A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

publishing industry, and into the intricaciesof family hopes and hurts all informTraill's (and Moodie's) published works—perhaps the difference lies in the editorialdecision to print a selection. Similarly, AllanPritchard's admirable edition of the VancouverIsland Letters of Edmund Hope Verney1862-5 (UBC Press) also provides some fascinatinginsights into colonial history, andinto the competing circles of social powerin early Victoria; Verney, with his upperclassEnglish family connections (toFlorence Nightingale and Lord Shaftesbury,among others), was contemptuous ofNatives and of local politicians such asSebastian Helmcken ("gross, treasonable,insolvent"), dismissive of American notionsof equality, and keen to have B.C.'s firstgovernor, Sir James Douglas, dismissed,perhaps with himself in mind for a positionof favour and power. William Christianedited George Grant's Selected Letters forUTP: they occasionally reveal a sense ofconflict within Grant, as well as betweenhim and the world.A different kind of selection governs arange of 1996 anthologies. Oberon's ComingAttractions 96, ed. Diane Schoemperlen,includes stories by Murray Logan, whichexperiment interestingly with point of view,though they do not always lead satisfyinglyto narrative conclusion; U Ottawa Presspublished The Quebec Anthology 1930-1990,ed. Matt Cohen and Wayne Grady, an historicalrange of translated texts; Joel Maki'sLet the Drums Be Your Heart (Douglas &Mcln-tyre) introduces 40 "New NativeVoices," none of whom (despite their questsand their dissatisfactions) yet captivatesattention; Douglas Glover's Best CanadianStories 96 (Oberon) gathers nine writers, ofwhom Thomas Wharton (on the categoriesof the novel), Connie Gault (for sheer liveliness),and Alan Cumyn (for a wonderfulstory called "Survival Golf") stand out;Olive Senior's The Journey Prize Anthology(M&S) includes a good story by DavidElias; and the retrospective, celebratory ThePQL Reader (Porcupine's Quill), edited byTim Inkster and John Metcalf, demonstratesby its selection from PQL writers—Adderson, Blaise, Fraser, Heighton, EliseLevine, Urquhart—just how important thispress has been in advancing the art of contemporaryshort fiction. Poetry anthologieswere, on the whole I think, of less interestin 1996.1 like Carmelita McGrath's ownpoetry in her collection of Newfoundlandwomen writers, Signatures (Killick); andthe baseball poems that William Humberand John St James collected for UTP; andSmaro Kamboureli's continuing considerationof the range of the multicultural characterin Making a Difference (Oxford). Yetin some ways none of these anthologiesmatches the quirky range of Peter White's ItPays to Play: British Columbia in Postcards1950S-1980S (Arsenal Pulp); it is not thequality of art that impresses here, but thelively analysis of social mores: "while postcardsare banal," the editor writes, "theirfictionalized quotations of reality are notaltogether innocent." Derrida runs upagainst Bermingham here, in a clever studyof the ideologies that the prevailing mythsand symbols of a given time project; thereare sharp comments here on nature, ecology,and industry, on gender hierarchies,and on the culture of the family and the car.This recognition of the relation betweenhistory and the present—perhaps even ofan integration between the two—governsthe strategy of a number of works of fiction,prose, and poetry as well. (Anddrama, as in Guy Vanderhaeghe's Dancock'sDance [Blizzard], about a soldier in aninsane asylum who has to come to termswith his own actions in wartime.) Perhapsmost obviously, it generates the tensions ofboth Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace (M&S)and Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Englishman'sBoy (M&S). To be clear, I declare right offmy huge enthusiasm for the latter, myreluctant distance from the former. Unlike189