OUTDOORS “The world is my pumpkin, here is a bit of the gypsy Prince George is my home.” in Vivien Lougheed, —Vivien Lougheed in the Sahara Desert

who traces her heritage,

through her father, to

the nomadic clans in TRomania. Born in Winnipeg in 1943 and partially raised in northern

Saskatchewan, she has visited more than 50 countries and written guidebooks about Mexico, Bolivia,

Belize and Central America, plus stories about Tibet and Iran.

When her grandfather bought her a bicycle at age nine, she was gone. “My mom would say don’t go off our street,” she says, “and I’d be on the other side of the city.” At 16, Lougheed quit school and left home, hooked on travel. At 18, she took the Greyhound to the Rockies and decided she would one day have to FROM live in the mountains. Lougheed moved to Prince George CHICKEN BUS TO in 1970 and co-wrote the Kluane Na- tional Park hiking guide with her hus- TATSHENSHINI OR band John Harris in 1997. Together they have hiked in the Tatshenshini BUST River area just below the Yukon too, can do the trails in places like verted school buses in Latin America that border, as well as in the wilder- Tumbler Ridge, Mackenzie and transport passengers and livestock. VIVIEN LOUGHEED ness parks, Mount Edziza and Haida Gwaii. “I want to get them “I used to travel as cheaply as I could,” BIBLIOGRAPHY Spatzizi, and they spent years out of their vehicles at 100 Mile she says, “so I could afford to do more. I exploring Nahanni National House to walk around their 45- don’t like the beach scene. I like to get • From the Chilcotin to the Chilkoot: Selected Hikes of Northern British Park (during which time she minute trail,” she says. “Too many into the mountains. I like to do the hik- Columbia (Caitlin, 2005). and John Harris co-wrote American motor homes on ing and learn some of the language. And • Adventure Guide to Mexico’s Tungsten John: Being an their way to Alaska barrel past try and get off the beaten path.” Pacific Coast (Hunter, 2005). Account of Some Inconclu- my favourite spots without Lougheed says she doesn’t travel to • Adventure Guide to Bolivia HEATHER (Hunter, 2004). sive but Nonetheless In- RAMSAY taking the time to stop and change the world. During a recent lec- • Adventure Guide to Belize formative Attempts to look around. I want to entice ture to a secondary school class, she ad- (Hunter, 2002). Reach the South Nahanni River by Foot the guy from Alabama who is going to vised, “You have no power, you don’t • Diary of a Lake, co-edited with and Bicycle). Alaska to stay a little longer.” know the culture, you are a foreigner. John Harris (Repository, 2002). • Tungsten John: Being an Account Now a travel columnist for the Prince Lougheed got her start in the travel What you can do is learn there without of Some Inconclusive but George Citizen, Lougheed has restricted writing game with a self-published title, judgment and come home and make Nonetheless Informative Attempts to her wanderlust to home turf for From Central America by Chicken Bus, which sure the things you don’t like don’t hap- Reach the South Nahanni River by the Chilcotin to the Chilkoot (Caitlin she says has sold over 10,000 copies in pen in your own country.” Foot and Bicycle, co-author with John Harris (New Star, 2000). Press $24.95), a guide to the mountains three editions. As a lab technician on va- She is currently working on a novel • Kluane Park Hiking Guide, and hiking trails of Northern B.C. cation in 1986, she crossed from Mexico that takes place in Winnipeg and co-author with John Harris With a bright photo of children on into Guatemala, then into El Salvador. Cuba. 1-894759-03-8 (New Star, 1997). the cover, Lougheed hopes From the She and her traveling companion • Fobidden Mountains (Caitlin, 1996). • Central America by Chicken Bus, Chilcotin to the Chilkoot will encourage Joanne Armstrong coined the Heather Ramsay writes from (Repository, 1993). Mr. and Mrs. Motor Home that they, term chicken bus to describe the con- Queen Charlotte City.

9 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FICTION WRITES OF SPRING

First introduced in Bill Deverell’s The Dance of Shiva, crafty defence lawyer Bad boy Barry returns Arthur Beauchamp reappears in Deverell’s 14th title, April Fool (M&S Barry Delta in Toy Gun reappears as a reluctant good $36.99). While his new wife decides to live guy in Dennis E. Bolen’s third amalgam of bleak humour atop a tree in order and compassionate urges on Vancouver’s mean streets. to protect eagles from loggers, Beauchamp is iven the cover of where ugly behaviour, brutal crimes, lies again retrieved from and deceptions prevail. Bolen renders To live is to retirement from Dennis E. Bolen’s this world with such visceral intensity fictional that you can almost feel the drug experiment... Garibaldi Island Toy Gun (Anvil $26), to defend a cravings, the hangovers, the adrenalin Bill Deverell G This time we’ve notorious jewel a stark image of a handgun rush that comes with violence. devoted half of thief on murder and rape charges. This Everything is convincing, nothing is courtroom thriller opens: “With envy, against an orange background, glossed over. Obviously Bolen knows this BC BookWorld to Arthur Beauchamp watches juncos most readers will be surprised to territory from the inside out. fiction titles. mating in the raspberry patch. A Ultimately Toy Gun is a novel of re- See pages 13-31 bumblebee tests a daffodil. There is lust discover this novel is more psy- demption, but first the worst has to hap- in his garden, spring’s vitality. Maybe Write us and tell us what you his sap will start flowing again too, and pen so redemption can begin. Just about chological study and moral ex- think: [email protected] the lazy lout below will rise from flaccid everything that can go wrong for Barry hibernation. The desire is there, but the ploration than hard-boiled crime does. Disaster piles upon disaster as his equipment faulty. When was his last personal and professional We want to draw our own conclusions. erection – a month ago? A half-hearted thriller. life spiral out of control. In Toy Gun Bolen takes us for a brac- attempt at takeoff. But he knows he As the third instalment He finally bottoms out to ing ride, lacing sordid truths with hu- must accept and move on. We age, in Bolen’s trilogy about fed- find himself a mentally mour and wit, mixing horror with the faculties rust. Some men lose their hair. In compensation, Arthur has kept his, a eral parole officer Barry and physically broken banality of everyday life, reflecting back thick grey thatch.” 0-7710-2711-7 Delta, following Stupid man. There’s something to us our own messed-up lives. He forces Crimes (1992) and contrived about the plot in us to look at things we don’t want to look Krekshuns (1997), it focuses this regard, and of course at, jarring us out of middle class com- more on the inner machi- the love of a good woman placency, and in doing so he reveals the nations of its characters (the waitress at the Yale, no narrowness of the worlds we live inside. Hitler’s gold than on crimes committed. SHEILA less) has much to do with 1-895636-68-X A delusionary Aryan killer A self-confessed ‘burn MUNRO his own redemption. Sheila Munro lives in Comox named Swastika out’ eyeing early retire- Meanwhile Barry won- where she is writing a novel. arrives on the ment, bad boy Barry Delta drinks too ders if even one of his clients can be West Coast much (way too much), cheats on his wife, saved. In so many cases the dam- and heads to has trouble curbing his glib tongue, and age done to them in childhood present-day is given to bouts of self-deception and is irrevocable. When the foul- Barkerville in self-loathing in about equal measure. His mouthed, drugged-out prosti- search of Hitler’s gold work in the underworld of addiction, tute Chantal declares, “I’m in Michael Slade’s eleventh gruesome prostitution and street crime has left him always going to be on the streets,” Dennis E. Bolen: thriller Swastika (Penguin $24), a fast- visceral intensity paced, RCMP procedural inspired by the jaded and exhausted. he is unable to contradict her. WW II archives of co-author ’s Bolen, a former parole officer him- To keep going, Barry Delta has to Jay Clarke father, Jack “Johnny Clarke,” who flew 47 self, deftly weaves the stories of Barry believe that if even one former inmate combat missions against the Third Reich. Delta’s life and loves (somehow women doesn’t re-offend, then his job “What is it about the Cariboo that appeals will have been worth- find him irresistible and more than one to the Germanic mind?” Slade writes. “Are of them wants to have his baby), his while. In grappling with the mountains evocative of the Bavarian boozy afternoons at the Yale Hotel, and this theme of redemp- Alps? Are the thickets reminiscent of how the desperate escapades of the parolees tion, increasingly the the Black Forest used to feel? Is it the on his caseload. novel is marred by pi- sense of Lebenstraum in its wide-open We witness the crazed excitement of ous lectures about the spaces, the yearning for elbow room that a coke addict preparing to commit a rob- need for love and for- drove the Nazis to invade Russia? Whatever bery and the humiliation of a prostitute giveness. The point is it is, German accents are everywhere in the being tossed out of a car and called a well taken but this is Cariboo today, and that made the Aryan just whore. This is a country of the damned telling, not showing. one among many.” 0-14-305325-6

Contributors: Mark Forsythe, Joan Givner, Sara Cassidy Louise Donnelly, Carla Lucchetta, Candace Walker, Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Heather Ramsay. INDEX to Advertisers Writing not otherwise credited is by staff. TO ADVERTISE CALL 604-736-4011 Proofreaders: Wendy Atkinson, Betty Twigg Deliveries: Ken Reid Anvil Press...20 HarperCollins...20 Self-Counsel Press...10 BC Design: Get-to-the-Point Graphics Arbeiter Ring Publishing...42 Heritage House...3 SFU Writers Studio...31 BOOKWORLD Arsenal Pulp Press...26 Hignell Printing...40 SFU Writing & Publishing...8 Banyen Books...38 Houghton Boston...40 Shuswap Lake Writers’ Festival...42 We acknowledge the Autumn Issue Vol. 19, No. 3 assistance of Canada Council BC Historical Federation...38 Hughes, Matt...42 Sidney Booktown...38 and the Province Book TV...9 Hushion House / BTS...38 Skookum Publications...42 of British Columbia, through the Ministry Bolen Books...34 Lester, David...42 Sono Nis Press...12 Publisher/ Writer: Alan Twigg of Community, Aboriginal, Book Warehouse...25 Literary Press Group...34, 36 Talonbooks...11 and Women’s Services. Caitlin Press...18 McClelland & Stewart...16 Temeron...42 Editor/Production: David Lester Crown Publications...32 Marquis Printing...32 Theatre in the Raw...38 Marketing/Website: Martin Twigg Douglas & McIntyre...43 Morriss Printing...32 Thistledown Press...36 Douglas College/EVENT...38 (M)other Tongue...38 Thomas Allen Publishers...31 We acknowledge the financial Drippytown...42 New Society Publishers...6 Thompson, Ann...42 Publication Mail Agreement #40010086 support of the Government of Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Canada through the Book Ekstasis Editions...26 New Star Books...16 Tingley Creek Rockers...42 BC BookWorld, 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 Publishing Industry Ellis, David...42 Northstone Publishing...14 Transcontinental Printing...40 Development Program (BPIDP) for this project. First Choice Books...40 Oolichan Books...29 UBC MFA Program...14 Produced with the sponsorship of Pacific BookWorld News Flask Publishing...36 Orca Books...2 UBC Press...37 Society. Publications Mail Registration No. 7800. People’s Co-op Books...42 BC BookWorld ISSN: 1701-5405 Friesens Printers...40 University of Toronto Press...25, 31 Gaspereau Press...34 Penguin Books...18 VanCity...5 Advertising & editorial: BC BookWorld, George Ryga Award...24 Printorium...40 Vancouver Desktop...42 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., V6R 2S3 Georgia Strait Alliance...42 Professional Dreamer...36 Vancouver International Writers’ Tel/Fax: 604-736-4011; email: available on request . All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at Givner, Joan...36 Ripple Effects Press...34 Festival...28 Annual subscription: $12.84 www.abcbookworld.com Granville Island Publishing...32 Ronsdale Press...15 Wayzygoose / Alcuin Society...32 Harbour Publishing...44 Save-On Foods...34 Yoka’s Coffee...38

4 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 SPIRITUALITY Sadistic gardens—or

here’s a prisoners-only New Age Movement as “a wake-up call SACRED GEOMETRY to organized religion” because many ‘Cretan’ labyrinth in the jail churches were neglecting the spiritual yard at Brockville, Ontario From ancient Greeks to computer geeks, and experiential aspects of religion. T “Many New Age practitioners believe and the movie version of Stephen mankind has been fascinated by mazes. in reincarnation,” he writes. “For them, the labyrinth symbolizes death and re- King’s The Shining features the Tree birth.” MacQueen is particularly enam- Tops Maze near Yarmouth, Nova oured of the investigations made by Lauren Artress of the Grace Ca- Scotia. thedral in San Francisco. She, in turn, In Canada, there are labyrinths from was inspired by a visit to the Chartres St. Andrew’s United Church in Halifax Cathedral labyrinth in France and has to White Rock United Church. since developed the ideas of Keith “Almost all mainline denominations Critchlow to incorporate Chartres- have at least some labyrinths,” writes style labyrinths in her Christian theol- ogy. Gailand MacQueen in The Spir- ituality of Mazes & Labyrinths Artress’ theories on the labyrinth can (Northstone $37). be found in Walking a Sacred Path: Re- MacQueen’s own fascination with discovering the Labyrinth as a Sacred Tool these physical puzzles dates back to 1967 (Riverhead Books, 1995). “At its core is when he encountered the hedge maze the rose,” MacQueen writes, “which is that was planted on Centre Island in a symbol of both Mary and Jesus. Bur- Toronto to mark Canada’s centennial. ied within the labyrinth are the shapes Since then he has been leading labyrinth of ten, two-bladed axe heads. Artress and maze workshops that connect his calls them labrys, relating them to the The Amiens Labyrinth own United Church beliefs to a sense of Cretan double-headed axe… Artress from The Spirituality of argues that the rose, the labrys, the wonder. Mazes & Labyrinths luminations, indeed the entire sacred “Where the labyrinth is about trust,” ENTRY he says, “mazes are about personal geometry of the labyrinth, represent the choice. Where the labyrinth is commu- feminine face of God… Another story has it that Joseph of tion of Zodiacal forms constructed “Today many Christian denomina- nal, mazes are individualistic. Where the Arimathea founded the first Christian around 2700 BC. labyrinth is intuitive, mazes are rational.” tions are struggling to restore a balance ✍ church at Glastonbury in 37 A.D. For After Katherine Maltwood linked the between the God of power and might, centuries the land around Glastonbury various hills (Chalice Hill / Aquarius; and, the God of compassion and nurture. The site that most clearly resonates has been known as the Twelve Hides Wearyall Hill / Pisces, etc.) with the Feminist theology, in particular, challenges with spiritual overtones in MacQueen’s (given to Joseph of Arimathea, the un- Knights of the Round Table in 1927, Christians to recognize God not just, or book is the ten-mile maze at Glastonbury cle of Jesus, when he arrived here with she founded the Maltwood Museum in even primarily, as Father, but equally as in Somerset, England. the Holy Grail). The somewhat circular Victoria in 1953 and bequeathed to it Mother. Artress believes the labyrinth is Long before Glastonbury was known area is a series of ridges approximately her extensive art collection. Maltwood’s a tool for putting us in touch with this as the Isle of Avalon, allegedly the burial ten miles across and roughly 30 miles in research archives into ancient cultures feminine face of the divine.” place of Arthur and Guinevere, the circumference. can be seen at the McPherson Library In medieval times the church used New Testament character Joseph of MacQueen cites Geoffrey Ashe at the University of Victoria. the classic example of Theseus slaying the Arimathea supposedly brought the as the theorist who deduced that the ✍ Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth, aided Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus ridges of Glastonbury constitute a cir- by Ariadne’s thread, to explain how to Glastonbury, giving rise to the famous cular maze—by far the largest labyrinth Meditation and retreat centres com- Christ, during his three days in the William Blake poem ‘Jerusalem’ in the world—but he omits mentioning monly incorporate labyrinths into their tomb, managed to descend into hell and the English hymn of the same name. the earlier probing of Katherine grounds, and Christians and New Agers where he preached to souls of the dead Emma Maltwood (1878-1961), alike have continued to seek historical and defeated Satan. “And here did those feet in ancient time the wealthy theosophist who retired to and mystical connections between the The labyrinth of Theseus makes sense walk upon England’s mountains green? Victoria, B.C. and died there in 1961. literal and figurative outlines of Glaston- of it all: The rational must triumph over And was the holy Lamb of God It was Maltwood who first suggested the bury, Christ and the Zodiac. the bestial. 1-896836-69-0 on England’s pleasant pastures seen?” Glastonbury landscape was a vast depic- MacQueen approvingly describes the

“In England, the labyrinth is a symbol of pre-Christian spirituality.” —Gailand MacQueen

39 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 KIDLIT

“When you’re a kid growing up on the coast, it’s far easier to get into a boat HEALING and go somewhere than it is to learn to drive a car.”—JO HAMMOND THE TIGER yler dreams of Trunning mara- thons like his older cousin Robert. So when Robert arrives on the bus for the annual First Nations gathering, wearing a cowboy hat and a big smile, eager for his daily run, it’s hard for Tyler to believe his favourite cousin is ill. At 21, Robert has HIV. By speaking out he hopes he can encourage an awareness of AIDS among the First Nations commu- nity. That’s the set-up for The Gathering Tree (Theytus $19.95) co-authored by Larry Loyie and Constance Brissenden of Vancouver. During an outing to the zoo, Robert tells Tyler and his little sister, “I’m just like this tiger…locked up in a cage. We both want to be free but we’re not.” Robert further explains why he can never NEVER GET be away from the city and his doctors for long periods. At the rural gathering, under the old tree that had welcomed his people for genera- tions, Robert adds, “I thought I could run OFF THE BOAT through life, winning trophies, partying, and that nothing bad would ever catch up with ake a smelly stranger in a dirty Hammond, born in Sussex, England bringing” and survived towing their where she worked as a “relief house on a barge when it nearly fell into me. camouflage jacket, a herdswoman” during her teen years, the sea. “[But to heal] I had to tell the truth and taught high school science and music After a bout in ICU with anxiety-in- be open to others.” mysterious house fire, add and was a member of the duced fibrillation, her Later, when Tyler joins in an honor dance T to support Robert, he suddenly understands five kids, two boats and a 1980 Royal Liverpool Philhar- enrollment in a stress man- monic choir. agement course set her to that by just being part of his family, he’s Subaru station wagon with a helping Robert stay strong. Immigrating on a writing. 1-55143-340-0 With illustrations by award-winning art- freighter through the raccoon skull hotmelted on its hood ist Heather D. Holmlund, The Gather- Panama Canal to Sechelt in JUNEAU THE WAY? ing Tree was initiated by Chee Mamuk, an and you’ve got the makings of a 1967, she later married vet- Jack’s Knife (Polestar Aboriginal HIV/STI educational program. eran log salvor Dick West Coast adventure, Home $12.95) is the second in- Co-author Larry Loyie spent his early Hammond, now an au- stalment in the time-trav- years living a traditional Cree life before be- Before Dark (Orca $9.95), by Jo thor of coastal tales. [see LOUISE elling Sirius Mystery series ing placed in residential school. He received abcbookworld.com] by Ladysmith husband- the 2001 Canada Post Literacy Award for Hammond. DONNELLY She obtained her own and-wife team Individual Achievement and is the author of log salvage licence, appeared as an extra Her first published children’s novel Beverley and Chris Wood. Ora Pro Nobis (Pray For Us), a play about on CBC’s The Beachcombers for many is loosely based on the rambunctious life When 15-year-old Jackson (Jack) residential school, as well as the children’s years, raised two children free of her own of her son who has merged with a char- Kyle’s over-protective mother insists a book As Long as the Rivers Flow “terribly restricted and autocratic up- (Groundwood). acter in her book. Her teenage charac- continued on page 37 ter Erik Johnson, for instance, knows his In 1993, Loyie (Cree name: Oskiniko/Young Man) and boats and engines. Constance Brissenden formed Liv- At age five, Erik drove his parents’ ing Traditions Writers Group to fos- log-salvaging boat “powered by a 460 ter writing within First Nations Ford coupled to a three-stage Hamilton communities. 1-894778-28-6 jet.” By age ten, he was piloting his own ✍ azure blue 10-foot fiberglass boat with Raised in the Nicola Valley, a twenty-horsepower Mercury outboard Nicola I. Campbell is a UBC named DC-3, for the “most dependable Fine Arts student of Interior Salish plane ever built.” and Métis ancestry. Illustrated by As Home Before Dark begins, Erik’s Kim LaFave, her first children’s buddy Mike has just lucked into a book Shi-shi-etko (Groundwood secondhand runabout. A seemingly in- $16.95) portrays a young girl nocent run to Bowen Island turns nasty named Shi-shi-etko (“she loves to when a dirty stranger attempts to steal play in the water”) who must leave Mike’s boat. her family to attend a residential During their camping trip near a school. She spends her remain- burned-out farm house, accompanied ing four days playing outside and by girls Toni and Bronya, the boys dis- listening to her parents’ and cover an old miner’s lamp. grandparents’ teachings, intent on They wake that night to the eerie and keeping everything inside her “bag unlikely sounds of organ music...and the of memories.” 0-88899-659-4 mystery is on. Illustration from The Gathering Tree —Louise Donnelly ✍

35 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 KIDLIT continued from page 35 stray dog must be “disposed of,” Jack at- tempts to smuggle the dog to a friend. Jack, a troubled kid from the world of subdivisions and lawn mowers, finds himself transported to 1930s Juneau, Alaska. There ensues a constellation-stud- ded adventure with Patsy Ann, the city’s plucky and famous white bull terrier. 1-55192-709-8 ✍ Vernon’s Gerald “Jake” Conkin, a lifetime member of the Al- berta Cowboy Poets Association, worked for both the Waldron Ranch in Alberta and The Douglas Lake Cattle Company. His “passion for the cowboy culture” triggered The Buckaroo Jake & Calico Carol Show – storytelling performances for kids – and the Little Jake series of western adventures. Little Jake, who left Vancouver for the Nicola Valley’s Double C Ranch, first appeared in Little Jake’s Cowdog. Now he’s back in Little Jake & the Intruder (Buckaroo Jake Productions $12.95), determined to become a real buckaroo. First there’s the challenge of training a coyote to be a “cowyote,” and then there’s the grizzly bear… Cartoon-style illustrations are by Ben Crane, who worked on ranches and farms in his early years and blames his family for a humor- ous twist that has become “permanently bent.” 0-9684444-1-5 Louise Donnelly writes from Vernon.

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Remember, Remember by Sheldon Goldfarb (Uka Press $19.59) 1-904781-43-8

Earthworms by Norma Dixon (Fitzhenry & Whiteside $19.95) 1-55005-114-8

Red Sea by Diane Tullson (Orca $9.95) 1-55143-331-1

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37 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FICTION

THE HOPSCOTCH OF “Ten years ago, I set out to be Elmore Leonard; instead, I became a MATT HUGHES sci-fi author.”

While he ghosted a medical thriller for Black Brillion: A Novel of the s a jack-of-all-trades wordsmith, a prominent US heart surgeon along the Archonate blends science fiction and fan- way, Hughes was also dabbling in an al- tasy with touches of Carl Jung. A Matt Hughes of Comox has juggled ternate universe. peacekeeper of Old Earth, Baro Harkless “Years before, I’d entered Arsenal reluctantly joins forces with the stylish journalism and politics with mysteries, Pulp Press’s three-day novel contest, writ- swindler Luff Imbry. Their common A ing 27,000 words over 72 hours. I called enemy is Horselan Gebbling, a notori- crime fiction and the creation of new worlds. it Fools Errant, an allegorical pastiche in ous con-man who may hold the cure for the styles of sci-fi grandmaster Jack the fatal ailment known as the lassitude. A university drop-out “from a work- age novel then on to prestigious prizes Vance and P.G. Wodehouse.” Next, a sci-fi anthology editor asked ing poor background,” Hughes is a and bestsellers. But, apparently, admire Hughes expanded his hasty tale into Hughes for a short story, and suddenly lapsed member of Mensa who has is all I can do. I cannot emulate.” a 72,000-word fantasy novel that follows he was selling ‘shorts’ to the mass market worked as a staff speechwriter to Cana- ✍ the adventures of a layabout aristocrat pulps, Fantasy & Science Fiction, dian Ministers of Justice, Small Business Filidor and a wizened old dwarf Asimov’s, and two British mags, Interzone and Environment. Combining mystery and sci-fi, The Gaskarth. and Postscripts. “Before I got into newspapers, I Gist Hunter & Other Stories features nine He published Fools Errant with “Within a year I had sold enough to worked in a factory that made school stories taking place in the universe of The Maxwell Macmillan Canada only to make a collection,” he says. That’s the desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was Archonate, plus stories of Henghis have his novel plummet into obscurity gist of how The Gist Hunter & Other Sto- night janitor in a GM dealership, and Hapthorn, a Holmesian “discriminator” when Robert Maxwell’s empire ries came to be published by a San Fran- was briefly an orderly in a private men- of Old Earth. promptly collapsed. cisco company. tal hospital.” Hughes’ previous titles include Black “By 1999, Fools Errant was but a faint So Matt Hughes has inadvertently Also a ghostwriter for hire, Hughes Brillion, a novel about a pair of mis- regret and I was a budding crime writer. played hopscotch with his writing career. can’t be easily labelled, and this versatil- matched cops of the far future, plus a Then I saw an interview with a senior “Other authors ascend a golden lad- ity has not necessarily been a blessing for ghosted biography of Len Marchand, editor at Time-Warner’s Aspect imprint der. I hop, like Pearl Pureheart, from one someone who set out to be an author of the first Aboriginal elected to federal par- who was looking for offbeat fantasies. passing ice floe to the next. hardboiled fiction. liament since Louis Riel. On a whim, I sent her Fools Errant. She “If there is a plan behind any of this, The release of his fourth sci-fi volume, Hughes’ fiction career was kick- not only bought it, but commissioned a it must be deeply unconscious. But since The Gist Hunter & Other Stories started in Rosamond1997 when Doubleday sequel, Fool Me Twice.” I honour my unconscious as the guy who Norbury (Night Shade Books $33.95) is akin to Canada published Downshift, a Both works appeared in paperback actually supplies the creativity, maybe another unplanned but welcome preg- humourous thriller, that led to short sto- in 2001. this is the way it has to be.” nancy. ries in Hitchcock’s magazine and Blue Hughes’ agent couldn’t sell any of his Gist Hunter 1-597800-20-1 “I admire authors who can make a Murder, a web-based zine. thrillers but he was able to sell a third plan and follow it, the ones who pro- Hughes won an Arthur Ellis Award sci-fi novel, Black Brillion, to Tor, the All BC BookWorld articles are posted online at www.abcbookworld.com ceed from short stories to a coming-of- and graduated to a New York agent. world’s biggest sci-fi publisher.

30 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 BIOGRAPHY

exposed by the media to accounts of celebrity murder- ers, Wiesenthal’s reading of the Roy Lowther case is both highly relevant and exemplary. Notwithstanding the fact that Roy Lowther was diagnosed as a paranoid schizo- Pat Lowther: phrenic before the marriage, and that his jealousy was personal in nature, Wiesenthal sees more in the mur- der than the momentary outburst of an individual mad- A full story of a half life man. She demonstrates clearly that his private, domestic fury was fanned and shaped by broader culture wars ancouver-born Pat Lowther was Wiesenthal’s purpose in re-examining the history of and class tensions. Lowther’s posthumous legacies. She explores the social As an unappreciated poet, writing unfashionable bludgeoned to death at the age and political forces that shaped Lowther’s career, con- “amateur” poetry, Roy Lowther was enraged not only by his wife’s success but by the kind of poetry she was of forty by her husband just as she tributed to her death, and that still complicate the evalu- ation of her work. writing and by her entry into the literary establish- was coming into her full strength In recent years the practice of biography has been ment—an entry marked by a widening circle of friends among influential editors and poets; a Canada Council asV a poet. The violence of her death and the extended from the simple writing of “A Life” to a new form or sub-genre that merges literary, historical and cul- grant; membership on a newly-appointed B.C. Interim weeks of suspense between her disappearance tural analysis. If every genre demands its own set of ca- Arts Board; a teaching job at UBC (a temporary ses- nonical texts, Lowther’s story with its literary, political sional position with a $4,500 stipend) and her and the discovery of her body brought her a and legal ramifications yields excellent material election as co-chair of the Canadian League of Poets. measure of fame and critical attention for this method. In an early chapter, Wiesenthal provides a The acquisition of a briefcase became in disproportionate to her relatively small output. sophisticated reading of Roy Lowther’s trial, his eyes the hated symbol of her growing pro- an event so marked by sensation that it has en- fessionalism. He confessed that after he dis- In the immediate aftermath of her death in 1975, tered local legal history. The crown prosecu- posed of the body, he flung the briefcase as far Peter Gzowski orchestrated a tribute on FM ra- tor, in an incredible gesture, introduced as he could into the bushes. It is a sad irony dio, and there was an outpouring of elegies by her fel- Lowther’s skull and the hammer that smashed JOAN that the briefcase seems to have been the one low poets. In the thirty years since then, an annual prize it as evidence. He mesmerized the jury dur- GIVNER private repository of her working papers for in Lowther’s name has been awarded by the League of ing the defense counsel’s arguments by han- a writer who had no office, room or desk of Canadian Poets to a female poet; there has been a docu- dling both objects, actually fitting the hammer into the her own. mentary film, Watermarks; a selection of her published hollows in the skull. The tendency of every prominent artist after death to and previously unpublished work, Time Capsule (1997); The trial, described in the Vancouver Sun under the become a contested site is amply illustrated by the acri- a novelistic biography Furry Creek (1999) by Keith headline ‘Verses and Verdicts,’ was also noteworthy for monious exchanges that followed the Gzowski radio trib- Harrison; a traditional biography, Pat Lowther’s Con- the extent that literature crept into the proceedings. The ute. Here, too, the insider-outsider theme ran through tinent: Her Life and Work (2000) by Toby Brooks; jury was initiated into the world of small literary maga- the rancorous charges, often in a way diametrically op- and other biographies and a memoir are reportedly in zines; Lowther’s poems, and poems that her lover wrote posed to Roy Lowther’s assessment. Her one-time friend, the works. to and about her, were introduced as evidence; the Milton Acorn, characterized Lowther as an exile, The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther (UTP $65) by Uni- judge invoked the standards of the so-called New Crit- marginalized by the Toronto-centric literary elite. versity of Alberta English professor Christine ics in his instructions to the jury about the interpreta- Similar disagreements continue to emerge over the Wiesenthal is part scholarly analysis and part biog- tion of the poems; and Roy Lowther used the evaluation of Lowther’s talent, and Wiesenthal exam- raphy and the most comprehensive study so far. The proceedings as a platform for his own poetic theories, ines them under the heading “Canonicity and the ‘Cult title (half-life is a scientific term denoting the transfor- including an indictment of what he saw as “an intellec- of the Victim.’” One critic sees the violent death as an mation of elemental energy into something smaller than tual kind of poetry.” event that raised a poet of mediocre talent to a place its original luminous molecular whole) indicates In a year during which Canadians have been over- among the “saints in CanLit heaven.” Another uses the death to read the poetry as prescient, and the poet as a prophet of her own doom. Others urge resistance to allowing the death to become a factor in the compli- cated process of judging the poetry. Wiesenthal sensibly argues for a distinction between the elevation of the woman to iconic status, and can- onization of the literary artist. The scholarly analyses in the first section of the book give way in later sections to more traditional biographi- cal narratives. Wiesenthal tracks Lowther’s working class ancestry and background, her decision to quit school at sixteen, her first marriage two years later, the birth of her first child at nineteen, divorce, custody battles, po- litical activism, a second marriage, more children, and the disastrous deterioration of the marriage. Through- out all this, the one constant was Lowther’s persistence in learning her craft, growing as an artist, and publish- ing her work. Wiesenthal ends her study on a note that highlights the poignancy of Lowther’s death. She describes Lowther on her fortieth birthday. She had returned to Vancouver after a successful reading tour on Prince Edward Island, packed up her children and was enjoying a family holiday on Mayne Island. She celebrated her birthday there on July 29th. “With her forties stretching before her,” Wiesenthal notes, “she was beginning again, as she’d once told Dorothy Livesay, to see openings for herself.” A Stone Diary, the book she had just submitted to Oxford University Press, was accepted on September 9th. She died two weeks later. Roy Lowther died in 1985 in prison. 080203635X Biographer and novelist Joan Givner lives in Mill Bay.

Poet Pat Lowther was brutally murdered by her husband in 1975. “The crown prosecutor, in an incredible gesture, introduced Lowther’s skull and the hammer that smashed it as evidence.”

7 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FICTION Estranger in strange lands Designer/novelist Barbara Hodgson creates characters and then sets out to live their lives.

walk around Barbara Hodgson’s and the recent Italy Out of Hand, a truth- is-stranger-than-fiction account of the office in an old bank building on evolution of Italian culture. When asked West Pender in Vancouver quickly to define her career trajectory Hodgson says, “I call myself a writer because it’s a reveals her penchant for mining the short cut. It’s just too complicated to draw in all the other aspects of it.” flea markets of the world. As long as she can travel and collect A artefacts, Hodgson will never be short She literally draws her inspiration make sure it could actually happen that of ideas for marrying words and pic- from her collection of antique, yellowed way,” she says. “One day I was walking tures. th photographs, 19 century travel cloth- down the street while visiting the city and Next stop, India. ing and painting kits that women like all of a sudden I saw cars stop and heard Dreaming 1-55365-118-9; her once used to document their travels sirens. What I had written was happen- Italy 1-55365-093-X in bygone eras. ing right in front of me.” By luck or design Hodgson has cre- For Hippolyte’s Island (Raincoast, Carla Lucchetta is a Vancouver writer ated a life for herself that allows her to 2001), Hodgson visited the Falkland Is- who also works as follow her many ideas for lands where she spent her a television books and projects. An avid afternoons watching pen- producer. traveller, archaeologist, ar- guins and photographing chivist and photographer, her surroundings for illus- she has written, illustrated trations. It’s the story of an and designed four novels intrepid traveller who and seven non-fiction books runs out of foreign lands in as many years. to conquer so he sets out This year Hodgson’s to rediscover the elusive work includes Italy Out of CARLA Auroras in the South At- Hand: A Capricious His- LUCCHETTA lantic. Hippolyte’s me- tory (Greystone $26.95) ticulous documents about and the newly released Dreaming of his findings on the islands —the flora East: Western Women and the Exotic Al- and fauna—become the marginalia that lure of the Orient (Greystone $34.95). ground Hodgson’s story in reality and Although her books have settings also serve as the necessary proof, upon outside North America, Hodgson main- his return, of the existence of the Auro- tains most of her ideas don’t depend on ras. travel experiences. “I find displacement Hodgson’s most recent illustrated intriguing,” she says. “I’m mostly inter- novel, Lives of Shadows (Raincoast, ested in how people cope outside of their 2004), took her to Damascus, to bring milieu and how it stretches their char- to life the tale of a young Englishman acters.” who becomes possessed by his new house ✍ and its history written on the walls. As Born in Edmonton, Barbara with much of her fiction, Hodgson con- Hodgson had her first experience of dis- tinually blurs the lines between that placement at the age eighteen when she which actually exists and that which her moved to Vancouver. She earned an ar- characters believe to exist. chaeology degree from SFU and at- ✍ tended the Emily Carr Institute of Art There’s a fine line of demarcation be- and Design for training in graphic arts. tween Hodgson’s fiction and non-fiction. After working for a time at Douglas & Both are an end result of her wander- McIntyre as a book designer, Hodgson lust and inquiring mind. Her fiction has struck out on her own as a freelance so many real geographical, historical book designer. She also teamed up with and environmental elements that the sto- Nick Bantock designing books and ries begin to feel as though they may well working on ideas for illustrated novels. have happened. Not only does she cre- The Tattooed Map, her first illustrated ate characters but at times she deliber- novel, came to life in 1995 after she was ately sets out to live their lives in order Tourists and encouraged by an editor at Chronicle to lend a deeper sense of reality to their guides Books of San Francisco. It’s the story of sketches. ascending the Great Pyramid, a woman who wanders around Morocco Hodgson writes her stories in tandem circa 1910-20. with her partner with such open curios- with creating the illustrations; each one ity that she falls victim to the country’s spurs the other on. That fact is most evi- mysterious past and ends up disappear- dent in Lives of Shadows where her art- ing into it. “I tried to travel as Lydia,” work and design are at their best, adding Hodgson says, speaking of the main context and beauty to a story that is noth- In October, book designer and novelist Barbara Hodgson will character in The Tattooed Map. “I talked ing short of page-turning. curate a Vancouver Museum exhibit about women travellers to people I never normally would have. Illustrated novels (not including from the 18th to early 20th centuries, an offshoot of her research It gave me so much more material.” graphic novels, which are growing in for No Place for a Lady, (Greystone 2003). “I thought, I’ll pick 20 To confirm details for The Sensualist popularity) are still fairly rare in publish- or 30 of the world’s most famous women travellers and concen- (Raincoast, 1998), her story about one ing and one reason is that they are ex- trate on their stories,” Hodgson says, “and then I kept coming woman’s gradual loss of her senses, pensive to make. To keep herself in form across interesting women I’d never heard of. Now I have a list of Hodgson travelled to Vienna, Budapest she pours her creative energy into non- about 700 women. It’s a topic that has a life of its own.” and Munich. “I had written about an fiction, creating illustrated histories on accident in Munich and I wanted to opium, morphine, rats, women travellers,

27 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 INDUSTRY Totally Jaded Bankruptcy Guide From 1995 to 2000, the world's leading producers of jade, Earl Sands, MBA, CGA, CIRP in annual tonnage, were British Columbia (200), Siberia New for Sept 2005 • $19.95 (200), Australia (25), Yukon (20) and USA (5). • Declare bankruptcy faster BY MARTIN TWIGG cases of the Queen versus John Doe (and and save money sometimes the reverse), involving jade in • Get a fresh financial start here are two types of jade. British Columbia,” writes Leaming. “I One is jadeite and the other was involved in one case, but, I hasten to add, as an expert witness, not as the is called nephrite. The accused.” T Leaming’s travels include Labrador, former is rare and comes princi- Start & Run a Siberia and the People’s Republic of pally from Burma and Central China, where the use of jade dates back Copywriting Business more than 6,000 years. Steve Slaunwhite America. Nephrite is chiefly “It was no simple matter to get per- found in B.C., the western U.S. mission from the authorities to visit the New 2nd edition • $22.95 western reaches of China, as the prov- • Learn the secrets of freelance states, Siberia, New Zealand and ince of Xinjiang had long been closed copywriting to foreign travel,” writes Leaming. “We Australia. • Written by a recognized were prepared to offer lectures on jade Stanley Fraser Leaming is the pri- by ‘the experts from Canada and New copywriting expert mary authority on jade in Canada. Zealand.’ I have no idea how much His new book Jade Fever: Hunting weight this carried, but we finally did the Stone of Heaven (Heritage House $19.95) co-written Start & Run a with Rick Hud- Landscaping Business son, touches on all Joel LaRusic aspects of the so- called ‘green-gold.’ New for Aug 2005 • $22.95 “B.C. is the jade • Work in the great outdoors province par excel- • Be your own boss lence,” writes Leam- ing. "In fact, if you talk about Canadian jade you could almost be talking about B.C. jade." Personal Budgeting Kit This high concen- tration of the sub- Sylvia Lim, CFP, CGA stance in B.C. has New 2nd Edition • $16.95 resulted in a rich lo- • Learn to trim spending cal history. Jade was painlessly present in both First Nations and Inuit • Understand where your culture, a fact noted cash goes by many early Euro- pean explorers, but began to disappear following the intro- duction of iron tools. The world’s largest jade Buddha was cut from a 32-ton boulder excavated Living Wills Kit Jade remained near Dease Lake in northern B.C. in the early 1990s. Tom Carter, Lawyer largely forgotten un- til the mineral was identified by Chinese receive our permits, at a time when New 2nd Edition • $16.95 labourers as the ‘stone of heaven’ dur- Xinjiang was just opening to outsiders.” • Write your own living will ing the Fraser River gold rush, spurring ✍ • No lawyer required many small-time prospectors to mine the Born in Minnedosa, Manitoba in material. 1917, Stanley Leaming moved to After the Second World War, a vi- Brandon, Manitoba at a young age and brant “rockhound” culture emerged, later attended prospecting school there consisting of hobbyists dedicated to col- in 1939. At 23 he entered the RCAF and lecting, cutting and polishing rocks— was discharged from World War II du- pre-eminently jade—for jewellery. A ties in 1945. He received his M.A. in ge- Self-Publishing 101 rock enthusiast magazine, The Canadian ology from University of Toronto in 1948. Debbie Elicksen Rockhound, was founded in 1957 and Leaming has traveled extensively in ran for almost 25 years. the world to collect and study jade, first Coming in October • $19.95 “The principal contributors were working as a field geologist for 12 years, • Self-publish AND ensure mostly from B.C.—to such an extent from Labrador to the Yukon, prior to thriving sales that it might well have been called the joining the Geological Survey of Canada • Understand the potential B.C. Rockhound,” writes Leaming. In in Vancouver in 1960 and remaining 1998, Win Robertson started the B.C. with the GSC until 1981, when he re- pitfalls of POD Rockhounder, which is still currently in tired to Summerland. print. His scientific work Jade in Canada In 1968, Premier W.A.C. Bennett (1978) laid the groundwork for the jade declared jade the official provincial industry of B.C. His other books include Available in bookstores & online: stone, and allowed anyone to collect it Rock and Mineral Collecting in British along the Fraser River, as long as it was Columbia (1971), Guide to Rocks & Min- www.self-counsel.com not done for profit. erals of the Northwest (1982), which he “Over the years there have been a few co-wrote with his son Chris. 1-894384-85-7

10 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 reviews FICTION PUNJABI STORIES BOOBY-TRAPS IN PLOT LIMBO Rainsongs of Kotli by Tariq Malik (Toronto: TSAR Publications $18.95) “It is the fashion of today for writers, under the influence Every day Patty brings home gorgeous morning,” she writes. of an inadequate acquaintance with Chekhov, to write tofu, seaweed and roasted Some readers might find Tariq Malik’s first collection of stories, stories that begin anywhere and end inconclusively. sesame seeds. The greatest hur- such overt imagery annoying Rainsongs of Kotli, is mainly set in the They think it enough if they have described a mood, or dle the couple must overcome, and distracting from the story. Himalayan valleys of Punjab approxi- given an impression, or drawn a character. That is all very aside from dealing with each Gill is at her best when she mately ten years after the tumultuous well, but it is not a story, and I do not think it satisfies other, is quieting their neigh- avoids puking sherbert imagery Partition of India during which tens of thousands died and millions fled their the reader.”—W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM ( ON SHORT STORIES) bour’s baby, whose incessant cry- and instead focuses on telling a story. In “The Art of Medicine” homes due to religious conflicts. Full of ing wakes them from their sleep. lively conversation and sure-handed “CAUTION: Her prose is booby-trapped with a pre-med student has an affair combinations of words so lethally effective they narratives, this deeply felt and frequently with her ethics professor. Initially amusing debut chiefly explores the lives may as well be dynamite.”—ZSUZSI GARTNER (ON LADYKILLER) unaware of their student/ and longings of the Lohar people of Kotli. teacher relationship, he lashes BY MARTIN TWIGG tat, machine-gun-style descrip- “Looking out violently, attempting to stran- back, I realize it tion of the accident, Gill’s trun- Ladykiller by Charlotte Gill gle her when she visits his was the first arrival (Thomas Allen $24.95) cated sentences devolve into a of electricity in series of flashbacks about a cou- house. In “Open Water: A Brief Ro- Kotli that set in n her debut collection of ple’s prosaic relationship. mance,” a broke scuba diving motion the events short stories, Ladykiller, Highlights of the flashbacks teacher—at Scuba Trooper, a that had such pro- Charlotte Gill writes as if she include driving on a highway, found and tragic I sort of underwater boot camp has an abject fear of conven- stopping at gas stations and pull- consequences for rich, successful careerists Tariq Malik tional storytelling. Frequently ing over on the side of the road for our family,” who crave discipline—falls for a depicting dysfunctional couples, to go to the bathroom. Malik writes. Another story begins, “There student in his class, only to dis- she allows her stories to drift We never learn overtly are certain days when the river sits qui- cover that she’s only 16 and is etly in profound contemplation of itself through a fog of emotional ten- whether the car crash victims an unwilling participant in the with not a ripple to disturb its thoughts.” sion. survive or not. program thanks to her parents. Born and raised in Pakistan, Malik lived The title story, “Ladykiller,” In “Hush,” Brian, a security Charlotte Gill: seven stories “The Art of Medicine” and for 20 years in Kuwait prior to immigrating is typical of the seven stories in guard, is forced to leave his job “Open Water” both succeed to Canada in 1995. In an afterword, the the collection. An unhappy cou- after getting hit in the testicles The story ends where it be- where her other stories fall short Vancouverite writes, “This book is a tribute ple visits the mother of the boy- during a robbery. Left to his own gan, in plot limbo. All the to the spirit of my parents’ enterprising gen- because they possess a general friend during Christmas. There devices at home, he has noth- reader is left with is a lingering eration that triumphed over adversity by sense of direction and purpose. is a fight and the girlfriend ing better to do than wait for his presence of a strange tension in sheer resilience and sacrifice; to those wise Although both stories retain evi- drives away angry. The ladykiller “acute contusion” to heal and, the couple’s relationship. men and women who were able to flu- dence of Gill’s infatuation with boyfriend, who has been un- more importantly, deal with his Gill, a recent graduate of ently quote verbatim passages in Arabic the period, her stop/start writ- from the Quran and follow these with faithful, attacks the TV set with wounded pride. UBC Creative Writing, resorts to ing style seems less rampant. We elaborate translations in moments of moral an axe. Patty, his wife, has her own punchy, chopped-up sentences care what happens next. rectitude, and, when moved to do so, The opening story “You problems. Morose and stressed and what Zsuzsi Gartner has la- 0-88762-177-5 would tearfully quote the classical Urdu Drive” grabs the reader with a out from work as a “tertiary belled ‘lethally effective’ phras- and Farsi poets, and yet were unable to car crash, but proceeds back- worker in the tertiary world of ing. read or write a single word of their own All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at wards, away from any resolution. H.R.,” she develops an expen- “The horizon pukes www.abcbookworld.com mother tongue.” 1894770153 After three pages of a rat-a-tat- sive addiction to naturopathy. sherberty light on another

14 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 reviews FICTION

EXPERIENCE, DOSTOEVSKY DOES ALEXIS CREEK EVEN IF IT HURTS BY JEREMY TWIGG Jericho by George Fetherling pertaining to Bishop’s hideaway Running by Keith Maillard (Random House $32.95) in the B.C. bush, north of Alexis (Brindle & Glass $14.95) Creek, off a logging road, be- n his second novel Jericho, re- tween Williams Lake and Bella f you read enough Keith Maillard nov- leased earlier this year, Coola. Iels, you start to believe Raysburg, West George Fetherling intro- Virginia really exists. This time around I The threesome ultimately duces an unconventional and Maillard returns to his fictionalized home- heads for the hills in a stolen mostly hopeless love triangle. town with Running, first of his four-part postal van that they paint green. We meet an over-the-hill Difficulty at the Beginning series that fol- It’s not the story that counts marijuana dealer named lows John Dupre from high school in the so much as Fetherling’s writing. 1950s to the psychedelic underground Bishop, a rural Alberta ingénue- Unfortunately we don’t get to of the late 1960s. cum-hairdresser named Beth see or learn about exactly how Dupre is a middle-class kid, kept and a lesbian social worker the psycho-babbling Theresa busy by a half-crazy Polish friend, a high- named Theresa who is in per- decided to join Bishop’s mostly maintenance rich girlfriend, a painful manent rebellion against her ridiculous rampage. We are left determination to become a decent upbringing as a Dutch Catholic. runner, a new-found penchant for to presume she jumped aboard Beth is supposedly searching booze and a se- because she has the hots for for her father on skid row, but cret yearning to Beth and she hopes to that doesn’t enter much into the be a girl. This whirl- protect her from Bishop’s story. She basically finds the un- wind of themes is megalomania. distinctly scrupulous Bishop instead. ✫ Maillardian: reli- The character of Bishop, a gion, music, phi- minor league Manson figure, is This is a very funny book most losophy, sexuality, the most riveting aspect of of the time, with strikingly origi- Keith Maillard class struggle and Fetherling’s frequently brilliant nal asides and social commen- alcohol. narrative that is divided haphaz- tary, but ultimately it’s more Dupre is hungry for experience, ardly between the three charac- Dostoevsky than Dickens. whatever the cost. “As a child, I’d ters in alternating segments of There is something brave wanted to know what it was like to be varying lengths. about careening towards the shocked, so with my hands dripping Bishop is an alluring crack- “There is simply no one more Protestant than darkness, whether it’s done via wet, I’d played with the light switches and electrical plugs—doing everything pot who can rationalize just sexuality, outlaw behaviour or a Vancouver lesbian in her thirties, living in I’d been told I must not do. I got about anything, the sort of brash writing, and Fetherling’s ability some tasteful condo with her lover and her shocked.” person who sees a pregnant to dispense with his critical houseplants, close to the amenities.” Dupre pushes himself by running woman on a bus and tells her not mindset in favour of an explora- track, then drinking too much. “If, on Mon- to worry, he can help deliver her tory one will be surprising to day morning, we were not bleary-eyed, — GEORGE FETHERLING child in an emergency. Physically anyone who has perceived him drooping, weary—in short, totally demol- he resembles the drummer in as primarily a brainy person, ab- ished… we thought we hadn’t had a Fleetwood Mac, balding on top, a line he wrote for a rejected Snaketown is something of a stracted on high. good time over the weekend.” Ever the long-haired, a petty criminal, a Toronto Life article about a gang wrong turn, one can seldom Jericho is risky and alive, and extremist, he starves himself in his desire petty guru. murder in the 1930s: “When I find fault with the boldness of memorable in the long run for to be a girl, resolving to “match the weight-height charts for teenage girls.” Raised by his grandfather in finally caught up with Cappy the writing. its presentation of a remarkable To create this series, which he says the fictional district of Smith, he was down in “There is simply no one more archetype. For anyone familiar “exists independently of me, has gone Snaketown in Windsor, Bishop Chinatown, winding his watch.” Protestant,” he writes, “than a with the underpinnings of West on, and will continue to go on, how- is the son of a prostitute. A de- This line appears on page 77, Vancouver lesbian in her thir- Coast culture, it’s possible to view ever I write about it or whether I write generate and a manipulator, he followed by about 50 pages of ties, living in some tasteful “Bishop” as one more weirdly about it,” Maillard has re-visited two pre- has nonetheless been blessed background material for Bishop condo with her lover and her deluded messianic figure in a vious novels, The Knife in My Hands and with an astonishing knack for that reads like a major chunk of houseplants, close to the ameni- rich tradition of mavericks and Cutting Through, revived unpublished saying bizarre but strangely po- a different novel parachuted ties.” cult leaders who have cultivated manuscripts and added new writing. etic nonsense. into Jericho for lack of a demand- The title Jericho doesn’t refer egocentric madness in Part two of the quartet, Morgantown is In an interview Fetherling ing editor. to the Jericho Beach area of Van- B.C. scheduled for release next year. 1-897142-06-4 has said this novel emerged from If the detour back to couver; it’s a biblical reference 0-679-31222-6

All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at VIVE LE FRANZ www.abcbookworld.com

The Life of Bartholomew G. he often feels more against the ar- money, likes to send greeting by Ernest Hekkanen like a fictitious char- rogance and cards portraying him in demean- (New Orphic $18) acter than a human stupidity of ing situations--and now she is The central char- being. other intellec- coming to the Avant Gardener acter in Ernest Having received tuals and as- to take his photo in his shop as- Hekkanen’s his B.A. from Simon sorted sistant attire. 35th book, Fraser University in nincompoops. That’s the gist of Hekkanen’s The Life of the late ‘60s, the During a three- disturbing and amusing portrait Bartholomew chronically self-ana- hour period of of an obsessive wise man who G., is a lowly lytical ‘Mewgi’ has G.’s life, while stumbles through life like a fool. ESL teacher increasingly identi- he prepares to Bartholomew G. jumps back and who has legally fied with Franz go to work at forth between self-loathing and changed his Kafka, the subject of his part-time self-aggrandizement like a liter- name from his chronically un- job at the Avant ary hybrid of Woody Allen and Bartholomew finished thesis. Gardener, he Ingmar Bergman. "He was no Ernest Gustafson to echo When told he stews in his longer capable of concentrating Hekkanen the Kafkaesque couldn’t legally Franz Kafka litany of hu- with the single-mindedness of a character known as adopt the single let- miliations, frus- cat about to pounce on a K. A chronic ter G. for a surname, first he al- trations and fears. mouse," Hekkanen writes. "All disappoint- tered his last name to Ge, then Alienated from his drug-ad- the intervening years had re- ment to his made the ‘e’ smaller and dicted son and a feminist ex-wife sulted in his mind becoming medical smaller until it finally became a who has long since surpassed slack. A windbag. A flaccid blad- doctor period.“I’ve come to think it him in academe, our pathetic der." father, isn’t good enough to simply anti-hero remains obsessed with This short and frequently study Kafka,” he tells a friend. the physical minutae of his body brilliant novel is an exaggeration “In a manner of speaking, to and his tiny Kitsilano apartment of how we all could feel if we better know him, one must be- while clinging to sexual memo- dared to dwell upon every tiny come the man.” ries of an absent Finnish girl- prick of mental injury and de- Bartholomew is a self-elected friend. His brilliant sister, from sire. Like a traffic accident, we defender of the great writer whom he is forced to borrow can't help but look. 1-894842-06-5

17 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 reviews FICTION THE PLOT DICKENS Audrey Thomas has reinvented a minor character from Little Dorrit for Tattycoram, her exploration of Victorian manners and the liberties often taken by novelists.

Tattycoram by Audrey Thomas “Harriet we changed into the resentment of Dickens’ sis- (Goose Lane $29.95) Hattie,” explains Mr. Meagles, ter-in-law Georgina, who trains “and then into Tatty, because, as a parrot to tauntingly repeat the aving picked a character practical people, we thought nickname Tattycoram. Then Hfrom the pages of Hud- even a playful name might be a Hattie escapes servitude by run- son’s Bay Company history for

new thing to her, and might ning off with a Miss Wade in what PHOTO

Isobel Gunn, her novel about a have a softening and affection- can be perceived as a veiled les- Aaron LYON woman who disguises herself as ate kind of effect, don’t bian relationship, Bushkowsky man in order to work in Rupert’s you see?” By apply- Thomas has Hattie DIANA Land, for an encore Audrey ing the nickname marry her foster Thomas has deftly plucked a she discovers some people are not Tattycoram, the do- brother—only to have exactly who they purport to be. character from Charles Dickens SHORT TAKES gooder Meagles and his her happiness and secu- 0-88899-691-8 for Tattycoram, another penetrat- daughter effectively rity interrupted decades The Vanishing Man by Aaron ing depiction of a relatively pow- Bushkowsky (Cormorant $22.95) ensure their maid will later by the news that Killing Time by Hank Schachte erless woman struggling with never be able to con- Dickens has caricatured (New Star $18) her identity. Aaron Bushkowsky’s linked collection ceal her disreputable in her Little Dorrit. Hav- of short stories, The Vanishing Man, It’s not necessary to untangle Hank Schachte’s Killing Time follows a beginnings. Charles Dickens ing been stuck with the concerns men who undergo divorces, the lines between fictional real- man who, after a car accident, loses The Thomas novel nickname Tattycoram family death, failures and therapy in ity (Dickens) and fictionalized both his memory and his ability to form tells it differently. After infancy was bad enough, but now Hattie order to come to terms with them- new memories. As the plot unravels fiction (Thomas) in order to in a caring foster home, our must decide whether or not her selves and ‘see love again.’ He and his short-term memory slowly re- read Tattycoram, but the twin teaches playwriting and scriptwriting heroine Hattie is mired in the ex-employer has taken advan- turns, the reader remains one step realms make for an intriguing at Langara College, Studio 58, Play- Foundling Hospital from ages tage of her by stealing her iden- ahead of the character in realizing his comparison. wrights Theatre Centre and Vancou- five to fifteen, until hard-luck tity for his work. past identity as well as what the future In the Dickens’ novel Little ver Film Centre. 1-896951-58-9 Hattie gains domestic employ- Should she risk confronting holds in store. 1-55420-019-9 Dorrit, an insular English gentle- ment in the household of Dick- the great man? A fellow orphan man named Meagles magnani- The First Vial by Linnea Heinrichs ens. named Elisabeth urges Hattie to (Thistledown Press $17.95) Rancour by James McCann mously rescues a girl named The great author dotes on take umbrage but Hattie is less (Simply Read $14.95) Harriet Beadle from the Found- her and encourages her to read accusatory and more worldly. Born on Vancouver Island, Linnea ling Hospital, an institution that In Rancour James McCann’s teen books from his library, much to “It’s not nice, what he’s done, Heinrichs lives on a hobby farm in arose in imitation of the hospi- novel about a graduating high school but he understands my resent- northern B.C. Her debut young adult tal for “found children” in Paris. student, a werewolf named Rancour ment,” she con- novel, The First Vial, is set in 14th-cen- and a vampire named Shay enter the Established in 1739, the origi- cludes, “and he tury England, a time when the coun- life of Alix, who had been mostly wor- nal Foundling Hospital in try was ravaged by the Black Death. understands ried about finding a date for the prom. London was sponsored by Katherine, Lady of Crenfeld Castle, about found- She must cope with the thousand- a retired seaman, Tho- must pit her wits against a villainous lings and year-old rivalry between the two vio- mas Coram. priest intent on usurping her land and children lent combatants, while making sure terrorizing the innocent. 1-894345-84-3 born out of she gets her homework done. wedlock.” 1-894965-31-0 The Walking Boy by Lydia Kwa 0-86492-431-3 (Key Porter $32.95) Hannah Waters and the Daughter of Johann As the tale of concubines, Sebastian Bach convents and the elaborate by Barbara Nickel (Penguin $17) palace court of China’s only female emperor, Lydia Kwa’s The Walking Boy has Herself a violinist, Barbara a ‘middlesex’ protagonist, Lydia Kwa Nickel’s latest young- born both male and female, adult novel, Hannah Wa- who ventures to the ancient West Capi- ters and the Daughter of Johann Se- tal of Chang’an in the 8th Century. On bastian Bach, follows two girls born behalf of the aging hermit monk Hare- centuries apart whose lives entwine lip, who raised him/her, Baoshi be- through the music of Bach’s Concerto comes embroiled in Tang Dynasty in- for Two Violins. 0-14-305078-8 trigue and a ghost story. 1-55263-693-3 Dreamspeaker by Anne Cameron (Harbour $9.95) The Courtesan Prince by Lynda Williams (Edge $24.95) Anne Cameron’s reissued novel PHOTO

Lynda Williams’ The Courtesan Prince Dreamspeaker won the Gibson Liter- begins many millennia in the future, ary Award after it first appeared in BOUNSALL where the colonization of space by 1978 and was the basis for an award- winning film 1-55017-364-13 TONY cloning has created two distinct and ideologically opposed planetary so- cieties. With their connection from 13 Ways of Listening to a Stranger by earth severed long ago, and with 200 Keath Fraser (Thomas Allen $26.95) years having passed since the Killing Reach War, conflict is again imminent. Eighteen short stories by Keath Fraser In spite of such tensions, two colonists from a 25-year period have been re- from each empire must learn to over- issued as 13 Ways of Listening to a come their cultural differences and Stranger. 0-88762-193-72 ancient hatreds. 1-894063-28-9

Ellen Fremedon Journalist by Joan Givner (Groundwood $18.95)

In 2004 Joan Givner published her first YA novel, Ellen Fremedon, in which a young girl innocently decides to write a novel based on people she knows in the village of Partridge Cove. It has been followed by Ellen Fremedon Journalist in which the intrepid hero- ine tries starting a newspaper in Par- tridge Cove during her summer holi- days. Larry, the village librarian, finds Audrey All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at typographical mistakes. An incorrect Thomas www.abcbookworld.com muffin recipe doesn’t help either, but Keath Fraser trouble really starts brewing when

13 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 Bob Hunter writing aboard the first Greenpeace protest vessel Phyllis Cormack, 1971.

WinnerWinnerGEORGE RYGA AWARD For Social Awareness in British Columbia Literature.

Robert Hunter (1941-2005) and photographer Robert Keziere collaborated on the first authoritative report on the Amchitka protests by Greenpeace in 1971, but Hunter’s original manu- script was rejected by publisher Jack McClelland of Toronto in On behalf of her late husband, favour of a picture book. Recently Keziere’s partner Karen Love Roberta Hunter accepts “The Censors’ Golden Rope” from retrieved the lone copy of Hunter’s eyewitness report and took sculptor Reg Kienast. The it to Brian Lam at Arsenal Pulp Press. Published last year as sculpture is given annually to George Ryga Award recipients. The Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey, the chronicle of idealism, bad weather, weird karma and personal tensions has been selected as the winner of the second annual George Ryga Award for outstanding social awareness. . KIENAST

REG The award was presented at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre

BY on July 27 during a celebratory concert, hosted by CBC’s Paul SCULPTURE

Grant, to mark the 73rd anniversary of George Ryga’s birth.

AWARD The shortlist included Redress (Raincoast) by Roy Miki and A Stain Upon the Sea (Harbour) by a collection of authors.

Sponsored by the George Ryga Centre (Summerland), (Kelowna) and Okanagan College.

Information: [email protected]

24 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 LOOKOUT #21 • a forum for & about writers 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 LOOKOUTLOOKOUTLOOKOUT P. G. Wodehouse was popularized NO LAUGHING MATTERS BY W.P. KINSELLA by British school boys. There’s a healthy respect for comedy in the YA market.” “Humour is mankind’s greatest blessing.”—MARK TWAIN Susan’s trilogy has been optioned by a production company associated with Easter-egg painter.” n the 1980s, I attended a reading by Alice Munro. I had read her CTV Vancouver. These are the same The second and third volumes of the people who created Corner Gas, a very most recent book and loved it, but it had never occurred to me that trilogy are equally hilarious. Yes, Susan funny Seinfeld in Saskatchewan series, her stories were humourous. She read a story and to my surprise the Juby is the real thing. But children’s lit- whose greatest compliment is that it I erature? Isn’t that picture books with didn’t receive any Geminis because it is audience laughed many times. When I mentioned this to Alice after the pop-ups that one reads to pre-schoolers? so many light years ahead of the drivel reading, she smiled and said, “Bill, everything is funny.” I asked Susan if she had any misgiv- that passes for TV entertainment. ings about her work being considered ✍ Unfortunately this viewpoint ganized religion, and organized children’s literature. “If one wants to I’ll hope Susan’s experience with TV has received little vindication in baseball. I suggested that hav- write comedy,” she replied, “the YA/teen is better than mine. There was an the world of Canadian fiction. ing an outfielder run from Iowa market is a good place to do it. A lot of unfunny travesty of a TV show called The What was the last to New Mexico chasing a fly the funniest writing these days is pub- Rez, which was created from my Leacock humourous book to win the ball, and having a church that lished for younger readers (and ends up Medal-winning characters, but the TV Governor General’s Award for ran 12 hours behind the rest of getting picked up by adults.) PHOTO people were too cheap, too lazy, or too Fiction? Or the Giller? Or the the world, and having an out- “I guess there’s a long history of this TWIGG untalented (my guess is all three) to op- Books in Canada First Novel W.P. Kinsella fielder fried by lightning, just kind of thing. I read somewhere that tion any of my 100+ stories about Silas Award? Or the Canadian Au- might be considered Erminskine and Frank Fencepost, so thors Association Fiction Award? humourous by some. some hacks created their own. I had to While a few of the winning books All of which brings me to Susan fight for every penny owed me and have offered some semblance of hu- Juby. never got paid my pittance for mour, only the 2002 winner of the Ca- ✍ the final six episodes. nadian Authors Association prize, I had just about given up on humour Generica, by Will Ferguson, was ac- in Canadian literature, when, as I was W. P. Kinsella lives in retire- tually a comic novel. wending my way through the sometimes ment in Yale, BC, with his Except on occasions when the Gov- good, sometimes bad, but generally hu- wife Barbara Turner ernor General’s Award is given to Alice mourless nominees for the Books in Kinsella, a former Miss Munro, the GGs are generally chosen by Canada First Novel Award, all of a sud- Congeniality and 2nd an incestuous clique of humourless aca- den I started laughing out loud, and call- Runner-Up for Miss demic drones who take turns rewarding ing to my wife, saying “Listen to this! Protestant County each other’s sub-mediocrity. On the Listen to this!” Tyrone. other hand, some of the choices for the The book that excited me was Alice, GGs have been so breathtakingly awful I Think by Susan Juby, a young as to be unintentionally humourous, and woman writing a very fictionalized have certainly drawn their share of rue- version of her teen years in ful laughter. Smithers, B.C. The second sentence Meanwhile Canada exports comedi- got me: “I grew up in one of those ans by the dozen, possibly because they loving families that fail to prepare realize that their humour will be appre- a person for real life.” ciated more in the U.S. The implosion of Alice’s former I remember once being asked the dif- high school counselor is a classic ference between Canadian and Ameri- scene, and Alice’s assessment of her can responses to my work. My reply was, replacement counselor, who she when an American reads my books, they dubs “Death Lord Bob”, is not entirely say, “I loved your stuff. It was so funny I inaccurate, as she sees him as being laughed out loud.” While a Canadian needier than she is. Juby describes Alice would say, “I enjoyedRosamond your work, I just and her family attending a picnic for Norbury about laughed.” home-schooled children: I consider myself a humorist, though “...home-schooled kids weren’t ex- PHOTO I have not always been recognized as actly what my dad called ‘paragons of

such. The reviews of Shoeless Joe were al- normalcy.’ A disturbing number of them TWIGG most unanimously positive, but few men- were still breast-feeding at an age when tioned that it is a funny novel. most kids are taking up smoking.” Then, One of the few times I ever replied to “I am pleased to report that I am mak- a reviewer was when the New York Times ing rapid progress... now, thanks to my treated The Iowa Baseball Confederacy as new Life Goals and an article I read on serious fiction, never once mentioning the Ukraine in National Geographic, I Susan Juby accepted the 2005 that it is (in my opinion) a spoof of or- have realized it is my calling to be an Sheila A. Egoff Prize in Vancouver Susan Juby Trilogy: Alice, I Think (Harper Tempest $15.99) 0060515430 for Miss Smithers. Her three novels Miss Smithers (Harper Tempest $15.99) 0060515465 are newly available in a box set. Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last (Harper Tempest $15.99) 006051549X

17 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • AUTUMN • 2005 Dissembling Fear n the wall in Noam Chomsky’s book-strewn office at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston there is a to forget that. That wasn’t [even] of gangsters. They’re decent, honest people so you “Fear of the United States high technology. That was explo- have to lie to them about threats to their security large poster of the British philosopher, mathematician and sives. The wealthy and the powerful and noble ideals. You have to make it attractive to no longer have the monopoly of vio- the population in their terms. Which are usually pacifist . Just as owed is mounting all over the Bertrand Russell Albert Einstein lence that they had in the past and moral and decent terms.” O“innumerable happiness to the reading of Russell’s works”, the even-tempered it’s driving them up the wall. If you world. It’s huge. It’s gone do these things to other people it’s NOAM CHOMSKY Noam Chomsky has adopted Russell as a father figure, as a beacon of sanity. up enormously since the no big deal. But when you do it to on RESPECTING DEMOCRACY us—it’s not allowed. “The bad guys are the countries where the Incarcerated for his refusal to serve in World Here are samples from the book: “I mean, take a look at 9/11. governments took the same position as the over- War One, Bertrand Russell came to teach in New Bush administration.” Look at the horrible atrocity, every- whelming majority of the population. Germany York City and inflamed public opinion by attack- NOAM CHOMSKY – NOAM CHOMSKY TO ALLEN BELL one in the world agreed with that. and France are the bad guys because the govern- ing the United States as a monger of atomic war- on CANADIAN MEDIA But if you look around the world, ments took the same position as perhaps 70% of fare. Chomsky has since adopted Russell’s mantle “My impression is that over the reactions from much of the world the population. Turkey is hated because the gov- as North America’s leading ‘refusenik’, dismantling the years the Canadian media were, yeah, a horrifying atrocity, but ernment took the same position as 95% of the White House hypocrisy and doublespeak on a have become less open, more re- welcome to the club. You’ve been population. daily basis, seemingly immune to egocentric in- strictive, probably more doing this to us for centuries.” “Who are the good guys? Spain and Italy where dulgences and unfettered by conformist tenden- corporatized. There’s massive cor- opposition to the war was higher than in France cies. porate takeover, by CanWest NOAM CHOMSKY and Germany. But they’re the good guys because Now there are posters of Noam Chomsky on Global I guess it is, who are forc- on MANUFACTURING the governments disregarded 80% of the popula- the walls of college dorms in the United States and ing editorials on the papers and CONSENT tion. In Eastern European satellites the populations Canada. For some, the grandfatherly professor has cutting down content. There “a massive government media are even more against the war than in France and become a symbol of America’s best qualities, as have been a lot of objections from propaganda campaign began de- Germany. But the leadership said, yeah, we’ll go inspiring as the Statue of Liberty. For others who journalists, and that really is omi- picting Saddam Hussein as an im- along. In fact, it was the former Foreign Minister support the regimes of the current White House, nous. I mean if the press gets minent threat to the security of the of Latvia who was asked—I think [by] the Wall he is anathema. taken over by a couple of corpo- United States—as involved in Sep- Street Journal—why they went along with the ✍ rate magnets—Conrad tember 11, as tied up with al-Qaeda, United States, and he said something like, ‘Well, Black, Israel Asper, a cou- planning new atrocities and right we know you have to say, yes, sir.’ So they’re the In the verbatim transcript of his interview with ple of other guys—then it really away, [in] a couple of weeks, about good guys. Noam Chomsky, A Hated Political Enemy (Flask is bad news. Independent media 60% of the population regarded “And it wasn’t just Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld Publishing / Sandhill Distributing, $14.95), Vic- are critically important for a Saddam as a threat to the security [saying it]. That was all the commentary. What’s of the United States. They didn’t wrong with the French? What’s wrong with Ger- toria screenwriter and poet Allen Bell offers democratic society. If you elimi- PHOTO think that in Kuwait even. Nobody mans? What’s the matter with the Turks? How America’s senior political dissident an opportunity nate independent media, you BELL to respond to attacks on his character (“mirthless”) undercut the functioning of the thought he was a threat to their se- come the governments don’t disregard 95% of the and his beliefs. democratic society. Which is, of ALLEN curity. They hated him but he’s not population and do what we tell them? In particular, Bell cites innuendoes from a course, the purpose.” a threat to anybody. Except within “How can you have a deeper contempt for Globe & Mail book review [Feb. 15/03] and a 16- Iraq. But pretty soon close to half the population, democracy than that? You find that in Stalin’s page article in the New Yorker [March 31/03] that NOAM CHOMSKY on IRAQ “The wealthy and the powerful no longer have the monopoly of maybe more, thought he was involved in Septem- Russia. And it passes without comment because maintains Noam Chomsky “long ago became al- “The New York Times rather honestly called Iraq ber 11. A complete fabrication . They succeeded it’s so internalized. It’s so deeply internalized that ienated from the American political center” and the Petri dish test cast for the new doctrine an- violence that they had in the past and it’s driving them up the wall.” in frightening probably a majority of the popula- what they’re supposed to do is take orders from “elsewhere in the world he is a superstar.” nounced in the National Security strategy which tion.” us.” “That’s not an article,” Chomsky replies. basically comes down to a dismantling of interna- “That’s an exercise in character assassination tional law and institutions and a very brazen an- summit meeting in the Azores with Bush and Blair. tary-run programs at the research centers in places and you don’t have the power to throw the peo- NOAM CHOMSKY on OIL NOAM CHOMSKY against a hated political enemy.... Part of the nouncement that the U.S. intends to dominate And if you take a look at what they said, they said like MIT. That’s what these institutions are for and ple in jail as they probably wish they did, then “The U.S. is probably not intending to use the on OCCUPATION OF IRAQ scheme there is to say, well, you know, these crazy the world by force and to do so indefinitely and even if Saddam Hussein and his family leave Iraq that’s the way the economy runs. The military sys- what you do is vilify them. So it’s expected. And it oil. The U.S. has never really been much con- “I must say, I’m shocked at this, [that is] they’re people elsewhere are coming to talks of mine. But to destroy any potential challenge to its domi- we’re going to invade anyway. Because we’re not tem has been the basic backbone of the develop- hasn’t been any different in the past. You should cerned with accessing the oil of the Middle East. having trouble. I thought it would be a walkover. in the United States nobody would pay attention.” nance. just interested in regime change. We’re interested ment of high technology industry. And many see the way Bertrand Russell was treated. He was It’s concerned with controlling. Which is some- To fail to take control of Iraq and make it a viable In fact, Noam Chomsky is a hugely popular “That has precedents but no precedent that I in putting in our regime, not one the Iraqis want.” other sectors of the economy. an object of hatred and contempt because he was thing totally different. society—that takes real talent. Just think of the speaker in the U.S. and he spends about an hour know of as a statement of national policy except “Take what’s called civil aviation. Many of these doing some decent and honest things.” “Since the Second World War a leading fea- situation they’re going into. I mean, here was a every night turning down offers to speak. He has for cases we’d rather not think about. Which is NOAM CHOMSKY planes are modified bombers. The avionics, the ture of policy has been to control the oil, not use country that was virtually devastated by sanctions. always been estranged from the flip-flopping, lib- why it caused plenty of shudders in the foreign on the ROLE OF THE MILITARY metallurgy, the hard research, is usually done un- NOAM CHOMSKY on the it. In fact, the U.S. was, and to an extent remains, The sanctions are over. It was destroyed by war. eral intelligentsia. His disenchantment with toady- policy elite here as well as around the world. And “The military system has several functions. One der a military cover. And then adapted to private MILITARIZATION OF SPACE a major producer. But to control it. World con- The wars are over. It was being ruled by a brutal ing liberal intellectuals dates from the Dwight Iraq was a test case that shows how it’s done. Why is to control the world. But there is another func- commercial gain. Quite apart from the infrastruc- “The main UN (United Nations) disarmament trol is a source of enormous wealth which doesn’t tyrant. Bad as the U.S. façade may be, it’s not go- Eisenhower era, long before Michael Iraq? Well, you pick a country that’s first of all de- tion that is very significant and rarely discussed. ture—the airports and everything else. That’s the commission has been paralyzed by a conflict be- flow into the pockets of the population. Rather ing to be that. How can you fail? Moore was in diapers. fenceless—you don’t want to attack anybody that And that is to maintain the economy. If you look way the public pays the costs, and you privatize tween the United States and the rest of the world the energy corporations and the construction com- “I mean, compare it with other military occu- The individuality of Noam Chomsky and his can defend themselves, that would be ridiculous— at what’s called the new economy—the advanced the benefits. Aircraft extends enormously. It also over militarization of space. I mean, every other panies and high tech industry and so on. pations. Take the Nazis in Europe. They ran Eu- reluctance to pledge allegiance to power has made and also worth controlling. No point in attacking sectors of the economy like computers, and elec- leads to the biggest service industry, namely tour- country just about is trying to institute measures “The U.S. is not interested in lowering the price rope with collaborators without much trouble. him an unlikely hero—a linguistics professor who Burundi, which is also defenceless but who wants tronics generally, telecommunications, the ism. Trace all these things back and you find that to prevent the militarization of space and the U.S. too far. Never has been. It wants the price kept Every country had its collaborators that ran things stands like Horatio at the bridge against sophistry it? Internet, automation and so forth—where did quite typically they go back to the dynamic state is blocking them. There have been votes at the within a certain range. Not too high because if it’s for them pretty efficiently. There was a resistance and deceit. “On the other hand, Iraq has the great advan- they come from? They came from places like MIT sector of the economy and a lot of it is under mili- General Assembly reaffirming and strengthening too high it harms certain power interests and if it’s but if it hadn’t been supported from abroad they Bell’s understandable respectfulness as an in- tage of being both defenceless and disarmed, and [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] under the tary pretext. the outer space treaty which bans the militarization too low it cuts into the profits that largely flow would have crushed it instantly. And they were terviewer allows Chomsky to ramble somewhat, also very valuable. It’s got the second largest en- cover of military spending “So quite apart from of space. The U.S. alone abstained—the U.S. and back to the United States. There’s no reason to under attack. but A Hated Political Enemy is a revealing and in- ergy reserves in the world. With the United States to socialize the costs and the task of controlling the Israel. Same with the disarmament committee.” believe that it’s helpful to the people of the United “Or take the Russians in Eastern Europe. They timate window into Chomsky’s personality. It shows firmly implanted right in the middle of the en- risks of research and devel- world, there’s the task of States any more than the British Empire was help- ran it without much trouble with collaborators all him in a relaxed mode, seemingly immune to the ergy producing center of the world, it increases opment. maintaining what amounts NOAM CHOMSKY ful to the people of England. over the place. conceits of performance. enormously the leverage for global control. So Iraq “It’s costly, it’s risky. So to a state capitalist on TECHNOLOGY “The propaganda does not say let’s conquer “How come the U.S. can’t do it under the most Bell asks Chomsky, towards the end of their was the perfect test case for the military.” you socialize that. And economy by socializing “It’s been known by specialists for some years Iraq because there will be more money in your optimal circumstances?... Now they’re in trouble. conversation, if Bertrand Russell were alive today, then, after it gets to the risk and cost and privatiz- that, with contemporary technology, the monopoly pocket. The propaganda says let’s conquer Iraq It’s costing them too much. They can’t pay for it. would Bertrand Russell consider George NOAM CHOMSKY point where it’s market- ing profit.” of violence in the hands of the rich and powerful because it will save you from destruction by ter- The army is starting to erode. It may get harder to Bush I, George Bush II, Donald on REGIME CHANGE able, you put it into the is probably gone. It’s now more balanced. They rorists. And it will let in freedom and democracy. go on to the next one. But it does reflect extraor- Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul “They didn’t want him [Saddam hands of private power. NOAM CHOMSKY still have an overwhelming preponderance of the That’s the way the propaganda works. It never dinary incompetence.” Wolfowitz, Tony Blair, Condoleeza Hussein] overthrown from within. Because That’s why IBM is pro- on POLITICAL means of violence but they don’t monopolize it appeals to people’s vulgar interests. And the rea- Rice and Dick Cheney to be war criminals? then Iraqis would have been in charge. In fact, ducing computers and not DISSIDENCE anymore. That’s what 9/11 showed as did the son is the people who make the propaganda make [Interview conducted by Allen Bell Chomsky gives his most succinct answer, “I take Bush practically announced that on the eve of the typewriters. They have “If you can’t deal with bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 the assumption that the general population is not on May 9 and September 11, 2003] that for granted but I can’t speak for the dead.” invasion. On the eve of the invasion there was a their fingers in the mili- Allen Bell photographed by Noam Chomsky arguments and evidence, which came pretty close to succeeding. People tend like them. The general population is not a bunch 0973685301

18 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • AUTUMN • 2005 19 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • AUTUMN • 2005 POETRY

Man at Graham fault Good

on McKay uses six move- ments of prose and poetry in Dhis Deactivated West 100 Graham loves Maria (Gaspereau $25.95) as he explores and examines a sense of place amid Vancou- Talonbooks publisher Karl Siegler ver Island wilderness and “in the scheme translated Maria Rainier Rilke’s of infinite time.” Sonnets to Orpheus in 1977, but UBC He says the background for the book English professor Graham Good’s is a fault line on Rilke’s Late Poetry (Ronsdale $16.95) is southern Van- the first translation in a single volume of couver Island Rilke’s three mature works, Duino Elegies, known as the bill bissett Sonnets to Orpheus and Selected Last Po- Loss Creek- ems. Coincidental with T.S. Eliot’s The PHOTO Leech River Waste Land and James Joyce’s

fault. "I de- DETH INTERRUPTS TH DANSING TWIGG Ulysses in 1922, the Sonnets to Orpheus cided, as part of we wer kayjun dansing yu know thats from lyrically express Rilke’s philosophical re- my apprentice- akadian 2 th great sounds uv swamperella sponse to the tran- ship to west great kayjun band me n dr bill n manee othr sience of life. The coast land- kool peopul dansing n ther at th gladstone first two poems of Don McKay: I walk scapes, to walk hotel qween west rainee oktobr nite the Duino Elegies the fault line the fault from were written in it was getting sew rocking it was veree calm th end to end and dansrs n th band sew great playing 2gethr n 1912 when he take note of whatever it presented to me keepin th fires goin whn just ovr ther th man stayed at the Duino in terms of rocks, plants, animals, birds who had bin smiling at us all nite on his back Castle near Trieste, (of course) and human history. A lot of on th floor n smiling angels wer all around Italy. The third and Maria Rainer Rilke walking was done on the old deactivated us n th scent uv deth fourth elegies were bush road which follows Loss Creek and mainly written in Paris (1913) and in gives the book its title. Since the area has dr bill is on2 it n th woman th man had bin dansing Munich (1915). The much-travelled, been very aggressively logged, this also with me n dr bill had bin dansing sew great 2gethr German-born Rilke died in 1926; led me into the history and politics of with ths great band n now th spotlites shining on Good’s critical work ranges from Euro- th smiling man thumping his chest ths dansr down forestry hereabouts—including techno- pean literature to Buddhism. 1-55380-024-9 logical advances like the Shay locomo- n cpr n anothr doktor in th hous hovr ovr n calling 911 n we get th door opn evreewun is sew 2gethr tive and the Stihl chainsaw." with ths paramediks n guernee cum in th downd ALSO RECEIVED McKay is a professor with UVic's De- man makes strange sounds 4 a whil ther was no partment of Writing and an editor for puls we all hovr th band is silent watching on Miraculous Hours by Matt Rader Brick Books. He is the subject of a new (Nightwood $16.95) 0-88971-201-8 critical anthology of essays, Worth Fifty we ar all thinking in sew manee ways abt deth how Segues by Naomi Beth Wakan (Wolsak & Wynn $15) 1-894987-01-2 Thousand Finches (Wilfrid Laurier it reelee sucks n evn if we can accept it how moving One Stone by Barbara Pelman Press $12.95), edited by Meira Cook it is 2 b onlookrs 2 sumwuns transisyun from heer (Ekstasis $18.95) 1-894800-37-0 and due in December. 2 ther wher is anee uv that how short our lives ar Frames of Silence by Allan Brown (Seraphim $16.95) 0-9734588-3-6 Deactivated 1554470080; Finches 0-88920-494-2 reelee n deth can cum at anee time espeshulee whn The Sutler by Michael Kenyon From bill wer not redee our eyez ar wet mouths silent we hold (Brick $17) 1-894078-41-1 ✍ bissett’s th doors opn th man who was dansing goez out in th Living Will: Shakespeare After Dark stretchr rides off peopuls vibes follo him 4 what by Harold Rhenisch Eric Miller is an ornithologist flu- northern wild (Wolsak & Wynn $22) 1-894987-02-0 ent in several languages, including Latin. roses / deth evr he needs th band cums 2gethr no spotlites on Republic of Parts by Stephanie Maricevic As the poetry editor of the Malahat Re- interrupts th (Broken Jaw $16.95) 1-55391-025-7 plays off th stage on th floor slowr mournful kay Ecologue by Ken Belford view and a teacher of 18th century lit- dansing (Harbour $16.95) 1-55017-349-9 jun fidduls bass drums haunting songs carree (Talonbooks Bizarre Winery Tragedy erature at the University of Victoria, he us thru all ths emergensee doktor cums back $17.95) by Lyle Neff (Anvil $14) 1-895636-66-3 has published his second collection of sz th downd dansr is recouping th band stays on Touching Tells And Learns poetry, In the Scaffolding (Goose Lane 088922532X th floor starts rockin wer all up dansing agen sew (Brio 0-9733942-5-0) and $17.95), a follow-up to Song of the Vul- The Roots of Affection by Ian Rudkin fine deth didint interrupt us 4 veree long tho we kno (Brio 0-9733942-6-9) gar Starling. 0-86492-425-9 sumwher els it did a lot evn if its onlee a courrier

JACK Who Doesn’t oetry thrives in Tumbler Ridge, in Fort St John and Grande Prairie. The Northern for Larry PINES & Lights College Foundation and Writing on the Ridge are two of the organizations which foster writing in the north. Donna Kane of Dawson Creek is affiliated Who doesn’t love a man who can back a trailer with both, hosting literary festivals and writers’ retreats. Somewhere, A Fire STETSONS to within an inch of his mark, (Regina: Hagios Press $13.95) is Kane’s first book of poems—and a very fine who can read one it is. With skilful tension, Kane’s poems thrust the reader northwards not only the tracks into early snowfalls, mud, and dust devils. Universal themes of death and life, love and weather, in the driveway but the payload they carried, holds a finishing nail areP conveyed with a distinctly northern slant. in his mouth, a pencil behind his ear, “Absence is a winter storm/ a two-lane highway bunched into one, / shoulders narrowed, snow who studies the joists bending/ jack pines mid-mantra.” A dead gopher in a fox’s mouth: “How well the gopher played its of the unfinished buildings so thoroughly part, /sagging sock, body draped, at your service, bones / small mallets sounding the scale/ of you know you’ve disappeared and for a minute ditch grass and willow.” In a poem about country and western dancing, the men with their boots you are watching a boy and good Stetsons have “a pure pulse inside them/ that knows instinctively how to thrust you into you haven’t yet met— the upbeat / like turning a newly sewn garment inside out, poking out the corners / with something his single-purposed concentration sure--men who learned to dance / some other way than counting steps / or looking at their toes, so fierce it’s clear he loved the world before you who move/with dogfight confidence.” 0-9682256-9-1 All BC BookWorld reviews are posted online at or any other girl came into it. — , Somewhere, A Fire Donna Kane www.abcbookworld.com Donna Kane

41 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FIRST NATIONS

Lewis Harvey, James Reynolds, Leona Sparrow, Andrew Charles and Marvin Storrow in front of the Supreme Court of Canada building, 1983

BY BEVERLY CRAMP to reduce the amount; in particular, the judge’s view that the club might leave. ack in 1970, Musqueam Of course, this has not happened. The Shaughnessy vs lease is too good to the club for them to Chief Delbert Guerin first leave before it ends in 2033.” gained access to the The Musqueam took a second legal B case to the Supreme Court of Canada exact terms of a 1957 agreement in 1990, winning the Sparrow case that that enables the Shaughnessy Golf secured Aboriginal rights in Section 35 MUSQUEAM of the Constitution Act of 1982. and Country Club to lease 162 These two landmark cases were key The legal battle of Guerin v. The Queen is one of elements in persuading the provincial acres of the Musqueam Reserve the top three or four cases that have advanced government to discontinue its refusal to in Vancouver, approximately one participate in treaty negotiations for set- Aboriginal rights in Canada in the 20th century. tlement of Aboriginal rights in British third of the reserve. Columbia. They laid the foundation for James the historic Supreme Court Reynolds’ A did you guys agree to all these terms?’ Delbert Guerin’s detective work also Delgamuukw (1997) decision that estab- Breach of and when they read the agreement they revealed that all buildings put in place lished Aboriginal title as a legal right. Duty: Fiduci- said, ‘we didn’t.’” by the club could be removed by it at ✍ ary Obliga- When the lease was signed, the gov- the end of the lease, contrary to what James Reynolds, who emigrated from tions and ernment controlled reserve lands and the Band members had understood to England in 1976, specializes in Aborigi- Aboriginal Indians were not permitted to vote in be the case. nal, banking and commercial law from People federal elections. During this paternal- Frank Anfield, the government agent, North Vancouver. He was one of the law- (Saskatoon: istic era, the federal government had al- literally held the pen for Musqueam yers on the Guerin case along with lead Purich $38) lowed the Musqueam to be taken members when they voted on October lawyer Marvin Storrow, Lewis describes the advantage of through the actions of 6, 1957. Harvey, Robert Banno and 26-year legal ✍ Anfield, a former Anglican minister and Steve Schachter. quest for jus- principal of a residential school. More than 18 years later, at a “Our advantage was, we weren’t ex- tice by the Specifically, after a government ap- Musqueam General Band Meeting on perts,” says Lewis Harvey. “But we Musqueam, as praiser had valued the land at $53,450 December 14, 1975, a decision was thought, this can’t be, this isn’t right. Delbert Guerin initiated by per year, Anfield pressured him to lower made to proceed with a writ to challenge Marvin Storrow thought it was construc- Guerin, to this amount. The appraisal was given to the federal government for breach of its tive fraud [because] the lease terms were gain full knowledge of, and compensa- the club but not the Band. Anfield also trust responsibilities. so terrible.” tion for, that lease. misconstrued the appraiser’s opinion of The Musqueam initially won their As a result of Delbert Guerin’s per- “I consider this the second best thing a satisfactory return to the Band mem- case in September of 1979 with an sistence, the door opened for Aborigi- that happened in my life,” Guerin says. bers and pressured them to agree to a award of $10 million plus post-judg- nal people in Canada to seek and obtain “The first important thing was my wife rent of $29,000 per year for the first ten ment interest. However, the Federal legal remedies for wrongs done to them saying ‘I do’ in 1960.” Court of Appeal overturned that deci- ✍ years. by the Crown. The Musqueam reluctantly agreed to sion and said the government had only “There is no question that what the Federal Indian Agent Frank this low rate because they wrongly be- a political and not a legal obligation. Crown did was wrong,” says Reynolds. Anfield held private meetings in 1957 lieved they would be able to increase that The Musqueam then proceeded to “In any other situation it would have with representatives of the golf club and amount to a market rent when the lease the Supreme Court of Canada where the been a slam-dunk. But because it was negotiated the lease without full consul- came up for renewal. Anfield did not award was upheld on November 1, 1984. the federal government, everyone tation with the Musqueam. correct their misconceptions about the “We were pleased with the finding thought you couldn’t sue them... Thirteen years later an Indian Affairs proposed lease. of liability but disappointed with the “What the Guerin case did was to employee named Graham Allen The final version of the lease was not amount of the award,” Reynolds says. overturn the defence that the Crown was permitted Guerin to examine some base- given to the Musqueam. It stated each “The kind of numbers we put before the above the law and to achieve some meas- ment Indian Affairs archives containing rental term was for 15 years—not ten— court ranged from $41 million to $70 ure of justice. the lease. and there would be a maximum 15% million. The trial judge agreed these fig- “I thought it was a story worth tell- “When I read the agreement,” says increase for the second 15-year term. ures were justified. ing.” 1-895830-25-7 Guerin, “I phoned Ed (Sparrow), Bill Future rents would not be at market “But there were contingencies (things (Guerin) and Mother (Gertrude rates but based on the uncleared, unim- that might happen in the future, before Beverly Cramp is a non-Aboriginal who Guerin) and asked them, ‘How the hell proved land value and the restricted use. the lease finishes in 2033), that were used edits the Musqueam newsletter.

33 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FICTION Having lived for many years in south- In Brenda Brooks’ first novel, eral Douglas Freeman and a team of re- east Asia, Christopher G. Moore Gotta Find Me An Angel (Raincoast tired Special Forces operatives must ob- Watmough has returned to Vancouver where he has $29.95), a film projectionist at a second- literate the source of the deadly missiles published a novel set in Rangoon and run cinema in in North Korea. 0-345-45376-X On The Street the Burmese Toronto is ✍ countryside. haunted by the Rick Dewhurst’s first crime One of dozens of writers scheduled to Waiting for the ghost of a friend novel Bye Bye, Bertie (Nashville: appear at Word On The Street on Lady (Subway who died long Broadman & Holman $15.99) is a light- September 25 at the Vancouver Public Books $38.95), ago. One night hearted narrative by a Vancouver detec- Library Main Branch, David Watmough concerns a part- she addresses a tive named Joe LaFlam who must search has been a mainstay of the West Coast time smuggler lament to that for the sister of a beautiful blonde client fiction scene since the Cornishman Sloan Walcott Brenda Brooks ghost, recount- Christopher G. Moore named Brittany Morgan. The sister has accepted Canadian citizenship in 1963. and his quest to ing her failed gone missing after joining a religious Now into his deliver a cam- attempts at cult... of Druids. Both sisters are waiting fifth decade as era to Aung San Suu Kyi, the democrati- finding love. to get married. LaFlam, a devout Chris- a dedicated cally elected leader who has long been Brooks lives on tian, would also like to tie the knot and West Coaster held under house arrest by the junta in Salt Spring Is- settle down. Much of the time LaFlam (only recently control of her country. It’s his 15th novel land. 1-55192-717-9 lives in Seattle in his mind. transplanted to since His Lordship’s Arsenal in 1985. ✍ The novel was favourably reviewed Boundary Bay

0-9687163-6-9 PHOTO Anne Giardini ✍ Hyped as by the Globe & Mail’s Margaret Can- from Kitsilano), very witty and non: “This is a pretty cute story, with a Watmough is COLLINS

A librarian deeply-felt, The Sad Truth About Hap- clever plot, no sex or violence, and char- launching the and journalist piness (HarperCollins $29.95) is a first acters who are a lot more engaging than first novel in a DANIEL David Watmough in Nelson, novel by Anne Giardini, daughter the dogs and cats some authors use as projected Anne of Carol Shields, about family, love, gimmicks. Still, if you’re wedded to the trilogy about Degrace is work, friendship and loyalty. 0-00200-594-8 idea of private eyes who don’t know the life in the city at the dawn of the 21st the author of ✍ first word of the Gospel According to century. Vancouver Voices (Ripple Effect Anne Degrace two photo- Ian Slater is bound to get it right Luke, you may find this one, with his Press, $15.99) is a 168-page novel about graphic books eventually. In Payback eye on heaven and his talk full of Jesus, a gay priest falsely accused of child of the West Kootenay region. Her first (Ballantine $6.99), his tenth just a bit hard to believe.” abuse. According to Jane Rule, “David novel, Treading Water (McArthur & novel to outline a scenario Dewhurst is a pastor in Duncan. Watmough fictionalizes his own life, trying Co. $29.95), is inspired by the tiny com- for the outbreak of World He’s not the first religious leader in on different sorts of parents, different sorts munity of Renata, B.C., fictionalized as War III, terrorist missiles B.C. to write crime fiction. of siblings as well as different sorts of Bear Creek. Ursula Hartmann, the first strike three jetliners filled As a rabbi at Beth Tikvah Syna- experiences. A blatant liar, he tells the real child born at the site near the beginning with innocent people. gogue in Richmond, Martin S. truth: the imagination has many lives. We of the 20th century, is one of several With the United States Cohen published a series of myster- laugh at, we judge, we forgive him and, characters whose lives are recounted already awash in para- ies in the 1990s, as well as Heads therefore, ourselves.” until the town disappears with the onset noia and fear-mongering You Lose (Ekstasis, 2003). 1-894735-09-9 of a hydroelectric dam. Bertie 0805431829 1-55278-526-2 after 9/11, retired-Gen

Ian Slater

29 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 FICTION Three docs prescribe the Troubles, homicide and a global pandemic

orn in 1941 in Blackpool, back into the Troubles with news of the jail breakout at the Maze prison. Lancashire, England, Book 1-894663-99-3 BPatrick Taylor of ✍ Bowen Island was brought up in Roy Innes grew up in Victoria and gained his training as a medical doctor Bangor, Northern Ireland. His birth at the University of British Columbia. While retired on Gabriola Island, he has in England was a result of his father written his first mystery, Murder in the serving in the RAF and being Monashees (NeWest Press $10.95) time about RCMP Corporal Paul Blakemore stationed there. (“Just because in the Monashee Mountain village of you’re born in a stable does not Bear Creek. The discovery of a frozen corpse in a necessarily mean you are a horse.”) snowbank, with no signs of foul play, has international ramifications that merit the Taylor received his medical training intrusion of Vancouver Homicide In- in Northern Ireland and immigrated to spector Mark Coswell into Blakemore’s now! Canada in 1970 to pursue a career in investigations. Add a smalltown coroner, Academic medicine, moving to B.C. in The Vancouver International a feisty female reporter, plus some mad- 1991. Prior to his retirement in 2001 as ness and mistakes, and you’ve got a po- Writers & Readers Festival, Professor Emeritus, UBC, he was head lice procedural with some medical of obstetrics and gynecology at Vancou- October 18-23 on Granville Island. know-how behind it. 1-896300-89-8 ver’s St. Paul’s Hospital for ten years. He ✍ Visit www.writersfest.bc.ca served as editor of the Journal of the So- ciety of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Having seen one of Vancouver’s only for event information. Canada and has written humour, sail- confirmed SARS cases in an emergency ing and opinion columns. ward in March of 2003, St. Paul’s Hos- His first work of fiction, Only pital physician Dan Kalla has imag- Margaret Atwood Thomas King Wounded: Ulster Stories (1997) is a col- ined a mass market thriller in which lection of short stories set during the 30 terrorists use a virus to generate a new Julian Barnes Evelyn Lau years of the Ulster troubles. His first pandemic. The title of this double dose novel, Pray for Us Sinners (2000), por- of post 9/11 paranoia is Pandemic (New Neil Bissoondath Charles Montgomery trayed a violent political group in 1974 York: TOR $10.99). Belfast. Its hero, Dr. Noah Haldane, knows Joseph Boyden Shani Mootoo Earlier this year Taylor’s light-hearted humanity is due for a new killer flu like Ivan Coyote Donna Morrissey medical tale of manners, The Apprentice- the one in 1919. He discovers Acute ship of Doctor Laverty (Insomniac, Respiratory Collapse Syndrome is kill- Lorna Crozier Alice Munro 2004), was short-listed for the Ethel ing one in every four people who con- Wilson Fiction Prize. Set in 1965, in the tract it. The perpetrators are Muslim. Michael Crummey Peter Robinson Ulster village of Ballybucklebo, where Kalla, 38, trained at UBC and sat on a newly graduated Doctor Barry Laverty SARS emergency task force in 2003, giv- Anne Fleming Spider Robinson enters the general medical practice of his ing rise to this first novel. A second medi- eccentric senior partner Doctor Fingal cal thriller is planned for release in 2006. Anne Giardini Audrey Thomas Flahertie O’Reilly and his oddball 0-765-35084-X patients. Camilla Gibb Jane Urquhart Now Taylor is back with Now and at the William Gibson Simon Winchester Hour of Our Alan Hollinghurst and many more… Death (Insom- niac $21.95), a sequel to Sin- Tickets on sale September 19 ners, in which a Vancouver- at all Ticketmaster outlets, charge-by-phone at based character named Fiona 604.280.3311 or online at www.ticketmaster.ca. Kavanagh, who is married to a Info: www.writersfest.bc.ca or 604.681.6330. doctor in Brit- ish Columbia, is catapulted Presenting a world of words on Granville Island Patrick Taylor was recently shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Prize

28 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 BIOGRAPHY Down to the wire

orn in Winnipeg in 1911, Jim Coleman, Canada’s first sports columnist, was the son of D.C. Coleman, President of the Cana- Bdian Pacific Railroad, who would often take Jim and his younger brother Rowan to sporting events via private railway. The kids saw everything from hockey and football to baseball and boxing, but nothing compared to Jim Coleman’s love of horse racing. His love affair with the ponies began at age ten when his aunt took him to Brighouse Park on Lulu Island. "You may be wondering,” he later recalled, “how anyone can get hooked on horse racing at the age of ten or so and then go through an entire lifetime without shaking the habit. It's easy, really. All you re- quire is the spirit of perseverance." Educated in a Victoria private school and McGill University in Mon- treal, Coleman was known by his cronies for his poker playing, his cigar smoking and his drinking—until he had to swear off the booze in the 1950s. He saw the Victoria Cougars win the Stanley Cup in 1925, he saw Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play, he interviewed a young kid named Jackie Robinson before he made it into the bigs and Jim Coleman was ringside when Jack Dempsey KO’d Jack Sharkey. His peerless 70-year writing career entailed stints at the Vancouver Province, Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Bulletin, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail and the Southam Newspaper chain. A recipient of the Order of Canada, Coleman was inducted into Cana- da's Horse Racing Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports and Newpaper halls of fame and the media divisions of the football and hockey halls. His final column appeared on the day he died of heart failure at age 89 on January 14, 2000. ✍ Jim Coleman (1911-2000), Now Jim Coleman has been memorialized by The Best of Jim dean of Canada’s sportswriters. Coleman: Fifty Years of Canadian Sport from the Man Who Saw It All (Harbour $34.95), edited by fellow scribe Jim Taylor, one of his most ardent admirers. The long-awaited anthology of sports articles is illus- trated—making it a photo finish for Coleman. 1-55017-359-6

8 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 INTERVIEW

Peter Such’s energetic novel, Earthbaby (Ekstasis “If I am in any $22.95), envisions a future devastated by way an ideologist, global warming. Technology’s cure is a deep space habitat to be tested by scien- I’m an anarchist.” tists aboard a prototype called Earthbaby. —PETER SUCH The astronauts soon discover that Gen- eral Foreman, the President of the Ameri- can Protectorates (formerly North America), has hijacked their research mission by secretly hiding nuclear weap- ons on board. The novel is narrated from the ground by NASA chief Andrew Tremain, who es- capes assassination by Foreman’s Lifeist forces, and from Earthbaby by crew mem- ber Lillith Shawnadithit, a feminist “psycho- simulacra” researcher. As Andrew and Lillith struggle on be- half of humanity, a bizarre sect called The Regulators is gaining influence in the highly technologized society of 2039. “This is a dystopia,” says Such. “I don’t want this to happen. If it doesn’t happen, I’ll be really, really happy. Ten years from now, I’d like people to say, ‘Peter, you didn’t know what the hell you were talking about.’” Peter Such studied at the University of Toronto in the 1960s under Northrup In the year 2039 Frye and Marshall McLuhan, and alongside Margaret Atwood After a 25-year hiatus, novelist Peter Such has returned to the future and Dennis Lee. Atwood, Lee and with his dystopic view of terrorism and technology run amuck. Such left the university in protest when they weren’t allowed to do a Ph.D. on a Cana- There’s a professor of literature at SUCH: Actually, I’m very good at tech- SUCH: My background was fairly dian subject. Lethbridge University named Robert nology and always have been. In this traumatic. I grew up in an orphanage His best-known novel, Riverrun (1973), Runte, and he looked at an early copy construction work I’m doing, I use ex- essentially, so I could see the tribal dy- concerns the last days of the indigenous of the manuscript and said, “Oh this just plosive bolts and blast them into the namics operating. When you grow up Beothuk people of Newfoundland who fits in with the book I’m writing about floor. But I think I have an essential dif- with 800 boys, age seven to 18, in Eng- were exterminated with the coming of Eu- the difference between science fiction in ference in my approach to technology. land, at the end of the war, when all the ropeans by 1829. Canada to that in the United States and To me, it’s just fun. It’s games. And I people who are the teachers and the ad- Such’s first novel Fallout (1968) arose the rest of the world.” think that is McLuhan’s posture as well. ministrators are shell-shocked crazies… from experiences as a uranium miner BCBW: Did he tell you what typifies The Europeans, particularly the East- But it goes further than that. In cul- near Elliot Lake. His history of the Dorset Canadian science fiction? ern Europeans, tend to see technology tural anthropology—and I am a cultural Inuit and Beothuk is Vanished Peoples SUCH: Well, number as something playful. In anthropologist—there are two main per- (1978). His Dolphin's Wake (1979) is a one, it is much more so- North America, we see tech- spectives: thriller about an archaeologist and his wife cially conscious and less fan- nology as a sacrosanct kind of One is that there is no common hu- who get drawn into opposing the ruling tasy and, number two, the entity, as a religion. But if you man nature, because we are all just junta in Greece. heroes are not Rambo-like. take the posture of the clown, purely a product of culture and circum- Such’s first chapbook of poetry from They may succeed but they then you are in much better stance. It’s a Skinnerian behaviourist- (m)other Tongue Press on Saltspring Is- screw up a number of times shape. You don’t invest in the based notion. The other notion is that land, Their Breath Is The Sky (2003), was before they get there. And nightmare… there is a common human nature and his first title to be published outside of On- they are not inviolable. BCBW: In Earthbaby, the that we are hard-wired to be a certain tario. Also, women are very lead- heroes are the ones who raise way. Interviewer met SARA Sara Cassidy ing characters. CASSIDY themselves out of the tech- My experience, having grown up Peter Such at his home in Victoria, where BCBW: Sounds like nology morass, to act for with 800 boys—where people got beat he and his wife, the artist , Joyce Kline Earthbaby. Why is it important to know themselves. Are you alarmed by how up and killed—was that if you weren’t formerly ran an award-winning bed ‘n’ that you wrote the book seven years ago? much technology is in our lives totally psycho, there was a tendency for breakfast operation. He now works as a SUCH: Because it’s all been coming today? cooperation and a real dynamic of com- renovations consultant and contractor. true! SUCH: Yes. We’re going down a terri- passion. ✍ BCBW: You’ve got global warming ble road, actually. But I’m really against So I believe in the common human BCBW: Of all the dates a futurist nov- turned up high. You’ve got political op- ideology. I’ve been accused in some of nature. I believe that basically human elist can choose, why 2039? pression in the name of anti-terrorism… my writing as being a Marxist but that is beings will love each other and be just SUCH: Because I’ll be a hundred years SUCH: Yes, I wrote Earthbaby before the last thing I am, because any ideol- with each other. old. And I’m going to see how much of the terrorist stuff happened. This is the ogy to me is anathema. I think to cir- BCBW: You raise the issue in Earthbaby it comes true. original manuscript, except for two cumscribe the world, to define pattern, that we always give over power to psy- BCBW: You plan to live to a hundred pages at the end, when they’re flying is very, very uncreative. chologically disturbed, tyrant years old? over New York. In the original [manu- If I am in any way an ideologist, I’m psychopaths.Why do we do that? SUCH: A hundred and four, actually. script], the twin towers still existed. an anarchist. I read Peter Kropotkin SUCH: Because somehow we don’t be- But it’s important to tell you that I wrote BCBW: When the space shuttle when I was young, but that’s because he lieve it’s going to happen. I remember this book seven years ago. The literary reaches Earthbaby, Lillith notes how its studied Siberian tribes, and I was very in- my grandfather saying, “You know, we presses didn’t want it and it was too lit- magnetic arms reached out toward them terested in tribal dynamics. used to laugh at Hitler. We used to go erary for the science fiction people. It’s like “something both loving and deadly.” BCBW: Why are you so interested in to the movies and they had the news- this crazy cross genre thing. How does technology enter your life? tribal dynamics? continued on page 25

19 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 because it’s alwaysmoreauthenticthan young people’s asmuchIcan poetry ally guerillawarfareandItrytoread honest yougotothepoets.Poetry isre- want tokeepourlivesandlanguage don’t meanwhattheyshould.If you true anditturnsoutisn’t true. some ofit’s sowe getconvincedit’s true, some ofitistrue.Ourfriendsbelieve of itisn’t andyet wewanttobelieve true information we get. We know thatalot society. We areover-reacting toallthe sense ofparanoia,whichwehaveinour what’s real. That results inatremendous SUCH: media left. feel larger. Andthere isnoindependent picture windowstomaketheEarthbaby tual realitymodelingandevenprojected ested ininterpreting reality. There isvir- BCBW: cept situationalcontext. society theyarisenotoutofanythingex- leaders spontaneouslyarise,butintribal really, reallyfrightening.No, Imean, people aregettingdegreesinit,thatis these leadershipcoursesintheschools— It isreallyfrighteningformetoseeall anarchist, Idon’t believeinleadership. SUCH: ally trulycomplexandthoughtful. leader thantohaveawhoisre- like we’re more likelytohave avapid arch orsomekindofsaviour. It’s almost things ontohim—whetherit’s apatri- it allowspeopletoprojectallsortsof because General Foreman issovacant, BCBW: people who(prop)himup. the power, ofcourse—there are allthese character. Ireally don’t believeBush is in theoilindustry. What alaughable up theonlyjobheeverhad,whichwas never beenoutofthecountry. Screwed D-minus studentinafraternity, drunk, of,laughed atBush. Asort youknow, SUCH: when Ireadthat. damentalist ChristiansintheStates seriously. Ithoughtofright-wing,fun- Lifeists in BCBW: mark, theDanes screamed withlaughter. penhagen, whentheytookoverDen- marched downthemainstreetofCo- ter.” Andapparently when(theSS)first ing ingoosestepwe’d roar withlaugh- reels andwhenwe’d seethemallmarch- continued frompage19 The languageisbastardised,words Yeah, soyou can’t figure out Well, yeah.Imean, everybody Butbeingfundamentallyan Andrew Tremaine musesthat That’s alsothereaction tothe

INTERVIEW Earthbaby Earthbaby . No onetookthem isalsoveryinter- the WASP market. is aslightlyexoticreadforwhatIcall we getoutofthepublishingcompanies credible peopleinthiscountry, butwhat litically significant. We have allthesein- house] andtheyareallsociallypo- three novelsinthere[pointstowardhis long time,andI’lltellyouwhy—Ihave novel. Ihaven’t beenpublishedfora ously isasociallyandpoliticallyconscious But whatwe’ve beenlackingreallyseri- SUCH: sex infiction? BCBW: cause ofAIDSandallthat. we’re livingthroughaPuritan agebe- about throwingitonthepage.Ithink erotic andsexual.Iamnotheldback ence. AllthepeopleIknow are very, very SUCH: sexualized future? Earthbaby just once—butthereisalotofsexin SUCH: the Regulators? BCBW: approach it. model aroundwhichtheycansomehow tions andcomesupwithsomekindof interprets andre-examinestheseques- fundamental questions.Ithinkeveryage and relatingashumanbeingsoververy and thatyouIaretalkingrightnow mystery aroundthefactweareexisting cept. can’twhich everybody really just…ac- enormous mysteryaboutexistence, I stillhadthisfeelingthatthere’s this believer inanykindofreligion…[but] the real oftheworld.I’m rush notagreat ful andfulfilledbeforeIgetbackinto had tensecondsoffeelingreallypeace- I’ve wokenupafterbeinghalf-dead,I’ve nearly diedseveraltimesandeverytime edge ofmysteryaboutitall. are realornot.Ijustwantedtoleavethis don’t wantpeopletoknow whetherthey highly evolvedcomputergeneration.I model thathasbeencreatedbyavery really existorwhethertheyarejusta reader todecidewhethertheRegulators BCBW: anything you’ll readinthenewspaper. freelance writerin Victoria. Sara Cassidyisastudentand www.abcbookworld.com All BCBookWorldreviewsarepostedonlineat I feelthereissuchanintenselyhuge I guessatthisstageofmylife,I’ve Absolutely. Yeah, Ireally do. Iwritefrom mylife’s experi- Doyouthinkweneedmore The bookjacketmentionssex Canyousaysomethingabout (Laughter) . Are you imaginingamore I leaveituptothe 25 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005 1-894800-57-5 Celebrating 25years! open until10 pm7days/wk 632 West Broadway BROADWAY open until11pm 7days/wk 1051 St Davie DAVIE sun10-6 sat 9-6 8:30am-9pm m-f 550 Granville St GRANVILLE open until10pm 7days/wk 1068 HomerSt YALETOWN open until10pm 7days/wk 1524 Lonsdale NORTH SHORE open until10pm 7days/wk 4444 West 10th Ave UNIVERSITY/PT GREY open until11pm 7days/wk 2388 West Ave 4th KITSILANO NEW!

Vancouver’s independent discount bookseller for 25 years www.bookwarehouse.ca













































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   LETTERS





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big fan of Brian Brett, but I do als can get worked up about in object to having my name our era. I found myself drawn taken in vain. Brian may THINK I said into a confrontation with the fine novel- it, and I can imagine one or two people ist, Audrey Thomas. who MIGHT have said it, but I’m sure I think I made a sympathetic remark Ellen is back, this I didn’t say it. about knowing what it’s like to suffer. JOAN GIVNER Audrey Thomas Audrey retorted from the back of the au- time with literary Galiano Island ditorium: “Brian, you can never know what it’s like to suffer the way women ambitions in... Brian Brett replies: While our exchange have.” To which I said: “You might be sur- was accurately reported perhaps it proves prised.” This annoyed Audrey, who I con- Ellen Fremedon: you can just never provide enough context sider a friend, and she exclaimed: “Oh come in a personal memoir (Uproar’s Your Only on, give us a break.” Verbal sparring matches JOURNALIST Music). I thought it was clear I considered often erupt between writers on contentious my conversation with Audrey a case of issues, so I didn’t think much about it. How- by Joan Givner friends bantering on a political issue while ever, to my amusement, I found myself be- ($15.95 Groundwood) I was moderating a panel on voice appro- ing booed by the strident faction seated a ISBN 0-88899-668-3 priation at a Writers’ Union AGM (which few rows in front of Audrey. I was a hair is why we were on the subject of men writ- away from launching into my abused his- A young adult novel. ing as women). However, it was the boo- tory right there on stage. ing and hissing of the group of women in It was one of the few times I’ve been front of her that was a defining moment smart enough to keep my mouth shut. Be- www.groundwoodbooks.com for me — those strangers, not engaging in sides, I’ve never given much credence to dialogue like Audrey, but making abusive today’s cult of victimology.

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SUSAN MUSGRAVE will be launching You’re In “I can think of no Canadian writer who so Canada Now . . . with bill bissett (northern wild thoroughly positions us in front of the mirror that roses / deth interrupts th dansing, Talon Books) at might offer us at once both reality and the The Big Bang Before the Bash: A West Coast imagined.” — Robert Kroetsch Literary Extravaganza, Dockside Restaurant in the “I think what I most love in Lent’s writing is the Granville Island Hotel (1253 Johnston Street), way it lifts ordinary speech toward lyric without Sunday, October 23 at 4:00 pm. Admission Free. sacrificing its ordinariness.” — Don McKay Musgrave will be appearing at the Ottawa “Landscape, family, art, and the passage of time — International Writers Festival (September 29 to Lent’s fiction concerns these rich themes . . . that October 3); The Vancouver International Writers vital intertidal zone between autobiography and and Readers Festival (October 20, 21, 22); and, fiction, territory that’s been very important in Word On the Street Vancouver (September 25th) modern Canadian literature.” — Cynthia Flood

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36 BOOKWORLD AUTUMN 2005