COhTl3T.S _. ._.... I 4

Voh?le 12 ~~IIW~ Number 5

FEXTURES The Other Sollludc. An outsider’s view of new French-Canadian fiction. By Albeno Manguel...... 7 Less Than Conquerors. The British takeover of Quebec was lessa conquest than a betrayal. By I.&l. Owen...... I0 _ Life on theMargin. George Woodcock’sanarchism is founded on personal frustration. By DavidStofJord. . . . .I7

REVIEWS Quebec, the FortiRed City: From the 17th to the 191h Century. by Andre Charbonncau. Yvon Deslogcs. andMarcLafrance...... _...... _...... 12 Le Pouvoir? Gmnais Pas!, by Lise Payette...... I2 Ferlr’sPolly,by:ean-CharlesHarvey...... __...... l4 Home Game,by Paul Quariington ...... I4 The Little Drummer Girl, by John lc Carr6 ...... I5 The Bblh Contml King of the Upper Volta and Shakespeare’s Dog. by Leon Rooke . . .I8 Murder in the Dark, by Margaret Atwood ...... I9 Captain Neal MacDougaldr the Naked Goddess. by Millon Acorn ...... 28 Night Travcllers, by Sandra Birdsell; Fifly Stories and q Piece of Advln. by David Amason; In lhe Bloud. byHelenRos~;FromrHlghThinWire,byJoanClark .__.._...,.....,....__.._...... _____...... 22 Labyrlnlbs olVolcz Conversations wilb Robert Kroesch, by Shirley Neuman and Roberl Wilson. . . .23 Generations: Selected Poems, by Rachel Kern ...... 24 BacehanalisRevirited,byJamesH.Gray ...... 25

DEPARTMENTS Field Notes In Translnlion, by PoulS~uew, . .29 WaitingforLeonard,byDavidHomel...... 3 Children’s Books, by Mury Ains/ie.Smirh . .31 A Terrible Intimacy, by Gary Fagan. . . .4 Paperbacks. 6.v.4nne Collins . .32 Elysium’s Lap. by Jc$f Miller . . . . S CanWitNo.83 _...... ,.____.______.._...... 33 English, Our English, by Bob Blockbum.. . . .6 The Edllors Recommend . . ,34 Interview with L&ndre Bergeron, by Daniel Francis. . .26 Books Received. . .34 The Browser, byhforrir Wove . . . .28

EDITOR 0 Michael Smith MANAGING EDITOR 0 Wayne Grady ART DIRECTOR 0 Mary Lu Toms GENERAL MANAGER and ADVERTISING MANAGER 0 Susan Traer CIRCULATION MANAGER 0 Susan Aihoshi CONSULTANTS o Robert Farrclly 0 Jack Jensen CONTRIBUTING EDITORS o Eleanor Wachtel (West Coast) o Robert Kroetsch (Prairies) o Doris Cowan 0 Douglas Hill 0 Stephen Scobie 0 Sheila Fischman (Quebec) 0 D.W. Nichol (Europe) Eastern Townships of Quebec. The Dardick declared tbe following day. introductions do their job: Collhts’s is a The stars of the evening were, of short and light-hearted history of the course, the elders. Supported by two magazine from birth to bankruptcy, a canes, cautioning guests not to shake hi cy& familiar to maoy a swcess”r to hand too warmly because of hll arthritis, CIV/n. Layton’s mntrlbution ties in the Frank Scott hobbled in whh hi wife rev& and the literary movenwnt in Marion, a painter. (It’s a commo”ly T?J:INGc.r. cummings’a advice to heart, Montreal in general with the political overlooked fact that Marion Smtt D little magazine called CIV/n. whose scene at the time. “Illusions were helped change the face of Canadian title was draw” fmm Ezra Pound’s manifold and generous,” he recalls - painting in the 1930sand 1940s. and thal “nagran for “civllizati”“,” was launch- but better they should be genemus than at 75 she’s still working.) He joined ed. The place was Moontreal, the year stingy. And Norris puts CIV/” in rela- Louis Dudelt, 65, and Irving Layton. 71. ws 1953, and the participants included tion to Souter’s Toronto-based Conhzct in the living mom, and the tlashbulbs II+= Layton, Louis Dudek. A&en magazine. popped. There was a sase that these Collins, Frank Scott, Leonard Nommn The heart of the Whicule book is the three might not meet again. and the Cohen (who later dmpped bis middle reprinted issues of the otiginal CZV/n. camems were very busy. Dudek. at the name), Phyllis Webb, not to mention After 30 years, they read surprisingly end of the evening, remarked, “Next it’s contributors like the Black Mountain well. There is good writing, daring, and our tombstones that wiIl be talking to ports - Olson and Creeley and Cl Cm- humour, as in Louis Dudek writing each other.” “un - Eli Mandel, Doug Jones. and so under tbe pseudonym of AIexa”der St. There was Eamaraderie. but Little the list continues. They launched the John-Smith, calling hill a “disilht- drama. so little as to prompt one of the nmgzine because, according to Dudek. sioned Canadian poet” in the can- original CIV/n group to say that the “Canada needed a wad ~~ooslng.and ttibutors’ notes. There is aIs critical party WBOa worthy reflection of the got it inCIV/“.” - - _- spirit; the Black Mountain p”ets are Puritan atmosphere of the ‘5?s. There Those old crev zaosers gathered read with respect, but not awe. And was just one incident of canebrmglng, togcthet not lot&g&at Simanbardick there is international breadth with when Lea Kennedy, self-acknowledged and Nancy Matrelll’s house on amiably translations fmm France and Italy, as owner of a “garbage bag full of unpub- run-down Roy Street in Montreal, just well as fmm Yiddish writers. Iished poems” (at 74 he ham’t published down from Wahhnan’s f& market tmd At the book’s launching Siion Dar- a line since 1933). accused Seymour itr; dlstlnctive neo” trout. Dardiek, the diclt made sure to have the new genera- Mayne of having booted him out of a Fublisher of V&icule Press, decided to tion of Montreal poets on hand to salute poetry anthology. But Dudek was there pay homage t” the Montreal poetry to soothe Kennedy with a little quatrain. swne of the past - a scene that is still a Clerlhew that held “ut the promise of a thriving today with different and “ew comeback to Kennedy, harkming back niuncs - by publishll a book on the to his fmt and only book, The Shroud- msgazlne that those times pmduced. ing: The Whicule book, entitled CIV/n: A Leo Kennedy could make a comeback Lirerqv Afagazine of the ‘SOS,is a hand- Awdw some volume with a laminated silver Wilh IIsmall book o/verse cow, a cotumst from the magazine’s About a c&in or (I hearse. original mimeo format with hand- Othetwise, it was business as usual. “tinted covets bv artist/desimter Buddy There were jokes about whore hairline &n&i. CIV/i perished f;om lack df had receded furthest, whose had receded funds in 1955after ntakbuz the transition entirely; Layton proclaimed that Frank fmm mimro to ptit, bit each of its Scott was “tottering into immortality”: seven issues in its two-year existence ls and MarionScott engaged MarleLouise preserved in the book. Gay, a Quebec&e artist 45 years her Added to them are retmspective junior, in a discussion about the pm- rrrcs by Aileen Collins. the magazine’s blems of havinga husband. children, original editor; Irving Layton; and an and still keeping time for painting. Plus acad~ictdly tinged piece by Ken Norris p chan&. . . . on the historlcalsigticanee of the little Other contnItc.rs were present too, msg. Of co”rse, no flashback would be the forefathers there assembledz Roby” like Dominique Clift, the political complete without old snapshots. Sarah, John McAuley, Seymour Mayne. essayist who, under the sngliclzd name Especially nostalgia-inspiring is the Fred Louder, and Ray Filip, who of Don Cllft. published poems in the cover photo shock a ,w”ng Leonard organlres the Phtriels radii series in magazine. Like a latter-day Lefty, every- Cohen in a lumberjack shltt, serenading Montreal that has see” GE%“” Mlron on one was waiting for Leonard Cohen. il gathering of poets in a cottage (eom- the same podium as Al Pwdy. “It was “Where’s Leonard? I wouldn’t mind pletc with stuffed moosehead) in the one of the better parties we’ve had,” seeing Leonard,” Irving Layton ___.. __.-_._ L-s--- -- ._ thundered, but Cohen did not show. That’s not a lot. for a prers that has Apparently he was en voyage. been in operation since 1975. Yet Villa During its short life, CIV/n worked, neuve has gradually developed a reputa- according to Dud&, because the poets tlon not only for good poetry by involved were still flexible and willing to strongty individual voices, but for the cooperate with each other. Everyone simple beauty of their hand-set, hand- was in his 30s; vision war supple, and printed books. One of my cherished career directions had yet to be deter- possessions is a folded broadside by mined. These were people aware of their VUleneuveof two poems by Kleinzahler, mission, which began with Firs1 .%a&- printed (a0 the colophon says) in Caslon ment and Scott and A.J.M. Smith: to and Gaudy open on hand-made paper make ‘Canadian poetry modem. The called “salt & pepper” by Twiirocka of way to do that was through bold state Brookston. Indiana. ment and “bad” taste. “We were the Fred Louder, who comes from In- boys that introduced the four-letter diana, is a natural prinler, with a predse words.” Layton said. He has an eye for clean, elegant design and a explanation of why it all happened in finickiness that demands perfection. Hi Montreal. That city has an “unbmken father was a journalist, and Fred spent record of poetic vitality” beenose of the hi early years in and out of print shops, distinct groups of people inhabiting it but it wasn’t until years later that hll and the social tensions they create. dormant interest began to stir. In the “And one way of resolving tensions,” 1960s he came to Montreal to study at Layton relates, “is to write poetry.” The McGill, and although he wasn’t happy Jewish poets were more effective and there he stayed to avoid the draft. eloquent in Montreal than in Toronto, At McGill Fred met Robyn, a Mont- he adds in cautionary tones. because the real native. In 1975 they spent the som- assimilative pull was stronger in the mer on Vancouver Island where they second, newer city. made friends wilh a man named Vernon Jewish and McGill Wasp, those good Bender who owned a print shop. Bender grey poets pot oat a magazine that bears gave them and a couple of others rereading 30 years later, and V&hicole (ineluding August Kleinzahler. who Press, in an act of honouring the wm- would become their fir6t aulhor) a tvm- munity from which it sprung, has given and-a-half-day crash coome in printing. us a rich treasure. Together, they prove Back in Montreal they began saving that, as Pound said, civilization is “not for a press of their own. “The original a one-man job.” - DAYlDHOMEL idea,” Robyn recalls, “was not to print books but to finance our expensive habit of writing.” They bought a tabletop hand-worked platen press made by the Kelsey Company of Metideo, Conner ticot. Their press name was taken fmm the street they lived on at the lime, a short distance from their present apart- ment. BEH~NDAred door on a quiet Outmnont “1 describe it as being first stage street of apartment house& painted HOearth Press.” says Fred. referrine 10 balconies, and steep iron stairways is the the- more famous- operaiion no- by home of Villeneove Publications. On Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Fred and this quiet Sunday the three-year-old girl Robyn experienced some of .the same has an awful cough, and the five-year- early difficulties as the Woolfs, and the old boy is busy Uttering the living room lessons in Leonard Woolf% autobib- with hand-m&down shirts from a family graphy have served as their own. “The friend. The kettle whistles. and tea is man says time and time again, don’t poured by the proprietors of one of the expand, keep small, keep particular. few English literary presses in Quebec, Make sore that the work is good and the Fred Louder and Robyn Sarah. writing is good.” Villeneove has published just live As for their editorial stance, Fred says small books of poetry: The Saumge simply, “I still hang very heavily on the Master o.fMimk by August Klelruahler, three imagist rules: directness, economy Signs and Certainlies by A.P. Morltz, of language, and mosicality.” There is a The Space Between Sleep and Waking certain exactnes.5 to the language of Ly Robyn Saab, Points North of A by Villeoeuve’s poets that no doubt reflecls Jack Hannan, and Brian Bartlett’s chl- Fred and Robyn’s tale io printing es toi! Wee&. As well, tha was a short- well as poetry. Besides, poems being se1 lived magazine called Versus a few years by hand had better stand up to close back, and now a new one, Four by Four scrutiny. Y-Iaod-set composition of type (each edition features four poems by gives you B kid of terrible iotbnacywith four poets), the third issue of which is the marlal.” about to appear. Now ViUeneuve has two Kelsey

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presses, bolted side-by-side onto a rooden table in a narrow room off the hallway. mooden caw of type and other equipment are arranged with , That star&! with IheIr shlniw almost fi&htening neatness. But it’s a Such conuno~~stork as Ihey strayinto. warm. inviting place, more the shop of a As Rye read these lines ia the hobbyist than a printer who also pro- . . . I lmw ofl heard monotonic singsong he accorded all duces notices and business cards for m morher Circe with fire Sirensthme, writing, ancient and modem @sum- money PS Louder does. Beside the Aml& Ihef7mv’cMirkd Naiad=, presses, neatly tied with string in - Cullllng Iheir potent herbsand bolqiul ably to preserve the objectivity of his analyses), the lunatic walked in and took winter’s fashion. are blocks of type the seat directly in front of me. I glanced kady for printing: they are pages ofthe at Sean, beside me, who blinked but next issue of Pour by Four. stared unsympathetically ahead, ammy- Not that smallness doesn’t have its frustrations. Poor distribution, few iog me beyond reason. I began private& to conjure his owe instabiities. which 1 rcviw.5, hardly any money (not wen to contemplated rehearsing for him aflcr replace worn-out type). Fred is nego- tiating to exchange one of the presses for Class. Sean counted hiielf a poet; his a flatbed press that will allow them to A~~swzsl preferred method of courting the Muse print four or eight pages at a time, madnessrobbed II of ILW~.... bting the ingestion of haUucioogenic instead of one. But even then the size of -John Milton. Cornus, II.UWfil drugs,. questionable of origin and their books, usually about 30 pages. pedigree, both. This recently had led won’t change in the near future. YEARSAOO. when my friend Sean and I hii to the sdamantine belief that he had “I really don’t believe that a poetry were enrolled in Northrop Frye’s bedded the White Goddess herself, after book should be longer than the ones we Literary Symbolism course, we would sit meeting and sharing some psilowbin or do,” says Robyo. Most poets their 30s in near the back of the auditorium at Vic- LSLI with her in Queen’s Park. He . haven’t pmduced many good poems, toria College, and a lunatic would claimed that sometime during the tryst she contends, and ViUeneuveis rigorous regularly accost us there, before class (in mediw re.v, no doubt) he caught fm in its selection. A.F. Morita, for exam- began. He would speak eamestly of to write, arose fmm hi couch, and went ple, handed them a manuscript twice as Pound or Yeats or Eliot, sometimes to his typewriter - his Pieriao compa- long as the book they fdly published. repeat to us whatever remarks on the nion in some state of dishabille at his After the weekend-long process of subject we had just made to him, and arm, or ear. reading the poems aloud and haggling then - with sadden vehemence - He awoke the following momiog, over which to include, Morih conceded that the experience taught him what a Eileea Silverman, or declaim that he had book should be. just spent three weeks watching televi- The peculiar nature of the English sioa. When It turned out that the fellow also habitually conversed ad Ilb[hrm createi problems: “An English poet in with companions not visible to the pm- Quebec is witing, working, performing saic eye, Sean became disgusted and on the fringe of the Quebemis milieu. began telling hi that th6 seats in our and slso oo the fringe of what’s going on row were all taken. “Ignon him. ignore ia EogJiih,” Fred says. “It can begin to him,” he would mutter if the man feel very lonely and very isolated unless should appear in his peripheral vision - you make ao effort to stay io contaet. advice that Sean himself strictly fol- On the positive side, it makes people lowed, oo matter how amicably the man. very individualistic. But there’s always a sought our company. Bat the maa bothered me profoundly. In @ot, I remember (with incredulity) spending one very cold morning outside Student Health Services debating whether I should enter and ask what could be done for such people.. I was dissuaded, to begin with, by the fear that

they noold look him up. Finally, it ‘ occurred to me with some force that they . . . every educated person oughl might assume I myself was seeking help, !o read thfs eccount of ‘what really obliquely. Numb and deprused. sod- tappensd’ at Three IVlile Island denly distrusting my own mind, 1 ~~oause this narrative represents donSeerof becoming very pmviocial. trudged ‘over to the Bobarts Library ‘he best in nonffctlon, In virtuoso “One very nice thing that’s happeoing cafeteria and doctored myself with soap wportlng. . . If you read no other oow.” he continues. “is that them’s a before preparing for afternoon classes. ~oolr In the next five ynars, by all new and fresh cot&t behveen Baglish 1 was relieved that when Frye began neans wad.. . The Wamfngf? ooets and Ouebecois ooets.” But Bobvn lecturing that afternoon the man was ab- THE LOS ANGELES TIMES points out &at there I& been more th& sent. We were taking up “To Juan at the BOOK REVIEW one attempt io the past to bridge the Winter Solstice,” by Robert Graves - a chasm betwen the two camps. “Lasting favowite of the professor’s, probably ties weren’t made. Whether they will be $10.95 nowisaoybody’s guess.” --CABYFAGAN skeleton key to his own visioa: _... . .-_ .._. .~_.

clawheaded for the first lime in days; non-committd reply: it is perhaps the out as part of a graphic display that must there .was of course no Irace of the professor’s one evident weakness that he have cost thousands of dollars. I’m sure wiU not entertain the clear psycho- (we& rmsonubiy sure.) that someone al vniter.to swour what rained of l-&.ir analytic casl of his methods. that fietwork must have spotted the meeting. 0” the paper rolled onto the The”. the lunatic raised his hand. and redundancy by ““w and decided not la pkwn there. he found (he swore lo me Frye c&d on him. Sean fell gently back go lo the cost of correcting il. more lha” once) a couple1: in his seal and gazed al the ceilim before I merely would like to know how it erl?tinSbrdhl, closing his eyei resolutely. wit&l fir- came to pass that such a bii corporation ek7oinSh~/lu. . . lher movement. I myself was on the paid so much money lo have such a” im- the most c~nmm” of typographer’s verge of intemperate sobs or intemperate becilic phrase put into such an expetive errors. laughter, I couldn’t tell which. “What format without anyone noticing (or car- Frye was drawing his charts on the about Dylan?” the mti wanted lo irig) that it was a” imbecilic phrase. blackboard: know. having to shout it la be heard Dou it matter? I may be in the newcn God Zeus from the back of the room. There was a minority. but 1 think it does. When P;mmdire Adam Prometheus lot of multaing and shuffling and tum- sameone Is trying lo sell me something, Eqwi.?“ce Man ing of heads our way. 1 wanted to run. especially somting having lo do with Hell Satan %r Cupping bis ear, Prye responded immed- communications. and I n&x that AU the time he wrote, he spoke - of iately. sonuone is not quite, or perhaps not Chanulsh, Ovid, IiaUova%n, Geoffw “Yes,"he said, “you gel the same even “early, literate, I think twice about of Monmouthh, the Song of Roland. kind of thing in Dylan Thomas.” And trusting my money or my need for goods Blake, Spengler, Vim, Yeats, antilhe- then. he led us .de.Rlv lhmmzh the or services lo that company or person. tical multiform innux. the one story of genealogy of Fern Hill: addressFug the Fix example., consider this -paper man. Someone, inevitably. asked about lunatic with ueal and careful deference. ad, s clipping of which was sent to me by Jung, and Frye made a chamctuislIcaUy - JSIT MILLER Mrs. Margael BunisaU of IGIton. Onl. It is headed “SATURDAY.SATUR- DAY” and reads as follows: The Whig-Standard is one OF Canada’sonly dailynewspapers to pm- ENGLl.W, OUR HiG?.lSii duce its own Saturday magarine, which is tilled with Feature stories. in depth reporting. thoughtful essays. book Reader discretion recommended: the following reviews. purzles, movie rcvicw.5. popular and classical music, and more. article, albeit an amiable one, is - It’s pan OF our special Saturday being presented uncut and in its entirety package. which also includescolored comics;TV Timer, Peoplein the Limb light. and other Featureson top OFour By BOB BLACKBURN rcgidnrdaily newspackage. There isn’t space here to tear that apart. It’s not the worst piece of writing I’ve seen this week, but when you con- sider that its purpose is lo promote the I SEE BY the newspapers, as Will Rogers reporter. Amieabiliiy is not. “Chatted sale of a newspaper that has at times used to say, that “the Queen chatted anicablv” is a double fault. produced some exwllent wrilinp, it is amicably” with somebody on her recent Then-thetewas the reporter who in- astonisbh& bad. hfy point is simply visit to the West Coast. That’s hardly formed us that “the bomb was defused that I would not feel eocourwd lo nws. but it illustrates the point that before it exploded.” subscribe (0 any publication that adver- - rhe” repo”ers are forced lo write al It’s “al likely that anyone would tiscr itself with sloppy pmse. length about “.%vsless events, they are spend much lime wondering how it came It may be, as a result of the mid- lo pass that lhe bomb exploded despite century decline I” the standards of stupid. having been defused. We know it did not language education, that precise cm”- \Vhe” you chat with someone, you explode. We know the reporter should municallon in the commu”icalions arc, by deki”iti.o”, making light and have said “before it could explode” or bupiness is less important than I like to pleasant conversation in a friendly *ome such. t)li& it is. Maybe the a+long-as-you- manner, and that’s all there is lo il. You Suppose, though, that he had said get-lhcidea-acmss dictum is somelhiig cvlnol chat in a hostile manner. something Iike “%he bank robber v/~li we have to live with. The most de.prea+ There remains the question of whether arrested before he made his getaway.” ing aspect of that possibility is that the Queen was indeed conversing an& That’s the same eonrtruclion, and, in today’s titers, if they w&h lo be under- ably rather than amiably. These days, this case, we would have la assume that sloood by a mass audience, are sometimes one cannot rely on wirers to make such the robber had been arrested and the” forced to write poorly. To be clear, they fine distinctions. Amicable refers to escaped, because that’s what the writer must be unclear. A precisely expressed somethiw done with good wUI. Amiable said. thought wiU be misunderstood by a refers lo a person’s nature or expression oiw DP m pay-TV services I subscribe “reader” who has learned Rnglish by < or attitude. It is entirely possible that the lo vwms viewers that the upcoming watching TV eotmnercials. Queen was inwardly seething with rage movie is being presented “u”c”t and in I da&. I shall not be able lo al the necessity of conversing amiably, in its entirety,” in order that “viewer communicate with a generation growing which case she wndd not have been con- dismxtio”” may be exercised. This has up to bcIi&e that “uncut and in its versing amicably. although she might bee” going on for many weeks, and I’m entirety” is a perfectly good English have give” the impression that she was. sure it wiU go o” for many monlbs. The phrase meaning “It’s thne lo go upstairs Amiability is readily observable by a warning is !pl only spoke” but printed and do your homework,‘dear.” 0

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ESSAY

An outsider suiveys French-Canadian fiction, and finds in it some of the most venturesome - and successful - writing today

By ALBERT0 MANGUEL

SW LIAY#M believe it, but thcrc BT~vast nutibers of people It is true that one mirror seems to reflect more than the rho quite seriously thllk of Musical Chairs as an infallible other. The intlucnce of the French language on Eoglish- system for deciding what someone should be. Their method is speaking writers in Canada is not noticeable and probably this: they jot down where, after nine months’ gestctlon, you non-existerit. The influence of the English language on French- happen to find yourselfi they decree that this chance occiu- specking Canadian writers is clear and almost deliberate; it rence shall determine your fate for the rest of your days; they makes the Icog@ richer; it has the effect of music played on prockxim with c straight face that if you happen to be bon, for instruments other than the ones one h accustomed to hear. In e:i”mple. in Buenos Aires, you should feel moved by the France, Andti Ciide’s diwovery of James Cain and FauIkner poems of Evcristo Carriego (the knowledge of whose existence stirred French proseout of its MEOWbed-linen; in Canada the most humco beings have been spared)and that you should changes have gone further, and some of the most original consider Jorge Luis writing in French today Barges r portion of the is done bv French Cana- national territory, like dims. the Malvinas. I don’t An outside& view . know that I approve of cannot be comprehen- this law. There wcs a sive; my own view may time when a person not eveo appear surpri.+ could travel the earth ing: most of the authors and find, rationally and I have “discover&’ arc emotionally, B place he well-known ln Canada. chose to call home - Unlike English or French samething few are fit to recders, Canadians seem do c.t the tender age at to know their authors. which birth registrars For many Englicihmen g decide such issues for John Collier is the shop- $ them. I have lived in window to watch, and in _ 2 Argentina, in Europe. France Chateaubtind is p an&in the South Pacific. a steak. Even a general 2 I now live in Canada, impression of a partie d but I wasn’t born hem. ular literature - Frcnch- ? For that recson, ccwrd- Canadian literature in 8 ing to the Law of this case-is diflicult to 4 Musical Chairs, I have obtain. There is not 5 oo right to talk about enough distance in time g things Canadian as if between the authors and ,- they were my own. 1 pro- thclr readers, and what g pore therefore to talk now seem essential dif- 5 about things Canadian ferences will probably E us if they were part of be, in a century or so, 2 the rest of the world. clearly defiid commoc traits. For some future _ _ As . .an outsider,. the . tint mint that strilies me is the existence of two languages and critic perhaps Anne Wbert and Antonine Maillet will be sisters two literatures to describe one and the same country, like a set in styie. of confronted mirrors. (I sty “the same country” bearing in UntiPsuch time I ccn only comment on a few individual mind Yves Beauchcmin’s dictum. “Quebec is part of Canada books. Last year was a good year: I read the Australia” Hugh as much Y a cat lo the mouth of a crocodile is pert of the Atkinsan’s Billy 7b-Toes’ Raidow (a moving, passionate crocodile.” But then I’ve heard the same ides exprusedby masterpiece). the English-Pakistani Zulfikcr Ghose’s A New Southern writers about the South being part of the United Hisrory of Tonnenrs(a brilliant tale of adventure), the Frmch States. Corslccn writers don’t feel French, Catalan writers Michel Toumier’s Mekhor. Gaspar el Bald~azar (a book one don’t feel Spanish, Sicilian writers don’t feel Italian. For cn wishes would go on forever). Yet better than all three. better in outsider. however. Bcauchemin’s LeMntou (The TomcaO is as fact than any novel I have read in a very long time, is Yves Ccnadicn cs Tomcsi de Lampcdusa’s The Leopard is Italian.). Bcauchemin’s Le M&J”. The Faust-like story of a young man 1~~ ,.._ . ..__ .__.______. ._I_~._._.-_.-~ ..~.~ _L~ I- -. .~ _,_. _.--_ --. -- -- ..-.-. - -

tempted into accepting injustice - and refusing to yield - unmvela like a magic carpet over 600 pages. Beauchemin uaa a language studded with brilliant turns of phrase. hllhly elaborate yet seemingly simple. His characters have a Russian Ah?l complexity (Beauchemin hes not read in vain the Russian clessies - Dostoyevsky, Turgeniev, Bulgakov) but retold in a modem idiom that is entirely Beauchemin’s own. No Prench, certainly no Bnglish or American writer (sinceMark main’s incredMil iYuc&ldwry Finn) has created such real yet timeless char- acters: this is literature at its most’enjoyable. But not all can be pleacure. Perhaps the lee.9 satisfactory dory 0%li %6lgnovel I read last year was Robert Lalonde’s Le demier CIddes Indiens (The Indians’Lasf SummeJ. The myth of the good savage somehow doesn’t work anymore, not even after Carlos gripphi Cestaneda. Prom the Lone Ranger’s Tonto to Nanook of the a North. the kind and knowledgeable native ha been done to death, and someaie should have told Lalonde that Indians have other, more serious oeeupationa &an to muse on mela- story0% physical problems, such as the essence of existentialism and the true nature of ecology. Lalonde’s Indians could remind him of a quotation a frierid of mine pinned up in his office: “Anthropology is to me es ornithology must be to the birds.” sunrivaL Lalonde is published in Fr&ux by Editions du Sail, the sophisticated publishers of a few very good authors (Garcia Maquw, GUnther Grass) end of a lot of post-structuralit dribble. Presumably this novel wes chosen by a would-be post- stmcturalist anthropologist. Anne Hebert is elm published by Seuil. Her novel Lesfous de Bassan(The GmmeL~)obtained for Seuil the Prix Femina in 1982. (One should. redly say that Seuil obtained the prize for her: it is an open secret that French publishers BE given the prizes in turn; an author’s luck dependslargely on whetherhis book is publii in that particularpublisher’s year.) In spite of the prize, Hebert’s b6ok is excellent. Ha old poetic voice is tbere. the voice of her early novel Les chambres de bois (Wooden Rooms); alsothe closedatmosphere, and even parts of that early plot. The plot of Us fous de Basun is not as slight as in Ler chambns de boir “or as haunting as in Kamoumska (with its unforgettable lady “intoxicated with dreams”), but thelanguage’inahichitis~rittenisestounding. Nothii quite like it is witten in Bnglkh today: perhaps John Hawks comes dose to Hdba’s dark obsessions; perhaps parts of Djune Barnes’s Nighlwood. CertainlyHebert is a master craftsmen: her prose closes on her images with the swift preciseness of a Irap. More than the Prix F&nins, the Prlx Goncourt guarantees a large sale in Prance, though not necessarily a large readership - many people buy the Prix Goncourt novels out of a sense of civic duty. But Antordne Maillet’s P&gie-la-ChmreUedcrerv- ed - and got - both. The sequel, though prizeless, is en even better novel. Cent #IIS dans Ies bob (the title echoesGarcia Marquu's A Ifundmd Yeam&%/irude) is a folk-tale(like the Colombian saga) in the real sense of the word: the history of a people. Acadia in the 18th century ls Malllet’s Macondo. “A hundred years,” she says, “are not a tong history for China or perhaps for the Hebrews of the Bible, but for a people who never left their famllles and remained huddled up between the sea and tbe wads. . . . ” The sentence is left open. Her plays (Ldjoyeuse crir!efor instance) 1 find too topical to be inter- esting, but Pdagiiellrr-Charrateand Cent mu dans les bo,obare wonderful frescoes of a world as magic as the Amazon with the added spell of winter. Outside Canada, Maillet’s language has an ol+feshioned flavour; to a French ear her Acadian A modem-day adventurer’s riveting life story, and his struggle for survival after massive Prencb brings back a sense of de!& but not pompous speech, heart surgery. A must for evetyone,touched of a time when there were kings in France. by the anguish and fear of heart disease. The Victorian threwolume novel (of which I will not speak slightly) seems popular in French Canada. Antonlne Malllet is writing another Acadien episode; Michel Tremblay has just

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le rorzwier(The Lady and the Tromp). For some reason, French literature does not wallow in novels such as Princes Daisr or Scruples; its popular fiction ls better written, more sopl&ticated. It has a tradition of cityand-family sagas that can be traced back to Balzac, Jules Remains, and Marcel Pagnol. Balzac is quoted at the beginning of Tmnblay’s novel - “If you keep on making fun of yourself, soon you will lx able to make fun of cveryonc else” - thereby defining the style of the whole series. These “Chronicles of the Plateau tiiont-Royal” began introducing lovable, nclghbourly char- acters - Tremblay’s own mother, for one - in La Gmme femme d’b ~616.a enceinte(The Pal WomanNexl Door Is Pregnom)and now have expanded to form a vast picture of h~lontrcsd in the 1940s. A Tino Rossl reckal that brings together the novel’s entire cast gives it its grand finale. Antonine hlclllct’s language seems to serve a mainly poetical purpose; in Tremblay the purpose is political. more aggressive. Both succeedin establishingthe individuality and characterof the people they qe dcscribihtg. Trcmblay’s humour is tsmpcted by a penneating scnsc of outrage: he feelshe and his people ure ugly ducklings (another of the quotations that introduce the novel); he feels that even in Heaven he end his people xill be “wclltlowers at the patty, because God himself is ttlro ashtuned of them.” Ugliness, Trctnblay seems to say, ls in the eye of the beholder. But from outside no ugliness ls aooxcttt: his characters arc suocrb comic creations. credible a’nh self-justified. I surmise from the critics that the televisionadaption of Les fis de la libert&(Sons ofFn?edom), Louis Caron’s turn-of-the c~mtuw LB~B.was a disaster. The books themselves. however. arc i~mc&iy readable. The first, Le cmmrd de-boa (Th; WoodenDuel;) wasa well-witten historical novel: La come de bnrme flhe FCY~Horn) is better - the charact& are better defined, more interesting. Quebecat the beginning of the cctt- fury seems - through Camn’s eyes - no lczx tom than Ireland is today. In that sense, Camn’s two books ate corn parable to Julia O’Wolian’s superb Irish novel, No CotWry /or l’ouug rWn (a title also applicable to Caron’s ssga). In both casts the conllict is seen through the imagination of a fanatic: Camn’s main character ls an exalted patriot, O’Fttollan’s an aged nun. Both see the land painted in harsh coloue. torn by tt fght they don’t try to explain bccattse they fuil to understand it. lntcrlor monologues, long convoluted sentences, writing that requires creative reading, these and other fictional arti- fices were codified by Joyce, acknowledged by the next ger_era- tion, and then respectfully put aside by most writers in English today. The French have a penchanl for this sort of writing, vzhich ususlly becomes a vaguely intcmting but boring indul- gence. Though h4arltKlairc Blaip’snovels sometimes have this

begins to unravel and oni-tinds that the device ib ~&ally a I& quiretttent of the story. 1 admired the carefully plotted sttw turn of Le sourd dots la Me (Dqf to the City); I found hex ncs novcl, Virionsd’Anna (Anna’s World)),less engrossing. The existential doubts of an cdolesccnt arc the book’s main theme, the tone being set by the first line: “It felt neither warm nor cold in Anna’s hesrt, nclther cool nor fiery, just empty. . . .” However. Blals’s writing is, as usual, as precise and deliberate cs a musical notation. Compiled by Wrgaret Awood, in her introduction to the English edition the Allergy Information of Blais’s Un joualonais,so jooolonie (St. Lowence Blum), Association called the characters “Baudelalrlan” and pointed out that Over I50 recipes ran@ng from gourmet fare to . beltind the apparent satire lurked “the threat of revolution.” candy, destied spectficall~ for en le who The same can be said about Virions &Anna. Behind her suffer imm the most common PZoo allergens, Bxtdclairion drlftcrs lies the sense of a force about to strike, a with each recipe including substitute ingredients. punk-like urge to break something out of despair in order to bring on a change, any change, for bctlcr or for worse. $12.95 paper MAY 23 METHUEN This feeling of an uttdcrlyktg current pushing ideas to the _~, ._.. -.---_-.-_..-_.___. _.,_ - _..._ .-_. .~~___~ _ __._..

surface - a feeling that vividly overcomesan outsider arriving in subject - sees the times to come as his world’s last chance. I in Canada foday - is nowhere as comprehensively described think Ma&-Claire Blals, Yves Beauchemin, Michel Tremblay as in these French-Canadian writers. There senns to be among would agree. Through them a” outsider gets a sense of a co”“- them a hyper-sensitivity towrd change. much more clearly try at a turning-point, restless with new ideas, in a seuillg of delined than among English-Canadian writers. perhaps fantastical architectures. Gargantuan winters, confronted because the Ftich Canadians feel that their posltio” is more voices, and American sounds humming in the background. precarious, more dangerous; that their survival depends on Bringing to Lifetheir own country, French-Canadian writers their language and that their kmguage is encroached upon have produced some of the best writing today. They investi- from all sides. They need to be aware of any new scats in the gate small pockets in the past and discuss their particular Kind. of the slightest cracking of twigs around the comer. future. They have shaped their language into effectiveness: it is Curiously enough I find Japanese writers today stressing the sound and sharp, and allows them to tackle the portion of the same point: that in change may come hope or destruction. but world they have chose” to see. By describing it they have laid ihal v:h”wer it may be. they must be on the lookout for it. open their notions and dreams and feara that, though seem- Ryu Mural:ami - the brilliant young author ofAlmost Tmm ingly limited to their own backyard, have, in their craft, parentBlue who resemble MariaClaire Blais both in tone and expanded. By being provincial they have bewme universal. 0

F.!MTLRE REVIEW

The transfer of Canada from French’kle to British - the beginning of a distinct French-Canadian people - was less a case of conquest than betrayal

By 1.M. om

The D!reom of Nation: A Social and s- than women was clearly getting forget that the eampalgo went on for a Intellxtuel History of Quebef. by Susan off on the wrong foot. year after those questionable generals Man” TmfimenkotT, hfacmillan, illus- The history of Quebec up to the Con- Wolfe and Montim had their mauvclis trated. 352 pages. $22.95 cloth (ISBN stitutional Act of 1791, which created Qumed’hewe on the Plains of Abraham. 0 7715 9730 4). The following spring L&is won a distin- is essentially tbeseme as thl’early histoG guished victory at SaintbFoy, which A GLANCE‘IHIICIUGH the thorough and of Canada, so that she is right to deal would probably have been decisive if useful bibliographies provided by Susan with it quite briefly. Her opening Fra”ce hadn’t neglected to get ships into Mao” Trotimenkoff confirms that a chapter is leas a narrative than a com- the St. Lawrence z%soon as the ice broke history of Quebec, fnnn the founding of mentary on the history of New France, up. New France to the L&esque r&time, was leading to the conclusion that “the And this episode was just one cam- badly needed. There \vm until now colony lackedm much - money, pea- paig” in a worldwide war, between two nothing of the kind in English, and not pie, talent, enterprise. peace, leadership, professional annia fmm Burope. The much in Fre”ch. Hence we must be luck - that it ws surprising it lasted as invading ~nny won. more or lest by grateful to hw for !illing this surprising lo”g as it did.” True enough. But soma default, and the result w= merely a gap. To me Ihe book she has produced is bow, in all this unlucky history, a people military occupation for the rest of the unsatisfJing ln some ways; still, it’s a was created, took mot. end grew. In war. The transfer of Canada fmm the book, and a great deal better than 1763 it would have been reasonable to French crown to Ihe British happened at nothiw. doubt whether it had a future.. Now the peace conf+wxe in 1763, when the The awkward, unidiomatic phrasing there can be “o doubt at all: whatever French. negotiators decided after due of the title gives fair warninp: Susan the extent of its territory, whatever “ame consideration that they’d rather have Ma”” Tmtimenkoff v&es clumsily, it goes under, whatever form of govern- Guadeloupe. The evult should be though Manillan’s blurb-writer prefers ment it may adopt, French Canada is for known as the Fre”ch Betrayal, not the the adverb “elegantly.” Sometimes I keeps. It’s the function of such a book English Conquest. I” many ways, it was had to read a sentence three tbnes 10 as tbls to tell how this wane about. the bealnni”g’of the French Canadians wrac* a meaning from it; and some- Tmtimenkoff s chapter on the Con- as a distinct people. times h turned out to say somethl”g she quest is brisk. efficient, and right. She’s Tmkimenkoff shows three forcer couldn’t have meant, as when she right especially, I’m sure, that it was the begbmi”g to dominate French-Canadian dewlbes New France as “a society blstorle”s of the neat two centuries who society in Ihe fust half of the 19th ce”- v:here women were at first scarce and made it into a deep psychological turn. The first was nationaliun. Nation- subsequently often alone, and where trauma; and she abnost - but not quite & was very much in the air al the people rhemselves vxxe eve” more - expresses my favourite thesis: that it time, of course. We were all taught at scanx.” A society where people were wasn’t a conquest at all. Many people school - at least I was- that nstion-

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alism beganwith the French Revolution, ultramontanist of the extreme right, he qwtioned” his attitude to organized vas spread through Europe by Napo- not only increasedthe secularclergy but labour is too cool altogether. The more leon’s troops, and evetttu& caused the brought in orders and founded new sinister aspects of conservativenation- nations to rise and crush those tmops. ones. lie successfully fought the liberal alism in this period are so obscuredas to This is probablya half-truth at best. but natlotmIIIts and took over Quebec suggest that she isn’t fuIIy awan of it’s a handy formula for Interpreting nationalism, giving it the e.mphatIcnUy them. The advocacy of corpotatism ir 19th-centuryhistory. And it’s interesting :gaI stamp that it retained until the mentioned. but not its origins in Fawist that natiottaIismspread to Canada with- Italy. AntiSemitIsm flickers for a mw out the help of an invading army. Bo&.t increasedthe number of tams meat in pmt of a sentence,and later the Nationalismw&t hand-in-hand Gth as well as mieats. and made them a tXditIstes appear suddenly and dLap- liberalism.And it’s a twIIy curious fact powerful force in the provisloa of s&al pear immediately,without explanation. that, in til the British North AmerIcaa services.Tmfimettkoff, who is professor For thir reason the changes of the colonies,Liberals Ia the 1830sadopted as of women’shistory (among other thiags) 1960s me made to seem much less their main aim the prJncIpIethat the at the Universityof Ottawa. throuahottt dramatic than they were. she’s tight in e.xe&nttiveshould be responsible to the givesmore ett&tlcm to the posItI& of saying that the terpl Quiet Revolution wmten than other hIItorIaas have, and (she wittily change4 it to %oIsy evolu- ptittclple-that w& only just becoming while she may make the matter more tion”) is an exaggerationas applied to establishedin Btitain at the time, helped the record of the Lesage govemmettt by the accessionof the ymmg Victoriain time it’s a welcomeredressing of the But to me it means more than that - K37; she was a respectfulgirl, and when balance. She shows how .woman, surely the tmnsfomtation of Quebecas a her prime ministertold her that that was whether as mother or BI mm, wm in fact whole, not just in politics. was nothing the way thlags were she believedhim. given an important part to play - in her short of astomtdmg. With a singleshrug The third major force was far remov- own separate sphere, of course. of the collectiveshotdders, the power of ed from liberalism: the ascendancy of It wasn’t obvious at the time, but the the Church disappeared. As just one the Church. Probably most of tts on thir age of Duplessis and his Union symptom, the birthrate went from the side of the languageline picture Quebec Nationale(193559) was the last stage of highest in the country to the Iowsst in as havbtg been priest-ridden from the clerical nationalism. I find Tmtimen- the Western world. It still baffles me., bzgimting.Trotimenkoff showsthat this koff’s treatment of this period rather and I’m still waiting for a historian to is not so. In 1759there were barely ZOO too muted. She makes it neither as explain it. Tmfimenkoff exelletttIy priestsIn the colony, in 1840fewer than appallingnor as funny as it actuallywas, demonstrates the role of televisionas a 500; many parishes had no resident and she fails to cmtvey the real horror eonttibating cause, but surely there was cm&. But that was the year the change with which the generation of Trudeau, mom to it than that. began, with the consecrationof Ignace IGbett, P&tier regarded him. To say Her treatmeat of the present r&ime Is Routget as bishop of Montreal. An that a “group on the. . . inteIIectuaIleft too hasty to be recommendedto anyone

Life “upstairs at Buckingltam Pa&a” - a d&&able. unforgettablfl portrait of Prince Charles 9 the only man whocould have wntten it. Eo@?9lactlac~; $17.95 f __. _ ~_~. . . L _._. .~.._ _._... -. _ .__,_~.~ ___ _....I._.I -._ .-_w-.-~-__ ” . . .

rho hasn’t been folloning events close- Whether it was the Indians or the British is exduded from these close to 500 ly: though, as might be expected, she is or the French or the Americans, OUT densely packed pages. The authors have good on tbe “Yvette” issue. The fine forefathers were constantly living in performed an awesome job of research choice of illustrations at the begintings fear. DiftXent as we are about OUT and produced a study of grrat interest to of chapters culminates with Aislin’s importance in the world. it’s hard for historians and military specialists. If at splendid cartoon on the referendum, in Canadians to belie in a time when times it is a bit heavy going, well, this is vzhich L&esque is in bed with Yvette, major world powers fought over us like not a book intended to rrplaee the latest and she is sa~Quebec City; it is instead a pnblications,*the book was &bllshed in of the 19th century would have been history of military structures in the city. both ofticiallawzuanes. TheEnelish ver- relevant. especially the poets like Octave Obviously the military presence made sion is a ttanslal’lo~ yet nowh& is this Cr&ozie and Louis-Honor& Ftichette, itself felt in all aspects of urban life. But made clear or credit given to a trans- once describal by Northrop Frye as “the it is the citadels, walls, bastions, and lator. I would think that scholars using official-communiqud mon-pays-ma- towers that are the focus of this study. the book might like to know that they patrie school.” Cl Tbe narrative begins with the con- are working with a translation. struction of Champlain’s habitation in Quibbling aside, Quebec, fhe For- 1608. Quebec was fortified in a primitive fified Cily is a substantial contribution fashion right from the start, but for to acholarsbip and a visual treat. Any- more than 100 years plans for substan- one with a thick wallet and an interest in tial fortifications were delayed. Colonial militariana will not be disappointed. 0 officials lobbied actively for something to be done, but in Paris these requests were thought alarmist and expensive. After the Conquest the British occu- pants of Quebec followed the same pat- REMEW tern of indifference. Then the American Revolution created an independent and hostile United States on the southern border and finally the threat to Quebec’s security was strong enough to prompt action. Between 1779 and 1783 a tem- porary citadel was built atop Cape Dia- mond, and in subsequent years further puebx. the hIifii Uty: From the extensive fortification took place, By BRIAND. JOlZ?SON 17111to the 19th Century’.by Anbe Chu- culminating in the construction of a per- bonneau. Yvon Desloges. and Marc manent citadel during the 1820s. Lafrance, Parks Canada, 491 pages, Interestingly, after Confederation $45.00 paper flSBN 0 660 109744). many of the fortit%ations were allowed Le Pouvolrl Canoa~ pas!, by Liw to deteriorate and some were even tom Payette., Editions Qu~bc~AmCrique, AS CAI!DIANS travel around the country down at the request of the city to make 210 pages. $12.95 paper (ISBN 2 89037 visiting the various tourist attractions, way for parks and wider streets. If it 120 4). we are often struck by the fact that an wasn’t for tbe initiative of Governor- ovenvhelming number of our historic General Dufftin, who worked to have mE MARRtAGE of Lise Payette and the sites are military installations. From the structures pre.wved for their historic Parti Qulbefois, consummated with the coast to coast it seems more forts have value, much of what we value todfy @ PQ’s historic election triumph in 1976. been refurbished for modem visitors G__z City liily would have tip- at Grst appeared to have been made in than any other type of historic building. heaven. A homemade media star who Aren’t v:e a peace-loving people? What The qutbors tell their story in immense had become the darling of every Quebec do all these museums of wa have to do detail. There is an account of strategic household and a home-made party held with us? theory in the 17th and 18th centuries. aloft by s nationalist dream were sud- When one stops to consider, however. ass-enta of every plan to fortify the denly knotted to a single destiny. Canada has had a very violent past. For town, and a wealth of material on the Together the PQ and Lise, offered the the first two and a half centuries of our financing and actual building of tbe beSt of two worlds: a daring future could existence somebody was always trying to structures. Wage rates, construction coexist with a warm and reassuring intel- invade our territory and kill us off. techniques, hiring procedures - nothing ligence. The rapid disintegration of this

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Ideal meriiege,a pmeesr that began future c&net ministers es L&esque the legs and climbs slowly. . . . If he almost with the exchange of vows, calls them in one by one to announce doesn’t whistle. it’s because that’s not served es a dramatic prelude to the their portfolios. ‘W’s like being at the done, but he &hlstler in hi mind. He disflluslonmem that would surmund the dentist,” she writes. just hes a more timid way of being Lfvesque government in the years Naivet4 gradually gives way to raent- macho.” ahead. ment. Payette is the token women Payette dwells on the insidious espeCt Lise Payette’s memoir of her political Uvesque needs to complete his cabinet. of politics, end the force of her candour trkds. Le Pouvolr? Comais Pas! (which his “club of navy suits and Hush may be a reaction to having to watch her could be roughly translated as Power? Puppies.” Charged with consumer words so carefully w$ile in power. Her Bcors me!) will probably not appear in affairs, cooperatives, end financial insti- baptism of fire cenib during the English transletion. However, it is writ- tutions, she is relegated to the same pink l‘Yvette” scandal of the 1980 referen- ten in such e straightforward. crisp style marble office her token Liberal pm- dum campaign. .Addressing a public that anyone interested in the juncture of deassor Lise Bacon occupied. (Before meeting, Payette said every woman has Quebec politics end feminism who hes finally resigning from the government in been socializedinto being au Yvette - a only a fair knowledge of French would 1980, she becomes minister in charge of passive female character in a school enjoy reading it. Payclle docummta her the (Itetus of women, but meanwhile primer-end that Liberal leader Cleude entry into the political process from the tekes on the burden of reforming auto- Ryan’s wife we.s one of them. The highly personal viewpoint of an ingenue mobile insurance and creating a con- Liberals, not about to miss en opening, in an alien world. The result is an emo- sumer protection bill.) At first it’s all a mllied the support of thousends of tional and humorous story about power mystery. She studies frantically, learns women who we Yvettes and proud of - the irony of being on the inside end all the facts. Yet ell her colleagues seem it. Some journalist countered with the still feeling on the oaside. Busdiog with to care about are the fickle nuances of notion of “Llsettes,” but the damage metaphor. her vision is not whet one public opinion - “the cabinet functions wes done. would expect from a politician. like the bit parade.” Now unshackled from politics and Only two or three deys after be& The author’s wit becomes especially working in television egaln, Payette has elected she felt a d(#i!reence.. . ‘The dif- caustic in describing the personel left us with e vivid memento of 8 cmcird ference between dreaming about having demeanour of ha penners in power, moment in Quebec history. Her book a child and getting up at two in the especially Leverqua, “this eternally amounts to e curious form of anthm- morning to feed one who is already dishevelled” men who makes women pology - en emotionally guided excur- there. There are no regmts, but one want to mother him. “For him a womsn sion into a domain she eventually quickly notices that something in us no ls a ‘creeture.’ His examination of a dlscovered.she wanted no pert of. Her longer belongs to us.” Later, in a woman is always conducted when she hxc~~o~objectivity is only too wel- Quebec City hotel, she waits with other turns her back. HIS glence begins with

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ruWJ~Lrn (IIMtiAveuenw NAL BOOKS Hardmvea Plume Paperback REVIEW provided by Max’s sage friend and refers to “a powder placed in the bath- adviser Luciat Joly: watet in convents and seminaries. It . Our loej.?l structure is like a wiangle. renders the water opaque. thus eoncral- The farmers are the base. the working- ing the bather’s genitals.” class are thesides. and the half-cidlizd. Fear’s Folly, Glassco’s first pmt- backward on= are a the peak. The few humous publication, makes a welcome really civilized people among us we out- addition to the Carleton Library’s so&l ride this triangle. A day will come. how sciences list - a novel whose signifi- ever, when there will be enou8h of the latter to pry open the vise that pinches at cance. O’Connor observes, “rests the lop and make a fourth line so that primarily on external impact rather than we’ll have a proper rectangle. But until internal merit.” I can’t help spectdatlng then. we’ll go on cutting a sorry ltture that jhe same may one day be said of - a sick people. many Bnglish-Canadian novels now Early ‘in the novel; a journalist accepted as literature. 0 remarks, “In a career like ours, my dear Fear’s Folty, by Jean-Charles Harvey, Max. irony ls the last refuge of talent.” translated from the French by John Harvey was a life-long journalist, and Glassco. Carleton University Press, 178 one who evidently perceived himself BSa pages. $6.95 paper (ISBN 0 88629 004 X). social physician. The sick people fought REVIEW back. Quebec’s church leaden not only IF IN t9.u J.-M. Rodrig& Cardinal Ville- condemned Les Demi-&/Es& but got netwe had placed Les Semi-civiLk& on him I&d fmm’his editing job on Le the Index of badly written, rs opposed Soleil. Moreover, Harvey - a medieval to morally hod books, a civilized reader touch, this - was made to withdraw his could have raised only mild objections. book publicly, though by then the first John O’Connor devotes several pages of edition had been sold otu. It was not to his thorough introduction to the book%. be republished for28 years. In the 1930s. mtistie sins: “Episodic and uneven in its there was no arguing: the Church was By BARBARA WADE vacillation between trite bentimentality “WI &I dam isFkx ” and angry polemic, the novel repeatedly Today, with church divorced from offers us poorly motivated action, state, and Quebecois ptiuts practising -. shallow chertu%erization. and clumsy liberation theology across authoritarian plot construction. . . .‘I He quotes Latin America. it’s diffmult to under- Home Game, by Paul Quariinglan, G&ad Tougtts: “Les romens de ken- stand the contemporary fuss. After all, DoubIeday, 412 pages, 817.95 cloth Charles Honey som penni lee plus kdi- Harvey’s novel was not stridently anti- (ISBN 0 385 18422 0). gesrer de la IillPmrure canedienne. *’ clerical. much less oornoeraohic or When he was translating the original. Marxist. Harvey pr&hed- oily the THHE“HOMF’ in Pmtl Quarrington’s John Ctlasrco told me that it was humanistic virtues of tolerance. intell- Home Game consists of a troupe of abominably written. He was right. Such tual honesty, and the will to r&l, write, what are unkindly called “circus copious dispraise might promise what and think without dictation. Yet that freaks,” together with a wandering ex- Glassco once called the tmintentionally was enough to make him what Jean Pati baseball player, fighting for their hilarious “Great Bad Book” but, alas, terms a ‘Boollegger d’inielligence en territory in a baseball game against The Lee DedcivilLds is simply a dreary p&ode de prohibition.” House of Jonah, an equally strange read. However many his flaws as a novelist, collectloo of rellglltts freaks who also The principal ingredient in Harvey’s Harvey was a gutsy and honourable happen to be terrific baseball players:ln stewpot is Max Hubert’s self-portrait: man. and a resilient one. In 1937 he this novel the phrase “there’s no place born poor, rural, and church law- launched an intluetttlal reformist week- like home” takes on an entirelv new abiding. Max is transported young to the ly, Le Jour, which lasted until 1946; he meaning. v:icked and hypocritical city of Quebec. lectured extensively, and later directed The stow bepins with Nathaniel After an unhappy period in a seminary, Le Pefit Journal and Le Photo Journal Isbister, on& k&n as “Goldenlegs” Ma_uconsiders taking up law, politics, or almost until his death in 1987. For many for hh running ability on the baseball journalism. until he is taken up by the- he was the “prdcureeur de la tivolurian diamotid, stow.wandering the country on independent-minded Doroth& Meunier, ImnquiUe,” a quiet revolution that his nwsteriousl~ crio&.d limbs. He is tt rich man’s daughter. With her loving would branch itself into the noisy cross& .a v&y % Michll after tdd - and her father’s money - Max politics of both the Patti Qum&oii and descending from a hitch-hiked truck ride founds a successful liberal review, T/z the greatly increased French presence in when he meets up with a two-headed Tnendeth Century. The review. though, Ottawa. If Harvey may be considered a dog. Nate “sc+med, doubted his is ferociously attacked by church and spiritual father of the PQ. this wnsti- sanity, got up to run, turned back to subscribers after it publishes an auault totes another irony: he was alyays, double-check his eyes. and whispemd, on the materialistic clergy. Simmering O’Connor tens us, a staunch federalist. ‘Oh, my God,’ all in the space of a along cith the romantic plot - too silly For the social background to Harvey’s breath.” He soon realizes the dog and ill-connected to relate further, book, O’Connor’s long introduction is (which he has named Fldo and Rover) except to state that Domth&e flees to a helpful, indeed indispensible. Certainly, just wants to play fetch. Nate throws a convent. but regains her lover in the best GIassco was the right man to prepare a stick to the dog until he feels the point of melodramatic tradltiott - are hard new translation - an early inadequate a gun in his lower-spine and wheels lumps of satire interspetxd with social one had been published by Lukin around to find himself the prisoner of a analysis, visions, and perfervid nature Baeette - of a novel concerned with Mineh-taU man. Not just any man. we descriptions. ecclesiastical folly: one delightful foot- are told (of,course!) but Major Mite, A bouquet gsrni for this pot au feu is note to Glas~co’s long poem Monlreal once the toast of the showtime clrcoit

___._ -.: - ___. -_~.---.~ --..- .-._-...- -_-r-l-.-..--. ~.._~ -.-.._~.~.._- ._.__... - .._. . . ._- . ..__. but too old to perform much anymore. tmpment provides both enmsanent and between them truly looking-glass wars. Mite is convinced that Nate wants to a sense of growing pace for the novel, as With The Little Drummer Girl, which kidnap the dog, and so takes him home we can feel his impatience to finlshz deals not with spies and counter-spies for his freak-show friends to pass judge- Bet in case you’re interested, I haw’t but with terrorists and anti-terrorists. *em. bm outside now For three weeks, the morality at least comes clearer. These friends BR B vivid cvlkctio” ac exceptfor acllninn M Becker’sto buy Bombing babies. whether on the West described by Quarringto”: Doctor Food.I usedto havea girlfriend,bul she Bank or in Israeli embassies. is wrong. Sinister. the tiny prestidiitator overly bar become convinced that I am Innocence, in other words, is presumed fond of Ion< words. who is searcbi~ for shacked up with another. \Vhcn I tell to exist, and it is innocence. rathv than Magic with-a cap&l M; Ally the -ai- her that my grandfatherwon’t let me go some govemment’s egomaniacal es- out she produce a variely OF strange getor Man (“What did you want os to mires and haw UP the &phone As pionage network, that is being defended. call him?” Doe Sinister demands of For my other Friends.they’re convinced Kttrtz, as head of the Israeli anti- Nate, “The Ma” with the Hideous Skin that 1 have snapped. gone to Flip City. terrorist group, recruits a” English Condition?“); the promiscuous Hlsslop Most OFthem FeltI wasn’tcar from it te actress named Charlie to help him find sisters (cith whom Ally is in love). begin with. Khalll. the head of the Palestinian ter- e.wcptio”oUy pretty and psrmpnently Doubts about his rsnity aside. mrlsts in Europe. &orb end Kballl joined at rhe hip; Davey Gdisth, “The QuaRhlgt0” isan exeetlentwriia with a share an initial letter with Karla, and Tallest Ma” That Ever Lived,” so tall he great sense of humour. With consider- Charlie ls a” angllcirm of the same cannot support his height and walks able deftnus he created that willing “ante, for what that’s worth.) Kortz and eith canes; Tanya the voluptuous suspension of disbelief that enables us to Khalil stand Firmly on either side of the _ bearded lady, and others. absorb ourselves in the anties of a rather looking glass, and Charlie is the tbty Across town lives the bearded, solemn unbelievable baseball game. It might be Alice who passes freely back end forth members of The House of Jonah. This argued that. with a cast of characters between than. Her recndtme”t in reliiioos sect. says the author, “was straight out of a circus, Quarringlon Greece k somewhat r~inlscent of against everything. AU the things which Nicholas Urfe’s ordeal in John Fowles’s you and 1 might consider joyful, iii appear colour~ul and btteratlng. And, The Magus. Le Cerrd doesn’t have booze end sex and bii cigars and thick indeed, your suspended disbelief does Fowles’s scope or depth, but them is a steaks and funny jokes end movies and reappear occasionally and react Loa par- parallel between Charlie’s confrontation smtgs and literature, all of that was tiadarly incredible passage. Perhaps this with Kurtz and Urfe’s interrogation by out.” Bxcept baseball. So the leader of is partly because Quarrington, for all his Conchis that suggests le Cart& per- The House of Jonah, Tekel Ambrose. Vonnegut- or Irving-like interest in the pose: to create a scenerio in lhich the decides that “Doctor Sinister and his oddities and outcasts of life, does not principal Betor - the reader - is troupe of mlsshapm outcasts” are a” share their bleak outlook on life BS a brought face-to-face with hi; own btade- abomination to the Lord and the towns- whole. He believes in happy endiopb. quadu as a human being. The attrae people of Burton’s Herbour, and must However, he cert&ly manages to pro- tio” in a le Cam? novel (and the reason themfore be challenged to a baseball voke a lot of thought along the way. 0 he has so often bee” compared M game. The loser wlUpack up and leave. Graham Greene) is in the fact that he When the challenge is issued to Dot doesn’t suspend moral judgentents. he Shdsrer he promptly asks Nate lsblster imposes them. Iiv BRIEF to stay around and help. Unlike Greene. however, le Can+ has As the narrative progresses toward the to exaggerate his characters. Kttrtz (like baseball game each “misshape” hi Conradian namesake) remains larger outce,st” engages our c4mcem es a than Life despite le CarId’s attempts to vibrant, ordii human being. Major The Little Drummer Girl. by JOhI le humanize hi, to make hhn a Prospero Mite, for example, induces his best cam& HOdder & stollghton (Musson), with a touch of Calihan. We don’t want ._friend . Angus (“The Biggest Ma” in the 430 pages, $18.95 oloth (ISBN 0 340 to be like a Greene character (though we worldly) to return to me tro”pe, osten- 32841 9). The central dilenmte l” le suspect we already are); we want to be sibly to play baseball but in reality to _ Car& previous “owls has usually beat like Kurt% This is perhaps necessary in relive east memories in Mite’s frantic that of the moral man defending with his Greek tragedy. in which there UUIbe a ertemptto deay his encmacbing old age. life a cause in which he “o longer savjng flaw, but it ds a” illusion in He is dismayed to find Angus, “ow a believes. Leanms in The Spy Who Came romantic fiction. Charlie’s control farmer. comfortable with hi mortality InJiim the Cold (1963) wes defeated by agent. Becker, is more like the old and with life ac en average (though tbls dilemma. George Smiley, ln the Leanus. He suffers from doubt and wxprionally large) c&en. Mite’s stub- Karla trilogy (which is in fact not a eontpassio” and dam” near blows the bormtess extends to the baseball dla- uilogy hut one lonp, long novel with two mission. But eve” he finally takes refuge mend: when he comes up to bat, he false endings slotted in for the in perfection. refuses to t&e advantage of his inches- publisher’s convenience), saved hhnself Charlie has the spotlight for most of high strike zone and swl”gs desperately only by substituting for his faith in the novel, and it is she who brings off at every pitch. “Westun .dentocraoy” a personal. the play. There are several hair-raising The narrative that binds’the char- fa”aticalvt”gea”ceo”o”e”m”- echoes in her of le Carti’s disastrous acters together is in itself another story, Karla. Le Carrd’s emx bss “ever bee” foray into “at&&” fiction - The that of Quarrington held captive by his the mindless see-smv Of twin titmdc Naive and SenttmehtalLover - but thii gwdfather, a scam operator who col- f~wzs-East/West, MIS/-KGB - but Limethe book is saved by its plot, which lected bets and the” served aS umpire at the moral slroggle .between a man and has at least a beghudng and an end. the baseball gang& He is forcing hi consdence, trapped in a play in Much is made of Ie Carr& notion of life Quarrington to wite down the decades- wbieh moral nicetied are not only irro as “the theatre of the real”; all the old story “because I saw your name on a levant but potentially fatal. Both Eest world’s a stage, and so on. If the story book one day. and found out you were and West i” le Car& novelsare tarred saff; bit in the middle - well, that too my wdson. . . :’ Qoarrhtgto”‘s en- with the same brush; the conilicts -“AyNBORA”Y -...-_._-- -.- .._.

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FEATURE REVIEW

As his autobiography reveals, - George Woodcock’s commitment to anarchism is founded on personal frustration

By DA V7D STAFFORD

Leller to the Past An Autoblo- tiond and aesthetic wmmitments. house in Marlow that !VBOto be his home (5ilphy. Volume 1, by George Wood- Growing up in the march lands from 1918 to 1940 Woodcock and hi mcl:. Fiuhenry and Whiteside, 329 between England and Wales he became parents were isolated in a world outside pages, $221.95cloth (ISBN 0 88902715 3). aware of and later identified with Welsh their own class. Shabbiness turned into grievances against English cultural sowed gentility. Social life atrophied, FOBA ~!ANwith a significant reputation impwiallsm. He lived, too, on the edge and the sensitive only child joined the as one of our most prolific writers, of modernity, and has ever since showed walking wounded of England’s class George Woodcock remains a shadowy a preference for the vanishing past. wars. figure posed ambiguously on the edge of Traditional patterns of rural life were His escapecame during school holi- Canadian consciousness. Thii is no acci- rapidly disappearing, but Shropshire days when he returned to his grand- dent. He is a tireless biographer. editor, during and after the First World War parrots. Shmps@rr became utopia, and joum~ist. historian, essayist, and critic. was still a pastoral. archaic, and largely in nature Woodcock found a setting for and his witings have ranged generously pre-mechanized. world where the emotional and aesthetic peace. In long over a broad weep of subjects, from rhythms of dally life were modulated by solitary eacursions he developed a Canadiao poets to early British explorers the changing of the seasons and the an- powerful inner eye and ear that in later in Tibet. from George Orwell to Gabriel cient regularities of weekly markets and years produced visionary experiences Dumont, from Aphra Behn to Hugh annual fairs. Remnants of customary transfiguring the real world and hiaclennan, and from Doukhobors to rituals were still to be observed. such as transcending its temporal bounds. In Incas. He thus escapes easy categorlza- the awesome Romany funeral’ where recalling these early days Woodcock lion by our specialized academy, while both gypsy caravan and horse !vere writes at his very best, combining his at the same time he eludes the parochial burned on a hoge pyre under the unsee- acute eye for ethnographic detail with a bounds of current cultural obsessions. It ing gaze of their form& owner. lyricism for the magic memories of must give him great satisfaerion. It isnot Woodcock’s was a margbml chikl- childhood that ti great poetic force. just that he has denounced the cult of hood in yet another way. for it wu Within the confines of the real world the nation and its accompanying com- largely conducted between the poles of Woodcock soon learned evasive obe pleat nationalists and would therefore the separate households of his gmnd- dience. At school, for example, hating refuse formal entry into the cultural parents, so different in character and team sports in general and cricket in px- pantheon. As this finely wafted auto- situated at opposite ends of the small titular. he avoided confrontation with biography reveals, he is quintessentially world of Market Drayton. The pattem the hard ball by deliberately knocking a roan who belongs to the rich and ambi- was intensified when the family left down his own wicket. Later, trapped in valent mvgins of cultural. social, the hopeless clerical job he took during political, and geographical life. the Depression to support himself and His mother began it all when she gave his widowed mother, he learned the birth to Woodcock in 1912 in Winnipeg, subtleties of job supervision.He even during a brief interlude when she joined joined a union in the vain hope that he the husband who had prseeded her from might be tired. Long before he read England in an attempt to escape the Kmpotkii he had leamed to detest heavy hand of parental disapproval at authority and restrlctlon, and it was his desire to be a musician. More prac- largely es an eatension of personal tica and Victorian, they wanted him to frustration that he came to espouse the join the family coal business. Too obsti- anarchism of which he bar since become nate to comply and too gentle to rebel, such an articulate exponent. he had retreated to the colonies, thus Woodcock provides some intriguing betmyiw a character trait whose in- vignettes of the people he came to know flucncc Woodcock readily acknowledges in London’s literary and Bohemian in himself, and which he makes a major fringe: the thin and angular George theme of this reconstructed life. After Orwell, always reluctant to refuse and experiencing one prairie winter the anxious to be friendly; Caton, the family returned to their native Shrop humourless publisher of avant-garde shire. Hwe followed the decisive exper- Shmpshire so that his beloved father, poetry, whose real business was lucrative iencer of childhood and youth that now fatally stricken with Bright’s pornography; the young and a&%- moulded Woodcock’s temperament and Disease, could take a job with the Great gently witty Muriel Spark, slapped in profoundly influenced his lifetime emo- Westem Railway. In the mean little public .by a quarrelsome peel; and the

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Rl?wfEcw whether in Rook.& world or yours or Louise Bemeri. But while it was a milieu mine, a charact$r must have either spw rich in personalhies and action Wood- tacular energy and charisma or such M cock ir disappointingly elusive. We learn insight into humanity that we are cap- little “bout his personal relationships tivated. Rook& people, for the most rith these people and nothing at all part, have neither. IJ”con”ected, many about the apparently nameless woman of the”t seem to live in a bubble of their whom he married in 1943. own blowing, talkii to a” outside This evasiveness and detachment, of world that may or may not exist. I” course, is part of the essence. Woodcock By GEORGE GALT “Gin and Tonic” Rebecca spends the day vlsltbtg her friend Es& who re- chism vas fuelled byipacifist refusal to mains a phantom throughout. “Hitting I:ill ln deface of the system that had the Charts” features the aging, selc created the Depression. In a revealing congratulatory stud in disco-land, look- letter to a friend he said that “1 shall do The Birth Cantml King of the Upper ing to score. He ls a man of lunatic my bert to keep the neutrality, spiritual Volta. by Leon Rooke, ECW Press, 160 detachment. though he does chat and i”teUectuaI, which the poet should pages. $8.95 paper (ISBN 0 92080248 a). distantly with another old loser and mtdnttin in conflicts between ordinary Shakesresre’s Doe. by Leon Rooke. makea occasional contact o” the floor: people.” This inner aesthetic imperative Stoddart; I44 pages,-Sl4:95 cloth (1SBl.i The pkuter spun anewand I quiveredin is both Woodcock’s great strength and 0 7737 24x1 I). my itacks, going solo for a while.Two his great weakness. It has give” him ram or three of those 1 bumped gave me moral counge and a clear eye that LEON Roowt’s LATEST collection of dirty looks and one in a feather-duster penetrates the posturings and preten- stories is not so much post-modem as skin and a svonlium 90 smile mur- mured in my ear, “YOU belter slow * slons of the powwf”L At the same time post-mortem. With few exceptions the down. Pops, your face is mow-white, it leads him to a disconcerting refusal to characters in The Birth Conrml King of you detinkelygot lily-pad gills.” engag< the real world. and hence to the Upper Volta move magically “I’m cooking with &art’ I told this judgements that am both striking and through a” afterlife world where impera- smiler. yet empty. tives of mind and wmpIexltIes of flesh It’s a rrUef when, aRer pages of soup- To equate Hiroshima with Auschwitz, seem a dii munory. This afterworld, or slstIc prose. this guy f&ly goes home snd thus Churchill and Truman with the otherworld, when it rescmates with - al&e, of course. Nazis and Stalin, as Woodcock does inkIings and echoes of our ow”, is In “A Nicer Story by the ‘B’ Road,” here, is to ignore crocial distinctions of totally absorbing. Most of it, however, I Agnes ls married to God. They met meaninS and intent, and thus to lead found deadly dull. secretly i” high school, and one thing led ultimately to a fatalism about political The title story exhibits the sense of in- to another. A reader is hard pressed to affairs that is one of our greatest present ventiveness gone awry that kTlmracterize-5 decide wheth.e.r,if God does not exist, danpers. Purity of moral outrage about this book. What a brilliant stroke - the story is narcissistic, OF if he does megadeaths may itself be part of our creating a white supnmaclst whose life exist, it is merely nihiistic, or whether “mblzm. Orwll oointed in a similar work is selling birth control to the hirection many y&s ago when he and natives of Upper Volta. Adlai, his so”, mad or the B madithe author Woodcock disagreed about Woodcock’s teller of the tale, remains at home provides alternate endings) you’ll be wartime pacifism. Objectively, Orwell defending “his spot” against black glad when you cross the falsh line. said. it twisted fascism. The discreoancv takers. Hll man, who may have in- An artictilate simplicity, something of

,. .-..--..._ -_-._ _ .-- .._-i_. ___ .,,._. --. :-_._.._~li . . . .I~ ..,... ~___. ~._.., _ . . .. _.__ -_ .__.F_._ ._...... _ . . __ _ _ ._ ___ thinks they have been, or perhaps he describe. I propose to call it the nugget. vlould argue that tbls book ls really an \J An anthology of nuggets would in- intimate pottrait of William Sbake- clude, among others, selections from speate by one of his best friends. I would Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Nolebooks say b’s a free-fltnving stream of smdn (accradinS to Hemy James, one of the ELizabethan sensuality filtered through strangest books in literature). Kafka’s the eyer. eats, mouth. and balls of Leon Rqi’eclions on Sin. Rnh, Hope and The Rooke, a dreaa-romp. a word-WY, llue Way, Max Frish’s Sketchbook. and perhaps a monumental self- Valery’s Monsieur Ta&, Somerset indulgence. depending on your point of By ALti-TGMAIVGUEL Maugham’s A Wriler’s Norebook, view, point of view being particularly Barges’s The Maker (mis~anslated as relevant in this case. Witness Hooker. at Dreamigers), Samuel Butler’s Not.+ book’s end. about to leave for London book Gerard Manley Hopldns’s Jour- v;ith Wilk aal, Julio Cortaear’s Cmnopios and I dabbled elf into BeeptIme,dreaming Mtwdw in the Dark, by Margaret Pumas, and MargaretAtwood’s brilliant of pat standins bowls pxkd with Atwood, Coach House Preps, 64 page% new book, Mwder in the Dutfc. meat. I dreamedoi snothy hawks with Sd.95 paper (LSBN0 68910 258 9). The dictionary defbtitlcm of nugget tbcir breastsripped open and helplessin would read “A small literaty piece; a my pwa+ dreamed of crey bwardly INAN as&w on John Wilkins, Jorge Luis quotable fragment.of knowledge or ia- bonfs choking my throat, dreamed of Eorges mentions “a certain Chinese fomtatiotq a short extract from a book dcrr chariy acroa new-fallen snow. 1 cncyclopaedia” where animals are odds and ends. A nugget must be brief pused onto tough spiny pie and categorized 8s “(a) belonging to the and to the paint; it must illustrate a &bed them clean. I bayed at the mwn and sniffed worms in the bowelsof a Emperor. @) stuffed, (c) tralaed. (d) thought or comment on an expuieace; it dead horse and ate what was good. in suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) must have a touCh of humour.” Nuggets my Iierce n$bt rule, I chased cluekers mythical, (e) stray dogs, (h) included in ate by tm means a minor genre: they ate $fly sktmg pales and bit err their thls classlficstion, (i) that wriggle comparable to doodles made by a . . around like mad, (j) innumerable, (k) painter or a sculptor (Henry Moore’s I 1% Mm and in my dreamcomem- drawn with a wry fine cam&-hair sheep come to mind). plated her virlues and defaults. As vir- brush. fj) etcetera, (m) that have just Because of their immediacy and tue. she was first and foremost a dog. broken the vase, {II) that seen from the urgency (there is something in the nature By that penultimate page some readers distance look like flies.” Any classifii- of a nugget that makes it look hasty and xill want to throw Hooker a meaty tion is arbitrary, but I am nr.vertheless yet long-reflected) nuggels seem con- bone. Many others, I feel sure, wiIl want surprised to see that no one has yet clusive, snappish aaswers to lengthy him put away. 0 classified the literary genre I am about to questions. Nuggets ate less epigram- __.._ _.~;_._.. ._..~ --. -_.._ --.--

nmtlc than epigrams, less sententious sinister crime. my hands are reaching from 19th~century Charlotte&n. In hls and contrived - but just as unexpected. for your neck or perhaps, by mistake. introduction. Acorn raises his fictional Murder in the Dark is subtitled your thigh. You can hear my footsteps ancestor to the status of a folk hem “Short Fictions and Prose Poems.” It approaching,I wear boots and carry a whose poetry is often quoted on the knife. or maybe it’s a pearl-handled streets of Charlottetown: “I’d rather go consists of brief tests. most of them revolver, in any case I w-r boots with about one or two pages long, each the very soft soles, you can see the cina down thestreet with the use/Out of my snapshot of a moment of experience. matic glow of my cigarette, waxing and pants than meet a man I owed.” What They pinpoint memories, impressions, waning in the fog of the roam, the follows this disarming humour is a and sensations. They capture and street, the room, evm though I don’t mythical voyage of a poet navigating his mmly~e fleeting thoughts, best defined smoke. Just remanbs this, when the course toward hi visionary ideal. in the last sentence of “Strawberries” SZCI~~IJIat last has ended and you’ve Poetic vision is dialectical for this cap (one of the last nuggets in the book): “I turned on the lights: by the nda of the tain, whom Acorn once calls MacJanus. forgot what things were called and saw game. I must always lie. Now: do you The poirt must explore his ancestral isstead what they were.” This memory believe me? heritage as the source for songs that will of things as rhey really are is app%ent in Murder in :he Dark is one of those inspire future generations. The first son- “Rav: hlaterlals” - seven pa8r.d of a books one wisher one could quote from net presents the conventional invocation writer’s travel notes in Latin America. cover to cover. It has been written to to the muse. As sailors cant the wind, Looking at a carved throne inside s read to a friend over the phone, or to so poets court the breath of inspiration. pyramid. the writer-tourist says: “Once chuckle over in the streetcar under the At the helm of the ark, &led by a gull, they played a game here.. . If your team eyes of mqre sober cltlzens. It is dew stand the tall, bearded Dougal and his lost they c”t off your head. That’s what and witty, told with the humour of The wee son Neal MacDou8al. The gull’s the carving is, the body of a man with a Edible Woman, with the sense of secret tmglc cry only stru#hens the father’s fountain in place of the head: the blessed childhood found in Dancing Girls, with resolve to “steer her safe.” The theme is loser, making * it rain. Metaphor.” the wisdom of L#iz&fore Man. with the as epic as the invocation: oncanny feeling for memorable scenes Atwood wams, “can be dangerous.” 80 you’ve amend& dmc on my ship- The piece ends: “We walk back down apparent in Atwood’s best poems. Set a mark to Imr while metastretch the corridor, touching nothing, knowing Because of its nature - similar to that s&f that we have intruded, blundered upon a of a journal or a sketchbook - Murder What kind of wind let you do that? child’s serious and profoundly believed in rfte Clark is a very personal collection. One breath’s whkw more and she game, and we have spoiled everything.” Here are the writer’s thoughts, fears. would how ripped/ (This conclusion Mngs to mind D.H. giggle. precise conclusions, and impres- The temporal/eternal, history/ Lawrence meeting a snake at a water- sions - an intelligent interview with an pmphecy, poet/goddess dialectic is trough, and frightening it away! “And lntelliint person done by that person resolved in the last sonnet, “The Com- so, I missed my chance with one of the herself. In an early poem, “This is a pletion of the Fiddle.” as the naked god- lordo:Of life.iAnd I have something to Photograph of Me,” Atwood witex dess guides the poet to the swet ha- e:ipiate;;A pettiness.“) “But if you look long enough&en- many of the spheres. Several tests are concerned with liter- tually/you will be able to see me.” In In his previous collection, Jackpine atore, or rather with the writer’s craft. these pieces. unobstructed by the plot of Sonnels, Acorn detined the soMet as a “The Page” for instance: “The page a novel or the framework of a poem, the “short poem with a dialectical pray of wits. pretending to be blank . . . . writer’s voice - amosed and wise - argument.” Thls dialectical play i4 the Touch the page at your peril: it ls you becomes most cutaloly visible.. 0 source of Acorn’s strength and weak- v:ho are blank and innocent, not the ness. It charges the words and dreams of pags:’ Others show Margaret Atwood a feisty sea-captain with dramatic ten- at her comic best, “Liking Men” for sion as he suffers denials of his words example: “It’s time to like men again. and awakens fmm his dreams. But the Where shall we begin?” and sets off on a dialectic too often is reduced to the guided tow of the male komo sapiens polemical rhetoric of a white/red world (well, not very sapiens) from the back of of good and evil when Acorn is content the neck (the nape, not the seruffl to the to portray the captain condemning an boots. and on to that moment in which act rather than stirring our own indigna- his foot, sticking out from under the tion. While some individual poems thug sheets, reminds you of the day on rvhlch appear to suffer from Acorn’s tendency - innocent babe - he was born. to bluster, they will serve the dramatic The piece I like best is “Murder in the stmctore of the sonnet sequence. Dad;.” the nugget that lends its title to By DA VID LA TM Following “The BolI Trots In and the book. It isa d&c, probably con- Puffs,” the penultimate sonnet presents demned from its birth to the grim the captaln as Old MacDougaI appear- immortality of anthologies, but never- inp to lapse into a mundane condosion: theless superb. It explains a child’s “*I’vegor a feel of somethingpvst the game. tmditionally a writer’s favoutite ~~~_~~~~~~~ skyUne (witness Graham Greene’s short story ed Goddess, by Milton Aiorn, Ragweed That’ll be a mark/or mu nert “The End of the Party”). “The thing Press, 32 pages, 16.50 paper (ISBN 0 p.uwgf.” about this game,” says Atwood, “is that 9X730416 8). you have to know when to stop.” The concluding pamgraph has the quality of MILTONAC&N~S NBW collection of 38 prose that should be learned by heart, poems is a sonnet sequence allegedly like a poem: culled from the log of the M&wood In ;ley cat. that is me in the dark. I Mae, a wooden ship skippered by Cap have designs on you. I’m plotling my tain Ned MacDougal. the son of a pirate

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tend to swing naturally towards concre.te predicament .. . . there’s a profound my own feeling after reading Labyrinths things - his childhood, his sense of sense in which we have nothing to write. of Voice is that it would be even more laudscape and history and community, about,” and he elaborates this later on interestins for the rest of us if he were to his evident love for the West and what by saying, “As a child I had that really give the artist in him more leeway. q makes it different from the East. He is strong feeling that I was living in a plan drawn toward huge metaphors that can that bad no story to explainit and so I contain and explall both hll delight in suppose one of the things 1 winted to do writing and his need to spin tbwries was tell that story of nothing to tell.” about v:hat he has already written. One Statements like these are illuminating, REVIEW of his most striking and suggestive but they are also bordari~ on nonsense. hnages is that of the archaeological site. Does Kroetsch really bdle every- where meaning is discovered through a tltlug he says? ~nfortunate.ly. like so painstaking recovery and reconstruction many literary interviewers, his inter- of fragments. during which the site itself locutors almost never challenge him, sp is destroyed. for all the talk, there is little sense that Kroewh talks well about his maor real discourse is taking place. influences like Cervantes, Conrad, At the wry hemt of this labyrinth.lies Nabokov, and eontemporary South somethiw disturbing. It is not just that By CAR Y FAGAN American writers. He has a genuine Neuman and Wilson treat traditional dislike for the kind of popular literature notions of human.identity and integrity that trades on predictable conventions as outmoded and n&e; the book blurs of form and language. He distrusts over crucial distinctions between witi-, writers like Kemuac and Bultowsfti clsm and creation. As loo8 as att and Generations: Selected Poems, by because, he says, their popularity is “a criticism remain separate and exen eon- ’ Kaehel Kom. Mosaic PressNallav Edi- reaffirmation of the hope that lattguage tending activities, the artist is free to lead tions, 60 p&es, 812.95 cloth iiSBN does signify something besides the way, to create according to his own 0 88962 186 I) and $6.95 _.paper (ISBN. language.” He talks frequently of “the best instincts. When criticism is allowed 0 88% 185 3).- temptation of meaning.” sometimes as too much authority, it can usurp the ar- though il were one of the seven deadly list’s role and start constructing models ~*WHBNROCHL lioa~ died.” said sins. sometimes as thouah it were essen- for artists to follow. The results are American critic Irving Howe at the I.to hi wlting. He-is occasionally almost always dreadful. What makes Toronto Jewish Book Fair last year, en to arresting genaalizations like Kmetsch interestinn is that the two “there was no replacement.” Not only le Canadian writer 1sin a very exciting forces exist within the same person, b was Kom, whd died last September in Montreal, a tine poet, but she was also a member of what may be the last genera- tion of Yiddish writers. “I am the gravestone of my people,” she writes in a poem included in this selection (“The Words of My Aletlqz”). She is a poet of grief, and to read her work is to feel her pain. Whereas many Jewish writers have recently used the Holocaust merely as a Take all 152,000 words - narrative device, Kom’s whole literary including more Canadian consciousness has been formed by its words - old and new - direct impact on her life.. fiven when she writes about other subjects the ghosts of than any other college. her murdered family, her People, fall dictionary. Over 300 over the words like a shadow: a naturally words have been added lovb nature has learned to feel rage, a raae that in time has subsided into uer- to this edition - look up manentsorrow. ayatollah, floppy disk or Rochl for Rachel) Kern was born in quadriplegic. And there Podlllki,‘an East Galiclan village. in 1898. Her first writings were in Polish, are pages of up-to-date but soon she switched to Yiiish. a information on our language then c0nsidere.d unliterary, a government, history and mere jargon that took a special commit- z;ple. A great graduation ment from a writer. After spending some difficult war y- in the Soviet Union she emigrated to Canada and sel- Funk &IWagnalls tied in 1948 in Montreal, a city that became a major centre of Yiddish Standard College Dictionary writing after the annihilation of Polish Latest Canadian Edition Jewry. Although Kom’s poetry and fiction Thumb indexed $19.95 Plain $18.95 have been published widely and antbol- ogized in translation, her work is, like & whiteside that of most Canadian Yiddish’writers. ______,_I._. ______._. .._.. ._~” -~.~.- ^_.._. _.~_~_ ---

largely unl;novm in her adopted co”n- than those that skirt around it, leaving try. This edition then, edited by the unspoken truth hovering in the air. Seymour Mayne and well translnted by Kern is also - and this isn’t really a Mayne. Miriam Waddington, and criticism - a very limited poet. She others. is nwst welcome and. I hope, is makes no attempt to understand the the forerunner of other translations of Holocaust as a man-made. historical Canadian Yiddish writers. event. Such detachment is simply Some of Kom’s best poems are anee- beyond her, as it must be for r~mecme dotal: they resonate with a deep sense of who experienced such a direct loss. The a folk past. “Crazy Levi.” for example, sense of fatalism and the natural tells of a man who wanders from village imagery create a kind of autumn of the to village. suffering over a girl he loves soul: the Holocaust becomes not only but ha been forbidden to marry. He oddly inevitable, but insurmountable. It endures the teasing of the women who is fmm this perspective of her wounded ask hi why he does not marry: life that WC must read Kern’s poems. Altbough Elie Wiuel’s introduction to the book is not very useful, I understand what he means when he says, “Yes, 1 do love P.achel Kom.” 0

These early poems are undated, but I suspect they mere written before the war, REVIEW and if so then Korn’s mournful tone has been part of her poetic voice from tbe beginning. They also seem mote ob- viously influenced by such early Yiddish witers as LL. Peretz. ICorn’s sensibility is no1 feminist but romanly. Her greatest valuer are family; she displays a woman’s passion for both her children and her own By SHARON DRACHE mother. Even a subtly erotic lyric ‘I’d love to whet your appetite entitled “I’m Soaked Thmugb With or the goodies made available You” has something maternal about it, ly the British women who run and in another poem she tells her lover, “I’d low to meet your mother once/and Baechtmalis Revisiled, by James H. lirago. They’ve discoveredand kiss her hands.” Mothers “nlways know Gray, Western Producer Prairie Books. svived the work of some of the far more than other women” and I92 pages, $16.95 doth (ISBN 0 088833 nost fascinating woman novel- deserve love and veneration. Kern’s own 093 6). mother was killed by the Nazis, a death sts of this century. And they to which she responds with frail, st~a “IS F,RST book, The Winfer Years rroduce them in gleamingly domestic images, and tears. (1966). James H. Gray has been the off% reautiful paperbacks-sturdlly- Poetry is Kern’s torment and savipur. cial social historian of tbe Canadian iewn, too, so you can openthem “I fear that first line of a poem,” she West. His success is based on two assew writes. but how can she resist it when a his ability to mythologize and his lat . . . discover the treasure poem can bring back her beloved reporter’s eye for fact @%ter Newman’s rove of Virago (now distributed family? In “A New Dress,” dated 1947, The Bmqfmnn Dynmiy -x.-es much to byAcademic Press) for yourself she uses a garment as metaphor for a the painstaking, colourful research . .” Michele Landsberg,Toronto poem and says it is “too short for my found in Gray’s 1972 book Booze). and grief, too natrow for my sormw . . . .” he has remained sensitive to the low guy S&f And yet the unsolvable irony is. of on the totem pole, handicapped because of race, relllion, or socio-economic status. In Bacchanuiia Revisikd, Gray returns to a theme close to his heart. Born of an alcoholic father, he writes of temperance and prohibition with un- bridled zeal. By bls own admission his best childhood years were 1916-1920 - Prohibition years - when his father brought home his paycheque every mursc. that she continues to write week, instead of spending it on booze. p0etM. Gray’s concern is still addiction. Some of the other poems in Genera- Everyone, he says, is drinking - from lions are too unfocused to generate the hlgh school students to housewives to intended feeling. Those that deal directly lawyers to politicians. It’s like a Roman with the Holocaust are less successful orgy, a sort of w&ship of alcoholic elix- lr. The lowering of the drinking age i” shaping public opinion on booze mom their movement, and o” the right I had the Prairies fo IS in 1972was an open in- than any other Canadian newspaper. the PQ, which I had severely crlticlacd in viadon to 15- and ICycar-oldr. In the The first politician to run on a booze a book called Pourquoi we rdvolurion fmt quarter of the book, Gray presents ticket was Manitoba’s Steven Juba. He au Quebec. After the publication of that startling facts about middle-class was responsible not only for the intcgra- book I was caught between the two:Of tecnagc brawls in manicured suburbs, tlon of male and female drinkers in course, both used the worst smear lacties the parents and p&c powcrlcss. It’s all Manitoba bars in the 1950s. but was also to ridicule me and make me lose all in an cvcning’s entc+inmcnt . . . bat- the political harbinger of the Manitoba credibility. And professionally I felt I chanalla. Bracken Commission, which saw the was starting to repeat myself. I had Primarily the book is concerned with cocktail era firmly entrenched. It also rc&hcd 42 years of age, and I felt If I the increase since Prohibition in brought the problem of alcoholism out stayed longer I would just tread the mill alcoholism. Gray points out that “dry” of the closet. In sn upsetting chapter on and think of my pension. So I said, years wcrc ncvcr totally dry. Thanks to alcoholism among Canadian Indians, “No, “o, I’m not dead yet, I’m the mall order booze business. the GraycitcsKenora, Ont., as the key place quitting.” Bmnfman brothers, the Diamond 10 observe the Indian drinking dilemma. Also because in Monfrcal I felt cmu- brothers, and Nat Bell, liquor in the Gray has given Canadians a careful pletely dcpcndenl on what I call the nct- Prairies was available during Pmhibi- documentation of the rise of alcoholism works of the city. You rely ot clectrlclty. tion for anyone who could afford it. It not only in the Prairies but in all of the postal syslcm, the transport system; was also during Prohibition that rum- Canada. He has pointed out that Cana- you arc so dependent on so mauy net: running and bootlegging gof their start. dian society is geared to alcohol in order works, like a rat in a maze. So I said, and the Bmnfman boys turned Yorkton. ‘to consummate virtually every act of “I’m going to get out of here and try to Sasl:., into the blended whisky capital of social intercourse. Gray is not only live as lndcpcndently as possible.” the ‘IVest.Throughout both “dry” and documenting; he is warning. The harsh Bit2 Was there II change in your “wet” years the Calgary Herald facts he prcscnb are about a very real political views ut this dme? &moured against stringent liquor law, problem in Canadian society. Cl Bcrgcmn: Oh yes, absolutely. I curt- sidcrcd myself in 1970-72 as a Marxist. Of course, the real Marxists told me I wasn’t. They were possibly right, maybe I was “ever a Marxist. I was certainly INTERHEW against exploitation, against capitalist m,.*.. v . cxploitatio”. But in Abitlbi I started cleansing myself of all this ideology, Lkandre Bergeron on lingyistic purity which was very strong in me, and rcal- in Quebec: ‘Language is often a screen to prevent izing that Msxx.lsmwas in fact a 19th- century theory, that the countries that people from interacting with reality’ had tried to put thll into practice wcrc proving that it didn’t work, that ihme By DANIEL. FRANCIS countries were turning into totalitarian states. So I rcaUy got rid of that ideol- ogy. Now, if you ask me what I am politically, I just call myself anecologist in all fieelds. I am still against the L!&NDRE BERGERONwas born on a farm Books in Canada: Why didyou leave the capitalist system, but my way of fshting in southern Manitoba in 1933. and cily? it is not through class war. I don’t follow studied in France before moving to Leandrc Bergeron: For quite a few those patterns anymore. Montreal. where he taught Qucbecois reasons. I wa completely neutralized BiC: How are yolc jighling lhe system literature at Sir George Williams Univer- politically. On the lcR I had the Mar.&x- ?lOW? sity. Active in the left wing of the Leninists at me because I hadn’t joined - _--.-. -. _ _ ._ Bergeron: It’s not just capitalism I’m independence movcnxnl, he became r f&hting. I’m fghting all power6 that be. known in English Canada in the early They manifest themselves l” different 1970s with the translation of The ways. In my last two books I’m under- Hkto~ of Quebec: A Patriote’s Hand- mining quite a few things. In the Die- book (NC Press). His latest English dmmaire de la Iangue qudbdwke I am publicadon is The Quebecois Dlcfiona~ attacking the Quebec& elite of today (James Lorimer), originally published in thal is pmmodng French French in French in 1980, while in lhc other of- Quebec. Thii elite, and the PQ is part of ficial language he has just written Pelit that elite, ls vyins to impose on the mrrnuel de I’accoucht?ment c) la ma&on, Quebccois a very rctmgrade couccption a manual for home childbirth. No longer of the language, and in fact sort of committed to an independent Quebec snuffmg out the real living culture of (“Separation implies that we have to go Quebec. If they managed to Prenchiry through an independent statehood and Qucba, as they would Ukc to, the since the state is not a means of Quebemis would lose all their ldentity~ Ubcrating the pwple it is no longer a But they won’t. goal of mine”), he now lives on a farm Bit2 What do yousay topmple who tell in the Abitibi region of Quebec with his yo” that Quebeeois iF not a Iangwge~ wife Franeine and their daughter D&ire. it’s simply w iqferior bmnd of Frendz? On rcccnt visit to Ottawa he was Bargeron: That is the official Ungulstlc intervlewcd by Daniel Francis: approach ln Quebec. I teU them that if

- . . -.y-y,, .: -- ._‘~iii.-.--.-_r-,.--_.-_C. -. , ,_ . . ..- _.._. . . . ______.. _ ____,_ . I .._ . . ..--- --.

the Qaebccois are a people, then they are Be~eron: Apparently, yes. i8 still apolitictd intent in your books. a llviog community with their particular BiC It’s (I manual_for givbtg birth ot Bergeron: Right. I am attacking a traditions. their background, and their home. Could you describe its origins? medical establishment, a certain power 1ulqag.e becomes the language they Bergemn: We lived this fantastic exper- speak. In Quebec most of modem imce, Franclne and myself, in Abitibi, Mm, husbands, have been told lhey am French is part of our language. but it is in our home. During her pregnancy we. comdetely incomuetent in the lield. that much more than that. Freochifying studied the possibility of having the they-are just the &es who have c&ed Quebec would be reducing the language baby at home. The more we studied, the all this pain to their women, that they of Quebec. I do not like the language to more we decided that it was the natural have mjoyed the pleasure of conception be used as an ideological tool to reduce thll to do. Most of the books were but ran away after. Well I don’t take American, and after the birth I said to that crap. This book is certainly an myself, “If a Quebecois wants to do the attack on the medicallltion of child same thing, does he have to learn English’] So I’ll write thii book.” establishment has. At the same’time it is It’s not strictly a manual. It’s more attacking the State, which is favouriag than that. 1 speak of the role of the man, these doctors. The State is lbc Blip the father. His role is very important. 1 Momma thar is talcmg cam of our birth- don’t consider that his role is just coo- ing, our schooling, our jobs. What7 Are ceiviog the child with the mother and we unconsziooa robots in this society7 saying, “OK, now the doctors will take Cm we not live fantastic experiences like care of you.” It’s the couple that is preg- birthing? nant. It’s the couple that gives birth to BlC: In cvetythingyou’ve written you’re the child. In other words the respoo- attmcted to tttam& and sell-help books. J.&*. sibility of the birth is the man’s respon- sibility - it’s not only the woman’s Bergeron: What I’m really driving at is th; Interaction between a given people responsibility. And if the man plays an responsibility of oneself. If we could and the reality they are living. Language active role in the birthing process, it is develop in this society pe.opIe who are isoften a s&en Used to p&at people simplified to such a degree. So I think responsible for their own bodies. their from interactingwith their reality. it’s a book for men. own health, their owe child-bearing. J3E So you don’t think it’s II criticism BlC: The birth happened at your farm. their own education, and nbt relying on of the Iangttage when people complain Who wavptwettt? institutions totakc care of us. we would that it has adopted II lot qfanglicisms? Berguon: Myself, my sister Marie, and be starting to have a new society. I don’t ISe~~eron:Of course not. That’s its rich- two other friends. believe in class struggle anymore. I don’t ness. English has borrowed 40 per cent BIG: So there were no medico/people? think that will change society. I think of its vocabulary from French. Has it Bergemn: No, not even a midwife. In bzen polluted by French? Of comx not, Abitibi right now there are no midwives. because English is a living language. In Now a mldwlfe can be very helpful. but Frame they are caught up in a linguistic we consider that the birthing process is ideology that is still 17th-eentmy. In such an intimate thing, it’s nearly as in- France, and in an elite in Quebec, you timate as conception. I mean, you don’t still have the notion of the purity of the conceive the child on an operating table. language. That’s fascism in 1982. Our You conceive the child in the intimacy of elite in Quebec have the notion that bor- a bedroom, sod the’birthing process rowing from English or any other should be the same. Of course, I favour language is pollution. That’s incredible. midwives, but in our case it wasn’t really That’s why when my dictionary came possible, so we did it alone, and every- out it caused such an uproar. I knew it thing went well. v:ould, of course. bat you have to do it, BiC: Howdoyou mvpond topeople who you have to fight fascism in language talk to you of the r&k? just as you fit f&am in ordinary Bergeron: If people study the birthing politics. process seriously they identify the risk, WANTED ALIVE DE: Your dictiottoty has be&a released the complications. To us, there was in Englivh, and you have soid that the really no great risk. The bii problem time & right/or this tmndotion. Why? with blrthiog is that people freak out Bxgcron: Thiigs that have happened because they’ve been terrorized by the have stimulated some English Canadians medical profession. They’ve been told, to say. “What is so different in Quebec7 you’re not bll enough to do it, you’re Who are these people after all? What do too stupid, you’re too incompetent. a they speakl” So this dictionary comes at pregnant woman is a sick woman, and the right time to get the two corn- sll this crap. In England 50 per cent of munities to start talking to one another. the children am born at home with mid- We’ve been talking thmogh d/&s inter- \\ives. Are Canadian and Quebec& pos&s. If English Cmmdllos can see women less healthy than the British? that we use these words, that they ax The birthing process is a natural process. words we use io OUTdaily lives, and that If the woman is healthy and has been vx have the same daily problems. com- checked throughout her pregnancy, munications can be established, right? what ls the problem7 El@: i-he latevt book yott’ve done ip Bit2 II seeins that there &II unity in all opparcntiy quite (I shift. the books thatyoo’w written, that there

May 1963. Books in Canada n that we have to go through personal rasponsibla for what we do, critical and n~olutions. that we start changing responsible. We are governed became ourselves, that we become responsible we consider ourselves incompetent, for our own lives. What.underliaa my childish, and we will changa our society publications is this constant anti- and do away with the powers that be if fl SOUllD1llV 1flUcitlTfR establishment, anti-power attitude. We wa do develop thi titlcal attitude and would not be governed if we ware all say we can do things ourselves. 0

THE BROWSER I. Dramatic readings: from radio’s role in Canadian theatre to the NFB’s annoying habit of dubbing French-language films By MORRIS WOLFE

Piloted by emotions, four brilliant crsay by T.D. MacLullch titled people crash head-long into THB WORST~“llyo about The Expor “The Canadian Tradition in R&m;” one another in awkward Inside Out by Dan Turner (McCIalland MacLulich dlstinguirhea between Cana- embraces of love and revenge. &Stewart, 203 pages. $18.95 cloth) is its dian and American culturn by looking at $16.85 unimaginative title. Apart fmm that, this book contains the best writing on the fiction pmduced in the two coun- baseball that I’& read outside Roger tries. Westerns, he argues (“novels of AngelI’s superb New 3%&r articles. civilization evaded”). pmdominste in Turner loves the game. (No patmnizlng U.S. fiction. Northern (“novels of pa.+ Tom Alderman of The Journal is be.) sion denied and sentiment repressed in Turner can take all-too-familiar the name of reason and social custom”) statistics and turn them on their head. predominate in Canadian fiction. The Expos may have been third in “~merlcan pmtagonlsts often seek to fielding average, he rays, but they escape from hitmy.” says MacLullch. “smeUed like ninth or tenth.” Tim “whereas many Canadian prot~g011k.t~ Ralnes, for example, made oaly two discover their true identities only by errors in 1982, but he was so spaced out acknowledging their place in a historical on drugs most of the time that he rarely continuum.” Well worth reading. knew where ha or the ball was. My favourite line in the book is Al Oliver’s: CBC gracuswL*Ncw*OE television “1 don’t see how anybody can crltlciie a almost never allows us to hear any player of my ability and attitude.” French. Translators rush in to pmtect us from it after the first few words are NA~MYA~~AN commented in Books in uttered. So I wasn’t surprised, when Les Canada some months ago that Northrop Bonr Debarms was recently shown by Frya “sometima mduced lltemtura ta CBGTV. that we saw a dubbed rather the condition of a corpse, so that he than a ;ubtitled version. (The CBC could study its anatomy.” George French network. it’s interesting to note, Woodcock takes up this point in a doesn’t sham &he J3nglish &work’s review symposium on The Great Code in aversion to subtitles.) But I was aston- the Winter 1982/3 Issue of the Uaivw- ished to dlsuwer that the National Film sity of Toronto Quarterly: “Except hem Board office in Toronto now has only and there in a fugitive way in the ‘Letters dubbed versions of two fdms I show my Clearly explains the new in Canada’ reviews he used to write, I Canadian film history students, Man Canadian laws o? marriage, have never felt the hensa of a book as a On& Antoine and LA. Martin. photo- divorca living entity emerging fmm Fry’s lsicl gmphe. Which means, of course. that c&d;, a%:$:;~$: critical writings, though those writings the tension betwean the anglophone rights and inheritance. using have thdr own life. Them is, in all this foreman and the franmphone workers actual casa histories as illur- brilliance of understanding . . . an in Man On& Antoine now is totally lost trations. absence of empathy, which explains why on the viewer. Is it MO much to ask that $7.95 Frye may confmnt the work, but never subtitled versions of those films be avail- encounter its maker. . . . With all good able for those of us perverse enough to literature, . . . something more Umn pmfa lhem that way? decoding is necessary; the &tic without empathy is no complete critic.” ONE HAS TO be pleased that Canadian The same issue of m contains a Theatm Review devoted much of a re- cent issue (number 3.8) to radio drama. Shattuck in the March 14 issue of The paper). AU aspects of the publishing It’s an indication that theatre historians New Republic to question even the process, fmm finding a publisher to have finally recogoized the central role notion of modernism. “It’s all make resolving disputes, are discussed by tive , radio has played in the development of work,” he has a sludent say, “an ever- of our leading editors. They do so with Canadian theatre. At the same time, it’s cise in nomenclature with no grounding intelliice, understanding, and good difticolt not to be disappointed by the in compelling events or works. Moder- humour. carelersness with which the issue was nism is not a meaningful category of assembled. Mary Jane Miller’s excellent literafy history or art hislory. It’s a MY AWARDFOR the most vicious attack article, “Radio’s Children,” for feather bed for critics and pmfessors, an on a newly dead writer during the past instance, is seriously marred by typogra- endlessly renewable pretext for scholars six months goes to Lawrence Stone for phical errors. A memoir by George Ryga to hold wnferences, devise special hi comments on E.H. Carr, the British is so badly written that it ought not to numbers, and glass each other’s works historian, who died in November, 1982. have been published. Another article, into powder.” 1 sospect that Shattuck’s In “Grim Eminence,” the lead article in “Walking a Tbin Line,” by Globe and article, “The Poverty of Modernism.” . the January 20 edition of The London Mai/ reporter Carolc Corbeil, consists will be discussed for years. Review of Books (a far more lively joor- mostly of a personal attack on the cur- nal .these days than its New York reot head of CBC-Radio drama. Susan NO,ONE WHO writes or edits books will counterpart), Stone informs us that Carr Rubes. Her piece feels more like want to be without Author 85Editor: A was, among other things, a bad teacher, something the Globe rejected than a Working Guide by Rick Archbold, a mean husband, a nasty reviewer, and a scholarly article. Still, there are enough Doug Gibson, Dennis Lee, John Pearce, crummy historian. So terrible a person good things in this issue of CTR that and Jan Walter (Book and Periodical was Cam, writes Stone, that even “his anyone seriously interested in Canadian Development C&mcil, 36 pages, $2.93 own parents did not care for him.” q radio will want to read it. An essay. for example, by Howard Fink about Con- cordii University’s radio drama project. And a touchiry memoir by Len Peterson about working with Andrew Allan and IN TRANSLATION Esse Ljongh. CTR is available fmm York University. Downsview, Out. M3J lP3. Though skilfully written, Robert Ma&au’s impassioned, at time8 wearisome, argument8 betray MICHAELCOOK argues in Canadian The&e Review that radio should once a hxk of 8OCialsophistication again “commit itself to raising the level of our common consciousness.” A By PAUL SlWEWlZ similar point is made by Murray Schafer in a recent essay, “Radical Radio,” ’ the December/January lssoe of tl!

Canadho Foram. “Why should it not ’ .- be possible,” he writes. ‘#to record the ~l.rHo”Gl# aNea.4~. OF Robert Mar- lated tiy David Homel, $9.95 paper) in changing of the tides and the winds, or teau’s books have already been hopes that it will provide a more a-- the coming of the birds in spring? . . . translated intn English, there seems to sible way into Marteau’s work. Why is it not possible for radio to take be little awareness among anglophone Mount Royu/ is easier reading than hold of the pulse of another civilization, readers of the prestige this French-born Interlude, but its contents me by no say in the reading of Victor Hugo’s LCE writer enjoys in his adopted Quebec. means the sort of discursive jottings one - M.wableF, non-stop ,for BS long as it Thii can probably be largely attributed tinds in many literary journ&. These lakes? . . . Or the music of Africa, and to the mutual ignorance between our are highly polished observations and China and South America . . . , the two literary culttow and the distribu- meditations, written with future publica- music of bamboo and of stones, the tion in mind; they ofteo display rhetor- music of crickets and cicadas, the music but in of Mart& a good deal ical and didactic intentions that tacitly of waterwheels and waterfalls, uninter- dedication and erudition is also required acknotiledge the presence of an rupted for hours.” Anyone familiar of the prospective reader. The short audience. They are neither conversations with some of Schafer’s lovely “sound- prose narratives of Interlude, one of two with nor advertisements for the author’s scapes” can im;yine the possibilities. new titles from Exile Editions (translated self, but rather a series of impassioned Remember the program that took us by Barry Callaghan, $8.95 paper), arguments lodged within the more con- from St. John’s to Vancouver simply by presume a passing acquaintance with ventional descriptive and ruminative splicing together all the answers to the structural anthropology, generative framework of the litaary journal. question “How do we get to . . . from grammar, and the history of world The entry for May 21. 1979, provides her??” What we heard. as we slowly mythology; and thus one tams to the a good example of Marteau’s technique. moved from East to West, were all the “daily journal” Meant Royal (trans- It begins with a description of the dialects and linguistic idiosyncrasies that natural setting, then recounts an make up this strange country. instance of physical suffting and draws psychological and metaphysical implica- 5~6 RECENT~XHANIX between poet tions from it. This sort of graduated David Donnell and critic Gary Michael transition fmm personal experience to Dault in these pages on the nature of philosophical reflection seems logical post-modernism made me realize once and familiar. but the sadden interjection more that I don’t understand what post- of “If Christ had appeared among the modernism is. Now along comes Roger Haida. they would have accepted hi -. - __... ..- ...~~__. .-...- -.-... -_.-~.. ~____._. .~. ..___._

with open arms” seems neither. It intro- perplexingbook as a whole as they are of excesses of consumer societies, and his duces a lament ior the “shattered . . . rain clothing the woods. the hour disgust at our continuing rape of the debris” of West-Coast Indian culture struck and the sifting, clolh with warp natural environment will all engage the that makes a powerful argument for the or weft. thread after thread forever sympathies of any fair-minded mxler. intrinsic worth of ifs subject, but does so beginning from top lo bottom, not What is much more surprising, howaver, perpendicular, thick, b&k, untear- at the risk of alienating that developing is the virulence, at times seemingly close able, penetrated with impunity at ils relationship with the author which can furthest point, behind. ahvays funhs to self-hatred. with which Marteau constitute one of the deepest pleaswas lhere is an intbdly of threads untied, expreskashimself: of reading. catching in the Srasr, blistering the ~4. The. lndiinr wets Ihe Greeks of There seems to be a hidden agenda of forming a muddy puslule tom by milky Am&s. Both lheir herilw wre specific concerns here that we ara not oyster and medura; it is raining sad pillaged, and the shadow Furies. slill Soing to be let in on, but are instead sup_ thereare busha of twigs flaming purple called lhe Eumenlds. take om their posed to accept as a natural, organic and the birch@ wear coal-black rings vengeancein everyroul. a,nd black bulbs and black incisionsin component of a mind roaming freely and their stroke of frozm melat and lhe over the data of daily perception. This lozengesof mugb bark resemblea mai- Today’s knowledge, which we call may be making too much of what In a cle enlarged by the mlcrorcope; and the science,took a mand ag;liast Lbehble. less accomplished writer would merely stems of hsbaceous planls that winlu against the myth. and revolled againsl be an indication of dcticient crafG but froze on their feel draw bloodstonelines the word, not knowing that it was spun since Rlarteau is both a hiihly conscious and II is magic looking between the Fromit, wrapped in il. This questioning and hiihly skilled literary artisan, I can wnxe-fir co”= ad the verdllrised will finish in death. Will we be its only Lwnclude that this method has been dome of the Oiatoire Sainl-Joseph. witnesses. many15 or vi+ms9 deliberately chosen, and is therefore a 1 mast confess that as I read the book a This constant exaltation of native legitimate object of criticism. second time I found myself editing out peoplu and non-rational thought pm- Although its reportorial observations the more argumentalive material. As a cesses. and concomitant denigration of and lbeir philosophical spinoffs are result I was able to more fully coneen- the “civilized” and rational. ultimately cnen abruptly replaced by program- trate on the many passages of similar becomes very wearying. One finds matic concerns. Mourrt Royal is still rich beauty. oneself arguing the opposite case if only in the kind of thoughtful, deeply sym- But this is Marteau’s book, and thus to rc.lieve the monotony. Granted that pathetic depiction of nature that seems his programmatic concerns do have to Martesu is championing the historical to have been abandoned by post- be eons&red. l-bay certainly are legiti- losers, his dogmatism and refusal to con- modernist writers attempting to invenl mate, wan to some extent convantionaG sider the viewpoint of the villains of his th,a pwpetually reflexive self. Sensitivity ly wise, responses to bnportant social piace make much of Mounr Royal seem like special pleading. I was at several to/ colour and humility before natural issues: his .defense of threatened _native . :auty are as characteristic of Marteau’s cultu~, his disparagement of the points tqnpted to mail him a one-wvl

a

Summer, 1939. Joe Glffen, adown-and-outwhite Canadian boy, agrees to join Chappie Johnsonand His Colored All-Stars, a black baseball team that scroungesa living tourlng small towns.Dlsguised In blackface, Joe finds out what It’slike to be on the wrong side of the color bar. A powerful autobiographlcalnovel and also the basis for the acclaimed play of the same name.

An ALA Best Book forYoung Adults “It has the power of a Josh Gibson tine drive.” - Philadelphia Inquirer “Suffused with a sentiment as natural to baseball as a thaw in the cheek -a mellow trlbute to the Game and some men who played it wlth class -despite everythlng.”- Klrkus Reviews

Seholastlc.TABPubllcatlons ,,ggNw,kkk Rd., Rfchamnd Hlll.OnC WCaWi __..Y . _..__ _-__._ . L._____i______.~. __-_ -. --__~- _-___... ticket to some region where he might CX’ILDRHKSBOOKS hove a chance to experimentally test his II theories - the headwaters of the Amazon, or the central Afrkan rain Bunnies and beavers: from a frustrating forests, say. I think he would discover humanoid computer to the grim there hov: necessity occasions many of the practices he assumes to be volun- lessons of survival in war-torn Budapest tarily rdopted. He mlght thereby gain a level of so&I-scientific sophistication By M4RY AINSLIE SMIliif commensurate with his exceptional litermy talents. Those talents are consistently displayed in Inleriude. a series of “revelations” that cloak the elemental THI? qua~.rrv of Canadian stories for Bmmy, by Anita Krmnins, illustrated by mysteries of life in deliihtfully fresh young children is constantly and Brian Pray (Three Trees Press. 24 pages, mythic ‘garb. A high level of fantastical delightfully improving. Big or Llllle?, by 511.95 cloth, 54.95 paper), little Eoiily, invention is sustained throughout, with Kathy Stinson, Shutrated by Robin dressed as a baby bunny for trick or consequences tha bring to mind Doris Baird Lewis (Annick Press, 32 pages. treating, encounters the cynicism of the Lessing’s “Canopus in Argos” novels: $10.95 cloth, 54.95 paper). is the second adult world. First her father does not ad- dazzled by the author’s fancy footwork, children’s book from this writer- mire her bunny suit, and insists that an vie sre mrlly seduced into reading narra- illostrator team, following their 1982 appropriate Halloween costume should tiws that mlght otherwise seem exces- Red Is RSW. The little boy ln Big or Lit- be scary, not cute. Then the tirst house sirely intellectual. Not that they aren’t t/e7 is beginning to experience the ten- she visits is Mr. Wurtzel’s. Nobody like intdleauly difficult - they are. and in sions and conflicts of growiw up. Mr. Wurtzel, because he is so mean. He some cases preteentiously so. Still, one Sometimes, such 811!Vha he ties his own hates anything cute, and threatens to put can usmdly enjoy them without worry- shoes or takes care of his little sister, he Emily into B rabbit stew. Children will ing about their more comples signili- feels big. When he is scolded or lost, he enjoy Mr. Wurtzel ragings, and adults canceo. The kind of tale thos generated knows he is still smell. Stinson’s text has will be satisfied that the story does not is the me&fable of Barges, Lem, and a simple and Very pleasing rhythm. have a saccharine ending. Although Calvlno. ;md Marteau’s versions possess Lewis’s illustrations show a thoughtful Emily’s optimism comes oat on top, Mr. the smne blend of whiy, chulwh, and serious little boy working out his Wurtzel does not become the and fussily telling detail: place in the world. neighbourhood philanthropist. l;a-;l-lun livedon the stone of LB. lie Annick has B popular series of very Children’s books me often used as Imewall about the three worldsbm did smell paperbacks called Annikins - vehicles to convey messages, morals that not speak. never moved his limbs. dld about the size of booklets of postage tend to dominate the presentation of nor blink. did not urinate, never stamps, but cheaperat 990 each. There ~101 and character. MS Beaver Goes defecated. and was not a statue; he are three new Annikins this spring, all West, by Rosemary Allison and Ann breathed, had a heartbeat. Kaa-lam written by Robert Munsch and illus- PoweIl (Women’s Press. 32 psges, 54.95 had been man. had been saint, had trated by Michael Mmtchenko. 24 pages bxome dung. had been buried. and had paper), seems to be that sort of story. I nourished a growing plant that had long, and a lot of fun. In Angela’s MS Beaver, whose previous travels have crossedthe hugestone of L8: you could Airplane fiveyear-old Angela loses her taken her to Toronto and Matitimes, % this plan was none other than !&a- father on a visit to the airport. and while vIsils her cousin Penny in British Colum- lam himself. looliing for him finds herself alone in the bia. They discover that B logging eom- I&-Iam was end& useless.lie per- cockpit of en airplane. When she starts pany hap cut down all the trees in the . formed no miracles. But wasn’t it to posh buttons, of coone the pkme area, thus upsetting the environmental mimculoussc?iing bim breathe, heariw takes off, placing Angela in quite B balance: his heart beat? F’ar-le.hrri dedicateda predicament. treatise to him, entitled Om’hwkis V “\Vhar’s this?” &id m Beaver. In The Fire Stntlon two children’s “Where are all the trees?” Ka+lsm. that is, Vark#lotuof light 011 routine vtiit to the neighbourhood tire Ihe/nc@ o/ Ka+lam. I’ll relate what I “It must be that loggingmmpuny.‘! le~medirom P magnetictape, recorded station becomes unexpFcledly excklng said CousinPenny. “They% cm down by il police captain called to a housein when they me swept off in the back seat all those trees! If rhere are no wee&all P~td vzhchcrea pubescem girl was pro- of a Iire truck to the scene of B &men- the animalswill go away.When the min voking displacemaw or objecls and &us fire. Mortimer tells the story of B falls. all the salmonsteams will till up mring o few shreds of lime irom the little boy who will nol be qoia when he with mud.” immemorial.. . . No one can deny the justice of Ms And therein, you can bet, hangs B talc. of his f&r, mbther, 17 brothers and Beaver’s crusades, but her solutions am Although devouring them all et one sisters, and two policemen. Buy this too simple. She and Cousin Peony con- go might bring on mental indigestion, book just for the piaure of MottImer on front the J.P. Megee Loggiog Company nibbled a few at a time these are stbno- hi bed, kneeling’ like a mlniaure Al and shot it down until Magee agrees to a lating excursions inm the Literary ‘Jolson and singing “Bang-bang, rattle- tree-replanting program. But the acres wilight zone. They establish that ding-bang, goin’ to make my noise ell of tiny trees that the beavers help to hlsrtau is perfec~y capable of correa- day!” Boy enoogh of all these books to plant - by ding holes with their teeth iy the esfesres and imbalances of give to all your friends, adult and child. and paring the seedlings down with lfowt Royal. Reading these two books In faa, buy a few extras, because their their paws - seem B far from satI&c- left me in no doubt as to why he is so size makes them very susceptible lo fall- tory replacement for whole mountains wll thought of in Quebec, and I look ing through holes in book bags, between of mature trem cut down by rapacious forwrd to further revelations fmm B mattresses and headboards, and into loggers. Perhaps J.P. Magee will most provocative and adventurous heating ducts. he.nceforth follow a program of consis- writer. 0 In Mr. Wnrt;reI ahd the Halloween tent reforestation. Powell’s line draw- ings am printed in forest green. and facing failure in grade 10 because of his Core, (Station l-f. Box 186. Toronto present an appealh& buck-toothed MS dyslexia. Don’1 Call Me Sugsr Baby!, by bl4C SK!, 112 pager), is subtitled Beaver. a cheerful and plucky, if rather Dorothy Joan Harris (148 pages, %2.25), “Stories and poems celebrating the lives strangely anthropomorphic, little tells about a 1%year-old girl who has of ordinary people who call Toronto heroine. jusf been diagnosed diabetic. Who Cares their home.” They have been collected In a Big U&House Far From Awe, About Karen?, by Alison Lohans Pimt by Ruth Johnson and edited by Bnid by M&a Zalan (Press Pordpic. 81 (151 pages, $2.25). describes how Lee. The book is a celebration of Cab- pages. $6.95 paper). is another book M-year-old Karen overcomes her bagetown, its history, its people, and the that clearlv has somethmc to say. Zalan desperate feelings of shyness and infer- diversity of their ethnic origins. It con- describes in 10 related stories the-life of a iority ‘when confronted with survival child s.urviGngthe bombing in Budapest after a car crash in the British Columbia poems a during the Second World War. When interior. All these stories. hue to the best tribute to the most famous inhabitant of her home was desrmyed in 1942, she and traditions of the genre, have optimistic, ~;;~;;~~~;~~~$;;~; her family were forced to live for the up-beat endings, and all, consistent with duration of the war in a small apartment Scholastic traditions, are easy and interest in children growing up in Cab- in the big ugly house, tilled \nith other enjoyable to read. bagelown today. 0 refugees from happier times. The storica present the child’s perceptions of her surroundings, her neighbouts. and the events that caused ha father to become r deserter, sent her to the country for a PAPERBACKS fattenine cure. and killed her friend f&i in a bombi& mid. It’s grbn, bui the stories are told gently and with humour, White attitudes toward Canada’s native peoples SDthat readers don’t feel sorry for fhe haven’t changed much over the years, but child wig& as much as they feel sym- neither has the Indians’ ability to survive them pathy with her. Julius Varga’s marvel- lowly detailed pictures, crowded with people, animqls, jagged skylines, and By ANNE COLLBVS rubble from the bombw, help lo I - create s strong sense of what it must have been like to grow up in such a desperate situation. PdnbQut~. by Claudia Cornwall t-r’s FUNNY how you have to go far away a canoe with all the old ceremony or (Nerve Press, 5875 Elm Street. Van- sometimes in order to begin to see what bought a power-harvester and sold the couver MN 1A6, $5.95 paper), is the home is like. For me, any serious think- quadrupled intake lo American gour- story of Edgar, a computer with fed- ing about the siluadon of native peoples mela. Both seemed like no-win situa- ings. Timd of being taken for @anted in Canada only began last year, during a tions. and treated like a mere machbm, Edgar month-long trip to South Africa. In the Hugh Brody himself wac so pctsi- rhetorical war over apartheid, the mistic about the options of the Beaver to the fr&tion of his pm&m% favorite ammunition of some of the Indians of the &theast comer of who can’t understand what bugs have whites I ielked 10 was the Canadian British Columbia that when he was hired gotten into the system. Edgar also prints example: \vasn’t what Canada had done to do a land “se and occupancy study of out ~oetw and art. searchiig all the time with its indiious peoples s form of the area by the Union of British Cdum- for a ki&d s&it to communicate apartheid? Diinformation about Indian bii Indian Chiefs he agreed to stay just with. The story, printed on computer reservations had even become part of the five weeks, and only in an advisory role: 8 paper - with holes down the side - South African school system’s teachings “. . . many people had told me that the also provides a glossary of “Edgar’s on apartheid. so successful that one region had been so devarmted by fmn- Lingo”: such computer terminology as black doctor sincerely asked me if it was tier developments as to make any work %nmr,” “edit mode,” and “voice true, as he’d been taught, that North with its Indii peoples a thoroughly data entry terminal.” I’m not sure American Indians had volunteered of disheartening experience.” He ended by whether it’s nice to imagine that corn- their own free will to live on reserves id staying I8 months, liviw and hunting puters can be human too, or whether order to maintain their racial purity. with the Indians of one tiny reserve as that makes rhe new technology even But before I ‘pieked up the following well as being their regular chauffeur into mme threatenillg. the local town, and Maps CntdDmam is Undertow,, by George Swede (Three M&s and Dretis (Pen- the result. It’s a book that unlocks the Trees Press, 64 pages. $10.95 cloth, guin, $6.95) and The People’s Land doors of prejudice, skepticism, and $4.95 paper), is the story of 1bree young (Penguin, $5.95), I had only thought misconception to lead its readers into the teenagers, a bungling policeman, and myself into a fatalistic dead end. What heart of a hunting society that has their esching encounters with heroin kind of future was possible for a small defmitely not yet been wiped out b$ eva smugglers in Stanley Park. The story is minority that had been stripped not only the newest version of the wild fmntier: told in a series of rapidly shifting points of much of its culture but also of most burgeoning whiti dreams of the North of view. with the result that it is fast- possibilities of viable economic life? 11 as non-renewable energy resource paced but rather elliptical and con- seemed to me that Indians either lived a heaven. fusing. kind of nostalgic half-life devoted to the Brady’s assignment was to marshal Scholastic-TAB has three new paper- statbtics, to make maps with the Indians backs about young people with pmb- cut the bonds of theii d&ling their current use of Crown land lems. In Goodbye, ~rlelon High, by learn white ways of coping in a white under Treaty 8 for hunting, fishing, and B.J. Bond (131 pages, S2.25), the hem is world. They either havestea wild rice in berry-piclring, and to invWigu.te all. .

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. . _..._ ._~_ __._ .__._ - -... ,_.__.___ .._._...... _.,_ .__.. ______~ _.,_._ -__.____ ,_ __. _... ..s_ ~.....CL_ .> . .__ souras of income to prove, first, that and running water. neither of which is tions of the North, its fabled hunters the Indians did have a workable hunting supplied to the reserve. . . and so on. On and the white triumvirate of Hudson’s economy. Then he was to consider the the surface. which is what whites nor- Bay factors, missionaries, and RCMP effuct that the last straw in resource mally see., Is apparent squalor and officers who essentially colonized the development - the proposed Alaska despair. North for Canada. Highway natural gas pipeline - would But Brody also follows the Beaver on As Brody notes in a tiny addition to have on peoples who had already been a hunt. into the woods and to the life his original foreword. the picture in the pushed into the edges of territory they they keep hidden, and tries to evoke the far north has changed sinw 1975. The had hunted on for centuries by white mind of the hunter, so different fmm Inuit as a whole are far more aware of agriculture, mining, forestry, and sun- agricultural Euro-North American man. their rights and far more outspoken in dry mcgbprojects like the W.A.C. A seemingly lazy and aimless sprawl of their anger with white administration of Bennett Hydroelectiic Dam. men at a river’s edge suddenly reveals its their settlements. An updated version of His arguments. caefi~lly developed in true nature to Brody (and to us): the book is soon due. But The People’s the even-numbered chapters of the Yet the hunters were a long way imm Land is still an excellent history and book. show how the maps and dreams sleep; not even the atmosphere was analysis of the white-Inuit relationship, oi Indians and whites colllle - and how ropodtic. They wait. watch, consider. and especially of the different and early, vaguely worded treaties and trap- Above all they are still and receptive, powerful effects that the stereotype of line agreemenu based on white ideas of preparedfor whateverinsight or realize- the “real Eskimo” (child of the harshest land owership (along with stereotypes lion may come to them, and ready ior , landscape southerners could imagine) whatever stimulusto action might arise. of Indian hunters as feckless, drunken, had on.both Inuk and white. it’s a bit of This stateof auemive waiting is perhaps and poor) “make it possible for settlers as close as people can came ,o the a nonsequilur. but 1 want to close with a and developers to pay no heed to the lalcon’s suspended tliiht. when the quote from TheEskimo Book 4fKnowI- Indians’ [prerentj economic and cultural bird, seeminglymotionless, is ready to edge, published in 1931 by the Hudson’s systems.” But more important, he plummn in decisiveaction. Bay Company and translated for the stresses the Indians’ ability to survive in It’s a flexible mind that the Indians have benefit of those it was supposed to the face of white attitudes and policies also turned toward adapting to their enlighten by missionaries: that haven’t changed all that much since continuing relationship with whites: Take heed. Innuih for the future till the first rvhite trader made contact. In historic drher thcse people have been bring even greater changes than have The northeastern corner of British able to use their flexibility to escape taken place in your country in the part Many Columbia is believed to be the cradle of redtricdons imposed by we&s. and to wenty years. . . . White men will ail North American hunting societies; defy any rtereolypic suggestion that explore your lands in search of precious the Athaposkan lndiins (of whii the their wy of life is dead. No one should rocks and minerals. These traders and these wapperr and these wanderers are Bearer are a part) are the inheritors of a be surpdxd when the Indians of today insist tha their ways of looking at the like the drill-ice; today they come with culture that reaches 1.5 million years the wind, tonwmnv they are gone with . into the past to the first hunter-gatherers world and hrrvuting hs rel~urcet will outlive any other. It is not nosmlgla, or the wind. Of these strangers some will on earth. In the odd-numbered chapters be fairer than others, as b the nawre of of the book, Brody breaks the bounds of scntimemalhy, when Ihe Indians amrm their own idemily andspecial interests; men; but whosoever they be. they can- most “studies” by letting the Indians, they are not payingtheir respectsto an not at heart possess that deep under- standing of your lives through which and his own wakening perceptions of idealizedand fossilized pa% the richness of their everyday lives, set our Tradcrr have learned 10 bncw the Maps and Dreams takes its readers a the agenda. Each academic chapter Is care of a falha upon you and upon long way fmm attitudes of futility and counterpointed by a chapter of narrative your children. Cl despair over the inevitable destruction of dexribing a portion of his 18 months on the native way of life. It leaves us, for the reserve - slowly and subtly he per- once, confmnting the possible. The suades the reader on an emotional as white economic pipedream of the inti- wll Y intellectual level that the Indians nitely expanding energy frontier of the llmwwTNO.83 North is perhaps as destructive of white society in the long run as it Is of native. Even small redraftings of white maps of northeastern. British Columbia - less \VE HAVE recently received word that forestry, less mining, fewer white sports Peter Newman, at work on a book about hunters taking more than their fair share the Hudson’s Bay Company, is not the of moose and deer - will leave the only Canadian writer who has turned hi Indians enough that they can remain talents to corporate history. Other titles hunters. being rumowed are The Clock Thai The People’s Land is an earlier book Ends the Night:’ The Weslciox S:oty, by of Bmdy’s. published originally in 1975 Hugh MacLennan, and Sole on lee: A and based on his 1971-75 sojourns in the IiisIov of CCM Skates, by Scott eastern Arctic as pait of the team that Young. We’ll pay $25 for the best sug- do have lives that work. They have been did ground-breaking land use and occu- gestions for other carporate hlltoria changed by trading and trapping, new pancy studies of the Inuit. (The lnuit that reach us before August ‘1. and $2.5 technology, and the temptations of a never signed treaties, and any land goes to Ron Robinson of Winnipeg for spree-drunk when they come out of the claims they make have to explain all the the idea. Address: CanWit No. 83, roods. The hard ironies of their rela- ways in which they live. and have lived, Books in Canada, 366 Adelaide Street tionrhipr with whites abound in crossed on the land.) While not gs beautifully East. Toronto MSA 3X9. purposes and misunderstandings: the written as Maps and Dreams, in which reserve’s ugly little houses are built close the story-teller overshadows the Rt%ulb of canwit No. 81 together in a mock-suburb to make it academic, it is equally eloquent - rich OUR ReQUasT for back-to-back books easier to deliver services like electricity with material Lhat shatters preconcep brought a landslide of titles a ~rofs. The 0 Grifs/Redicel Tories/More Losers - Sheila Peters and Lynn ShewiU, Smithers, B.C.

0 The Born Who Wouldn’r Flom/Women 0 More Joy in lleewn/lkmce of the Happy and Children Fim~/Grey Sea Under Skades~Fzrpetuel Modon 0 Love in the Dog llouw/Besseu/Go-Boyl q Tbm Ice/Going Down Slow/Surfacing 0 Love A&% wirh II Cougar/Consequences 0 Tkr Bbae Mounreins of Chine/Thir Side /BodUy Harm JordaniYou Can’t Get There from Here - Brian McCullough, Kanata, Ont. [7 Tke Mad Trapper/The Lest oJlhe Crazy Peopletl Don’t Went 10 Know Awwte 0 Fat Woman/Rewttful J&us/Mom Joy Tao Well in&awn q liorrre Tnuhs/From II Se&de Town/God - Marjorie Retzkff, Lennomille, Que. Is No: (I Fbh I~prcrw 0 Wkm the Crow Seid/Cellbzg Home/ lionmnuhle mention3; Pmnz a High Thin Wire 0 Tkr Smw Walker/White Figure. While - Ann Knkht. Calgary Grewrd!Thm’s Me in the Middle 0 Tl:e Firebmnd/Fhun.% Acmrr the Border 0 Over Pmirie Trails/The Vanishing Point/ :Tbe Scorched-Wood PeapIe You Cee’r Get There /mm Here 0 gemeter Rising/Hold FesUTempes~ - Ed Prato, Vancouver q Srbpping Stones/A Fine and Private Place !Spir Dehmey’r Island THE EDITORS RECQMMEND - John Gregory, Tooronlo

THE ~ouowtfo Canadian books were q Tke Betr@nl/By Pereons Unknown/ Parer Polirics reviewed in the previous issue of Books 0 Viuledon @the Virginv/Eeaudliil Lows in Canada. Our recommendations d&t !Doing Time necessarily reflect the reviews: - L. Patrice Ward, Saskatoon PICXION 0 Fa%&omen/The AcmbelsXbe Swlngiw A Sound Like Iaughter. by David Iielwig. Stoddart. The last in Helwig’s Kingston q DIUSOII Lady/Dmgon’s BreaIh/Such Is telralogy. this urubmant comedy centres ,tly Beloved on the disastrow messeswe can gel our- q Fmzous Pleyem/Sboelosr Joe/The Swell selvu~into in the pursuitof what seemto us &uJn reasonablepeals. - W.M. McLaughlin. \Vindsor. N.S. NON-FICTION I7 llw I Spent My Summer VecedonlThe TmiUng Pythagoras,by GeorgeGall, Qead- Sw,, Seeson/Tbe Fe, Woman New Dow ram Edidons. Gall combinesPyrhqerean philosophywkh the 19th.centurylravels of his great-greatgrandfaths John Gall to ‘illumine his own wanderings,in which he reveals a Grace as yet unspoiled by tourism. 0 My SpipirirSoarsAWy HearI Is Broken/ Hceren end Hell in rhe NHL PORTRY .A Sad Device,by Iloo Borson.Quadram Sdi- tioos. Borson’r meditations on the mysteriousfour behind natureand male femalerelationships are ripe wkh semuous detail.

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