Winter 2005 Volume 19

reviews NON-FICTION BUSH AS NERO War Law: Understanding International THE SPICE OF CANDOUR Law and Armed Conflict by Michael Byers (D&M $35) Stan Persky sprinkles his enthusiasms from A to C In the early 1940s, German soldiers shaved off the beards of Orthodox Jews. The Short Version: An ABC Book his memories and intellectual from him, his standard male More Walter Farley Black Stal- American soldiers have done the same by Stan Persky (New Star $24) discoveries with all the zeal of a pattern baldness. I fretted about lion stories, more Wizard of Oz to Islamic fundamentalists captured in record-collector putting on it, mainly worried, I suppose, books, more John R. Tunis sports Afghanistan. any reviewers of Stan tracks from his favourite albums. about its potential effects on my novels or Amazing Adventures. The sickening—and largely unpun- ished—physical abuse and sexual hu- Persky’s The Short Ver- Spalding Gray-like, Persky could sex life. For years, I fought a los- Ever since I began to write, I’ve miliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib sion: An ABC Book will easily perform excerpts from this ing battle by arranging my hair always wanted to end a book M Prison in Iraq is one of the subjects ad- begin by mentioning that book as a one-man play at the in a desperate ‘comb-over,’ at- with the magical promissory Persky’s new collection of mem- dressed by Michael Byers in his treatise Fringe Festival, and Balding Gray tempting to disguise the obvious. words: to be continued.” for the layman, War Law: Understand- oirs and opinion pieces is sup- would be a hit. What an extraordinary waste of It adds up to a smorgasbord, ing International Law and Armed Con- posed to be modeled on Czeslaw Persky’s flirtations with the time, of mirror gazing, of bril- not a five-star restaurant. You flict, recommended by Noam Milosz’s two-volume work Milosz’s mainstream are apparently over. liantine and gels occasionally, can go back and forth along the Chomsky. ABCs in which the late Polish He won’t be writing any popu- walking around the streets, line-up, dismissing some dishes, “The United States,” writes Byers, Nobel Prize winner, in his mid- list paperbacks about the when a breeze comes up and rif- finding delight in others. The “wields more power than any political eighties, provided a miscellany Gordon Campbell government, fles through my fringe, I forget spice of candour is Persky’s most entity since the Roman Empire.” Hold- ing a Canada Research Chair in Global of literary profiles, reflections as he did in the old days of Bill that I’m bald, and like people consistent quality, whether he is and recollections, in alphabeti- Politics and Interna- Bennett. That would take a lot who have lost an arm or a leg are hyping Chicago Cubs’ shortstop tional Law at UBC, cal order. of work. Instead The Short Version said to experience a phantom Ernie Banks or the influence of Some reviewers will also men- Byers traces inter- enables the now-venerable limb, I experience some imagi- French heavy-hitter Roland national humani- tion that many of Persky’s Capilano College professor and nary hair. Then I run my hand Barthes. (Discovering the latter’s tarian law from the ruminations and ramblings have habitué of Berlin to explore the over my crystal-ball-shaped posthumous, alphabetically-or- 1859 Battle of been initially posted on the self-satisfaction of his accumu- dome, and move on.” dered book entitled Roland Solferino to the ‘re- Dooney’s Café website managed lated riches. The Short Version: An C (at the end of the book) is Barthes, we learn, was “an indel- gime changes’ by his friend Brian Fawcett in ABC Book presents Persky the for Continued. “I remember ibly liberating experience” that George Bush, Jr. that entailed the Toronto. Or they’ll quote philosopher king, unplugged, how thrilling it was as a child to encouraged Persky to embrace ousting of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Persky’s own obtuse explanation unfettered, counting his chips, come to the conclusion of some- himself as a subject, leading him for his A-to-C litany. “An ABC Hussein in wars not sanctioned by the with the insouciance of a brainy thing I was reading, a story or a from his breakthrough homo- United Nations. book is perforce the short ver- Jabba the Hutt. book, and discover, at the end, sexual memoir Buddy’s, and now sion of another, conceptually Byers refers to the disturbing prec- A is for Art and Auschwitz. it wasn’t ‘The End,’ but that onto The Short Version.) edent of Guantanámo Bay where so- amorphous entity, just as life it- “Theodor Adorno sternly de- there might be more to come. You don’t have to be a previ- called ‘enemy combatants’ are being self is the short version of the clared in the wake of the Holo- ously committed Stan fan to ap- incarcerated indefinitely, in contraven- dream of immortality. That en- caust that lyric poetry is preciate someone who admits, tion of the Geneva Convention, but he tity is one that includes both a impossible after “My books, like late-medieval doesn’t consider whether or not the database—the sum of all my vo- Auschwitz. I think that chrestomathies, are a patch- U.S.-engineered torture of Canadian cabularies—and the events of my the best way to inter- work of books.” To empha- citizen Mahar Arar can be justified in accordance with the George Bush life; together, they provide a lo- pret that remark size his point, Persky doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence. cus in which I experience the is not that good proceeds to provide a 1-55365-151-0 world.” poetry can’t six-and-a-half page bib- All of which just gets in the be written liography of his fa- way. after vourite books and IN THE (DON’T) KNOW Whether Stan Persky is writ- Auschwitz, authors. He’s telling Left Hook: A Sideways Look at ing about Athens, Woody Allen Canadian Writing by George Bowering but that us everything he (Raincoast $22.95) or AIDS; describing sex-acts in a good wants us to know, Bangkok nightclub or providing writing and very little a paean to his former mentor/ George Bowering’s advertisements now re- otherwise. for his own literary agenda in Left Hook: lover Robin Blaser; or discussing quires 1-55420-016-4 A Sideways Look at Canadian Writing Canada or Chicago, his amalgam an un- are as illuminating and exasperating as of seemingly informal A-to-C derstand- ever. It’s surprising and good to learn chatter is mostly a lot of fun. ing of the his “main male Canadian poetry hero” Clearly Stan Persky is not Holo- was Raymond Souster, but he doesn’t writing a book to change the caust.” elaborate. “The most poetic person I’ve world, or even an insightful self- B is ever known is Phyllis Webb,” he states, but we don’t learn anything about his portrait. He’s amusing himself. for Bald. relationship to her. And the undeniable intelli- “My fa- gence of his amusement is in- He shrewdly praises novelist Ethel ther was Wilson’s feigned simplicity as “the most fectious. bald, complicated trick of all” but he limits his Reading The Short Version is and I in- celebration of Al Purdy to a lengthy dis- like being in the presence of a herited, sertation on the poet’s penchant for confident joke-teller. Even along with using the word though one suspects Persky’s much else purple. As much easy-going style is an illusion, we as we’re happy want to believe the rabbit really to learn that does come out of the hat, as if Bowering’s po- he’s just making up his prose as etry buddy Fred he goes along, effortlessly and Wah is a former high school trum- without artifice. George Bowering pet player who It’s a clever act to follow. The took the title for Short Version is a one-man show his 1981 collection Breathin’ my name in which Persky is free to be an with a sigh from a line in the song Deep enthusiast, indulging in Purple, Bowering naturally assumes the the comfort of reader knows who the heck Fred Wah is. There’s a fair-minded appreciation of Mourning Dove, who also hails from the B.C. Interior, but several chapters aren’t indexed and Bowering is overly prejudiced in favour of his acquaint- Wilde man Stan Persky lectured on ances. Oscar Wilde in October at the Vancouver Public Bowering drops his breadcrumbs of cleverness and wit as if writing is a me- Library. He will also appear at 3pm on November 27 andering game at which only he can win. It’s a willy-nilly compendium. as part of the 21st Jewish Book Festival. You gotta be in the know, folks. 1-55192-845-0 29 BOOKWORLD WINTER 2005 reviews NON-FICTION Imagining Difference: Legend, Curse, Imagining Difference and Spectacle in a Canadian Mining could have been called The Town by Leslie A. Robertson (UBC Press $29.95) Curse of Fernie, or A Whole Bunch of Stuff about Fernie. argaret Mead went to Enemy aliens, graffiti, hate- Samoa. Louis Leakey mongers, video games, Buf- Mfound hominids in falo Bill’s circus visit in 1914, Kenya. skiing, tourism and Italian To make her name in an- superstitions are all stuffed thropology, Leslie A. Robertson together, connected by per- went prospecting for a myth in sonal asides, melding aca- the hard-luck town of Fernie.

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