“Hot Shoes” – a Novel (Selections and Summaries)
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“HOT SHOES” – A NOVEL (SELECTIONS AND SUMMARIES) AND A CRITICAL PAPER CANADIAN TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: SETTLER-INVADER, DAMAGE, AND TRUST David Brundage, MFA, MA Dr. Dic Edwards and Dr. William Marx This creative work and research was undertaken under the auspices of the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David and was submitted in partial fulfilment for the award of a Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing, Faculty of Humanities, School of Cultural Studies. June, 2016 1 CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF CRITICAL PAPER P. 4 STORY SYNOPSIS OF NOVEL P. 5 DECLARATION P. 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS P. 8 HOT SHOES—SELECTIONS AND SUMMARIES P. 9 Introduction P. 10 Prologue: Long Before (in entirety) P. 13 1. Leaving NDC (in entirety) P. 25 2. What Would Tarzan Do? P. 59 3. Hot Shoes P. 65 4. Blue Gold P. 90 5. Hunted P. 106 6. Thoughts of Adoption P. 123 7. Making to Sail P. 138 8. Latch Key Kid Sans Clef P. 151 9. Insight and Farewell P. 166 10. Marooned Barefoot (in entirety) P.185 11. L’Eau de Vie P. 238 12. The Road to Jake’s Fields P. 255 13. Leaving Kisisokôe (297 to end in entirety) P. 293 2 CANADIAN TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: SETTLER-INVADER, DAMAGE, AND TRUST P. 319 Introduction P. 321 Colonialism Canada P. 323 Indigenous Worldview P. 325 Four States of Relationship P. 330 Separate Literatures P. 354 Murphy and The Blue Gold: P. 361 In the Name of Trust and Tomorrow Last Thoughts P. 421 BIBLIOGRAPHY-- WORKS CITED P. 421 APPENDIX ONE Murphy’s Imprimatur P. 429 Format Note: I am following the guidelines of the MLA Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, third edition, Modern Language Association of America, 2008 but without giving the form of publication, which the most recent MLA no longer requires. I am including URLs when they seem helpful, which the latest guidelines also suggest. 3 ABSTRACT “Canadian Truth and Reconciliation: Settler-invader, Damage, and Trust” My story of Murphy and The Blue Gold ocean liner transporting non-Aboriginal people of the former Canada back to their nations of ancestry responds to contemporary Canada entering a new era of truth and reconciliation, recognizing acts of cultural genocide and persisting racism. Non-Aboriginal fiction on the damaged relationship to date has gone only so far in using accountability as catalyst and guide for a newly imagined vision of distinct peoples in a shared land. Historically, the relationship shifted from separate worlds to trade and military alliances to a colonial push toward both apartheid and assimilation. World views differed greatly. Although the Aboriginal view promised more for future harmony and environmental health, the encroaching non-Aboriginal view with its stress on colonialism, “progress” and consumption took command. Two segregated streams of literature developed, the non-Aboriginal one dominant. The myth of the “vanishing Indian” presided. Seven categories of non-Aboriginal fiction that skirts or deals in some partial way with the damaged relationship can be defined; the vanishing or vanished Indian myth generally pervades seven of these and troubles the eighth. Murphy’s story, on the other hand, asserts that Indigenous people and cultures are absolutely still here and will be long into the future. The rest of us just haven’t really seen them. If we do, we may begin to work more effectively toward the welfare of an endangered planet. As an artist who travels to an “exotic” new world (2172) where he encounters Aboriginal people, Murphy evokes the figure of the frontier artist Paul Kane, and the question arises: will he apply his art in the old colonial way or will he vie for something new that recognizes our second chance at a relationship. 4 SYNOPSIS OF THE NOVEL “HOT SHOES” “Hot Shoes” focuses on a young boy growing up amid troubled history in a fictionalized Province of Quebec (Gaulôre), Canada. The main action begins in the fall of 1962, in the island port of Métropole on the great St. Léonard River leading to the Atlantic Ocean, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Almost ten-year-old Murphy Beckridge comes into a strange pair of running shoes. These transport him aboard a “green technology” ocean liner serving a special program. The year is 2172, and all former North Americans of non-Aboriginal heritage are being “re- rooted”: returned to the lands and cultures of their ancestors. Uncertain how to operate the shoes, Murphy seeks understanding but then becomes separated from them. Sprinkled through the novel’s twelve body sections are vignettes and episodes set at a privileged boys’ summer camp. The Beckridges’ millionaire landlord has sponsored Murphy and another youngster from the same building, French boy George Deschamps. Dealing with homesickness and various anxieties, including a sense of responsibility for the disappearance of his father’s captured German Luger, Murphy befriends a number of other outsiders and misfits. Through two camp visitors, an Algonquin father and son, he is informed of genocidal policies within Gaulôre and Canada, the very sorts of atrocities his father was fighting during the war. History texts from both English and French schools have told him nothing about this. The novel’s perspective is that of an older unnamed narrator (possibly an older Murphy) focusing on how Murphy at summer camp deals with events – real or imagined—that led to and then followed coming into his hot shoes. Murphy’s initial controlling emotion at camp is homesickness complicated by fear that his various misfit and rebellious friends will cause him to shame his family through charges of misconduct and then expulsion. 5 On board The Blue Gold in 2172, Murphy meets two sisters willing to adopt him, but to remain on board, he must pass a DNA test confirming that he does not have Aboriginal ancestry. Since his mother’s stock is British and French and she married a British soldier, Murphy has no concerns about the test. But to his surprise, his sample shows above the acceptable portion of Aboriginal ancestry. For his protection, the sisters smuggle the boy off ship, into a very altered City of Gaulôre, where he must fend for himself, “marooned barefoot.” His hot shoes remain on board, bound for the northern mouth of the St. Léonard and then the open ocean. Murphy at summer camp thinks of the fantastic voyage experience as a tale he tells himself to fall asleep at night. Both stories turn on Murphy’s loving relationship with his family and especially his father Nestor and with the anxieties and mysteries surrounding this relationship. Murphy’s personal response to life’s difficulties is to explore his artistic gift, seeking healing and spiritual atonement, striving to uphold his belief in some greater meaning and purpose. The novel ends with completion of a significant phase in the 1963 Murphy’s life and completion of the missing Luger plot. The 1962 fantastic adventure story, however, ends with the protagonist still stranded in 2172, although he experiences a vision of paddling through blinding sun to his hot shoes. 6 DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being currently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed…………………………………………………….(candidate) 30 June 2016 Date……………………………………………………… STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. Signed…………………………………………………….(candidate) 30 February 2016 Date……………………………………………………… STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed…………………………………………………….(candidate) 30 June 2016 Date………………………………………………………. 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dr. Dic Edwards, my Director of Studies at University of Wales, Saint David, has been wonderfully helpful and encouraging. I am very grateful. My wife Joyce has been amazingly understanding on what felt like an endless journey. 8 “HOT SHOES” A Novel Selections and Summaries Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find thee by other lakes… and night o’er take thee everywhere at home. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Book IX (Motto of Camp Kisisokôe) 9 INTRODUCTION: HOW THE PORTFOLIO REPRESENTS THE NOVEL “Hot Shoes” runs to 150,000 words, twice the length permitted for the PhD creative submission. While I think there is room for judicious trimming and conversion of certain scenes to narrative summary, I don’t believe it is within the nature of this particular text to be reduced to 75,000 words. I have therefore formed this portfolio of the work byselecting particularly key sections exactly as written while summarizing other portions to provide an understanding of how the selected portions link together in the whole. The novel has a Prologue (Long Before), twelve sections based around the story of the hot shoes, which begins in September 1962, and a denouement (Section 13) in which Murphy returns home from camp in August 1963. The prologue introduces Murphy in the city in 1958, covers older brother William’s birthday gathering, then concludes with a scene presenting a main part of Murphy’s dramatic conflict at Camp Kisisokôe, summer 1963. Before explaining my method of representation from there on, I believe it is helpful to describe the novel’s main components and structural dynamics. “Hot Shoes” takes its shape through counterpointing one arch plot (Murphy and the hot shoes) and a multi-plot sequence set at the boys’ summer camp, 1963. The manuscript has 13 sections following the prologue. Sections 1 to 12 each contain segments of the main adventure plot with a number of interpolating vignettes at the summer camp.