volume 13 - books in canada · visitable. the main one is fairly duwn-tam, the noted and nohnious...

Volume 13Number 6

smooth But &&y. Clyde Rose is synonymous with book publishing in Newfoundland. By Terry Go/&. . . . . . . . . . 7Fin&y’s People. Timothy Findley’s characters devise new ways to deal with their guilt. By Alberfo Manguel . . . . . . . . .13

suPPL.wENTBo& Show 84. A special guide to the Canadian Booksellers Association Book Show ....................................... S1

REVIEW3WhgD~You~iveSoF~rAwayl,byNormanLevine.................................................................l 6M”&rB&,,e Matb,s, by John-Reeves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I6Bs.~ng:ABiography,byMichselBliss.............................................................................l 7~~dsleEleglrr,byOeorgpBowering;WomsnintheDust,byPatrickLane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19Boo,tofWlerry,byLeo”ardCobe” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..3 1

DEPAR7MEhTSField Notes

The Blue Tower, by MB. Thompson ................. 3BabmcingtheBooks,byGeorgeBowfng . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

E~glish,Our~~,byBobBi~kb~~m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6Interview with Sham Butala. by Geoff Hancock ........ .22Poetry, by Doug Fetherling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24FiratNoveLPbyPmdWikon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

In Translation, byPau/Sfuewe ........................ .30Cookbooks, byDuL?orry Campsu ..................... .31Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..3 3The Edlton Recommend ............................. .33CanWftNo.94.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34Books Received .................................... .34

z EDITOR o Michael Smith MANAGING EDITOR 0 Wayne Grady ART DIRECTOR 0 Mary Lu TamsGENfiRAL MANAGER and ADVERTISING MANAGER 0 Susan Traer

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FIELD NOTESli --==I

C~IE OF THE fw: Stockholmero who diiML cry “II&, h&a, h&a!” 81 me duringlast year’s marathon in the Swdishcapitol was Auuysl Strindberg. All themorz surprising in that the mllte neces-sarily ran past several of the Z&odd ad-drsxc; Imown to have housed thes‘bcdwilled Viki~” during bis life&winvolvement with the city he loved andloathed.

Though Stockholm underwent a hugeIiauu:3mannesque facelift in the 18705,many of those addresses are extant andvisitable. The main one is fairly duwn-tam, the noted and nohnious BlaTomet, the Bhze Toner. in which Striud-berg spent the last four years of his lifeand in which he died in 1912. It’s aL 85Dmmdnggamn (Queen Street) where itcrosses Tegn&gatan, named too for awiter, the Romantic poet Bsaia Te&r(17624846). Why the fourth floor of 8.5Dratn@g&n vas called the BlueTovxr is hard to see now, but Sttindbergthought that it had a tuwerish appear-uncz “ad, I mess, a bluish one, and thename stuck. not least because thosesmngs packed ramblings of his larryear:, the Blue Books, took their namefrom the author’s deem.

In any case. the apanmenl is wonder-fully pnarved. exactly as it was whenSrrindberg lived there. One ascemlsfrom a gloomy lobby in an antique cageelector and is deposited on a smallding kmdmg. You guess a bit, and amarked door yields: there you me.Thcrc’s a little desk, with posters, pust-cards, and a reco~ ($5) of Strbul-b&m comedians reciting in their old;yc - by heart, judging from the fluffs- chunlx of the master that in manycxx they premikrxl. Harriet Bow (histhird wife. r;ho didn’t die until 1961) iscm it, and Falck (who founded Iutbnawatrzn) and the we.s”me Mar iaEchildl:ncch~-Wablgren (who died at 96and mrord.-3 her bits of M&ter Olo/.i’& (Eesler)), aud Fr6ken Julie in 19S8\vhen she w:‘c~ C7).

The ap.xtmenl is ordinary enough,kept in v;orl:iy crder so that you cances 3rindb:rg’s bedroom, bathmom.IivioS mom, and, above dl. workmom.Smbs of pmcil, dried inkpots, scribbled

give- paw: “B. Shaw 8 Albem&leOdns” is one, followed further alongunder glass by letten from O.B.S.. thatunbedwilled Celt in London. Snaps,maps, cartoons, opening night posters,end a Swedish tIag bedeck fhe wall.Bdng in them is a siIly thrill, as thesethings shouldn’t be, but always am.

It’s from one of the maps that onegleans where else Striudberg lived intown. He was born and raised in a rcruf-fy area near the IUara Church, and he’sburied out ncrth, in Nya Kyrkogardennear the Charled Hospital (Kamlinskasjukhuset) on the Uppsala mad, which

he called. iu his last crazy play, sturalandsv@e”, the Great Highway. In be-tween he swooped and phunmel~ed all

can F awidz Ostcrmdm,Narva. The Intimate Theatre was cmNona Banmrget, not far ouL, and in-deed Strindberg kept for the must partfairly dose to the middle of what is notnuw - and certainly was nut then - aparticularly hu,qe metmpolis. When hedid muve out, it was to Ids behwedsFcargard - Lhe skenia, the archipe~outside the city - most often tu tinyICymmendll, ccunmemorated i n suchnavels a s Hem&born0 @apie JHem@ and I havsbandet (Among theSkerrtes, m.nshk.d as By the OpUr Sea).

Most visitors v~ill know best GamlaStan, the OId Town, the medievdStaden mellau bmama, the town be-t~thebridgeal-hiswastheheartof

old Stockholm, and many ofStrindberg’s splendid histurical playsconrain references tu its steep htitingstreets and the Hanseaticeditices. But hepaid leas oblique tribule in books - alasuntranslated - such as Gum/u Stock-holm, and cmmtlesa sketches and essay&.Dazeus of stories have specitic Stuck-hubn settings, and his most famousnovd, R&fa rummet (The Red Room),is a geographical, social, fmancid, andlnteueaual e%p”siticm of 1860s stock-hukn. It centres - as dues its sequel,05tIvka rumm?n (The Oothic Rooms)- on Bern’s restaurant downtown onBemeIii Park and its “Red Rudm,”where the 5tuden@, artists, writers, andmalcontents met to excoriam theirelders, refashiun Swedish art, and makeplain the rough places for the cm&grevolution.

A very small stuue’s throw across thesquare looms another landmark wooed,execrated, and fbmlly pomessed b yStriudberg, Ku”@. Dram&i&a Tea&en,the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Flunkedfrom its‘ portals as an asp* actor,lukewarmly performed as an aspiringp&might, Stidberg lived in lowhatewith this baroque lady too. Only afterhis death dii the mnsaxatiun begin, andwhile Sweden has bred its share of goodplaywrights. the Royal Dramatic is moreStrindbexg’s house than anyone dse’s.One permanent display in the “Id anterooas is of a pmduction of his master-piece, Erlk XIV, complete withcostumw, ti design. photos, memorabilia, and diiorid nota.

Stuckholm wasn’t bnly Stidberg’stown. A wealth of writers bar hymnedand hated it. Strindberg hated CarlMichael Bellman, for that matter, whonever went out of Stockholm in his life,bur wmte, like Machado de Assis ofRio, about the whole world from itsmicmcusm. There are many who wouldthiuk of Bdbnan as the purer writer: Ithink of him as one of the great Bum-pean poets, the Swedish language not-wirhstanding.

Them were in ISth-cennny Stockholmsome 700 pubs, inus. and tavuns for70,000 people., and Bellman very pmb-ably drank in them all. Mudem criticismhas somewhat mudit% the picture ofBellman’s lurching from dram to dram.

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from doxy to doxy, occasionally dashingoff, lllx. Schubert or Bums. a span-taneour ch~d’oeuvre (or m&terverk 85they v:ould prefer to call it). In fact hewas patronized by that most urbane ofkings, Gustaf III. and fit quite comfor-tably into various Icvcls of society.

Bellman’s apogee was the 1770s,thoush publication did not visit himuntil the ’90s. His two great books areFraimans epiwlar and Fredmanssanger,visions of life through his part% alterego. the tavern-crawling Fmdman, andhis 20 or 30 cronies ib a low-lifeStockholm.

“‘D&k UT dit .&z% se DOden pa digvL+ator” says Fredman to old FatherMovitz who is cmaklng of consumption:“Drink down your glass, see deathavwiting you.” He celebrates Mollberg’aparade to the grave of Corporal Boman,rackets and pub-crawls mmtd theislands, and. bnmortalest of all, wakesone morning in the gutter and deliversan epistle “which is the soliloquy whenFredman lay outside the Creep-In tavernover by the Bank of Sweden one sum-mer’s night in 1768.” Beginning by rcvil-htg his parents for the sweet urge that ledto his begetting, and thus to his w&iitremulous in the muck and hangover ofthe Creep-In’s back alley, he modulatesto a glorious gratitude for being alive atall to stagger and creep back in to startthe boo&g day afresh. The best trace ofBellman. now that his pubs have

cratic socialism. Ts his house at 3 UN%dewGnd, a lane in the quarter just a bitbeyond Gamla Stan. It’s only open thefmt Sunday of the month, as I dis-covered when I sallied down on thesecond.

Then there’s that odd fish C.J.L.Abnqvist, public servant. educator ,journalist; man of letters, born in Stock-holm but not able to die there, fleeing toNew York in 1851 from charges ofpoisoning, forgery, and theft. EarlyAhnqvirt could have shamd a depart-ment with Erlk Johan Stagnelius, short-Uved sombre Reau of the Swedishromantic movement, and he certahdyworked for a while on A&nWet, anevening paper that employed Strlndbcrgtoo. The author of The Book 4f theRose (Tern- Bok) and that 1839bombshell Det gar M (On It Goes,translated as Sam Videbak) was eStoekholmer thmo& and through, andthe city permeates his writings as it doesthose of Siwertz and Sllderberg. Blancheand Bo Bergman, and so many others.Their trace& literary and actual, are ubi-aoitous: the city Lives. if nowhere else.tkn in their w&k. _

Stockholm. the Venice of the North? Iprefer to thll of Venice as the Stock-holm of the South. At any rate I lmowwhich one I’d rather run 26 miles aroundat the hclght of a summer’s day.

- M.B. THOMPSON

Ttits IS Tm last Issue of Ewks inCunudu in which the name of WayneGrady appears as managing editor.After 3% years, he is leaving for newadventurer as the manag& editor ofHarrowsmith. Anyone who knowsthe ways of this magazbm rvlll under-stand how sorry wc are to see him go.

A former associate editor of Week-end Magazine, Grady brought toBooks in Canada a’ considerableenthusiasm both for Canadiu writ-ing and for the practice of jour-nalism. He has worked for us atvarious thne.5 as mviewcr, columnist,feature writer, associate editor, andon brief but memorable occasions ascow photographer and actingeditor. He also cared very muchabout the appeamncc of the maga-zine, and played a large part in itsevolution into its present form.

As if that were not enough, Grady

found time to write reviews. mtlcles,and profiles for a number of othermagazines (particularly SuturdcyNight, for whom he was a contri-buting editor) and to edit books.most notably l71e Penguin Book ofCanadian Short Stories and its corn-panion. The Penguin Book ofModem Canadian Short Stories. Hisspecial interest in Canadian fictionhas led him to meet and becomefried with more than a few well-known writers. many of whom havealso become friends of this &&ae.

Of course such devotion to thecause of%antit will be a hard habitto shake., and although Grady is off%cially leaving the staff of Books inCanada we look forward to hi eon-timdng contributions - throughcolumns and reviews - on a less for-mal basis. In the meantime. we wishhim all the best. 0

t~~v~~~w~x’sthought that I wesprcttynaive about the busbms of writing andbmadcasting. In fact, I believe that youhave to be rather naive if you want tocod up being a writex of any kind,whether a poet or a philosopher or asports writer. all of which I can rcmem-bcr aspiring to. I have always thoughtthat the people I worked for or withwere a lot smarter and wiser than I was.Magazine editors. radio producers.crltics, even the people who come to theairport to meet me when I am tmvellingon lecture and reading tours. I used tothink, though not so often any more,that the world I was ++I@ into was alot more experienced and wise than 1was. If it has been around longer than 1have, it must know more than I do.

SoasfarasIcouldsec,thecriticsandthe book reviewers must be older andmom kaowledgeable about their tradethan any new titer eould hope to be.They must be the cIdcm that a youngwri@r hopes to please a little and learnfrom a lot. That’s what I thought; andlatex that’s what I wished. In Canadaone might as well wish that one could gointo a book store and fmd a clerk whoknows as much about books as a shoeclerk knows about shoes.

But when I was still a pretty youngwriter, I surprised myself by getting ajob as thcatre reviewer for the CalgaryAlbei-mn. Of course I went into theediting room believing that everyonethem was a grizzled Runyan and I was aseared boy from the sticks. Then I sawthe Albertan’s system for book review-ing. Them was a big mund table in themiddle of the room, and in the middle ofthe table a heap of books that had comein for review. Anyone working there,feelin ao urge to write a book review,cocld lift something fmm the table andgive it a uy.

In the many years since that eye-opener, I have heard similar stories frompeople who have worked at daiUcsaround the country. Then are, ofcourse, exceptions, such as the rcdoubt-able Globe and b&U, but perhaps somereaders are old enough to remember thatin the 19605 the Globe and MatI had awhole magazine section on books, justlike the New York ?%nes, you cnder-stand. Even our ternpI= have felt the ef-fects of spiritual hard times.

,

In a lecture he gave quite aomk timeago, and published as a book called 3%Well-Tempered Critic, Ncmthmp Fryemade what would seem to the naivemind a temperate suggestion that a

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country might train and prepare itscritics and reviewers with as muchretiousneis as it prepares its engineeraand military cooks. Maybe OUT univer-sitia could be encouraged to educatesome young literate people in the pra-3tice of book reviewlog. giving a course inthe history of the subject, complete withvarious examples of competent and evenexccht documents fmm the past. Amethodology could be introduced.perhaps besinning with the admonitionthat the reviewer read the book to be

by the &me author, maybe even otherbooks in tbe Geld.

Spmkllg personally, I can say that thefew cscellent reviews of my own bookshave hem highly appreciated by theirauthor, and have aroused the old pleas-ant feeling of my naivetd. The beatreviews have encouraged me to go backto my work with a changed idea, withthe determination to correct faults anddevelop strengths. I am not kidding.Neither am I refening to rhose rarenotices tbat announce my brilliance.They are olcer thao.the ona that urge

foi as ihat co&der such thingsss the argomeat and context of thebool:. its intentions, as the school-teachers used to say. and its use of_.IuylW.

Like a lot of ~eoolc I always got a

school report card that alleged that I wasnot worklog up to my capability. whenthe schoolteacher was moonlighting as abook reviewer for the local newspaper.she always said that the author in qua-tloo was not in sofftient control of bllmaterials. Now, I have laboored forpm to fti a serious method thatwould trtkct my view that one shouldnot be in control of bis materlals. I amnot charmed by such quick dismissals ofmy literary belief.

In rreent times I have been pestered bythose reviewers who resent the author’s“interjecting” himself between thereader and the story. A second’s refle*tion would produce the thought thatthere was no story there before theauthor came along iatNdiog. I supposethat it ls unappealingly naive to expectthe Canadian reviewer to know morethan the book’s author does, but I donot tbll it unreasonable for thereviewer to understand the author’spoint, and even to dllss its merits,befoE abjuring it.

In a lot of discipliner the tyro isjudged by bls elders, and if he has thekbtd of gift that willsbake and renew thediscipline, .he will prevail while learningto anneal his blade. But in Canadianbook rev&b@ it is normal for a vetemnpoet, for example, to be revlewed’inquite highly regarded publications by areoreseotative fmm the horded of post-

teen veniflcrs. I myself used to dokllometres of reviews on books by myelders and masters. And now that I amao elder, perhaps it is my duty to reviewthe young poets, at least to prove mypoint and redress the balance. But I havedecided that I have contributed enoogbreviews to my nation. Isn’t that a wmm-dram? Will we always have tbc ooleam-ed judging the leanwdl

Not if we can somehow eoact Noah-rap Frye’s dream, or implement hisrational argument. Looking intocultural history, or any kind of history,we judge a civlllzatlon’s worth by thequality of its arts. The arts become dur-able and fine when they are passedthmogh the fn of criticism that risea tomeet them. Writers sod painters acrossthe mlmtry tell me often of their dismn-tent that they send work out to ears sodeyes that do not work = bard.

I call oo universities and colleges todiscontinue half of their almost bmu-merable creative writing courses, andreplace them with courses in bookreviewing. I urge the papers and maga-dnes of Canada to demand as much oftheir book mvlewers as they do of theirlayout desigoers and office fondtore.

I may be naive, but I think it is pos-sible to create a book reviewer. If we canput a mechaolcal arm in space, we canpot a crltlcal eye in the Regina Lwder-Pmr. --omRoEBowERme

d

Although she was an independent and very private woman,Mary Cassatt’s letters, like her enormously popular Impressionistpaintings, are Hled with revealing details about the culturalscene of 19th~century Paris, her fellow a$ists, her family, and~herself. Over 200 lettars, most never before published, chronicleher entire-and are exhaustively foolnoted to ldentirypersons and events discussed. In each chapter lntmduction,Nancy MowllMathaws sets the scene for the correspondence asshe examines the soclal, political, and culhoal contexts of theletters. Fll lllus~tlons, in&ding ’rare family photographs, make this g_

tings, prints, andook a visual treat. A cb~n-

z!x%CTannotated bibliography, list of s-s,

camp ate this beautifully pmduced volume, a must forI-ofartandarthlstory.

CfWWrT ArdD HER CIRCLESELECTED LETTERS

Edited by Nancy MowlI Mathews50 illustmtions, 360 pages, 6 x 9*

clothbound, ISBN o-89659-421-1 $2.5.00

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Tba cansdlan opera company417 Queen’s amy w.Toronto, OntarioCanada. MW IA2 .(416) 363-s67i(416) asamai SubscriptIon Offlee

ENGLISH, OUR IWGLISH

Your missing something if you favdurconvention over logic: its quite clear that punctuators

must proceed ‘according to sense. . .‘.

By BOB BLACKBURN

THE QIJESIION of whether the ptiodgoeJ before or after the closing quota-tion mark is one on which I disagreewith vbtudly all the editors I know.They think nothing of shiftlog a cm-rectly placed period fmm the outside tothe insiie for no mason other than thatit looks better.

It does look better. what’s more,especldly to the North American eye, itlooks tight, simply because it hasbecome the umventlomzl form.

Fowlcr, who prefers to call quotationmarks inverted commas, has this to my:

“There are two schools of thought,which mlgbt be called the conventionaland the logical. The conventional prefers to put stops witbln the lwertedcommas, if it can be dbne without am-biguity, on the ground that this has amore pleasblg appearance. The logicalpunctuates accordmg to sense, and putsthem outside except when they actuallyform p&t of the quotation.”

Fowler of course favours the logical.He allows that in some constructions(e.g., where logic would require a periodon each side of a qu&tioo mark) “logicmust respect app-.” But he saysin condusion, “the conventlo~~al systemflouts common sense, and it is not easyfor the plain man to see what merit it hasto outweigh that defecr; even the morepleasing appearance claimed for it is notlikely to go unqueSioned.”

The heart of the problem ls to befound in the phrase I’. . . if it can bedone without ambiguity. . . .” (Notethat Fowler ls merely descrlblng the con-vention, not cmukming it.)

There are many editors who will exa-clae that sort of discretion. Then aremany more, though, who will not; whowill blindly follow the convention nomatter what damage it wreaks on thesense of the text. To license the condi-t ional noutlng of rules $3 to invitetrouble, but the majority of publishersdo it. They are like the benightedteachers who w their pupils that spd-llng and grammar don’t matter as longastbeycangetthelrideasacross,thereby b&sting the world with a generationof people who follow every statementwith “You know what I mean?” Usuallythe appropriate reply is no.

Cosmetic punctuation (my own termfor what Fowlen calls conventlooafJboth- me chiefly because it is illogical,but I use it in most of my writing, know-lng that correct punctuation is certain tobe changed, possibly in a way that willpervert my meaning. If it must hewrong. I prefer to make it wrong in myown way.

I cannot think about punctuation forlong without getting around to theapostrophe, w&b is probably the mostwidely and frequently misused of all themarks. Perhaps this is because it has thetwo quite dlstlnct major functtons of in-dicating the posscrsive and of replacingmissing letters in contractions. I haveseen conscientious newspaper edltorsbecome quite drmated by the frustra-tion of being unable to train theiremployees to remember that it’s is a con-traction of il b and its is the possessive.Thll ls surely the simplest of distlnotlons. yet the paga of our dally news-papers are riddled with examples of thberror.

It’s getting worse. I knw a reporterwho had a B.A. in English from an ex-cdlent university, who had a full careerin newspaper work, and who reachedntbxment age without ever grasplug thefact tbatyou’re. not your. is the contmc-

_ tion of you are, and that the possessive ls

ymus, not your’s Bvery day I see fheir’sand her’s and the like ln print. Evenworse is me use of ‘8 to foml the plural.The authors of signs, posters. andmenus are among the worst offenders inthis as well as in the ridiculous misuse ofquotation msrksz Your miwing some-thing if you haven? tried our “home-mud&’ pie’s und errke’s!l!

Gawd!!! 0

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PROFILEI

Like it or not, the flamboyant presenceof Clyde Rose has become synonymous with

book publishing in Newfoundland

By TERRY GOLDIE

m q owi-irov/?i St. John’s there is a building called the Murray Not that Breakwater can’t play typical publisher when itPremises. It’s the sort of thing seen around tbe world - en old wants to. At the gathering for Part of the Mdn - an iUu.vwerehouse turned by gentrif~tion into a terribly tasteful tratcd history of Newfoundland and Labrador by Peter Nayshoppiog mall. The stores in it are also as one might expect: a and Patrick OWeherty - there wes a message from theflorist’s, a shop with all the right fondtore, and a smell book premier and the presence of assorted dignitaries (bxlodingstore. the retail outlet for Breakwater Books. Lest December Roger Simmons, soon to be one of the more short-lived federalthere VW a friendly g&&g there to launch a new Break- cabinet ministers). And, of course, the usual baogers-on -water novel, Low Mm by Oildea Roberts, end to promote a academics and artsy types - the usual cheese, and the all-too-few other of tbe more recent Breakwater books. usual wine.

It cas the night before Christmas, and more then a few wea- ll :d Part 4f the Main wastora \yere stirring. And

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adropoftbecreahuel * touted throughout the

press as “Our 400th An-was to be bad, too. ifyou could find pubEshaClyde R o s e -ad h imagic, ever-repkoishblgmm bottle. There wasalso come good old tra- ;ditiod Newfoundland ;music by the BreakwaterBoys, one of whom was IPat Byrne, secretary-treossureroftheBre& 1 [j@ .- ’

niversary Book,” tomark 1583. when Hum-

water board. By the endof the festitities, when i!:there were plenty ofdrops in all of tbe crea-tares, Byrne had donneda Sante Claus suit andwas seremiing the shoppen Gth ao accordion.

That’s one exam& ofbook launching, New-foundland s ty l e . -IAnother was the partyfor Doogles Hill’s novelThe Sewizd mp, held I

# tot$inz :;;::nz Lb x. 1% sometimes iiveg. Port RI& Gutnchmt and C&de Rae2 ISimm is about 100 kilometres from St. John’s, “up theg southern shore” (a mabdender who checks the map will f&: tbat this in fact looks to be “down,” but to expl& this wouldp take e treatise on the NewfowuUend-centred world view) and a

phrey oibert &bnedNewfoundland for Bri-tain. But it was alsoknown by Breakwater BStheir 10th anniversarybook, and it show justhow far they have comein those 10 yeas.

In 1973 five professamin Memorial University’sEnglish department -Rose, Byrne, Pittman,Dick Buebler. and TomDawe-gottogetbertoform a pub- com-pany. AU except Boehkxwere native Newfound-landers , and alt had.become very coocetnedwith the absence of New-foundland material inprint. Their reection wesan anthology, E&&s ofthe Wind and Tide.

*here is more than aslightly emateor look. .

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about Burfflcs. Its most notable feature cao oe sommea up 111en adjective often used to ducribe &.wfoondlend and New-foundlanders: feisty. The preface, by Rose, begins with a0attack on Parley Mow&, but then twos to praise:

s good, wild time was bed by all. The Port Rbwanites, seated atE the rickety tab& in the church hall, treated it like a slightly8 spzcial version of the Saturday &bt ‘%me.” A local group

5played tr&bional and country-and-we&em music, and PatByrne was tbere Spain, this time singing an oft-requested

g ballad io the traditioml style, The Rocks of Mereshem,”g penned by poet and vice-president of tbe Breakwater board,2 Al Pittmao.

The decade of the sixtia blossoms with literature about New-foundland by Newfoundlanden. . .Da4y, yovly wrilas aresprouting. For the firsf time in our history our children areenjoying writing poems about thcmrclva. In my schooldaysreading poetry was. Uke smoking, a furtive activity. Mowat’stwo-fold wntribution is that he initiated a literary movementEn;s;-cctcd us toward thesounxs - thelmd end thepcOPle.

Co.ming this fail:

PO Box 101 Station “p” L%%uo, Ok MSS 7% ’ (416) 783-5753

Sims then, Breakwater has done along, with a few ups anddowns, in a reasonably constant expansion. Pittman recallsthat the original intention was to create a “small literary Lidof thin& a book at a time.” But it wasn’t long before it got

to Set into largkvolume. paperba&s. with Wi//iwuw, -afuturistic thriller by P.S. Moore. “The mass market gives meno pk!a&IY.,” was Rose’s Eomment on the affair.

Not so long ago. some bdieved that such questionable ven-

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twer were leading toward the demise of Breakwater, and a fewof the Breakwater authors were vocally upset about royalties,contmcts, and a number of other issues. Much of the fusscould be assigned to the usual testy relationship betweenauthors and publithers. but that amount of smoke would so&Se& e bit of flame somewhere. A story on CBGRadio added abit of gasoline. Then all stopped. Not a spark to be seen.

Rose points out that Breakwater has shown a profit for thelast four years - wbiih would date right afbz the kesfuffle.He also asserts that all royalties are up to date. and that allcontracts have been bonoured. AU of the authors from thatperiod who were cantacted have said that they have no corn-plaints. The best description would probably be satisfied butnot happy.

PART OF THE problem is Rose himself. To call him a New-foundland version of Jack McClelland would not be farwoo.9. when Breakwates began, Rose, as pmaidmt and pub-lisher. decided to take a leave of absence fmm his teach&posit&n. A few years lat.61 he resigned, and from then &Breakwata and Rose have been synonymous. Byrne and Pitt-man remain on the board but, as Pitt& says, Qydc make3the decisions.” Rose is so closely identified with his companythat opinions about the one are invariably shaped by opinionsabout the other.

Before Breakwater. Rose w~(1 best known locally as an.actor, a role he continues to play when he apwars with Patand Joe Byrne and Baxter War&am. They per’fono the musicand he doa a fv recitations. Not that he can’t join in on thetunes when the mood hits him. A few years ago. when tbcBreakwater Boys were makin. a large number of appearances,tbcy featured an octogemuian Newfoundland fiddler, RufusGuinchard. Breakwater also rekasetL,a mfording of Guin-chard’s music. There on the back cover, in a still from PeterGmwski’s short-lived television series, are Gmwski and Guin-chard -and Rose playing the spoons.

Tlds continuing flamboyant presence hap meant that“evmyone knows Clyde.,” but that not a few are put off byhim. There is a beer in F+avfoundland Dominion Ale, thatdti to be “a Newfoundland tradition” and uses televiskmads with folksy themes. In some of them Rose, the actor,appears in rubber boots and watchcap as what a semioloSistmight call an ultimate si.@%r of Newfoundlamiiity. As aresult of this a number of locals refer to Rose with the samephrase aa that claimed by the beer, “the old smootky with thehearty tlavour.”

Such a remark is likely to come as part of an attack on “pro-fessional Newfoundlanders,” a term snidely applied to wham-ever the speaker feeIs makes too much of his seafar& Toots.The speaker is usually a native Newfoundlander. often some-

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one professionally involved io Newfoaodhmd culture, whofeels that certah~ Newfoundlandem - and ~ictdarly Rose -just “play the part” a bit too math.

There caa be little question that Rose is iaclined to thedramatic effect. Some of his comments about Newfoundlandand himself aa a Newfoundlander are at the very least hypcr-bole. But he is honestly proud of his background, and of hisfather’s life as a fshenaan in an isolated outport on the southcoat. Now Rose Iives in Portugal Cove, oace an outport butsow more accarately described as a bedroom wmmaaity forSt. Joha’s. But there. ia the hnrbour, is hh boat. Aad it is notan overly romantic vision to say that when he is at book fain inBologna or FranktIm, playiag big publisher, a good part ofhim is back in “the cove ”

Representative of the &e he plays - or the life he lives -might be Rose’s b&dour at the Second ?lnp launching. PortRirwao is a “real” outport, aad many of the “professionalNewfoundlanders” from W. John’s, regardless of theii pedi-grees, seemed as out of place there as any mainlander. Theoarw solit neatly behveea the aroao from St. John%. a&a asif th&~wre at &y other co&ail party, and the lo&Is, sittingat the tables with their beer.

Rose was able to move easily behvem the camps. A numberof the locals remarked oo “what a ides fellow that Mr. Roseis.” Toward the end of the evening he brought oat an actor-dion and, as a musician friend of his noted. “Clyde doesn’tkaow maay notes. but nobody csa play with his kind ofspirit.” As the party wound down in the earlv hours of therhomIng, Rose tbokhis accordion and led a c&d ia a paradearound the harboar. When the sun came UD. he was to be seensitting on the rocks looking over the wate.;..

BOBB’S PEBFOB~~NCZ as t h e archcty@al Newfoundlanderwould not be so importam if it were not aa essential part ofwhat B&water has become: the closest thing to a majortrade publisher in the Atlaatic region. It is rapidly becoming amajor educational publisher as well.

Breakwater has made periodic preteasioas to rep&emAtlantic Canada, bat so far its emphasis has been on New-foundland. One partial reasoa would seem to be that mostwdtsrs la the Ms&mes appear satisfied with ceatral Canadianpublishers. while few Newfoundland authors of any staturehave not made at least some appearance through Breakwater.Breakwater’s biggest success to date is a very Ne\jouadlsndbook, the Dicdomny qf Nmfoundlmd En@h. Elsewhere itis published by the University of Toronto Press. aad oo themainland and throaehout the world it is beinn marketed aswhat it is - a careful, scholarly work, the product of some %years of research. But in Newfoaadkmd it was given the kiadof emphasis usually reserved for ao American best-seller. Thehyps bithe book stored was kemendoas, with Rose appearingOIL television to urge Nswfoundlsademto give a gift of theirheritage.

Rose’s arrangement with II of T Press weot beyoad simpledistribution. He oaid for the books directly to the winter. aadthey had the B&kwater name on the d&jacket: Rosebays,“It is such a strongly regional book that people aatarallyassociated it with Breakwater. If a man ia Plscentia buys it, hewants it to be a Breakwater book.”

Such strkleat regionalism may stick in the craw of a numberof people, but it ia the motivating force for Breakwater and forRose. Breskwater’slargcst independent effort byfarisP& crfIhe Main. the illustrated history of Newfoundland. Rose’sstated I&XIII for publishing it isuirc simple: “It is rhe book .whii @es a &ture of who we really are.”

Now Rose is aoandinn his o&are. in an u&ration of anumber of coon&as Gthat %e.” -Some arekitb the Mari-time% Rex& the various Atlantic -ems have decidedto put more o-f their textbook m&y into the haads of local

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oublisbers. and Breakwater is trying to get ar bii a share ofihat pie OS possiible.

The Mtitime Provinees Education Foundation (MPBFJrepresents an attempt by the three Maritime provinces- NovaScotia, Nw Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island - to puttheir dollars together to increase their purchasing power foreducational mat.zials. Breakwater had hoped that Newfound-land would be btvolved, but the government decided to stayout. For a publisher with a desire for growth, it is an irritatingexample of one more time when what could have been “AtIan-tic Provinces” remabts “Maritime Pmvinces.” Rose’s remedyhas been to create Breakwater Maritimea in Halifax. Break-water Maritimes has already put in a tender on one MPBFbook, Mutitime Smfie.9, which d require 32,000 copier in1937.

As with many publishers, education is the bread and bullwfor Breakwater, with the exception of such happy surprises asthe Dichmy. Rose seems M have an honest intaest in thearea, as seen in Bqfflcs, which was or&idly intended to makeup for the absence of regional material that Rose recalla fromhis boyhood schooling in Burgeo. But Rose’s main love is thetrade side, a preference that has led to expansion on otherh.XiZOflS.

“The ldnd of book we’re after,” he says, “is a book thathas some cultural worth, eminently valuable in the refkctionof a certain people.” To date that has been primarily New-foundlanders. but the interest is aettbm waler. &bough it has

yet to extend to central Cana& “I tbb& the southernCanadian is an American - or very close to it.” He sees his‘%zermin pwple” - Newfouddlandera - not in the context ofCanadians but of noribemers: “The sensibility of the New-foundlander. and of people from the Northwest Territories orthe Yukon, is more in tune with the Nordic countries than,say. soutkem Ontario or B.C.”

Which is the reason for hi in-t in a work like Oil ma’Amule& an account of the Imdt Circumpolar ConfereneCheld last July in Frobisher Bay. It represents the first work inBreakwater’s Arctic and Northern Life Series (the next will ben history of wh!rhaling in the tic), and perhapweflects thesuccess of Bre&vater’s FolkloreiFolklife wrier. “Success”might be too general a term, as botb quality and sales of indi-vidual tith have varied neatly, but they have been consistent-ly carefully presented lni ve~~attmtiie format. The cmmeotion created by the series has made for an interesting contimd-ty in what would otherwise be a disparate grouping of reprints

and academic e&ograp-&; and s&g colleo

In other words, a fine example of what a sharp, culturallyand commercially aware publisher can do. ‘We are where weare because we have been very agressive,” says Rose. “Wehwe always given equal importance to the business side of ouroperation.”

BUT. AND THBRE is always that but . . .Besides the usual typos that plague any publisher, Lotus

Man has a quite severe error in printing. The end of onechapter has been transposed onto the end of the prwiowchapter. The novel is “modem” enough in form that many

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readers might not notice the ircnspositio”, and Rose hasdecided that with 3,000 copies in print ha will leave it. Hardlythe reaction of a major publisher.

Of Pm-l of the hfain Rose says, “I knew that we had to do itright - get the best printer in the land, the best editor in thekmd. and naturally we are tbe best publisher: The “bestpublisher” would not accept a” crmr Iikc the one that occursin Lows Men, but a good small publlshcx - one that mustmake choices - might. Breakwater has “cw reached six full-time staff, with a” annual twnwer of about $500,000. Thisrepresents a slgnlfxant growth fmm the earlier days, bet it isstill difficult for such a small operation to acbicvc the ccmplcxproduction seen in Par1 qf lhe Main and yet maintain a hiihquality throughout its large and dlparate list. Some of themcrc “minor” titles have a” appcaranee that scum closer tothe Breakwater of swan or eight years ago than to the Break-v;atcr of Per1 of rhe Afain and the Diclionmy.

Breakwater has a clear sense of its gccgmpbiial and politicalfocus, but “ot as much of what ldnd of book it should bedoin. - books for the connoisseur of regional literature or forthe coffee table. Thus, at times, its fiction and poetry seem tobe ptbzg short shrift. But, as Pillman points wt. bc has notstuck with Breakwater as a writer simply b&use he is on thehoard. He has had offers from mainland pubUshers, but he

i” terms of distribution ani rcprcsantatio”.Another writer - Douglas ‘Hi - who is much more at

am?s length fmm the operation, agrees. Hi believes thatdistribution of his novel has been BP good as he could have cx-pectcd. and the myaltics cvcn batter. Still, it doesn’t maa” hewas totally satisfied: “A scmitivc authcr probably would havewalked off the wharf.”

The problem faced by all the Brcak”wcr authors is that sc

much is dependent on communication with Rose. Hill saysthat he was eonfused about Brcakwatcr’s intentions with hismanuscript until he found out it WBS ahxady at thetypwcttcr’s. As Pittnmn says, “Clyde makes the deckions,”but some authors seem to have had difticuky ascertainingwhat those d&ions wcrc.

Rose has developed a very able statan. that has bee” ready tostick with Brcakwatcr through thin as well as thick. Themanaging dllr, Lois Penny. is often mentioned by Break-water authors as making a m&r positive contribution to tbcircxpcrimcc with the company. But. like the board, the staffstems at lcast at o”crunwc from the major issues. Most qws-tions draw the respcnse:~“You’U have to ask Clyde.”

There seems little question that Breakwater will continue,part& because of its recant fumncial success and partly becauseof its obvious porendal Ln the burgeoning cducclioncl ticld.No other publisher in the AIlantic region is batter prcparcd tomeat schools’ needs.

But a much more important reason is Rose himself. Pittmanrecalls the years of fmncial difficulties: “Clyde could havegiven up at any tbne and walked away from it proud of whathe bad done. I know what he eaczificed, fiiclally and per-sonalIy, to keep it going when it jwndd have been much moresensible to Let it p.”

It is inconceivable that such a dramatic personification ofthe Newfoundlander as Rose will ever be accaptable to all pcc-plc. And it is inevitable that any operation as dependent on thecner@es, the intaests. and cvcn the prrjudiees of one “oIdsmoothy” will have a numba of miscues or even worse. ButNewfoundland, the Atlantic. and perhaps Canada would bemuch poorer without Breakwater. In order for it to continue,we should all be happy to accept a bit mcra of “the heartynavour.” 0

TatterhoodRobln MullerT&erbacd Is his dramatic retellingof a” old fairy tale about two sisters.

opposite OF the wildTatterhood. But when a” evil pack ofwitchessteals Bellndaeway. It is

o”t to rescue her.ordcrlOl4 _-

Balloon Tree No Coins, PleasePhoebe Cillman Gordon Korean

When Princess Leora’s father Is away.her mean uncle plots to lmprlson herand becomekl$ hImselF. tiemanages to destroy all her balloons.which are the only means by whichshe can war” herfather. FrIghtened.but determlned, she embarks on adesperate quest.0rclcr#0l0 Sl4.95H/C

Korman at his best1 Agaln. this youngauthor. whose novels havesoldalmost a mllllon copies, has crafted atale full of actlon. humour andsurprIseI Here IS thestory of Artle.behlnd whose innocent Face lies theheart of a consummate hustler.

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IZATURE REVIEW

The characters in Timo%y Findle& astound& collectionof stories never question what happens to them.

Instead, thy devise new ways of dealing with their guilt

Dinner Along the Amazon, byTimothy Findley, Penguin, 3.56 pages,$6.95 paper (ISBN 0 140073 043).

WE AnvAI~ AnawE too late or too earlyin Timothy FindIey’s stories. The eventhas already taken place, or will takbplace sometime later, once we have leftthhcEagc, or perhaps it will never take

“Sometime - Later - NotNov,~~ is the title of one of the stories inDinner Along lhe Amawn (which is oneof the first four titles in Penguin’s newPenyin Short Fiitioa series), and thetitle fits almost all piecea in this brilliantbook. ” . . .Th&e am no beghmings, noteven to stories,” aliw PindIey in“Losers: Findem: Strangers at theDoor.” “There am only places whereyou make an entrance into someoneelse’s life and either stay or turn and goaway.” This sense of distant continuity,of solidity in all of Findley’s work, lendsrzality to the world he portrays. Hiscbamcters have lives of their owl, livesthat come from a past we, the readers,are not asked to witness, and drifttoward a future we are not invited tosham. Their histo@, vrhieh ia also thehistory of Fiidley’s obsessioos, is takenfor mted.

The baclciekgrouad of Pindky’s world isours, hovJcveG it is Imown to us, itsfeatures are commoll to our ocperienoe.Suburbia in our time, the world wars inour sbamd past: this chosen backgroundenjoys the prestige of “having happeaed.” of being true to life. Thereader’s disbelief is suspended from thevery start: of course these houses exist,

E of course the war took place - and the

%reader is then left to wander in the mazehe has accepted as real. But now comea

% the realization that the backgmuod isZ not the focus of our attention. Against2 it, in mid-speech, ia mid-action, we seeg Fiodley’s people. They are al\mys occu-I pied, a goup obsessed with collecting2 whatever evidence about themselves is0 available - photographs, childhood8 memories, souvenirs in cardboard boxesS- trylog to uaderstaad their world.

By ALBERTG kC4IVGUEL

Suddwdy the landscape is queatioa&sod the reader is made to question itwith them.

Chekhov (whom Findley mentions inIds introduction as another writer par-sued by obsessions) proceeds in the samemanoes: setting up 811 acceptable worldand peopling it with characters who failto understand it. The reader then joinsthe characters ia the investigation of theStOW.

One of the finest stories in this colle~tlon, the macabre and moving mastei-piece that lends its title to the book -“Dinner Along the Amazon” - isremarkable because of the many ways in

pertinent to the monologue of each ofthe otbers; one tong sentence desclibblg

.or the present or, the

tam which 6 the mind. peopled with

rnn landscape, I$ a boocthey bad aU- fmm wbmb one of their voices

began to quote aloud.”Their voices: the plural reveals

another aspect of Findley’s people. Theyare a conglomerate., a group functioningas one single being, each part unable todetach itself fmm the others, each how-ever keeping its individual face, and yet

which ‘it explores the paradox of thereader joining forces with-the fictionalcharacters to solve the riddle of theircommon world, a paradox illustrated byone of the cbamcta, Fabiana: “Shebegan in the middle of some interiormonologue that perhaps bad occupiedher for some time - which yet seemed

deppndiog on the others for survival,SllffCri~ the others’ misfortuae4 andfears. Everytbiog is shamd, and yet thecbarac.ten stiu fed lonely, Ii!&? Siamesetwins/each &&ii a different Ian-gIlage, each with his own memory.“Adult loneliows,” says FindIcy “is theloneliners defined by remembmnce.”

http://www.inscroll.com/search0_bic.asp?begCount=1&choice=A&word=Timothy+Findley

Eval when a charaaer suads infreeing himself fmm the knot of his feI-ha beings (as does the Snovr Whitemaid in “About Effm”). his influence isstill felt by the rest of the group. “Idon’t know how to begin about BffE,”rays the child narrator @egimdw, as isusual io Fmdley, o&r the fact), “butI’ve got to because i think you oogbt toknow about her. Maybe you’ll meet herone day, and then you’ll be glad I toldyou all this. If I didn’t, then maybe youwouldn’t know what to do.”

There seem to be two ways of eoteringFindley’s workk tbmogb the eyes of acharacter whose reactions WC follow(“Lemonade.” “‘About Effie”), or onOUT own, with no interpreter (Y-IeUoChecverland, Goodbye,” “ D i n n e rAlong the Amaran”). In both cases thediscovery of this world comes as asboc!:: we thought we knew it so well,and it is never what we expected. In mostcases - unlike EffE - the charactersshare the shock and fail in their effortsto make sense of what ” happening:tbeii struggle, their pwnnate trying,makes the stories.

In FmdIey’s world there is always astregsle. a rar going on: historical orsocial, political or pe~onal, a combatwhose ends are not knowa. The warmeans different !hlngs to different char-acters; %a? is the name given to themachineries of fate. For Hatper (in“Lemonade”) war is a dream that hassilenced hi father; for Neil (in “Wa?‘)it is a broken promise about skating. In

“Hello Chewerland, Goodbye” it is astrict code of social graces, fought as ab-surdly and pathetic@ as the kind ofwr fought with yns.

To survive in this world. Fiodley’scharacters perform rihmls we. as read&sare ma& to observe: Harper’s morningcal;ening before he is allowed to kiss Idswast@ mother; Neil’s escape iato thehayloft to punish his father for betrayal;T.S. Eliot distilliog words fmm his wifeVivienne in “Out of the. Silence”; EzraPound pursing in his cage the si. ofvisionary poeuy in “Daybreak at Pii.”Some perform the+2 rituals as imitationsof life, as Annie Bogan does io “TheBook of Pins.” Others, especially thechildren, performthem to fmdaplaceinthe vvorld of adults.

For Fiodley’s cbiklma the world hasalready happened: the laws and reasonsthat governed its constraction have beenforgotten, and what faca them oow is

an inmmprebensible the&e stage. Hereactioos are mistaken for other actioos,and aU intentions seem wrong. A poem- reminikceot of Stevie Smith’s “NotWaving, Drowning” - introduces%osen: Pindersz Strangers at theDoor”:

Some liveren? only seenItmugh windowbewad whichfhe rrmemmceof lmlghbf~timmmmtw

The confusion of appearances pro-vided a key to most of FmdIey’s stories.In “Lemonade” Harper canoot under-stand why his mother lets her beauty dieaway and imagines that the jewels shehas sold can restore her lost grace; in“War” Neil takes his father’s enlistmentas an aa of unfaithfulness; in “ThePeople on the Shore” the narratorassmw that a dying woman’s lastglance is a revelation. After the confu-sion come4 tile disappointment: thejealo.uy, the rage of unkept promises,the disenchantment. “Dbmer Along theAmazon” is thickly layered with this s+qoence the characters build their hopeson their assumptions, fall from grace,and rise again, in a seemingly everlastiagpattem.

&c-apse their assumptions are mis-taken, their lives are never fulfilled. In“Sometime - Later - Not Now”

delicate balance maintains the socialsmxtore. Only the present coontxthings am as they ax, never as theymight be. Michael, in “Dinner Alongthe Amazon.” hates the future: “Hehated anything he could not control: hebated anything he didn’t know. Certain-ty was the only ally you could trost:’And t&a: “The future was his enemy.”Fear of cbaoge keeps ETndley’s peoplealive.

As a group, Fmdley’s people believethey are guilty. They never quas!ioa whywhatever has happened, has happenedto tlwrn; instead they try to explore new!vays of living with their gui l t . Io“Losers: Fmders: Strangers at theDoor” the heroine tries to convioce astraoger to mme and live in her houseand sbr+ her plants and her anguish; in“Tlw Book of Pins” Annie Bogaopurges her guilt thmegb memory; in TheLast of the Craw People @in&y’s fustnovel) guilt is paid for with de&h. As ioCatholic confession, the assumption isahnys that we have sinned, that we amnever guwess.

Read after The Wurs and FamousLast Wordy. Dinner Along the Amazontake.5 on another significance: it is notonly a collection of extmordioary shortstories -it is also a showcase of drafts,ideas, new developmeots, variations onthe obsessions that make up Findley’schosen world. In his iotmdwtioa,Pindky says he !vas surprised to ftithat certain themes, certain “sounds end

Diana, the young artin with whom thenarrator is io Iove, never becomes a Breatpianist. “No. They won’t die,” she-saystalking about the babies she will neverhave. “They just won’t happen.” It washer own epitaph,” the narrator adds. Itis also the epitaph of most of Piodley’speople. In “Lemonade” the ne&hbour-hood witch mistakenly supposes thatHarper is setting off on an adventox%%e been waiting for adventore ail mylife,” she says. “How lucky that you’reso young.” Adventure u4Il never cometo her (perhaps because she new setsout to fnd it) nor will it come forHarper. The solid background reality isInflexible, and when we leave the story- ewzn though we will never know itstrue end - we realize that the characterswill not succezd. Defeat seems to be thevery esse.nce of a Findley being.

The childrm are encroached byadolts, the adults are encroached bywar, the countryside (in the least sue-cessfol of the stories in tlds collection, afable &led “What Mrs. Pelton Knew”)is encroached by the city. Danger isalways there, lurking, ready to spring.bringing change. change is to beavoided at all costs. The children do notwaot to become adults, the adults do notwant to grow or learn too much: a

images;‘cmpupagainandagaininbis~writing., It is true that what Henry Jamescaued “the fuNre in the earner reoeatsitself in Pindiw’s work - &sty r&s,solitary children, photographs, sileaa-but these imager are not jest samplesof a collector’s hobby. They constitutethe certain, precise landscape of thewriter, a daogemus landscape laid thickwith traps, through wbicb the charactershave to pick their way. The roads have

to be dosty because Nature here is notwelwkng~ the children have to be lone-l y because witbin the groap speechiaries no meaidng, no c&fort~ thephotographs Fe necessary because theyare the only tangible evidence of thesemoments, these stories, with no emiing

of time; fmm

selves (as in the Eliot story or in FamousLast Words). Silence is all-important.“OUT world.” says Flndley, “had beeosecured for us by a World War that

written by llhc;trak?d by

Orhd I%teIgl& Jaiinip IiMhmik

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dosed in a parable of silence.”To ony&e approaching Csnadiao

literature for the fust time, it becomespainfully obvious that the quest for a na-tional identity is a literary obsession.The reader has the ovemll feeling thatmost CyladIao wkers confm their ex-istence by constantly pinch@ theirnationality, by makii statements ratherthan shovm a \vorld. Timothy Findleyis never guilQ of rhetoricz his stories arevmnderfdly visual, like plays acted outon the page at a breathmkii pace.When his chwdcters speak, they nevere@in: they explore, they talk, andtheir dialogue becomes the characters.

Certain writers, perhaps umvit@gly,have defined a country through theirliterature: Paul Scott’s India, GardaM&u& Colombia, Malcobn Lowry’sMexico. Findley’s world of missedhistorical events, assumed guilt and con-trived ways of smvival. of .+ildrenbeseiged by paternalistic politics andculture. of adults deeolv concemcd with,but a&d by, art and-s& graces - tithis world seems to me 811 e&ellentdeftition of Canada. In his majornovels, in this astoundiig Dinner Alongrhe Amczzon, Timothy F’indley restoresan almost forgotteo power to the art offiction: the creation of a deep, coherentv:orld in which we see our own. 0

R E V I E W

By EL WIN MOORE

Why Do You Live So Far Awnyl, byNorman Levine, Deneau Publishers, 128pages, $8.95 paper (ISBN 0 88879 100 3).

~CIRRCIW IS OAUDY. unconsidered, imme-diate as fur., a measure of loss; it passes.Sadness is reticent, reflective, pervasiveas air, a measure of distance.; it stays.And Norman Levine is a master of saddistances. W& Do You Llw So ParAw? asks the title of tbi& colleztion,and an eadier Levine title can be &&cdas annvet: IDon’t Wanl lo Know Any-one Too.Well. Levine seems an expatri-ate spirit; a hard-eyed, clear-wd touristin his own life. Bdentlesa as a camera,he rwords the distancea between hus-band and wife., between son and mother.behveen the free rich man and the trapped poor man, between the rooted and

. ;... .

Thr Cold vat %.%ap “‘.‘.ThcRiddIeofrhe.Sands’ .TKO .+merican spies are stranded by E&he Childres . I

in K&t Berlin when their Count A doscly-guprded scctet o:thctmd+; tbcm for two defectors. _ . Frisian Islands ctaeatenr the

. .’X ncU Czm’e BI Good :.‘j. ’

secoriQ of the eptire Britishnation. . . ._ . .

Why does Senamr Ames resigns. T- . . ..-

mtha thzo face charges ofbribay? And why ron’t he help ,:

EpitaphForA5py -‘I ‘a,.

rhr police investigate hi.5 . :~~~~~~ay~g id ii,

daa~hter’c m u r d e r ? :. tries to beat charges of espionage,: ;_ ‘; . .byfindingcherealspyhinxelf.

Yiilz2 nxoclq I-klnur . . . - k&i&bleGoods

POF’L intend m fmd out z&xand tomah sequel m the classic1920’S adventure. B&rb coriw.

the moth! betwm wish and fact.Levine mamtains, too. an artful,unstated space betwren reader and oar-rator.Andhelikestoe.ndhissto+swith departures - a last look, a tomb’@away. “One is always disappointed bychaagc,” says Gordon Rideau, the im-poverished guest of honour at a ramionof M&ii grads, shortly before he beginsto follow his old university brothers intothe washroom 10 ask them for loans.

This book gathers five short storiesftist published io the 1960s. anotherwritten io 1975. and a 1981 rwision ofthe 1961 novella “The Playgmlmd.”Mostly early Levine, io other words -Levine in his time of long stmegle,before his work began to win the atteo-tion it deserved. The dominant theme ofthe early short stories hen is privation.A writer pawns his typewriter. A writermoves his family for the 14th time in fiveyears. A writer stays indoors to avoidmeeting creditors in the 8-t. A miter’swife smuggler home chunks of fmoodunder the baby carriage’s mineova. AUthis in a determinedly flat, bare, direct.and factual style, for Levine IO&g agomastered tbc twimique of lowering hisvoicesoastobebetterheard.Thesestotiea give an uneasy enjoyment. Thereader keeps wondering how autobiwgraphical they are. The effect is of afeast where the food is tine and the chefis much in evidence, and emaciated.

“The Pla~ound” is set in 1959-60 inthe seaside town of St. Ives, CmmvaU,Levine’s long-time home. We are giventhree sasoos io the life of St. Ives andtbrce seasons in the gossip and partyingof an anists’ colony that mos heavily toidlers, spongers, and pretenders. Thisstory is almost aa much a pastiche as anovella - Levine seems to have writtenmany of its parts scparatdy and thenstrung them together by inventing a oar-rator with the appropriate name of BiiStringer. The people of “The Play-grOWId" don’t amount to much.They’re a matter of quick, usuallyundercutting sketcha and a few goodscenes. But Levine has appropriated thetown. He knows it at alI hours and fmmalI vantage-points. He knows it from thecastrated cats sunning themselves in themiddle of summer streets to tbe mtsidehoose pipea painted to look like varicoseveins to the gull caoght~head down between electric wire4 in October cold,“the neck arcbiog with the wind like theneck of a kettle.” The sense of place intbisbis~ is rich and dense and

Levioe*s’pmsc traditionally has beencelebrated for its taut authiQ. Latelyhe seems to be lettiog a little more of therandomoess of theworld into his finon.There’s more ease io his telliog. Thecbaoge shows here in the 1975 story

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“Continuity,” and it showd too In the19:O collection Thin Ice. One criticfound the lvylage of Thin Ice “almostchatty.” But I think Levine has gainedby surrendering himself just a bit to hismatedal. His re&nt stories seem subtler,

ham, and even Dame Agatha herself.stitl others seem m&e interested in ln-

joyed the research and to liie his char-acters: in fact, the novel’s chief fault as a

stitutious than in the socletlea they sene mystery is that we are treated to tooor the titles they inhabit. Sayers examined many points of view. We are made privythe rather rarefEd world of advert&g, to the inner cogitations of Inspectorfor example, in Murder Must Adwiise. . Co&ins, Sergeant Sump. Constables Pr-P.D. James set ha puades in such sealed ingle and Doist - though cogitationc¶ses as mental l”stlt”tions, retlrmt may be too pa&e a term for the latter’shomes, nursing hospitals, resort hotels. mental acmbatlcs - and even of Dolst’sNgaio Marsh wrote several “owls in wife and an assortment of totally imiewhich the theatre was almost the central vast monks and nuns. Sorting out whatcharacter - Enter a rUwderer, for in- is and is not relevant Is. of course, thestance, or Dcoth at the Dolplrin. For job of the reader of mysteries, but thisMichsel Innis and Edmund crispin - welter of perspectives makes the job un-

. I~ 1 both pseudonymous Oaford dons - it necessarily burdensome. Even in\ms the UnivcrsiQ. Umbcrto Bco’s slm8ady situated The

v&x, and more various in thdr effects. It is among this latter group that the Name of the Rose (ii which Be0 was pri-Norman Levine came back to Canada Canadian d&dive writer John Reeves madly concerned with recreatin8 the

to live in 1979, after 30 years in England, belongs. His fust book, Mwdu by thought of the entire 14th century) weand Denem Publishers of Ottawa, his Microphone, was more abdut the CBC are prawnted with the thou&s of onlyold hometown, is steadily making more a a nefarious institution than it was’ Eco’s Holmesian detective and his Wat-of his v:ork available to Canadian about the commission and detection of sonlan side&k.readers. If Levine were a constitution, crime. And now In Murder Before But Murder &fore Matins is satis-you ml8ht say that he is being gmduaily Matins he takes us into the even more fying as a mystery. The monastery iF anrepatriated. But Levine is a writer, one reclusive world of the religious oasis of tranqullllty in a chaotic world;of C-a’s best, and au old friend of monastery. there are names to remember. maps tosadness and distance. He writer in the TathweU Abbey, a modern monastery read, even a crossword pusale. to solvestory “Continuity”: “There are some lo Toronto, Is the home of an equal (one of its dues Is also a due to thepeople who beIon to the place they live murderer), and sufficient red henings toin. There are others who don’t. They the OUbdne~ Order, an 800~year-old lutrlgue the most avid bf fishers. 0just pass through.” 0 contemolative sat not unlike the Bene-

dlcdni except that monks and nunsshare one eatablishmeut. though they arephysIcally separated frbm o& an&herby walls, locks, and rigid routines. Both

REVIEW smes are ruled by an Abbess, and them REVIEWare a Prior and Ptioress, Sub-Prior andSu~Prloress. Precentor and Preeenuix,and so on, down to postulants, novIce&aud lay brothem and sisters. When thePrior, Dom Benet Holland, Is found onemorning at the base of the belltower,having fallen to his death from a

By KA YNE GRADY

Knrdcr Eefore MIttins, hy JohnReeves, Doubleday, 186 pages, 917.95cloth (ISBN 0 385 19377 7).

a”>,~ DETECTIVE novelists succeed in re-creating entire cities: rzadersof slmenonI;now cenaln distriClS qf Pads as ifthey’d lived all their lives across from theQual d’Ort&es, and the Amsterdam ofNicolas Freelmg and Jan van daWeterlng ir as real and as mysterious as16th~centmy London is to scholars ofShakespeare or, perhaps more appm-pdately, the Elizabethan pamphleteers.Other detective wlters are more con-cerned with portraying particularse8ments of society: mobsters in the caseof the Amxk.ans; the Brltld aristocracyIn novels by the scxalled Queens ofCrime, Dorothy Sayers, Mawry Allin&

tampered-v&h platform near the top,Inspector CoggIn and Sergeant Sumpare called in to investigate. The crime Is

By PHIL SURGWeventually solved, but not before of-ficers and readers are subjected to aseemingly inexhaustible supply ofmonastic history, geography, theology,and psychology. Matters of Catholii

Bardtag: A Blograpby, by MichaelBliss, McClelland & Stewart. 336 paw,

liturgy are discussed. speoifw the $24.95 cloth (ISBN 0 7710 1378 X).retention of the Gregorian chant: “Mostpeople . . . are content to just St&g IN ocrcma~. 1920, Fred Banring was Zpalong with the Solesmcd tradition,” years &I, an unremarkable graduate ofobserves one of the police offxers, who the Uuiversity of Toronto’s medlcaljust happeus to have her MA. in medi- school; painfully trying to scratch out aeval mouasticlsm, but the Gilbertlnes practice in London, Oat. To ffl some ofseem “to have incorporated some very his ample spare time. he worked as ainterestiw ideas from Cardme’s researches on the Blnsiedeln C&e.%” western uuivusi1y.-Heavy going, and uttlc of it directly On the evening of October 31, atIerrelated to the crime and its solution. The preparing a talk on the pancreas, he set-question of traditional robes versus tled down with a learned article on theclvillan clothing also arisea, however, hypothetid Internal secretion of thatand is made relevant - but to say more organ, which many rexarchers believedhere would be to break the mystery- would be the key to understandiig andnovel reviewer’s vow of silence. treating diabetes. Later that niight, in-

Reeves seems to have genuinely en- spired by the article, BentIt dcdded

,..,

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MISSIONARIES AND IHEiND1ANS OF CANADAhl ENCOUNTER SMCS 1534

John Webster Graut

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that the internal secretion (if it existed atall) might be Isolated by allowing mostof a pancreas to atrophy and attemptiagto obtaiu an extract from the unatro-pbied part. The greater part of the pan-creas produced strong, externallybermted digestive euzymm. which werebdievcd to get in the way of attempts toisolate the internal secretion.

Baathtg took his idea to J.J.R.MacLeod, the associate dean of medi-clue at the Unlvemity of Tomato, whoknew the pancreas literature * well.MacLeod cautiously ailowed that Bant-h&s proposed experiment Vas worth atry and gave him permission to use uni-versity facilities for a couple of monthsdmiog the following summer.

Bantiog was an iamperieuced, corn-paratively ignorant, often sloppymseamher. He had no particular interestin the pancreas or diabetes. In the springof 1921, unhappy and restless, he applied for a job with an oil exploratioaparty in the Mackeazie Valley and toyedwith the tiea of joining the Iudian ArmyMedical SewIce (perhaps thhddng h emight Bad somethbtg akin to the com-radeship he’d eujoyed while serving asan atmy surgeon in the First WorldWar). Notig came of either notion,and by the md of May he was hard atwork with a student assistant namedCharles Best, ttylw to keep dogs whosepancmas had been removed (and whobad thus become diibetic) alive with es-tracts from the atrophied pancreas ofother dogs. Hardly a year later, Bsntingwas the most famous man ia Canada,rewed the world over as the discovererof hlsaiin.

But, contrary to public belief. Bantingwas not the sole discoverer of themiraculous hormone. Two years ago, inhis Ike Dkcovery of Insulin. MichaelBliss gave us a detailed history of themluctant, strlfwid&n partaemhip thatwas actirsIly responsible for the greatsuccess. As Bliss argued then, andreiterates in Bunting, “insulin emergedin 1921-22 as a result of a coliabomtionamong a number of researchers. diitedby J.J.R. MacLeod, who expandedupon and carded to triumphant successa project initiated by Bauting with thehelp of Best. The single most importanttechnical achievement was that made by[James Batramj Coliip in the putitica-tion of the extract. On their own, Bant-iug aud Best would probably not havereached iusulht.”

As the work progressed, it was evenfound that there was ao need to atrophypancreas to get the extract. But Bantingwas the oae who’d got the bail rolling,and with the support of many wll-placed fieads, aud his fierce, aear-paraooid determination uot to berobbed of the credit due hhn, he became

the Canadian Pasteur. Faith in him wasso high that oae of his boostas feltmoved to warn the public not to be ha-patient, it would take Dr. Bating atkaseas~wo years t o produce another

But, ‘after nearly two decades ofresearch in a number of areas such ascaacer, iafam diarrhoea and siiicosis,them were still no mimcles to. report.When he died in a plane crash la 1941,Baming was mainly aa administrator,helping to organize the war effort ofCanada’s fledgling medical researchestablishment.

Michael Bliss argues that Fred Bant-lag, the unsophisticated farm boy fromSbncoe County who (much like hiscountry) bhmdered rather spectacularlyinto the Xhh century, was mom interest-iug as a man than a s&mist. In his foreword Bliss writes that Banting “seems tofit the aovelist Joan Dklion’s dethxitiouof ‘a great literary character’ as ‘a char-acter so ambiguous aud driven andrevealing of his time and place that hisgravestoue might well coatahr only hisname and nationality.’ ”

And that’s what Bilss delivers: thestory of Bantiog’s upbriaging, educa-tion, war service, work. politics, friend-ships, hates, and messy, incomplete lovelife weals much about the Rive dmadmthat he lived through. But Bliss is ascrapulous historlau, and one of the@asums of this book is in watchiughow he keeps his muse of Bantig’s pos-sibilities as a lite.rary character in check.He quite properly shuns ail but the mostelemental specalation, reatrlcis himselfto what he has lesmed for sure fmmprimary sources. But Banriog didn’tconfide his most intimate thoaghts and

emotions to dImi% and letters, so theream gaps, which Bliss has refused to fflwith conjectum. Iastcad. &has fleshedout his picture of Baatlag aud the timeheliwiiawlthafewaIiusioastoaudquotations from a nicely chosea range offiction writers: Stephen Leacock,Donald Jack, Robertson Datis, F.Scott Fitzgerald and, most notably, sin-cl& Lewis. Theh presence mulches thisvaluable, fascinatiag story without d&tor!iog it. Cl

. ...--.._, _.__~ ___~_. .--.-_ -_--.-.--.-.--. -_- -.-_..

REVIEW aide for the noise and smoke than for its_ durable revelations.

By GEORGE GALTthis &most far-n&dog book,_ nolonger young but still taking large risks,,Bowing now can mix old wisdom andfresh insight without wrutiog an ounceof fuel. The scope of KenisdaCe Elegies,essmtiaU~ one lo116 DOM broken iota 10

II@r&dok IElqles, by George Bower-in& Coach House Press, 152 pages.

parts, i&breath&&, and its wcom-

8U.50 paper (I.SBN 0 88910 265 1).plishment matches its ambition.

Tixse meditations an offered in im-Womoo In lbe Dust, by Patrick Lane,

Mosaic Press, 64 pages, $14.95 papermediate, taaile language., which is not to

(ISBN 0 88962 223 X).say they are devoted to the immediate,&tile world. though that too. Mortali-ty, but more interesting, the clmllenge of

YOUNO POETS can be excessive, brash,self-admirio8, armgsllt and ridiiuloos

L&g folly conscious Of mormllty &ile

- and get away with it. They can fly offbeing wholly alive, are the book’s preow

in ail diitions. rockets full of energy,cupations. To be complaely conscious,

bumiog up received wisdom in a wild betthe poet soggests. is to be dead among

on radical insight. Ofteo we read themthe living: the living people one touches.

just to watch the risk-m, the cuttingand all the living selves one aecomolata.

loose, the lofting into their personalWe don’t die once but every mommt.

unknown. OccasionaUy they revealDyiw is the meat and magic of life, and

something we cao keep, but many beglo-unless we know it we’re only half here.

nix18 writers bum up so much fuel along What happcncd

the way that the trip seems more manor-to rhaf smlk that wm on your fnra mlnuk ago?

Geornc Bowerinn. I used to think. wassuch a-young pcii. Though he inoreWorth k#pklg, his early COSmiC rCCkCtSBencrally described parabolas of heat,not U&t. Still woduine the universe in

God. there goes mw!hw brmlh,and I go with It,

I wm furlhcr /mm my grmetwo stanzas back, I’m human.

Will the uniwme

Will the dad pm& norice mu linesappating among rhem,

or mz their ws fllkd with lheii ownmusic?

For thii poa the vanishing present is

a dialecticu.l & of mud and mnaph&in whiih the lawns of Kenisdale (desoribed on the back of this book as “oneof Vancouver’s most gracious residentialareas”) are desceodea from the fartheststar. Immersed in the immediate, hisnoselntheroses,heisslsofacetofacewith the tmnsceodent beyond.

Love kyeaming for the &alow kyeaming

by the night stnm for (I body full ofblood....

Ybou art lightning and low. she mys.but the hungu in hkface knot for her.

“orwas it give at hk birth.

Hk thick lipsmkxmdyour nippk, girl, are not suck-

ins you alone.

YOU m2 D wkp.your sudden coming mow him

only to the beginnins of hk pa&n,hekinyou,

____-- _.___ _.. -.

yes, and IWW he k thnr you.

mn acme the ether and up hk qine.he’s gone.

About consciousness, these medita-tions an also about poary. Writ@about writlog cao be tedious to read, buthen it is handled unself-consciously es anatural appendage of awareness. Likethe houses and ganieos of Kenisdale,the writer is B nelgbboorhood &fast.His books, his papas, his bones are dis-lntegmtiog as qldck1y as the uees io theyard. Only the pem~aneoce of words caoleapfrog us backwards and forwards outof the dot of time our bodies inhabit.

There is lively wit in this book as lothe&oes from EUot when Bowring’s

skiddiing aava hk own wokened air,like a pen rxnw a modem poem.

loolc at the world and newout qf II.

It begim to fall down a IitUe.We nnowte andpmudlv show our

friends.

It begins to fall down, begins to die.But thii poet bar the renovating gift, theability (and felt responsibUity) to snnatchdeath out of slack-jawed everyday Life:

Your siknt blood k (I messagefmnr a &ing meangw.

It kfilkd wbh uwds

Patrick Lane’s new book is a collec-tion of drawings accompanied by 27poems culled from previous books. Itwould be unfair to judge his poary fromthe work rrprinted here. Lane’s fmestpoems, including a wrier written on theoccasion of his visit to China in 1981,were published in his most recent newwktion Old MoIhgr. Only one o fthese appears in Woman In thestead we are given some of g

yi.$-

aogoished love and death lyrics, few oiwhich bear the attention lavished onthem by this handsome book. There is BII-W concemration of pab~ and loss inmost of these poems that Lane sucwss-folly enlarges in his later, richer work.

The drawings depia a state of mindranging fmm a kii of bacchanaliadementia to death by starvation. The ex-tremes of desire, the onylekllng impem-

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of perfection: “Who can teu of yourgIoly; the poet asks in the 10th player.end “who dares expound the interior lifeof god?” He must reconstruct the“word” and learn to spell the “Name”because the divinity of Book of Merqvrepresents the “m of absolute unity”and each person ls but a “portion” ofthat unity: it ls “the Name that unitleadeniand.”

The poet, then, cannot create theworld e”ew, es Cohen reeliz% “Youmock us with the beauty of yourworld.” He can mere& invoke thecreator to inspire him toward a properrepresentation of the world that Is freeof individual prejudicez “Let me raise

the brokenness to you . . . . Do not letthe words be minebut change them intotruth.” The wayward traveller will arriveonly when his heart hes found its“homeland”:

The world is all forgetting, and the heartls a rage of directions, but your nameunities the hart. and Ihe world is liftedinta its place. Blared is the one whowalls in the travelln’s heart for histurning.Whether or not this volume signals an

end to Cohen’s “secular” Ufe. Book crfMercy will stand as one of the mosthilnest and courageous attempts inCanadian writing to grapple withultimate truth. 0

INTERVIEW

Sharon Butala on Prairie writing:‘The horizon keeps you mindful you’re not very

important in the scheme of things’

By GEOFF HANCOCK

A NEWC~~. to the gmwing ranks ofPrairie writers, Sharon Butala was bornin northern Saskatchewan in 1940 andeducated at the University of Sarkat-chewan. An educatIonal psychologist,she specieliied in teacbiing children withlearning disabilities. Her first shortstories appared in Coming Attractions,edited by David Helwig and SandraMartin (Oberon Press), and her firstnovel, Country of the Heart, was pub-lished this spring by Ftih House. Sheha recently completed her second novel,and - es she told Geoff Hancock -now is at work on a third:

Books in Canada: Pmbie writing has ostrong sense of community. Do you feelpart of this tradition?§hsron Eutele: I’m definitely a part ofit. In fact. I’ve fought hard for allwriters Living in isolation in rural areas- easy enough to do in Saskatchewan,since that’s just about everybody whoisn’t in Saskatoon or Regina. Forthoseof us who are isolated, it’s important tofeel we are as much a part of the writingcommunity as writers who live in the cityare.ElCz Writbtgforyou, then. iron exprc~sion of the region.But&~: Definitely. If it isn’t an exprrs-sion of the region, then it isn’t worthdoing. 1 mean that in the lager sense,not that all the stories have to be about

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me. I was born in a northern outposthospital, so the experience of the wilder-ness is part of my distrust of the city en-vironment. In Saskatchewan you don’thave KI travel far to be in the wilderness.The work ethic is also there. The philo-sophy of the quick buck is not found onthe Prairies. The horizon keep you

scheme of thII.

milking cows. If people who were bornand raised on the Prairies are writingabout their lives, then naturally theirwork will be about Saskatchewanexperience.BIG: Is the q%?rience of the Pmiries ostate of mind? You mention the lmpoctc# (I vap[ horizon on an individual inJkWr8torieS.BUMS: People who live in the moun-talm of B.C. must be shaped by the

BIG: Pmiriefiction creates tmvekrs andcqdorem, I’ve heard. who want tod&cover chat’s in the splrces.ilutia: Not only to see what’s over thenext hill, but to go where the rest of tbeworld is. That’s very much part of thePrairie experience. Rven today, when wehave a sense of being in a worthwhileplace., we want to see what the rest of theworld is like, especially when we’reyoung. For me, I wmt and saw, and nowI’m happy where I am.Bit: Do you find that n$ected in yourfiction os well? Do you choose the sub-ject or doa the subject choacc you?Butsln: The subjects choose me. I’ll say,I’d like to write a story. I’U have lots ofideas, but nothing I can work with. I’llbe pacing around, and something willdawn on me. Usually it’s ready-made.So I’m chosen by the. story.BIG: What do you write about?But&: I hope I write about ordinarypeople. I want to write about tbe fabricand texhwe of their lives. I want to delveinto the souls of ordii people. I tbb&that’s quite good enough. There’s notlikely to be murders in my stories, orgreat shocking events. 1 don’t need caraccklents, or bombs falling out of thesky. What’s going on in the soul of anordinary person as she wash.% the dishesis interesting and important enough. Ithink it’s more important.Blc: Does thut ako q&vct the style?Butela: Style, like subject matter, ftisme. People say I have a style, but I don’tknow what it is. It also changes from

to express the emotions of-charact&For example, the f& story in Corn.@?Attmctiom is “Breaking Horses.” Iwmte that deliberately in a stiff, almoststaccato style. In the first paragraph, I -.pmtion a dry blizzard blowing in from,the west, blowing mcn’e dirt than snow. Ididn’t go on to say, “like the people,these dry. tough, laconic, bard peoplewho suffer in silence.” Other times, I L:would like to write Like Edna Alford, glovely flowing s&enrxs that make me Ithink of cotton cendy at the fair. It’s sobeautiful. so ephemeral. I’d like to writelike that. thouaunh I don’t know if I’ll +

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didn’t plan the novel; I just vnote it,then shaped it. The theme ls love. That’swhat “is important for me IO writeabout. Two lcind.5 of characters really in-terest me. One is the passionate person,the other tries to rule his life withreason. Some characters are one or theother. some. ‘war \vlthin themselveswhether the mind or the heart rvlll rule.It’s an old. old theme.. That novel I hadto v&e to learn how to write.

I’ve just ftihed my second novel,Vpsream/Lo Pays d’en hm&, which isabout my own experience as a child of aFraxlKanadlan father and an Irlsh-Scats Anglican mother who convexted to

Catholldsm when she married. M ygmndwents came fmm Ouebec in 1911h f&n&miles from Batbche. Nobodyhas written about the French Canadiiin Saskatchewan.

Now I have one more task. I’m start-ing my third novel, The Cafes qf theSun. It’s about the ranching country insouthwest Saskatchewan, told thmugbthe life of one man. I want to place thisminuscule subculture in the world at thetime, and show how beautiful the short-grass country ls in itself. when I’ve gotthat down, then I’ll feel I’ve paid mydues. I can write and not know what’scaning next. 0

POETRY

Add to the accomplished voices of Spr+rshottand Woodcock a talented newcomer

who returns political poetry to a higher plane

By DOUG FEllZERLJNG

nmc? IS MUCH to commend and enjoyin Francis Sparshott’s poetry, and thereis also something wmierful about hispoetic personality, a distinct but ofcourse related matter. I finauy deducedwhat tbe something was only recentlywhen reading 77te Inner Ear: AnAnthofogv of New Poets (Quadrant),edited by Gary Geddes. In his intmdue-tlon Geddes wonders aloud about thedepressed state of poetry reading andpoetry publishing. “But who is listeningin Canada?” he asks. “The poet gets hislittle subsidy to write, if he’s lucky andhas the right referees; the publisher putshis black or project grant towards thecost of printing; then, nothinghappens.”

Those words, which seem born moreof a publisher’s fatigue than a letter-to-theeditor-writer’s anger, reinforce thegulf betvwn the pmfesslonal poet andthe amateur - amateur in the best andseldom appreciated sense, wbiih Spar-shott. I believe, epitomizes beautifully.The most familiar writers, most of themv:ith Q base income from English depart-ments, are sometimes so fully geared toliterary production that the typewriter isa monster they must feed. the bookworld a school in which t&must swim.such people, of course, mnstltute at anyone time navlv all the maim fieures. Itls a rare bird-Al Purdy fbr &ple -who sustains hiif through otherchannels and remains just far enough

outside the infrastructure to b+his ownperson. And yet them is a simple beautyto someone who writes, or at least pub-lishes, only when occasion makes neces-SW. Working away oblivious to bothposterity and survival sometimes giveshim a freedom from organizing twin-

id as a certain type of dexterity.Spmhott has taught pbllosophy at

the Unlverslty of Tomnto for more than30 years. Hi poems touch on philosophy from time to time, and he has written a great deal of prose about therdatlo&ip between art and philosophyand about the philosophy of art. But his~oetrv redlv sminer from a different setbf in;puls&, ias a life apart from hisother work, certainly has a different a”-dience, and generally proceeds at its ownpace and in its own language - a pro-cess on which, as a reader, once caneavesdrop. He moves along with an evi-dent delight in doing what he does, awith tc. be taken seriously (not solemnly)only when he’s serious, and when he’snot, not. The two newest Sparshort WI-Iectlons attest to all this.

The Cave of Tmphollius and OlherPoems (Brick Books, 31 pages, $5.00paper) is Spar&Ott at his mast sober andperhaps most characteristic. The“other” poems of the title are onlythree. “Stations of Loss” is made up offmgmmtsllavingthetoneofaninnanotebook. “At a Later Symposium” is

dram& in form and has a Socratictheme. “Netsuke.” re turns to theimagistic .d is reminiscent of bls 1919haiku collection, The Rainey Hills.Fmally, the title poem, which won the1981 CBC literary competition in itscategory, seems to combine the twoother approaches. The subject is da+sical (a note informs us that Tmphonius,sm~ cd Apollo, was an oracle fromwhose cave supplicants returned UPconsdous and with the answers theywere SeekbIg mysteriously revealed tothem). The theme is temporal, the con-cerns lasting, and the structure ordered,using short sections that lessen the ap-peammx of randomness. But the mostinteresting aspect - and this is also trueof Sparshott’s much different book, TheEanglng Gardens of Etobicoke (CblldeThursday, 80 pages, 83.00 paper) - lsthe important question of language_

Sparshott’s most recognizable traitsare his word-play for serious purposesand the way be mixes standard Englishwith the vemacular. In these he bearssome resemblance to Dennis Lee,though I think it’s worth rememberingthat Lee is only a &ray manifestationof something that has been common foryears in the visual arts: the attempt tomlxHllhArtandLowArtintoatbirdthing, something central to the work of.for instance, Vera Frenkd. one ofCanada’s senior video artists. Here inSparshott’s hook is some of the word-play one furds in Lee’s cblkken’s verse:“In a world without vowels/” notesSpanhott, “you would have to live atthe Y.” And again in the title poem:“These axe the seven wonders of WestToronto/Campbell’s and Christie’s andthe Goodyear Co/and the LakesboreLions and two Itan? remember/and theHan&g Gardens of Et&coke.” It’snot only the gazettm-like list of propernames that’s reminiscent of Lee but the“and two I can’t remember” in whichmodem diction intruder for a secondand dean its throat.

This is altogether a curlou, delightfulbook, a xerographic edition that thepublishen claim will never be allowed togo out of print, if that’s the term, butwill continue to be run off as d&red,forever. It mntabls occasional poems,such as one about the.Quebec referen-dum, in the best tradition of people likeBetjeman, and onea reprctentlng otherhalf-forgotten typa. Most of themrecord, perhaps even cdebrate in aweary sat of way, middlaclass urbanlife but with a deliberately potty, slightlysumal edge.. The tone is enhanced byD.J. Knight’s ml&s. consisting ofweirdly juxtaposed piece4 from Vi*torian steel engravings, often with adbdcal flavour.

Whereas there is a division betweenSparsbott’s philosophical works on the

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one hand and hls poetry on the other,there is no such divlslon between his realpoetry sod verses such as these. Or, ifthere is, it is a trick of composition, notof impulse. Again the comparison withDennis Lee ls tempting. In the corn-poundlg of lofty language and the col-loquial, Lee simply emphasizes the onein the adolt poems but brings the otherto the foreground in his children’spoems. The inments are the same,but various recipes call for differentcombinations. Sparshort is like this aswelk it seems to be part of bis equipmentas a poet who operates outside the poetic.mainstream, quite happily and fog-tunarely so. and who, from all one caninfer, is joyfully unconcemed with hisown-kTlttciis.

Clmrse Woodcock is another forwhom ioetty is not life’s primary activi-Q. It hasn’t been the backbone of hiswork since the late 193Os, though poetryhas continued to feed his other coocemsand to represent them in aystal6ze.dform. Of course, Woodcock wmte littlepoetry during a ZO-year period begi-in the late 1940s. He atuibotes theabsence to being distracted by a friend’sdeath (“Despair is&articulate”). Whenhe did resume wrltiag individual poems,rather than the verse dramas for radiithat had occapied him instead, he did sowith a modem, Canadian Style, not therigid Audenesqoe forms be had used inthe 1930s. For all these reasons, it has

in two dltict&asea not io communionwith one another. This view is subvertedby Woodcock’s C&c&d Poems (SonoNis, 244 pages, $14.95 cloth), the latestof several retrospective collectloas overthe years and one that comes equippedcith its own critique.

What Woodcock has done is toarrange his output by subject under 10headings and then chronolo.gicaUywithin each category. That Woodcockwotdd probably be one of the fust tocriticize excessive devotion to thethematic approach should not obscurethe fact that, in this case, the schemeworks quite well. Here Woodcock is his

that, in addition to a s&ion of &oby&craphieal poems and another of tmnsla-tions, he cao point to cohesive areas thathave developed quite naturally over theyears. Examples are the retel&g ofclassical myth, the horrors of modemwer, end, of course, aaarchiim. It Is bt-structive to 1001: at the poems withineach gmap and see how the British poetof between the wars dealt with a subjectdifferently from the modem Brltlsh Col-ombian. The poll&al themes seem ntoreappropriate to tbe fuore of the 193Os,the autobiographical poems better suitedto the older, more ~Qllstically supple

Woodcock. Burled e somewhere is alesson about the dangers of fashion.

In a society devoted to commerce andbulk trading, it is the fate of poets whoalso write a lot of prose not to be con-sidered poets tirst or be associated withindividual poems. But there are severalof Woodcock’s, particularly “To MatieLoulse Bemerl” “Black Rose,” and“Kreotaer So&a,” that are remarkablyvivid prizes caught on the wing and ripefor attention. By synthe&btg and illus-tratbtg the proms of his ideas, Cal-kcted Poams is also a sort of reader’scompanion to Woodcock’s whole shelf,showhg many bidden connections andofferbtg little tidbits of information.somewhat the way a good annotatedbibliography does, and with a ut6iQ andstatus of its owa.

To come full cl&, I’m pleased tohave read Complleily by SusanGliekman (SllV&icole, 62 pages,U.95 paper), whose title poem was oneof the most strlkiog in the Gary Geddeaanthology mentioned earlier. I tirstheard ha name when she bad a sbvglepoem in Morris Wolfe’s Aumra 1980; itis not included in this her fust collection,one of considerable cumulative power,

with the sections fallbtg into one anotherlike dominoes. Her concems are lltigalone, partlcolarly in a jumbled cityenvironment. and the h- of itall. In one poem, a box of old lettem.which has somehow survived manycbaoges of address, recalls a more opti-mistic stage of life.

to quote from briefly - is the titlepoem, which is recognizably witldo theanti-war tradition that stands up for Lifeagainst death, but which gropes forreason far beyond the quick response,and sees the complealty BS part of thedilemma. The in&table concltion isthat Yve are all accompllcea, and so itgoes on. . . .‘I Polltlcal poetry ssems tohave waaed lately, possibly under theweight of its own simplicity. Gllckman.returns it to a higher plane and relater Itto the general dlff~oltlw of living andmakes it seem to belong there. CompEci-fy should c&abdy be seen as one of thesmall handful of “bests” among recentpoetry collections. 0

FIRSTNOVELS- - 1

Wild oats: the subversive~linguisticcharm of Mennonite Manitoba and the sexual

obsessions pf school-marmish Ontario

By PAUL WILSOI?

TooManylBlackbii,byKenLedbetter(Stoddart, 189 pages. $17.95 cloth), is aliterary mystery-cum-Gothic horrornovel set la a backwater town in thesouthern United States. The centralevent involvea the arrival in town of astranger, Morgan Ballard, his intenselyprecocious little daogbter. Ophella, anda wife who is never seen. Each weekBallard regalea the locals in the dragstore and feed mill with btcomprehen-sible but gripplug banter tbat leavesthem all d&y, saspieious, and far*cbmtcd. Then mysterious things begin tohappen. A boy drowns lo his well, a&pareotly with a smile on his face. Thestranger’s wife dies and is rapidly buriedbefore anyone has a chance to discoverwhat happened to her. His daughter,tomtented at school by a gang of boys,cuts an ear off one of them with a but-cber knife. The man marries two more

women - one the slow-witted daughterof the local banker, tbe other the spiritedschoolteacher who has taken theprecocious daughter under her wlag.Both women die violent and mysterloasdeaths as well. Finally, a day aftex thedeath of his last wife, the man and hir&$er perish when their house bums

All;his is told in the fm chapter, andthen retold - lo 16 different ways - bypeople in the town, some of whom, 40years after the events, are still obsessedby them. Gradually, the sinister bmoe.n-doa take on more solid outlbwd, and themystery is illuminated, though nevercompletely solved. One of the strongsaggeatlons is that the evil the townfolksee in the stranger is often a concocdonof tbelr own lurid bna@atioos. Nothinghe is suspected of - fmm incest to mar-da - does not already go on in the

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Iw.P. In fact, one begins to suspecr thatcertain citizens may themselves beresponsible for the tragedies that havecaeurred.

Because Ledbetter has chosen to tellthe same story through many differentv&es and points of view, his bookstands or falls on how original and in-teresting he can make each of the mono-logues. When his story-tellers am vivid

the results & brilliant. Somerlmes;though, a hokey, artificial folkslcsine.sscreeps in and detracts fmm the power ofvhat is being said. Occasionally, theprofessor of liter&urn (which is whatLedbetter is) intrudes, pmticoltily whenhe drops s&buy twisted litermy allu-sions (the title is one of them) likehankies throughout hi text. Onewonders to what extent such sdf-consciously literary features am then towoo the reader into an automatic sym-pathy with the stranger, who can quotefmm Shakespeare, Marvell. and Dmmeand discourse on the pleasure of MobyDlel;, but whose mind is so crippled bydope, philosophy, and his own pain thathe cannot, apparently. even muster asimple interest in fhe other humantragedies ihat go on around him.

lrhs sallmllon of Yasdl Slemens, b yArmin Wiebe (Tumstone Press, 176pages, $7.95 paper), takes us to brighterroml territory just north of the 49thpamllel. It is a comic novel set in a Men-nonite community south of Winnipeg,mostly in the late 1960s and early ’70s.about how young Yasch Siemens, themmamr, *ows up, chases girls, works.drinks, plays baseball, gets married, andsettles down, all witldo the bosom of hisow” people.

The book is prefaced by an epigraphtaken from Josef Skvorecky% essay“Red Music” in which Skvoreckydescribes one of his central preoccupa-tions: a fascination and delight with themany ways language can be “buggeredup.” This prepares the reader for whatfollows. Armln Wiebe tells his wholestory in the dialect of his region. aDullCent English thal has been subvertedby the @imar. rhythms. and vocabu-lary of Flat German. itself a die% ofstandard German spoken by the hfeennmnits. Having rrled mysdf Lo lmnslatesimilar passages of llngldstic play bySlxoreclg, I can attest to how difficulrit is to bring off successfully. ArminWiebe has hit exactly the right note withhis “fractured English,” and it becomesa wonderful instrument of expression,one that works equally well for broadhumour or in more delicate, lyricalpasrages. Here’s a sample, taken from aseduction scene:

theoOataleansonmeand...the

next thiw we rue in the moooshine onthe winbcoloumd sofa with the Mgflowers allow it and I am driving thedwbledike along in s big rain. . . andlhe half-ton is schwasksing fmm sideto side M tbe slippery mud and thecanal is half full with water and I amlurning the steer from one side to theother Y fast as I can and the truckplows tbrougb a deep mod puddle andthe wlndshield is smaltemd full and Ican’t see n&Ins and the wlpus onlyschmaos it full and I cao say for sontit looks matter nothing and the tiresfeel lhs slippery mad over s hump and Itry tbe brakes to use but the truck isabady going down and it ia too late tobe afraid of anylhing tbcre could be tosee and I just kt myself feel what thereis to know. Then the trwk stops and themotor spotters and dies and 1 cati bearmy heart bsmmalog sway like so oldJohn Dosre two.cylindor driving aloogin mad gear. I feel the water reepingthrough the floor of the track: But I justsit there till the water starts to leak intomy boots and I turn and look cat thewindow on the womao’s side of the caband I see the wild mustardblooming.. . .The reault is a good book, a good

story, and a hymn to the man ofresource and humour who knows hisown Limits, is willing to settle for lessthan his large dreams, who can workhard without making a virtue out of it,and who never forgets where the realpleasures of life lie. 1 can’t resist cmmore quotation. from the last chapter,wherein Yasch is now a regular marriedman reflecting on his lot:

Sure, Yasch Siemeor isn’t a b&hotfarmer like the others, but ii’s nol sobad, really. with only a half-section 1can really fsrm it. and 1 don’t ddok Ihave any more nfld oats and mustardthan the neighboors who ose all thstAvadex BW and Hoe-grass stuff theyshow sliding on a corliog rink onTV. . . . A fanner slwsys hss worriedbut It bllrs dosso’t seem so bad whenyoo don’t have to worry about feed@the bank manager’s family, Lhe lawyer’sfamily sod lhe Implement de&r’sfamily.. . . Daft [his son] somodmeswsnts !o know how come ho can’t bsvsone of thoss gamer that you plsy withlhs TV like the neighboors’ boys havsbut I just laugh and say that wbUc thosegw are playing with themselws oo TVhe coo play with their girlf?leods.

. . . While Tulips for Lena, by ElizabethVerkocsy (Simon and Pierre, 163 pages,$9.95 paper), is an erotic spy-sbxy bawdon the plausible assumption that theKGB is using Can& as a base of opem-tlcms @sin% more important targets inthe United States and OII the less plaus-ible assumption that, to do so, the Rus-slam would go to elaborate lengths toinvolve an innocent woman in a harebruined seheme having to do with aswllch of identity. By the end of the

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DAvm HfuLm*Y’s expcrbnbntal novelralblrl~ MovI3l (Press Porceplc, I28page& $9.95 paper) purports to pre..wnt,intbeformofsTvdocumentaryscreen-play, the portrait of Samuel Bremmer, arenegade. independent fdm’-maker ofthe kind Helliday obviously v&hes wehad in this country.

The book con&s of two paralleltexts. one a poetically abbreviated ver-sion of Bremmer’s scenarios, repre.5ent.-ing “fti-cltps” from whlcb we aresupposed to get an idea of what hismovies were like, end the other“talking-head” interviews with Bran-mer himself and the members of Idsteam of actors and crew, from whkb wemay deduce the details of his life, ideas,.and working methods. One of the -II

patently turned intb a promotionvideo, tbe fti of its kind In pub-,refIectlng Press Porceplc’s commitmentto multi-media expression.

Halliday is skilful at parodying thedocumentay style, and his “fti-clips”show that he is seriously interested infilm as a medium of expression. butthere is something hollow at the beat ofthis book. It is not just the implicationthat, beceuse anglophone Canadianfilm-makers (with the exceptIon of pea-pie like David Cmnenberg and, morerecently, Ron Mann) are StlIl seen -erroneously, but never mind - ashewers of wooden docudrama enddrwers of watereddown art cartoons.one can somehow compensate bycrating mythological hemm of thecinema that might have been. The mainproblem is that the arguments raised inhfaking Movie take place in a vacuum.There is notbiw - no “pmduct” - totest them wdnst, and therefore they

they were meant to. The missii dbnen-sion ls film itself. Wouldn’t it be ironic Ifthe video meant to publicize MakingMovies turned out to be more intere&ngthan the book7

ntuce’ IS A maxim in ancient Romanrhetoric that says that the excesses ofyouthtld exub- are mom wlcomethan the spare pmclslons of a maturestyle because, like .the overgrown tree,there vdll at least be sometbb~ of valueleft when the excesses are lopped away.That is how I feel about Goldenred, by ayoung (I assume) Ontario witer c&dPeter Gauk @lephant Press, 160 Green-field Avenue, Unit 5, WIlIowdale, Ont.MISN 326,221 pages. $5.95 paper). It isan energetic, fumy, and disarmi&candid novel about a young man go@

being-&v& by lust and longing &d ad&e to make sense of it aU: A verymasculine book with a lot of polymor-phous sexuaIlty around the fringes. it isalso one of the munchiest books I haveread in some time. Soti will no doubtfmd it offensive and crude, end for themthe book should probably be accom-p&cd (sbw it is, after all, about gmw-ing up oversexed in Ontario) by the kllof school-mannish warnings tbe OntarioCensor Board has taken to pasting ontomovie adwtlwments. But people withcurious and open minds should ftiGoidemvd a source of delight andperhaps even enllghtemnent.

In A Bright Land, by Alan Pearson(Golden Dog Pm.%, 106 pages. 96.95paper), is a brief-n+ about the kinky,fen- sex-life of a UN translator c&dClaire who languishes in fashionableennui among the expatrlete jet-setters ofrural Spain. Altbougb tbm is a certainpolish to the writing. it is diftlcult to getthrough the surface of this book to anysubstance ‘that mtgbt be lur@ under-neath. Pearson appears to have assum-ed that an exotic setting and off-beatsexual appetites would be enough to sus-rein hts reeden interest. This mighthave been !xue back in the 20% unfor-tunately. he’s about three Literarygenerations too late. 0

IN ThMNSLATlOA’

Two new hits out of three keep Lester & OrpenDenny& International Fiction List

at the top of a very competitive league

By PAUL STUEWE

P~~LISHEFS SERES can be Iike the guestlists for a holiday-season open house:@at starts out a.3 just a few intimatefriends often becomea a more diversegather@ of nelghboure, relatives. andslight acquainlanees to whom one owessocial obligations. McClelland &Stewart’s New Canadian Library(NCL). for example, has never decidedwbetberitwantstobeapmstigellneofhigh-quality literature or a refuge forbooks that don’t quite muit a -market edition; and Macmillan’sLaurentian Library seems to have nodiscemible principle of inclusion otherthan the pubIisbe?s ownership of paper-back rig@. An imprint thet hes sue-ceeded in establishing s positive image IsLester & Orpen Denny& IntematiooaIFiction List (IPL), and its latest releasescontinue in this young but exemplaryt%&on with two has out of a possible

+It” doesn’t begln to express the im-pact of Jona Oberskl’s Childhood($15.95 cloth, translated by RalphMahelm),anoveInermtedfmmtbepoint of view of * Jewish child inHolland during the Second World War.Childhood will inevitably be comparedwith 7% Diuy of Anne Fmnk. andthere certab@ are sbntlaities: both mes-merize us with their simple and diitresponsea to what we know to beamachbag horror, and both speak toour post-Holocaust end post-Hlmshbne

*warettess that innocence is no prc-t&ion ageinst destruction. Unlike AnneFrank’s journal, however, Childhood iswritten by a mature survivor who aims ata synthais and intensitication of whethe experienced as a child, and it is tbebrilliant accomplishment of tbae goalsthat renders the book a consummatework of lItermy art.

Oberski doesn’t chest on us by sneak-ing en adult’s thoughts and perceptionsiDto his protagonirt’s story, and whet-ever this loses in sophistication of detailis more than made up by tbe convincb~emotional tone of the narration.Although the child does not understandall of whet he sees and hears, he doesrecord it for readers who can imaginewhat pbmses such as “in tbe new campwe never saw my htber” or “AlI of asudden I heard shooting” mean in thecontext of Nazi-occupied Bumpe. In thissense Childhood demands active pertI&patlon on the part of the reader, and itrewards it with a heartbreakmgly power-ful Iiterary experience that ‘I cannotrecommend too blghly.

Italo CaIvIno’s sfon (I winrcr’s nfghf ufmvcler . . . and Mamowldo havealready appeared on the IFL, and DIf-fIcu1t Laws ($10.95 paper. trendated byWIlllam Weaver and D.S. Came-Ross) isyet mlotber engegblg offemg from tbisbrllllant Italian witer. The book con-sists of ti short stories and twonovellas originally published between

_~~ _._ _ ...‘_.I_ ____i.. . . .._I _-_._I_-.~- .____.._ ~~._._.~.___

1957 end 1970, and there isn’t a lemon inthe bunch. The short stories arcpresented in the form of %dventurcs,”each of which dcmonstmtca how smallrents in the social fabric can becomemajor turning-points in individual lives.The two novellas lake a more leisurelypath through similar situations, while

of the unity bet&n the obvi& and theprofound that characterizes so much ofthe author’s work. Calvin0 is very adeptm mrking interesting mountains out ofunpromising mokhiUs. but he’s also

pamtt social slgniflctice there are moic-hills of mundane minutiae try@ toevade explicit recognition. The way inwhich he organizes fhcse small impres-sions and obscwations into symphonicaof verbal ouancc is wonderful to behold,andD~cu/tLovcsshould meet with thesame critical and commercial success asits predecessors.

Shusaku Endo’s novel The Samurai

($17.95 cloth, transla~ by Van C.Gcssel) isn’t in the same class asChildhood and Difficult Loves,although it may bttercst students ofJapan& culture. The book describesthe vicissitudes acountered by a tradllmission to the West in the early 16ODs,and it does succeed in recreating a vividsense of the period. The psychology ofthe main characters, however, isn’t somuch inscrutable as simply unconvhwing. and the relaxed pace of the narrativem&c4 this more of an irritant than itwould be In a washingand-bucklingsaga. The flat, tmaffectcd prose stylemay be more the translator’s fault thanthe author’s, but regardless of rrspon-sibllty it’s another strike against a bookthat never bursts into animated fictionallife. Since the Japanese consider Endoone of their most important writers, Ican only suggest that The Samurai’smerits, like the members of the missionit chmnlclcs, have not succecdcd in mak-iog a succasfid journey to the West. 0

Cooks’ tour: Hitting the culhiary trailfrom Lebanon to Oregon, and a Canadian fish book

that should put our kitchens on the map

By DL&~RRY CAMPA U

rr’s TI.WS TCI TAKE cookbooks seriously.Not only aze more of them appearingtbon ever before, but people are inwas-ingly aware not only of the nutritionalqualities of food but also of its taste,texture, colour, and social value.

Certain adinay sfandards have beenupheld for generations and should s!illbe honoured. Therefore, aw-me whowitca and offers for sale a cookbookshould have credentials. Making the bestbrownies on the block iq not enough.Ewn sly wayx of inducing the bridgedub to eat leftover tuna casserole dis-guised in sandwiches won’t do, either,and anyoone who cells something con-toiting a cup of suger and a heapingtablespoon of flour “mayonnaise,” or athree-layer jelly mold a “salad” hasn’teven read the simple dictionary detini-tiom of those words. Come, come,ladies - scrvc your friends whateveryou. or they, fattoy, but until you lcamthe basics of kitchen tenoinology, don’thave pretensions to publkation.

Happily, there are people who havestudied both the art and the fondamen-

tds of cooking, sod their books deserveour respect and our in&cat. One ofthese is A. Jan Ho\wth, author of TheCmudiso Fii Caokboob (Douglas &McIntyre, 287 pages, $19.95 cloth).Howarth has a degree io home eco-nomia from Edinburgh University, hesworked in London and Paris, and in theZOycarsshehabceninCanadahasbeen a home economist for Woodwardsend a corunrmer cqsuitant for theDepartment of Fisheries and Oceans,where she developed and tested recipesfor every commercial kind of fish avail-able in this country. She spent five yearsof rescareb oo this book.

The result is haodsomely presentedand illustrated and includes informationabout buying, storing, prcscrving, andcoolcing fti. But, for me, the glory of itis in the im&mtion, Rcshuess. and deli-ciousness of the recipes. Fish is, ofcourse, the most vcrse.tile of au of ourfoods, but I hadn’t real&d its fullpotential tmtll I saw such things asHowarth’s Oysters Rockefeller seasonedwith anisette. mast mackerel with wine

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sauce, salmon French toast sandwlchcswith a dash of Tabasco. and clamsouffIG with bacon and rosemery. Even

se& red meat agaht.CookbooR contributes to our nationalpride and it deserves internationalacclaim.

Mmicl Brcckenrldge is the author ofTotal Value Cookbooli &lcClraw-HillBycrson, 226 pages, $14.95 paper), asystematic and solid approach to thebusiness of feeding a family economlcal-ly and nutritiously. It also lncludcs tlmc-and money-saving devices, instructionsfor freezing and storing foods, menuplanning. and a shopping guide.Brcckeurldge not only has had the prac-tical cxpcrlcncc of mnnlng her o w nhome but she hao also spent spat eightscars on rcscarch. rccioe tcstlm. smak-in8 to groups, id IAding &&shops.Evidently she bar had no time for fritter-ing. nor ao most women today who, likeher, combine families and cerecrs.

Her system requires a complete dls-rc8ard for fads, forg*fulness, andimp&buying. None of the rccipcs arcextravagant, yet many of them arcpiquent as she uses herbs end splccsimaglnatlvely - they don’t have tbc sadflavour of so much that wc think of BS“cheap” dishes. Her ham and noodlebake. for instance, made also with acooked vegetable, green peppers,onions. oregano, curry powder, and oldcheddar cheese, could give anyrestaurant a good reputation. Hadczscrts arc simple but are based on real,mq&:agcd ingrrdicnts that give them afresh, natural taste. .

Two other Canadian cookbooks stem,exotically enough, from Le@on. Theyarc A lfaste of Lcbmmn (A Taste ofLebanon Entcrprlscs, P.O. Box 6110,Station E, Ca@y, Alta.. 194 pages.81495 spiral bound), by Mary Salloum,and Alcxmdn’s Lebanese Cooldng(Alexandra’s Lebanese Co&ii, 48Ehvood Dr., Amherst, N.S.. 86 pages,$5.95 spiral bound), by Valerie Man-snl,r

there hems to be almost total &ccmcniln its kltchcns. Both books fcatwcrecipes made with mfnccd or fmeIy dicedmeat - usually lamb - chick peas, Len-tils, e8gplant, and pine nuts. They alsorccommcnd roasting chickens with waterand a prcfcrcncc for oil over butter.Salloum’s recipe for stuffing made withrice. beef, cinnamon, and pine nuts isexcellent and 8ocs as well with veal andpork as with poultry. And a mostunusual dcwrt is Mamoul, fmm Man-sour’s book - rich, sweet tarts with awalnut and roszwatcr tilling. Many sug-8cstlons from both books can add apleasantly foreign touch to your menus.

Blchard Nelson’s Antcrlean Cooklog(New American Library, 446 pegcs,523.00 cloth) is a good, solid volumecontaining mom then 500 rcclpes thatrange gcogmphlcally and gastronomical-ly throughout the 50 states. You can fmdalmost anything in it fmm aloll sauce tozucchini custard, and the rcclpes a~ alldcpendablc and usually flavourfid if notsurprlslng. Compilations such as thllone arc a great solace to the cook whohas nm out of inspiration and needs afresh approach to a routine dish. Nelsoncould well take his place on tlw shelfalong with James Beard, CraigCkdbome, and Madame Benoit.

N o w f o r the specialty nu.“bm:Angla Clubb is Mad About Cheddar(Clerke Irwin, 88 pages, $8.95 spiralbound) and writes almost 90 pages ofrccipcs, incorporating that cheese, toprove it. Most of them, actually,amount to tossing a cup or so of gratedcheddar into various soups, dips,casscmlcs, or souffl4s, which I find,bclnn mad about cheddar too. usuallv_,improves them,

The Muffin lWt!ier’s~Guide (FireflyBooks, 135 pages, 57.95 spiral bound),bv Bruce Kofflcr. has almost IOU rcciouufir muffins, but &of them arc v&a-tions on plain, sweet, bran, fruit, nut,and chocolate themes. The s&ion onEnglish muffins, howcva, is of realvslue’for those of us who find the com-mcrclal kinds less and less tasty.

Soup Tlmc (Soup Time Publishing,Box 525, Lmnsdcn, Sask., I24 pages.38.95 @al bound) is Bob McNeil’s con-tribution to tbc making of a food that,thick or thin, ls found in every countryin the world. H@ section on stocks andhow to clarify them is valuable for thosewho want to bc8in from scratch, andsome of his hcarty, one-dish-meal soupsare simple to make, delicious, and tXIngto cat. Cl

I TAKE EXCZPTION to I.M. Owen’s short-

Ok and Illusion _ Twc: Fabks, Fan-hades, and MeIafitions (March). Any-one familiar with the nature and It&toryof the short story will realize that boththe writing and the rqdiig of short fie

tion has chmgcd dmmati& in the pad50 years. Mctallltlon ls not a %ssQbarbarism,” as hc suggests, but a highlyregarded and seriously diszusscd term incmmnt Utcmry theory. Although I have

theory, my ~e&to&l noise” b basedupon well-known aesthetic and criticalSSSU”pthS.

The reaxlns for the development ofmctafction uc based on the conceptthat “r&liQ” ls a formless chaos and

“tiction” ls a sclf-consclous artifice, atechnically manlpulatcd form that rcprascnts ,‘rcallQ.” In turn this l&l to thercquircmwt of new critical ways to dkcuss fiction. Crltlca twcd to read fictionto “see what it meant” or “how thestory worked.” The metafictionalwriters include the pcrspcctlves ofcriticism into the tiction itself. Theessential idear, literary forms, and phiI*sophll qimlltica of the story arc dir-cussed on the surface of the s$ory. Inother words, the metatiction becomes aoinquiry into the writer’s imaginativeresponse to reality. Tenslons arc set upbetween not only traditional end non-traditional fctlon. but also b&vcenwhat is fmtlon and what is “real,” andeven between the story and the reader.who is invited to react to the story.

Mctafztions have many chamctcr-istics. Among them arc a need torevitalize litemy forms. a collage orfragmented method of jwtaposltion tobreak down familiar patterns of order.latcml instead of linear cause and effect,no mliance on traditional characterdevelopment, a denial of deepm@ngs,a !ms~lclon about the cliches oflangua&, a n d a n implicit politiceldimension that aucstions the idcoloeicelstatus of the %wl” world sup~o&dlybchlnd rcslistlc tlctlon.

Crititx have noted mctafiional clc-mcnts ln Homer and Aesop, and drawna clear line through ccrvantcs andStcme up to Nabokov, Bskctt, Barth,Barthclme, and even our own LeonRwkc, George Bowcring, LeonardCohen, end Hubert Aquio (as wcU asmany of the contributors to my anthol-ogies). Mctatiction most certainly pre-ccdcs television. Bcvlcwers ln Books InClmada have a responsllUiQ to keepabreast of current critical thought thatmight inform contemporary f&n.

Two other points: the acupuncture

and tlame image is based upon my per-sonal experience with moxlbustio”. inv:hich a burning herb is placed over amerkiii point to extract energies.Kidian photography cont%ms such snenergy flow. This image is central to mythesis that there is still much ta be dl-covered about the nature of Canadianshort fEtion. The “ancient monsters inthe psyche” refers to the often apocdyp-tic vision of the metafictional titers,sometimes based upon the Book ofRevelations. Nineteenth-centuryLiberalism and social justice have beendefeated by modem history. The meta-fictional vvrlter moves on to a visionaryworld. Since history is going intonothing, metatictional writers find theirdramatic conflicts in the imagination.

One tinal point. Strictly speaking,“barbarians” are those cultures fmmMegalithic to Celtic times whii, unlikeEgypttan, Greek. or Roman societies,had no apparent reading or writi~&ills. But they were bnagbmtlve peopleswhose menhirs, dobnens, stone cl&s,and hill fgures still cause us to wonderand speculate. Owen’s intended term ofdisparagement is actually a complimentto the different ways in which the humanrace views the world.

sion Is unpublished, and likely t” ranainunpublished, and thus bmccesslble to thereader, he might have understood them&m d’gtre of plot outlInes included inthe discussion.

‘If only Plant had grasped the purposeof the book. which is to examine a rece”tphenomenon of Canadian theatre fmma global view. so as to provide a clearerpicture. of that phenomenon - toorecult for the meaningful conclusions hedanands now - for future scholarlydiicussion.

I” mncluslon, let me just expresssane sliiht surprise that Plant seans tocauider so woefully inadequate *volume t@t has gone through carefulassessment by readers at University ofBritish Columbia Press, and was also en-domed by the Canadian Federation forthe Humanities, after further scrutiny byanother group of readers; I am sure allof these szholars wllI be duly crushed tolearn that wh’at they mistook for anacademically respectable and usefulbook has been discovered by our col-league Plant to be no m&e than a“prim&‘1

Renate UsndenlHalifax

of Loma Cm&r’s work she will fmdherself mistaken on all counts. This wasa full reviav of all of Cmzier’s work todate meepting ha‘ m-authored book.The intention was to take a” overview ofher development ~s’a poet in light of herlatest work. The Weather. Simmie willfind there much praise of Cmfiier’sabilities and accomplishments and no-where what she temu a “put-down.” Tosee spitefulness of any sort in the reviewis baffling to M and mat disturbing. Ihad hoped my admiration for Cmzier’spoetry would show bettu than that.While it is considerate of Simmie tojump to Crazier’s defena I think sheshould nst easy since no “personalattack” was intended at all. I agreeCm&r’s work is “honest,” indeed ifthis were not so I should hsrdlv havebothered to study ha work in the fmt .place. I am glad Shnmie is able to laugh,since it must he bleak for her to seevengefulness where it is “ot. I assume Iam%& in a culture where open andfair discussion is a contributing factor tothe arts. The tone of Sb”“lie’s letterleadsmeto sus~ectwehavenot reachedthat point of -mah”ity yet. We havesome work ahead of us, for I would likethii to be such a country.

Geoff HancockEditor. Canadian fiction Magazine

Toronto

IfOnly...IN ~~poNs~ To Richard Plant’s reviewof my book Second Stage: The Altema-the The&e Movement In Canada(April), I would like to state that hisnegative conunents might have give” mepause for thought had they carriedgreater credibility. “If cmly,” lndeedl

If only Plant had take” the trouble toregister that the book begins with alengthy introductory chapter that putsthe Canadii alternative theatre movamat into a historical and internationalcontext, and alro provides separatechaptus in which the evdutio” of themovement in English and FrenchCanada is discussed in some detail, hev;ould hardly have described it as “aspotty overview of what has happenedchiefly in five ‘dtemative theares inCanada_”

If only Plant had observed that de-mentary rule of teacbIng and criticism -i.e., that negative crltici~m in a vacutunlacks credibility - hemighr have backed

.._- .._ __ -_

tirt do not tit catal” categories -we&arbitrarily left out of the book by point-ing out nana of companies and titles ofplays whose incltio” would have bee”essential.

If only Plant had siopped to considerthat most of the material under dlscu.+

stormy weathertvftsHmeo”l”le” t on Kristjana Gun-“ars’s review of Lana Cm&r’s work inyour March issue.

This review is ostensibly of TheWeather, Crazier’s new poetry colleption. Why the” are we subjected to aputdown of everything she has everwritten, put-downs that don’t eve” makesense.? Like this statanent about InsideIs the Sky, published in 1976: “At thetime of its appearance the dynamics ofmalefemale relationships may havebeen fresh, but now that cry isoverdone.” Since it has obviouslyescaped Gunnars’s attation, I’d like toPO@ out that the book appeared at thetime of its appearance..

The spiteful tone that permeates thLpiece from beginning to end nwks it asa peamd attack and therefore not to betake” seriously. The suggestion thatLoma Cmzier writes to her maleau$icnce was partkxlarly nasty. If I hadto describe this poet’s work in one wordonly, that word would be honert.

About Cm&r’s long poan, “ThePoetus Dram,” Gunnars says - refer-lillp to her ow” co”voluted intemreta-tl& of the poem - “The poem can onlybe read with a sense of humour.” So canthis miw.

Lois SinunieSaskatoo”

KrM&na Gunnars r.qlier: I f LoisSimmie goes back and rereads my review

CANWIT NO. 94I

The limpld. lucid. rotund moo”,resembling an over&d marshmallow.rose difldendy amongst the dark rtin-pretwnt clouds which scwtled acrossthe “‘epic sky like cockroaches tlecingfrom a” insect spray.

??a~ U(ECRABL~ piece of work waswritten by one of the finalists in theinternational Edward Bulwer-Lyttonbad writing conteat, which asks its m-kants to co”lpose an opening sentencet” the wont bnaginable nc.v& We havefaith that our readers can sink to evengreater depths. We’ll pay SZ3 for the“mst abominable first se”te”c~~~e to reachus before September 1. Address: Can-Wit No. 94, Books in Gwada, 366Adelaide Street East, Toronto MtiA3x9.

Results of Canwit No. 92

of entries lost in the mall? Whatever thecase, the results of our request for colla-borative poetry werr underwhelming. tosay the least. The winner is W. RitchieB.a@ict of Calgary, whose verse corn-l$essmodie; of Rudyard Kipling and

Th&~~a; Hsnge thtngs done in the

By the men who molt for gold.

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ey, Vol. II

GOLD, SILVER ANDSTRATEGIC METALS:The Complete Investment GuidePeter C. CaveitiHOW TO WRITE A BEST SELLERRichard RohmerTHE HUNTING ANIMALFranklin RussellIT’S YOUR FUTURE:The Canadian Guide to EstatePlanningArthur DmcheLOVE IS A LONG SHOTTed A//anMARKED BY THE WILDBruce Lkteljohn & Jon Peeroe, EditorsMEN FOR THE MOUNTAINSSid MariyFg;;;AlN TEA AND OTHER

m&r van ToomPIECES OF DREAMSCharlotte Vole Allen

THE QUESTING BEASTRichard H&e/iRAISING BRIGHTER CHILDRENSidney LedsonTHE TORONTO PUZZLE BOOKJohn Robert ColomboWRITINGBAND REFLECTIONSRode&k Ha&-Brown

BEL RIASheila BumfordTHE TROUBLE WITH PRINCESSESChristie Ha&MOUSE WOMAN AND THEMISCHIEFMAKERSChristie Harris

Look for these tit/&s at good bookstores everywhere J-+; McCLELLqND AND STEWART.._., -1 The Canadian Publishers

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volume 13 - books in canada · visitable. the main one is fairly duwn-tam, the noted and nohnious...

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