8 Con9 and Prow. Roger Cemn has Irenrlorrned himself fmm a violenl criminal into e novelist. By John Goddard 12 Adulce and fNeeenl. Whal’s right - or wmng - with CanLit? Comments Imm our readers on Ihe Nate of the an. 15 Yesterday’s New. F.R. Swtt’s ‘socialism’ wee es misleading es the version portrayed by conservatives today. By Leo Penitch 10 Charter el Wrongs. As George Grant shows. deceplive language shmuds our notfan of fights and freedoms. By Barry Cooper 20 Brief Geelowe. Short notices on recent fiction, non-liction. end poetry EVIEWS 16 Tho Indigo Orers and Other Slories. by Aona Murray 19 Tmnto?r Tree. by H.R. Percy 26 Inroectlne the Vouile. bu Eric McCarmack Ill Maw& by Pbilif : Journey by George Gall IlllonE& I 31 Speaking ior Myeelf: Ceinsdlan Wrlten in Interulew. by Andrew Germd 32 The SoIltory Outlow, by B.W. Pave 32 The BolldIngs el Samuel Maelure: In Seemh ol Appmprlote Form, by Martin Segger; Robson Square, by Ann Rosenberg; Tomnto Observed: Ne Arehlteclore. Patrons. end Hletory. by William Oendy and William Kilbourn; Vlclorion Arehlteeture In London and Southweotern Onterfo: Symbol9 01 Aeplretlon. by Nancy 2. Tausky and Lynne D. GiStefano 34 Ted Trindoll, AMtIe Wltneee to the Norih. by Jean M&set and FtnseMarie Pelletier: The Immlgnnt Yearn: From Eumps lo Caned& lYS-lg57. by Barry Bmadloot 36 Lev(l Unknown. by A.N. Wllsan EPAFaBMEWTS 3 Flold Ndas 40 Recommended Engllrh. Our Engllrh. by Bob Blackbum 40 Neeelead Flref Novels, by Janice Kulyk Keefer 41 CanWIt No. 120 .lntenrlew _.._- with Brian Fewcett. by James Dennis Carcoran 42 Canllt Acmstlc No. 6. by Mary 0. Trainer

Besketchewee short-story writer Edna Allord’s latest book is J& Gam’en 01 Eloise Loon (Oolichan). Margaret Avison’s4!Iinfer SunlThe Dumb- tom: Pawns fWM966 WBS published in 1983 by McClelland & Stewart. Jack BaNen’s Crag &a fhe Ace (Macmillan) wes reviewed In our April issue. Mallhew Behrens is a staff writer at Now magezine. Bob Blackburn is our resident English-unge specitiirt. laurel Boone Is e freelance writer and cdtlc in Fredericton. N.B. Poet Barbara Carey’s latest book is Undrasfng fhe LJarh (Ouarry). Nova Scotia writer LoSley Choyce’s Nre Dream Au&r (Indivisible Baoks) wil be reviewed in e forthcoming issue. Mary Frances Coedy wiles for Celhofic New Times. Bany CuDperteaches political science at the University 01 Gelgary. James Dennte Corcoren Is a Tomnto freelance writer. Bert Cevmn has reviewed for CBC-ftedio and Scene Chenges magezine. Joeophine Cmbtree Is a folksinger end psychotherapist. Anne ltenoon is a Tomnto freefew writer. Poet Mary dl Mlchele’s latest book is Immune fo Wavr?y (McClelland &Stewart). Gary Oreper is e research librarian et the Lfnivenity of Waterloo. Gory Fogan is a freelance writer in London, Ont. Gldeon Forman coordinates e weekly radio show, Peaxfi&. on CIUT-FM (Toronto). Freelance writer Shelagh Garland edits psychoanalytic literature. John Goddard’s Books in Canada profile of Edith Iglauer won e National Magtine Award In 1985. Grog Gonnlck Is et work on a history of the roll pessenger Service in Canada. Gloria tllldebnndt Is a Tomnte freelance writer. Novelist Douglas HUI is mtuming to Newfoundland this ~urnmer for e two.year stay. Rick Jacobson’s paintings and drawings appear frequently in these paga. Jsnlce Kolyk Ksofer won first prize for lictfon in the CBC Literary Competitions cd 1985 and 1985. Robin Kobryn wee recently in Ottewe to photograph the visit of Ronald Reagan. Barbara MeeKoy is a freelvlce writer and specialf9t in women’s rtudles. NovelNt and politfcat scientist Jack MacLeod teaches et the Univenity of Tomnto. Oougla Malcolm is a Tomnto freelance writer. Albsrto Manguel’s Dicfimwy oflm9gfnary places. written wlth Gienni Guedelupi. was recently republished in en expended editfon (Lester & Orpen Dennys). Toronto artist Steve McCabe’s d&ngs appear thmqhout the issue. Mlehsle Melady stud& Canadian laerature et Carleton Un’bwity. I.M. Owen is e frequent contributor to thls megtine. Leo Panitch’s most recent publication is Workfng Mass AI//&S In Crfsfs (Versa). Lary phft is deputy llbrarian et the Art Gallery of Onterio. Non Phllllp is e Vancouver freelance writer. Ruperf Schieder review Brftfsh and Commonwealth literature in this magdne. Mary 0. Tnfner is a lreelance writer and puntbmaker in Port Caquftfam. B.C. Alan Mgg’s Vender Wrx From /mm&ant to Remiw and Vancower and Ik Wnh-S were recently pubiished by Harbour Publlrhing.

EDITOR 0 Michael Smith MANAGING EDITOR 0 Doris Cowan GENERAL MANAGER 0 Susan Traer CIRCULATION MANAGER 0 Susan Aihoshi ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER a Beth Cruder EDITORIAL ASSISTANT 0 Marc Cota CONSULTANTS 0 Robert Farrelly 0 Jack Jensen 0 Mary Lu Toms CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 0 Eleanor Wachtel (West Coast) 0 K.G. Probert Prairies) 0 Shirley Knight Morris 0 Paul Wilson 0 Ray Filip (Quebec) 0 Terry Goldie ( ;ast Coast) As an art form the novel nd longer stands at the centre of our culture, but is Its primary purpose to provide fodder for film?

m MAY nis Gmadian Forum Imegee of our time. Just 85 narrative Yatbefksttbinganovellosesioits published B cartoon strip by ~atr~wasedi~sedin the18thcentow translation from minted word to bnane cafherine O’Neill called “The on the screen is ii voice. Perhaps th& Book club,” in which B gmup of intbezOth.He&?ateSl:&ulbmerparty women and men are soberly with friends try to fmd five novels book can make B terrific fti (The God- discussblg Latin American tiaion, publishedblthelastfewyeantbatauof falher) while a tine novel cam turn out s specitIcaUy Manuel Puig’s novel, you have reed. How about three? One? dud in the tbeatre (?7ze Wars). A nowlist I&s of the Spider Woman. Wben Now h-y five films and see the difference. most be very trod or very ruthless to join somebody mentions William Not that fh isn’t a great art, not that silently tbe conspirapl that tells us that I-Iurt’s pafo- inthefdmver- fti and literahwe don’t by now have a seein8 a movie version is equivalent to slon, grouptbe corn= andalive the certain shared history. Every fti student reading the book, that one is a replace- disinteeratesdiscussion into a knows how D.W. Griffith learned to cut ment for the other. Nor can it be in the shouting match of happy voices: “i scenes fium reading Dickens, while nove8st’s best inter& to oarticioate in the thought Jane Fonda was crummy in novelists have been borrowing fmm fh assumption that 1 noid isn’t worth Agnes of God,” and “when are they technique for decades. But that does not ready@ unless it has been made into a gonna make another Monty Python negate the autonomy of each form as its fh, in which case reading isn’t even movie?” The cartoon is not only Punny, own bc+. of the novel as novel and necessary. but d&ly accurate; novels may be notbbudse.Awriterspe.n&yearsona Henry James had a premonition of this serious, even important stuff. but what novel. often lating the ideas tloat in sad uroblem in 1908 when he wrote his people really like to talk aboiat are ixeface to 7% Golden Bowl. James. con- IllOVieS. before getting down to work:What the sidering the praaice of prindng illostm- O’Neill’s cartoon came to mind when novelist is usually lookiru for ia the voice. tions in B novel, wrote. “Anyddng tba I read recently of tbc sale of the fti In II recent kw Y& i’fmes Book relieves responsible prose of the duty of rights to Margaret Atwood’s The Hand- Review. for exmnple. Mavis GaJbmt ex- being. while placed before us, good maid% Talc - not to some patched- plainshowtheodywayshecolddtdltbe enough, interesting enough. and, if the together quilt of Canadian producers and story of her novel-in-progress is in a mde question be of picture, piaorid enough, businessmen but to a New York modw v&e; it waw’t the s~oryrhe had trouble above a8 in irsell, does it the worst of sex- tton company that has hired no less than findingbottbewyofte8iogit.AsIiemy vices. and may well tipire in the lover the British playwright Harold Pinta to Jamesiirsttokios.awrite.rhsssninfinite of literature certain lively questions BP to write the screenplay. This sort of the future of that institution.” James understood the power of the B flutter of excitemeni and B new belief visual image, even if not as red or pro- in the value of Canadian litemhue. AtIer found or complex, to posh aside the all,iftheAmericanswanttomakeaf~ out of it, the book mwr be good. But I i&d~mbination with the &d&s mind. wonder if we should be so pleased, and And in this lazier age a prepackaged if novelists are redly doing themselves s image is easier for our minds to grasp service by do& tqdrworks to be than one that we ourselves must aid in made into films. creating. A fti, eveo a mediocre one, l% Amrendcshir, ofDuddvKravitz can replace in the public’s imagination the Who ?&&en lhe l&f, The iun Fk& imsge that might have been pot there by Daminn in the Dark - the list of Cana- the novel. Is that what the novelist really dian n&s that have been turned into wants? fhs is by now fairly long. The tempta- Curious to lomow what ldnd of approach tions for the novelist are obvious: besides HomId Pintu’s screenplay might take to the money, a f&n version (or so the argu- Mannet Atwood’s novel. I honed to his ment goes) can brb# a novelist B whole m&recent fti adapt&, i%tleDia~. *ew audience, often a larger one than the As I had already seen the. fti (and novel itself received. But is that real SW number of ways to tell a novel. Even the thought it very good), reading the novel cess for a novel? Do we now see the subtlety of difference baween two ‘?ealistic” novels is enormous, no less people will rrad a book after seeing the -moth& art form. as fodder for fti? great than that between a Robertson t%n. The fmt shock came imm+dy. Even those of us who love the novel Davies and a Geome Bowerin% If form Like most moviea, the fdm adaptation of must admit that it is no kmger at the cm- is content, as toad&eeit sot&is, then Russell Hoban’s novel uses an omniscient tre of our culture, the form of art that eny novel’s story ot&t to be inseparable narration to follow the pabs of the hvo spansdassandnationsJitytopmvidethe fmmthewayitisreve&d. qoia mistits who eonspirr to ktdnap thne

___.,_ . . . _i.~ .~ :_ _“.. _--- _TF.r. ._. _ ~. ____-_I. __..“_._. _.._ _.l,.--.~~_.i _..--.- . . . -“. -c.s._. ._ _._._~ -. _----___ sea turtles from an aqwium. The novel friends and shivering in line for an how; isn’t told like tbat at all. but bv altemalina *ow I prefer weekdays, when it’s q&t. diary entries. Just the no&o df diaty But plenty of people are stiU craay about \titing, of tbe ability end the desire to reading and tbe novel, thank God, is not tiov~gtxm~, I am told, has a 4,6Z.%mile vtite a journal, is loaded with possible ready to become a protected species like coastline, althoogh this fgure may have meanings the film never bar. classical ballet or opera. Nor do I expect changed in the last year e to govem- To be honest, I was hoping to find the -or reeJly wish - for novels not to be ment cutbacks in so maw sectors. novel brilliantly superior to the fti. But adapted into f&o.% Even Henry James stagnation notwithstanding, 1*msti8 mn- I couldn’t help feeling vaguely tried, if without much success, to tom his Trident that most of those milts of coastal dissatisfied. Some details seemed wrong: novels into plays. But if you plao to see periphery are still out there and, like a Neaera’s water beetle oughtto have been the fh of The Hmdmaiid’s Tale you man looking off toward some mela- male, not female, and her ne@hbour might be advised to read tbe novel fmt. physical road to physical well-being. I’ve wasa’t an out-of-work actor but a. jet: Perhaps every such adaptation should decidedtbattbisistbeyearIwiJlbegin lagged businessman. The novel is begin with a warning immediately follow- a hike around the coast of the province. drearier, less triumphant. and probably ing tbe director’s name: “This film CA- Circumnavigation has always been a more honest. Most aonoybx of all. I not by ifs very nature contain the vision hobby of mine. I have e dream that pm. couldn’t get the voices of the actors - and meanbtg of the novel that it super- pie will one day pass me on the street and Glenda Jackson and Ben Kin8sley - out licially resembles. Any vision and mean- say, “There he is. the grrat circum- of my mind and allow tbe voices of the ing it does have is purely its own.” navigator.” In fact, I think I’ve wanted novel to take over. And es if the novel The novel is still a young form. and if itself were conspiring against me, it even it is no longer the central pleasure of a back around circ~cision, leaming early threw up a neat little irony: when Ben culture, as it remained in Henry James’s on to crawl eround the living room IGnpley -I mean William - compares day, it has not begun to use up its behind furniture until I became tangled hislifetoBwtLaoc&er’sinthef~5% possibilities and, I believe, liever will. In in electric cords and coated with dost- Swimmer, he doesn’t reaJize that tbe f&n 1884 James wrote: “The advantage. tbe bells. So b@ the exploits of such adven- isbasedonashortstoryby JohoCheever. luxury, as wll as the torment and rerpon- twem.Thed&estayedwithmethmogb To the end, I never could quite shake the sibility of the novelist, L that there is no adolescence. Once I bad my driver’s memory of the fh, and that seaned both limit to what he may attempt BS an &- licence; 1 began to circomnavigate tbe my and the novel’s loss. ecutaot - no limit to his possible ex- ljarking lots of shopping malls and Burger Don’t get me wmng - like most peo- periments, efforts, discoveries, suuo- Kings often, if not always, in search of ple, I’m crazy about tbe movies. Ia high cesses.” That’s just as true today. a female of the species. But those were school I liked going with a 8a8gle of - C.&w IwxN younger days.

For more information, contact: Canadian. Give he Gift of Litiraq h.mdaGm 34 Ross St., Suite 200, Toronto, Ont. M5T 1 Z9 (416) 595-9967

_I-.-- Y.__.- -. Or maybe I’ve just been subliminally Lawxncetown River. My wife. always seduced by a billboard I saw in the Tan- willing to see an adventurer on his way, drove me in the family Pinto to the bridge the province. It a&ounced unq&o- at the river. _ ctdly: “Nova Scotia: There’s More to It’s hard to say exactly what a man feels Sea.” I mulled over the sheer poetics of when he sets out, one step at a time, on that statement halfway to Bible Hill, a.misslon such as this. h&co Polo, Lewis revelling in the though&hat there were and Clark. Sir Edmund Hlarv. Or more punsters alive and well In tbe department appropriaiiy, R.P. Scott, _ Antarctic of tourism. Or it could have been some exolorer who reached the South Pole only thing more deeply seated in that billboard to-fmd that he had been preceded by thi fantasx a bulalne headland thmsdaa into dastardly Norwegian. Roald Amundsen. a pea&f”1 bl;e ;ky. Scott and his men died trying to hike the Whatever it was. it kindled a d&e to thousand miles back to the coast but, hike the periphery of the pIWince, to acccdng to the Cohmbia&skEn&o- place root after root the entire leng(h Of pedia, “remaiar and records of the epic tbe coast. After so many years of belog jourttey were later recovered. ” That was seatbelted into an automobile, the theimortant thing: the story was left rediscovery of the foot is in itself a reawakeniltg. And the thought of hiking So I too was off. Waves of a dbnlmttive Three men. alone tbmunh foe. son. wind. rain. and but virulent nature dashed themselves perhaps & @u~mos& fop) stl&;d in against Egg Island as I rounded my first Their lives. me that deeo-rootcd .&it that must have headland. The a navy “as per- sent others-before me out on tbc great forming target+rac& off the coast. Oil Their Friendship. q”e.sts of yesteryear. rigs were being towed to George’s Bank. Like other great explorers before me, On m of the headland, a local contractor I wanted to be sure I had the very best “as bulldozing off the topsoil to seU to quipmeat for this harrowing venture. I suburban lam-owners. undoing cmtmiea wanted expert advice and opinion. This of recovery work needed after the retreat took me straight to Canadian Tim where of the glacier. Ah. the glaciers. They were I purchased a bright red nylon backpack cert&ly here with me in spirit. I could with an easily removable Smud patch. feel them still ma&a at the land as thev When I spotted the portable indoor tram- retreated north f% tlk last the -what, poline, tiowever, iwas dissuaded tem- only a few thousand years ago. Some of porarily from the dresm of my quest. For us still long for the return of the glaciers, $39.95 I could slmol~ stav home and. Uke as we UC awake on a summer evening, the rest of the ho&s ofimmaaity, &I- sweltering in the fog. But that is another else. Jog in place in from of my televi- -ry. sion set every day to the MMlnute Work- HlkhgtkMhOR.S,0tltZ-tlW out. tive UP on the mace of mind of work of the sea. The headland. carved p&t&, empty beach& and get my exer- and rutted by Nonh Atlantic storms; the cl.% along “itb those t&e mcrge!ic boon- remains of things living and dead floating cing ntiphets day after day- uo to pather around the knees of the hills. But no, that would have to wait. No doe &ts a sense of world community: trampoline, no skateboards. no Nautilus machines, no ail&mounted torso- with a Norwegian label. there an arm balldll gravitational wondermaehiaes. fmm a Talwanese das!ic doll. somewhere Just a man and bls feet. And 4,623 miles else abandoned kbster-po< floats. AU of coastline. signs of a civilization in decay. It should be pointed out that these were I walk the long rock-strewn s-d of not tile mere macbinatiolls of yet another Lawrcnatown Bt!acb, carefully observ- macho masochist out to set endurance lag the cadence of my breathing, and records or destroy his mmfmtable income soon recognize I have arrived back io the and career for the sake of a dream. I vicinityreturn of mydown own home. I would accomplish my goal by biting off my potholed mad past my neighbour the the mast a chunk at a time. A few miles real estate appraiser, who hails me, a day, with time to digest, to meditate, readily recognlzlng the heroic quality of to be certain that the great videotape of my memory would record every last h&e. My aog barking, the phone ring- detail. ing tmanswered on the wall, my mailbox On the day of the stan of the great full of personalized letters offering joumCyit”as”armmldtheslm”asless unbelievable opportunlfies in the exit@ iimid ihan usual. Not a had omen any- where. My pet raven “~0 out harassing I am ‘oblivious to it all. the herons on the marsh and my For I have carved off my fmt two mil*l neighboor’s St. Bemards “exe patrolling circumnavigation if Nova Scotia. the gravel road. I would begin my hike, s~bollcally enough, at the mouth of the

-.- ..v-Y-ii I I_. ., _~.~...... C~ .-_..--L-.---T~.-~..-~~.-..3_*~r..~ .a .. .~,?z?.Y. L... _. _x.., _ ?T._ ._.. -_z_-.TI1^- ZO-Minute Workout, For I will not gloat peninsulas and beaches yet to be tmd: won’t speculate beyond that. There will so much over my own accomplishments Terminal Beach. Half-Island Point. Rat nq doubt be new challenges to be met But that I am un\viUiag to take wholehearted Rock, and later Panty Head. Cixkscomb by then I will have wrestled with matuity pleasure in watching another exalting in Point, Ingonish, Merigomish, Tatama- and wiU Feel, 89 other adventurers beFore the accomplishments of the body. gauche. And one day, arriving back at the me, that discretion is truly tbe better part I dream of the coast ahead, the exotic mouth of the Laweacetown River. I of valour. - l.*Lw CnovcB

It’s its when it is possessive, and it’s it’s when it is is contracted, ahight? When there are two its, it’s them l3y Bob Blaokbum

HESIMPLESTTHING one might ask marian who once wrote a memorable dehite pronouns). It doesn’t hurt 10 bear a writer to remimber is that its is diatribe about Cole Porter’s lyrics, par- in mind that the smallness of apostrophes the possessive and it’s is the con- ticularly the line From IVlght and Day. does not justify squandering them. They traction of it iF, yet tbis is probably “I’ve got you under the hide of me.“) should not be used, either, to form the most common error in written An editor of my acquaintance reports plurals, save to avoid confusion. This I English. an increase in the use of cmyonc For rrny decade, For example, is the 198lk, not the There are similar ones. Readers one. as in crl crnyone moment; of awhile 1980’s. Were the dream of some of this magazine send me many For (I while, as in awhile ergo; or ~~nymcwe bureaucrats to be realized we would have clippings, usually From major (thcze is no such word); and, God help another CBC. Then there would be two newspapers and magtines, with us, of&t For II lot. which I tind hard to CBCs, not two CBC’s. circles drawn around her’s or believe, even today. There is an interesting problem in the E tlrelr’sorthelike. (I have yet tosee Most of these errors and confusions world of computers, wherein we Find the a hi’s.) could be avoided by applying common very common term DOS. DOS, pro- - As a young reporter, I worked For some seqse. A homicide detective or a madam nounced damp. ia au acronym for disk time at a desk adjacent to that of an expe- would understand the diffexwwe between opaadng system. The plural is DO& bat rienced witer who held an honours anybody and crny ba@ or somebody and since many computer programs in some degree in English and For whom I had some body; why c&t a reporter make the circumstances change everylhing to upper great respect and liking, despite her same distinction, and why can’t we get case, no matter what you type. those who lifelong inability to grasp the distinction across to the writers who nowadays tend uses the beasts often write DCJSRS as the between the possessive your and the con- plural, despite the unsavory connotation. traction you’re. 1 didn’t realize then that Since doss is a word (albeit not one that I would spend the rest of my life bump- is on ewrycme’s lips nowadays). it would ing into what I still consider an inexpli~ be inapproprate to use DOSS For the able blind spot. plural oFDO.9. In this case, DOSS might Contractions, of course, have no place be permissible. But what happens if you in written English, or so I’ve been told by are compariw several such systems? some readers of this column. They do Should you rr.Fer to these DOSS’S advan- Sam to be at the root of many problems taga over other DOS’S? I think not; that might dismay the inventor of the rather you should thank God for of. apostrophe, who doubtless had only the IF you are a signpainter. you should best of intentions. They can be blamed heed Fowler’s admonition: “To insert an For the loss of the shull/will distincfion. apostrophe in the plural of an ordinary (AFter all, who would Fret about whether noun is a Fatuous vulgmism.” You to write she shall or she will whm she should, however, dot your i’s and cross could simply, write she’ll and be your t’J and mind your p’s and qk unassailable?) Finally, if you are an etymological There are more problems with contra purist, you will pronounce apostmphe tions. Then is the infammis abight. What (when referring to the punctwtion mark, do you say to someone who asks why, if and not to the fwre of speech) with only it is all right to write abwdy, it is not all to leave the apostrophe out of can’t that three syllables, but you will also Feel right to write alright. You will get cant is a word? z lonely. It is alright to use Four, any nowhere trying to explain that all ready It is not neceswy 10 memorize a lot of does not have the ssme meaning as rules to know that it is not unusual to ubwdy and that there is not, and there Form the plural of pronouns by adding HERE IS A Footnote. I place little Faith in need not be, such a word as alright. A s, so an apostrophe is not necessary to in- computer spelbng checkers, but I paid possible response to such a lecture might dicate the possessive. The plural of it is quite a bit For one, SO I run stuff through be a Runyonesque “wright. awready.” not its; it’s them, and so on (but one must it. I just did, and it accepted alright (Despite tbe way his chars- spoke, stand one’s ground on the use of the without a whimper. That’s what we’re up Damon Runyon was an astute gram- apostrophe 10 form the possessive OF in- agablst. 0

-_-ly --~. . . -.- _.- -_---_._. -- A. _-i, ‘,.. ..:: .I

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.-.--- .~_ ._ .._- __.^_._ --- .--_-----1- - . Though never entirely free of ‘the volcano inside me,’ Roger Caron has transformed himself from a violent criminal Into a novelist By John Goddard maa smmrw 24 years in jaiI, Trudeau with his arm in a sling and a caption saying he’d fallm Roger Camn moved into an apart- off his trampoline. I felt kind of guilty. I imagined a Rash of sunlighr from my tclescopc blina him, makiog bim fall.” A ‘~$$ezez~Y&~~~ When Camn told the anecdote to an informal meetIag of v the two buildings. but with a high- plots of bltenlational intrig& &Id political &sassination: They powered telescope propped oil his implored Camn to build a book around the incident, surdins nbltb-tloor balcony, Camn could him home with a contmct, a 815,000 advance, and a working easily pen over a line of trees into title: The Te/e~~otoMw&s. The book is to be published this the Prime minister’s backyard. fall. “I used to watch Margaret “It’s turned into a poignant love story,” says Caron, sittbu 1 Trudeau come by on Friday after- at his round dining-room table iii the ocw, iiiculate, two- noons to pick up the kids,” says Carcm. storey house he now rents in HuU’s west end. He has eschewed who during that period of the early 1980s the intemationalG&goe angle to write of a young mao driven was also becoming one of Canada’s best- by hardship and tragedy to a desperate attempt at revenge.. The sellbIg awhors. “1 almost never saw book now is caUed JoJo, a classic Caron title to adassii Caron Pi&c, but one day I saw some activity tale. His last bwk was Bingo?, published by Methua two years in the backyard and went to my teksco~. ago - a harrowing yet strangely touching account of the 1971 Therehewas-PierreTmdeauioared prisoners’ riot at -toa Penitentiary. Hi first book was Oo- gym suit, bouncing up and down on the Boy1 (McGraw-Hill Ryerson), a horrific yet deeply slining trampoline with two kids. The next day, cbmnicle of his life as a compulsively violent abninal. Cr+Boyl a picture appeared in the paper showing . became a literary sensation, winning the Govemm General’s RLwerQu Award for non-fiction in 1978 and selling more than 500,000 copies in Caoa a and Britabx Camn descn.%es JoJo, his maio cbmacler in the new book, as “a victim of cimomstance: very quiet, very likable - not a crvbabv or a miveller.” The sketch fits Camn himself. I-k is a ion& almost a recluse, confining himself to a kind of house anest so ~nottoamuse what becalls “tbevolca.uo time.” But he cao psych himself into being a charming host, and OII this wticular afternoon be talks euagb&-- -_ for four hours with lit& prodding. He sits erec4 with bis arms folded on the table, ao exceed- @gIy bandsome man at 49, with thick silvery bait cropped short over a well-proportioned skull. He is of medium height and weight, but has a welldeveloped build from pumping barbells four nights a week at the Ottawa Athletic club. “I’m an extremely, compulsively organized individual,” he says. He doesn’t ti or smoke, but confesses to a coffee addiction that feedshisakwdyhup~acdvemetabolism. Bverysooftenheris& to pour another cup or put on a fresh pot at the otherwise bare counter of his spotless kitchen. His face, in repose, is open and boyish But when he con- centrated to make a point, his pale green eyes focus so intently they appear capable of penetrating walls. He seldom laughs, except wha telliog~okea on himself about not fitting the norm. “My track record for missiog deadlines is well-known, so Methoen is paying me .%?,SOO every rime I hand io two cbaptaa.” Tbe Iaugb that follows is good-humowed but not relaxed or resonant. After 4Oyean of almost uimaginable pain and suffering, Camn keeps himself reined in. “I never want to forget I’m a grade-six dropoaf. an ex4on on parole.” he says firmly but without apparent bittemms. (He has bceo out of jail almost nine years. with a little more than a year of parole left.) “I koow that the momeot I figweG’m sanebody special, the moment I start carrying a briefcase or

.-. ._.__-__ .,.._ X__..__C. . . ~.,_-~1-~=_-_- -... ~- .-_-.-.~_~-L------,=c .-~-_. _r -. smokllg a pipe like Peler C. Newman, that’s the moment the sporting-goods store and landed in jail, beginning a 24-year rug will be pulled out fmm under me and I’ll be back in the career as a hard-core can. He escaped custody six times in 13 slanmer. So if somebody holds two hands out to me and says, attenwts, and was officially r&used five tbnes. But his periods ‘Here, Roger, take these piti, I’ll say, ‘No, thank you. just outslde were alwar brief, usually ending in violence, robbery, a little bit, please,’ and I’U pick out just a little. I don’t ask and rearrest. a heck of a lot out of Life.” Caron rays he has nevu murdered anybody - his convl~ The table is quivering. It begins to quiver whenever Cam” tions were for robberies and jallbrraks - but he WBS castandy becomes partludarly intent on what he is saying. He was brawling. When two guards caught hold of hbn on his fvst diagnosed a par ago as having Parkinson’s disease, a escape attempt, Cam” exploded. “With a bellow of rage I degenerative illness that is affecting his left side, producing a kicked [one] guard in the beUy a”d watched with satisfactio” tremor in his arm when he gets mdted. Pinning his left mm as he sagged slowly to the 8round,” he wita in Go-Boy! under his right to hide the shakl”g only cases the entire table “Another violent lurch left the second guard with “othl”g but to tranble. “I had trouble accepting that I had Parkinson’s at a handful of hair.” He took on mybody, including the biggest fit.” Caron says. “People tell me. ‘You’ve climbed your brotes, somabnes two or three at a time. mountain, you’ve paid your pound of flesh. you’ve got all your Once. in Montreal, he pummelled hw thugs at a friaul’s tortures and nighunare~ behind you. Now go out and a&joy 8fc.’ apnrtment. “Blood was stream& dorm the face of the guy at The” all of a sudden I get a” incurable d&ease.” myfenandIwasgoingtoeaceupo”himwhe”Ieaughthim reaching into his coat pocket1 I kicked hbn oo the side of the refusing-to feel sorry for h&.lf, nfo&g to blame anybody, temple and the mncussion caused one of his eyes to pop out and by slubbomly looking for something to be thankful for. of the socket and dangle on his cheek1 I” an ww”tmUable m8e “MY family has a hlstory of heart disease and cmcer,” he says. I grabbed him by his hair and hauled him scremni”g to his feet “but a survey in the States found that people with Parkinson’s while reaching with my other hand for a gin bottle to clobber almost “ever get heart attacks or cancer. So in a sense I’m with him.” lucky.” Cam” took his own lumps, too, calculating he ha0 been mended with more than 2.000 stitches. The more he fooght, I(OOUI CARON WAS born into a large, impoverished, hot the more tortured he becamd - “a mass of inner hostility, a tempered family living “art to the railway tracks in Cornwall, bubbling volcano full of bewildering emotions.” Ont. “Prom an early age,” he wita in Go-Boy/, “I had a feel- ing that I was unwelcome.” His father had owned a bakery in MAX? PEOPLE old enough to remember the assassination of Northern Ontario, but moved with his 10 children after his wife U.S. President John F. Keooedy, on November 22,1983, also died and the bakery went bmkmpt. Roger was the first of three remanba what they were doing when they heard the “ews. children fmm a second marlage, his boyhood world almost Caron was hunched over a toilet bowl in the solitary- void of compassion. His father became a bootlegger and an confinement block of Kingston Peditentlary. He was serving alcohoh his mother war a compulsivelytidy housekeeper. They two years in solitary, keeping up to date by scoopi the water fought constantly. Shadowy apparltlons filled Caron’s dreams. from his toilet bowl at night and talking thmogh the sewer pipes reaching through the bars of his crib to awaken him in terror. to convicts sent down for short terms. With three resonatiog “By the time I was 1 I years old I was diff mt from most hits of the faucet button OIL the sink, a” inmate could sumno” kids my age,” Cam” writes. “Apart from%. an8 sollcy’and others to the “patty Line..” Cam” remembers the dialogue om rebellious. I was a loner.” He tore recklessly around NVA. night going somethl”8 like this: getting into trouble and bringing punishment on himself. His “Hey, I&. who c&m in?” father beat him, his half-brothers beat him: even the local priest “Me, Jack.” boxed his ears. Cars ran into him, horses knocked him down, “Jack who?” and east-end bulllcs blackened his eyes. Once he stole the town’s “Jack from the machbw shop.” Victoria Day fireworks and blew himself through the air while “Oh yeah how ya doi”‘?” trylog to light than. “Tl&av& - days on bread and water for lnsolmce.” Rejected by the human world, Cam” made friends with “Yeah, well, what’s happening7” animals. He had a pet alley& nained Tiger. a scrapper that “Well. did you guys hear that Kennedy was just would stand up to my dog. .“I believed we could acNaUy corn- assassi”ated7” municate thmu8h mental vibrations,” Caro” writes. He tamed “What? You’re kidding. The president?” hawks, raccoons, groundhogs, and squirrels, oRen bringing Camn wa? at o”e of his loww ebbs, entombed in a concrete them to school under his jacket or on a leash. He loved to fish. cell with a steel door, o”e of 20 such czlls in the block. “I “early His favoorlte spot was at the foot of a precipice near the power went baoanas,” he recaUs, his left arm shaI& the table. “My station, where the water was wild and the fish uwe giant-sized. past was a dark abyss full of nightmares, and I had nothing Fishing trips with his father o” the St.. Lawre”ce River are to look forward to.” That Christ”ms. when a “wnber of the among his few happy family memories. “Even when the f& Salvation Army gave him a bag of jellybeans. Cam” used them weren’t biting, there was “ever a dull moment with lots of good- to spell swear words on the floor to enrage the guards. The humoured talk, beer. and cigars,” he writes. “I Uked it best guards snatched @jellybeans away, but the r&ode got Cam” when it got dark and the bonfirca were set, their light illu- thinking about the power of words. minating all the bamboo poles rest& oo forked sticks, white At 18 he had become a voracious reader - everything from corks bobbing gently in the breeze. . . .” the adventures of Sir Edmund HiUary to psychic phenomena Fishing is still important to him. Regularly from March to - and now he started writing. He acqoired a pm.4 and scrlb- September. he ties his fold-up fLlhing md to the crossbar of bier, and wrote for the next 12 years while moving from prison his bicycle and heads off to secluded spots he knows around N prison as “the most unwanted prisoner in the axmtry.” At Hull and the Ottawa V&y. Sometimes he drives to a camp- one point the manusmipt totalled 1,800 typed pages. Perhaps site “ear tin, Ont.. where he rents a boat and spmds entire predictably, publishax gasped at the sight of it and replied with rejection slips. he %d-&lll “One pubUsher wrote back and said they almost went for to land that really big one.” it, but it was too big a risk because nobody knows me. They W-he” Caron was I6 he tripped a” alann while burgling a said if I was Peter Demeta [the Mlsslssaoga buslnessm aown-

-. .~_. __ A __-.--_--.. .~ .-. _.~ _-_.-_..^_____ .- - _I_.. . . _ ~__~.~_ ~._~ _~_~ _ _~. . . ..-. - - .._ ._ _..-- -.--. vlcted of having his wife murdered in their garage1 they would purge them by writing an eccoum of the brutal riot he. had publish it, because people know the name. S O I read this and witnessed while he wes en inmate at Kingston. For weeks dw- walked into the cell next door and said, ‘Hey, Peter, they say ing the sprlw of 1971 tension had been building among the if I wes you, they’d publish me.’ Peter Demeter. at the time, prisoners over fears of being transferred to Millbwea. a new wes my next-door neighbow” maximum-security prison rumowed to be ma with inhumao. Cama kept wnitlng, and smding tbe book back out. Finally, mccbanired efficiency. On the evening of April 14, two days McGraw-Hill Ryeawn took it in 1576, assignbig editor Bllzabetb after Cama’s 33rd birthday. a convict named Bll Knight Hemswortb to cut the manuscript from 900 pages Lo 300. Pierre punched s guard in the stomach after the guard cudeied Knight Berton wete a three-page introduction, saying that I’. . . this to tuck in his shirt. The outburst was planned. Knight end five co-conspirators took six guards hostage and set off B riot or. in prison argot. bingo. Winning the Governor General’s Award Over the suaeeding four days. conditions in the prison was like a homecoming - as if the public deteriorated steadily es the prisoners’ most primitive instincts took hold, leading to a klad of real-life playing out of Lord were saying, ‘For 24 years in the name of the Flier. “Every how cm the bow,” Q.ron mites in Blngol. of reliabilitation we did an awful lot of “the riot leaders would gather waybody up to the railingr fronting our cells aad the circular dome end get us to pound horrible things to you, and now we’re even’ out a rhythmic tattoo. The eerie sound brought a chill te my spine es hundreds of grba-faced convicts beat louder and louder document by a multi-time loser is far and away the best Iprison until the grey fortress quivered in tcrmr.” A group of story] 1 have yet encountered.” Go-Boy! hit the book stores psychopaths eventually uwsted the lcadershlp from Bii Knight in April, 1978, ea a modest run of 4,000 topics and quickly and dragged out 14 rapists, child molesters, and informers to sold out. be tortured. “The bloody clbnax was so primitive that it left The book’s appealtierives mainly from its straightforward, even the most hardened criminal gasping in awestricken guileless narrator, who engages the reader’s sympatbice while horror.” making almost unimaginable brutality comprehensible. It won Bingo! presented new miring challengea td Camn. When the country’s top literary prize. “Winning tbe Governor friends broke him out of his cell the night the riot started, he Geaeral’s Award was like s Canadian homecoming,” Camn immediately destroyed the electric belithat regulated the la- says. “It wes es if the Canadian public were s&g, ‘Roger, mates’ hours, then attacked a central lockin8 mechanism to free for 24 yeen you did an awful lot of bad things to.us, and for remaining prisoners. But for much of the time. he wes off try- 24 years in the name of rehabilitation we did an awful lot of ins u) fmd coffee to feed his caffeine craving, away fmm the horrific things to you, and now we’re even.’ ” eenrreoftheaetion.TopMentthcMlstory,behadtodoexten- After his release to a half-way house in late 1978, C&on still sivc research, gathering baprwsions fmm’other witncsscs and “had a lot of nighrmares to get rid of,” and thought he wuld sifting through news clippings and gwemment docuawats. He felt eaonaous pressure after the sucuxs of Go-Boy! to prove be wes not just a oaeshot miter. But the worst pert was facbu the horror of the riot asain. He thought he could knock the book off in a year; it took five. ylmx %O-II9 “1 didn’t have writer’s block -I just didn’t want U, face it,” he says. “Late at night, I would climb the stairs to my bedroom -I called it my torture chamba - then I’d tam on the light over my typewriter and sit down in the chair, and I’d become like a medium, as if I were looking into a crystal bell, and I would go right back into that hell.” B/n.@ became a popular and crltlcal success, B pewerfal story that could only have been written by an insider - an insider 10 Days bf with Camn’s streigbtfmward story-telling ability. It lacks some cultural Events of the urgency and focus of Go-Boyf and will never match Go- Boy!3 sales, but Bingo! was cm the national best-sell= lists for 0 Art shows 0 Outdoor several weeks after its release in the fell of 1985 and conthaw Pelf01man~ 0 cxxmlts to se.8 well. Both books are required reading in crimiaelogy and 0 Theatie 0 Workshops sociology wurscs across the country. - featuring - CAKINKE~~~S tit copies of bis books, in hardcover and soft- A czud&Ml IN&x8 JPr@0gli%n cover, English and French, behvccn hand-shaped ivory bookends on a shelf in his livlag-mom. For him, the hewIs cup Writer in Residence AL PURDY piw the books symbolize the pack&g of his past into manageeble units. Wrltbu his books was a kind of psycho- and readings ly therapy, bis way of transforming hbnself fmm a violent aimiual 0 Brian Doyle to a contrlbutl~ member of society. 0 John Gray With bis autoblographlcal writing behind him, he has turned 0 Leona Gom 0 lbm Wayman to fiction. He ao~ thbsks of himself es a professional writer, his entire life revolving around the completion of JoJo. A noo turd type. he rises emund 3:00 p.m., showas, makes himself tooart and coffee, end returns phone calls fmm bis answaioe Box 399, Harrison Hot Springs, B.C. machine. Then he sits down with a felt pea and not-d at bis VOM 1KO (604) 796-9851 dining-mom table to write. pinning his trembling arm between the table and his chest. Every 10 lines or so, he runs upstairs to the typewriter, punching out what he has written with tbe lodes fw of his good hand. At 8~30 p.m., four nights a week. he drives to the Ottawa Athletic CLub, lifts barbells fmm 9~00 to 11:00, plays racketball for half en hour, takes a shower and Ba~~kNews: am_i whirlpool. drives home for his one main meal of the day, often steak or egg& then writes from 1:00 a.m. until bedtlme at 7:00 a.m., tilling a quota of 750 words a day. In the novel he is writing, JoJo is a half-breed Indian, the prodact of a rape. He and a black boy named Wiokie are adopted by a farmer named Hector in Wichita, Kansas, who works them to the bone until the boys born down the farm aad end up io the state reformatory. Alker further tragedies sad a tender love affair with en Americao girl, JoJo makes his way to Ottawa to masider political essasslnetion. Camn expects to ftih the book soon and plans tbls summer to beglo a second novel, to be called Dreumcaper, “about ao old-time coo who goes after that one big score that would put him on Easy Street for the rest of his life.” Both stories are psrtielly set io the United States - an attempt to break into Harvard the U.S. market, Caron says. No U.S. pobllsher or distributor took an interest in Go-Boy! or B&o! “To the Americans, I’ve been strictly Canadiana.” University Camn sigoed a contract for Drenmmper wvith’Methum in March, happy to have another book to look forward to. His Press one outstamiiog regret seems to be so inability to get close to 79 Garden St. someone. “The thlog I missed the most while in prison was the exqoislte pleasure of hokliag a womao in my arms,” he writes Cambridge, MA02138 in the introduction to Bingo/ “Upon my rcleese I made up for lost time, end on each occasion I felt like falling to my kneu sod thanking God for having created such a wonderful part- ser. But all my solitary years in the prison system have created barriers that no one has been able to koock down, sad I’ve stayed aloof fmm marlage.” The Story of W88sm But even in love he is making progress. he says. He has had Blsck Lesder aad Mu a steady relationship for the past year and a half with Janet By stepha L. Hubbar Morris, a vlvmious woman originally fmm Kent, England, who works BS a medical secretary io Ottawa. She is separated with A biography of Tcmoto’s 1 7-‘~~;;;~~t 7 two sons and. aL 46, much older than the women Caron usually fkst Black politic* ,‘b,,f!i fancies. adetemdeedaamicipal I--+?.-- .,__. “He did a real chat-up job, he did,” Morris says of the fghter. i --zL moment she met,Camn. “I couldn’t believe it.” They met at ..-.L.” ao autograph sigalng for Bingo! at a small shopping plaza in HazeMcao, outside Ottawa. Morris stood lo line with 238 other people, and when she got to the fmnt Camn started talldog to her. “I muldn’t believe he’d chat me up io a queue in front . of - how maay people?” “IL was really romaatic,” Caron says. “He looked to see if I had a ring on.” “We hit it off really well.” Morris is a body-builder too, end goes twice a week with Caron to lifi weights and play him at racketball. She sometimes gets him out to movies and restaurants, and they go fishing together. And she helps Caron develop bls story plots. “She gives reaUy good advice,” Camn says. “We hemmered out an outline for Dreamcaper together in five days.” Morris says Camn will probably always need more privacy than most people, but they have talked about sharing a thrw Jocalyne Kidston storey townhouse. Camn could live lo e self-contalaed unit downstairs and come up to her and the boys wheo he’s fesliog a seasonal cookbook for all seasons roclable. The main thing to be sorted out, she says, is that “Roger Iovu womeo and v&men love Roger. I gst very jealous ISBN 0 920806 82 1 80 pages $9.95 when we go to a public meetiog and the women fa8 all over ~erlox bound; illustrated by Susan Gamble him.Theygrabhimandlrisshim-~theyallwantu,touehhim.” Women flock around Csmn because they have read Go-Boy/ and been moved by it, Morris says. “I cried over it when I read it, long before I koew him. After you’ve read it, you feel you know him, evea though you don’t. Theo you look at him and think about eveything that’s happened to him. He seems so vulnerable and hurt. He’s a little boy. And yet he’s strong sad masterful. He’s everything. He touches your heart.” 0 - Is CanLit too regional? Not regional enough? And ‘ust who are the country’s best writers? Some comments 1mm our readen on the state of the art

HomYc”R favourite Canadian miters? What’s right For example. Pierre Berton, MaK Cohen, Irvia# Layton, and - or wrong - with Csasdim literaturr today? When Farley Mowat. we posed these questions to 25 of the country’s writers, Many readers merely listed their Favourites, while others of- in the January-February issue of Books in Canada, we Feted commeats on the previous swveyaadtbestateoFthearts also asked our readers to give thheir commen taoncanLit. in general. Their opinions were every hit as conlndictory as Their replks, as olle IDi@ have guessed. were as dtversc the excerpts that appear below: as the cities and towns from wbicb they. malled them. CanLit is too regional. CanLit isn’t regional enough. WHEN I WAS in high school, over 10 years ago, I heard nothi~ Canlit is too-well, toqthadian. About the only sub- about Canadian literature. University was little hater: I took ject on which our readers seemed to agree was the Federal one CanLit course because I had to. to get my degree. One .govemment’s apparent imlifferea~ to our culture, tbougb survey course taught without any flair did not tit3 in me any even here one reader commented, “As Ione as you can appreciation for OUT writers. over the years. ho-. I have scrape by without a microwave and an annual tropical vaca- read Canadian fiction and poetry on my own, and have come tion, you call tap away at your word-pmcasor secure in the to admire and eqioy it, not because OF any cultural relevaace knowledge that wmhnlly some state-funded publisher will bind it may have, but because it L a fm and excitb~ litemtwe.. Caaa- your wisdom in book Form.” dian writers are finally beginning to gamer the iatematkmal But by far the greatest range OF opinions lay among our recognition they deserve. How ironic that at this point in our readers’ choice of favourite \witers - a list of close to 100 lKeratur& development we once again have to defend it agabnt names. No surprise that five-Alice Mumo, Margaret Atwood, the neglea and indiFFereace of an tmsupponi~e govemmentl Timothy Pi, Robertson Davies, and Msrwet Laurence - Deirdre A. Laidlaw. West Hill. Ont. such other writers as Edna Alford, Joan Barfoot. CANADIAN PIC~ON has, over the last 10 years or so, begun to Johnston, Veronica Ross, Dennis T. Patrick Sears, Gertrude bore me.. Aside from the Fmnt rank of our fiction writers - story, and Mema summers aurankedhighpiapthan, Davies, Richter. Atwood - the vast majority have notig ori@nal to say, and express their tired ideas in peduitrian language. who wants to read another novel about a sensitive, middle-class woman strug@b~ with love and self-identity? Who needs another book about a witty university professor fighting with other Faculty members and bedding graduaic students7 The problem, of course, is that middle-dw Canadians - and middlaclass Canadian writers - lead uniformly Iux- urious and outwady minter- Wing lives. I suppose this is a meat accomplishment of xlth- century Western society, but almost anyone who wants to be awritanowcanafFordtocaU bimsdF or herself one. As long as ~0” caa scrape by without a microwave and an annual tropical vacation. you can tap away at your word-pmcesmr secure ia the knowledge that ev~tually some state-funded publisher wiU bid your wisdom in book form and that you will be reco&nized m a valued con- tributor to Camdian letters. Granted, this a!mosphere en- mingle with that of the world, and gamer a greater sense of courages the tlowlsbiog of literature, some of it worthwhile, pride from the accaladu of readers impressed with the wrl@ but most of it unspeakably mediocre. and not its geographic antecedents. - Morley Walker. Winnipeg The Canadian lite+ure I’ve read tbis winter has found shelf space with works by writers from South America, IN THE 15 years since I’ve been b&k in Canada. Canadian czechoslovakia, the united states, Great Britain, Switzerland, writlog has undergone a rwolwion, at least in my awareness Gemway. and Africa. Granted that locale affects some of the of it. GUI present buninaries were. in 1971, just beginning to what and how in writing, Caoadiao perspective is not bmateIy shine. In the years since, there has been a steady increase in interesting (nor are the ofher nationalities I’ve mentioned). It brillianoe, to the point where I see oew lights in practiwlly every is the writer’s ability that makes the work sparkle, or not. field of wiring - history, biography. ecomnni~, as well as - Yvomte Callaway, Montreal fiction and drama. My impression is that, on the whole., Cana- diao literature is dolog quite well. in spite of the tough economics of the business. Canadian authora beau& they se& to he more relevant to me, I do think that continued government support of Camdian and they appeal to me emotionally. Tlley give me a sense of publlsblog, whether it bs tbrougb tax relief or outright subsidy, belonging to Canada as a political, territorial, and cultural en- ls necessary. Young writers should be enm through in- tity. Even when they are exploring and dealing with “on- creased public support. Perhaps there sbou l!?dbe more publicly Canadian themes. Canadian authors do so in a unique man- sponsored competitions. Certainly there should be an apan- ner, which appeals to me more tbao, say, the writing of the ma- sion of writers’ granrp thmogb the Canada Council. Coltwe jority of British and American authora. costs money, but I can’t help but believe that it is a sound in- - K.J. Cottam, Nepean, Out. ve!xmmt. - James B. Clark, Wallace. N.S. 0”~ 810 PROBLEM 1s that our writers do not get recognized at home. So&led Canadian aiticc are too q&k to pot down their THE PEOPLE’S GUMSleE own. Witness the recent acceptance of CaImdiao writers in the United Stated and Britain. Robertson Davies, Margaret Ahwod, wio ABE CANADA’S most popular writers? Though our I-h& MacLcnnan, and AIice Monm have all received outstaod- maden listed close to 100 names - from LM. Monlgomery ins AmeIica and/or British recognition ill the last few months. to W.D. Valgardson, fmm B. Pauline Johnson to Paulette - Michael 0. Nowlao, Ommocto. N.B. Jlla -those they mentioned most freqoeotly all happen to wite fiction (though Margaret Atwood was also mention- A MAJORITY oe Americaos have oever heard of Davies or Met- ed, less frequently, as a poet). Accordiog to our studiously calf or Mumo. and some have not heard of Atwood or unscientiFic survey, here are the top 10 choices (an asterisk Laurence. This Friebteos me. Canadian literature needp to tmo- indicatea a tie): read&. The Focus of CanLit is too internal. The labmth of 1. Alice.Munro 6. Mavia Gallaote homan-reality needs to be remgnized now. more than wer. The 2. Margaret Atwood Janette Tomer Hospital* Mordecal Richler’ eyes of tbe literary world are.&~on us; &I words need to be 3. Timothy FmdIey recognized and acknowled.wd as deFinitlve literature and not 4. Robertson Davies8 9. MtianEngel’ liter&e that is seeking todefiie itself and its people thmugb Margaret Laurence* AudreyTbomas’ an open space. - John P. D&am, Windsor. Ont.

TV IS A shame that more Canadian witiog is not available here OUR oOVERwEN’r has an appalling’ attitude toward the arts. in the State& It seems that Canada is in its Renaissance where This no longer depress= me because quite a few people now fiction is concerned. It is tremendously exciting For me to read are aware of the fact. - Craig Barton, Montreal the writers who have emerged since the ’60s. - Caudia W&b, Wichita, K&as THERE Ls tremendous talent in Canadian literary people.. My chief criticism is their cynicism, clouded faith in people and ~T’swaoNowithcanLit?Thesamcasin~theaas:caaa- &mida’s future. We have much for which to be grate&l, much dians’ inability to appreciate tbemselw. The national habit of to praise. A large dose of optimism would be reFreshlog in a self-putdown, perhaps exacerbated by the conFosion as to what novel. some emphasis on the imperishable human spirit. Could is truly ours, because of the large amount of culture beamed it be that faith and optimism io our witers might just help turn . these troubled times around? that seems driven by gwxd and therefore piays to the lowest - Helen Iiutchlson, Napwe, Out. taste. Nor does it help that my geaeratlo~~ (I am 53) sod those not tbmYw ALIcE MuNBo ls right. We worry too much. Do you Far bebind me were never exposed to Canadian literature. when think politlclans read? I have serious doubts about that. Thank I went to school it was ne& heard of. I had to wallow around God they have removed the tariff on imported books, but what and dlsmver it For &self. Perhaps there is hope lo the younger I want to know - will this bring the plica down? genmtion, who are beii expo&d more and-more. C-&&o - Rita Bealy, Greenlllld Park. Que. studies should be compulsory. - Pat George, Toronto

IAGREBTILiTliterate Canadians have a wt deal to be proud t~~wehavesvitalanddyaamicli~eommunityinthis of in their homegrown (or imported and naturalized) writers. country, and I include alltiters -not just l%!ion and poetry but it is rather a pity that Canadaummctedness constitutea so writers. we have to give non-Fiction titers equal time - much of the claim to fame. A lot of our literature bas the csP=iallY magazine and newsoa~er writers. At the moment it strength to stand on its own and should be allowed to. The cod- seems every& thinks that if & haven’t written a book thee dliog of canadlao works simply because they we Canadian you can’t be a REAL writer. Want to bet? smacks of chawinism. Rather, allow the literature to mix and We have to spend more energy and time gettiog the literary arts to u//Cansdians - not just those who live in the cities and here are local writers, who just serve a purpose in Nova Scotia large towns. People in rural areas don’t have book stores, don’t or B.C. We need them, bat they really jut take the place of have authors giving rradingr, don’t sa miring workshops, d&t the local weekly paper.” I’ve always been so admirer of Nor- get literary~pptition courses, don’t know that CanLit exists. mao Levine’s work, but I’m very disappointed in him here_ Who The chauenge is to everyone - let’s stop tbwing up how many can blame him, though? As he says, “We need more than just differemxa we have and start thinking about how many goals publicity about new books coming out - we also need a plat- we have in common. - Sylvia Bough, Cold Lake, Alta. form. In Britain, in the course of a day the BBC will brdadcast three or four short stories.” I \‘AsDtsAppotrn6o that the writers you questioned were. for What we get in Canada is the same list of writers reviewed themost part, the same writers who are included in every swvey and interviewed over &xl over again. I’m not suggesting that of this kind. Are there not ruly writers in the Atlantic provinces they’re not worthy of this attention, but there ne many other writers who deserve attention also. I grieve to think of the fme writing all over Canada that goes unnoticed. ‘Canadian writers are too ‘regional. As poets, - Helen Porter. Mount Pearl. Nfld. novelists, and historians we desperately I TEND M agm with Dorothy Ikemy: “Too many good poets need to look beyond the borders of our own aren’t distributed properly and are not reviewed cross-country. Bvery city seems to’have its own clique. btit that’s as far as it backyards to see, appreciate, and write goes.” Cenediao writers are too regional. As poets/novelists/ about other horizons. Fences .will destroy us’ historian% we’re going to have to look beyond the borders of our own backyards to see, appreciate, and write about other whose opinions are considered valuable? I think of such pea- horizons. This wacbing out is desperately needed in Canada. pie as Susan Kerslake, Ann Copeland. Veronica Boss. Robert Fences will destroy us. Gibbs, Kent Thompson, Alistair MacLeod. Harold Honvood, - Hope Merritt, Point Edward, Oat. Donna Smytb, Janice Kelyk K&fez, Lesley Choyce, Greg Cook, Paul O’NeiU, B&bard Goal, Anne Hart, Al Pittman, Kevin TH~RE&~ much published in Canada today that there should Major, Joan Clark, Bay Guy, Wayne Johnston . . . . I could besomething for everyone. Theworst thingwrongis that since go on sad on. the cost of books is so high readers such as myself must bor- Perhaps it’s understandable that Norman Levine says “in a row fmm libraries - and feel guilty that we do not pay myeItica rrorldly sense there are only a dozen titers here - the rest equitably to the authors whose works we enjoy. are just fw the lower echelons. A lot of the people writing - Obee Benjamin, Dartmouth, N.S. % t tna THE loss of our many good writers if steps are not taken to assure that our Canadian publishers keep solvent. - Simon Liz&., Annabeim, Sesk.

JUST AS Michael Ondaatje stated, “The real writing energy is stiU with the s~pressu, with those writ&s outside the main traditions of popularity.” And this is a concern since distribu- tion of books in this vast country is a problem for any press. Writers such BP Edna Alford, published by Oolichan Books, don’t reach the college and university students 1 encounter most days. Our young readers aren’t meeting our “young” writers, because many book shoppers pick up their reading material at Safeway and United Cigar Stores with their Lean Cuisine and Loto ticke%s. - Darlene Quaife. Calgary

I WROTE A book that was published, have a whole scrapbook full of good reviews, I even won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. But when people try to buy my book, they can’t f& it. My teeaage daagbters love to walk into bii chain book stores and ask, “Do yo” have soy Canadian books? Oh. good! And what shelf are they on?” Imagine walking into, say, a book store in Amsterdam and having to ask where the Dutch books are kept. I like George Woodcock’s suggestion: the Canada council’s subsidizing bookshops that carry a complete range of Canadian books. - Joan Fern Shaw, Toronto Through organ t&&ma. earl detection and txeatment and non-stop reses rcl, we’re contributing to the overall health care of all caoadtans. WHAT’S WRONO with Camdian literature today are statements MS keep it going please g@e generously. by authors like Aliee Memo who, on being qwxioned on the state of CanLit. replied: “I never think about things like that, and consider it a waste of time for a writer to do so.” Apathy for the state of one% professional milieu is pitiful. What else is wrong? New writers aren’t being promoted to the public enough. I doubt that many book stores carry Wayne Johnston’s The S&my of Bobby O’MaUey, and pmbably no &e asks for the book, either. That’s what’s wong with the state of CanLit today. - Mat&o Obakata, London, Oat. 0 F.R. Scott’s commentary still seems relevant because his notion ot socialism was just as misleading as the version portrayed by conservatives today By Leo Panitch A New Endewour: Selected Political vote. A 1942 address by Scott to bank- here confirm Canadian social Essays, Letlers and Add-, by P.R. workers trying to organize serves to put democracy’s deep dependence on British Scptt, edited by Michiel Horn, Univusity ihis ne!vs in perspcctin: Fabianism (“even Canadian ladi& have of Toronto Press. 144 pages, $27.50 cloth Cammucbd corpmations . enable their imperialist connections,” Scott (ISBN 0 8020 5672 5) and 512.95 paper groups of capitalists to act mUEctively bhnself once said). and they reflect the (ISBN 0 8020 6603 8). together through z@ents of their own poverty of theory that .tradition &x&g. That is exactly what trade represents. unions do for Chek workers. . Wba IS IT A mmu’m to the late Frank Scott’s The central theme in all of Scott’s I see all the fuss and barher that is made political wilings, including tbe earliest, perspicaciousness that his political about unions by me” who are more hi& organiredtbananyunioncmh~tibe. contains the erroneous notion that the tary on the current political scene? Or is I cannot help vmnda aL the blindness expansion of the state’s management of of those who are taken in by such a capitalist economy represented the society &an Frank Scott hi&elf even- talk.. . You may have fo stand Fast gradwl advance of socialism. Scott cer- rually came to think? Either way, as I set against attack; if so, remember that tainly played a key role in enunciating aside tbe morning newspaper to read a others have done so and have won such a cramped and misleading vision of book of essays and speecba by Canada’s through. socialism for fhe League for Social most celebrated social democratic intellec- The newspaper brought the news that Reconsbuction and the CCP. lual, I was struck by their topic&y - the govemmenl was about to renew its In this way, he may have inadvertent- even though almost all of them were cruise missile testing agreement with the ly contributed to the popular confusion written between 1930 and 1960. United States. A letter from Scott to that lies at the heart of the %nnmon The newspaper bmugbt the new of the David Lewis in 1959 also puts this news saw” notion, so effectively played on by growing stench of corruption in the in perspective: loday’s neo-conservatives, thaUbe prob- Mukoney government. An essay by Scott SwelyLhepla&factistbatCanadaisnor leans with the bureaucratic statism in con- fust published in Queen’s Quurf& in adding fO her own ddencs. but only fo temporary capitalist societies have 1935 puts that corruption in rare intemational tensions, by her prexnt somehow Lo do with “too much social- perspective.: subrrviau IO Anledapolicy....ro ism” rather than with the fact that the beablc to retallateyuu must kapwrself socialist vision of democratic control of . . .tbaebmuchdisboneatysummn~ in a pcrmanem position of menace [o the the administration of government in the economy was never embodied in the enemy,Mdthisweca~otrndihouldnot welfare state. Cuda. No one wmdd deny it. . . . IBurl attempt to do. Only by letting ourselves CapItali.m~hasshownitseiftoLxinfected become a bare for America short-raw Scott no doubt hoped that by asso- with a greater dwee of mft than bar missilea can we be mena&&. . We ciating socialism with wartime planuing, wu been disclosed in govemment under- musaleclareourp4icytobetbatwe.mke crown corporations, and limited social takings.. . . Tbecormptionofcapitalism no parI in prepnredws for atomic war, reforms, Ihe CCF would be seen ti less is sys~emlc. that is, part of its normal ebhw by w o/ allack or d&em-e. radical and more dc.ctomUy viable. As working. whew that of wvemment &cause there is no ddence. bodies is individual and spasmodic..It is early as 1937, he wrote to David Lewis normal for capkalis! ~corporations to In the light of the sociaiisr inspiration that the CCF had to make alliances with wterstocksothatprolitsare~iuta and lnsiiht that the above quotations “tbc near Ii&L” Smtt SIiu retahd in the ditidendr instead of biir wages, lower early 1940s enough of a commitment to casts for articles. or improved seniec for tbe social ownership of the main mans the public. . . . And capitalism is dimcdy of production to reveal on occasion the campted by bribery wbicb takes the fallacy of bls own argument, such as foml of commissions 0” contraas and when he admitted that even the extensive sales. ibe bid@ of profits, and so stale intervention during the war “is shot on. . . . Indeed, the very fact that wme of tbesepncdeaatcnotiUe.wdis thebat through with traditional idea of property proof that the etldc of c@ausm is in&- rights derived from tbe laisseafaire quate. . . . Corruption in politics lo-day period.” is mostly due to the private nmasbip of Scotl therefore recognized tbal the the ccmmic processes. Socialism. by “transition to a democratic planned eSmlnating competition and the private society is going to rendered more diffi- appropriation of pmtits. strika at the reveal, it might be thought surprising that cult because we have allowed wealth to root motive of corruption. and is indeed Micbid Ham, in his excellenl introdue accumulate fo a dangerous degree, and Ihe only mctbod of effecting a cure. tion to this book, insists that Scort could fmm the owners of that wealth are bound The newspaper informed me tbal the not be considered a “theorist of to come most of the ideas and inflwnce Eaton’s \vorkers’ attempt to unionize had socialism.” Yet Horn ls mainly correct opposed to rhe change we must ended in an ignominious deceaification in his assessment. The writings collected undergo.” But even then he could nol Set

! , -__1_I___. . _ ___,__.__-. i _.._i_ _ ..__~_- ._~.- -_ past the notion that this was simply a mat- merely to ducribc our existily societies. making her the victim in a domestic ter of %mning two systems side by side where a limited politIcal freedom arug- morality play. In these stories the sexer for the moment,” rather than under- EJES in the midst of economic dictator- are profoundly estranged, rather thah at standing that the Canadian state as it WBP ship. . . we must espand our present war. In the title story, one of the bat, the freedom to inelude economic and social narrator is the son of one of two mlddle- (and rem&s) stmchnd was inherently democracy. . This is what is now freb a capitalist state. Even such planoing and lag men’s bents and minds for the for- aged friends whose quest for love and welfare reforms as it evolved were ward march, and is &kg them a d&c- meaning puzzl*~ and fascinates him. Mar- developed in a manner that preserved lion and a goal.. . The democratic ray’s acute observation of Emily and socialist society must replace the Catherine shows them at times foolish of \vealtb and power in Canada. rapacious system of monopoly and dogged, yet also conveys the vitality Scott and the CCF further tempered eapitausm. . we haw our chance now that draws the boy to their world, rather their aocidism in the post-war period, tid in Canada. Let us arise and take it. than the drab limbo to which their they fell in, moreover, with the Cokl War Stirring stufr; but, unfortunately, not discarded husbands and lovers have been representation of American imperialism the stuff that by any stretch of the consigned. as the embodiment of “freedom.” Horn imaginalion can be said today to be stir- If Murray’s women suffer dislocation is no doubt right u) say of tbls that “they ring in the breasts of those who tell the snd fesr, they are usually able to seek shifted along with public opinion, and pollsters they will be voting NDP in the some escape or iUu&ation. bat her few shifted imiepcmimtly of the merits of tbe next election. For the long travail of the male characters seem pardysed. In “New case ” Scott’s anti-comm unlsmdklnotsit NDP to its torrent standing in the polls, Year’s Day” a teacher, marooned in an well’ with his earlier &fence of Com- Frank Scott most he given some of the lnMmgadalmiUtown.~bisthwarted munist agitation against persecution in credit. For the fact that virtually no one passion for a dead youth withsorrow but the early 1930s or with his growing assocls.te.5 this electoral standing any little understanding or hope, while in reputation as Canada’s foremost CivU longer with a popular stirring for fun- “The Firing” a woman. similarly Uhertatiao. Nor did this rem~tation sit well damental sodal change, he must also bear isolated, impulsively abandons hersdf to with bls defence of Pierre Trudeau’s in- some of the blame. a transfiguring sexual encounter. Two vocation of the war ~MeasureS Act in stories deseribblg the same literary soiree 1970. from the separate viewpoints of a It ls lnter&ng to see that even in his divorced couple show the man immo- advocacy of federalism against the bilized by petty rivalries and prissily seoaratlst forces in Ouebec Scott was still repelled by his ex-wife’s untidy Life and w&t to use the a&mettt that he had person. She, on the other band, emerges developed in the 1930s as regards the with the knowledge that she now can oppression of French Canada - that it leave the marriage, and a temporarily wxs not the federal system but “the By Anne Denoon consoling religious conversion, behind capitalist system” that was at the mot of her. the problem. But whereas his wiitlngs of The ldgo Dress and Other storlss# by In all her stor*s Murray evokes the early 1930s invariably provided a crisp RonaMurmy, Sono Nls, 148 pages, S9.9S nostalgia for 8 mythicauy graceful past and logical analysis of the oppressive and paper (ISBN 0 919203 37 4). threatened by the harsh reality of the pre anarchic nature of the capitalist economy. sent. In “An Old Tale” an idyllic Eden what Scott by the 1970s meant by his is invaded by an enigmatic but potentially references to “the capitalist system” (or malevolent fi. This. and l ‘Tbeofflcu to socialism) was woolly and vague. who feds herself adrift between and the Woman,” which desaihea a It is unfortunate that Scott did not live chaotic modem world and the remem- philosophical exchange between vlctbn to see the NDP’S clurcnt standing in the bered certainties of the past. In the fist and oppressor in a wnemtration camp, story, “Homecoming,” * woman arrives I found rather artlftial, and tbe least sot- he-was the;arty’d lone credible - at a newly porchased house in the city cessfid of the groop. sometimed the only audible - voice.. where she grew up. hoping’ to recapture However, when dealing with the milleo Wriring in 1934 @nst Quebec’s “thw- the order and optimism of her youth, only and sensibility she obviously knows well, Pluto-bureaucracy,” he thought a to be driven into retreat by her own fears Murray writes with clarity, intelli&nce, political miracle might he worked in and the umldy reality of the present. In and rich detail. Most important, she Canada if French-Canadian socialist the last, “A Chota Peg or Two,” the nar- accepts the often inexpressible nature of leaders ever emerged to show “how rator searches her elderly relatives’ feeling - for example in “Blessxd,” public ownership is the easiest method by manories of India for the link between where she makes believable and moving which the French canadlan may regain the imperial confidence of their world and the story of a woman. hrotauy reject& control of the natural reso- which the gmcdess existence of her own cblkken by her married lover. who travels to Car- EngUsb and American capitalists have that might dlspd her sense of being thage to relive the myth of Dido, and stolen from him.” And he promise& “If “some kind of anomaly, the in between fmds unutpectcd and inexplicable release stmt on abridge, neither one thing or the in the smile of an unknown Tunisian o?tbeCCFbmad C&adawiUirem Other.” woman. In “Marina Island” she tells with exlzitblgplaeetoUve’iu WeAngloSaxons In other stories Murray evokes the sbnpUciQ how a child’s partial under- a doll fellows beside the French when alienation of an otherwise dutiful bouse- standing of her elegsnt great- it comes to politics.” wife whose drrams engulf her in fantasla gmmimotber’s youthful passion also In 1942, with the CCF riding as high of the death of her husband and child, b&z her first awarent~s of loss and. in the polls nationally as the NDP dots and the cathartic obsession of another today, Scott produced a manifesto that woman with the mvsterioos east and Perhaps because she is a poet (this is painted the universal march for immlneot death of a recluse. htboogb her fast collection of stories) Rona blur- democracy as being on the verge of some of this material is familiar, Murray ray knows how to enhance the tr+b and “changing the viorld”: avoid cliche by mllml~ on ber pm- resonance of her work by what she leaves We no longer use the tam democracy tagonist’s interior expsriwxe, rather than unsaid. 0 Goodbye Rune is a beautiful treatment of a child’s first exoerienct? with death. Through the sensitive treatment of lnstktor Manual the author and illustrator. Sara 0 200page learns about death and comes to terms with 0 Three monographs for backgmund loss of s0me0ne special. 0 Visuals and exercises included _o__mcell 4 - 10 0 Send for complete information ISBN O-920911-09-9 $11.95 cloth lIlarlmUng3etvics~ Dspt. PB AddictIon Research Foundation 33 Russell stlne‘t lbmn$ Canada 833 P3l P.O. Box 2188, St. John’s, Newfoundland, AIC 61

The Garden of Eloise Loon Edna Alford 224 pages $16.95 cloth $9.95 paper A powerful new collecrion of fiction. thesestories draw cu~r attention 10 the most pressing issues of today: the environment; the madness of war; isolation and the loss of long distance vision; tolerr~nce and the lack of faith. Ultimalely Alford addresses our need for spirilual grwth.

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A striking collection of 38 new voices in Saskatchewan poetry $9.93 pb/$l6.95 hc

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- As George Grant’s persistent probing shows, the deceptive language that surrounds our rights and freedoms shields us from society’s lethal course . By Berry Cooper

Technology and Justice. by George Grant wonders why. When rights are Grant, House of Anansi, 135 pages, 88.95 denied to individuals, we know from re- papa (ISBN 0 88784 152 X). cent European programs of persecotion, of BighL and Freedoms, we late-century individuak are left unpmtected and the WHEN DUE WEI(IHT is accorded the term citiz.ws have learned that rights are state is free to be rid of them. If fetuses poli!ical philosopher, it is 110 caaggemtio” trump. But why do we have rights? What are unprotected, why “ot the old, the to say that George Grant is the only one is it about us that gives us rights in the stupid, the unproductive? Perhaps fetuw ‘among us who deserves to be so iden- fit place? Or, what amounts to the same are not individuals, the” what are they7 tifi6d. Ever since the publication of thing, why does the charter (at least by Tissue? The.” why distbiguish (wjth Lumen: for a Nation in 1965, the ap- intention) guard individuals fmm the epect to rights) fetal tissue from unpro- pearance of each of his books has bee” abuses of arbitrary power? The answer ducdve tissoe, especially old u”pmdubi\ie a major intelleztual event. Their titles in- appears to us, abler we have assimilated tissue7 dicate grand themes: philosophy i” the the historical scholarship, BE a” assump There may be answers to such q&s- mass age, technology and empire, tio”: evayo”e should be protected by tions, but mostly we insulate ourselves English-speaking justice, and now rights because human beings are children from raising them by daily employment te&mology and justice. It takea ma* than of a euphemistic language: every child a brain power to write books with such are children of God, Bible taught. wanted child; death with dignity: titles; it takes greatness of soul as well. That assumotion is orooerlv described diminished quality of life; be”&n neglect. Grant is “ot jut another intellechml, as ha-it18 once-susrain;d &ht.i It does”? Such slogans have a surface meaning that not even just another scholar. He is a any more, and Gp wonders what “o one would deny - it is better that lover of wisdom, a philosopher, but one replaced it. What is the llcw assumption children be wanted than that they be who speaks to his fellow citizms (sod not that grants os rights7 The short a”swer unwanted, and so M. Yet at the same just to odwx scholars, or worse, to in- is: we have rights because we will them, time these phrases disgoise a thooght- telkctoals). To addreps bis fehv citizens, which is to say, we take them. A little lessness: does a diminished quality of life Grant must use WC& they cao under- reflection, however, indicates the self- destroy its sa”ctity? But this rehlms us stand, a popular or politic-rhetoric. He ca”celli”g “ahue of this response. I” co”- quickly to the question of OUT basic is a political philosopher because he seeks sequence, we have developed a language assumption: what once guaranteed the to t&k the-mea&g of our public life, to cow up the incoherence of OUT will sanctity of life is now suffering from ex- OUT politics; he is a polilic philosopher and, sostainbxg our deceptive and self- periential atrophy. because he philosophized in an idiom deceptive speech, we have committed Grant’s analysis explodes our _ intelligible to normal human b&s with b (willed) oorsclves to a kind of k”owle.dge euphe”dis; he dissects the sophistry by 0rdi”ary capacities of eo”ml0” seose. that makes the raising of qmtiom about which we try to shield oorselves from Even so, Techrmlogy and Jwliceis not ourselvas so very difficult. what we are doing at the be&u&g a”d at the end of life with our lethal chatter in particular, “Thinking about about abortion and euthanasia. He shows Technology” a”d “Faith and the Multi- how the two discourse.5 are co”“ected. versity,” which constitute the Eve” journalists and intellectuals ought philosophical and political sunlnlit of the to grasp the teleological sig”ifica”ce of book, require great attention in order to oar current policies and what pc.lid*l are be understood. Accordingly, it would be foreshadowed by our current a great impertinmce to pretend to indi- euphemisms. Abortion and euthanasia, cate Grant’s teaching in this book. It is Grant shows, are subordinate to enough to say that his splendid disc&o” cybemetics. the art of the steersmao. of NieUsche and Heidegger a”d Weil will They arc, or soon will be. tech”iques of reward the attentive reader. population “wnage”le”t. A” indication of Grant’s status as a Gram has reflected for ma”y years on political philosopher is his ability to co”- For iosta”ce: the charter deals with the characteristics, the genesis, and the nect the summit with the base. I” our rights and moms, and sometimes these essence of oar social and political order. demotic rimes, the remark of a leacher of conflict. The ouestion of abortion is often I” our tech”010gical society, there is “o evil, that truth is ugly, rings true. It is for posed in tomb of the right to life of a reaso” why abortion sod euthaoasia this reason that “ewo”lers to Grant fetus and the freedom of a woman to co”- ought “ot to be used for populatiod man- . would do well to begin at the’end. with tdhaOWlbOdy.ItlthiSiLUiartaneC,dlth~ agement. We know already how much theretlectiolls of G&&a”d Sheila Grant tidenee indicates that frcedo”L or rather technology is needed to meet the unergen- ties that technology has produced. Cer- tainly one of those emKgencies ls con- widening. They all recollect their ingenuity and vigour from the reader. nected to ao increase in the populatio”. boyhoods in the 1920s. But Jordau and Though 0” my first reading I was Bven if Canadians need uot yet praise Olsen go still further back. f&ted and often moved to laughter, pop”l8tlon nw.nage”K.nt, they certainly Olsen has come into possesslo” of ttie it wasn’t uutil the second readlug, with practise population adjustmmt. That is, Widdex Kidd’s diary, so that his memory the ~wzlesolviog behind me, that I could the respoose of humau as well IU “ou- iucorporat& hers and includes a couple actually enjoy it. humannahuetotheeulerge.nciespro- of oneaigbt stands with Joseph Howe. Even a the fmt readiug, though, this dueed by technology can ouly be met with former naval person held me as firmly as more technology. that earlier stor+ling ancient mariner This is what is meant by the atatcknt held his audience. 1 struggled as hard BS that technology is the ontology of the age. the Wedding-Guut to get away, but the Grant begina his book with the state- long grey beard and glittering eye were ment that he has tried to think in tams almost as compelling as ever. and would of the Spanish proverb, “Take what you have been quite as much so if Percy had want. said God -take it aud pay for it.” emulated the relative simplicity of his The price for malting technology what it predecessor’s style. But he keeps break- is, wtih cau be see” easily enough in the Jordan, lately retired fmm the editorship ing out in rashes of contorted, self- matters of abortion and euthanasia, is oftheloealpapa,isw&inganovel&o”t conscious mauuerism. oblivion of justice, of ctemity, of divinity, Ned Tranter, his main source being his Mr. J sees hlmsclf lurking there beneath I” a tecbnologlcal age, we have no rwsou boyhood memory of Scabby Pointer, an the t&s. small. idiious, au insect in to think that we cauuot make the adjust- evideutly humtic ret&d professor who its eudaugmd habitat. Wars and ment and become oblivious to oblivious- used to wander about the village and the yo”thF”1 wandering apart, he has parsed ness. It ls enough, perhaps, to recognize wuutryside soliloquizhtg loudly about hlr whole life hen. His whole, happy liFe. that one of the best among us cannot be Tranter. Jordan has the convenient gift later “mme”ls there have hem, God knows, aplenty, but the yen umbrage so adjusted. Perhaps no thoughtful per- of total recall. so that we get most of has scchuled and assuaged them. The son can. 0 Trauter’s story iu Scabby’s words: au in- preva3lr.g oxtent has assimilated them genious but unconvincing device, this. and set than in pmportlo”. Deaths and Tmnter had crossed the Atlantic with disappointments (Uke the barrenness of lSpigr,inthehopeofbecomingtheprin- his balls) and mgedii like ElizaWs cipal supplier of pork in the New World. Ie#s: the rhythms of tranquilllty have But the pigs didn’t survive the journey abmdedtheirrharp&esanddulleddxir 5red in and Tranter landed with noddng but a” pohu0fpain,.0tbadwyllemah”ed abundant supply of acorns. brought as and somehow beautified in the serene expause of his reuumbmnce. AU the past their foddq. He was then seized with an lier pollshed and smooth From long ambition to dant a line of E&&h oaks tumbling in his mlud, like agatea in By IAM. Owen clear-titecontinent. He&o formed Blizabeth’s electdc maebiue. The hture, a friendsbio and fir-trading oartnershio however. Is somctbiug else. Tnmter's ‘Ihe, by H.R. Percy, Lester with au A&km. Jacques l%cette, au; Audhaeabliudmao,lmownasGregthe & Orpen Dennys, 256 pages, $21.95 cloth fell in love with another Acadian, Groper. is haviug breakfast. He (ISBN 0 88619 154 8). Stephanie Till& at the time of the slu like a spider at the centre OF the. dispersal of the Acadians Tmnter sided Thewebofhisaws ir still. save for ulili m PILEDEQSSOP.. Painted Ladies. with them against the English troops and a Few routine tremors nmmally ignored H.R. Percy’s new novel starts in the prr- was eventually hauged from his own oak. audasmaUsensationmtwowblchhels sent and tells its story in flashbacks, Stephanie had a weird foster-sister, too preoccupied to recclve titb his usual through the memories of its principal Praucine la /ok, and the Tmnter story gusto. The m&humus smell of his hard- characters. But in ?3nnFer’s ‘I& Percy is supernaturally linked to the present by boiled egg. dccapltatedaud Faagmwhig setshtnselfamorechaUa+gtask,siuce Placl”e.6 evident reincar”ati0” as Carla, cold, does not thismoming moye ldm to the story ruus from 1724 to the present Sam Olsen’s adoptive granddaughter, a mild olfsctory orgasm. True, before unleashlug its evocative adour he for a day. who WBS found in a shawl hanging from Few mouwnts cherished its wanu mtun- Salvia Street, a tree-lined residential an old iron bracket projecting from dhy as oue might cherish the breast OF stxetinasu&lNovaScotiamastitown, Tranter’s tree. It was the milkman who oue’.sbeloved.Helettherantalidngc~- is about to be wideued to become pan of found her, and handed her over to Sam’s narofitspeaktohimaamr~eirtleedng g highway, end its.trees are to come daughhter-in-law “along with a carton of common frontier; even marginally down. Most of them are old. having been cottage cheese and a quart of two per- remembqing ti c%quisitc fdght of the planted about the middle of the 19th cm- cent.” Carla has decidedly eccentric first time. WhoI the .qg was enormour in tury by a” innkeeper’s wife kuowo as the qualities aud magical powers that she “sea hisbaudrndwarmnotFamthesauapa” but fmm the hen’s appalling and Widder Rid& but oue umgtdfmt ‘to avenge the death of the tree. unimaginable titers. Hlr mother later English oak comes from an acoru planted I’ve mentioned only a few of the laughed at hh anguished rerVral LO COP by one Ned Tranta soo” afrer his a&al characters whose memories provide the dmwthesmallmu&r,totastethec0rpse in Nova Scotia in 1724. The fmegmuud stories that lmertwlue to make the novel. oFthclnconceivableweecshesaid story of the novel is about the events of It could be regarded, lodeed, aa a callee- was only a chicke” seed, no more averse the day Trauter’s tree is cut dowu. That tion of short stories, or perhaps two tobe&? bolted than a chestnut to being serves as a frame witbin which we are novellas and smral short stories. The shown memories running through the auihor keeps shifting, suddenly and with- He achieves many clever phrases (I like heads of various people, notably two out wandug, from one to another of thee the desctiptio” of the daytbne moo”, lifelong residents of Salvia Street, Jim stories, but hll great ingenuity and enor- “pale as a watermark on the ear4 mom- Jordan and Sam Olsen, and oue former mous vigour sustain the forward drive of ing sky”) but they cluster so thickly on resident. Jed Se&y, the detestable cabinet the novel The trouble with the method thepagethatthestylebefomesostas minister who has ordered the sheet- is that it requires almost as much wearisome as John Lyly’s lo Euphus. 0 _ I_, _ .,., _l_~.. _. ...I ~..l_~___ __,~l-.l___-__. .---..~ - -- . .--- ..~ . _. -..,~ ---- ., ____ ._.- ..-. -.. _

material and the extravagant clahns made on its behalf provides some inadvertent- ly comic moments. /iflernoon Tea offers Little WlIso” and Big God: Being the ment work&l well until the day so& us the commonplace unredeemed by art. First Part of the Coofesslons of Anthoay Hebrew titles fame up and his compa- The tinal scene of the title story is a Burgess, Stoddart, 460 pages, 828.95 “ions cnuldn’t understand the problun. notable exception. for it is wonderfully cloth (ISBN 0 7737 2125 8). He appears to have had an unusualIy realled. active and varied sea life, now no doubt Robinson’s prose style is not without WlLsON Is the novelist’s family name - tapering off, and tbis too is a pole hard descriptive power, but would be better a middle-class but far fmm dull Man- served by a more stringent process of chester family. Burgess was his mother’s in photographs and the detac~ent of his selection. “Kong Hn Fart Choy” is lit- name, and Anthony his confirmation writing. tle more than a loose assemblage of name; and the polarity of Wilson and The fmt paragraph of Burgeos’s co”- details working to very Little purpose. God is only one of many in this half-life, fessions ls well t&d. He s- to be seek- After a8 this criticism of the under- which takes us to 1959. Burgess appears ing absolution from his readers, and one doneness of this work, it “my seem to see a” affinity of sorts with his Argen- looks forward eagerly to his next appear- ungrateful to complain about instances of dne na”lesala, the Iate Jorge Lids Borga, ance in the confessional. overdoneness. Nevertheless, these stories and this is not surprisII: his unfailingly . - BEaT COWAN suffer BS much from the frequent out- of&eat relationship with the Second bursts of overwriting and turgid World War and postwar world wndd not generaIlza!ions about the ineffable BS they be out of place in one of Barges’s do from the inanitio” of the subject fantasies. matter. Religion is indeed the focus of the ten- Afternoon Ten. by Brad Robinson, As Henrv Jdmes remarked. a work of tral polarity in his life. A Roman Catholic Coach House Press, 96 pages, 98.50 ftion “is bf its very nature : . . an ado from the cradle, he is neverthelus an papa (ISBN 0 88910 299 6). about somethbm” that the writer iustlfia apostate. He does not suffer the religion by nw.ans of hiscraft. In 4/lcm&n Tea gladly but, making efforts to become FORD MADOX MRD observed that “the Robinson Ieaves us wondering what all reconciled to the Church, he notes that death of a mouse from cancer is the whole the “ado” is about. he has found no metaphysical substitute sack of Rome by the Goths.” This is the - snaLAoH OARLAN” fo.r it. He is contemptuous of what he perspective adopted by Brad Robinson in calls “. . . the eucbarkt in its emasculated hi first book of short stories, which Anglican form,” and his view of converts undertakes the study of the wealth of Black Swan, by Gertrude Story, such as Graham Greene and Evelyn significance latent in the unassuming Thistledown Press. 127 pages. 522.00 Waugh is equally jaundiced, though that details and small circumstances of life.. cloth (ISBN 0 920633 Xl x) and $10.95 is not perhaps a” apt word to use of a The tirst three stories describe the ex- paper (ISBN 0 920633 21 8). ma” who is colour-blind. This visual perienca of a Canadian writer. George variation - characteristically he says it Terry. travellb~g in Southeast Asia. In the LIKE HER PRW~O”S work The Need oj raises epistemological questions - he Wm&gA/wqys, Gertrude Story’s latest compensates for in different ways. One afternoon in a I&laysTan hotel t&g to offeti”g is situated i” rural Saskatchewan WBO to have his first wife dress his read Henry James’s The Porrmil of a and chronicles the life of a strong, characters for him in his early novels. Lady and concludes that, despite its Teuto& woman. &da Be&natm is the Another raises another polarity. He sees flawless form, the work lacks vitality. cetltre, a”d 0” occasion the narrator, of himself as a serious composer - some Although George skips the preface, we the 13 intercnnneeted stories of Black thing difficult to evaluate, since his music hope that Robinson will not do so, as it Swn. But whereas the protagonist of l%e is very, very rarely performed - and co”- contains James’s advice to the writer of Need of Wanting Always is concemed siders the orchestral coloration of his fiction to develop his subject so that it chiefly with husbands and children, scoring as a compensation for the visual provides a foundation for the structure Gcrda’s most significant relationship is appreciation of dour, whichhe cammt of meaning and interest he wishes to that with her father. The oolleaion details share with the nmjoiiw. Side by side with create. The slenderer the subject, in Gerda’s hatred for the man, her years of his religious perplexities is a degree of James’s view, the more “doing” it &teri”g to his needs. and the peeee : psychic perception; he has seen fewnants, requires. fulness that their ielatio”&ip assumes in one of whom Q think hesays somewhere) The failure to “do” his subject is the end.. became the central character in his se&s Robinson’s besetting weakness. The Papa Beckman” is a traditional of novels about “Enderby: He has also material of these stories is too insubstan- patriarch, and Story paints a vivid por- witnessed a manifestation of Eastern tial and frequently too barial to sustain pait of his une”lightmed ways. Violent. mysticism in Malaysia, which one notes the weight of significance; emotional and rresponsible. and abthotitarian, he eon- he used almost unchanged in his recent “spiritual,” that is assigned to it by the tmIs the family’s activities while often “owl Earthly Powers. author. The resldt is bathos. I” “The Pen- failblg to provide support. His 10” Language - arising from hi early and-Ink Clerk,” a” account of the inner Murray must turn to a grandfather for eaperience with the Lancashire dialect, badly”eededeyeglassea;tbewane”i”the : which he had to exchange for standard humdrum lives of a bank cIerk and family can ejrpect *o help bl the kitchen. : English -is a central preoccupation. He wife. the incongruity between flatness of Tdama always still made borscht and _ was the only child in his Manchester the conception and treatment of the bara hal eve” though she work&l six days . a week at Woolworth’s: or if she didn’t, I did.” Gerda tells us l” “Seebm Better.” “Papa wouldn’t have it any o&r way.” through the text with a”“oying frequmq. To u”derstq”d ,more clearly her FLkht Aminst Time sordv lacks that Phnllos: Sacred Image of the troubled family life - including the death sp&k of &“tive hmgw&a”d unusual Mmdine, by Eugene Mcinick. Inner City of a brother and sister - Gada tums to imagery so integral to * novel’s success. Press, 144 pages, 513.00 papa (ISBN 0 writing, an actlvity that clearly fasci”ae3 - MICHELE MELADY 919123 26 0). Story. Gada sew herself as a medium through which various “pictures” and EUO~ ~obm~~s thesis .u.cms simple voica -including her father’s - are ex- Vlgll, by Roberta Morris, Williams- enough: in the world of Jungian sym- pressed. The voices “made her put their Wallace, 165 pages, $19.95 cloth (ISBN holism, femininity is see” as all- words in books.” 0 88795 032 3) and $9.95 paper (ISBN 0 important, generative, and primary, Black Swan suffus fmm repetition and 88795 049 3). -especially in the fa”t&&m%pecdve love, snd strength more or less i&or& “Darkness” - a “umber of tedious IN WRITINO Vigii,, Roberta Morris has This hook, then, is a” attempt to redress pasrnges. Thcsc aside, o”e finds much consIdered the unthinkable: what will life the balance and get father ensconced as that pleases here. Tbe fanllial traumas be like after thq drop the big one? While co-bnportant, cogwrative, co-primary, rI&&ape a writer are impressively not mi”imi@og the horrors of exposure right up there with mother. Further, - OtoEcl~ FoRMAN to radiation (“Lacking water to drink. Monick explains that the Jungian there ls certainly “OM for washing, let theorists staked out theb patch of earth alone for scmbbii the floors where peo- in opposition to centuries of male Flight AgaInat Time. by Emily ple have vomited or helplessly en&d NasmUah, translated from the Arabicby their bowels”) Vlgl/ “ewrthelesssuggests of thepatriarchalcolture. - - lssa J. Boullata. Ragweed Press, 208 Where the book mns into trouble is pages, Sl4.95paper(ISBN0924lXl459 1). residents of Kaane, a fictional Haw&ian with tbe sentence “But the old patriarchal island, hunt, fiih. and farm for food values are no lo”ge.r obviously tme.” To WHEN CONFBO~D with television within nine months of suffering a nuclear me. C.G. Jung was a kindly individual images of the war-tot” Middle East, our attack. who left planet Earth to range among While the residents suffer shortages cosmic metaphors, leavi”g us lesser lights comprehmsio” and disbelief. Sheltered (numb18 out of nail-polish renmwr, using behind to deal with the everyday, messy by our own pacltic reality, we wonder the Iast of their wheat tloor to make f&d probluns of mere earthbound me” and how people can continue to live in such wontons), they retal” their family and wome”. The above quofatio” leads me to a hostile environment. We ndstakenlv social stNctwe.s, not lapsing into tenitied conclude that this follower of Jung has assume that most would bii farewell to chaos as the tourists do. And there an followed him into the stratosphere. Only thelrtmubledho”@andsandanigmteto deaths: from slcknw, murder, suicll, in the wildest reaches of theory cm one safe, sane North America at the drop of and miscarriages. claim that patriarchal values are “c longer a hat. Through all the horror, the resident “true.” Flight Agrrins l7me is the story of an community kozps vigil for the fust baby Loll8 Lines of u’ome” shoppers at elderly Lebanese couple faced with this to be born after the attack. As each fetus Loblaws checkout co”“ters with babies opportunity. Radwan and his wife Urn spontaneously aborts br is stillborn, in mms, toddlers underfoot, heavy- Nabeel leave their tiny vllla8e for a six- attention focuses on Jan Ito’s prrgna”cy, 1oOki”g bundles Of groCeries to be m#bZd- month visit to their children and grad- until it becomes a sign of the Second children in Prince Edward Island. Coming. There is eve” a” an”unciatlon, has changed in the real world. Ma” still Although impressed by the comfort and although delivered by a madwoman. The uses phallos as a power tool to bring secmity of Canada, Radwan rejects his baby is born on - you guessed it - woman to heel. The ontral issue here is children’s pleas to make his new home December 25 and the novel ends with a and always has been the begetting of hue and retums to Lebanon. The book few verses of Isaiah. chlkba. I” his jealousy of Waman’SablI- Still, although Morris’s use of biblical ity to bring forth and bear fruit. mm * poasful yet highly irrational e”mtl0” referencu is at times heavy-handed. the makes her pay. She must save him. She that ultimately takes priority over such story is compelling, suspenseful, and du must raise the childrm alone or watch co”cems as personal safety a”d family characters are interesting, sympathetic. than be indoctrinated with his beliefs. unity. It’s a good, easy read. But what the book And if she leaves him, she must do Nasrallah swceeds in capturing the IS sayi” is not dear. Don’t worry, without his momy, which he \n;ill childlike wonder of a ma” who, having nuclear war is hell, but after losing some withhold in retaliation. spent 70 years in a small village, suddenly It is true that many women today opt fmds himself immersed in a foreign you;ll bounce back7 Or wo& that the to &cape this trap. They are laughed at culture.. She praents Radwan’s vacilla- Second Con& is dependat on a nuclear as unfeminine, suffer heart attacks tion behveen apprehension and adndra- holocaust? because they most work so much harder tion of North A”wicm society with both If the story is simply a testament to humour and sympathy. ma”‘8 will to live and to nuke (as suffer B se”& of inner loss &d despair However, the novel as a whole is opposed to fmd) meaning fmm life. the due to feeling deprived of thek inalien- marred by a frustrating flatness of refcrrnpg to Christian theoloey don’t fit. able right to bear children. langoape. Perhaps this ls due to the im- After the bomb, the people of Raane This ls the first generation of women choose to see (as opposed to exptxie.“~ to make we” the slightest dent in the &l&h. In any case, Nanallah’s prose is ing a revelation) that their salvation is a patriarchy. And they are paying for it. I riddled with overworked cliches profoundly deformed, perhaps literally believe a book about the die and 8uara”teed to send &en hard-core soap braid.% infant. God’s salvatio” seems to benig” nahue of phallos is politically opera buffs into pamxysms of pal”. Lines have no part ln these new times. like “He was tall as a poplar tree, hand- rccoueclioos, suppordng evideoce, under- onlyabandfulofevmts,bateachonecaa staoding, even sometimes forgiving. The be looked at from any number of vantage Albertines of tbe past hear about but do poiots,.fmm any number of years. con- Alb&e in Five Times, by Michel not leant from the Albertines in the stantly surprising us with revelation Tremblay, translated from the French by about that most secret of characters, our Jobo Vao Bunk and Bii Glassco, Talon- harmonies by explo& the same themes OWL - ALBEKm rtfANGu6L books, 76 pages. $6.95 paper (ISBN 0 in differeot chords. Once aaab~ Tranblw 88922 234 7). uses as dmmatlc stmct& a mu&l model: this time a fugue kor tive female WtO’t’SRS ARE POEEWR fmdb,g WayS t0 voices. Wbm aptly orchestrated, the break the steady flow of lime, perhaps script allows for cutain words, Restores, Wben Freedom Was Lost: The because real life is sequentiaI, memory movemeotstotakeplaceiosev&Alber~ Wemployed, the Agitator nod the State, flashes backuwds and forwards, aad tines at once. pullb18 togctha threads of by Lome Brown, Black Rose Books. 208 writers work from memory. This is cer- meaning throughout the play. page& $1495 paper (lSBN 0 920037 77 2). tainly true in the case of Micbel The language of Alberthe (as is often Tremblay, whose memory of Quebec’s the case in Tremblay’s writing) wavers DESPOTS THE stmrsat~o created by the past, of a-of Montrcal in the 1930s between natoralism and kits& bat never Great Depression, the 1930s were a and ‘4Os, is the landscape in which most falls into either. It has a pecoiiar lyxicism vibrant Period during which the labour of his plays are set. In Albertine in Five of its own that allows one Alberdne to movement was never stronger. A whole l7nnSTrembIay has returned not only to say, “The son dropped like a rock behind coltw.grew”pwithslogans of theWob- this past but also to the same set of tbemountaias. . . . Just before it disap- blies, songs of Joe Hlll, and tales of sit- characters, and fmm there rescued one, peared the birds stopped singing. Corn- down strikg sod union organidng under Albertine, and lets. her wander tbmogb pletely. It WBI~ like ewyt&g, not just imoossible conditions. her own mind. me, was watching the sao go down,” and &awe most of tbe confrontations Albert& is familiar to us through another Albertbte, furthu 04 to reply, that caotured the headliies took olacz in g8mpsesbHeveralotbeTmnblaywrks, “Say what you like, when they give us the U&d States, Canada is oft& a mere both plays and novels, but this time she tbat crap about hips to the moon and the footnote in history. Lome Brown, best holds the whole stage. Aided by her con-. stars, I switch cbanoelr.” On stage, tbe kaowo as co-autboraf An Umuthmiwd tidante. her ageless sister Madeldnc, result is one same motif played fmt on Ii&uy sf the RCbfP, seeks to remedy Albertbte at 70 mn- with four of her the flute then on the double bass. tbe dearth of ’30s labour Caoadiana with former selves recauing facts, deoyblg Memory, TrembIay seems to say, keeps tbis study of the liltIs_known labow cam&~atb~=zventwlly inspired the on to - Uofomm& his book reads like acol- lege outline. a skdetal summary that suf- fers from lack of life. Brown givas readers tbe academic’s ivory-tower approach to and oil% studiis but n&r ihe words of tbe people who made history themselves. Typical of that major problem is the se& of photos, wbicb b~clodes the faces B Hear Us. 0 Lord From Heaven of those who went to Ottawa to mark the HU!lUSOlOlW 50th anoiversary of the trek. Brown fails ICC:1 HetEi mi Thy Dwelling Place to interview any of these soNivors; in- Lxu::6 w.n =_-;_ stead he tacks on a cmde “wbersare =-‘Z. BYMALCOLM LOWRY they-now7” summary in the last two F pages of the book. LSBNO-88894-539-6 What should have been an insightful 288PAGES.PAPERBOUND DOUGLAIL study of a shameful period io OUT history MIlNTIlE is instead a lacklustre report tbat suffers $10.95 7&fiPw from poor editing, sloppy proofreading. and too much faith in the notion that good intentions always make for a good Fire Eyes book. -nArniEvfwlaENs ANOVELBYDIBAILEY The Jounals of Lady Aberdeen: The ISBNO-88894-537-X Okanagan Valley in the Nhetles, edited 248PAGES,PAPERBOUND by R.M. Middleton, Moniss Publishing. 91 pages, 38.95 paper (ISBN 0 919203 67 1). THIS SLIM VOLUMB of six chapters reads very much like a competently nwarched but onremarkable snippet of family history, compiled for family refereace. R.M. Middleton. who provides the NE'iiBOOKSFROMDOUGLAS&McINTYRE aooota!ioos to some of her ladyship’s

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. _~ ..___.__._ _._ ___, . . . ..__. ~._” _-._. _.-._i_T.~-C.__ . . . . - .-_.. e-s.. .~.. .-I .._.~__.._ =_... “.“___ journal entries, is almost family. Hegrew be said, but oRen/are”‘t, io a family” - “tumoured air storm” and “clover- up on a raocb in Vernon that was bought “Dionvsian” is simolv an adicctive: there candled.” and that mwmdboa. “jittered by his gmadpareots from the Abcrdeeos, earth ch-~gahun~idng do&m&eio.” sod like the Abe&ens Middleton has Fox writ= like Plath out of a private Bhythms too are varied, titb a bucking served as a govemme.ntal representative, and obsessive psychological world-view. pentameter as tbe bare form. Elaborated Plath wrote: “The blood jet is formal shaping may come later in tbis South Africa. poet&There is no stoppiog it.” Fox poet’s developmm~ here one feels that Lady Aberdem. wife of the Earl of echoes with this: “The/poem streaks out the pressure toward utterance is oftm in Abe&en. Gwem& Oeneral of Canada an exasperated struggle with the medim” from 1893 to 1898. is fondly described in - for example (from Part Iv): the foreword by her grandson, the Mar- . . .rnwh~f~a~~t~whit~~.th quess of Aberdeen. as a “battle-axe.” Mlll.9 According to Middleton, she was also a too ten-Me to releaw. -thatgthyr major social conscience in Canada io the were uttered 1890s - tbe first president of the Na- would mean the loss of some .%etUiaI tional Couoctl of Women, founder of the organs ill beotiw weight Victorian Order of Nurses, and a sup tearing /mm stagtn#~ M tendon . . . porter of many other charitable Or, in the sixth of the “Grim OIganiratiOllS. of me like blood./Like a wound I haven’t Invocations”: The book is adequately footnoted, with taped.” But Fox’s lines are curiously dif- . . ..tShim. bind.@ yank me. sources that include.Lady Aberdeen’s fuse., lacking the compression and clari- epuw~mfy-h-Lw.P~ owe biigraphical books, and there are ty of Platb’s. several inter&n8 archival photos, but The effect is one of flattening, rather Where thought is intense sense tbis little book fails to capture the reader’s than deepening, of the thought or cx- experiienec, where vision overwhelms divi- interest in the formidable Lady Aberdeen perience, of the colour. If this is poetry sions (i.e. boundaries. categories), a or the beautiful Okanagan. Instead, one of the wound. perhaps the wound has dangerous undertow of emotion reads of tbe financial misfommea the healed, or indeed been taped. The work sometimes sweeps everything out of con- Abe&ens suffered, and her ladyship’s produced is not a poetry of wholeness but trol; and one longs for the elegant journal entries are very much take” up a poetry of survival. of the amputee: “But language of mathematics in&ad. with dry details - the number of fruit a hatred of bis crippled hand and/foot However, no other terms than Lilbum’s m planted, the costs per acre of blocks the flow of divinity.” could give us thepoignaot. nsasary, per- harvesting, and the like. What I may be failins to appreciate in tbis particular collection some may call poems oi ho&s ih Part II - &that por- the Iwelling of maturity. Still, the kinds trait of Bernard of Claitvaux witing bis of insights Fox provider into the human letter “where accidia dubslead wimiows condition seem obvious and uninspired: with futs of rain.” “People are basically the same./Same It was a delight too to read “Blessed The Deepentog of the Colours, by Gail hungers, thirsts. emotions.” Sheis seek- be alLdapper goats natty in Kentucky Fox, Oberon Press, 83 pages, 517.95 cloth ing Ybe stid in tbe every day” in an string tie tufts/. . .Blc.ssed be the jubilate (ISBN 0 88750 631 3) and $9.95 paper attempt to bring the psychic violence of of jump” and be turned back to (ISBN 0 88750 632 1). the imagined, intertot world into tbe prao Cbrktopber Smart (Tejoice with the pur- tical. quotidian realm. But that attempt pie Worm who is cloathed/ Sumptuous- THB wnowt* of this collection is to fuse opposites actually subverts the ly”) and find his “A Song to David” autumnal, brown, reddish brown, rust; dynamicr of the poem so that in an elegy evoked by Lilbum’s “Moses Addresses what fire it contains does not blaze, but where she is confronting de&she writes: the Dervish of Is.” seems a kind of tidizalioo, without heat, “That what/I was thinking, was thought The cover-flap cites Hopkios and without intensity. Tbe mood of the work under/unbearable strai”, and that I Giosberg and other “beats” as ante is retkctive, strangely detached yet self- would/have a headache later.” A deep cedents, and notes the wide background absorbed at tbe same time: struggle is suggested, the outcome of of a man born in Saskatchewan who has Istand fl, (I quid spectator, and wlch which is a headache.? worked io West Africa and has farmed tkpocm mtmbteon tk wind 7kt ww, - MARY I” M1cHaL.a and studied for the last eight years as a the btack whvt of tk was nt n@ht member of the Society of Jesus, the bn~;y;N~ and thepoem lives only Jesuits. May there be many more boolcr Names of God, by Tim Lilbum, fmm him. - MARoAREr *w3cN If the romantic poet survives suicide, Golichan Books, 100 pages, $8.95 paper madwas, what becomes of her? Her sense (ISBN 0 88982 069 4). of colour7 The pitch that uulnot be sue The Power. to Move, by Susan tabled? s”rvival in these poems, even the THBP~BPARTS of this book are untitled Glickman, Vdhicule Press. 81 pages, love poems, seems to have become a kind (&bough Part III has tbe epigraph $8.95 paper QSBN 0 919890 80 6). of embalming process: “and all alone “Nature has been sucked into history. the/two of us, like pickled eggs floating G.W.P. Hegel”). Spiritual Vision, SUSAN aLIcx?AAN a second collection of in a/sealed jar, sea-white, delicious and Niure, History, Sdeocebl C”k”re., Pure secure.” Science: thue are crude a~mximations kelakholy. negative sense in which we Fox refers constantly to mystery, to the of the five themes. And the language is haw.mmetousetbewordbutiatbespirit “oexplained “sometbblg.” “sually “terri- enriched from correspondiogly many of its literal mea&g, which is “to set free ble,” that opens us to the muse, but she sources - witbout any poem dmyiog a& from pleasant but mistakeo beliefs.” rarely fathoms those depths. So in a poem cess because of terms like “abulia,” “ee Whether it’s in tbe superb opmbng poem, about her father - “for his/Dionysian tomorpbic? “escbaton.” pinee there arc “For My Students in English 108 Who momeots when he says tbb&th% should also many such immediacies as Complain That AS Modem Literature Is

. . -_._ .-_.-I-.-I -~_--^__.--.;.~__--.~.__.F ~.. . ~_ ._ . _~~-. .-._. ,... I__.. _---__.--- - . ___. ._ _-..-~~_-.---_-.~~.

Too Depressing” - where the poet peels Gliian is well aware of being “rich in son, former editor of the “aggressively back the tmnqull, bucolic gloss in which a foreign country.” But illusions are a Carbolic Re@fer, Morley we’ve sealed the distant past - or in a kind of privilege too; and so the collee- Callaghan, who ““ever went in for being sequolaofpoemsruefuUydebunkiwthe lion still concluded with a poem that af- orthodox,”Ma&Claire to Blais, a ‘myth of perfect low” GE&man mow firms d~illuslonment. In “The Dance” rebellious “Catholic outsider.” None can beyond convenient illusions with focused the reenactment of an Aztec ceremony strides. Her language is crisp and direct, ls freed fmm the “sentimental fiction” sial tiiures both inside and outside the tblgedhemandtherewRhlmnyh”tnever imposed by tourists hungry for cheap church. “nfeding. I” fact many of the poems ex- spectacle, and acquires its own dignity They range fmm Cardinal Emmett plore the intricacies of attachment, from and earthbound splendour. Carter of Toronto, head of the largest a perspective best expressed in “Mllge.“: Yes, there’s life for the imagination English-speaking diocese in Canada. to after the letting go of illusion. And yes, Andy Hogan, priest and former NDP MP there’s some fme poetry in ThePo?+w TF Breton, and JeanForest its knoI!ed heart, Ihe flmv that pcr/ets Move’s familiar landscape. Edmonton,accompUshme”ts whose in- whnt’s r-ml -aAaaAaAcA.axY Gemally the truths that ‘Glickumn UntwshyAllwta andpartlclpatlng wants to pare from Uluslon are not the darker kind. Personal mlationshlps seem plagued less hy violence or harshness than spedfically misunderstanding and private ambiva- Portraits of Canadian Catholldsm, by L&sonsome, Higgins and - lence. Only lu the third section, where the M.W. Hiiins and D.R. Letson, Griffin such as Marc Lalonde and Larkln Ker- poet has been transplanted to another House, 1% pages, SI I .95 paper (ISBN 0 win, Reseatchpresident of the National culture (Mealcan), does she touch more 88760 111 I). Cmmcll - substantially on larger social issues: Christian h”maldst value.5 into tllelr Fzwher soulh, ~uqk? AT A TU.E when C&rlstlanity in Canada secular careers. andd the~ra~ cblhedrailn Maim C%J seems most ecumenical, to write about The authors probably aimed for a sbikhwreachemhrrwsfrvwdth- prominent Roman Catholics may seem to balance between men and women in thell /or a knth be &.tt&lng. That being said, however, portraits. but ,$ey might’ have +d (4‘Nightflowers’~ this book preseats a readable profile of harder. Only three of the 12 are women Here poverty aud privilege make up the I2 Canadian Catholics, all in many ways - Blais, Forest, and social critic Mary Jo central realityon theis threaten-leading edgx of their own fields. Leddy. This imbalance is inexcusable. ing in a physical, not just emotional, They come fmmspec- all pointsgiven on the the contribution many Catholic sense, though not to the poet herself: trum fromof orthodoxy: Larry Hender- women have made to Canadian society,

CRIME PAYS A profile of mystery novelist L.R. Wright By Eleanor Wachtel BEYOND THE WHIRLPOOL Timothy Fir&y on Jane Urquhart’s Storm GZm.s TOP CAT lbm Marshall on Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion Reviews of new books by Clark Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee, *. Victor-Lwy Beaulieu, F?K. Page, Josef Skvorecky, and much more

_.. .~.~_. L ._~ _ -_.xci:+.- ----. ~~peclaUy in the tklds’of education, health care, and the social sciences. The mosaic that emerges fmm these profti represents a Catholicism that is (both of fact and grammar), and the occa- Travelli”g I” Tmplcal cOu”trles, by mainly French and Irishi” background. sional infelicities of the prose.. Too bad. Jacques H&bar, translated from the It is likely too soon yet to adyse how Done well, this book could reach a wide French by Gerald Taaffe, Hurtig, 250 the face of Canadian Catholldsm is audience; the potentiality is there. As it pages, 514.95 paper (ISBNO 88830 303 3). changbtg through the influx of im- is (thanks, o”e assumes. to the careless- migrants from such countries as Italy, the ness or ineptitute of NC Press), it will FROM 1946 TO 1986 Senator Jacques Philippines, and Portugal. quickly become extinct.- DOUOLAS HILL Hebert trawlled through more countries The portraits present some surprisihg than I’ve had hot di”“ers. and the” saw aspects of their subjects. For example, fit to print the fruits of his wandering ea- Cardinal Carter, a” innovative educator peiie”ce. 7kmelling in lkwicai Countries who in his younger years fought against (cmmies that Hebert calls the Third spoon-feeding and rote memorization in Brftlsh Columbia: Vi&s of the Pm- World thmlrghout Ids book) is a cornpen- schools, laments that “the lay advisers of mired In”d, edited by Brenda Lea White, dium of fatherly advice. tourist trivia, a the clergy have the international rcpata- Flight Press, 115 pager, $12.95 paper fnv personal anecdotes, and several Lists Lion of being ‘yes-men.’ ” This book (ISBN 0 919843 06 9). of addresses for Canadians abroad. The presents very few “yes-people.” For that, Lists me useful, but the senator’s advice the authors are to be commended. WE ALL TX-“NK we know why people live wobbles between tbe obvious and the - MARY FRANCES COADY in Lotus Land: it’s warm, it’s got great USelers. seencry and the social climate is laid back Hebert strongly dlscoaragw importing and tolerant. Briiish Colwnbia: Visions drugs into (or from) Third World coon- of the Prom&ed Land. a collection of 18 tries, soggests that wonle” tmvelU”g alone essays by writas sod artists on why they speak softly in a” effort to dissuade Latin The Glass Boltom Boat, by David Uve in B.C., merely confums these rapists, reummte”ds that travellers check Gilmour, NC Press, 170 pages, 821.95 their plane tickets to make sure that all cloth (lSBN 0 920053 57 2) and 312.92 it amo&s to, with a few norable excep- tlights are marked OK - which. HCbert paper (ISBN 0 9u)O53 99 8). tions, is a collection of chatty letters and tells us, “means confinned.” The politi- reminiscences, interesting to the authors’ ciao sometimes shpws beneath the THE BOOK IS much fun - and much fans, family, and friends, but not really tmveller’s garb: “One sum thing,” quoth frustration. Pan, because it’s obvious adding up to a book. H&bat, “is that if you made a long and David Gilmour waded up to his neck in The two pieces that stand oat from the fro%1 trip to the Third World, you will his subject (fish management in Ontario); rest arr George Ryga’a “The Village of have undergone profound change. . ._ frustration because NC Press had done Melons,” which looks at poverty and Witli you enlarged outlook on the workI such a crummy job with the book. I had you’ll become smsitive to the problems thought editorial productions as of developing countries and more aware miserable as this in Canada were at last of the responsibilities incumbent on our behind us. country and each of its citirms.” Good things fust. Gibnour’s no John I can thtti of no reason why a” in- McPhee, but he undertook this enterprise telltgent traveller would want to use in personal journalism with considerable H&ert’s book as a guide. Certain travel and obvious pleasure. “So while I was writers - Jan Morris, Ronald Wright for hired to write a book ubououl fisherlea example - can prepare us for a muntry management,” be says, “I ended up by sbarbtgwith ostheiraqubwi wisdom; witb~g a book about leaming about others - the almost anonymous authors tisheries management.” And so he Ieams, nice antidote to the comfortableness of of Fodor’s and the Blue Guides - help and shares the diminitb of his @“or- the rest of the book, and W.P. Kinsella’s by providing the hard facts. Hebert’s and, and tells some great stories along “Nuke the Whales and Piss in the book does n&ha well, a”d his con- the way. He meets, and records with skill Organ.” which is a funny, bitchy attack descending tone is, for me at least. highly and humour, the words of conservation on books Like this one. irksome. - ALBERT0 MAN0uF.L officers current and retired, biologists, There is a way in which the cumulative anglers, wmnlercial fishermen, eve” a effect of the collection dou give some in- poacher. sight into the B.C. spirit-it’s intcrest.b@ Gilmoor does a basically solid job of in a low-key way, though a bit unfocused mtig sense of statlsticsicr. of transmutbxg and self-indulgent; it has a jot of ’60s But Who - Now? The Tragedy of a lot oi htstitutional ma&al (the book eccentricity and charm. but the overall the Ocean Ra”ger. by Douglas &IOU.% is sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of impression is of a group of talented edited by Cle Newhook, Breakwater, 95 Natural Resources). into a” interesting people amiably dithering away their time. pages,$19.95cloth(1SBN0920911234) and oltbnately effective if disjointed nar- Eric Niwl once called British Colun- and $9.95 papa (ISBN 0 920911 21 8). ratlve. Readers will not miss bls point. It’s bia”. . . a large body of land entlrely JUT- a sad and disturbll o”e: the fmhery rounded by envy,” and the feeling of AT DAYBREAK on Monday mornbg. comfortable acceptance of good fortune, February IS, 1982, I stand by my kitchen spoit fishermen- blame cornme& almost smugness. comes through window watching the storm drive the tishemten, commercial fishermen blame strongly. The real question that emerges wildest water I’ve eyer see” agaba?t the the gov-nt (and sport fisherme”), is why would anyone Live anywhere else? cliffs across the barbour and thankinn everybody blames the environment. And Visions of Moncton, or of North Bay or God my boat is safe ashore. Three ho& the fti a~ going, gone. But there is some Regina, now those would be books wmth earlier and a couple of hundred miles east slight hope: fish management “my save reading. -RON PHtLL.tPs of me, the huge oil rig Ocean Runger has again and the diftiity in doing so. Their this scrutiny, and in “Sad Tales fmm the loss of all her 86 me”. I hear the fust dear and moving penxptions a~ served Patagoaia,” in which members of an ax- guarded newt on the CBC, quoting its ob- well by superb organization and graceful che.ologIcd expedition recount tales of ViouSly eqaivocatblg corporate press editing. These are Newfoundlanders atrocity around the evening camprue., the releases. at six. I listen to the disaster’s (mostly) SpeakbIg oat of pain and loss, motivation of the story-teller aad even the echoes for days and weeks and months. &ad they don’t mince words. way in which the unbearable tales are told Paschal O’NeiU from Riverhead is lost. But Who Cores Now? is a model of its come into queStion. The chief enghwz He belonged to our Harbour. kind. I hope it never has to he copied. teUs a story about a surgeon who has Now Douglas House of Memorial Perhaps we cua learn, perhaps we do murdered his wife and inserted her University has organ&d a book and wit- care. It’s hard to read this book without dismembered parts into the abdomens of ten a text, and Cle Newhook has super- tears. - DO”GLAs HUL their chiklrea. vised and edited intwiews with the The chief e&ar% story WBli ended. families and friends of the victims. They The Patagoaian dsrkness rileneed tile aim well and hit hard; what they’ve done men for P while. Then Chips. rocking wiU convince any reader that this smoo+hly on his bsrrd, said in his rather “suneless accident that never should have 8raUng voice. that he thought the story happened” was the fault of cauous corn- was well enough done, but that it was paniesvdmcaredformoaeynotUves,and disguring rather than ssd. and wore timid governments, provincial and not reaUy suitable for the occasion. l-heco&mrelyUkedthccbiePlstorip. federal, who cared for companies not darkness He mdd hardly wait, his scrrygy beard Iives. brisding. M denounce this one PI Bat the book is much more than a i3y Edna Afford “m.ni,er rather boring instance of the political position-paper. The authors metaphysical erotic swu& for autben- -bIe the words of those who have hspeztiq Lhe Vaults, by Eric McCor- tichy aad freedom in daily life, and of the been living with the aftemuth. and what mack, Peagain, 7.08 page& $17.95 doth e pmblans of co$og with the dichommy they cboo& to print has more force tban (ISBN 0 670 81687 6). of the Word/word. its abstmcl sad coo- alI the psychology primers and self-help awe dhneusiom in experience and besr-sellers in your book store. The wives, “INSPECTING THE “A”I.TS.” the title story pareats, end chikiren of the mm who died in Brie McConoack’s first collection, speak of fear and foreknowledge, of grief presents us with two diStwbiag observa- and anger, of support (from family, com- tions: first, “Inspections are necessary. “Sad sKnies in PatagOaia,” Iike many munity, from a half-million New- Bxpuieace has shown that we cannot of the stories in the collection. contabls foundlandas), of the need to start life always tfust the housekeepers”; and stories within the story. and the ftions second, the inspector is also suspect. It often turn in on themsdves, leaving the is as if McCmmack is instrucling his reader at times amazed. at times readers at the entrance to the “vaults” disoriented, and sometimes confused. Ia that forewarned is forearmed. “The Fugue” a vengefol lover fiulivdy . Although hyecting the Vmdts will in- enters the home of the professor who has / troduce many readers to McCommck’s seduced his gHfriend. The yo”ag maa, formidable talent, some may have en- holding a kaife ready to strike, staads countered his work before. More than behind the professor in his den while he Author of poinled Ladies half of the 20 stories have appeared in reads a novel in which a detective publications such as New Quarterly. In- discovery a young intruder who has A charming tale spanning terstute, Prism International and others. broken into a house and stands, knife 250 years in Ihe life of a The best in the couection are character- poised, behind a maa who is reading a small town-and the loves ized by an astoaishiag creativity, a clear, novel. confident style and a CO”MgeO”S McCormack’s use of multiple imaged and woes of its eccentric reinforces both our hmse of the mystery townspeople. iUlagiIl~tiOll. The opening Line of “The Swath,” in and complexity of experieace and OUT which McCmma& dicturbs the surface of sense of displacement and isolation when “Bill Percy has as fine a our perception of reality with a confronted by that complexity. Ia “The prose style as any fiction marvellow humorous precision, could Festival” we witness aa “event” in which writer in Canada.. . ” well be applied to McCormack himself: phalanxes of insects are layered one above Books in Canada “I am one of those not afraid to the other withb~ the boundaries of an U- remember. : . :’ This “memory” is luminated Strip oa the floor of a gym- almost invariably applied to the dark nasium. “Bristletails. cockchafers, buf- .wessesofhomaaaatureandexp&ace. falo beer& harleqtis. sacred scarabs, “Inspecting the Vaults,” “The Frag- stink bugs, duo8 beetles, IdsSiog bags, * meat,” “Sad stories in PU8Onia,- stag beetles with their enormow antlers, “Uhardt at the Window,” “Festival.” and walking Stick bags.” When the in- and “Oat Picture of ‘Rot&y” are among sects have congregated, a paraUd.tie.ty the most impressive of these stories; they of birds ir introduced by an announcer on a loudspeaker system, and there frightening ability to shatter &zr com- foUows a spectacle of camage ChUUag in I placency with our individual and cdleo- its scale. tive capacity for human atrocity and with The find, brUUaat imageof “Bdrhardt his nearly surgical examination of OUT at a Window” differs in its construction motivations/mtiondizationS. in that the multiple image appears not aS The story-teller him& doer not escape a cumulative listing hut in a form that more closely resm~bles celldivision: the anachronistic colloquialism that “he What Fontam doesn’t know ls that his distorted image of the detectlve/i”spec- knowsitdoest?tmveraUtbebases.“end teenage granddaughter, Gaby. is 0°C of tar is multiplied and reflected in in “Train of Gardens, Part I: Ireneus the terrorists. Sk joiitui theiiiot because numerous identical window panes. This Fludd,” where Watoonobe, the primitive her father, Schott, who is Fontam’s son- metastasis, if you will, follows the detec- Oluban islander, is said to describe a in-law, is the chief of the Gree” Party, a tive’s exposure to tbe possibility of an in- Thirty-Oner (the revered sacrifidal old clreumstance that’s kept hkn too busy to deftite “umber of brutal, e”lgnmtic, and gentl&” wio has had all but his most give his daughter enough loving. Whet unsolvable murders. I” each case the siPrnificant member removed hv the bieb about Gaby’s mother? She’s apparently weapon ls a shaft of shattered glass. priestess) es looking “for alI the wo;id dead, but “ever mind that for now. Because of McCommck’s considerable like a long-spouted teapot without a A”yW~,anorherguyO”tbeHel”lcaW linguistic powers, the reader will be well handle.” It is IreneuYs observation, is Wolfe. who’s aruthless CIA boss. He’s advised to keep her wits about her in the perhaps,. or the author’s, but in the bn- perticub& antsy because be knows that vaults. The stories are riddled with word- m&hmb ;onstruct of the l&and of Oluba, the kidnapped Helm has in his Doss&on play. puns, send-ups, and sometimer unsolIied by the trapplugs of civlllzatlon, doctnnenii showing all the U:S. missile jokes of questionable taste, such as the teapots do not abound. end it is unlike bases in Germany. Helnt got the”~ from parody of the lndiao chant in “Knox that Wetc.nobe has sea one, onleas Stolz, who’s a big-shot civil servant end Abroad.” Some of McCmmack’s vaults Ireneus has brought it with him. another pal from the old days in the Ger- depict all too familiar mythical t&tory. Although readers, upon tumbtg the last man army. Wolfe knows about the “A Train of Gardens, Part II: The docunents, but the fmdlsh Lebanese and Macblne; for exe”@, wvhkh could very hfj most cioseJy%th the f&&&Id the other terrorists aren’t yet awere of well be take, as a humor&s satirizatio” - chamdon whaler. da Costa. in them. N&ha ls Stark. He’s the local of a particular sexual myth and a “Lus~wort’s Mediteiio”, (“He kept his “olice sleuth who’s busy trackinr! Helm deconstmction of it, is nevertheless umet- eyea Udded as much es he could and wore ;mdthetermrktsandtr>of~out tIi”g in its exe&n. dark glasses to blunt the sherpness of the Fontana’s role in evervthbag and wisbbu Ireneus Fludd, desaibed as “a pygmy bmtges: ‘Seem, Iiohn Hultus. the light that Wolfe would go_awaY. in physique,” “a lump-seek,” “a bone hsrpootu my ties’ “), they will II”- Wolfe won’t. The” Stolz turns up beg, ” “titer macho,” co”structs end doubtedly acknowledge the power of the murdered. He’s the civil servant, you boards a mythical train of sexual fan- remember, the one who passed on the tasies, each of its seven cam containing front them without flinching. I” fact, secret missile docontents to Helm. who varlatlons of the a&typeJ female tip- mecisel~ because of McCbrmack’s abill- kUled Stolzl who knows? And the” tress. We foIIow him through the north & to a&y the ener8y generated in the Wolfe breaks the news to Fontana that woods. the river, the mountain. the dark, the question arises: can we afford G&y’s mother who is Fontan& daughter oceen, the desert, the jungle. snd tinally not to inspect the vaults? 0 isn’t dead after aU. She’s in en Eest Ger- into. the. . car- of rest. Variable Edens, in- tnanpris@~.ThisisgoodnewstoFo”tena vanaoty i%e. Each of the ten~ptressm, who wear only daughter. The-on is that, yeas earlier robes that they shed like Pavlovian . . . well, forget that. Too co”fiwl”g. automatons at the first sight of Ireneus, Schott is also murdered. He’s Gaby’s ere we&endowed (long txesses, large father and Fontam’s son-in-law and the breasts), and ere %iIed,” “bomlshe_d,” husband of the woman who he doesn’t “‘gliste&g,” The piece is chamcten4 Rnow is alive in the East German prison. by such passages es the following: “As H&z done in by the tiendlsh L&ne.se. she swings her kg over to dismount, hla No. wait a sec. it’s Rossi who bumDs off ky, soars at the glintpge of her pi& By Jack Batten S&Ott. Rossi k Gaby’s lover. Mak; that pr&nd lover. He wooed Gaby iusl to get These imaginary creatures are, the”, Rquhmx, by Kurt Maxwell. Random -her in tke @mxist outfit. PO&~ &it- generally slippery customers and are fib House, 286 pages, $19.95 cloth (ISBN 0 ted Rossi for a f* customer fmm the _ quently camivorous, complete with fangs. 394 zzclo4 8). start. But he tbougbt Rossi was probabIy We witness their seduction of Ireneus and a Wolfe operative. their predictable transfonnatlon from THIS BOOK IS one of those thrillers that Anyway~ once St& and Schott are out beautlful/desirabk to dark ““r,ws” basaplotw&hnvisba”dtumsa”dother of the way and Stark gets his hands o” and/or ha8s covered with pustules. spi”s that defy eve” brief description. G&v... but I’m eetlin~ ahead of ti. Ireneus in each case narrowly escapes his But, what the heck, let me try to offer a Let’s go back to the-terrorists wh;n repetitive fate but sumndns to “the twia condensed version of what goes 0” in they’re hiding out with Helm in this mt- fangs” of “umber six, the jungle woman. Equhmx. ten old barge. What happens is . . . unkl”dest cut of all, IrmaIs winds up l” For Stater~ there’s tbls fellow “anled On second thought. I don’t think I’ll the seventh ear bathed, oiled, end yes, Helm who’s a kl”d of senior emu to the bother tryi”8 to explain the plot. I can’t nurtured by none other the” “a servant Green Party in Germany. which is where dealwiihit.ButIcendeelwithKurt girl dressed in white.” eIl the action takes place. Helm gets kid- Maxwell’s prose style. It’s terribIe. He Whlk the writer hes nearly unlimited napped by a bunch of terrorists heeded writes sentencea like this: “He moved in- latitude in the realm of magic realism, UD bv a fiendish Lebanese. Various wl- to the bathroom and perfomwd his mom- premise and dream fiction demand s&t I&I&s of good and bad guys ~cf out to htg toilet in a hurry.” What does that observance of their own buernal logic,. find and rescue Helm. One of them is mean7Theeuvhadaoolckslasbends and violations of that Iogk piece the piece Fo”ta”a He lives in Montreal and does quicker shoiei7 Maw& miter as bad- in danger, the spell broke”. Most of the piece work for the CIA u&r some sort ly es Robert Ludlum and all the other storks in Inspectin the Vaults are of blacknw~U. but years earlier he stied popular thrilkx authors, and like them he flawlcas in this respect. Fzemples of ex- witbH&nintheGemmnad~tbe has a secret of success. It is that, for all ceptions, however, oeeur i” “Knox Second World War. Fonttom and Helm his Iold their awful prose, they keep tbelr Abroad,” where Job” Knox refleck with were nice G&mans who didn’t like Hitler. stories barrelU”g along. And once you they’re prisoners in a Canadian gulag. deals with cultwal battles in the Canadian just tdfti out what happens in the end Apart from teaching, they hold endless to Fontana and Stark and Wolfe and the rounds of dbmer parties. browse dally theme in Jamaica. One can’t help feeling woman over lo the East Getmao p&o”. thmugb the Ibolted warrs of the Iiud- that Krebw’s fiction would be”& if he Still. there’s one item.for which Kurt son’sBayCompa”yaodsleeptohelppsss low.ted Ids sights i little and allowed the ti”“?. It’s not surprisiag. then, that “lore of hbllself to e”lerge. There is “0. oue of his chamcters, a pardadarly &t&h isolation has distorted the pemoaslit*s of doubt he is a tale”ted writer. His descrlp- CIA age”t, the name of Jack Teagankn. most of them. The cast of eccentrics in- tions of Joe’s warate huoti”n wxdl- Don’t Maxwell and his editors k”ow who cludes Joe’s room-mate, Lucie”, who tions with S&n and Paulgo& are the real Jack Teagarden wap? Don’t they breaks into his bedroom and watches him erpecially maorable. Perhaps it will just realize they have i”s”lted thbusands of sleep for &“paniomhlp. and Iris Biic, be a “mttex of tiow before he fmds his music lovers by namiag an llllsavoury fm who as the India” princess Wii Beaver true voice. 0 tional perso” after perhaps the most has sup~lauept@d ha lnc~mc by creating marvellous trombone playa who ever ersatz Indian masks for collectors of lived? unforgivable. 0 native art. Her hoodwinking of lwo Ger- man joumalists from Stem “mgasine ir one of the book’s hiahliahts. The native people GC&act Prints sre of ice and snovt, but the white man’s in- By Gteg Gomick explicable society has left them be wildered and embittered. Carrying little Whlatlestop: A Jo”r”ey Across cultural baggage of his own, Joe readily Canada, by George Gab, Met&a, 240 make friends with Pauloosic. a” Inuit pages, 824.95 cloth (ISE?N 0438 80310 8). who is as much a” outsider in the Cree village as himself, and Simon Blueboy, a SINCE THE FEDERAL gcwemment killed clerk at the Bay. As a result of the latter off a fifth of Canada’s passenger trains Contact Pri”ls, hy Philip Krdna, friendship, Joe is allowed the rare i”1981,writenhavehowedovertherail Doubleday, ?A3 pages, $19.93 cloth privilege of going i”tizi the bush with pssseogasys~likecebuuardsclrdi”ga” (lSBN 0 385 2.5102 3). Si”um and his family. Krebwvr skilfully old, dyi”g steer. With Whistkstop. sketches the rough-house camaraderie George Gdi becomes the latest addition AFrEaREADINo contact Prints I liad 110 that develops between Joe sod Sknon. but to the flock. trouble “ndemtwling why the recent there will always he a barrier between Like those writerswho have ghoulishly unference 011 aboriginal self-govemmeot gone before him, Oak seems i”te”t on collapsed. “You’d have to stay forever they are iwied cutty to the dam com- picking the bones of the passenger train before I’d believe you,” a oativc char- pound because Simon is ao India”. before it fades into mrmory. as if that’s after wlms the white “srrator, “sod even Although Con&t Prtnts is founded on a foregone co”&sion. As well. he then I wmldo’t trust you.” Contact Krelon’s ow” experience., there is scant assu”les that every Caoadiao religiously Prtnts is based o” Philip K&“&s foti evidence of it. He has unwisely decided adheres to the idea that this country was years of teacbi”g in Fort George (ii the %o make Joe a tabula rum upon whom built around the railways. It happms to novel it’s rewned Port HenricttaMaria), supposedly fresh imeges of the “ortb are be so. but some llblstratio” Of the fact a Cree villa8e 011 the Quebec side of recorded. Th$ role is npreseoted. a little would be nice. N&ha Wiistkxtop nor James Bay. As a report o” the two heavy-hsndedly, by his hobby of photog- those books that preceded it have really solitudes of the Canadian north, it sue raphy. The novel’s title refers to photos done this. W%y sn those trains still nm- ceeds admirably, hut its impact is marred by the unexpected intrusion of “in@ Why do Canadians have such a” ~~d&“er’spuzdi”gmod realitytbatJoel.wesiatbeco”taapriot affection for them? What does thefiuz- stage, and the chapters are arraoged like tloning of the railways tell us about Joe, the book’s hero, is a sort of hype+ a series of contact prints docummting Canada’s past and its fuhue7 No;anaruw borea” vex&” of Isherwood’s famous “I Joe’s s”rmundinga. are given. am a earnera” narrator. All the reader The novel that evolves through this In truth, I came away from WhWlestop with more questions than answers. Is it ed to Canada in desperate ne;d of work a snaphot crisply in fo&s on the a travel book? Is is a historical or after spe”dl”8 several years in Jamaica. periphery but badly blurred at the ce”tre reference work? Is it iotwkd for the co”- Wbeo a job teaching English, grades nine where its main subject is. Why Joe is so sumptio” of railway buffs? I still don’t to 11, in Fort Henrietta-Maria comes obsessed with taki”8 pict”res is “ever know. open, Joe leaps at it. What he didn’t revealed. His lack of motivatlo” Nbls the It’s hardly a travel dbok. Galt’doa realize is that “it meant going abroad meander by train from Cape Breto” to again. And in my own eou”try at that.” Vancouver Isla”d, but his fascbmlion The foreigo land he describes is one in with trivial details fails to present a well- which the native people have bee” red”* rounded portrait of any of the regions or ed to a state of “ear servitude by white comm”“itles through which he pa.%%& In- techoolo&v. nEnat”re Of the relatio”sbip climactic scene in which he endangers stead, we get a see.“&& endless list of is hymbolized tbmughout tbe novti by the Pa”loosie and bimsdf for no other ressoo fleabag motels and greasy nstaurants that b”“li”ent relocation of the village to tba” to take a photo. The neutrality of will certainly not make this book a “mke way for the HM2 dam, part of the his peTs0nalit.y also trivial&s “mments of favourite of the Tourism Industry James Bay Iiydm Project, which is about supposed profundity, such as his embar- Assodatio” of Canada to go into operation. -e”t owe the dam incident. Sydney, N.S., is notable for its Despite white domination, most of Contact Printsis Krdner’s third book. “shabby sidewalks” snd he can fti 110 Joe’s fellow teachers live as thou& People Like Us fn o Place Like This alao reason to spend time there. Someone he meets in Halifax tells bbn. “YOU don’t buffs. There is precious little detail about r/a”t to go to Yarmouth,” so he does”?. the trains that convey Gait across the Winnipeg ls memorable for its Chinatown country. A few quotea from a 1937 Cana- - “an agglomeration of low, run-down dian Pacitic brochure is bis apparent nod buildb@ -and tbe plethora of “poorly totbeva!+ttnswn?troveofhistolicala”d dressed Indians.” Regina he had technical information in repositories such imagined would be “a morally neater as the Canadian Pacific Corporate place. . . . But the neatness I had Archives, wblcb he acknowledges be imagined was a” abstraction gleaned tited. And though no onewould honest- from reading. . . .” ly suggest that VIA is anyone’s idea of a * ThclExc~cm~e New Brunswick’s Reversing FMls is di+ perfect public tranrportation system, 100 Years of Trading missed as “a dubious tourist attraction, Gait’s distaste for currmt passenger ti Grain in Winnipeg. it reminded me of a backed-up toilet.” haz been allowed to overshadow the spec- And cities such as Timmins, Edmonton, tacular scener that are laid out before rail and Prince Rupert fare just as poorly in parrengers, eve” on the most decrepit Gab’s opinion. His deacriptiona are not train. The rugged bea”w of the north just depresdng but frequently co”daeen- shore of Lake Superior completely ding and tainted with the faint aroma of escapes him, and the Rockies get a quick centr&Canadian superiority. He records o”c&o”el. a conversation overheard on the Sydney- I can only ass”l”C that whiwkstop is Halifax trab~, in which a child asks her intended to be a Canadian equivalent of mother the purpose of the causeway Paul Theroux’s The Gnat Railway across the Strait of -0: ” ‘It joins Bawar or The Old Patapdan Rxpress. “lo3coco and Cape Breton,’ answaed unformnatebs “one of the wis cban”, and . . . . ” Oak the” mirac”lo”sly adwnt”rebltbercco&tio”sofThao”x’s See them at Booth 110, deduces that the woman was apparently wanderings are to be found here. CBALJ;se%30. of the belief that “the mainland had been Gait asks rhetorically, “Was Canada done a favour.‘! reaIIy so -t and dull?” If I had only Toronto Convention Centre What’s more. Gdt seems to have de W’hivtkmp as a reference, I’d he corn- rived little or no pleasure fmm his fellow pelled to say yea. Tba”kfidly, 20 years of “assenaers. If we are to believe him.thc tralUco”tblental train trips allow me to tblnk differently. 0 citizens. failed businessmen and women who have consumed too much VIA beer and are ready to make a pass at the author. Nor cm whidsto~ be described as a reference or historical work. fisgments of history pop up occasionally, bit they BT~ usually tempered by Gait’s cynical and erratic tiw: of Ca”ada’spast. He makes note of tbe unfair expulsion of the Aca- By Oafy Draper diluls by the British -who wanted their rich agricultural lsnd - but the” vmt”reS Tbe Fmnlly Romance, by Eli Mandel, that a Jewish politician he once knew Tumstode Press. 259 pages, 812.95 paper “‘didn’t look Jewish.” Comments such as (ISBN 0 88801 103 2). this, peppered throughout. the book, don’t forge any sense of camaraderie be LIKE nta CR~CAL essays that follow it, hvee” the author and this read% These the preface to thls book engages the also make many of his views, historical readerato”ce,andmakesbbnwantto “A witty and erudite gazetteer or otherwise. much harder to take. read on. Eli Ma”dd is known, of course. to all the fabulous places and In fairness, Oak has demonstrated as a critic, a teacher. and a poet; it is sure marvellous creations found in himself to be a writer with a sincere in- ly a teacher’s ploy to lead the reader on the world’s books.” Toronlo Star terest in Canada’s history in his many ar- with a series of apparentIy contradictory titles for magazbw such as Sahuday . claims and disclaimers for the work that Night and Camdim Geogmphic. It’s a is to come. l%eFami& Romance, he says, pity that his previously demoattrated “proposes a” acco”“t of tradition in affection for history doesn’t surface in . Canadia” history.” It offers a “theory of wh&tlestop. There are inaccuracies, too. He calls suppose, for a o3Ie&.” of boik rev&s, the Dominion Atlantic Railway tbe “Dominion and Atlantic” and he notes the disd&&s The that Windsor Station’s ariival.a”d depar- method, their author says. “suffers from ture boards are gone - they were there rando”moss and incoherence.” Cutal” wbe” I visited Montreal last week. Minor argumenrr, passages. and authors an5 points, perhaps, but enough to cause o”c ‘ktumecl to with a” almost maddins in- to wonder about other statements. sistence.” Ma”del apologizes for the evi- Obviously this is not a book for ralhvay dent wIonlaIism of a” approach that “thds its origins in non-Canadian The qualily of Maodel’s niticlsm is sources; and for proposing a lltaar~ “nifomlly blgh. He reads with insight and theory %nequivocally mule in its bias.” sympathy, and he writes clearly and vivid- Virtually everything in tbls book has ly. lie grinds no particular literary a=. appeared elsewhere, fmm the New Delhi speaks for no school but the school of in- -An Intimate Biography Litemny Ha(f Year& to the book-review teuigeot inquiry. The range of bis readiw pages of the Globe andMail. Some of its and his sympathy is admirable. This ls nol by Sranlqy leinlraub 10 say that he lndiiriminately praises 8lI come the diversity of sources and he surveys. While he remarks on “the Absorbln new biography purposes knocking against each other. pub&heLfon the 150th But its strengths are many and various. anniversary of her accession some of them, in fact, are the very to the throne. Stanley wealmesses for which Mandd apologize.% Weintraub reveals Victoria Besldes, the book ls in some ways more subtlety and power of [George] Grant’s with shrewd sympathy and coherent fhan Mandel’s modesty allows. argument” in Lament for a Nution, he provides telling portraits It is organized in three parts. “Orlglns,” __w-a _..nn -tn ‘__-:nnint out_-. the -. philosopher% in- of Gladstone, Disraeli and “Writers,” and “Writing.” In practice fkihUirv and hn “harsl 1. unyieldims, un- other figures of the era. there ls a good deal of interrelationship charitable judgemeots,” and dis&sses among the three, though the ce”rral KD one of Grant’s comments as “not war- $38.95 cloth 672 pages tion consists largely of essays co*Oen- thy of serious intellectual discourse.” A trating on individual writers. But more svmoathetic critic, perhaps, but no than this structure, the book is held POll~Wi. logetber by the obsessions fo which One major benefit of reading Mandcl &xF IWz70W9S Mandel alludes in bis preface. is that the-reader feels so frequently the It is held together, in other words, by d&toremmtofamillarwlters~dto _J&WlENGE his concern for such “mums as the turn to those who ax new and unknown. by Pamkia Jean Smith Holocausr, the Canadian long poem, the or overlooked. Another is that the writer verbal paradoxes he calls “strange actively engages the reader in critical Delightfully witty tales about loops,” by the titers he returns to, discourse. Mandel’s opinions are almost Roberr Kroetsch and Christopher invariably inkrcsdng, and they often en- the adventures, trials, and Dewdow and Michael Ondaatje among heroics of golf widowhood! coupe response. This is as it should be them. and perhaps above all by the idea in the familiar essay. The case is put. and Humourous entertainmkt of the family m”mnoz, tbe notion that he rhe reader is free td agree or not:Mandd for~se on and off the golf borrows froln Freud that as children we stimulates; he never lnsisrs or bullies. all retell our family history, making These essays are personal in two ways. ours&es out to be the descendants of First, the voice itself in this collection is $19.95 cloth 160 pages royalty, and not of the everyday people sometimes distinctively first-person, who are posing as our parents. The idea though never obirusively or obnoxiously is more-broadly put in a quotation so. Thir is most apparenr, nafurally. in Man&l borrows from Jullel Mitchell’s B paper such as “Academic and FWchoanatti and Feminbm: “You can Popular,” wbii was initially delivered only read idstow backwards, you start before an audience: from last things fml.” Not that I haven’t spoken to confercnccd The book is built, in part, on opposi- of thls sort before. It has bsome, “nfor- tions: academic v$. popular. U.S. “We%” tunately I w. a kind of habk, a llc~~ vs. Canadian “Region.” As I said, in the vo”stic:thaeIamonceagaintelllw~ preface Mandel speaks somewhat anx- same old storlu about Cohen. Atwood, iously about his dependen= on “On- ondalI&, Layton. CanadlM tiling and Canadian sources. His critical context the dbasuous state of modem c&we.. by Sue Grghn includes, among much more, Aristode, Those essays that were fust published in Freud, Harold Bloom. Blie Wlesel, and scholarly jounmls are less personal in Deft, cunning, and clever, Georgs stcbler. The f&essay in the col- tone, but the voice is no less distinctive, W isfir Deadbeat is Sue lection, unlikely as it may seem, is an and if no less plainly embodies the char- Grafton in top form. Readers essay on Van Gogh entiUcd “Modernism acterlstic habits of mind and expression who delighted in ‘X ” &/br and Impossibility: What are the op- of the author. Alibi 3” &fir Bu?@ac’ and tions? Qmadian lltemmre may be put in The other reason that the author’s very ‘%” irfor Copw will not be its own little cornw fo! its own special human self shines so clearly in this col- disappointed in this latest supper, or_ it may come to the table with l&on is that Mandel explores his OWII the rest of theworld. MandePs approach past and his own writing in several key $22.95 cloth 240 pages depends on the belief that Canadian essays. In the book’s opening essay, culhlre is of suffcienr interest and varie- “Auschwik and Poetry,” be gives ao a0 ty that the strong su&ine of Van Gogh’s Cmlnl of his own confrontation wltb the canvas is capable of shedding light on it Holocaust, and recounts tbe wltlng of bis witbour causing it Lo wither away. Thii poem “on the 25th Anniversary of the is not colonialism. The real danger to Liberation of Auschwitz Memorial SC~- Canadian culture liu in the failure to vices. Toronto, January 25. 1970.” The bring the world’s best lights to bear on book’s penultimate essay, “The LOOS it. The real danger is pmvlncialll: not Poem: Journal and Origin.” combines too much light but too Little air. notes on a 1984 conference on tbe Carla- disn long poem, notes on a 1985 trip to highlights?) and numerous other qws- the Soviet Union, and Maadd’s own tions are consistently used. With the poetry. It ls not the sort of essay you m- remarkable exception of Joy KoLgawa’r pectin such a collection Let me teke that. discussion of philosophy. these iaterviws back. It is not the sort of essay you ex- primarily dissect narrative tecbnicsllties WrnUAJBED pea in most muections of ctitlcsl essays. and characterizations. (If one has not It is essays Like this one that make this l& such an eace@onal wllectlon. dlscuss~, one frequently cannot al&Ire- GUDE The major weakness of The Family ciate the finer ooints of the Romance is that too often a book review conveKations.) . - by Gerda Pantel included here remains just a book review. Humour. intimate revdatims. and fr% One of the essays that fmt appeared as tionsaremre.AsanacademicraIherthan Coast to coast affordable the preface to a book is still just the a journalist, Garrod seems disinclined to travel with the most preface to that book. These piecss don’t invade privacy to expose pexson#ity. corn rehensive Bed B pick up tbe resonance of the entire col- Clearly “the work” is what’s important Bre&hst guide available! lectlon, and tbe reader fmds himself ask- to bll. bow and why it’s done. (Only lng what they’re doii here. But these are David Adams Richards’s interview isn’t Revised and enlarged with the exceptions. Most of the essays benefit prefaced by a sample reproduction of a over 1,600 listings. from their mutual proximity. manuscript page.) This mahue approach $10.95 Taken as a whole, does tbe collection will be most useful for would-be writers. 305 pages provide, as Mandel suggests, a theory of As the book’s highlight, Garmd’s talk paperback literary history for Canada? I think the wltb Kogawa caphue tbe iatellectual’syn- answer is a qualified yes. The Pami.9 Romance is an important book. Its ap- bnemiew. Both are “prea&‘s kid.? and preach is fragmentary and partial and their mutual co”cems shine. “As ix wry GrnENSIDE UP biased and personal. But it is also ex- small child,” says Kogawa, “I prayed tremely persuasive, and it opens up the every night to know the truth. By ‘truth’ by Wes Porter territory in a new and useful way. 0 I think I meant ‘suffering.’ I desperately wanted to know about suffering. It Be prepared for an&y Spring! seenied so awful. Knowing about it would CBC horticulture expert, Wes have been a way of controlling it in some Porter, @tails how to build way. Not knowing seemed very and maintain the perfect dangerous. . . . Somehow the way to a bcttw world seems to require joining wltb Canadian laivnl Authoritative, suffering, not cutting onaelf off from informative-a masf for it.” every homeowner. Alsoptl&darlybnp~vesJivcarrAListair $10.95 126 pages, MacLeod. Kent Thompson, and David By Alan TKJigg Adams Richards. Perhaps the book’s illustrated sp*g for MyseE Cmmdlaa wlitas recalling his career highlight: a kiss from h Interview, by Andrew Carrod, Break- Alice Munm after a reading of bis short \vater, 297 pages, $14.95 paper (ISBN 0 story. “Shotgun.” “I was deeply N&?VWLOWPliWI 920911 10 2). touched. In Canada it’s rare for anybody to make any money. sn the rwxct of pm- nils wwzohta Booii contains interviews ple you admire is what you want most of . about fiction writlag with eight writers all, and for Alice to do that WBS tremen- * associated with the Maritimes - dous. I thought, ‘Well. I peaked. What Elizabeth Brewstex. Robert Gibbs, Susan else is there to do?“’ & Did Raymond Kerslake, Alistair MacLeod, Kevin One of this book’s less obvious Anyone, anywhere, can turn Major. Al Pittman, David Adams strengths is the author’s ability to sum- Richards. and Kent Thompson -as well marize each writer’s chiefeoncems in sue- a patch of ground into a lush, as six others: Trbddad-born Neil Biion- cbxt introductions. Of Carol Shields. for bountiful vegetable garden. dath, M&is author and publisher Beat& instance, we’re told: Culleton, Joy Kogawa, Carol Shields, Pull colour photographs and Marriage-its imitations. campromises, illustrations make Dick Guy Vandahaeghe. and Sandra Biidsell. recraa and rewards - is her focus. “Factors in their selection,” writes shieldr probes into the Inlelkcnlll BJ wu Raymond’s proven methods Andrew Garmd, “were my personal Eli domcrtic life of women with keen in- accessible to any gardener, admiration for their achievements, and ri#lt. she has a fine eye for d&it. an beginner or seasoned expert.. the authors’ relative lack of exposure lo .xcdlmt car for autheodc dialogue and the media.” Tea of tbe 14 have published captures convinci~@y xix dynamlcr of three or fewer works of adult tiction. sodal gatkxiw - the gi?nuine eMnc0 g?95 paper 366 pages Oarrod hoped largely unheralded authors tionr and nummcus bypocrlsi2.s. would be “gemdnely open end less prone Speaking for Mvsclf aho contains a’ to already rehearsed responses.” bibliography of the writers’ works and This premise did not pralude the inter- pen-and&k drawings of seven authors by viewer fmm asking already rehearsed Clemente Omzco. questions. AU but two of the laterviews Interviewing is a craft req*g prac- open the same way (What are your career tice. The same can be said for beb inter- viewed. With few tricks of the trade up our minds.” The SolitaNy Outlaw returns SWOOPS and darts. probes, makes remark- hls professor’s sleeve beyond the occa- to “the oower. Dagion and aac.m~tabilitv able connections. The message is sional use of flattery, Garmd’s sober of “o&.,~ - McLabaamqae, but Powe is such a aooroacb. to so manv novice inter- If it is easy and teemtine to dismiss a toa& wised. incisive writer that. like a &vees, lis produced a-worthwhile col- co*cem with-ekctmnic-me&a as es&cad ma& ,oliti& leader or a star &ball lection of intervIews built upon rer;carcb, paranoia. comider the din of advertisia.8. sincerity, and intelligence. Nobody falh ihe sedu&ve Muaak in the supermaike~; &;h&kc.soutbisownt;rfwithaecm- in love. Nobody finds God. But we’re the tribal acoustlf field of the political much the wiser for it, particular4 those ‘XXWdCW.,; Walk ioto ,‘OW f.Wl&,&S’S pages cmckle with &t&r, brl8iance. of us \vcst of the Marltimes. 0 bedroom and estimate the comparative energy. authority, and a sweeping range 20; and dollars spent on records vs. of vision. For Powe, the question is not the smvlval of the national culture but the PoWe insists that we -nter the survival of culture at all. Tkis is a wild “post-literate” when and haunting book, probably the most . . . there h a dcc8ne lo the sense of a important of the year, and certain to rader,.eeMiObemmcramerketlobe establish Powe es the most controwzsial and compelling t&ore among young Canadian writers. 0 met s&es become faadty dub.% a text becomr tlnitue (#‘the coffee-table By Jack MacLaod book”) or a flow dislr; poAitrxacy is the cadillon of publishexa. editors and The Solitqry OotIaw. by B.W. Powe, even writen tbemselva; and saiou Lester & Orpen Deanys. 208 pages, 822.95 dotb (ISBN 0 88619 141 6). mmtiet culture. Distrlbwiti hinh pdnUn8c&% tbelack of mnprelh& vHAT*PLEASUan it is when a ,‘pMmis- edueatlon: the eonlrol what *writer can say m do. In Nmth Amaica, an author ing” writer breaks tbrougb and fulfils who persu~l tke market cae publish that promise, in spades. Tldr Is a break- ehnosteeytbie8andbismcssa8e”8lbe By Larry ?laH tbmugb book. Timothy FIadley once said ulvietimdbytbesmsedona3stmedis,the that conversation with some people is TV twist. .Thir is tbe slmel of the The Baildlags of Samael Madare: h “dangerous” because you don’t know massagb: "Yea may sai whsr you Seercb of Appropriate Form, by Martla “bat you or he might say next; there may want, but nothtng mcaus anyihtng: Se-, Sono I’&, illustrated, 274 pages, be flying leap into the unknown. B.W. The rcsult is the Chiklish-mass, the $39.95 dotb (ISBN 0 919203 76 0). Powc is a dangerous thinker. He tites Peter Pans who “ever think, struggle or Robson Square, by Ann Rosenberg. likeaIiontamfr”orliingtbeanimels”ith grow up. doc&alrc dilettantism. the Capilaao l&flew, Nmnb.er 40,1986,128 chair and whip. He pushes the reader in- mmaaceofe@emism,thedilai&&of pagm, $7.00 papa (ISSN 0315 3754). tonewandstardiagspacesinexcitiagand the word. Powe quotes Lewis ar decleim- Toronto Observed: Its Arcldtecture, distlubblg ways. in8 that what every artist should try to Patrons, and Flistory, by William Den- In 1984 Powe published A climata prevc.atIs“. . . the exbiiitionist extremist dy and Wti IGlbomn, Oxford, il- char& aualectiml of cssaya on literary &nUOta driving the “hole bag Of tricks lustrated, 327 pages, 835.00 cloth (ISBN criticism that drew raves from tbc critica. [dviIizationl into a aibilktlc nothingness 0 19 54058 0). With spare. compressed prose and a or zero.” VictorfanArcJlittcmreInLtmdooaad biting ed8e of intdligence. he grappled Paced with “the death of the human Southwestern Ontnrlo: Symbols of with Lavton. Cohen. Laereace. Atwood, enIighteament and the triumph of Mass . Aspimtlan, by Nancy 2. Tausky and Man,” Powe exhorts us to cherish the Lynne D. DiStefano, University of outlaws. to follow the cxamole of Glenn Toronto Press, iIlustrated, 834.95 dotb ing agaidst ‘-ively) and McLoban Gould &ho wrote of ‘,th; men who (ISBN 0 8020 5698 9). (whom he is crusading to resurrect). It makes richer his own time by not b&g was a powerful book. Many wondered of it, who speaks for all genaatfons by s.4hmm afAcuntt3, the most prominent v/hat he could do for an encore. The being of none. It is the ultimata argument domestic architect in British Columbia Sotitmy Outlaw is that encore, and it is ofindivldvcrlty - an argument that man during the first quarter of this century, danling. canacate.hisownsymheslsoftime popularI& large Tudor-reviveI houses to Here he addrmse P. Wynaham Lewis, without beine bound bv the conform%& such an extent that they became the Marshall McLuhan. Piem Trudeau, that lime exposes.” (Italics Powe’s). We ballmark of Victoria. As a watacolomist Glenn Gould, and Bliss Csnetti, five men are urged to share the concern of who enjoy+ painting the landscape, who stand outside the laws of woven- McLuban aad Can& with “present con- Madore sou8bt to design his houses so smuations of Dower. mass .mietY, that they were compatible with the B.C. cept Canetti, autborof l7mBlindtng and l&age, and cl&e. -Both conslder&i tenainandtositetbemtotakemaximum cSon+v&andPawer A8 em “the children whattodowltbtbeIiteratepowcrattheir advantage of its sapsrb vlewr’of moon- of electricity~ “liters of the post-literate command: how to find -&I audience. tain and MB. The marveIlous two-storey age. Each “wanted to deal urgent4 with ‘Literature as a profcsslon la dc&actlve,’ halls (dubbed the “Madme hall’,) of the implication of mass society for books, Canetti savs. ‘one should fear words mu*c, politics, ,zldml& and the lmiividual more.’ ” _ cesm-ad elaborate demilin8 in native tbinkine itself.” The underlvine theme Is Powe. Pow. Goadii us to resist mass cldtne, he “riles like a shrill burglar formed th; setting for elegant In A Cfimate Chd, Powe mole: alarm in defence of The Word. moddbm enterteiniag. “We are in * real sense k-sing our minds. us to “intellermal combat” to protect G Many of Madore’s buSdings survive For “hen we lose words, we begto to lose ‘dream of xason.” The Satitary Outlaw and from the wealth of illustrations in

inthesecondMfofNaocyTauskyand the value of oral history, and as a result Lymx DiStcfano’s remarkable book, Vfc- storles.and the traditional ways were torirrn Archite&ue in London and always passed.on through wnversatio”. Southwestern Ontario. But in the case of the Morisset/Pelletiw Thef~halfumtablsanotablcdisc”s- work, most disappointing is the lost Tainted sion of the role of architect iu Victorian potential la seewing whal could have Canada: in the 1850s civil engbwrs and been a lruly historic document. Given the victory land surveyors - to say nothing 6f background of the late M&k wanderer builders - fbnc!ioned ar architects; as the Ted Trlndcll. whose odyssey in the Cana- eentuty advanced crchltects became pro- dian North recalls the anecdotes of Little fe.ssionaIs in their own right In addition, Big Mm, this should have been a con+ Legacy of Valour: The Cansdlans at the authors examine in detail the personal pelling study. Paswhendeelc, by Daniel Dancocks, Hur- libraries of these London archltccts as a Instead, Trindell’s taped recollections tlg, illustrated, 289 pages, 524.95 cloth source for thclr designs. Anyone ln- are best summed up by one of the chapter (ISBN 0 88830 305 X). t-ted in the history of bulldll in the headings: “My Life: It’s a Routine arca will also be grateful for their discus Affair.” This work feels llkc a lengthy 17 Is A truism today that during the First sion of the principal &xal suppliers of articles&ctchcdfartootbininanettempt World War hundreds of thousands of building materials, especially new ones to justify itself as a book. Though being soldiers were sent Lo certain death by like wrought hnn and plate glass. inthepmenceofswhahumanbeingwas commanding ofIIcers who neither knew The photographs by Ian MacBachem no doubt inspiring, none of that wonder nor cared about thcsituadon at the front. me matchless: particularly manorable are rubs off OII the final product. Daniel Dancocks’s analysis of just one his depiction of the desolate Palmyra The production values here also reflect part of that war, the Semnd Battle of Baptist Church in a winter landscape and Passchendacle, shows that this belief of the bell-tote of the Guthrie arises not fmm what actually happened Presbyth Church in Melbourne. His but from a propaganda campaign de- contemporary photographs of buikllngs signed by Prime Minister David Lloyd are juxtaposed with corresponding plans a great lack of care. Stray senten= sud- George to enhance his own image in the - to mention just one of many aspects denly appear and Trlndell’s name is eyes of the British public. Dancocks also of the book’s exce!lent design. misspelled on the back cover. disproves the myth recycled each Remcm- MacEachem ls a *orthy descendant of Barry Broadfoot fares a bit better but. brance Day tbat the Canadian soldiers John Kyle O’Connor, a photographer as he should know from experience. ccr- who fell at Passchendacle, their heroism flourishins in the 1870s. three of whose tain oral histories belong anywhere but in notwithstanding, wasted their lives in a photographs are also included. One has book form. Broadfoot’s Ten Last Yews, gruesome battle for a useless rklge that only to see his view of Richmond Street a document on the Canadian experilnce the British promptly abandoned. to know, quite simply and sadly, that of the Depression, did quite well when it Second Passchendaclc WBO actually the Landoncrs of a century ago had a more was translated to the stage. Perhaps his hideous finale of the Third Battle of beautiful dty in which to live than those lateat hook, a recounting of posl-Sec.ond- Ypres. a scties of *gilt engagements’ of today. Cl World-War immigrant experiences. fought in Flanders between July 31 and _ would be more inter&log in another November 141917. It was clear to Reki medium as well. Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, the corn- The book is divided into clght sections mander of the British expeditionmy force, dealing with various post-war that the war had to be fought and won phenomena, including war brides, in Flanders. where the German forces languagc~barricrs, job problems, and were concentrated. Dancocks forcefully disaimination. Some of the accounts articulares simple truths obvious to Haig dance with the qualities that make for but eluding Lloyd George: in war soldiers good shorr stories and others would make die, and the larger the armies, the more ’ By Matfhew Behfens for good articles. but too many of the men who die on both sides. In Flanders talea suffer fmm pointless rambling. In tbe r@cs tearing at each other were Ted Trlndell, Mdtls Witncrll to the gigantic, and so were the casualty lists North, by Jean Morisset and RoseMarie can prove annoying; &~papa, they are reaching England. Politically, Lloyd Pellcticr. Pulp Press. 168 pages, $10.95 simply boring. George could not tolcra~e such losses.. paper (ISBN 0 88978 177 X). Broadfoot also proves hbuself terribly Knowing nothing about war and lgnor- The Imndgmat Years: From Europe tu clumsy in his attempts to make pithy pm- ing those who tried to advise him. he in- Canada, 19454967. by Barry Broadfoot, nouncemcnts at the beglnnlw of each sisted that the Flanders campaign should Douglas&McIntyre, 255 pages, S22.95 new se&on. Given the current kostllity he abandoned in favour of attacks on the cloth (ISBN 0 88894 519 I). toward refugees and Canada’s closcd- fringes of the Kaiser’s sphere of lnlluencc, door policy, I wondered where he came where, military strategists knew, little _ warmz AN oa.~ hiitory is deceptively damage could be inflicted on the eary. Anyonewithstaperecordaandthe the nation we know now (vis#-v& Gmnws. patience to transaibe could be an oral racism) end “the blatant discrimination Llovd Gcoree further endanacred and historian. But cvcn for those who are that had plagued the fmt arrivals was demorallzcd thi country by d&&g that acknowledged masters at it, there is ending.” the long casualty lists proved Ha&% in- nonetheless a drawback to the genre. In The material in both of these books compercncc, and he manipulated the war a tmditlonal sense, an oral history is forms only the skclceletal outlines for what cabinet into sabotaging Halg’s requests meant to be hean2 a fair portion of the could have been far more engaging and for replswmcnt troops, guns, amm”“i- kmguagc,rile”“anoeofthespokcnword, important works. Their broad claims to tion, and suppllcs. To make matters is often lost when placed on paper. reflect the “nlque Canadian experience worse, Haig himself was uncom- Native peoples have always recognized fall far too short. 0 municative and politi&lly naive.

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Mce IVhnro Paradox and Parallel ROOLl of Peal32 e.Xamhs W.R. Martin movement from the perspeaive of activists Dr. W.R. Manin discusses Alice Mum’s writing and QI canmilted to both a grass- prcminenr rWrUM of bu an: IhE @Cal pmu8oabt. lhC roots appmach and the develcpmenr of her nrmlive tiniquc. md the didccti# :. : ..; . . _? , ~ ,T formation of links with that involvu paradoxes and pankls. both national and infer- O-88864-1 15-x; $25.00 &XII. $ns pb., $29.~ d. nationsI movements. 088864-116-6; 514.95 pqcr (111 The University of Alberta Press clEdmonton. Albena TG 288 Chmnimlly unable to sey what he meant, Vaiour makes the issues end the cam- work - end GenUeme” in Enghmd he made public statnnents so terse and (1986). set in High Victoria” England in garbled that his aides co”s~antly had to &&lls who don’t “know more of tag 1880, achieved e balance between the interpret thun. The prime minister did tics than a novice in a nunnery.” serious and the farcical elements. Wllso” not hide his search for a more compati- However, a reader who can’t already “ten see”wd to be experimenting, with vary- ble commander. at sight * Mauser rllle from a javelin” will ing degrees of .wceas, worbg out veti& Dancocks sets Second Passchcndaele have some difflc”lty interpreting Dan- tions on the themes ihat he had embodied into this context. He shows how vital the cocks’s descriptions of srtillery with such nmstery and slmpllcity in The capture of the area was to the fmal via- movements and barrages. The battlefield Healing Art. tory -and how accurately Halg, relying #tures ere not very helpful -mud does I” his newest tiction, Love Unknown, on repxts by subordiistes and, above ell, not bhotomaoh well itself and it tends to Wilson seems to he co”timd”g to experi- on hll own observation, had assessed the obscure the details of anything stock in ment. To be honest, I em not sore just situation. He explains how and why the it. Clearer photos of the war machinery, what he in trying to do. He reenu to be Canadians. commended by Lieutment- along with a large map of Flanders and presenting the relation betwee” romance General Sir Arthur Cunie, cane to be in a comprehensive map of the bat- end reality, end also between two levels the forefront at Second Pespehendaele, tleground, would have contributed enor- of reality. au lo terms of love-or LOVE. and he narrates the battle. itself,.~. in all its. moosly to the pleasure of reading this ex- for the pages are splattered with capital stages. His maps and descriptions make citing book. 0 letr~. clear what the goals of each phase of the The “Prehistory” sets up the romence battle were and why; how Cwie and his on the first page: “Once upon a rime, subordinates planned to reach those some twenty years ago, there wem three reals: the disoosltio” of tmo”s and their nice young women, who lived together” ,tt&pts to c-&y o”t Carrie’s plans; the in London. The “pretty one.” Bicheldis outcome of each engagement; and the - Wilson is fond of naming his co”seq”ences for that battle and the wsr. characters after obscure female saints - This unvamished review of the records meets and marries “the Ma” of her acts as an emotional counterbalance to Dream,” Simon. “Everyone else, some- the pity and horror evoked by the sor- By Rttperf schleder how, made e meb( of life or failed to have vlvors’ descriptions of the hellish battles a life et all. But Silo” and Fticheldls had and the romantic patriotism aroused by Love Unknown, by A.N. Wilea”, done what we all feel we me supposed to Hem&h Hmnilton (Rmguin), 208 pages, do, what we all dream of doing, what the fact heroism. $19.95 cloth (ISBN 0 241 I1 0227). modem world makes so nearly imporsi- When the Canadian troops finally ble, Simon and Rlcheldls had lived fought their way through the loathsome AL~HOUO” x-m ~PECTED Brltlsh critic happily every after.” quagmire and captured the elmost- John Suthe&“d regerds hb” BI ‘a wriairer The “idyll” established. the novel imperceptibly hllhcr ground near Pass- who most be considered foremost in his proper soon move* m reality. The other chendaele. they saw its value - the land generation,” A.N. Wilson is not well two ““ice girls” surprise Simon with hi.3 on the Gemmn side of it sloped toward k”ow” o” this continent. I” terms of pro- secretary at Fontainebleau. Soon one of the English Channel, enabling its holder0 duction there is no denying bls’pre- thwn. in tom, finds mm ~0~6 with to oversee their own and the enemy’s eminence. For one whowhirth date is. Simon. Soon rmm LOYE dwindles to e” ports. Furthermore, Gemmn records 1950 -this puts him in an age bracket affair, while Blcheldis ge.ts mired in sor- show how decisively their losses depleted with Cranedian writers such es Susan _ did domestic duties, all oblivious. I” the Musgrave. Guy Vsnderheeghe, and end, however, Simon eventually real&s troops. David Adams Rlcherds - his accom- that “he wes trying to dipmiss actual life But, six months later. knom that the plishment is phenomenal. In addition to in favoor of a” ideellsed version of life,” Germans were about to throw all their re- being a teacher, literary editor of the im- and returns to Rlcheldis, his family, end maining strength into a huge retaliatory portant Spectator, and e constant his prospering bosiness. attack, He& commanded the troops the” reviewer, he has produced in less the” 10 So much for id&d romance end holdi”g Passche”daele to retreat because years 14 books, including critical TmJE LOVE. of their exposed posltlon in a “bulge.” biographies of Scott, Milton, and I-I&he To provide a counter-movunent for By straightening out the battle-line at that Belloc, the major section of a” examine- this decline fmm ronmnce to reality in . point, he thooght, he could mount the tion of the Church of England today, a earthly love, Wilson produo% Simon’s best defwe possible with the forces lefi set of essays, and most pertinent for tbis brother, Bmtle. a “hopeless” priest ba a to him after Lloyd George had drained North London suburb, deserted and troop3 away to It*, Palatine, and other quality has bee” reco&ed by rich b”- divorad by bls wife. Duriqg a cataclys”5c remote theatree. Halg’s strategy worked, portant prlzea es the W.H. smith Litermy stoml - also wetched by Rlcheldl et but his repuatlon was so badly tamished Award. home with her cbildre” and by the thatevenSlrArthurCurrle,astutegenerel adulterous Simon experiencing ~llu~ that he was, felt betrayed. on Wilson’s work, I romped &rough his LOVE with her best friend in a London To justify Haig’s conduct of the Third fust three novels, The Swee& ofPhdim hotel - Bmtle discovas God as a “Lov- I Battle of Ypres and explain how Currie (1977j, Un.gwmM Hours (1978). and ing Bel”g” and begins his “journey . and his Canadian troops contributed to Kindly Light (1979). with mounting m- lead& up to the only Love who v/as folly the eventual victory, Dancocks calls on jowent and admlmdon. It was with The good md true.” Later Bertle takes up a primary sources such as private paixxs, HeaU”gArt (1980) and Who Wbs Oswdd hymn: letters, diaries, and olliial dc-zuments, on mh? (1981) that, it seems to me, Wilson nqv song is LOW 0liknown. cootemporary and modem histories. came into bls owe es an accomplished Mu Saviour’s Love for Me. biographies, and analyses, and on wit- vniter of serious comedy. None of the On the tid page Batle’s wife-to-be fmds ten and oral eyewitness accounts. He is nmt thre+. Ww Virgin (1982). Scandal that “she was entering a fairy-tale. end a masterful writer, too - ,5r?guq of (1983) -ko me, Wilson’s least l”tere!&g thatsheandBartIeweregoingtoli~hap pily every after.” The scene takes place, Unknown. In establishing a formal F&h?and parts of Gentlemen in R&and once more, at Fontainebleau. They now pattem that will embody what appesrs to such satisfying comic works. are observed by the (former) “three nice be I& ceolral theme, the relation between If I were to try to justify John girls,” who. ironically, take for granted two kinds of reality and w/o kinds of Sutherland’s claim that A.N. Wilson is another illicit weekend. Neat. love/~ow. Wilson has sacriticed the “foremost in his generation.” I should Too neat. The device underlines what humanity and the compassion that made base my case not on his latest, but on are, to me, the shortcomings of Low The Healiw Art and Who Was Osnwid those earlier novels. 0

Among four new novels, one stands out for its extraordinary language and the magical, timeless world that it creates By &mice Kulylc Keefer

OME~~HEILE ~NS~DB Dorothy than a novel, and where Wiive’s text (Tatonbooks, 183 pagea. $9.95 paper), tbe Wiive’s novel there% an aaion- is pure narrative to the exclusion of sym- story of a mysterious. weal&y, and in- packed movie trying to get out. bolic stmcture, language play, and grown Saskatchewan family, is like a keg Rno, Madrina, Run (sono Nls, 309 chamcter development, Begamudti’s is a of explosives that dampens somewhere pages, $9.95 paper), a.5 the tide sug- kind of narrative masque: we are given along the narrative line and refusea to gests. is an extended chase se- huge dollops of descriptive detail - ignite. The dark secrets embedded in this quence. Though \Viive’S editor names, places. plans, procedures - but Prairie Gothic have to do with Incest, as might be accused of dozing - allowing supertluous sections to mmt. Weare made to sham the perspec- clutter the narrative - the reader Is, for the most part, kept wide finally of the child who strong-smeUhg ett&gh. I had guessed awake by the story line: the efforts the fiction’s hero, but all these clwacters who really did what with whom by page of an astonishingly resourceful, slightly possess inadequate information about 30, and the other &meats of the novel batty middle-aged lady to rescue her what is happening 10 whom, and why. were& strong enough to sustain the ad- foster child from the death-squad horrors The obliquity and dislocations are, for miration and interest with wbicb I’d of El Salvador. Our heroine succeeds begun reading. thanl~ toapeculiarlycaptivatiagdewex than intrlg>mg - oni can’t be bmughi Though Pinder does an admirable job ffluchlnu - an impeccably well-trained to cam about the sacrifmes Begamudrd’s in detAing the con%iousnegs of tbe dissf- German shepherd with the less than characters make, because one knows too fected girl, Evelyn, and in charttog her evowtive name of Johnny. little about them. ‘l’lwre’s also little sense progress fmm anomie to empowerment, The sub&t of Wingrove’s novel is pure of any narratorial paspsctive the reader she doesn’t successfully integrate this wish-fulfilmentz a Platonic love affair canshsre-wearemadetoseeevery- chqcter into the wmuading narrative: with Johnny is transmogrified into m thing in close-up. and the detaits mvealed the roles and iaterrelationsbip of Evelyn quited love with the dog’s human are leas than illuminating. The resulting and another major chamctw, Maude, fait senblable- Jon, a~atifyinglywealthy, charm&, and ChHstiaa doctor, eager to whole p&t. -&en why, &might&k, sre the House is an arhbitlous novel, and take on not only the unhappily married we given a traditional narrative and Kay, but her irresistibly charming foster gratuitous revelation in the novel’s final botic stntctmw work excepiionally &l, child, Joaataa. They all end up happily pages - Dr. Stngh’s explanation of his but one has a disappointing sense, as the ever after on a New Zealand sheep ranch. disillusionment with India? novel progresses, that the mystery and This should be a terrible book, but it Sucrflces is deddedly not The Rqj eventual revelation add up to far less than is saved by tbe shew wnviaion and Quartet but a totally differeat mode of the reader has been led to anticipate. artless brie of the narrative: the text has fiction: thus Singh’s vignette of the W.D. Barcus’s Squatters’ Islan‘h many of the delights of naive or folk atmcitie4 following Partition in 1947 can- (Oberon Press, 207 pages, $23.95 cloth, paintiag, and enough of the cliches of not serve the nermtive pwpase or possess $12.95 paper), stands out among the action-suspense writl~ have been. if not the terrifybIg effect of the analogous books under review because of the md- avoided, then stood on their heads for the sceae with which Paul Scott so master- queness and power of the ftive world it reader to succumb to what might be called filly concludea both A Division oj the creates. It is a ma&at world - tbougb mimetic enchantment - the d&e to Spoils and ids entire quartet of novels. we are given the date 1947 for the novel’s linger in the RctIve world created by. tbc The “sacrlfuxs” io Begamwlrd’s teat are main events. Bareus’s is as timeless a novelist. not all a function of plot: narrfitive world as it is prb&ive. The main Vee Begamudr6’s SawlfIces (Poor- development and the in- or uofo&g of characters -the boy Andrew who grows cupine’s Quill, $7.95 paper) -the story to manhood in the course of the novel; of a weakby Brahmin family’s exc.&vely to basteand to a curiously detached ktad May, the vacuous, sensuous New- protracted process of emigration fmm of evasion. There are fu things in foundland girl he mania; Andrew’s India to North America - is the utter Sacr&es. but the effect of tbe whole is curiously distant Paw and the old Por- opposite of Run. Madrbm, Run. At 109 neither very engaging nor compelling. twueae ‘fisherman, Joe Ramos, with rather elliptical pages, it’s a novella rather Leslie Hall Pinder’s Under the House wbomAadmwbecomasobsessed-seem

~_ ._,.,..-.....-^. _ . ..__ ___~--~_..~-..L._=.. to cbnduct their lives entirely through richness, ptraltpncss, fullness of the tion of the novel, in which the reader is sense-perception and intuition, rather attnosphere it conjures. asked to move from thewelta of hmmry tba” any rational conscio”sness. As with Perhaps the feature that distinguishes phaomena to a perception of larger Begam”dr&‘s teat, there is a lack of Barcus’s novel fium the others is its extra- structuTeB of meani= to an under- perspective, of uarrative overview that ordinary use of words. Because of the standing of what the island means not would allow us to place and judge these strange beauty and intensity of its only within Andrew’s limited experience characters according to a shad system language, squ&?&1stMdis not an easy but also in metaphysical terms. Yet of values. Yet somehow this fore- read. There are problems, too, with its Squatters Island remains a remarkable grounding succeeds in Squatters’ Island sheer solidity of structure - the achievement. one fmt novel that does not -we are draw” into the story md suc- relentlessness with which Barcus details merely promise but also ddlvers a great cumb to its encbantutent because of the his tictlve world - and with the final sac- deal to its readers. 0

‘Whatever I’m going to do is yoing to be a formal invention of my own. I m committed to that, even if I land smack up against a brick wall’ By James Dennis Corwmn

OIW IN Prbtce George, B.C., in self-explanatory - it’s got a better yes, in fact theconception and mecutio” 1944. aud educated at Simon assemblage of facts about what happened of the book is in a naive form. I began Fraw University, Brian Fawett in Cambodlatbao any other book I know by asking myself a deliberately naive worked as ao English teacher and about. “‘A Book for People Who Find question: What is themost diffcult sub- city planner in Vancouver before Television Too Slow” is a comment on ject matter I can take on as a writer’? I turning to full-time writing. I-Iii the lack of dense information that televi- fairly quickly established that Cambodia books include Features of State sion provides. Television pumps eoor- would be the most dift%ult. I didn’t kuow (Talonbooks, 1977). m C&w mous quantities of information through auything about Cambodia. I knew there with the Le& and Other Stories very narrow conduits and turns them all had been a bloodbath. and I didn’t know (1982). and The Secret Jourmd of into the equivalent of informkiional anything more than that, so the research Afaxander Mackenzie (1986). His alphabet soup. What I tried to do was for the first six or eight months was pret- most recent book is Cambodia: A write a book that had a dew of density ty slow. Along the way, I began to under- Book /or People Who Find Television that simply isn’t available either in tdevi- stand what it was that the Khmer Rouge Too Slow. which he discussed with James sion or in most tiction todav. had done - thev had attemuted to eater- Dennis C&wan: BiC: Were you familiar witi the recent minate indivldial memory and exter- history of Cambodia m the outset or d/d udnate individual imagination. I began to Eooks in Couada: Let’s begin with the you have e n&e version if these events? notice there were some pretty scary title of your Ialest book, Cambodia: A Fawcettz Gne of the criticisms of the book oarallels between what thw had done aud Book for People Who Find Televise” is its “aIve quality, and I think that’s a ihe whole momentum of th conuuunlca- Too Slow. What’s being soid here? real issue. “How can you do this? How tlons revolution that we’re *inthe midst Bdan Fmvcetl: Well, the “Cambodia” is can you say tbll?” My response is to say of-all the way from television to mass data systems to micro-computers and so 8&l Mwcetl forth. So the result mdldn’t have come from a book that wasn’t in fact conceived - in naIvety. When people accuse the book of being naive, I’m delighted. Yes. of coumc it is! BiC: Who ir voicing thase’ crifi&ms? Fawcetb The reviews ate coming from people who are awustomed to &albtg with llteratore as lf the subject matter of literature were literature itself. They are all forumlists, in the sense that they are unaccustomed to dealing with a book that is conteut-driven. All the formal at- tributes of that book are driven by the subject matter. In fact, the dual teat was absolutely dictated by the complexity of the subject matter. BE: You didn’t have that in mind to begin with? FawceU: I had no notlon of how the book was going to be formed. I said, let this book take whatever form it takes; let’s sea what form the eontent will produce or dictate. A long time ago. someone Fawcat(: Probably because I’m not pointed out to me that fmt-rate literature capable of it. No. I’m probably technical- comes from fust-rate subjeer matter. Oat ly capable of it, but not neuralIy capable.. of formalist subject matter, I just don’t If somebody were to give me an oudine.. think you geer first-rate literalwe. One of of dmetbing I was supposed to write, I’d the things I’ve noticed is that by the tbne probably be able to do it without any dif- these people actually get into the text, flculty. But in the absence of that, .I’ve they’re determined to mlk about my style, kepept my mind relatively free of there the way I speak about tblogs, bat they’re forms of interference. There’s a sort of THE ART OF THE equally determined to ignore what I’m Zen, to put this in the most positive pos- SHORT STORY IN saying. sible light, of not falling for alI the traps. CANADA AND 1 don’t think this will be a popular I didn’t fall for the Cantit trap because NEW ZEALAND book with the CanLir people. Canadian I wasn’t capable of it. I f,gwed out literature has declared its subject area to ’ somewhere along the line that I could W&i. Naw be Canada in a very narrow sense and perhaps wile half as welI as AI& Munro, essenrially Canadian wvlrlng. I caU it rhe if I really worked my ass off at it, which A” analysis of the genre Alhx Munm fan club. Now, Alim Munm is half as good as a pre’ay good writer. of the short story as it is a wonderful wi@, we all know that. I guess what I’m saying is that whatever has developed in two She is “of a religious fwre. She is not I’m going to do is going 10 be a formal countries, and a close the greatest wiler in the world. There are invention of my own. I’m conmdrted to ways of writing that are al least equally that track even if it means I land smack study of specific authors: acceprable - that ublmately are capable up against a brick wall. Canadians Alice Muruo, of pmducl~ greater Iltera”ue. But if One of the things I’ve been doing in my DC. Scott, and Margaret you’re not in the Alice Muoro fan club, writing is fhallenging the whole enterprise Laurence, and New if you’re not trying to do things in that of fiction. I don’t want to write a “owl Zealanders Frank way, well. . . .I mean, 1 think there are because I’m interested in challmg that Sargason, Katherine whole entemtise. and himicaU~ I believe fer than Alice Munro, ai what Alice I’ll be pm& &ht. Sooner orl~tersomb MamfieldhtriciaGrace Mu”ro does. Guy Vanderhaeghe or San- body’s going to wake up to the facl that and Maurice Duggan. dra Birdsell. for example. Reath F’mser the news on television is tiction, and that $30.00 is a very good writer. fiction is universal in that it is humanely EiC: These prqferetxes are fir (I group toxic to us now. We live in a world ln of witefs, one couldpossibly calla “new which there is more flctIon ln an average uaw’* within Canadian writing. How doer this crop of writetsJ?t inlo concep- century. We sre ass&d. overwhelmed by tions of CanLIt? Fawatl: Well, CanLit ls alreadyreprese”- literawe is dying is that fiction ls uni- tat& of a” era. One begins to feel as thou& you were pressed against the far writer. the” it’s a &or intellecrual task edge of a very full balloon, and lhere - and if you want to wire lictIo” and really is no “lore room for anyone else. get famous. go and write for Ihe movies You’ve got all the people in the CanLil and television, but don’t writea book. I depamnents of our universities and want to get away fmm fiction and create they’re writlag about the wlws who are some form that I don’t undowand or already accepted within these terms. know how to describe as yet. There really is no way to break into that BIG: This gets w to Ihe re/adonshtB be- phalan.., and I’m not sure that should be tween news reporti and Miami Vice. one’s aspiration anyway. The balloon is Fawcelt: Well, I don’t believe in defued. I suspect the whole enterprise is puritanical postures. I don’t think you probably just going Lo come to rest within should say because televlslon is toxic that the next five to 10 years. you simply turn away. 1 think what we Elf2 Who isyour readingpublic? You’re have to do is learn how to watch t&vi- not wiling drug-store books. sion much more criticaUy than we do Fewetl: At Ihe momenl, I have no idea now. I recommend the sequential ~thod mho’s readll me. But I don’t see any of watching &vision - by which I mean +H;I~~-&OF reason why Combodio couldn’t have bee” that you shouldn’t get up when the corn- pal out in a paperback format and maw mercials come on bacause the conuner- AMERICAN SEAL produced. I think it’s much more in- dais are part of the ficlion, whether it’s FISHERY teresting to the ordinary. fairly well- the naws or dramatic programming. educated guy la the street, of whom t&e There is always a collusion between the Briton Cooper Busch are several million Ia this country, than to the audience that formal literature K5 Ucertain elements of reoiity flllt be ‘Fascinating.. . those with defines - which is what, around IJOO? divcerned more readily In Miami Vice nautical, historical, or And they’re all people who don’t read than the edited version of reality that is ecological interest will pa&w for news reports, then &‘t the books anyway. So in a way. I’m not get- &asure this beak! Choice tlng to my audience. smote thing be applied to genericficfion? EIC: Why aren’t you trving lo reach on Fawce.l(: Sure, I lhlnk tba same thing is 514.95 audience Ihtough lhe b&d/y accepted happening there.. That’s why Stephen terms of mass mark& “gerwic”‘Jicdon? King is under a fair amount of scruliny ~_.. __.__.. _- __..~ ~... in Cambodirr As an entertainment writer, other places. I read V.S. Naipaul for doter is to be edited by historian Victor John LeCarrd occasIonally veers into the sentence structure.. I think I value Nalpaul Suthcm, mrator of the Canadian War realm of education. because in fact he because to a certain extent he is pissing Museum In Ottawa; it is due in 1989. And does hpov how all those security systems up-wind constantly, which I think is a finally, The O&ni Book oJ Canadian work. If you want to read those ihi& for good intellectual method. He went info Litermy Anecdofer has for its editor information. why not? For people who all those strange places and came out want sheer information, I think Arthur more skeptical than he went in because in 1990. Hailey should be read. His method for he refires to believe. He’s not a believer. AU three editors are c!oUectIng anec- writing Hotel was to send a bunch of I read Raymond Carver and I would love dotes from across the country, so if you students into the hotel with tape- to be able to write stories like he does. I have favmuite stories connected with reaxders. He went back and listened to remgnlre the landscapes and social situa- Canadian polltlcs and politicians, miUtary the tapes, to get it down how people act tions he writes about, but I would never life, or Canadian literary fwre.5. they are in hotels. Popular literature does have a be able to write like him because I don’t anxious to hear from you. Please submit good side and a bad side. Arthur Halley have a demonic side like he does. material to each of them care of Oxford is a very useful popular writer. I read a fair amount of science fiction University Press, 70 Wyxford Drive. Don BIG: W’e nwe talking recmIiy about - not for pleasure and certainly not for Mills, Ont. M3C 1J9. Da&. Is your ident@cation with him. as sentence structure, but because there’s Sarah MacLachlan (I municipal bureoucraf in Florence, lied always something to be learned from it. Marketing.Departmmt ckxely to your own position (IS o city I still think of sclencc fiction as the Oxford university PIUS planner in Vancouver? leading edge of the imagination. I read T0Klnto Ftwcetb I went into city planning because a lot of science 1 wanted to find out how cltics work. Z&year program After being there for six months, I real- daJsical- I’mnow some ized I’d hit the jackpot, that I was learn- very obscure sections of the Ten ing the most important things an artist in ofArc/&cfu~ That’s theTHE ~~I.LOWING Canadian books were my own time can learn. I turned around foundation of the world we’re in - reviewed in the previous issue of Books and looked at my fellow at.@ and they’re fit have examined a lot in Canada. Our recominendations don’t aondered why they weren’t doing simiIar of e like that so it’s very informative. neccasarily reflmt the rev&s: Unds of things. That’s what artists all I read a - asunconvek across history have done. Chaucer, Plato as I Like Josephus. I used FICTION - all the big ones are up there. They’ve this as one of the sources for Cambodia. Farewell Tour. by Virgil Burnett. The Par- got as close to the heart of human rela- He wrot.z theJewish cupinc’r Quill. Burnett’s seven short s2odes tlons. in terms of civic activity, as they wasJude& the whole struggle in are Freighted with curlowly dated and or- could. By definition this is what an artist thetime wrote in nate mnlinentpl conceits. but ~s.portmyal of the human comedy is cmenam& exm% is supposed to do. We’re not supposed to under ordinary. and unique. be sitting around collcga in our smok- wasvery a ing jackets tell& people how Heart of Iread Dewdney, Bowing, because I NON-FICTION Darknessis about the secret heart of evil Yea16 of Choice: 1960-1968, by G&ad in all of us. That’s crap! play baseball with him and I like him. P&tier.tralctedfmmtbeFra~chbyAlan BiC: Howdoyou combineyouroccupa- And I think he a lot better ._.~~ ” Brown. Melbuen. Less comprehensive than non wm your wrumng~ 0 other birtorlans of the period. Pellet& con- FmvcetL: I don’t have a f&time job now. , _ 1 fines himself to personal experience in tbls IwsinajobwhereIwas1 making a whole second volume of his memoirs. Bis rreour0 lot of money. I just sort of said to myself, 1 lion sometimes conflleU with the others - there tie a mlilllon reasons why I don’t notably the sdmiMmamyof Iten L&xs- wiie, why I can’t write what I’m sup- que - but is always more convincing. posed to write. There’s only one way to do it and that wa to cut back on the coot- POETRY mitments that didn’t alIow me to write. The Self-Completbig Tree: Selected Pocrm, by Dorothy L&say, Press Porc@Ic. When Also, I had a life-threatening illness, Liway’s fti Scteztcd Poems was published which has a tendency to prioritize things DOES BRIAN ~PAWCETT (Field Notes, in 1957. Desmond Pacey called her one OF in your mind. I had a stomach ulcer that March), classify Al Purdy, Sid Marty. the best poets of the “generation that came blew up, after 15 years of threatening to. and Dennis Lee as teachers, lndepcn- to mawrky belween the two World Wars.” 1 bled IO pints of blood into my sromach dently wealthy, or idiots? Tblrty years later she bar compiled a & and nearly died. I didn’t have a religious Anna Porter tion that smuts her place among tbe bti experience about it - I just thought after President and Publtsher poets of the century. Key Porter Books . Toronto TELLING TALES bought a word-processor and discovered W~THOUOKT that your readers would be z-m munwt~~ Camdii bodks have I liked writing better than anything else interested to know that Oxford is in tbe been received by Books *I Conada in I’d ever done in my life. process of preparing three books recent weeks. Inclusion in this list does of aneo not preclude a review or notice in a future BIG: What dotes. The OMord Book of Canadian Political Anecdotes is b&g edited by iSSUe: Jack MacLad, the well-known author and professor of poUtical sclencc, and is to be published in the fall of 1988. The O&rd Book o/Gmadian Milikvy Anec- A madam from coavml B.C. Rut Nobel warns gbls l7bmlt catcblng YD: Kncllr /Or “Watch out, working mai&, Me. ‘- For ~inptoms of AIDS In Irlcls who go AC-DC..” THE VERSE above is not just a limerick - it is also a lipogram, a composition Rkbnrd IfatIiid, ~lltlml cut, Has nincliva, moytemom Ihan that. that inteatioaally rejects one or more Survivor par excellence - letters of the alphabet. For instance, Now what could de.ens.amce in 1939 a California musician, Hroest Thk cm.ti~ Pcmu. Vincent Wright, published a FOlkQ$ arty, 50,000-word novel in which the letter Who orbits e does not appear. We consider that When ilk a little excessive. Instead, motestents At? are invited to compose limericks in which, es in the example above. the Allan Fotheringhnm W&S with zest Of folblm north, south, east, and letter e is not to be found. Tbe prize WS,; is $25. Deadline: August 1. Address: Skewem tmgets high and low, CaoWit No. 120, Books in Canada. Spara nelther friend ltw foe. 366 Adelaide Street East, Toronto Dr. Fotha good work, MA 3X9. Dlwel the murk Witi ever Results of CattWit No. 118 clever NOT EI’ERYONB who contributed Jprr. nonets on well-known Canadians Mlrrer Stevens. as 0 minirtef stack to the strict demands of the Dld you see nothing sin&-r verse-form, but those who did pm- Mtd~ busbus with your job? vided a wealth of sly wit. The winner Like 2Tlc& Dick you sob; Classilfed rates: line$8 (40percharaoters is Donald Wiikler of Montreal for the ‘*I mu not o crook.” toDeadlIne: the line). first of the month for foUowiog tines: I saw that look - issuesdaled folkwlng month. Address: Now I~‘illum L.mn Machvnzie King Did you wink CenadaBooks Clasal2ed.in 36% Adelaide Low3 his mother bwt hod rr fliw Or blink. z8m&st, TomntoM5A SX9. (416)Phone: Or two will) naughty Iadiics Sine? - Marvin Goody, Toronto lPerlsb tbe thought) but these qA OOICSBGVICE for day eara CentreD and Can be fb@cn. nurswvschoolr Chlfdren’s booksand E.C.E. 0, where has .44argwet Trudeau Not tbe living resoume books. For mom Informalion call Torrcled him, just gone? RaInbow Books (416) 222.5217. Cl&shed Her .smp,nies were DUSI. INTELLECTUAL, IIterate women (40s) vrlshes to meef B man of means. any age. Robertson Davies tugs at hb bard. vrilh broad literary background. Box 17. bfugs fw the cmnem, looks sincere. Ruokg In Canada Puts at eae hk w&bred bow, Clenrs his thmnt and Intones: OLD AND BAGE BOOKB. CanadIana “*Indubitably calalogues. Heritage Books, 866 Palmerston I’m prized today Barry Baldwin, Celgary Ave.. Toronto. Ontado MBG 2S2. ON 6 JUNE: Happleat of literary bIrthday% RAB. This Is your first (of many?) appear- ances In BIG C.XXLUTU@N TQ CSANCJIU AW%EWiiTCG NO.S ORIGAMI LEBBONB from a oreatlve, literate Thethey thatfirstbad fana oncat Ukraiaianwas given name, a “Kitka” - lr~struclor. Many years of experience. Box 16 the cat. William remembered her playing mood wasthe onlystove whenBooks sheIn Canada. ~,aa kitten. into alI produce the Sheseym manyyears littersthat she lived SEEICING A COPY OF Squadmn 421, fkxt - seven is a ripe old age for a farm cat. of a smfes of RCAF books publlshed by - Wflfiam Kurel&, PrairieA Boy’s Summer (Tundra Books)Hangar Books. Wdte lo Box 15. Books In Canada M. New Bmwiick When properly fM in. the letters in the box form a quota- bea tion from a Canadian book. Find the letters by solving the N. Distaste clues below and writing the anwas in the numbered spaces provided. Then transfer the letters from the spaw to the 0. HawaiimfEart appropriate squares ip the box. The fmt letters of each answered clue form the name of the author and the title of P. PO01 the book. (Solution next month.) The soMon to Acrostic No. 5 nm?am on page 41. Q. Pi&skater

A. .%hudtv Niiht editor 8. Pianist c. Nipple

D. Poster Hewitt U. New Btuiswtck ptlrasez4wds. mMUfactUred car V. Ambassador to U.N. B. ppi&-altiFa)Iic W. Exorbitant rate of 2 wds. bnerest x. Vancouver F* 2zfm humortsl 0. P.oberlstvlce% Y. As before 01 famous cocktaa aforesatd hyph. wd. 2 1nwlpuon on a I-I. Lumpy tomb AA. once commoll I. LtbemtpOuster stght at train stations J. Pmbiemlontsts BB. Site of huge oII field tap. 1941 cc. wml rmlemcllt

DD. Assodated with me’s birth EE. Pcdtticat reporter

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