AWNAM d natiod review of books

VOLUME 4, NUMBER 4 APRIL, 1975 Laushin all the way tot .eE bank with

hath wrought for

PLUS REVIEWS BY Fred Cogswell, J.L. Granatstein,Michiel Horn, Do& Fetherling

_ __.. ___.._.._ . _. , r. - REVIEW ARTICLES

Clsre MacCulloch: Earje Bimey on the Spit: The Collected Poems of Earie Birney, two VOIUIYB. by Earje BirnBy; Ecrrlc Birneyy: Critical Views on Canndian Writers Series, edited by Bruce Nesbitt 3’ Linda Sandier: RobinShlton at the Feast: Timelight, by Robin Skel- 5 ton .

RRVIEWS

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Awar Fmm the FImnf Pcwb, by Kent 7blhDmp?ion 9 Dennis DutTy: 77~ Moneychangers, by Aribur Iiailey 10 L’L. Clrmmein:

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A Gwd Place to Come Fmm. by Morley Torgov: It AU En& Up in * o 3bopplng Bag. by Paul Kligman . 14 Michiil Ham: ThInking Abau Change. edked by David Shugmn!dn 15 Phil Lamhier: Why There Must Be a RewluRon In Quebec, by Lcmdre Bergemn 17 Doug Puherling: The Joumal Men. by 1. Nomxn Smilh 18 Bill P&barn: Joe Boyk: King &he Klomlike, by William Rodney I9

DEPARTMElirrS

Sctipl B Film, by Cvhedti L. Om I9 Leuels to the Editor 21 Vol. 4 No. 4 APRIL, 1975 Acmsttc No. 4 by Diana Piler ?A Editor DOUGLAS MARSHALL \ Managing Editor SANDRA MARTIN ILLUSTRATIONS Assaciate Editor MORRIS WOLFE Art Director MARYLU TOMS SUSAN TRAER ‘7hc Bert Seller.” by Joe Rmenblsll 2 General Manager “Old Toad Polidcims,” by David Gilhooly 6 Business Manager ROBERT FARRELLY 16 Drawing by Howard EyeI Consultant ‘JACK JENSEN

Bwh in Canada is published twelve times per anmum, wkh the assistance of Ihe Canada Council and Ihe Onitio Anr Council. by Ibe Canadtinn ~ONTRIBUTCDRS Revtew of Books Limited. 501 Yonge SI., Suite 23, Toronto. Ont. M4Y IY4. Phone: (416) 9214%. Sukaription rates 59.95 a yea @IS over- seas). Back issues available on micmfil& from MeLurn MicmpuWtin& Fred Cool, the founder of Plddlehead Poetry Bmkr. is currently on P.O. Box 972, Smlion F. Tomnto M4Y ZN9. Second Class Mail - sabbviwl fmm the IJniveniv of New BnmswicL: Iavat Dickson, aulhor Regtsmdni No. 2393. Gmtenul 0 1973. Cmmdlan Review of Books of Wilderness Man. Is currently wuktng on a biography of Radclyffe Ltd. PrInted by Acrttnge Fre=Cb. Ltd. 2 Books in Canada. April, 1975 _ . .._~ cu__-i__._ ...... ;L_:; c ~. ..-..:r.;.~ .‘r-; _ . . _:. . .._ -.I’: ‘..:. .- EARLE BIRNEYONTHESPIT We hdS been roasted, toasted, and now . collkcted- but he cm ,nekr be contained goes on and on. defending, explaining, calling bumble= The Collected Poems of Earle Blmey, two vo~umcs, bumblers Montreal ‘faction’ . . . WBS even the rife has been lived, the poems written, the within light-years of your constellation.” Sigh. Anally dcrnce competed, the sign@cant poems glenned, D. G. Jones, the 34th speaker winds it all up appropriately the cmfl polished, the struggle ended. with hi p&e, “The Courage To Be.” A hcarty round of applause and rhen the star. Biiey himself appmacl& the dais. He gets time for figures and their going-ens are generally as dill as rebuttal and wrap-up (two articles reprinted from The Crew- weekends in Collingwood. The few “charactca” we have rive Wrirer and a 12.page epilogue.) Sad actually. The star nurtored have quickly faded atter a brief sparkle, into the pastels of our mosaic or, at best, chowder in our melting pot. tie Berrymans, no Plaths, no Lowells on the brink. (In A NOTE TO OUR RE&ERS England, Philip Larkin is the oddity because he is so incrcd- ibly doll, so ordinary.) OwinS to the current wgoriq oj Ihe postal service. Bimey is the closest thing to a commotion that we have our special issue on wornen wirers and womeo’s had recently. Oh sure, Al Purdy is a fair understudy. but presses in Canada has been posrponed until next Birney is the’star. Every new book brings out the opposition monrh. The May issue will include reviews and arti- and the supporters. Just read Nesbitt’s catalogue. But al. cles by Myrma KOS@I (on Marion Engel). Adele ways the divisions are that clean-cut: there are those who Wiseman (on Sylvia Frater’s The Candy Factory). build the annoor defences and those who wield the slings and Aviva Layton (on Joyce Carol Oorcs). Thtpo.wal and arrows. The marvel. upon seeing the “collected srrikes have also disrupred the distribution of B’ooks poems” is that the man has survived and so well. in Canada. Readers in some parts of the country may It would he interesting to know who buys.these “col. hae received rhe hforch issue o week or two late. lectcd” works that seem to he a current preoccupation with For reosoos obviously beyond our conwol. the dis- Canadian poets, or at least their publiShem. There are pmb- ruprions may conri&for>onze rime I0 come. lems; the volumes are expensive for Everyman and when April. 1975, Books in Canada 3 _ .-._.._ _ _.._.._ _ .__.___~ .~ _ ~~___ - ..- ..~. _~ ^ . ..-.--~__..__... .._.. ._

purchased one would like them to be complete. Will Bir- ney. for instance, issue a supplement every few years? The . implication of a “collected” works is thkt the life has been lived, the poems written, the daoce completed, fhe sig- i 1 niticant poems gleaned, the craft polished, the straggle ended. They hint that the music is, for the most part, over and the parade has passed by. The rest is marking time? Ridiculous. Look at the impressive C&cfed Poems of Irving Lqvon (McClelland & Stewart, 1971). No one be- lieved that Layton was bowing out or that he was giving his “positively last public performance.” (We have, in fact, had three volumes from him since and t&m is no hint that he has lessened his pace.) And so it is with Biiey. The last line in the biographical note on him reads: “At present, he is on a world rour, reading his poetry and worklog on other books.” So who has $20 for these complete poems of a yet-incomplete poet7 And to the cootents. Wdi, everyone knows Bhey: he is either speaking to us or he isn’t. Only the former group will shell out the big money for the big edition. The curious will have to find another introduction. It is too late and too far into the game to attempt to sell the poems; and &course, they don’t need to be sold. . It’s a simple maxim but a true one. When he is good, he is very, very good . . . . This is readily observed when we have the complete poetic canon spread out before us. He is r’ . often superb; truly one of our great poets (shades of \ Nesbitt’s praise) and yet ironically he is one of OUT most unsettling and unsettled figores. It is h,qd to take him seri- ouslv. even when he wants us to. This leads to either adola- tionb; faint damnation or both. Last year in The Fiddkhead I wrote a review that sug- gested that wheo the emperor was viewed, up close, he had no clothes of late. Perhaps he had abandoned his craft and his power for modernity? (Notably in what’s so big about green?) The comments were many and varied: some agreed but wished to remain anonymous and some from both coasts poems are clever but seem pale when cornpa@ to the brittle damned me and the review (interpreted as an $tack). A brilliance of the earlier ones. The complete works, hem typical reaction to a Bimey book, it seems, at least in this stripped down, anthologized and’arranged, offer intematiog couny. frosting to a sturdy and delicious cake. John Newlove has Professor William Walsh, a distinguished international done a good job in his iqle as friend and fellow-poet and scholar. critic, poet, and teacher of Commonwealth litem- “editor of thisbook.” turn at Leeds, nxently reported that only Anne Wilkinson The autlmr includes his own foreword: the poet seems and A.M. Klein make any sort of international ripple out- persistent in getting into these acts. The statistics of his life side of Canada (at least in his observations fmm beyond the work am impressive though. “Of &se 223 makings and garrison walls). However, he added, he was yery interested five translations, four am printed for tbe first time. 18 have in a new poet from the West whom England had. just appeared only in periodicals, and the remainder published discovered: Earle Birney. Englishmen were learning to in earlier books.” The poems &e “roughly geographic& love, in 1974, the new poem “Bear on the Delhi Road” but within each group, and between them, then? is ao at- (1958). Could Bimey be right? Is he ahead of his time? tempt at chronological pmgmss.” Whatever the conclusion, ~cClelladd & Stewart have The first volume has six subtitles that outline the scope put all af his circus animals on display. Prom the tint poem, and contents: “1920-1938: Canada,” “1928-1968: “Kootenay Still-Life, (1920/1941)” to the most recent U.S.A.:’ “1934-1958:. .North Pacific,” “1938-1947: “poems,” this is ao impressive collection. War”, “1941-1958: Canada,” and finally “1953-1971: Columning rrp~%~ crtsscms.t ra Europe.” The second volume has seven categories and @aImedfit by a windforgonen) deals with Bimey’s travels from 1955 to 1974 to Mexico, breather a rtng/e buttpbra, naked Asia, Canada, South America and the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand, the Sooth Pacific, and back to Canada. A fine biographical summary and index are included as are two in@reating sketches 6f Sbney by Harold Town. The drawings seem to age Bimey somewhat but perhaps, as with Picasso’s painting of Gertmde Stein, the subject will grow to match the artist’s vision. In any case. we wilb This post-Imagist poem takes us tbmugh the poetry as pm- undoubtedly be able to watch the process. Bimey is col- cess to the latest experimentations (a word BiFey detests) lected but no one imagines for a minute that he is easily and fancy footwork of the 1960s and 1970s. These later wtdained. 0 4 Books in Canada, Apt% 1975

-- . . .._ ~ . -: ...... ;‘_ _,_ __ ..______.._.. _i_~L_a--u _-...: . . - ..: -.-.. 17’. ROBIN SKELTONATTHE FEAST The hairy cmb of UVIC has rejected ksluttish

Muse and now is dining obt on. his cultural past , audience at the University of Massachusetts numbered 440 TimeIIght, hy RohIm Sk&on, McClelland & Stewart, people. They stocd in the aisles and they didn’t go away. I 118 pages, $6.95 cloth. received applause that I had never believed possible, and I suddenly realized, My God-1 can say things!” By LINDA SANDLER Skelton has come East to promote his new book, Timc- fight. He is a large, untidy .Yorkshire.man -a sort of hairy ROBIN SKELT~N, in hi youth, was seduced by a sluttish and disaster, wearing a baggy suit. Like many New Canadians treacherous Muse. He offended more than one reader by educated in England, he combines an anarchistic energy caricaturing his Muse as a whore. and I was curious to know with a reverence for tradition. During his 12 years at the what kinds of poems she inspires. “Well the Muse, of University of Victoria, Skelton has emerged as a species of course, ls a sexual image of the creative imagination. But the poet may resent the compulsion to get all these damn words down. knowing that at the end you’ve had your or- Like many new Canadians educated in England, gasm and you’re left with the post-coital sadness.” Skelton he combines an anarchistic energy with a rever- .1 laughs with a loud clocking sound. end the Irish whisky washes over the edge of his glass. He attends to the whisky ence for tradilion. level, and reminds me that hi! ballads to the capricious Muse were written 15 yeas ago in England, while he was serving his poetic appmnticeship. “I tried my hand at most cultural czar. He founded. and now cbntrok, both the Crea- of the tricky verse forms, and inevitably, I resented my tive Writing Department and The’ M&hat Review; he dictatorial Muse.” served five years on the Board of Directors of the Art Gal- Skelton emigrated to Canada in 1963. The impact on his lej; he organizs Irish festivals and KgUlar poetry read- poetry was startling. In the Canadiali sectionefhis Sclccrcd ings. The bibliography of this notorious pwt-teacher- Paems (1968). Sk&on is no longer a “star-cmssed ven- editor-Irish scholar-impresario is of comic extent. At the triloquist,” but a powerful lyric poet. “I became emotion- age bf SO, he has published 25 books and pamphlets of ally involved with the Canadian landscape, and so I was poetry, five studies of poetic cKft, and 30 more titles. Kng- writing with a diffemnt voice. But I also had a new audi- in8 from scholarly criticism and editions to anthologies of ence. When I gave poetry readings in England,. I had the contemporary poets. He also sculpts and ma& highly em- usual turn-out of 10 or 12 people. My first North American tic collages. Skelton has the power. perhaps, to advance or to withhold aid from young writers, and inevitably his ideal of cultural excellence has won him as many opponents as suppone~. As editor of The MaIdtat Review, he has incurred the charge of being an&Canadian. M&hat, now in its ninth year, circulates around 850 copies to 28 counties, and prints poems, plays, and translations fmm almost every country. The proportion of Canadian writing hoveK at the 40 p.er cent mark. Skelton is sympathetic to his critics but believes that bfalahat serves an invaluable function by complementing the all-Canadian magazines. “My national: ism. you See, is a nationalism of the English language. If we are to have a viable Canadian culture - and this means overcoming the dominant American influence - we must become increasingly aware of the literature of other coun- tries.” The current fashion is for poets to develop a “signature” style, but Skelton remains stubbornly diverse. One of his zanier poetic experiments involved translating the fictitious tiorks of George Zuk, a fictitious French poet and sexual fetishist. “Rabelais, I think, said that ‘Everything God al- lows to happen, I allow to be written ab&t.’ When you change your style, you look out of a different windqw, and you seea different view.” In The Htatting Dark (1971). Sk&on looks at the Canadian scene through the window of social realism. Timelight is a visionary work: the poet ex- plonx his personal and cultural past through the windows of Robin Skelton memory and dream. -. Apdl, 1875. Books in Canada 5

_ _ .._. ‘I. -;:-;.y;,_.-j._~ _ ,__, ,vv-._ --.._.------. _._..-.__ - .._..-... Timelight has the form of an urgent confession. “Lis- ten,” the poet says, “This is/desperate. Listen.” Preparing to revisit Europe, the poet tries to make sense of his life, and of the elusive memories of his youth. In “Ciare Abbey” he suggests that death has the clarity and dignity that life cannot have.

As the elegiac tone indicates, Skehon is using the confes- THE CANDY FACTORY sional form for an essentially philosophical exploration. “It is for you,” he writes, “I make this/venture a message.” Sylvia Fraser In 1969, Skelton took a sabbatical leave from teaching, Tough, bold and exultantly sensuous, this and wandered around Europe. A chamcterlstic exile, he life-affirming panoramic novel surges with mad- contemplated the ruins of artworks and inferred their former ness, cbmpassion and insight. The author of meaning. “I waS trying, perhaps, to make sense of a cultural Pandora returns with eleven brilliantly realized past, and to find my place in it.” Dante, in exile, found the characters spanning the spectrum of humanity. eternal radiance of God. &a Pound affirmed the transcen- $8.95 dent value of art. Skelton, at the end of his quest, finds no enduring radiance, only “timelight.” Even art is time- LOT’S WIFE . bound. Monique Busco Timelight retraces the poet’s path through the dark past, and towards conscious acceptance of what he learns. In a The 1971 Governor General’s Award ‘novel preface that obscures rather than reveals the mceniug of his about a woman’s life-and-death internal conflict poem, Skelton affirms his European roots. But the poem by one of Quebec’s most accomplished novel- articulates, eloquently, his ambivalent sense of belonging to ists. Poet John Glassco affords a fluid and refined an inaccessible past. This is the Canadian experience of translation. $7.95 Europe, and Skelton is perhaps more Canadian than he knows. THE CRAZY HOUSE Skelton is a powerful and versatile poet. His early Muse Anthony Brennan is doubtless responsible for his craftsmanship (and for those Absurdist comedy and savage satire in a novel brief intervals in the book when he surrenders his own voice tc Auden or to Eliot). He swings easily from elegy to the that proves the future is with us now -and that evocative language of the visionary poems, to meditation, the human spirit can survive. A fast-paced, and to the allegorical dramas of his bestiary. Skehon’s entertaining book, illuminating reality with a “Spider” outclasses anything produced by a modem bes- brilliance rare in fiction or fact. $g.95 tiarist. In his dream poems, he shows a rare grasp of surreal effectsi and the beauty of hii elegies is their rhythmic con- WOODEN L-RJNTERS trol. Skelton ,is the poet as Maker - and ‘Ffrnefight, as Mart Cohen Skelton made it, coheres, and is more than a craftsman’s Primitive emotions and violent conflict erupt on work. 0 \ a remote B.C. island where the elemental life- style is spiked with alcohol and drugs. Cohen’s newest novel has substance, energy and sheer readability - the marks of a masterpiece. 811.95 THE REBELLION OF YOUNQ; DAYID AND OTHER STORIES Ernest Buckler By the author of “one of the greatest novels in 1 the English language’: (as poet Alden Nowlan termed The Mountain and the Valley) - a first collection of the distinguished novelist’s remark- able short’stories. $7.95 *

i Books In Canada. April. 1975 . Here’s your invitation to discaver why Caiadien books dominate our bestseller lists. If you’re interested in Canada, then join 1~1 in ao exciting voyage of discovery. The Readers’ Club of Canada, created by and for Canadians, offers the very best Canadian books to members from coast to coast In this dub, you only buy the books you really want; no minimum purchase is demanded. The Canadinn Render. the Club’s lively journal, keeps you up-to-the: minute on the exciting world of writing end publishingin Canada. Tbere!s no me bership fee and the Canadian Reader is-free. Pow pur&ases ?re at boolrstdrc prices, sometimes less. You’re “ever charged for “postage and handling”. And Bonus Cer- tificates, earned with your purchases, stretch your bookdollsrs by about 20%. The Club provides ersonel, civilized service for several thousand people like yo”. Now, with help Rom the Canada Council end the Ontario Arts Council, we are able to enroll more members. If you bel*g wit “5 th!n take you. fira Selection end yowfi& In!xodu&ory Bonus from the typicel Readers’ Club offeings on this page;

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pprll. 1975, Books In Canada7

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perates and .impresses. The two main described as “ritual,” for. example, characters are thesis material for without any attempt being made to The novel ds “survival Revisited”: tenuous, tepid, elaborate or identify those qualities that tentative Calvin and lost, languid, make them ritualistic, and one soon labile Laurel move to an isolated island gains die impression that he is trying m shadows off the British Columbia coast and endow his shadowy characters with bounce enigmas off one another while some facile mythic resonances in order Wooden Hunters, by Matt Cohen, awaiting a nudge fmm riecesaity. Cal- m compensate for their lack of human McCklland & Stewart, 219 pages, vin and Laurel xen’t “tleeing” Or substance. $8.95 cloth. “searching” or doing much of any- Essentially, Cohen does not seem m thing at all; they’re just hanging out, have amassed enough material 10 en- By PAUL STIJEWE and neither is sufficiently realized to gage his imagination fully. There are a make us want to spend much time with number of striking vignettes of impas- COMUING so QUICKLY on the heels ofThe them. They talk and think inrhe sort of sioned action interspersed among the Disinherited, which was justly ae- mubiple imprecisions that chamchrize arid stretches of phadc discourse. and claimed, Wooden Hunters must be banality masquerading us profundity: several of the minor characters am viv- considend in terms of what we sow “There was something .in the way she idly represented in a few well-chosen know Matt Cohen is capable of acbiev- often looked at him when they wem sentences. But these quickly tizzle out ing. As the work of a “talented but about to make love .that sometimes put in the surrounding emptiness, swal- undisciplined” writer - roughly, him off, a look chat tried to hold him lowed whole by the all-encompassing Cohen’s tag prior to the appearance of with hereyes, force him 10 admit some- vagaries of a book that seems more The Disinherited - his new novel thing that was obscure but reluctant in willed than truly felt. If it is a function would be grounds for an encouraging, him” is a typical example. Or, of rhe novel m evoke some sort of sym- if mildly patronizing, pat on the heap; something’s happening, but the reader pathetic resonance in the reader, then it as Ihe work of an accomplished author, all too ofte?.doesn’r have a clue as Io is fair m say that the echoes are missing however, it disappoinls while pmvid- what it is. from Wooden Hunters. ing scattered evidence of its creator’s Cohen’s narratiye passages are Much was made of the “Faulk- powers. tighter than before, although here too nerian” sweep of The Disinherited, Wooden Huruers seems a tired and he often relies on trite express@ns that and one is tempted 10 push this analogy uncertain book. an only partially avoid the novelist’s responsibility to further and classify Woodci Hunters thought-out idea that alternately exas- shqw as well as rell. Experiences are with the attenuated humour and lo-

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5 Books In Canada. April, 1975

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- --..--*---. - -_. -. ..__.~_-I__,__ - ._~______i __ _ quaciousness bordering on self-parody Tenants Were Carrie and hnie. the tagonist, and so evenly has he allowed of Faulkner’s later work. It exhibits the presiding genius (insofar as there was us to get at the lruuth that hi&s behind same combination of extreme facility one) was Terence Waterhops?, in the solipsism, that this “truth- and the absence of any coherent stan- Acros~fiom the Floral Park the tech- dawning” (rather than the groteb dards of inclusion, and while I have no nique, and something of the sensibility. queries of character or the apparently inside information as to the .circums- of Vladimir Nabokov has been incorpo- gothic plot) constitutes the real sus- tances of li%ooden Hunters’ creation, I rated into Thompson’s own conception pense that makes the book hard to put would guess that it WBS conceived at of character and setting. Other tbiogs down. leisute and executed in haste. The I+ being equal, a switch from Waterhouse Such a technique, sustained as it is suits, in any case, are highly disap- to Nabokov as a model is bound to hem, in one sense simplifies the task of pointing. add lead to the conclusion produce amarked improvement. the novelist and gets rid of many pmb- that Malt Cohen has a p&od of The proisgonist of Across fiotn the lems that plague novice writers. Places, reRection and reconsideration before Floral Park is a neumtic who, pm- : people, incidents.andconvenationsdo him. 0 @ted by a doting mother during in- not have to meet any test of experience fancy. recoils from the “realides” of that a reader may apply; they only have 7-l I social existence at school. Later. after toseemreal to thepmtagonist. So inner I k@ hero dS the deaths of his wealthy patents, he is his world that one is mom than half indulges in an inner life of fantasy in way through the book before a chance which the places and people he comes reference to Iieavitree Road lea& him solipsist into contact with are reshaped accord- to believe that Floral Park is located in ing to his desires and fears. Since his the English city ofExeter. and it is only Across from the Flowil’ark, hy fantasy world is a ramar@bly consis- on the penultimate page that the full Kent Thompson, Macmillan, 151 tent one and the readermerely sees the name df the principal character is given psges, $7.95 cloth. as Simon Witherspoon. Under these ‘vdually does the reader come circumstances, the novel lives or dies By FRFaDCOGsW’KLL realize that the events, setting, and according to the deftness of people described are ordinary and that Thompson’s technique and the mean- KENT THOUPSON’S second novel, is a the single most emaordinary thing in ing and interest td be found in his prin- highly creditable attempt at that most rhe book is the protagonist and his view cipal chamcter, Simon Witherspoon. difficult of literary feats, the making of of reality. So skilfully has Thompson Jung has said that every man has the bricks without straw. Whereas in The sustained the personality of his pm- capacity to become all men. Whether

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April. 1975, Books In Canada 9 , this is uoe, then is much of universal been a deliberate distancing, and a feelings, and piles of inside info - human failures and weaknesses to be treatment of character and events not some pf it even of interest and found in Simon Witherspoon. He is only for suspense but also for human significance - on the subject of Ihe lazy. self-indulgent, fond of his and aesthetic e&t. He has learned novel. In thii case, Big Banking. And, eRatore-comforts. and can purr like a early what so few budding novelists since tastes have gotten a little kiti contented cat when satisfied. When at;’ learn - what to leave out. There an? of late; and Harold Robbii’ bon-bon tacked diqctly, he is an arrant coward, even fewer longueurs in this work than on the auto industry outdid Whee.5, we bur when his interesrs and appetites are there were in The Tenatus Were Cor?ie have a detailed description of-buggery threatened he is completely unsc~- and Ten&. In the past Thompson did and tomue this time. Oh, it isn’t up to PUlOUS and Sneaky. Yet he is capable of yeoman service as editor of The Fid- The Day of Ihe Jackal when it comes to growth. and,althougb he is no King dIehead and he also displayed consid- ice-clean sadism, but yes, you could Lear, the reversal of roles at rhe end of emble poetic talent. Rction, however. probably manage an erection out of it. the novel has something of tragedy in a - is his real forte.‘I, for one, am eager to If you’re built that way. moral as well as a physical sense. When see a thii novel. 0 Nothing pretendous about the people he loses whar he most cares for, he inside the bank. The baddie is a religi- submhs because at that moment he has ous hypocrite, but our hero drives that a glimmering of what human love and As one t&r moneychanger out of the temple by hir- decency mean. ing a private investigator who comes up If anything, Thompson has made his with Ihe heavy shit. (By rhe way, how- hem too attractive. A grown man who to another cum John Bhrlichman and Chuck Col- persists in behaving like a small boy The l%me.ychangers, by Arthur son hired such a bunch of k’nockem where his appetites and feelings are Hailey, Doubleday, 472 pages, when it came to their Ellsberg caper’?) concerned is rhe most dangemus thing $10.95 cloth. But the rest of the people, the good in society, as our society today has guys, they get along, you know? For every reason 10 know. He oughr not, By DENNIS DIJFBY instance, Alex the great hem. His old therefore, be made to seem so attractive man got diddled by banks for all his life -orperhapsThompson in this novel is YOU GET YOUR money’s worth wiih as a farmer so A!ex figures that when he indulging in a double irony. Hailey. No one buys hhn for elevated grows up he’ll become a banker. Sharp Thompson, then. is a novelist who is reading; the buyer gets a smoothly de kid. Now a dope like Emiliano Zapata, not content lo mnder experience’liter- signed product with a proper balance of his dad got diddled by a landowner, and ally or to confuse autobiography with well-paced narrative, characters who that kid instead vowed to take ven- fiction. In both of his novels there has don’t bother you with a lot of complex geance on them, landowners, bankers, -_ ___‘_ .-- -

IN MY BACK YARD by John DeVdes A young boy is overjoyed when he finds a new friend--a frog. Unfortu- nately, his family is not nearly so pleased1 Children will be delighted wiuith the satish/ing-and humorous-solution that the disheartened youngster finally comes up with. Reading level: gnde 1. $1.00

MYSI’ERY OF DISASTER ISLAND by Ann Rivldn When their parents buy a deserted island hoping to turn it into a holiday resort, John and Linda em intrigued by the stories of lost gold and treasure --and are determined to foil the mysterious visitors who are trying to scare them away. Reading level: grade 5. g5t

EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF CHEE CHEE McNERNEY by Evelyn C Nevin An en&aging tale about a group of travelling companions who set out to seetrh for gold in the Yukon. Although the spunky hemlne finds herself in one predicament after another, she manages to keep a reasonably cool head and her sense of humour. Reading level: grade 6. $1.00

COPPER SUNRISE by BrianBuchan Two boys, one Indian and one white, learn to trust and like each other. But misunderstandings between their respecdve peoples caue tensions to rise and soon they find themselves trapped in a vicious racial contliu A superb historical novel set in the 19th century. Reading level: grade 6.8% Retailers: For a catalogue listing more than 600 titles including 175 new releases, tirite to Scholastic- Tab Publications, 123 Newkirk Road, Richmond Hill, Ontario.

10 Books in Canada, April, 1975 ::,_ . ..:, TV. .; ~ .&. :_.._.. ._L.. ..;.~;~~:..:!..~_..:.~i.. ::.._.._ the whole mess, when he grew up. And usual Altman film because it deals with ronto, a rather seedy and rundown part did. Only a damn fool would read an the sort of people Hailey does and yet of the city. The locale for Death in Don Arthur I-I&y in search of En$iano assumes that they am figures of grace, MiUs. Gamet’s second murdex mys- zapata. complexity, and passion or at least that tery, is Toronto’s suburbia and the Margot is Alex’s woman. She’s a. the character played by Elliot Gould is. high-rise apartments that cluster beside sharp lawyer, and Rosalind Russell There is none of that kind of bullshit its expressways. Once again, the set-. could have done her 20 years ago. An here, which is why I enjoyed The ting is brilliantly delineated - the _ earlier lover got killed by a cop’s baton Monejwhangers. I was expectihg Light sterility of the apartment buildings and (he was very upset v&en it happened) in August? q their inhabitants’ lives. the Don Mills during a campus demo, so she got out shopping plaza that necessarily scrw of illegal protest and became a people’s . as the focus of entertain’ment, gossip, lawyer bitt a nice people’s lawyer who drugs, and drinking. Garner has been doesn’t go amund defending cock- Unquiet this country’s best observer of urban suckers and bomb-throwers. She’s a bit life ever since he wrote Cabbaget+m. of a bra-burner, but she’s still got it Unfortunately Death in Don Mills is where it counts. flows the Don less affective as a murder mystery. No one gets really passionate about Death in Don MiIlst A Murder Garner’s characters never come alive. much. of anything, except maybe Mystery, by Hugh Garner, not even Inspector McDumont, money. That’s why this book is so very ~;;&;IRI Ryerson, 299 pages, Garner’s ace sleuth from the Metmpoli- real, because if architecture, interior tan Toronto Police. McDumont is a decoration, and the,way people move square and methodical cop. not averse offer any clues to what they’re like in- By J. L. GRANA’IWE~ to roughing up a suspect or to harassing side, then my observations of the his superiors, and always ready topmf- grown-up world eonfirm Hailey’s (now IN HIS AUTUBIOORAPHY. One Damn fer a homily at the drop of a clich& In that should turn him on!). If you want Thing After Another!, Hugh Garner some respects. McDumont sounds a bit feelings about banking, try Hugh talked about his intentions when he like Gamer himself, a frequent source Hood’s “The Singapore Hotel” (The wmte The Sin Sniper, his first book of of quotes in theToronto press about the Fruit Man, the Meat Man & the murder fiction. What he wanted to virtues of slum clearance and the neces- Manager). This book, though, comes do, he said, was to tell “a great deal sity for more freeway construction. lots closerto the way it looks. about the neighbourbood and its citi- Bui if the characterization is thin, the Altman’s The Long Goodbye zens.. . .‘* The scene of Sniper was . detail of police investigafion is very manages to be more offensive than the the Moss Park area of downtown To- good indeed. The reader follows

‘THE CLEARING John Cm&t This magnificent novel enoompasses almost all of the human emotions. It tells of low and hate, war, and,the beautiful but terrifying wilderness of central Ontario. Millie and Howard Hendren anive mysteriously and aettle In a shack In a clearing on the lake’s shoti. The agony of their past, the tenible toil necessary to swvlve, and what happehed to the couple are part of THE CLEARING’s story. Seen through the eyes of a young boy, a summer vlsltor, the rest of the story Is’ his grcwlng understand- Ing of Howard and Mlllle, hls service In World War II and his unhappy love affair. John Craig has done a magnlflcent job of detailing (+nvard and Millie’s story. The wlldemess is an essential backdmp and Mr. Craig writes, with feeling and from per- sbnal experience. of the beauty and cruelty of the land surmundlng the lake. $635 (March)

PSI -THE OTHER WORLD CATALOGUE June end Nfchalas tfegurh The first and only Ebmprehensive guide whleh has been compiled by two Canadians on the full dimensions of psych10 phenomena -Its most recent developments and Its major organizations. It is a complete catalogua of the psychic -societies, journals, books, services-what they am. what they do and how you can Mach them. DO you want to buy an alpha waw machine or a dowslng md? Learn the seweLI of the pyramids? want to try acupuncture, take a Klrllan photograph, ffnd a medium or visit a faith healer? PSI - THE OTHER WORLD CATALOGUE has all the answersf $640 (publlshed) Available from your Book Wore la, LONGMAN CANADA LIMITED BJ 55 Barber Grezne Road. Don Mills_ Ontario

April, 1975, Books in Canada 11 3 .I.... _. -. ._ .- -I._..____ --- I --_-- .-. ..-

McDumout and his men as they put With water-colours the artist must Niagara Fags pale by comparison and together the details of the case, the con- work quickly. The strength of the we might sympathize with Auua Jam* stant hue&wing of witucssca, the medium is in its directness; it gives son who. seeing the falls, said “I have careful sifting through personal effects, these water-colours an atmosohere and “0 words for my utter disappoint- tbe heavy reliice on medical invcsdg- a freshness not see” in early-Cknadiau “leul.” ations. This reeks of authenticity. and ogs. lbe drawings are a sort of iitmus Mary AUodi’s two-volume cata- the effect-is heightened by Gamer’s test for artistic skill, since nothing can logue is really an iiiustratcd dictionary skilful “se of genuine sttccts, news- be hidden in the transparent washes. Of attisk. There am 2,228 entries ar- papers, reportem, and even of a well- Watet-colout has been seen kaditiot+ ranged alphabeticaiiy wifn brief but know” chain of Toronto rcstaurauts ally as best suited to rendering meticulous biographical notes about (with peculiarly attractive steak moisture-laden air, but what is perhaps each artist and information on the l&es). the most stunning and appropriate sub- pmveuauce, size and medium of each Death in Don Milt3 works as a good ject matter for the medium is Snow. work. These notes ate oftcu suppie- mad. It is competent, careful in r& Early Canadian water-coloum abound mental to other books on Canadian search. uncanuily real, especially to a in winter scenes: settlers gaily sliding painting so that Ailodi’s catalogue Tomutonian. Gf course, the real death down the Ice-cone of Montmore3lcy might also be used as a staodard refer- in Do” Mills is to’be alive in Do” Mills. Falls, or riding a dashing cutter acmss ence work on the subject. To Garner’s great credit, thii message suowy fields; toweriug mountahw of Accompanying the entries are 430 also emerges loud and clear. 0 ice in the West and the Arctic; and sc& ilI”atrations by 270 a&k. Uufortu- ’ scapcs fiiled with glitterhtg icebergs. nately, only 31 PIE in wlour. but those Early Canadian water-cokuus fol- in black and white am adequate for giv- lowed the lines of English exploration ing the reader a visual record. Win Theminbows and settlement. Hence the first artists entries, the drawings am. arranged ,wem precise military topographers fol- gedgmphically from east to west, so lowed in the 19th cetmuy by pmfes- that the reader can follow the artist of history sional artists who travelled across the travelRug across the country. The country with the survey crews. The” ‘geographic and subject indexes also Canadian Water-colours and settlers took up the brush and drew the provide an exciting and painless foray , Drawhgs ia The Royal Ontario laud as it surprised them, or as they backin time. IfMontmorettcy Fags, for Museum, in two volumes, by Mary came to own bits of it. Tourists also example. is your passion. YOU can look AIIodI, The Royal Ontario l&seum, often took back to Europe their sketch- at 30 other views of the scene. The 290and26Opsges,$30thesetwIth books laden with conventionally indexes suffer, however, bum too little SlipSC. romantic or picturesque views of detail, each entry should have had a human and vegetable life. Early Cana- subject breakdown. Although costs re- ByRARBN’MULHALLBN dian water-coloum. the”, pmvide a stricted tbe “umbcrof colourplates, the continual visual narrative of White set- SCNai selcctio” of the designs to be ON A mxu~~“~ evening in 1836 tlement, of insolvent subaltenis court- repmduccd in colour is sometimes aboard IBIS Terror. ice-bound in the ing the daughters of the bourgeoisie and dubious. William G.R. Hind’s ex- Canadian Arctic, a group of sailors,. of the sturdy prize livestock of Farmer quisite small drawing “Pierre the dressed in birarm costumes (including Jackson. Abenaki” ought to have bee” in colour, a beamkin with a goat’s head), acted a What is important about any collec- as should Hiue’s “Inside a Micmac “farce” together. The performauoe tion is not only the clarity with which Wigwam.” We could have douewith- was captured in a water-colour drawing 6-m artists see the country but also the out sevemi of the ORe”-mprod”ced by Gwen Stanley. who kept a journal aspects of life upon which they focus. wash drawings in colour, like those of and made 31 other drawings of the Winter is a joyful playtime and the IBriot. and had mom qf the unique Terror’s 183637 expedition to dis- Amtic is, as Captain George Back work in the collection. cover the North West Passage. Since tailed it in 1833, a “magnificent But these are niggling criticiims neat the Owen Stanley water-&ours arc st0whwge: The expanses- of the to the accomplishment of this carefui not part of the Royal Ontario Museum Prairie and the beauty of that openne.& and exciting catalogue. Mary AUodi colleciion they are not listed or repro- 9 inescapable i”.the_superb colourplate has spent a decade putting it together duced in Mary Allodi’s catalogue. of Adrian Nelson’s “Red River Carts and the dedication with which this was Bowever many such views and sketch on a Pmbie Road.” The scale, the pm- done is apparent everywhere. For the books am listed and reproduced from po&ns of ma” in envim”meut, also geuerai reader it is a tremendous bar- ROM’s Sigmund Samuel Gallery, in- speak out in the deep yet open coloiu of gain at 830. For that money, whem else cluding a breath-takhtg drawing in col- Fmnces Anne Iiopkbw’ “Timber Raft ca” you take a trip through space and our of Si John Franklin’s ship Terror o”theSt.Lawreuce.“Audtheseuseof time and n-encounter the quiutesse” bung with festoons of ice against a everything in its Proper place - includ- tIai Canadian scene? Cl daaaiing wedgewood blue sky. ing the natives - pmaents itself in the Water-colour drawings such as Stan- strong primary coloum and stiff figures ley’s arc interesting for a number of of the Swiss itmnigraut “child” artist reasons. They are invaluable historical Peter. Riidisbacher (180634) who, records as tirst-hand accounts of life in when only 16 years old, recorded views Canada, they also complement and eu- of the Life of the-Red River settlement Eve” a written journal and theii im- tbat he then sold to of&em of the mcdiacyisowinginparttothenatumof Hudson’s Bay Company. In this rich tbe water-@our medium. . human panorama the usual views of 12 Books I” Canada, April. 1975

__._.., .._.._ ..* ,_. . ..-. ,_ ..- .-._.__ I-T.-- .I .---.-- ._ ._.,. .I. T_ .v*_--.?-- _, ,, _ . answetz “Snowblindness,” “Sinking That’s about it. He was anillustrator, Through the Ice.” “On Leaped $e not an artist. The paintings reproduced Scratching the Came Like a Runaway Horse,” and here, like tbe paintings’of :‘Highland “The Chief Grasps the hand of each in Cattle” or “The Stag at Eve” that bung backof b&ond Torn” indiyte what to expect; figures in mournful ochre over so many late- in the costume bf the wildem& ‘inim- Victorian mantlepieces. remind us of a The Edge of the WRdenmst A day that is past. The true Noah is still Portrait of the Canadian North, by we don’t know. The title..3 of a few o-f beautiful and grand, and trappers and Frank E. Sehoonover, blethtten, iI- the many books he illustrated also sig- animals and Indians will live thei htshnted, 176 pages, $20 cloth. nify: Where Nortltertt Lights Come rigomus lives in it. But we, unlike OUT Down, Sled Trails and White Waters, grandfathers, scorn the romantic hap- BY LOVAT DICKSON Ut&r Frozen Stars, The Whelps of the pings, finding the intcqretation we Wolf. and Rode of the North. We want in the actual experiences of a Gmy CONDRMNING “IGNOBLE EASE,” and should resist the temptation to be Owl, the paintings of somcone like associatine himself vieorouslv with the su~ilious. We know that the boy Ar- Franz Thompson, and in the records of public mood as any-good -politician chic Belaney would never have become explorers and Hudson Bay factors. shoold.TeddyRoosevelt in 1903 began Grey Owl if he had not been deeply Outdoorism was a comparatively preaching the doctrine of the strenuous susceptible to the same lure that drew short-lived phase that the automobile life. The long Sunday afternoon of the Schoonover to the wilderness, Presi- and the lakeside cottage, substituting late Victorian age was over. and there dent Roosevelt to boom its invigorating reality for the dream. brought to an end. was a veritable craving to be up and virtues, and an enormous public to lap Schoonover was a master-colourist of doing. Until then travel and adventure up these romantic tales of adventure. that period who took immense pains to had*been largely the prerogative of the This commemomtive book has been authenticate his work; in his words, “to eccentric or the well-heeled. But now put together with filial piety by bring the outdoors to his studio.” Hi the railroads had brought the wilder- Schoonover’s son who, in the absence output. and that of his brother . ness within the possibility of of spy signature, must be held respon- craftsmen, deserves a nostalgic glance everyone’s daydream. sible for. the woodenly phrased fore- backward. But it is a misiudement to To cater for this fascination, a litem- word, and the biographical informa- ture of extraordinary copiousness tion inserted at intervals. The textual at $20, an expensive form of embalm- sprang op. Some very good writers like matter otherwise consistx largely of the ment that also seems on the way out. q John Buchan and Si Gilbert Parker Dav Books keotdurine twoemeditions wrote for it, as well as a host of lesser S&oonover iade tokmi&e him- talents, and to bring the scene visually self with the scenes and the characters before the eye of the reader. there be was portraying so cotitantly. The Why ,HaroId emerged a number of illusmtors of un- tirst of these was to James Bay and usual merit, their prolific output being Hudson Bay in the winter of 1903.4, aided by cheaperrepmduction methods and the second in the summer of 1911 loves Frmck and advances in wlour printing. to the north shore of Lake Superior. Frank Schoonover was one of these. These were hardy enough enterprises at Albert Franck: Keeper of the He listed his specialty in commercial those dates. The Day Books tell us little Lanes, by Harold Town, bIcCleUand refemnce works of tbe time as “Ameri- that most of us who have paddled & Stewart, 96 Pages, $22.50 cloth. _ can trappers and Canadian Indians.” canoes orcanadian rivets or skied in His work appeared regularly in the North don’t already know by hear- By ALAN PEARSON Harper’s, Scribner’s and McClure’s, say or experience. But the sketches and his romantic paintings were much Schoonover drew on the spot, which . “IGNORING ALBERT FRANCK’S Co”- admired. Examples of them hang today were later to provide the material for . kibution to Canadian art has become a in the Glenbow-Alberta Institute. and dramatic illustmtions, are full of in- standard academic procedure.” says in a number of American museums. terest and show a respectable and indus- Harold Town. This alleged oversight Forty full-page colour plates and in- trious craftsman absorbed in his task. has been put right by Town himself numerable black-and-white repmduc- with the appearance of this wsnnly tions here give evidence of hi tireless written memoir. The mellow tone of industry, and the pains to which he Town’s tribute will surprise those who went to get the detail right. He had know the ma? only fmm his acerbic begun numbering ,a11 his drawings in newspaper rewews. 1901, and had reached the one Albert Franck. who died two years thousandth Xl years later. Each dmw- ago, was k Dutch Jew who came to ing involved time for reading the story Canada in 1926 at the qge of 27. At that he was to illustrate. in some cases even time Toronto was not exactly a place to for writing it himself, and for adapting set creative tires a-crackle. especially from his field sketches suitable scenes in a man whdse experiences had in- to fit the narrative. The mte of two cluded workingina tea plantation in the drawings a week, year in. year out, Dutch East Indies and the orange certainly restiCe. to his capacity for groves of California. Nevertheless he continuous work. stayed on, working first as a swimming But what kind of work? The titles& Pmd dmwhg of IndIm boy by km& > - instructor then, during the Second some of the reproductions give the Sdwm~overfmnr The Edge of he Wikmess. World War, as an employee of the de April, 1975. Books in Canada 13

I

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Havilland ai&, company. Later he of a burgomaster. Hi are not concep- made a living as a picture restorer, an tual ideas briskly worked out, but occupation that led some of his friends poetic paintings rooted in everyday ex- to refer to him as “the Old Dutch perience. For him the everyday event CleanSer.” was Ihe great event, as it so often is for Duringthislatterperdhepaintedin those who dwell in poetry. 0 water-colours and oils arid did not set the world of art on fire. though his peers respected his work. He would some- times tiork on eight or 10 paintings at a Menschen of time-the actual working methods are recounted by Town. After he’d com- pleted a painting he would pmp it up d mtichness * against a wall and then view it from his “Diienbaker chsir”‘and give it the A Good Place to Come From, by typical Chief’s remark. He’d say, “I’ll Morley Torgov, Lester and Orpeo, give it careful consideration and then 186 pages, $8.95 cloth. do nothing about it.” But of course he It AU Ends Up In a shopping Bag, usually did. by Paul Kligman, McClelland & Franck was very much a domesti- Stewart, 224 pages, $8.95 cloth. cated man. He loved his neighbour- hood and had no wish to leave it for By DOUGLAt3 MARSHALL exotic climes; he loved the home with its cooking smells and its trivial but tr3 A spEt3x to the Canadian Parliament vital activities, in all of which he took in 1941, Winston.Churchill made a ad active part. rhetorical appeal to the pioneexing His hdme was a jolly meeting place spirit that built this country: “We have for artists and interesting people; a not journeyed all this way across the place filled with cigar smoke, eating. centuries, across the oceans, across the drinking, joketelling. and music-for mountains, across the Prairies. because Fmock played cello and his wife, artist we am made of sugar candy.” Fine Florence Vale, was a good pianist. words, designed to butter up patriotic The overall climate of Fmnck’s lifk. parsnips. Churchill no doubt saw mod- domestic, social and artistic, is vividly em Canada primarily as the product of recreated by Town with old photo- Anglo-Frelich colonial grit. But his tri- graph!, maps, diagrams, and holo- bute is just as apt-if not more so - graphs of letters. When Franck died at when applied to the ZOth-century the age of 74, he had known hard work, pione&. the immi&ants of other races good friends, a happy marriage and. who literally .and culturally crossed finally, had it all cmwtied with artistic higher mountains and wider oceans to success. A life of quiet achievement. settle hem at the bottom of the vertical Franck’s subject matter was old To- mosaic and the dawn of the Depression. An Introduction to ronto houses. usually seen from a back These nearly identical books am labe. The& is a repetitiousness about filial homages to two such pioneers. Modern Commonwealth his wofk, but that is asignbf his serious Both were Russian Jews born around and South African Fiction involvement and intentions. In a way it the torn of the century in the Odessa parallels the activity of the safecmcker district. Both were refugees from the juggling the tumblers of a combination twin honors of the pogroms and the safe in an attempt to get at the jewels, Russian Army during the First World but the !afe can never be opened and all War. (Torgov’s father “demobilized” the fun is in the juggling. For Fmnck, himself; Kligman’s father ducked coo- the pleasure he derived from his obses- scription by having most of his teeth n sion lay in rearranging the elements - polled out.) Both fled via Roumania the positiOoing of a window, a door, or and wound up in Canada in the 1920s the roof incline of the shabby ho+es making livings first as peddlers and t at stand in a ruin df snow behind a veil then as small shopkeepers. pRes8 poRc~p1c o,a maple twigs-elements arranged in As with background. so with chamc- light that varies from sunny to crepus- .y vh FhF; we? g? quirky, ledlatrlbatad In cular. Yet there is always the wistful 0th and oat1 survivors. strong- Canada by Muawn Book CU., 90 Laamlll Rd., melancholy that evoked in Fran&s WI led; tireless m their labours; driven Den Mill& ootwlo soul a sympathetic echo. He clearly by atavistic devils; governed by mulish /I steeped himself in such a mood many principles; and sharing Forward- times. leaning views about how the world The paintings am as solid as the torso should be run and how their sons should of Franck himself. The photographs in grow up to run it. They were fair men. . .$e book show he had the durable look by their lights, but unliberated from 14 Books in Canada, April. 1975 . theiu pasts. They ruled their shops and tioncd, are just&d by the fathers who households like benevolent (and some inspired them. Each of these pioneers times malevolent) &spots, feared and was a real menreh worth meeting, even misunderstood by their wives and chil- vicariously as we now must. They dren. sadly unable to communicate the helped make this country a richer and love they clearly felt. Torgov scoffs at more interesting place in which m live. the conventional notion of the And they were not made of sugar first-generation Jeiish family as a sort candy. 0 of cosy matriarchal bakery: Nothing to tose but their change Thinking About Change, edited hy David P. Shugarmen, U of T Fress, 2% pages, g4.95 paper.

The good place to come from in By MICHlEL HORN . Torgov’s case was Sault Ste. Marie.. Ont., and his father the clothing mer- TEN YEARS AGO the University League chant never stopped urging him to “get for Social Reform published its first oat before it’s too late.” (“Goodbye book. The Prospect of Change, edited soo, flack you,” was the affectionate by Abe Rotstein. Change is again the refrain pappa kept thmwing from the tide of the ULSR’s seventh and most train whenever he left for Toronto on a recent volume, ,Thinking About buying trip.) Torgov, now a Toronto Change. I preferred it the first tome lawyer. has written a good-hamoaned, around. Two of the essays in this new clear-eyed memoir that ieads like a book, regrettably near the beginning, novel; it radiates genuine warmth and, are .stroagly reminiscent of Frederick despite its episodic structure., has a fluid Crews’ The Pooh Perplex. Several of inner harmony. Torgov is one of those the authors. furthemiore, seem to have marketplace story-tellers who deals in been trying out a new tactic intended to the currency of univasal troths; he _ help bring about the revolution: boring understands you don’t have to be the cl& eliemy to death. Jewish to have a small-town Jewish Some of the papers ore genuinely background. interesting. Barry Cooperusegclassicsl Kligman. aToronto-based actor who political thought in order to make mom grew up in North Winnipeg, has written ’ sense of the events in October, 1970. in an autobiographical novel that reads , Quebec, and especially the reactions by like a patchy memoir. He has much the the governments in Ottawa and Quebec same tsle to tell - his father was a City, than any other analysis I have struggling food merchant - and in read so far. Williim Leiss carries out a themselves the episodes are just as searehiag ‘and largely successfal cri- funny and just as revealing about the tiqueofwhat he calls “the false impera- human condition. But the seams are tives oftechnology.” and more particu- weak, and mawkishness keeps oozing larly of the notions. that, lirst, “the in around the edges. One reason is that the narrator-son and his subjectivemac- create new possibilities for hu.man ac- tions intrude too much and blur the fea- tivitv”: and that. secondlv. technoloav taxa of the main charactex. - in it& is neu& in its Social etTecE. Kligman seems to be writing a duti- Leiss insists on seeing tecl+logy in its ful apology, putting it all down on social, economic and political context, paper while there’s still time. He looks because he recognizes that tcchnologi- back in bewilderment and the novel cal change is often rooted in the wish to reads as pan of an on-going attempt to control or manipulate one’! fellow men come to terms with his father. Torgov. as well as nature. in contrast, seems m know what hi Although his’tone is a bit school- father was all about and writes with the mast&h, Howard Adelinan demon- security and easy grace that knowledge smues convinciagly that youth is not gives him. His is a celebration mther the vanguard of social change. Bentley than an apology. Le Baron’s quest for tbe new socialist However, both books, the one excel- manandDonald Willmott’sperspective lent and the other merely well-inten- on voluntary associations_ both repay . * April. 1975. Book in Canada 15

. _._ _ __.,-_.. _ _Z?V._ - ..-r;-.-. ~.-~~~L;‘,~,~~---.- ;yy,, :___.,. _-.._.- _- - . reading for their candour as well as for the6rstULSRbooktobeeditedbya what is said. The other papers all have person (Ian Lumsden) who did not PAPER!.BACKS theif moments, but on the whole they teach at the University pf Toronto. The am sleep-inducing. The essay by Gerry radicalization of the ULSR and its shift The Vigil of Queb& Hunnius is not, but his comments on from the St. George campusofthe U of FERXASD D”zdONT the patty system’and extra-parliamen- T .to the Keele and Steeles campus of Translated by taty activity are weakened by his too- York University have continued @nce Sheila Fischman and slight acquaintance with Canadian and then. Several of the codkibutors tc Richard Howard world history. One example: he would Tldtzking About Change are Marxists certainly have profited from the argu- of one kj,nd or another. and when they Dumont. perhaps the most ment over group government between look at the NDP most of them do so’ sensitive and influential con- from its leti. science at work in Quebec today W. C. Good of the United Fanners of Ontatio and Frank Underhill in 1933. In one sense this book has mom in reconstructs recent Quebec Perhaps Underhill is now persona common with Social Planning for history from the inside, non gram in l&t wing circles because Cad, the LSR’s main publication, and attempts to account he drifted http the Liberal patty in the which appeared in 1935, than with the for the’Octobercrisis’ 1950s. What he and othet members of ( early ULSR volumes. Thinking About of ,970. $3.50 (Cloth Sio.oo) the League for Social Reconstruction Change is, on the whole, in fairly mdi- wrote in the 1930s deserves more atten- csl opposition to the established order. tion from the current generation of tad- So, in its time, was the LSR book. The icals than the latter am giving it, how- language and the ideas behind them MARY 4. lNN,S ever, and perhaps not least because the have both changed markedly from one Lively biographies, by Cana- LSR was something of a model to the to the other. Pethaps most import& is dian women writers, of twenty ULSR when the lattet took shape in that several ULSR people now clearly women who have made 1963. The original league was form& do not share the confidence of the old significant contributions in 193132 by two small gmups.of in- league that major social change can be to the development of Cana- tellectuals in Toronto and Montreal. It accomplished peacefully and within the dian society. ‘. . . packed with flourished for a few years. went into a existing political institutions. The interesting fact.’ Montreal decline and expired quietly 10 years thought of Marx has in’the lsst 40 yeats Star 54.95 (Cloth $IO.OO) after its founding, its activists by then become better-known in Canada and fully engaged in war work or: in the possibly mote respectable ss well, at CCF. The founding of the ULSR was least in academic circles. TPle Vall@y of the owing in pmt to a speech at the Univer-’ “We need a revolution!” begins Lower Thmes, , sity ofToronto in 1962 by Fraidt Scott, Willmott’s essay. Most of the con- 1640-1850 a central ligure in the LSR. tributors agree. though they do not The new brganization from the be- agree about how tbe revolution is to be ginning eschewed expansion beyond accomplished and what it will bring. ‘This very readable local his- the University of Tomttto, however. They do believe, with a dogged op- tory of one of Ontario’s tich- where&s the LSR had spread branches timism, that human freedom and equal- est agricultural districts. . . throughout Ontario and tbe West. And ity are reconcilable. But their voices ate contains a wealth of material while the latter group, despite the fail- ‘!oo otten muffled in academic refer- on pioneer life and social cus ure of an attempt to associate it for- eneeS and obscured by polysyllabic jar- tams.’ BtiMt Book P&WC. It is mally with the new CCP. had quickly gon. They have thought about change the story of pioneer Canada become known as the CCP “‘brains and apparently helped each other think ‘writ small.’ S4.50 (Cloth ttust,” the ULSR was firin in deciding about it. But only book teviewetx and .%j.OO) to go no further than m addtv!ss itself incorrigible consumers of this kind of *‘to public opinion as a whole on the literature - thete cannot bc many of charisma basis of a broad left-of-centte atmmach either - ate likely to get through the to current problems.” The ~0% were book. Who knows, “the revolution” written by R&stein in his preface to may come anyway. •i Schiffer ‘not only analyzes The Praspact of Change. They’might charisma in detail but goes on just as easily be used of Norion&m in. to probe the psyche of voters Canada (1966; edited by Peter Russell) in modern mass democracies and An Independent Foreign Poiicyjk like Canada and the United Canada? (1968; edited by Stephen states . ..hehassomepro- Clarkson). The essays in these vol- found and original things to umes, many of them still invaluable to say and he says them well.” teachers of undergraduate courses. do Tbr Globe and Mail. $3.50 . not show their authors to be much left (Cloth SS.50) of centte. This was changing by the time the ULSR’s fifth volume. Close the 49th Parallel Etc., appeared in 1970. Sev- _ eml of the essays were considerably more nationalistic and radical in tone than what had gone before. It was also

16 Books in Canada. April. 1975 c’ ,___ _. .._. “I . . . ____.. .__ -_~_ _ ~-~-- .._-

the pmccis. It consists of a dialogue between Lh.ndre Bergenan as mv&- La botibe tionmy qmrcrtchi~ and a partially politicized Qu&ecois. worker, .who is NO 'TH skeptical, at times scomfid, but on the de m tante whole ready to accept his mentor’s re- lentless views. It goes like this: Why The&Must Be A RevoluUon In Qaebec, by L6andre Bergeron, &mslatad by Sheldon Lipsey, NC ..- Press, ,144 pages, $8.95 cIotI.aud ?& . $3.95 paper. A COLLECTION OF CANADIAN By PIULLANTHIBR SCIENCE FICTION LEANDRE BERGERON first published the by French edition of this book in 1972 in H.A. Hargraaves an attempt to counteract the derogatory . meaning given to the idea of revolution And so on. These am fast and fan&- because of the October crisis two years iar mutines for use during a night’s earlier. The revolution, according to drinking in the local brasserie, which Bergemn, will not be broughtabout by is where presumably a revolution impatient FLQ types acting for - would take mot. Whether you like the rather than with -the workers, but by idea of revolution or not, or accept the collecdve a&on of workers’ or- Bergeron’s interpretation of social ganizations. It is the spirit of the May, fames, you have 10 admirehis ability to 1912. “front commun,” or general sound the populist note. strike as Bergemn calls it, that should The reason why there must be a revo- animate future moves towards revolu- h&on in Quebec will surprise neither a tionary social change. Marxist nor jour average liberal- Such change will not be brought conservative Canadian. Bergeron pm- about by the Parti Quibecois, that is duces the expected views on oppressive certab~. The PQ offers mem nationalist strucmres in work, family, govem- sentiment and cl&s reconciliation ment. and school, reviews the evils of when it should require stem clsss colonialism, rejects the drug culture as sttuggle and a dedication to mvolution- unproductive. attacks individualism ary socialism. The Bergeron scenario and the English language. He will settle has no place for cosy deals between for no half measures. He adds ideologi- workers and bosses jusr for the sake of cal doodles to make things perfecdy some vaporous ideal of Quebec com- clear, and this English edition has in- munity. The bosses am going to get it; cluded some old photos of striking the workers will rule Quebec, if not the workers. But assumh that you did world. want a revolution in Quebec, I would In 1975, with Bourassa’s Liberal venture that you should be better sup- ix fascinating tales examine thl government solidly entrenched, the plied with hard facts on the system, and some good inside leads on how it can be nemes of sur&al, morality and unions in some disarray, student protest thics in the twenty-first centur a fitful and uncetiin thing, and the turned over. Bergeron’s book doesn’r FLQ a fading memory, !alk of revolu- provide this weaponry. ?%e Pm&e’s rhen the lives and destinies of tion may seem ridiculously untimely. Handbook will go fu+r still in the Amercanadians” are controlled But maybe not. Too maniof the mi- brasaerie. y a giant computer network. mssive conditions that provoked politi- The book has been ‘translated by cal unrest still remain in the umvince. Sheldon Lipsey, who has done his best LA. Hargreaves has moved into and energy, for the moment d&&d & r with the joual, and has been edited by previously neglected literary the problem of inflation, is bound to be Caroline Perly, who has RshufRed rhe rea to provide the Canadian redirected eventually to more drastic original French teat. dropped some I fom~s of action. Anyway, Bergeron items, and provided section headings :ience fiction fan with absorb- keeps trying. c’est to& la rlvolatlon. that often don’t make sense. A note at rg entertainment. Bergeron’s popular Patrime’s the beginning of rhe book says that any Handbook (1970) was rhe first item in portion may be used free of charge by his course on revolution designed for anyone serving the cause of Qtibecois the man in the street. Since its publica- or Canadian Liberation. The same tion, the idea has been mrun as a comic thing? Send a copy to a friend in Al- book and as popular thc%tre in an effort berta and see what he thinks. 0 to get the Marxist inrerpretation of Peter Martin Associate! Quebec history to as wide-an audience 35 Britain St. Toronto, BS possible. The present book &ntinues April. 1975, Books in Canada 17

‘, > .:.. -x-c--. lacnchbd, and gained controlling in- owner. Smith, the author’s father, was in terest in 1891. ATory paper, it merged more colomful. He’d worked in Fleet Tll ree men in 1917 with the Grit-supporting Free Street and had covered or interviewed Press and for a time.was a Unionist Pamell. Randolph Churchill, Shaw, d Gess club organ called the Journal-Prees. But the Conan Doyle and Gilbert and Sullivan. second name was dropped in 1920 and Onceinvolved withtbeOttawapublica- The Journal Men, by I. Norman the paper resumed its support of the tion. however, his life appears las Smith, lbfcCleUand 8z Stewart, 191 Conservatives. glamomus, thouih this appearance pnges, $7.95 cloth. With the merger, the paper acquired may be partly the result of his son’s not By DOUG FETHEXLING as editor E. Norman Smith, who had wanting to play favourites. As for been the Free Press publisher. Ross O’Leary, Smith tries hard to find some- ALT”O”OH 1. NORMAN Smith, tIOW Tr- died in 1949, Smith in 1957. With the thing interesting in him and failing,m tired, was editor-and subsequently pres- latter’s demise the publisher’s role sorts to purblind praise. ident of the Onawa Jour~l. his book pwed to O’Leary. now the irascible The author says little about hiLse.lf The .loumal Men is none of the ‘things Senator, who was then already editor. wrcept that, since joining the paper in one might at first expect it to be in view Two years later, it was porchascd by 1928, he worked with all three men. of those credentials. It isn’t, for in- Michael SiRon, owner of the Saskatoon Even considering their longevity, this stance, like Ross Harlmess’ J. E. At- Sfar-Phoenix and the Regina is a remarkable span. Smith’s subtitle, kinron of the Stfr, a company book Lecder-Part. Presently it’s a link (with “Three Great Canadian Newspaper- enshrining the founders of the new% the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Win- mep and the Tradition They Created.” paper and extolling its financial nipeg Free Press and five other pafirs) implies that these men were of like triumphs. Neither is it a more indepen- in tbeF. P. chain, Canada’s largest. It’s mind and stabfished an enduring tradi- dent corporate study nor a reminis-_ still a Tory paper. tion. He repeats this in the text as well. cence. Instead, it’s a breezy. sketchy, Almost none of this basic informa- But so help me, nowhere else doa he paean to the author’s three prcdeces- tion is givenin The Jowool Men. what explain exactly what that tradition was sots: P. D. Ross, E. Norman Smith and it gives instead are anecdotes aboutthe or is. M. Grattan O’L.cary. They are menithe three men already named. who, by the Similarly, he doesn’t develop at all author implies, whose lives. taken to- standards of the newspaper business, the more entertaining personalities - gether. tell the story of this moderately don’t seem too eccentric at all. Ross, a Holy Joe Atkinson, John Dafoe and distinguished newspaper. life-long athlete, began his involvement R. E. Knowles among them - who’ve The history runs something like this: as a ball of fire and bolstered a sagging passed in and out of the Jownol’s Ross went in for half interest in the enterprise. Having done that, he seems offices. Some he mentions hardly at all. paper in 1886. fhe year after it was to have become an almost absentee others he excludes completely._ The

. I. WOMAN’S PLACEk HOWIT WAS Examples of Early Canadian F~minisni II. WOMAN’S PLACE: HOW IT IS The Question OfEdufodon The Quesrion of rhe Lnw The Question of Marriage Media (and women) The Question of Employment ’ I III. WOMEN AND THE ARTS: CRITICISM AND POETRY Feminig criticism, by Margret Anderscn FeministPoetry I+. WOMEN AND THBIR BODIES The Question of Children The Question of Sauality V. WOMEN’S LIBERATION VI. THE R.OYAL COMMISSION &PORT VII. CRITIQUE OEi,THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT: . Seked Bibliog&hy of Canadian Publications on Women 253&s; softcover $3.95,hmde0ve.r$10.95

SAANNES Publications Limited’@ Box 6209-A 8 Toronto M5W 1 P6 .

18 Books in Canada, April, 1075

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Journal Men, then, is a klbute to three one of which operated until 1961, make Pe@brm&e opened Dec. 8 with old editors, none of them a pioneer. up the first part of Rodney’s book. It is “Angel Against the Night,” a play by who are linked together principally in an excellent, gripping history of Boyle, Lyal Brown, produced and directed by the ledger books and in the author’s and the Klottdike. Ronald Weyman. Immediately one fond memory. It’s not much of a book The second part takes Boyle through sensed that old familiar feeltng peculiar but it’s the kind of piecemeal effort a dream world of confusion, disorder. to CBC t&vision drama. It was all we’ll have to make do with until some- andrevolution in RussiaandRoumania. there: the technical competence, the one, someday, writes a comprehensive He sees everything (except the deca- nice feeling for time and place typified survey of Canadian journalism in such by long haunting shots of fields, rivers, a way as to bring together and flesh out and responds effe&ely -for “king mounfains and trees, good thematic in- these historical, economic, and politl- and Empire.” His pIa&& affair witb temt and credible acting. But some cal anecdotes. 0 Queen Marie of Roumania, which thing was missing-the dramatic heart causes BoyIe to perform mtmemtts of the production was static, dead. Like heroic deeds in the mould of the a pleasant, rather dull documentary, the wild story moved without tension, and the Our superhuman qualities and his characterization remained Rat, one- lack of some human ones. Finally he is dimensional, giving us the shape but colonid boy0 caught up again in the real world of oil not-the substance of emotiotial conflict. concessions and power politics as he An example of unrealized potential, Joe Boyle: Ktng of the Klondlke, attempts to retain lost Western oil hold- “Angel” was an inauspicious begin- by Wlllam Rodney, MeGraw-Hill ings in the Caucasus. ning. Barry Callaghan’s orlgipel script, Ryerson, 340 pages, $1250 cloth. Often Rodney iS inclined towards “The Man in the Tin Canoe” (Feb. 9). torturous language. At one point he produced and directed by John By BILL PADGEAM writes of “a lifetime of continuous McGmvy. was similarly Sawed. It physical work, considerable travel and explored fascinating historical mater- IN THIS BtooaA~~v of Joe Boyle; . the inevitable drain upon his nervous ial, filmed with a tine eye for period William Rodney develops his hem in energies duiing those hectic exciting detail, but it suffered from a needless the image of a Victorian superman who days in revolutionary Russia coalesced obscurity of language and of event. has few of the usual mental or physical high above the Bessambian $bt.” As Scenes accumulated under such a infirmities that plague the smaller, a UFO, one is tempted to ask? weight of theatrical and gratuitous im- weaker, less-intelligent and obviously m book is an interesting and read- agery that the real significance of the drama-the tremendbus achievement genetically inferior _ people- who SUT- able attempt to &~.al a Canadian hem round him. and should interest those who wish to of Rev. Evans in cmating the Cree That Boyle was a Canadian as well leant mom about the Klondike and the alphabet and thereby freeing the In- would be imlevant except for two typi- early development of the gold fields. dians from their inarticulate past - cally Canadian traits that he displays in Those Canadians who.still cherish the never emerged. much exaggerated form. First, he has “Empire” will ‘enjoy reading about “Raisins and Almonds” (Dec. 22) a profound fealty to the British aris- Boyle’s exploits in Eastetn Europe. It by FFedeUe Bruser Maynard. directed tocracy and to the *‘Imperial Mother- should sell well in Vi&&. 0 by Don Williams, and “Baptising” land” - feelings not reciprocated by (Jan. 19). an episode from Alice the British Establishment. In fact, he is Munm’s Lives of Girls and Women, able to transfer those feelings to the directed by Allan King, presented adif- mling aristocracies of Russia and Rou- !!K!RIPT ferent kind of problem. Based on the mania. Second, he has a tremendous presumption that to tell is to reveal. independence of mind that permits him both of these adaptations by Pahicia to ignore the bungling of the militaty- & FILM Watson failed to make a successful diplomatic buieaucracy and respond transition from book to screen. State- quickly and effectively to rapidly ment is not drama. The combination of changing situations, an ability learned What H&h the literery narmtive voice-over of a on the Canadian frontier. middle-aged woman, remembering the From relatively obscure but decently past and eloquently explaining the emo- “superior social or financiril status,” bath wro&ht tional upheavals of her youth, with the Boyle mns off to “a and returns tem- awkward performance of an inexperi- pered an& hardened to become a suc- By CATHERINE L. ORR enced actress, valiantly trying to em- cessful businessman in New York. He body those conflicts dmm~tically. was subsequently turns into a primfight UNDER THE rmt~crto~ of John Hirsch, disastrous. The disparity became pin- promoter and then migrates toward two new series were launched by CBC ful. reducing the dramas to the level of Alaska, reaching Juneau as the Klon- drama for the 1974-75 season: the uneasy reportage and inspiring little in- dike discovery is revealed. He arrives 60-minute Sunday night Petformance, terest or belief. “Raisins” fared in Dawson at the head of the stampede and the three 90-minute specials titled slightly better with the excellent sap- and realizes before anyone else that Opening Night. The keynote has been porting roles of Fmdelle’s parents, most oftbe gold in the Klondike gravels variety, the productions rapging in con- played by Howard Ryshpan and will be too deep to mine economically tent from situation comedy to serious Miriam Breitman. by hand. His struggles and final drama, and in quality from some hardly Whatever their weaknesses, each of uiumph in establishing a pt placer- worth watchi@ to others that were ex- the above plays had its redeeming mo- mining operation using giant dredges. cellent. merits. Unfortunately, the same cannot April. 1975. Books In Canada 19

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be said of three hackneyed sctipts: vellous industrv and imagination at ‘Find Volopchil” by Kaino Thomas, work in small tiwatres a&.& Canada. directed by Rudi Don; “Last of the “TheFsrmShow” (Jan. 12), thesensi- , POW LCUS Words” by Nika Rylski. tive creation of Tbeatm Passe Mumllle directed by Al1s.n King; and ‘“The Mid- , underdirectorPau1 Thompson, bmught dle Game” written and directed by to life the daily toil, joy, and sorrow of Martin Lawn. “volopcbi!” (Dec. 15) the farming community of Clinton, was a con job, playing the gimmick of Ont. The televised version could have The Great ImposCr for all it was been is moving as the live performance worth. Everything was clich6d, pre- if only CBC had re&aincd its infitriat- dictable, and bating. “Last ofthe Four ing habit of slashing all programming Letter Words” (Jan. 26) exploited a aith commercial breaks. “Ten Lost serious sulijcct. the struggle of a young Years” (Feb. 2). a dramatic adaptation woman against cancer, turning it into a by George Luscombe’s Toronto Work- ; self-induI&nt melodrama’ in which pa- shop Pmductions of Barry Broadfoot’s tients were seen as frralrs in a sideshow bestseller, recreated what it was like for snd doctdrs ss insensitive mechanics. some Canadians in the Diiy Thirties. This unjustifiable lack of taste or re Highlight4 by Cedric Smith’s songs, it sponsibility completely destroyed gavt us an unforgettable glimpse of the whatever crcdlbility the drama might unreasoned hope, the painful humilia- . have had. “Tlie Middle Game” tion and the bitter humour of a time (Feb. 23) was the nadir of the season: disturbing to remember. technically, a clutter of disjointed Non-Canadian material provided & scenes; dramatically, a tiomout tale of interesting contrast. “The Trial of . a middle-aged professor whose only m- Sinyavsky and Daniel” (March 9). sponse to the emptiness bf his life was adapted fmm MaxHayward’s book On an inspimd “I don’t know.” Given the Trial, was a finely sustained. serious incredible ineptitude of the production, drama by director Ted Kotcheff. The one won&n why it was ever screened. subtle characterization of the two Rus- Deadwood aside, Pqfennance hd sian authors, faced with the choric dcti- screened some excellent new pmduc- sion of the courtroom, richly rewarded tions. Two shows, taped from success- the viewer’s patience through the long ful Toronto plays, captured the mar- arguments of the trial.,“The Good and Faithful Servant” (Jan. 5) was a stun- ning example of that peculiar brand of British humour that amuses with the ANTIQUARIAN BODpEiLERS caressiug touch of a razor’s edge. Di- ASSOCIATION OF CANADA rected by George Bloomfield, with superb acting by Cyril Cusack as hap less George Buchanan and Helen Burns presents as obsequious Mrs. Vealfoy. Joe Orton’s scatjdng vision ,of the dc- human&d condition of man was bril- liantly realized. Nothing was sacred Our Sixth Annual and no obe cscaped. “Village WC+ oh@” (Dec. 29) was the highlight of the PerfDnance series. A happy com- bination of a good play by George Ber- ANTSQUARIAN BOOK FAIR nard Shaw. superlative acting by Pax- ton Whitehead and Patricia Gage, and in the fine direction by Mario Prizek, it just couldn’t miss. . CRYSTAL BAbL ROOM Gpking Night, under executive producer Robert Allen, featur&d three KING EDWARD SHERATON HOTEL thcatm pieces adapted and directed for TORONTO television. Michael Cook’splay. “The I-lead, Guts and Sound Bone Dance,” which opened the season Oct. 23, ex- plorcd a savage drama about life in the MAY 14,16,16th-S-11 pm. grim outports of Newfoundland long $2.50 (good all 3 days) after all the fish are gone. Unfortu- or $1.50 daily nately;the.televised version by director Ray McConnell wasagutless effort, set in a hopelessly artificial studio, giving no real sense of the stark environment that detincd Cook’s understanding of 20 Book In Canada, April, 1975 . survival. However. for David skilled writers, diitors. producers, Freeman’s biting satire, “You’re and actors who have been properly Gonna Be Ahighr. Jamie Boy.” direr- trained in their arts. Given Ior Jim Shaw skilfiilly exploited the Pegiwwmncce and Operring Nigh& one tight, claustrophobic possibilities of has a sense thar these things am slowly studio drama to expose the petty emo- beginning lo happen. 0 tional tyrannies, games, and preoccu- pations of a family of TV addicts. And finally, the best of the entire season was Eric Till’s magnificent production. of LETTERSTO “TheFreedomoftheCity,” adiamsti- A Newsletter zation by Brian Friel of Londonderry’s THE~EDITOR Blood Sunday, Feb. 10, 1972. Under Designed as a Till’s sensitive dhection “Freedom” Meeting Place for became more than just anod~er play on “PATEETIC” FALLACIBS the tragedy of Ireland, revealing a Writers, Illustratok world of evil where there me no easy answer and even innocence is astate of and Publishers. unconscious guilt Moving through altemadng levels ofpossible truths, the drama traced a cbrle that began and ended with the senseless death of three innocent people, and in the process. sample copy $1.00. expanded to implicate us ‘2. “The Freedom of the City” was a tiumph. attesting to the tremendous potential of television drama in the hands of men LIFELINE with vision and skill. The 1974-75 season represents an % HIGHWAY BOOKSHOP improvement over the past several sea- COBALT, ONTARIO’ sons. At Ihe .same time it has helped put POJ 1co inro focus some of the problems facing CBC-TV drama. In trying to develop a. viral, distinctly Canadian expression in television drama, John Hirsch has moved into a no-man’s land. The BLACK CBc’s best productions have always CANADIANS, sprung from foreign somces. Beside A Long Line of Fighters these our home-grown products seem by Headley Tulloch swl.-wanl and self-conscious. (The pm ^_ sent season has been no exception.) Against such an embarrassing record, v:e have preferred to see ourselves as a nation of documentary film-makers. leaving drama to those who seem to CHRISTY’S OWN PmARD know ic best - the British and. the sir. Americans. To Hirsch, such a decision liln Christy msy ml1 be justified in atlacking is fatal; a refusal to control our own “wpa-middle-dau. swbMcaled, university- culti heritage that in time will mean we no longer have one. Our pa.% will go the way of our other natural resources, so skilfulIy exploited and pa&g&d that wewill forget it is not really our own. Caught in a state of transition, 0 192 pp., ovei+70 pictures CBC-TV drama is suffering from Ihe E, S3.95papeq $8.95 cloth frustrating side-effects pf change. To prevent ihis condition becoming per- Black Canadians puts Canada’s black manent. a healthier climate must be citizensinto300yearsofCanadi2.n provided. People, Canadians in general hiitoryandpointsthewaytothefuturr. and CBC’s top brass in particular, musr Our& edour. . . RegmSg mu be convinced that TV drama is imp?- histmy. . .Afiifcnr berimge.. . The road tant, not just as light entertainment bm telibmmien.. . WbicbnwyBlack as a serious reflecdon of the way we Canada. . R&n, whoprq%? live and of who we are. Them must be time and money to build a tradition of K! good drama. to develop a solid b+e of -. Box 4010. Slatlen A, Tea., Oe ApN# 1975, Books In ceneda 21

_ .___ _~.___, _.. LINING UP AT THE TEAT issue” of the mlgrdne devoted to attides “by and about women witers.” IronIcally. the issue Sir. PUBLISH YOUR in which the announcement appeated (March) IagreewlthKeitbPmsertketelsnoddngwvng amit@ 27 reviews and articles. only one of with Patton* per se. He used the term in his which wa written by a womsn (Suw Leslie). BOOK IN 90 DAYS review. headed Three yearlllngr ‘M Alberta AMtot@t I congnUrlate you op your de&km to For over thirty-sewn yoaR Ex- lFebtua&. But wkm dll my 8ovemment have posltion Press published book have I *%omen% Iswe.” I wmdd much prefu its own &my to spend7 tbat evey issue of So& in Canach included manuscripts equal lo ,trade I ‘imagind be would agree with Robert mare material “by andabou! wvmen wtRets.” standards in an aversgo Of Rumilly’s quote, “Patronage! The udder or three months-a third the democmcy!” As if tke lineup to have a go at the Mavb Volpc usual time. Our spsclal im- public teat wsstt’t long ~ttott8ld Btsndon. MM. Prlols, Exposltlon-llnlvenlly Ron Robinson (scholarly), Banner (trade), Winnipg STILL SMALL VOICE Lochlnvat (AmerIcana), Testc moot (tellglous), are rewwd BLOWING PMA’S HORNE si for desetvlng wotlts In their si Goad to see you taking M intetcst in the liltlo separate llelds. We ofler a Idon’t know sbwt Spiro Agnew. butlim Christy mng scar.. Hope you keep it up. complele pttbllshlng setvlce In- ir tight in bisthoughtful essaydmtwas titled Was By the way, the small-mug prrsr scene Is not “rpdlyittg” aramatteroffact. Fmasmanynew cluding edltorlal supeNislon. Spiro Ag~v RI&? Most published Canadian mags. twice as many are Rddiw. Your cooxment a dynamic adverllslng, rimr- mitlng is elitist, upper-middle-brow. Cantit rcadiy Ilsts stuff, a.wJ this is tmgic. mighthavebcen~equue’inUlemid-I9Mk;jurta ketlng and pmmotlonal pro- brid~minder.If~oMchyth~~you,lUmc gram and trade dlsbibutlon. Cluisty. ho*, doesn’t seem to undcntand why this is so. lie comes clore when he say= “In be the tint. lnquirles are invited: edltorlal every other cmmtr~ of the wculd witk a vital reports furnished without obli- literawe tbe (publishing) industty is suppotted gation. by its p&ulat wita’s.” P&rely tmc. But Cbdsfy doesn’t explote why this doesn’t happen in Canada. ll~lhc reason is very simpkz tke channels of distdbutlon Tot “popular” writing in Can& ATWOOD’S FRIENDLY have been preempted by the Amedcans. “Popu- ENEMIES Ia? and popularly priced books are mass-market Sir: pspcrbacb, and 13 of @z I4 firms diioibuting I twk umbmge witk your inference in your paperbacks in Canada are fomign. Tknt’s wby Jat!uary issue that I had been making “ad some8dng Ilkc 98% of tbe paperbncks on Cana- feminamattacks”agalnstMargatAlwocd. Ske ,dim nfwssmnds a Am&an books. is no more an imtitution tbatt Nancy Gteene Cbosty singles out Mycel Home’s Annals of (skier) or Anne Murray (singer). And 1 do not thr pbvbmwkr LI a valuable, nowelitist book. rwcntherfame. Those whwe writingr havemar ‘then lambssta tbepublisber--me -for “stick- appeal receive mass .r&sponse. Margaret inga~eetlgonil”thatmlLcril~oesrible~ly Atwood’s poetry is her tit!&, “eatiw acblevc- to the aSktent upper-middle class. But Clulsty ment.Tlfeideasfrbmtkep&ee.xpandedaud dosat’, seem to understand that rbad M rul diluted in her tbcsis@e novels. while ha cdtf- cbdce in the matter. ealbwkiscvcnfunher~moved~mhersovrsc Becsw PMA books are denied weed% to the of inspitatlon. Nevettheless. Sw-vivgl is M im- Am&can-mntmlled mass market, they me pm- pottant book in tke Idstory of @e Cansdlan duced in comparatively small and consequently idemby-crisicculturesyndmmc, as it till 8en.w expensive editions for sale in the haditional e.teszvemlamidotebwh. bookstan If I pdced for il mass market my My lemrs to tlte Globe and Mail v&a-e in books couldn’t nacb. very soon them would be supptm of Scott Young’s fiettdly wit as con no mote PMA books, low-pdced ot other&e. pared to Atwood’s pe”y. caustic counter-attscks. Bw MI oub8sbu would much mtket sell Many titers ate thell own worst qttemier in L+ttets to tk Editor wlumns. Imlgine the opi* of&e book; ke believes in: To publish means. ion many have ofIrving Laymn attd John Robat fundamentally. mm&e public - to give the Colombo bared on some of their lettenl Be& widest possible sealon of the ablic uttrestxlcted member of a demoetatic roeit+‘. Cmudianr are access to books at tke lowest possible price. fiw to judge a poet by blsiher poems. public &oice Q% a ghwing That’s what Cbdsty wants and tbat’s certainly commmtsvld/orlettu% Mattywillbavesuffetrd what I watt. too. Canadian publishers, howver, Atwood’s samastic “put-downs” Y ha poetty- politicaLl force iao ate foxed to sttnggle for sutvlval in att “elitlst” reading quadott-times. My puro&al opinion is I. that Mar8at ALwood ls brilliant but lacking in I Zanadiaw society - dourly ~ttict Cansdian access to the popular compadott. maketplacc fat Canadian books. Poefry widlout beart R’s g& m take 8oW”tt”c”t llction m get the osrgatiizedl space for Canadian books in low-priced paper- back editions on Canadian newsstands. Hugh PlomosexwaE Faulkner has failed to act, but even,unlly be OT Bunice Lever one of his sumessors will bite the bullet. Editorof Wmwr Cx3mmunity And then we’ll see “popular” Canadian books York Uniwsity at “popular” msss market pdces. And. Jim Toro”to Cklisty, Mareel Home’s AnIt& 0f dte Fh- breather will almost cmtainly 6s one of those bmks. Peter Mattin Raident. PMA Ltd. Tomnto A DEARTH OF FAIR WOMEN Sir: I was plead to read your recent z&moun~~m~nl that Boats In Cart& will publish a “special 22 Books In Canada. April. 1875

_._----_..-----__.~_ ._ ..-_. _ _. . UlWSbCAN~ Acrostic No.4 By DIANA FILER 0. Cbiqo Black Hawks cenfre P. “One of Ibe domestics was -to his especial rmice.” Clhaclteray) Q. Bloc!&ad

S. Physically sUon9 and bcallhy @amp.) T. Rickety; likely to fall npyc D. Pioneercovend w@on --. -- forwtwmd 1mel iniEm 22 ISI iii 85 I5 35

v. Canadiin news --- ma9tuine (duee words) 3iiiI~im3Tiz I59 128 l27Ti iif W. Pou. aulhorofBaffs@r II One.armedlog&r (ftil name)

x. waml,drywiodfmmm eastern slopes of Ike , Roc~Momuaino L. Ofengrwed ------itipdoor 183147823fir6n 23 58Tw-8 SOLUTION TO ACROSTIC NO. 3 SAFDR? FOR EVERYONE A GARDEN A steel and glass apamnenl building has no expression wbalscever of the number of people living in it. TX opposite cxlreme is the casbab. lhe earbnb wr*rponds wkh people3 desire for idendly anda nodonoftbeccale oftbecommunity and their place witbin ih

N.B. Book3 in Cona& is offering a prize for Ihe rUrt -I SololiQl lo which the wmslic is bled. Send soludons m: Bmks in Canada Acmstic ACWIsic No. 4 opened aher April 30. The prize? A copy of Ihe book rm No. 4.501 Yonp SIreel. Suile 73. Tomnlo. M4Y IY4. I . April. 1975. Book8 In Canada 23

____ :___.(~___T__._ -.-, .: -.... - -e-.-.-._y’.‘:-_T- ---:T;-.:_, _I, WATER SKBING GEORGE ATFlAk, Jr. and CLINT WARD

Anyone can learn to water ski, say George Athans and Clint Ward. In this book, they tell you how. Whether you’ve yet to try it, have just learned to stand on your skis, or are ready to master a 3600 wake turn, these internationally known champions will expertly guide you through the basics of this popular sport. The three events of competitive water skiing - slalom, *figures, and jumping - are thoroughly explained in step-by-step instructions accom- panied by careful diagrams. , Illustrated with over 100 photographs and diagrams.

$4.95 paper

GEORGE ATHANS, JP. LlNU WARD B World Champion 1971 to 1974 o Canadlan Champlon 1961,1967 to o Canadian Champion 1966 to 1974 ’ 1969 o Holder of 5 Canadian records o Coach/Manager Canada’s National m Canadian Amateur Athlete of the Year Team 1965 to 1971 1972.1973 o Chairman 10th World Water Ski B Member Canada’s National Team 1966 to Championships 1974 o President Canadian Water Skf . ;feF;z; Canadian Amateur Athlete’s Hall Association 1966 to 1970 o President Group 1 of the World Ski , a Member of The Order of Canada Union since 1971 l Member Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame