\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

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