to presentwhat is currently known about Maori lifeand culture before the arrival of Europeans.There is data here on origins, language, settlement,lineage, conflict, disease, cultivation,and design, all articulated with cool clarity.Like the indigenous peoples of Canada, theMaori were a people with a substantive history,about which Davidson writes both withcause and with interest.As we have noted before, Virago Press hasbeen admirably championing another kind ofhistorical redress, by reprinting and reassessingliterary works by women. One of the mostrecent reprints is that engaging work of fashionablewhimsy from the 1890's, Elizabeth andHer German Garden, by Elizabeth von Arnim,the Countess Russell, cousin of KatherineMansfield — but as the reprint makes clear,some of what appears to be Contrived Attitudein the book is a covert cry against therituals of domesticity. Such works become,then, not merely texts made newly available,nor are they solely valuable for their documentarysociology; they are also challenges tocritical methodology, and to the very presumptionswe bring to the conventions ofreading. The ongoing rediscovery of RobinHyde (Iris Wilkinson) in New Zealand isserved by a press comparable to Virago in itscommitment, The New Women's Press ofAuckland, which has just released DragonRampant, Hyde's observant 1939 account ofher travels in China during the Sino-Japanesewar. As her editor, Linda Hardy, notes, thebook can be read for its reportorial coverage,but also for its implicit account of a womanin search of the freedom to move unencumberedby irrelevant preconceptions. Hyde'sSelected Poems, ed. Lydia Wevers (Oxford,$!б.95), gathers a body of poetry long unavailableand worth reconsideration; familiarimages of Persephone-in-winter are here, togetherwith a trained diction: "I am sorry Iplanted the memory tree / In the cool of thegarden shade. / . . . / I would be more than aghost / To your memory yet. ..." Most presentin the volume, however, is the author's ownvoice, wrestling with images of cage and tide,doors and rain, struggling to articulate thereal nature of defeat in words that declarefragmented but active resistance. A thirdbook, A Home in This World, is an autobiographicalaccount of the early 1930's, publishedfor the first time (Longman Paul,$19.95). I* te ll s °f tne depression that doggedHyde's life, and of the conformist pressuresthat invaded and shaped her world even whileshe claimed freedom; a volunteer mentalpatient at the beginning of the decade, Hydefled from "treatment" to the "home" her titlespeaks of. It is a place of accommodation butnot exactly of peace; her metaphors speak ofbelonging and of intrusion, together. "Wordsare daggers." And what she values, finally, shelocks away.There's one more kind of memory; it's thesort represented by the Festschrift and TheCelebratory Issue. In 1985, Poetry Australiaturned 21. For many of those years the preserveof Grace Perry (poet, doctor, individualist,rural dynamo, literary renegade), thejournal has been home to talent of manydifferent poetic persuasions, and to poets fromanyplace as well as from Australia. In heropenness to talent, to the commands of poeticvoice rather than to the dictates of received205

OPINIONS AND NOTESconvention, Grace Perry helped transformmodern Australian poetry, freeing it from itsconservative diction and giving it space toswing its idioms in. It's been a commitmentfor Perry as a woman of science as well as apoet of passion: "Can you feel it?" has alwaysbeen coupled with "Does it make any sense?"Sometimes she turned an issue of the journalover to a whole book, a single writer — mostrecently in No. 99 (John Millett's splendidCome down Cunderdang, a broken poeticsequence in which the world of the countryracetrack becomes the arena for cultural history),and No. 97 (A Face in Your Hands, abook of lyrics by Craig Powell, long a residentof Canada). Issue No. 100 is a miscellany oftributes and poems, a small cross-section ofcontemporary Australian verse, from patriarchA. D. Hope to the established, the unknown,and the young. We wish the journal morecontributors, more subscribers, and a long life.THERE ARE LITERARY MYTHS of many kinds.One is that, if you are an able and visiblewriter like Roald Dahl, you will necessarily bea good anthologist: unhappily Roald Dahl'sBook of Ghost Stories (Cape, $17.95) ls boring.It's a collection of coincidence-stories,with no ghosts of consequence and no chills ofexpectation. There is more chill, in fact, in thefantastic realities of Ninotchka Rosca's TheMonsoon Collection (Univ. Queensland,$16.50); in nine linked stories, Rosca — aPhilippine writer now "travelling" — writessometimes awkwardly of bizarre changes inpeople's daily routines (a monsoon causes aworm invasion, a postal clerk becomes abomber), but she is clipped and effective inher intervening vignettes of political rebellionand political repression.Politics is another source of myths. TheOxford Illustrated History of Britain, ed.K. O. Morgan ($29.95), indicates how someof them develop. The book (only adequatelyillustrated, with various prints — of Romantiles, Beatles posters) is a collection of tenseparately-authored chronological chapters.What emerges is a two-tiered story: a myth ofevolution and benevolent Empire (in which,incidentally, scarce mention is given to Canadaeither as a possession or as a political construction),and a chronicle of religion andlaw, which is shown really to be a chronicleof occupation and ownership, mainly of land.Yet the importance of the conflict betweenthese two is never addressed. V. S. Pritchett'sThe Oxford Book of Short Stories ($31.50),a decent but slightly lopsided collection, claimsto include writings from the Commonwealthas well as from England and America, andmoreover, to include those stories that contributeto "the art" rather than depict "thenative scene." But the editorial judgement iscompromised by a taste apparently shaped before1940: "modern" Commonwealth writersturn out to be a Callaghan and Narayan, andare present (quite respectably, but misleadingly)in the company of Saki and WilliamTrevor. A reference book like CommonwealthLiterature (Gage, $13.50) —-a biobibliocriticalguide to some 132 writers — shows howthe Eurocentric bias unconsciously extends tocommentary as well. The book is disappointinglyout-of-date in entries (Robert Service isin, Munro and Gallant are out; there is noGee, no Rushdie) but it is even more so inattitude: the aim is corrective and centralist— to show "how many writers there are outthere." Modern writers, meanwhile, are shapingcentres and perspectives of their own.American-centred works run their own risks.Twayne's The American Short Story 1945-1980 A Critical History, ed. Gordon Weaver,is a fragmentary tripartite attempt to namenames and encapsulate literary quality, butcan succeed in little more. There is a kind ofdesperation about its lists and its speed, buteven that serves a purpose. The book led me(happily) to the work of Russell Banks andthe recent stories of Paul Bowles, and thoughmany other leads proved barren, that does notnullify its function. The bibliography, however,has special quirks. It omits Clark Blaiseand Jane Rule under its list of AmericanStory-writers of the period (Fine, you say) ;but it does list Leon Rooke, Mavis Gallant,and Alice Munro — the last of these (bibliographersbe warned) for a book called TheBeggar Mind. Joseph and Johanna Jones'well-intentioned books Australian Fiction andNew Zealand Fiction (both from Twayne)also suffer from the survey impulse: fasteningon descriptive themes, they organize the fictionaccordingly and leave out too much detail.Similar constraints affect other Twaynebooks —• Dorothy Blair's Senegalese Literature(a serious treatment of a limited body ofwork), Catherine B. Stevenson's VictorianWomen Travel Writers in Africa (from MaryKingsley to Lady Barker: Stevenson's commentsrange from notes to extended analyses,in an uneven attempt to solve by relative allocationsof space the problem of significancethat surveys create), John Weigel's PatrickWhite (simply a reader's guide to plot struc-2O6

OPINIONS AND NOTEStures), and Robert Wren's /. P. Clark (mostinteresting as an American's reaction toClark's America, Their America). StephenGray's Douglas Blackburn shows what happensin a good Twayne book: it is a reinvestigationof the world of a writer who fabricated hisown biographical data (cf. Grove), and asolid survey of the romances, operettas, pamphlets,columns, history, reviews, socialistcauses, secret service work, and the satiricSarel Erasmus trilogy, all of which shaped andexpressed Blackburn's career. Gray thus rescuesBlackburn from obscurity of several kinds,literary and political; more importantly, hewrites extremely well. Crisp and clear, hemakes literature sound interesting. As it sometimesis.Political myths, moreover, often take onvisual images, acquire populist form, affectboth literature and criticism. "We have a fictionthat we live by," writes Vincent O'Sullivanin The Rose Ballroom and other poems(John Mclndoe, $7.95) ; "it is the river ..."— "At every window, fiction / Love at eachdoor." For the satiric New Zealand playwrightGreg McFee, the image is less flattering; hissociety's infatuation with rugby and the rhetoricof hero-worship is summed up in hisantiheroic title: Foreskin's Lament (Price Milburn,$5.50). The play itself — direct, comic,pathetic, male — unfortunately does not travelwell.Laurie Hergenhan's Unnatural Lives (Univ.of Queensland, $19.95) probes a parallel Australianimage. He less traces the runningtheme of convicts in Australian literature(Tucker to White), however, than he effectivelyprobes the literary implications of theidea, the cultural fact. By contrast, JohnDocker's In a Critical Condition (Penguin,$9.95) takes on the power structure, fasteningon critical method. Self-defensive in stance(perhaps too much so), the book constitutes aplea for "whole" criticism, by means of anattack on what Docker claims to be criticalhegemonies: a Leavisite and then a similarlyexclusive poststructuralist bias which permeatesthe Australian academy. Canadian criticsmight reflect on its provocative remarks.Directly anthropological, Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Naked Man (Harper, $12.50,a paperback translation of the 1971 Frenchversion), comments on North American Indiancultures, again seeking images of organization.He classifies myths, rituals, and socialstructures according to what he determinesare the binary distinctions of human life atlarge. But one wonders also within contexthow exclusive the observations are, wonders atthe degree to which binary expectations encodethe subsequent analysis before it eventakes place. Douglas Gifford's Warriors Godsand Spirits from Central and South AmericanMythology (Douglas & Mclntyre, $15.95) * sa book of yet another kind, a book of talesaimed at an adolescent market (John Sibbick'sillustrations range from awkward drawingsto imaginative — animistic ? — designs offigures in nature), one which implictly challengesconventional Eurocentrism. One extraordinaryInca tale (Christian, we are advised,but the label is deceptive) shows the embroideryof a mixed culture: it tells of awoman with a snake sister, who aids her toward off the devil husband who was about tocarry her off. It is a tale with various overtones.But the stated moral is perhaps unexpected:Never marry a stranger.In yet another context, the myths of roleand relationship affect the subject and structureof fiction itself. The ten 194.0's stories ofthe Maori writer Jacqueline Sturm, collectedas The House of the Talking Cat (Brick Row,$6.50), seem rather dated now. But the bestreads somewhat like a Joyce Marshall story.Called "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," it tells of ayoung woman's discovery of a previous generation'sdifficult choices about sex, love, andsatisfaction. Such choice is a recurrent subject.Catherine Helen Spence's Handfasted, for example(Penguin, $7.95), though a muchearlier book, seems oddly more up to datethan Sturm's. An Australian novel submittedto a literary contest in 1879, it was rejected atthe time for its immorality, and was not publisheduntil now. Reading it is an educationin both fashion and social bias. The "immorality"ostensibly was to be found in thepractice referred to in the title — "handfasting"is explained as a "trial marriage" of ayear and a day — but in retrospect one getsthe feeling that the novel was deemed evenless acceptable in 1879 because the practiceof handfasting in the story was the prerogativeof women to demand. The story tells of ayoung Australian who travels abroad and discoversa lost Scots colony somewhere southeastof San Francisco. Having lost the Bible andthe habit and art of reading and writing, themembers of the colony acquire (instead) theskills of humanity and egalitarian government.The young man is attracted to the virtues ofsuch a life and to a young woman in thecolony. Handfasting follows. But one of theparadoxes of the book involves its ultimatesurrender: of vision, to convention. Spence207

OPINIONS AND NOTESfinally permits the young man to exerciseauthority; the woman resists, but at last shegives in — to marriage.In more recent Australian novels there issomething of the same preoccupation. Thecentral character of Barbara Hanrahan's KewpieDoll (Ghatto & Windus/Hogarth, £7.95;pa. £3.95) —not an advance on her earlierwork — claims to want "instant now," to beable to cope with plastic civilization. But thenovels show her seeking most to remember hermother — and to find her father — and tolocate in family a freedom from her terribleand somehow stupefying naive isolation. TheaAstley's An Item from the Late News (Univ.of Queensland) uses a more sophisticatedstyle to tell of the sexual violence and malemyths of a small town, of an atypical malewhose pacifism and passivity make him thetownsmen's victim, and in whose murder thefemale narrator plays her part. Afterwards shegrieves, and the novel indicates conventionalsocial role-modelling, but as with Hanrahanand Spence, it also closes declaring (if notexactly asserting) some form of dependenceon the male. Glen Tomasetti's Man of Letters(Penguin, $6.95), by contrast, is an ironic,articulate, satiric portrait of a universityphilosopher and writer who fancies he understandswomen. But he puts down the innuendoand anecdote beloved of the popularculture only to ask for a new form of Galatea.Tomasetti nicely balances his disconcertment(when women are enraged with him) with hisapparent need to have his ego stroked. Realityengenders myth in this world; and vice-versa.Following on her first book {Thoroughly DecentPeople), this one shows Tomasetti to bea writer worth watching for again.W.N.208