шш in review DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER - University of British ...

on his poetry or his ideas. Indeed, thevolume is almost resolutely anti-intellectual,barely mentioning the various ideasand movements with which Carman wasinvolved. The New England Transcendentalmovement, for example, greatlyinfluenced Carman's thought, yet this isonly briefly touched upon. Similarly, Millerdiscusses at length Carman's involvementwith Mary Perry King in a schoolof Delsartean acting, yet never describesthe Delsartean methods. In lookingthrough Miller's index for Carman's individualpoems, one realizes that she discussesonly a few, and says little aboutthem.Even more damaging for a biography,Miller so immerses herself in the detailsof Carman's life that it becomes difficultto gain an overview of Carman's character.One sees his proclivity for hurlinghimself into romantic affairs as well assomething of his personal reserve, butthe two fail to coalesce into a portrait ofCarman. At one point Miller quotes Carmanas saying that for a biography "atrue photograph of the exterior person iswhat is needed. The pose, the bearing,the motion, the stride, the voice andtone, a trick of the eye, a habit of thehand all mean so much." Unfortunately,Miller does not succeed in creating this"true photograph," in bringing the manto life.While her painstaking research is admirable,and her tracing of Carman'ssteps will no doubt be of help to futurescholars, in the end, one senses that, forMiller, this biography has been a labourof love, but a love that drowns Carmanthe man and the artist in a sea of details.A pity, for Carman's lyricism, if it is tobe appreciated today, needs new insights,new techniques for reading. That, andthe highlighting of a brighter brush.RONALD HATCHBOOKS IN REVIEWMURDER & LIESERIC WRIGHT, A Single Death. Collins, $1995.TIMOTHY FiNDLEY, The Telling of Lies: AMystery. Viking, $19.95.E. L. DocTOROw ONCE SAID of fictionwriters: "ours is the only professionforced to admit that it lies — and thatbestows upon us the mantle of honesty."Perhaps it is the overt playing with liesand honesty, as well as with such basicsas life and death, that makes the mysterystory an important form of postmodernfiction. The detective story is alive andwell in all its forms in Canada today,from the straightforward and gripping"good read" to the complex and intricatepostmodern playing with convention.The more popular version is most admirablyrepresented by Eric Wright's latestnovel, A Single Death, another storyfeaturing Inspector Charlie Salter of theMetropolitan Toronto Police. The fine,exciting plotting is matched by delightfulwry humour and complex characterizationthat makes you care about the majorplayers in this drama, a drama that is asmuch about marriage and separation, theloneliness of life alone and the dangersof intimacy, as it is about murder andlying. For all its humour and well-crafteduse of the detective story conventions,this is a novel that touches on and illuminatesthe major themes of most contemporaryliterature: gender and familyrelations, aging and death, generationaland class conflict (within a "classless"capitalist society), the paradox of thehaunting, inescapable past and yet theurgent need for a sense of history — bothpersonal and public — so vividly soughtin our postindustrial urban society.And these too are the themes of TimothyFindley's The Telling of Lies.Though carefully subtitled A Mystery,this is a very self-reflexive, metafictionalkind of mystery, sharing as much with225