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Volume 3. Numba 5.-

May, lw!

Douglas; Love in the Dog Howe, byFEATURES Molly Douglas; A New Kind of

Country, by Domdny Gilman;Eob’s Uur Uncle. The CanLit Recratlottal Farmlng, by Eric

community owes a huge debt of Winter 28 b J)gratitude to Robert \Veaver. Mark In Defera ofFederalbm: The View

@

Abley’s definitive pm% exp!ains : from Qttebqby GlIles Lalmtde;rhy 4 Canada’s Third Option, edited by

A I&ves Gallery: 2. Photo 16contar S.D. BcrkowitzandRobertK. Lngmn 29John Reeve6 presents seven ltcw faces You Cannot Die, by Ian Cutrle 30from his litenvy portfolio IO Mttlthtatlottalr and the Paceable a

It’s tlteMelThlng. An essay by Donald Kingdom, by Harry Antonidea 31Sw6btson exambtep how Lads Ridhao becume P m&ii in+ry 14

ILLUSTRATIONS

Coverand dmwing6 dtmughout theissue

REVIEWS by Howard &gelPhotograph of William French by

r$@t. by Yvcr Th&iault 15 Wayne Gr6dy 38

The Habit of Being, by FlanneryO’Collnor 16

Children of My Heart, by GabrielleCONTRIBUTGRS

Roy I7Good m Gold, by Joseph Heller 18

Saskatchewan-born freelancer Mark Abley R-

The McGregors: A Novel of ancenlly tived h Tom”t0 via ox6mi. DewhDnffy teaches Engli! at the U of Ts Trinity

Untario Pioneer Family, by Rob6tt College. liownrd Bagel (ak.0. Foe) L theLaidlam I9 produrn of CBGRadii’s 4111ltolo~. Moti

Zoom. by Andrew Brycht 19 critic and trmslator 8he)la pbcbman writes aTh6 Back Room. by Ann Copeland; bookcolumn kmheMonVed Gazee. -‘k-WAY

The Emthow Question. tq Ian mm Wayne Grady is m associate editcrr ofGould 20 We&e& Magazine. John Grew.v Is r Tommto

Unp Spoor and Final Act. by Jack lawyer. Dougllu Rllt teaches Bnglllh at the Uof

H. Crisp 21T’s Eindale College. Ban Huts is.0 Tmontaheelmca. Susan Lalle h a Vancmwa freb

The Doctor’s Sweetheart and otb6r lancer. Fomwr f&ml NDP lm6er mvl6 Lewis6torles, by L. M. Montgomery 2 2 leacha politicat szlenca at Cadeton University.

‘?omcbody Told Me I Look Like Rlcbnrd Lubbock ls a CBGTV rcdpiwdter andEveryman, by Raymond Filip; a grofessllnal pasimist. W. A. Marsan is thePeeling Gronges ltt tlw Shade, by editor of TV Guide in Canada A.F. Marib 5

Jack Hamton: Mbutmles, An preparing a pmRla of Ludwig Wler. theAntlmlo~: Writer to Writer. edited DEPARTMRhlTS Chilesn.bom pnet now tlvlng in cam&% for a

by Barry Dempster 23 futme issue. I. M. Owm b il Twonlo cddc.

Frtdrle Symphony, by Wilfrid 32translatw. an6 autborl~ on 8cotds.h dialects.

EggIlcSlClll 24Endpapers. by Morris Wolf6The Bmwser, by Michael Smith 33

John Reevesis asttllphoto.6mphacelekalcdfmbir animation. Nowlllt CbbrLs Scott msticatca in

Fcter Lougbeed: A Blogmphy, by On/OffSet. by Pier Giorgio Di Cicco 33 Fatlbmok, Out.. which ls a suburb of BatdenorAllan Hustak 25 CanLetters. by Michael Thorpe 35 MmyAlnslte8mltbirabetkofSt.Mmys.Ont..

Vfolence In Camda, edited by AliieBeyer Gammon: The PreventIon of

First Impressions’, by Douglas Hill 36 where Ihue h llcver UI apaslmphe. DonaIdInterview with William French, Swnluwn nacbes hitory at Queen’s University.

Youthful Crime: The GreatStumbleForward, by James C.

by Phil Surguy 38 Eleanor 8wdnscm is a social worker in Kinlp-

Letter6 to theEditor 40 ton. Ont. Phtl Surgny ir the head of the Engllsb

HXkl6t 26 CanWit No. 43 41dqartmem at Mount A8iion Univenity. Geqe

The Do9 Crisis, by Iris Nowell 27 The editors recommend 42Wood&. in oiw you bwe been living on the

Silence L My Hornelm@, by Gikvlmoon, is the formu editor of Canadian Lilem-

Books received 42 IuIc.

EDITOR: Douglas Marshall. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Michael Smith. SMALL-PRESS EDITOR: Pier Giorgio Di &co.COPY EDITOR: Marvin Goody. ART DIRECTOR: Mary Lu Tom.%. GENERAL MANAGER and ADVERTISINGMANAGER: SttsanTraer. CIRCULATION MANAGER: Susan Aihoshi. CONSULTANTS: Robert Farrelly andlaek Jensen.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Eleanoi Wachtel (West Coat): Gary Michael Dull: Wayne Grady; Douglas Hill:Sheila Fischnian (Quebec); Sean Virgo (Bast Coast); Tim Heald (Europe).

Rintcd by ttcrilyc -co. L.M. t66N 6666.2664.

May, 1979, Books in Canada 3

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In more grateful and discerning countries,Robert Weaver would be,designated a national monument.But in Canada, the best we can say is that

by Mark Abley

WHEN JAMES THURBER looked back on the first editor of The New ’Twkcr, FlYold Ross, he thought of “the eloqumit large-fingeredhands that were never in repose, but kept darting tbis way and tbntto emphasize his points or running through the thatch of hair. . . .Ross WIS. at first view, oddly disappointing. No one, I think,would have picked him out of a Iineap 110 the editor of T/z NewYwkcr. Even in a dinner jacket he looked loosely informal, like acarelessly carried umbrella. . . . He was usually dressed in a darkwit. with a plain dark tie. as if for protective coloration.” RobmWeaver - once desaibed by Al Pmdy as tbe most importantliterary figure in Canada -prefers tweeds to dark suits. and his

hands rove busily over wisps of hair ulat no one could mistake fora tbateh; but in other respects tbe d~cription is exact. Weaverdoesn’t look like abroadcaster oreditor. Hedoesn’t dine in tiechiccati he doesn’t fly south in March. He looks like an employee ofa bank in the days before banks began Lo strive for glamour. Infact. at the start of the Second World War he was an employee of abank.

Like most gmy eminences. Weaver is uneasy with titles. RareIyif ever does he refer to the honorary D.Litt. conferred on him 81York University in 1976. He talks with undisguised nostalgia ofthe halcyon days at CBC-Radio when he was simply a member oftbe pmducers’ pool. Dozens if not hundreds of witers must havephoned the CBC switchboard and asked to @eak to Bob Weaver:it’s doubtful if any of hll friends, aquaintanccs or pmteg& haveever asked for the “Executive Fmducer. Literary Pmjects, RadioDmma and Literature.” He is perhaps best known for hi an-thologies of Canadian short stmles, four of which have appeared.Yet he’s also been an editor of liwotber boolrr; the creator of theCBC’s Anthology and its producer for more than Xl years; aneditor of Tmmmk Revh since its inceptibn in 1956: and afriend in need to writers all across tbe country, some of whom hewas responsible for bringing to light in tbe first place. “I am.” heonce confided to Marlan BngeI, “the still point amund whichevetyddng moves.” Hugh Gamer, in Ids autabllphy One

4 Books Ill Canada. May 1979

Damn Thing Afier Anorher. calls Weaver “a man who has doneme so many favors and saved me from so many disasters that Ishall always be in his debt.” Nor ls Gamer alone.

Yet Weaver has a wry humility about his work. “What savesmy life,” he says, “when I lhink of the past 30 years is that it’s allso funny.” Other pmduce~ speak of lbe singular respect in whichhe is held at the CBC; Weaver tells a different story. “I’m tabbedas belonging to the older generation. looked on witb benign tol-erance but not really taken seriously. The CBC has always thoughtthat the literary world is a little peculiar.” Weaver views tbe CBCwith b’ony and affection. A couple of brief venture+ into televisionletl him with no desin to try his luck a thkd’tlme: “I don’t

wars at (111.” One great gt. h&ever. is his profound under-standing of wrItus. and bis willingness to put up with tbem evenat their most bull-headed. Hwold Ross, accm’dii to Thurber.“mgarded writers ac temperamental mechanisms, capable ofstrange behavior. and artists were just as bad, or even worse.,Cbmplexes, fixations. psychological blocks, and other aberrationsoftbe creative mind bad him always on rhe alert.” Weaver is noless avmre of such aberrations. but he’s a charitable man. Gamer,Al Purdy, Mordecal Richler. Austin Clarke, Hugh Hood, and JohnRobert Colombo would scarcely have dedicated books to someonewho regarded titers as men mechanisms.

“He has.” says Ivan Owen, an editor who has known him since1943, “changed very littIe ova the years. He’s just gone doggedlyon, doing the things he wants to do.” Kay Maelver. a CBCcolleague for 30 yurrs, says. “He’s always had tbe same ratherquiet manner. always tbe sense of humour and Ihe tremendousinterest in writers. In fact he was astonishingly Ihe same as he isnow. except much thinner.” Weaver’s tastes and recreations areabout what you might expect of a middlbclass boy bmn in NiagaraFalls in 1921. He likes movies and football; be knows thesubtleties of a martini as intimately as tbe subtleties of prose. Helikes to watch Lore Grant and The RoeWord E/es; he’s keen onTV golf. In the second issue of Tamarack Review, he inserted intoan affectionate article called “John Sutherland and NorthernReview” one of his personal regrets: “Rankest hay in theliterary world -he occasionally played golf.. (We neyer had tbegame we said we must play together.)” Ivan Owen recalls con-fessing to Northrop Frye one day that Weaver was out on the golfcourse. Frye. surprised and severe, replied, “I didn’t know LhatRobert went in for the executive sporls.”

The joker in this homely pack is Weaver’s imagination. Withoutit he would never have been mom than LI competent editor. and he

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ccttoioly \vould never have developed the eye for t&h talent thath;ls. over the yeus. distinguished him so highly. Like many artistsWeaver lost his father when he was young, end grew up emid thecompyly of route” (an Aunt Emily war e witer of sorts). Hisfether. o doctor, had gambled on gold mines and left little money,and ot the nge of 18, living by now in Toronto, Weaver began tov:vrl: in tbe Dominion Benk.:lnitially he was earning $8.50 e week- “hlore tbsn I would have made in I small town. Anyhow Intber liked it. I liked meeting the people.” He was needingwidely: Wolfe, Norris, Dreiser. Gwell. but very few Canadians.Then came WY.

Weaver list joined tbe RCAF, “but I flunked e coupe thatr<auired scientific ability so I ended UP in Ihe srmy.” They wee?.noi the best of days fdr him. A mi&t private. ie ecq&ed theniclssme of Muscles. In 1944 he wes thankfolly discharged andscat to the University of Townto on Veterans’ Aid. Weaver has along memory: every year he gives money to the Salvation Amty,whom he found to be the most helpful of all tbe wartime charities.(He is not o rellgioes man.) At the IJ of T. “ovawhelmed bymarching feet.” he blossomed aed he wrote. Besides doing ~bview and editing o college magazine, he produced some poems, afew stories. even pert of e novel. Ales, they weren’t much good.“limes Remey said to me one day. ‘You don’t have soy creativetalent but you’re e very good organizer.’ I wss irritated at the time,but it seemed rational enough. He spotted me.” NowadaysWcnva claims to have no regrets about the writing: “I long egolost the ottitode. ‘Yes. but I woold have done it differeotly.’ I don?think I’d bwe mdde e very good writer.”

Nonetheless. his prose style is a delight: crisp, clear, clean.morculu. end never showy_Jts lucidity could serve as e model fornuw jounxdiitr and not e few novelists. “If there’s anyone I’dlike to write lilx.” Weaver rays. “it would be Orwell.” The style,like the character. wz fmed when he WBS young: while still etuniwsity. be hod a piece accepted by T/te Nation in New York. Bsuccess that was psrtly rerponsi.ble for his enhy into the CBC inI948 s o program organizer in the Department of Talks and PublicAffairs. Weover by this time had ecqoired a B.A. and experienceas J shipping clerk. doing assorted joe jobs and reading Cenedienliter.aure on tbe side. He soon became responsible for the pmgremCuadim Sborf Smries, along with one or two other shows; and in1952. together with the producer Helen James,. he edited en M-thology of stories that had been broadcast between 1946 end 1951.His cereer wes well established on e path il has never len. Theanthology. published by Oxford University FTess, wes (he originalCmwdinn Sbnrr Smrics. Two of its 24 entries (including the

celebrated “One. Two, Tluee Little Indians”) were by HughGarner. who had phoned Weaver one day. having had e few beersbeforehand, and chewed him out steadily for 20 minutes. In e briefpause Weava quietly announced that he wasn’t rejecting Gemer’s.wbmlsslonateJl. Gemer.e%mkhed,bquirrd.‘Areyougobt8topublish me after all I’ve said about you?’ “I’m M editor,”Weaver replied. “We don’t have any feelings.”

Not ell the volume’s contents stand up es literature. end Weaverwognized as much in hi prefece. “It seemed to us that the storieshad not been chosen merely to satisfy B rigid editorlel policy, butto reflect sonte of the variety of life in Canada today. . . . Werealize thet the stories bmedcest by the CBC have varied e gooddeel in qoelity.” Some of the antbors ere no less familiar todaythen Gamer: James Reaney. Sinelair Ross. Joyce Uemhell. (“I’veknown Joyce for more thee 25 yeers,” Weaver happily confides.“and it’s still difficult.“) But others, equally promising in 1952,have feded. into tbc nigbt. Where is Willism S. Annett, born inAlbwte in 1928. once employed on Wall Street? Where M Rig-more Ademson, e lady editor bore in Norway. end EmestoCuevss, so erstwhile legal stenognphcr from Newuk. New Jer-sey? The p&es by Douglas Spettigue and e trio of otha writemwere tbell first published stories.

The 1950s wen busy years et the CBC end happy ones forWeaver: “My favourlte de&e. Jt wes e fairly civilized time, eventhough evetyone says it wes dreary.” The only political petty forwhich he’s felt soy greet wermtb xv= the CCF, “which stood forreform end also for moral reetitode. I suppose my ideal fore RimeMinlsler would be M.J. Coldwell.” (It wss. moreovez, the timewhen one of Weever’s favourite films wes made - JogmarBergman’s Wild Slron~berries. “It’s o greet Ceoediae movie,” heremarks drily. “Jsn’t it e pain ti didn’t make it oorselves?“) TheCanadian Shorr Smies program died, to be replaced by An-thdogy, which celebntes its 25th anniversary this year. “It’spretty well unique,” Weaver seys. “and the CBC deserves somerespect for that. There hwe been no moves, no1 even covert. to getit onto FM. I’ve always wanted And&gy to stey on the AUnetworlt: the writing community in Canada h small-town es welles big-city.” The audience for Anrhology is not only loyal, it isalso surprisingly large. Weaver could be contented if Xl.000listened regularly; the best estimate is about 45.000, znd one ratingrecently Suggested that 75.000 people toned in. Whatever theexect figure, more Canadians listen to Anthology than buy all thelittle magazines put together.

One of the best and most famous of tbe little msgezliies isTamarack Review. which began in 1956 and has been publishedalmost continuously fmm Robert Weever’s office et the CBC.“The CBC has elweys been rather amused by this thing operatingout of its beckyard.” he says. Although the idea for the magazinewes Wwver’s, the name w suggested by Jvon Owen. As Owentells it. Weaver had said. “I weet to have a name tbet sounds likethe Canedian Shield.” Owen had been dubious; wouldn’t such aname also sound like the Salvation Army? York Review, KfmberReview. Lawenrlon Review . none ws right. Thee Owen. whohad been staying in Muskoka end had bought e boat fmm e hotel

May,‘lOi’9. Books in Canada 5

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B Boo!rs In Caneda. May ,979

celled the Tamer& Lodge, soggested Tamarack Review. Muchto his owe amezemeot, the name wes taken up et once. Itsexistence wm noted by the government. for the editors regularlyused to receive promotional matkial from the Depertment ofForestry. Owen, who wistlully remarks, ‘1 xatt to spend my lifebehtg interviewed about Bob Weever; I wish someday semebodywould interview Bob about me,” is himself e distinguished figwein Canedian letters. As well es directing Oxford Univetsity Ress’sCanedinn division, he worked es e Tmnamck editor for nearly 20Y-.

The couent profusion of smell magtuines in Olnada is e trcentend welcome phenomenon. Twenty-three years age. but fore fewuniversity quartetlies and the indomiteble Fiddieheud of Ftetlerlpton. the field wes vittoelly empty. Nor wao it es if dozeos of goodbut utdmowe writus were clamoming for publkalion. To begin aproforssional megednc with no linen&l suppott From acederniecod every intention of paying the contributors wes e bold veotwe;Weaver has threatened to resign from Tamarack if the U of TResswere to t&e it over. “You wouldn’t beliive,” lvon Owen says.“how hard it wes in the eerly deys to Bad four good s&es e yearfor Tamamck.” “Yet there was always the uneasy surpicioo,”Weaver later wrote, “that dte case of the drought might be thelack of markets end of editors greatly cmtcemed with the shutstay. Which wes the toot of the trouble, the dmmy. solitary. oftenabused and exploited writer. or the editor by twos enthusiestic ormorose, usefully nagging or glumly unresponsive?”

The first issue appeared in the autumn’of 1956. The editorsineluded Weaver, Owen, Kildere Dobbs. Williim Toye. AnneWilkinson, end Millet MaeLure. Among dte conttibutots weteBrian Moore, Ethel Wilson. George Woodcock, Mqeret Avison.Jay MecPhersat. and Timothy Findley, whoseshott story “AboutEffie” was the first hc had ever published. Their work wesprefeced by e cheerful editorial: “We’re committed, es all editorsshould be. to the proposition tbel saying something well is thebesis of civilization. _ . . We remember those who have foiledbarbarism by e well-turned sentence: Ciiem, SriR, Amold; codremember. too. thet they did em address themsdves to a liltlec&tie of initiates but to the people et large.” We seem to havecome e long way shtce the time of the early Tamaracks. Only theaodecious or the foolish could sey. es Weaver dl in the seumdissue, thet Cenedii litem~re “ha0 still the shakiest of founde-tions.” And to read the third issue ls to multiply dte feeling ofdiitance: an editotial condemns the Hon. J. J. McCann, Ministerof National Revenue, who wes responsible for Customs end hadbanned tiom this cootmy Peywn Place. Beck&s ~%/foy. endPiayboy. (“Very popoler among college rutdents and in someintellectual circles,” eccording to the edimrlel. In the heart ofthose ~irelcs smod Robert Weaver: “Be wes the first pason Iknew of m have e copy of Phyboy.” the joumelist Joan Irwin hessaid.) Yet even now Renaissance Canada end the book-benningRev. Ken Campbell flourish. and copies of Penthouse are occa-sionally seized et the bordder: es in so meny other ways, the 1950sere less dislent then dtey appear.

The standard of excellence echiewl doting the first few years ofTamamc~s existeoce has tnrely been metched among Cpnsdieoperiodic&. Besides ccmstenlly encooreging - and constantlypeying - Cendisn wtilets. the editors took risks. lo 1960. forinsteoce, they devoted the whole of M issue 10 Weat Indianliterature. One of the few mgrets that Weaver will today admit isthat Tamarack hasn’t published mote work from outside Caneda.Occaionnlly an issue acured contmversy (though the editorsnever received invective of the celibte ooce directed by e persott etMergeml Andetsw, founder of The Lifde Review: “I eamesllyrequest you m discontinue sending your impertinent publication mmy daughtet who had the folly of ondiictiminating youth m fellinto the diabolical some by joining the ungodly famiIy of yoursubscribets. As fat you. haughty young weme”, may the Lordhave mercy upon your sinfol soul!“) In 1962 Weevet compiled dtebest work from Tamarack Review into what may be his least-known yet most delightful ettdmlogy: The First Five Years.Cimteiniog the work of 40 writexs, the book is e triumphentviodicetion of that I956 leap in the dark. The volume, like its

editor, has very little pretence; es Robert Fulford wmte in theintroduction, “Humour, modesty, end the at!nosphere of recentCanadian intellectoal life deprived the Tamcumk Review of thatb~orlous self-righteousness which stemps so many littlemagazines.”

The First Five Years was !Veaver’s fourth anthology and hi8thii to be published in three years. In 1960, ~lswerlng a requestFrom the World’s Classics division of Oxford University Ress. hehad produced a new collection with an old title Canadian ShortSrorics. (As thii anthology later acquired two sequels. it’s some-timer known informally es the First Series.) It contains the work of26 witen. dating back to the 19tb century end forward to AliceMunm and Motdecai Richler. neitber of them yet 30. Threetomslotions from Quebec authors were included, making thii, asWeaver said in his introduction. “the first comprebeatsive an:tbology of Cnnndian storks to make any attempt to include fictionfmm both colhues.” Again he showed himself scutely consciousof what, for better or worse, Canadian @on Ieckd “what wedo not have is much of that sophisticstidn and iutelleztual intensitythat distiyuisbes a good deal of the contemporary fiction appear-ing in the older literuy societies abmad. It reetm that the Cam-divl vniter still feels able to indulge a cutain n&&d. . . .”

A year later came Ten For Wednesday Night, published byMcClelland & Stewut. Like the 1932 Canadian Short Smies.Ten For Wrdnerday Night sprang directly from Weavrr’s work etthe CBC. (He has never down P sharp distlnctlon behveen hiswork in print and on air: both bwolve the marketinS of goodliterature. the swteoance of titers, and the establisbmmt of eCenadien literary tradition.) Weaver’s intmductlon suggests bowthe climate was changing: “The stories in this book were bmad-cost at various times during 1960 on the CBC’s Wednesday Nightprogram. They came from an lnvltetion by the CBC to I smallStoop of witem. . . Most of tbe conbibutors to thll book belongto the new generation of Cenadii writers who begen poblkltingnRer the Second World War. It ls the most diveme, professional,tmd mature generation of titers we have had. and it is a genera-tion able to wite and publish in au improved, wen though stillinadeqorde. literary atmosphere.” ._

Earlier tbis year B& in Canada spoke of e shoti-sl~ry“glut.” But when Hugo McPherson wmte the chapter on recentfiction in Litermy HiJrory OfCmadcz, published es late es 1963, hecould still cell the short story “a special, if cmreatly neglected,genre” and a “difficult. exacting, and now declining genre.” “Itstill flourishes.” he admitted, “in smell reviews and studentlltenxy magnines. bot the majority of yotmg writers abandon itafter their spprrntice years.” Thanks in part to Weaver’r vigil&tntutuiy of vniters such as Rlchlec and Munm, McPherson’sglum deliberations are of purely historical interest. Weaver beganto vmlc with Mmo while she vm still a student at tbe Univemityof Westem Ontario. and continoed to do so at%% she had moved tothe West Coat. Yet they didn’t meet until Weavex was on avre;tcm tow. Not knowing what to expect, he knocked on ha doorin Noah Vancouver one day end wes startled to be met by a“smashingly beautiftd” woman. He was exe” own? startled whenshe informed him, “You don’t lock right -you were supposed tolook more fatherly.”

These days Weaver is avuncular and portly, M expert mmnteorbut no one’s image of grace. Yet behind the heavy. black-rimmedglosses lurk two very clear dyes. A pipe, always ready to betamped or fiddled with if not ectttelly smoked, acts es a virtualsecurity blanket. Others may think of him as one of the mostestablished members of our entire litemy estMdmerU; Weaverhas his doubts. “I hope I have a kind of outsider’s feelii aboutwhat I do,” he says. His domeetic life lacks fanfare or &mow.Weaver lives with hll second wife Audrey and their two chlldmtin a duplex in north-central Toronto. end resolutely refoses to haveany mck with the trendy. His hebitoel lunchtime watering-hole,the Hampton Court, was long ago vacated by tbe Beautiful Peopleot the CBC; Weova did not follow them to Fenton’s or theWindsor Amw. “He hes a peculiar nait.” reports Clive Mason,Director of Program Operations et CBC-Radio. “He knows morequiet places to stay end to eat ecmss Canada than anyone I’veknovm. I’ve never known him to stey et the reeognizcd hotels.”

A mirror of recent history, thisconvenient review reflects theshape of the land and thechanging lifestyles ofCanadians. It provides thelatest facts and figures on _population characteristics,government organizationseconomic and social condi-tions. This authoritativereference work includes newchapters on energy, educa-tion, health and housing. Aunique record of Canadianachievement. Appendices.Clothbound. 17 cm x 25.5 cm.977 pp. CSll-202-1978. $15.00

available from our.Aulborlzed _B00hstore Agents 8Ems~ Canada,other boolmlores, 01 by mall fmmme Cansdlan Government PublIshInSCanire, HULL Quebec KlA OSg

Given a quiet couple of hours. he’s fond of readll mysmnovels, which he h?s reviewed for the Toronto Star for the pest 1.3years. “I like writing for the Sfar.” he explaln~. “because I don’thave any idea who reads me. Anyway I have a catholic tempasmat.” Yet it’s no secrel that he prefers a goad whodunit toanything avant-garde. Why are them so few good Canadiantbdllers? “It helps if the locale is accessible to the mythic, llleParis or California or the south of England. and only recently has itbecome possible M think about Canada that way. Also thriUer8tead to come out of urbanized so&tics. and we’ve been slowcatching up to that. And they require pmfessionalllm and a relaxedfeeling that we haven’t fought our way through to yet. It’s mucheasier to write about growing up in a small mwn.”

Weaver’s CBC cxea in the 19605 and 1970s resembles a manbeing pushed up II mountain he never wanted to climb, and leapingdown fmm near the top (just about landll on his feet) bexuse bedidn’t Iii the rarefied air. When his bosses de&led to ‘*la-tlonalize” radii, he ceased m be a nebulous special programsofficer and became Super&or of Special Pmgvams. Bvenhwllyand with some reluctance, he mok over as Head of Radio Drama’and special programs (that is. arts) and had he wanted, cculd havebecome Program Director of CBC-Radio. Weaver was aCVQtempemmentally suited m administration. which is not m say hewas p poor adminislrptor. Thanks to a tiutha sbicf d&nitiOn ofroles - an agreement with the producers’ Association that allpmgmms had to be made by recognized producers. not by peopleclassified as management -he relinquished conbul of Anthologym Howard Engel in 1575. Aftes nearly two more years of dryadministration, Weaver resigned as Head of Radio Arts and be-came once again an executive producer, a greying eminence who.would like (0 be more than merely eminent. He speaks wrth Iu1amu+ lmny of “what I ngard = my somewhat dsltigcz+er.” Even if he is, as Kny Madver reports. “bema~d~~~lyrespected st the CBC both far his knowledge and for his dedicationto writing,” he may well feel that he’s outlived much of hisllsefulncss.

Yet in the last dozen yeas. in addition m the CBC work. be hasedited five more books. Gne of them, a CBC publication limplyentitled Poems For Voices, consists of six long poems he hadcommisstoned for AnrhoIogy. Weaver has always been more ateast with prose than verse, and thlr is the sole ocasion on whichhe edited a book of poetry. Mom cbaracterlsthz is the sde~lion bemade, together with his wife (“I browbeat her into helping metium time to time”), of the best stories of Mavis Gallant. Pub-lished by the New Cauadiaa Library as The End of the World, lhevolume inch&z seven stories that had not appeared previously inany of her books. weaver ts one of the few CMadtan literarytigurzs whom Gallant, a notoriously dimcult lady, trust.% In hlsintmducdon he took a sharp swipe at nationali&: “Now thatculrural nationalism is turning us in on ourselves. Mavls Gallant’swork may have even less chance than before of lutraering muchattention in her own counby. That would be a pity, because she issimply to0 fine a titer for us m ignmw.”

“I’m sorty now,” he says. “that I wa5n’t more actively anti-nationalist. ‘Cltizenshlp’ can easily mm intO sometblng that killspeople. I always dug my heels in about nationalism. but I’ve neverliked mnfmntation.” Still, Weaver’s attitude bar been evident forat least two decades. In November. 1958. he wmte: “Those sameyeara since the Second World War have also been a time ofad& nationaliim in Canada (much of it centred in our univa-sides). and the Canadii writer who published abmad for practicalreams may incidentdly do something to diffuse and contain thatcultunl nadondism. Miters in small counbies inevitqbly swrehfor readerr abroad. and the situation of the writer in Canada Mayls neither unique nor especially discouraging.” About 10 yearsago Weaver found himself under attack from a few vehementnationalists. notably Dave Gqdfaxy -who had once been quotedBJ saying. “For the young English-Canadian writer, Bob Weaveris probably wonh three Canada Cmmcils and a GuggenbellFoundation.” Not only was Weaver pldlosophica.lly hostile tonntionaliam. however. be was also fond of America. The bony hthat. unlike a clear major@ of well-known Canadian vniters (14

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out of 13. for instance. in his most recent anthology of stork%).Weaver has never lived outslde Canada.

His Second Series of Canadian Short Sforics appeared in 1968,his Thkd Series late last year. Weaver’s prefaces display a justifiedpride and pleasure in the development of Canadian fiction, adevelopment in which. one is tempted to say, he haa bea less theenthusiastic bystander tbvl tbe coach. trainer. and pti-time wcountant. “1 know all of the writers who have stories in thii book(the Tldrd Series].” he wrote in 1973. “and in smne cases I haveknown them and worked witb them from the very beginning oftheir careas.” Whii it is doubtless true that there must be writersin Canada who &save a place in such an anthology but do notlxwv~ Robert Weaver. it is also true that no better colkction ofCatadian sboa fiction has appeved in the 1970s. Nor has W&vetstuck with the old warhorses - Morley Cal&ha& Ethel Wilson.W. 0. Mitchell, and the ill. Only two of tbc titan in the bookm older tbvl Weaver himself. He does not expect to prepare aFourth Series.

He’s a great wxmsti~tor. always liable to be put& some-tbiy off:-so&times, as in the c&e of at anthology he hadsuggested to the English firm of Faber&Faber, a pmjst isput offfor so long that it dies altogether. And yet it seems now and thenthat Weaver has moved mountains. His longest bwk is tbe O.&iArrrhofoSy of Curradian Lirrmrure. -edited with William Toyeand issued in 1973. The editors introduce the book by takbtg slyissue with Llnrgaret Atwood’s mnchant polemic, Survfwl. Aftergranting the essential rightness of Atwood’s argument, Weaveratd Toye go on to say that her themes **are not. of course.uniquely Canalii preoccupations. Indeed. alienation is world-wide: the victim can be discovered evuywherr. . . . The mood ismOLt often sombre - not unlike that of other LiteraNtes in thetv:mtieth century.” It’s typical of Weaver to avoid outright dis-s$ccment without exactly fudging any issues. He does not like tomake enemies; he may have no enemies. He does lie to be l&d.When Books in Canada asked him several months ago to name thebooks OF authors he thought N be the most underrated and over-t&d in all Canadian literature. he refused to respond. “I’m notfond of tbcoe literary 8antes, and anyway I don’t dislike anyoneatough.” In fact he almost certainly does dislike some writersenough to mention them: he just doesn’t want it known who they

are. His candidates for tbe most undemUed books are charact&-tically dispraate and fascinating: John Buchan’s Sick Hearf Riverthis last novel. perhaps his best, and one with a noahem Canadiansetting). and Charles Cochrane’s Christfaniry and Classfmi Cul-rwG- iwritten by a former teacher of Weaver’s at UniversityCollege. Toronto. and almoclt unread in spite of praise from W. H.Audcn and Reinhold Niebuhr).

Weaver’s remarks in prbtt about the progress of our literatureha+ been generally so hopeful and pleased that it’s a melancholysurprise to find him strildng a different note in conversation: “Idon’t feel that the ’70s have been a particularly good period inCanadian wlting. Putting aside tbe economics. my feeling ls thatthCTe was a very short period in the late ’20s that ~a.9 interesting;and 194560 v% a good period, optimistic and rather free. But

beginning in the early ‘c%s, there’s been too much emphasis on (henolilies and economics of the literan world. to tbe detrbnent of theliterature. The dominant writers &e still (hose fmm the earlierperiod.” It ml8ht also be noted that the 1970s have been an uneasytime for the old guard at CBGRadll who would ill to see tbe AMnetwork devbted to something more than a stream of magazbwshows.

But Weaver lumbers on. His latest venture, tbe g13.000 CBCliterary wmpetltlon wbllh he organized last year. wceeeded allexpectations. Having hoped for as many as 1,500 submissions, befound hi desk burled under 3.000 mmuscri~b. At one slage hewas reading 50 a day (“That’swhy I’m so g&t,” he says &tb acbuckle1. Maw of the entries. especially in the memoir category.were die. &I Weaver be& io regkt having suggested thecateat at all: “So much enthusiasm, so much goodwill, so manyterrible manuxripts.” He had begun tbc competition after rcslgn-ing his management post. and, he frankly admits, he was lookingtOr something to do. He began to malize he was dOin8 it rightwhen he received an intliinant letter from a well-known titersaying, in effect. “You only wanted unknown people N Win;that’s why you sent back my mam!saipt.” At much tbe same timehe received an equally irate letter from an unpublished writersaying, “I would have won if only you hadn’t been after some-body famous!” The results. at any rate. are a kind of vindication:Weaver would not have been happy if all the new and unknownwriters had been losers. A few of the 10 winners - HelenWeinzweig. Sean Virgo, Gail McKay - are known mainly toadepts in Canadian writing; a few more -James Harrison. RuthAmIdshalt. Michael Hennessy (the Regishar of the University oftince Edward Island) -have published little or nothing. Weaverwas especially delighted when be phoned Ruth Anddshak, wholives 25 miles outside Calgary and had won second pri+e of $2.000in the shcn+story competition, and found her to be a part-timewaihess who tins a small farm. “Oh WOW!” was her first xwaction. “Now I can buy some cattle!” The contest will be repeatedat leasi twice.

Weaver is approaching 60, and new projects continue to occupyhis mind. “I would love to do an anthology of Stories From theAmericas. I’ve toyed with the idea of an O&io anthology. And Iwant to do one on immigrant kiting - stories, poems. andnon-fiction by and about immigrants. and going back at least tothe early 19th century. It could be enormous. . . . Yes. it’s a coupleof years off at least.” In the meantime, Weaver will carry on doingwhat he’s done for the past 30 yeas: helping writers, if necessaryby lending or giving them inoney from bis own pocket. “I’mproudest.” he concludes. “of being open to writers, and stickingwith titers, even in hard periods.” He is a humane man. a decentman at a time when decency is a much-maligned vktue. “Atxemendously kind man.” Ivan Owen says. “You may feelneglected but you never f&l slighted. And in an emergency tbaehe is. Whm Andrew AUan died, it was Bob who went to see him

Occasionally Weaver resembles a refugee from the 1950% adriRin a more Nrbulmt age; but without a good deal of will’ andtoughness. no one survives tie decades at the CBC. Even hisfoibles - distinct tendencies, for instance. to be gamdous anddilatory -seem to endear him to people. It’s a mre if not uiiiqueaccomplishment to have been able to reduce tbe formidableNathan Cohen to sentimentality. “I get sort of choked up.” Cohenonce confessed. “when I consider that beautiful man.” Wwvahas been valuable for so long partly because, though he takes g&tpride in his role of literary middleman. he has few illusions aboutit. When Alice Munm ls nad and remembered, Weaver will beforgotten. As Randall larrell advised all uitia. “Remember thatyou can never be more than the staircase to the monument, theguide to the gallery, the telescope through which the children seethe stars. At your best you make people see what they might neverhave seen without you; but they must always forget you in whatthey see.” Unless (to alter the metaphor slightly). emerging dazedani delighted from the gallery. they glance ti M inscription on tbewall and read. “Gallery built by Robert Weaver.” 0

May. 1379. Books in Canada 9

. . ..---- --. ._. _ _ . .*.-.-- -

by John Reeves

Top photographers seldom comeaway from aportrait session without an insight or two abouttheir subjects that even the best-held cameracan’t capture. A year ago (May, 1976)40-year-old photo raconteur John Reeves

interrupted his mid-life crisis long enough tomeander back through 16 years of files andprepare for us an annotated portfolio of I1CanLit figures. Now he’s one and 40 and hereare seven more:

Bert Sheppard (1078)

boy. HP hsa llved all his llfs intho mrgnlikent fccthlll ccun-try around High River, south-vri,loK%lgarysnd since 1981ho has besn 61 partner In thefamous IWO Alto (0-n) Ranch.Errtnrit~~ books and pub.Ilshsz thorn hlmsolf. ttlstlmt

prr&sl mc”clr’csllidSplfzn Days, publlshed In1871. KID latest bcc!r,JuatAbout rJcthlng, IS s sequel toS@fzo’) Day& Just AboufrJctbffig can be bought at theGl~ShoplnHlghttlwrorhom

10 Bao!rs In csnsda. May 1979

a cmlcn under Bert’s bed Intbe RI0 Alto bunkhouse. Thebock c”dskis ccntrlbutlcnsfro” Senstor Dan Rllsy sndR. r.9. PsttS”“l. tt IS extsn-slvely Illustmtsd by suchcowboy “tlsts ss GalleGallup. Bert had 1,900 ccplesof Just About Nclhh# printedIn Calgary and to dsts he hassold about onsthoussnd blthem st 511 each. Clesrly,vsnlty publlshlng doesn’thsvetcbeunpmfltsble.Amsncs” buy s total rysv/blskeynltb the nst from $11.000.

BARBARA AUlELandSANDRA MARTlN: There wss

slender;thslreyessrectearand Iustmus: their coin.

s Urns when most “vlswam plalcnssmis bumlshedalaWm”e”.Tbsytendedtc be baster. Soft sweet soundsa” “‘ilwely lot lncllnsd eiilmr emansts from the crchldto ne~mtlcpudgecrgln-diet splsndour cl their Ilps. Duringgsuntness.Th@y said “n- the past year both MartIn sndpleasant things In thslr Amlel hsvs asked me to takecolumns, and otlen they their plctum, and somehow,looked unplesssm; they we” with full knowledge thsttheyessytcrldlc~l~sndtc dlsllke.Times have chsnged. Ccn-

hsvs bctk been ssylng

slder two of the cutmnt cmp ofappalling tblngs about books

book “Wewe”, treelancerby”yb&frlsnds,Imsnsgeds stnngled “yes” to both of

Sand” kW’tln and Barbs”Amlel cl Msclean’e. They s”

them. They were dlsturblngpresences In “ystudto; Y”-

Wc”e”:thsys”tslland “erItl”“ble de&es stlrmd In

._ ._-. I . . ..I____ -....... -.- .---

Barbara Amiel(1078J Sandra Marl/n (1078J

myvlscma. Phrases like“consortlng with thsensm~pxccd bzfommyglazedeyeo.I am a TM! betrayer, Judasvrllh a tl~s~elblad. The yearshzw madr me not only older.but also much loss pure.

Army Corps. eventually be-oomlng Canada’s only femalo

. War Artlst. For many years hsrlush. emberant landscapepalntlngs have been widelyexhlblted In Cansdlanartgal-Isrles, both prlvateand publlc.Inlg7gshebecamstheauthoreta dsllghttul Illustrated autoblogmphy called K%Mf/owersof Canada. I took thls photo.graph ot Molly Sobah InFrsdnrtctonwberesheandherhusr

nd Snmo have llvsd forthe astlgyeam.TheSobaksas very hospltablsand Mollylsasuperb~olllamglsdthatmvvlalt to FrederIcton m.w&d amund photographingMolly: for II matters hnd beenotberwlse, I might - Heaventortend - have had to eatdlnnsr In the SeavsrbmokHotel.

MCRLS’f CALlAGHAtk Bothhis 80”s or@ hlends. I havepared by his housecount-1Ex time. But no one eversslr~dmrtopmduceapo~ltot Borlsy Callaghan until laatsummer. During the photosr:slon Cattaghan remlnlacadabout being photographed byKaYah mcny years befom; heMt the encounter had notbten altogtiher comfortableand Karsh had “ever Messedany of the photos. Not longeitcr my VkYlt VJlth Mr. Cal-I8ghon, Ii~Mi% Canadlanf httthe boo!r storer and. IO and

psopl&kh surnames bc-olnnlna with q “C” was tho

“my courteous and s very shyma”. Courtesy Is hard tophotograph. (10 only the shy.“ass was wldent In myphOtos, and I v/a&t sum h&lL___~~_~._..__. _.._L_.__ IMOLLY LAMB BOSAK was

born In Vancouvsr, the drrugh.t~rolth~artscrltlcpnd cot-l&or W. Cwtlmer Lamb. Shertudlcdpslntlng BtthBVan-co”“crSchool of Art. In lfflt?

nappy my ouen* I”nmIJl~S

Steed, Sdltor ot Questmsgszlne. was going to bOnltha plctumof~greatmanbeing shy. Hov#e@r, JudithFlntayson’s text tar the Queststory made much ot Dr. Frye’s Morley CelIaghan (7070)

chync;s and Stead ra” myylcturo n&to a herding thatrzd ‘71~3 Fcsrful Shyness ofKorthrog Frye: and B sub.hc:dlng thti oald, The MostFwmldz,blo Kind In Canada:?h3L:x1 E~hlndth~Mash.“Ancdltorwndoaphotograph~r~lot ofhcrm, but he can also doVye” M XJwl w ofgood.

CECILIA JOWSTE People amcldom zt cxt nlth their ownpoar~lt.Tha phyolcel ImageIXID cute= of them rarely&~nfarmo~rlth th~mantalImzgothcy havoerestcdforthcm:clvc~. TRSIQ arc, howc#vcr. ;I fx.1 mxv?ptlono to thlSrule, ad Ccellla Jowsil wasoac~o’ithhcm. Jowett~~Ontthegratzrgxt d horllf&orldng~acnunwynuroe.Shor;orf!cd Wst In P plonsar corn-nwnlty nzr Cochhrene, Ont.A~~~Gx?I~~~~ &a movedseuth to Longford IYllls, avllkga nlrm miles north olC~illl~. on Lake Couchlchlng.t-~hllollvlngandnorklng In theOrillb arfa cho bscamecquzltid with Stephen Lea-cock, vlno encouraged her towitc about h:rself. Jw;reS’szutoblognphy, rJo lhou@tfor Tomormc: was publIshedby Rycl-,on WEIS In lgS4.Kiss Jozetl Is an old familyV?knd. and when she learned

Molly Lamb Eobak (lO73)ph8r,sheasl~edme10produ~a portmlt of her, which I dld InMarch, 1855. Her poignantresponaeto the pictures I‘shlppsd to Longford Ulllsuasunexpacted and touehlng. I iquote her latter In parb “Thephotographs came safely andI do thank you, for the honouryou have shown me In gmnt-lng my nlsh that they am

:f ‘_

3&. .4.Northrop Ftye (1978)

12 Boo!a in Canada, May 1979

yours, your work, and much s~medlstsnce,togstthebastmore to me therefore. One effect and ask myself often,pose, quite unconsciously on ‘Seewhat lb hasdonetothamy pmt, Is Illm ‘Whlstlsr’s pMly girl In the loehet, at 16Mothef. so nothlng Is really -. years ot age.‘. . . The laclr ofn~,undrrlhesun.Theslreln money for good shin creamand stress of the past yearnshows dearly In my face

over the past 35 years didn’thelp the wdlnkles; but then,

(‘fWS’) end they are truly resland chamctarlstlc. The large

sgaln,ltlsmyoe~arlam~d~yandnellherlteavennor-can

photographs I nlll hang at alter II.”

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THE COMMODORE’S BARGEIs ALONGSIDE

THE SWBET SECOND SUMMEROF KlTTY MALONEMstI Cohen“Mar Cohen’s novel is a triumph.. .”-The Tonmto Star. $12.95

WlNGSlNTIiEWINDDianeGi i?reTnnslate $by Alan Brown“Dazzling. . the style and poetic powercaptivate the reader fmm the openinglines.“-Lc Notwclfistc. $10.95

HAMLET3’IwlNHubert A uinTranslate& Sheila Fisckmm

A literary display of unrestmined genius-the novel that the Quebec press. both Frenchand English, hailed PS a mlaerpiece ofJoyce-an proportions. $12.95

TH6 UNDSRDOGSWilliam Welntraub

“I predict it will be acclaimed as the bestand most contmverrial comic novel of thisCanadian decade.“-Brian Moore. $12.95

ZINGER AND MEJack MscLeod

For ewpne who has ever come within apsringavera of an ivy covered wall. authorJack i&cLeot/%uducesZinpr. and thegroves of academe will newtbe the same.again. $l2.95

CHINAHANDBruno Skoggard

“Perhaps ir all stems fmm my amah’sbirthday gift to me when I turned seven in1928. She tooh me to see a beheading.”$10.95

lTiEWHlTESHAMANC. W. Nicol

The wlritc ~hnmnn is a tenderly poignant,highly visual and truly spellbinding story ofmnv~ting~ries,centrirrgamundayoungwhite boy on the verge of manhood. wholeaves the transient south m explore theeternal north, and in 30 doing fatally severshis links with the past. $10.95

AT GOOD BOOKSTORES EB

/ c-. ,... .-n-.-,1 .V,_F... _.. _. ..,‘,, ._- _._.

The marketing if Louis Riel as pop history has reached thepoint of overkill. Hanging him \ivas gentle compared to this

by Donald Swainson

%~OP.E HAS BEEN written about Lads Rieldun any otha Canadian. Both the mea andhis rcbellioos have fascinated readers formore that c cuu”ly. However he ls finallyrobejudged-aspopullst hemorfanatlc-RiH hcs become a media indusuy.

The flood of Rlel material hav becomeinundation. 0. F. 0. Stcolcy published hisstcodard. if somewhat pmsalc biography,Lmds Rirt in 1963. E. B. Gsler’s mtfor-lunate The rllu~t W/w Hodro Hang had beeninflicted on English-speaking Caoadicos in1961, end was translated into French shmlydtrreaftcr. Hmt\vcII Bostield pxsented uswith a snappy life in 1971. DesmondMorton gevc us. in tepid succession, TheLorr War Drnm (1972). Telegrams of theNorth-IVcsz Campaign (1972. jointly withReginald Ii. Roy), and The Queen Y. LouisRicl (1974). Rudy Wiebe. following JohnCoultcr IRick A P1a.v in Two Parts, 1962)and Don Guttcrldgc [Rick A Poem forVoices. 19681 has written two novels aboutRiel and his timcs: The Temptadons of BigBnw (1973) and The Scorched-WoodPeople (1977). George doodcock’sCiabritil Dumom (1975) follows in thetradition of Swange Empire (1952) byJoseph Kinsey Howard. It goes witboutsaying that Ihe reprint people have cahcd inon c good thing. A pcrticularly bIzwrcexample v:as the publication by Colts of theutlerly worthless TheSroryof Louis RielrheRebel ChicJ (1885, reprioted 1970; noconfessed author). These influential booksarc allegedly works of history, but creinformed more by mission-orientedimaginations tbcn c meticulous u*c of cvi-den&.

Among rhe athcr books, W. L. Morton’sdlmdrobu: The Bird1 ofo Province 119651includes documentcry material that 1s cm-cial to coy tecl understanding of RX’S rolein 1869-70. end oompletes his eerliei.4lr:wn&r Bcgg’s Red River Journal(1956). In sddition. Thomas Flanaganbegan to anclyze Riel’s religious thoughtseveral years ago. He ha published severalorticlcs on his subject, cod has given us twoimportant books: The Diaries of Louis Riel!1976) and now Loids. “David” Rick14 Books in Canada. May 1976

“Prophet of the New World” (Universityof Tqonto Fmsr, 216 pcgcs. 515 cloth,ISBN 0 8020 5430 7).

Meanwhile, the CBC has entered thebtiocss in c bll way. On April I5 cod 17CBGTV presented a three-hour pmductionof RX. The budget was more thee $2million. The televi;on show is otily part ofthe entqulse. The sound track of the film isto be rclcescd in cassette and long-playrecord formct. “A pop version of the Rieltheme mtd c scored version of F&l’s finalspeech,” the publicity blurb tells us. “willalso be mlecscd cs c single.” NC Multi-media ensures that oar little ones arcincluded by pttig out ce “cudiolvisual”kit. ThcTV show’s sponsor is giving us “afull colour poster” and Compass Film Saleswill distribute the TV film to movietbcctrcs. Finally. Roy Moore’s screenplayhas been tmnslatcd into c novel by JanetRosenstock end Dennis Adalr (Rlel, Paper-leeks. 2Mpagcs. 1SBN077010102x). Allin all it should be a good spring for Riel

buffs.Why are Ccncdicns endlessly fycinat&l

by thll strange cod largely +mdcmtoodmmt? He must eppccl to something deepwithin u*.

Canada has always been c troubledcountry. This is tmc of many of thecountries with which we share our cultm’cl

Raymond Cfcwlier ns CBC-TV’s RM.

rccsonably cmain that tbcy have a future.We cm not; we ofteo fear that our countrywill dlsintcgrcte. We have rcasoc to far.Canada wes created by political andeconomic managers. No political pbllos-ophw. major poet, militcry genius, ormessianic leader hod tbe slightest plccc intbe confedczation movement. As a peoplewe were crated by the Macdonalds, theMowats, the Tuppcrs, the Oaks. and theCertiers. - all politicians end/or busincss-men.oftlieline. Wecamtotstudy ouroriginsthrough the kind of grcotncss cxemplificdby Paine. Washington. Napoleon,Robespierre, Cromwell, Milton, or Gus-tcvus Adolphus. We cannot turn to docu-ments ill The Federalist Papers, McqnaCarla, T h e Communisr Mani/cJro, fhePetition of Right or Areopagirica. Rather,we rout focus on debt allowence. repahiation, tcx equalization formulae,Section 92, tbe federal-pmvineicl interfcce,cod the pofash tax.

Canada was orated by managers and hasbeen sustained by managers. That whichfcnoot be managed tiateos our uisrmce.We do not hmction within national mythsand Ideologies. Movemcnrs cod philos-ophies that might -form some societiescm oftcn seen cs menaces 10 the veryexistenccofthlssocicty. Withinthiscontcxtit is not diictdt 1o understand why LouisRlcl occupies a huge place in our historicalimcgination.

The acquisition of the Wedt WY ourmajor managerial coup. After appmprlatenegotiation weslmply purchased the Prairieregion. We then bound it to ccmml Canadawith c milmcd that wcs largely financed bythe sale cod gift of wcstem lands. If theWest symbolizes our managerial syndrome,Riel symbolizes the opposing forces. Dkpending on time. current issues. philo-sophical bent. cod regional bias. Riel can beseen in an almost infinite number of ways: Ihe thteatcncd natiooel unity; hegcvccoher-cocc to regional identity; hc representedPmirle bicultumlism: he wao c victbii ofAnglo-Saxon bllotry; he wcs Ihe first of clot18 line of Pmbie reformers: he rcprcsemsa lost opportunity to txeat fairly with our

---. .--:. .---.i-_-. ..-Y---.r-i- _-.-~._~I_?.__~.-_“_i.__C-“.i ..._i---i ._._ -:.---A

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n;ltkv pcoplur: he represents the concept of~~C3”SC~’ 3s opposed to the practice ofbmlxrege matnagcment. He is. in shot& theultimate Cam&n example of the usable inhktory .

It is not accidental that the bulk of thecor!.~ Iiwd above were witten by non-pr~~f~;sionol historlons. The focus ls not onattemptin: to understand Rlel es ett histoti-cot ligure: the focus tends to be on “singpoor old Riel to advance one’s cane or, esis non dwrly evident. to mal;c a lot oflll”“dV.

In be 19th century opinion concerningRicl divided pretty much dot@ linguisticlines. Rench Ceoediem supponed h i m ;Enclbh Cooadians warded him es e devil.Asihc \‘jinniprg Frr*s Press put it in 1885:“Riel wa fairly tried, honestly convicted.laudably condemoed. and justly executed.”This all changed by the 1960%. Riel now isrevcrzd b) ell sonsofpeople. I-IeisaReirlereformer rho loved the oppressed. lie is arc:i”n”list and o rictim. Riel m&es us feeldeliciously guilty. end we “se him to flog““I opponents and wont ““I vittue.

Commenting in any detail on the pletbonof r.xy”t \s:orkr concerning Riel is impossi-hlc in a short article. However. three recentbooks illustrate important trends: thescholuly. the mythic. and tbecommerclal.

Thorns* Flmag”n’s eoncent is to analyzein a schalilrly way Rid’s religious thought.His cork ib boperb. and his Lorris “DOI%?Ricl is probably the best sbtgle item ewwitten about the rebel leader. Fbmegenarguer that Riel should be see” not es amadman. but es ” millenarian leader. Thethesis hu its implausible facets. and Rielcat msily bc seen as both -that is. as amJd prophet. Newtheless. we now 131”~rhat Ricl thought. at least after_tbemid.187Qi. lie KY most emphatically notan evly rcrrion of Tommy Douglas or EdSchrcyer H e was en ultm-conservative,whoru “ultimate hopes for the reorgatiza-lion of ma-diind under cletico-theocraticrole were tbc antithesis of liberalism.” Rleladwcetcd incest. probably hecause of his“nhcaltby attitude towat& his saintlike*irtcr. Sea. He wooted polygamy, becauseof o aoog desire “that women should beput hack in their proper station of sub-wn%znce.” His fantasies abouttbefotoreofths Pmbics involved the creation of **a newIrelmd, Italy. Bavsris. Scandinavia,Poland. ewe *a “ew Judea for Jews who;rgxe to recognize Jesus Christ es the onlyhlcrsiah.‘. .” In 1885 Riel led his follow-er.+ to dcnh and defeat hecattse for bit”whellion !‘:a not a political and militaryoprr;ltion. but a “politico-religious mowmatt.” It could succeed. hut only with amiracle. Uiel defined himself es “the tele-phone of God.” If Riel is to continue es OUTnm”\t “\ahlr historic”1 personage, Flaoeganmutt he ignored.

Rudy V.‘iche’\ T/w Srorclw& KwdPw~/c reyrewnt~ the mythic option.Wi<he’r Ricl is devoutly religious. hot in LL1;i”d of NDP mmner. Wiebe ha Riel say,“Why don’t WC make a heaven here in the

Notth-West. where we “n have peacebetween all people, tt” killing. . . .” Thii iswhet it’s all about. Riel sod his friends lovelife, flowers. and children; they laugh a lot.A&s of course are the reverse. They arecold, calculating persecutors. Metis peoplerepresent the burgeoning West, ti’eedom.life, love. . . . lilltory is routinely distorted.The rrrult is bad history, bed mylb, attda singularly uns”ccersf”l “owl.

And finally. the commercial option.Rosenstock and Ad&, in their Rid. havereneged to Harlequinire the West. Theyhave written en “orelievedly “nfortonate“novel”. It does not claim to be history; itclaims eve” more: “What is real is the spiritof the histcw.” What we have is a fairlystraightforw&dpieceofpmpage”da. Rielida saintlike leader attemptitt8 to save a smelland very vln”ou$ nation f&m the relentlessevil that emaoetes fmm Ottawa. Louis Rielis part social democrat end port liberationtheologian. The bisloty is rewltten to soil

the views of tbe authors. One example willhave to suffice. Riel’s erared pronotmce-metus about the settlement of the West e.relra”sfonoed into liberal policies of lbe1970s: ‘“rhe g”“eTnme”t. in 1971, alsoadopted Riel’s suggested multiculhtml pol-icy within a bilingual fremewotk.” Perhapsthe roost offensive aspect of this book issome of the dkdogoe. whicli might wellhave been written by William HenryDmmmond. A metir explains the BuffaloHunt, “We get everything ready - thebows, etmws, and guns. The women. theyget their things ready to claim the buffalo,sharpeo all the knives good. The Bllhop ofSt. Booifaee. he appoints a pri.%t to 8” onthe hunt.”

The Riel industrv hs5 bee” witb us for along time. If eoythhg can slow its gmwth itis the poodemu overkill appmech of theCBC. In 1885 we haged a defeated andderanged mat. Most we punish his memoryin perpemity? 0

jj@umqy im&i@by George Woodcock

Agosk, by Yves ThCsisult. tmoslatedfrom the French by John David AlIen,McGraw-Hill Ryerson. I60 pages, $9.95cloth (ISBN 0 07 082847).

IT ts htora (he” m years since YvaTh6ria”lt published the novel he is bestknow” by. Agaguk, in which henenatedthepowerful story of e” lnuit hunter’swnerge”cc”utofihedarknessofaplimitivellnd harsh life among the ice and tundra.Agoguk became and has remained e bestseller beyond the dreams of most Canedianwritem; up to now it hso sold more than250.000 copies and in sheer financial termsit bar cetteinly been T%ia”lt’s most sopcesskiil novel.

It may also have been his most soceessfolintemtsoffictionalart, IortboughThkiaultbar b&n e consistently productive novelist.he hes written nothing since that caught theimaginalio” quite so powerfolly. His laterhooks took him beck to the Que8e.c margi-nal farmlands of his eulilier novels. into theslums of Montreal, and -in novels such asAsltini (perhaps the second most importantof his works) -into the boreal forest of thenotthem Indians. Almost always, whetherhis pmtegonlsts were naive Canadiins. orhabitants. or Itelieo immigrants. he wasconcaned with the way in which men livedunder extreme conditions. and et times thepowerful merged into the grotesque, thedrama shined “vet into melodrama. !

Th&lault “ever lost his interest in thenative peoples of the Canadian North. In

1969 herehoned totbelnuit weyoflife withasequeltohis earliermestupicce, Toyoour.

$1~ flAgage& lo which lbe old hunter iseomtpted by the commercialism thatemerged during the populmizetion ofEskimo art in tbe 1960s. cod ls evenhtallykilled by his son Tayaout, who ls appalledwhen his father sells images in which aresecreted the most sacred traditions of tbelooit. Tayaout himself, the upholder of theprimitive pest, is killed by a great whitebear.

The sane inacapable cooflict betweenthe Mmitive pest sod the civilized presentdominates Th&ia”lt’s most recant novel,Agcmk. in which he returns after anotherdecade to the world of the Inoit. During (hetime that has elapsed since Ta~nour. therehas been a fortbet shift in the r&tionship ofthe lnuit to the modem world. Agoak,grandson of Agagok and so” of a full-timestone carver, enters the cornmuriel worldof the North and es the novel begins seemspoised on the verge of e successfol caner ase c”mp”ter expert.

The links with the earlier novels areto”““us. for though Agogok cod his wifeIriookand their travails in thewilderness arerecalledin Agoak. thedramaofAgog”kandTayaoor is “of mentioired. and Agook’sstone-carving father is evidently anotherson of the old huoter; he has departed sos”ccessfolly iium the eocestral life thatAgo& wha the novel begins. has almostn”koowledgeofthehu”tlogtechniq”estbat

May.‘i879. Bwke in Canada 15

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vxre c~sential to the survival of his Fore-F&X3.

. In .Jpak the civilizing pmcess thet iscentral to Agu& goes inlo reverse ascircumstances fxce Agoak back into thewlldemess and reienUessly primitivize him.

In the earlier part of the novel. Agoak ispon~yed~sntnuiteagertoadopt tbeskillsOF whitz men und to succeed in P way thatwill make him ittdistinguishuble Fmm them.In Fmbisher he masters the white men’sways OF organization, and dreams of goingsouth to Montreal to make a career in theccntre of Canadian financial power. Themore traditional lnuil regard him as atraitor. md even his wife Judith, pas&motea~. their sexual relstions may be, fearsleaving the North lest she lose her htuitidentity.

But thev do achieve a liind of emotionalcompromi;e. md a happy Future seemsassured. Then two visiting Americans breakinto Ago&s house cod tape Judith. Agoak

catches them in the act, kills and mutilatesthem, and then, rather than risk IiFe im-prisonment, steals sleighsand teams of dogsand, with Judith, sets off nemss the ice withEllesmere Island as his final destination.

As they travel, the primal Imtit emergesin Ago&; the self-preservative instincts ofhis people reassett themselves, and hebecomes the adept bunter he never WYbefore, surviving .and For months success-fully evading the police. As tbe’hiddenknowledge emerges, so does the hetshnessdbehaviourtbat went with tbeold life. andAgo& becomes bruhlly dominant towardsJudith, who begins to lose her haditionalinclinations and to think even prison pref-emble to the enslavement she now Feelsherself exwiettcbte. She tries to Lpcaoe.but in a s&e of t&mental terror Ag&kills not onlv two Mountie uursuers but alsoa whole Family of nomd Imtit whoseammunition he needs. The final assertion ofprimitive domination is a bitterly ironical

revotsaloFoneoFthekeyszettesoFAga&In the earlier novel * crucial point in tbecivilizing of Agaguk occurs when lriookpr~vettts him, rifle in hand. From murderingin the baditional mrnner the girl child shehas born him. Judith is too defeated. whenher child cotnes. to defend it, and at tblspoint. as he crushes his daughter’s headwith a rifle butt. we l&now Ago&. has beenwholly recaptured by the primal pt.

Agwk builds up in B steady crescendo.The early chapters in Fmbisher are ratherprosy, and the long diicussions betweenAgo& and Judith about their funr~. ateimprobably self-conscious. But oneeweerein the world of ice and danger. whereTh6tiuttlt portrays the IiFeoFthe hunter withunsentimental Ferocity, the novel gainssteadily instreogth.aodinits finalchapters,if not in its beginning, Agwk is a darklypowerful book, bitterly pessimistic in itsview oFa the regressive potetttialitles ofhuman naNre. 0

Flanney O’Connor’s letters chart a short life in whichpain and peacocks are constants and the Church is everywhereby Douglas Hill *

The Habit OF Being, by FlanneryO’Connor. letters edited and with an intro-duction by Sally Fltzgertdd, McGrew-HillRyersott. 617 pages, $19.95 cloth (ISBN0374 167 69 9).

LWNERY O’CONNOR died in 1964 at 39.after P ICyear struggle with hpnscr~rhnrmrusur. the watittg metabolic dis-ease that killed her Esther. With the exception of tx*:o years at the University of Iowafora MasteroFFine Arts in writing. ayeararthe Yaddo colony. and another in New YorkCity and Connectlcul, ha life was spent inGeorgia. first in Savannah end then, duringher illness. with ha mother on tbe Familyfum at Milledgevllle. Her published workcomprises two short novels, Wise Bloodand i-lx I’olcnr Bear II Auury, two books ofstories. and a posthumous volume of criticalwiting. And now this monumental collec-tion of letters.

O’Connor’s talent. by any xcouot, isunique: tbtts the temptation to the commen-tator lthere have been more than a dozenbooks and scores OF articles on her worksince her death1 to classify and label. Therearc a few points of agreement among herreaders. hovrever. which these letters sup-port: that her faith - enormously sttvttg.informiy - is Roman Catholic: and hex16 Bools in Canada. May 1979

world is a Fmtestattl South @‘iNallyblasted by the Civil War, fallen from greceto tbe farther refuges of fanaticism; that hercharacters tue gmtesques - deformed,maimed in body and spirit, Christ-haunted;that ha vision sust@ns irony and motpas-sion. outrage and love. So saying one hasnot captured her, oneisstillnot propwedforthe fusion of bumour and honvr or tbebizarre expressions of mutilated faith (whatshe calls “do-it-yourself” religion). Noneof it seems random or gnhritous.

The letters date From 194.8 N 1964, fromthe diffidence - hiding steel - of theWyenr-old searching out her markets.through the self-confidence of the mttture,successFu1 artist expanding her acquain-(awe, free to talk - needing to talk -about her work, to tbe calm bnvery of herfinal year, the requests For prayers, always

ha own prayers For troubled liiends. thecomposition of one of her best stories onwhat was literally ha deathbed. Theeditbtghere is firm but unexceptionable: petson&ties develop, Friendships form, continuitiesof character, situation, and argument areestablished. The range. diligence,responsiveness. and sheer volume of hacorrespondence are aslonisbbtg.

HabiteountedmuchForO’Connor. “V*cation implies lllitation” is her refrain;acceptance of that imperative impliesmutine. She tried to write For three hoursewry morning: she tended her ducks andswans and peafowl; she received visitors,made numerous hips For readlogs and“litry” cdnferences. and wmte letters. Allthis against the uncertaituie.s ofdiee, drugs,crutches. a dlstigurrd and disintegratingbody. “I don’t make no plans.”

Patterns emerge -of life. religion, art.Tbe pain and the pwcocks are mostants. Bsere relatives. townsfolk, tenants - the“good country people” whose behaviourand locations she reveled in. The Chttrrh iseverywhere: “I write the way I do because(riot though) & am a Catholic.” Moreprecisely: “There ax some of us who havetopay ForourFaitheverystepoFofewayandwho have to work out dmmatlcally what itwould be like without it and ifbeing without

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it v:otdd be ultim;ltely possible or not.”Her favorite authors -the “influences”

-are Hwthomr, James. Conrad. Fmdk-ner: her closest fiction-writing hiends wereCaroline Gordon and John Hawkes. Thereading described in Ulese letters is timely.various. and immense, the critical opinionstough but appealing (“anybody that ad-mires Thomas Wolfe can be expected to likegood fiction only by accident”). There’s notB lot abcut specific matters of cmfi -O’Connor liked to think of herself as “onlyB stotyteller” - but one sees distinctly thather characters nnd their difficulties havecome alive and remained so in her imagina-tion. Thhere’r also virtually no pontificationabout literature, just some careful effort atdefining and clarifying her own part in it.

Limitation. then: short storks, shortnovels, short life - “What you have tomeasure out. you come to observe closer. orso I tell myself.” For all its size. thiscollection seems. lii everything else aboutO’Connor’s work. a distillation. a paring-dcwn - 600 pages of essential insight andself-confrontation. (Compare Faulkner.whose recent Selected Letters is for dtemost pan scrupulously arranged tedium.)O’Connor deserves to be read and known inCanada: there is value in her lucid exampleof how to make cultural and regionaluniqueness a source of purity and strength.Begin wirh the fiction. begin with the let-ters: eilhcrway you’ll bestartled, intrigued.caught by tbii remarkable life in art. 0

Children of My Heart. by GabrielleRoy, nanslated From the French by AlanBmwn. McClelland&Stewart. 171 pagzs,%?.95cloth (ISBNO77107838 2).

By SHEILA FISCHniAN

*%Y PIJ~S: says tbenarratorof Childrenof My Heart. “with their jay. brbught backmy own childhood. To complete the cirde,I tried to magnify dteir joy so that it wouldgo with them all tbmugh rheir lives.” Thenarrator is a young woman. scvecly morethan a child herself. who teaches her pupilsto teal and write -all the while learningwith them poignant tnnhssbwltbe world ofwhich they are all part.

The book begins with Ihe young. un-named narrator facing her first class. “thevery smallat.” while at the end she bidsfarewell to a tender initiation to the world ofchildhood regaiDed and bmeccnce lost asshe leaves behind a country school and wilhit, MCd6ric. tic child-man barely youngerthan she. with whom she hm discovered thefirst hints of a less innocent kind of love.

Watch for thesefeatures in f&n-e issues of

RXiS - 50 years after“ t h a t s u m m e r ”Gay Geddes pleads thecase of the long poemA profile of Chileanpoet Ludwig ZAlerThe curious anticlimaxof the Governor General’sAwards

I

I must digress here to express someirritation at the form that bar been given tothis English vetsion of Ces en&ms de nzavie (for which Roy won her tbbd GovernorGeneral’s Award). The original book waspresented as a series of stories, each with itstitle, linked simply by setting and narrator.and opening eloquently to take in herever-developing experience of joy and pain;of wisdom too. The contents are UDchanged, but the collection of stories hasbeen presented so as to suggest a novel -which the book most aw!redly is not.Surely English Canadians. of all the readersin Qe world. ans accustomed to readingcollections of shmi stories and needn’t betempted. like so many children facing smnenasty-tasting medicine. with the disguisingsugar of another literary fomx

Aside from that criticism, for whichneilher the aulhw nor the translator is to beblamed. I can only rayfhat Children of MyHeart is a jewel. one of the finest examplesof dx great art of Gabrielle Roy. She whohas written witb such grace and under-standing of tie dying bank clerk AlexandreChenevert, of the indomitable RoskAnnaLacasse, of the lnuit woman and herhalf-American child, here returns to herown Prairie beginnings, where she too was acmlmryteacbe.I.

Lie Michel Tremblay. who seems to bethe writer most likely to inherit ha literarymantle, Roy obviously loves ha characters,and she writes ofthem always widthgenera-

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ity and campassion. The sometimes naivenarrator is prescmcd with atTcction; she andperhaps her real-life model would surelyhave magnified her pupils’ joy so that “itwould go with them all through their lives.”The mngc of characters is vast, from thelourish series of Demettioffs to the fright-cned. angelic Italian child to_ Nil, theUlnini;m boy who sings like o lark. almostable through the power of his song to heal.The women - mothus. small sisters.colleagues -might seem to play secondaryparts. but each is essential snd fully realizedthrough only a few words or gestures.Finally. dmugh, it is bledtic -who ridea

to school on his white stalliin and shamswith his teacher lltc first frightened glimpsesof a nascent sexuality -who most imprc-sss*i the reader and perhaps hi creator too.

Roy’s writing is limpid, con!mlled. eleg-ant, and spare, and Alan Bmwn htx TC-created it hem with such diffident skill thatreading him is like reading the originalFrench. Nevaisafal~enotestruck.nevesisthere any doubt whose voice the rcadcr ishearing. And although Ihe translator is.quite properly, invisible -indeed, becauseofthis -thebookis as much Alan Brown’sas it is Madame Roy%. 0

by Dennis Duffy

Good as Gold, by Joseph I-teller. Mus-son. 447 pages. Sl7.50 cloth (ISBN 0 671.2’923 0).

BRUCB GOLD is a Jewish American trying tofind out what il means to be a Jew inAmerica. In view of the impressive Jewishpmcnc~ in the American cultural fabric.tix quest may appear P trifle unnecessary.Any cultuml grouping that includes bothLouis B. Mayer and Judy Garland, SaulBellow and Helen Fmnkmttialer. LeonardBernsteinand BsrbmStre’ctuld. maybesaidto have letl a mths distinctive impressionupon the ingots of the Republic. Andcunainly decades of the Jewish-Americanliterature and drama of the family. froml-knty Roth to Philip Roth, have madeJewish 111orc5 and intonations as widelyavailable pieces of Americana as Irish copsand Italian hoods. Of course. the passinginto mythology scarcely guarantees culturalaurvivol. Instead. it often indicates tbeopposite. while being fed into the omnivo-mus digestive system of American. popculture axn distort not only outsiders’ per-ceptions of a gnuup. but the group’s ownsense of self.

Genentionr of American novelists haveassured us that to find one’s life in Americais to lore it: herds of individualists in flightfrom thci family. culture. and biihplacecrowd the classics of American literature.Instead of following this tradition of aliena-tion through an examination of a singlefigure examined in depth, Heller taks asatirically conceived non-person. anrfdd~h. for his subject. seeking to give himthe status of a tribal represcntativc.

The sense of America as a closed systemof tribal discourse marks Hcller’s previouswork. EverJlbody in Cm-h-22 except YOS-18 Boob in Canada. May 1979

sarian suffered from scvem military-indus-trial complexes. The author’s skill in mak-ing the Sccnnd World War an instant-foreplay of the Cold War not only influ-enced (to their detriment) an entim genera-tion of American radicals, but telegraphedto its audience the conviction that their liveshad become part of an endless. absurd,impenonal power bip that patently revealeditself in the total cormption of language.Sincethemostconwptponionofthis mt layin its rhetoric of duty, responsibility. andpcmonal sacrifice for social goods. Heller’shem-in-fliiht repudiated the public world.What seemed to his audience. hotivcr. as anovel and rebellious gcstprc was in facl nomore the a classic lift-off fmm * scenelava troublesome to American heroes.

The Huck Finn world of bizarre cmss-talk caught by Cm-h-22 yicldcd to lessentertaining vignettes of mendacity inSomerhing Happmed. Still a mosl usefultext for anyone seeking to understand tkehabits of thought that pmduced the NixonWhite House and its cmpomte supporters,the too-lengthy novel sometimes becomeswhat it beholds, .snd thus merely reflectsrather than rcndcm the boring evasions itdeals with.

Thecorruptions in Goodas Gold includeboth the personal and the public domains.Using the writ=-writing gimmick that hasbecome a staple of modemirt fiction, Hcllwshows a careerist cynically atlcmpting to,fabricateabookon the JewishexperienceinAmerica. Partofthntbooklies intheoneweare reading. At the same time, Gold liesunder consideration for a white Houseappointment to a regime whose chief passesmost of his lime in prctcndii to writedeceitful me+rs of a do-nothing admints-t&on. Two kinds of evasive discourse

-.e-:.r . ._ .i_. ,. -.. .-7----

prevaiil: the familial one cloaks sibling andgenerational rivalries beneath a pseud*hankness and pseudo-aggression in speechlhat produces tbe pamdoxtcal “You’ve gotto be kidding u) say anything that awful”l”response that releaoa hearers from theburden of taking the talk’serimwly. Lardedwith Yiddishisms and slwoys spokenaround a table covered with fatty food, thechstter turns expressions of hamd andcontempt into buzz-words. It is KitiS Learplayed at a bagel joint by a man in chcckcdtrousers and plastoid white loafus thatmatch his belt.

The Wasp talk of the White Housedoesn’t bother to conce?.l its emptiness: tbemltcccdents of any pmnoun are never clear.the passive voice always fvgs the agent forany action. Nobody writes his own speechesor even thinks his own thoughts. As anemblem of this world, HeUer choosesKissinger. Masta of doubletalk. ass-kisserto any regime willing to serve as his patron.wire-tapper of his friends. ~smmunded byenemies indistinguishable fmm hi frtendsat& as Israel at the time of the Yom KippurWar could testify, smvmmdcd by friendswho have him for an enemy: Heller holds upKissinger to ridicule in terms that havebecome familiar over the years. To theindictment, he adds one new charge Kii-singer is a Jew. How, (hen, can Judaismmean anything. stand for anything that isdecent in American life?

Here. aRer a scria of very minor plotcomplications. westop. The public world isawful. and Gold is finally turned down forthe job anyway. The family world is awful.and its mcwt decent member dies. Gold isawful, as a husband. teacher. and culturalcommcmator. Oh yes, Ame++? b prettyawful too. Lots of its old urban neighbour-hoods are decaying and changing as newfolks move in.

Such a message neither dazzles nordepresscs nor exalts me. but only makes mewonder as to why it took 447 lamelyplotted, repetitiously written pages to tellme that. While I would not want to bearKissinger’s baby, I see no more reason forJews feeling ashamed for him than for me.Irish-American by birth, to have feltashamed because Cardinal Spellman was sohorrible about the war. If one senses acenainsplitnow happening in Jewishlifeonthis continent. and wcmts to know moreabout it, Mordccai Richlcr’s St. U&ah’sHorsemar~ is still the place to look. Ricblerremains under the delusion that bclicvablechuactcm. interesting events. and styliticeconomy form narntive nscssitics, and Ihope he stays that way. The fact that Goodar Gold was hailed as a “bestseller beforepublication” might convince him othcr-wise.

On the whole. the novel reminded me ofAnimal House. One can make films. goodfilms. that deny the possibility of the ethicalenterprise. that sneer at eve” the hope ofdecency. The Marx Bmlhers did so, afterall. But tbcir style. energy. and inventivencss scarcely marks Aninto/ House. acry ofboorish despair fmm a group of people who

got no clown to the barricades than the sixo’clock news. That sort of eesy contemplthat rcleaws one fmm the burden of techni-cal escellencs, that big mspbetry lo aoobrlinele old universe is what his novel isall obom. It’s selling well. Cl

1

TheMcGregors: A Noveiofon OntarioPioneer Family. by Robert Laidlaw.M8cmillat. 176 pages. 512.95 cloth1ISBN07705 17110). .

By I. M. OWEN

THE PAIIT OF Onttio that stretches west-vard from the Niagara Bscetpment to theshore of Lpke Huron is a land o fcomfortable-looking farms and little townsberide placidly flowing rivets. their streetslined with hee\y Homer Watson ttees andgmcious houses that look es if they havebeen. and will be, there forever. This is thesetting for mat of Alice Munm’s stories:stories of lives whose apparent toml sim-plicity conceals undercurrents and detkcomplexities that, like the houses and thetrees but in e different way, suggest ecommunity whose roots in the land em deepand ancient.

No\,: comes a posthumous novel by AliceXlunro’s fetber. Robert Laidlaw, to remindus how very lately this green end pleasantlend wes harsh. challenging frontiercountry. The M~Gtegm~ of the litle ereHighkmd Scats who don’t belong to thewry first vxve of pioneers: they arrive inBruce County in 1853. buyins their farmfrom the original settler. But the land is stilluntamed and the life is primilive.

The novel is the life story of Black JimMcGregor from his errivel with hi perentsm the ege of six to his death 70 yevs later.It’s not. end doesn’t set om to be. perticu-badly interesting es P novel; there em noremukebk events. complex chemcters. orpowtful emotions. Essentially. it’s socialhistory conveniently test in the form ofB&m. a description of the everyday life ofa communily during its tmnsition fromcolonial frontiet to prosperous hinterland ofa n urben civiliwtion. It concentreteS on.Scottish settlers ood their descendants,keeping the 11 should think) more nttmemus

hiih in the beekgromtd and et a distance.Approptietely to the Scottish atmosphere,it’s e firmly instructive book. It teaches usebout deer-hunting, ban-fmming, the con-stmction of log cabins. threshing, end muchmore - eU intasting cod valuable for itsown s&e. And the quite beli&eble thoughnot wildly interesting fictitious charactersere a help in bringing it to life and inducingus to reed on, though they em not strongenough to tmnsmute the social history into ework of ett. But a book cao be a good bookwithout being e work of att.

Having been pqt inadidaeticmoodby thebook, I most point out e couple of slips thatcould hew beeo earected without injury tothe text. When Jim McGregor goes toxhool. in 18.55 apparently, the schoolroomis decorated with en illustmted map of theworld; in the middle of Africa it showsStanley greeting Livingtone. That greetingtook place in 1871. Since no dates havebeen mentioned up to this point in the text,the chronologically minded reader may beconfused for some time about the period oftbestoty. No doubt theanachronistic m’ap ise childhood memory of the author’s thatfoond its way into thii book by eccident.

Occasionally. though not osuelly,Laidlow’s Highlend characters felt Law-kmd Seats. Thet’s not whet Highlenders dowhen they speak English. Rather theyspeck. es Stevenson’s Lowlender DavidBalfoor remarks. “with * pretty eccent,most like the English (but moree8meable):’ 0

Zoom, by Andmw Btycht. tmnslated,fmm the Polish by Kevin Windle, Simon &Pii, 154 pages, 510.95 cloth USBN 088924 070 1).

By CHRIS SCOTT

ANDREW savcm, WHO eanle to Canada in1972. WBO born in Warsaw in 1935. He hesbeen e sotider, miner. heavyweight boxa,and e Polish press -pondent in NotthVietnam and Chine. Btycht is the author ofDried Cmssa (1961) end Dancing inHitIer’s Xfeodquorias (19%). works ee-claimed in Europe es pa? of the post-Holocaust litetetore.. Zoom, hanslated byKevin Windle, e Flt.D. bt Slevonic Satdiesfrom McGill, .js his tits1 novel to be ’published in English.

Like hi German cootemporary. JakovLind. Brycht is a mee obsessed by theZOth-century boreaucmoy of death, end anunnamed mncentmtion camp (pmbablyMaidenek. possibly Auschwitz) is one ofthe locelcp of this book. Zoom is about four

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men: the snonynlo”s “amlo*. a young alIdaspiring fmss photographer: Rohett Wolf.his cynical and world-wary mentor. andFather Gerber, a Catholic priest whosacrificed his life in the concenalion campfor Adam Gil, P railway linamul.

Gil has been sent on n world pmpagsndalow by the Church as a token survivor and akindof stsnd-in for themartyred Getber. Heretis. seemingly unchanged. lo his jobtapping the rails of the Moscow-Romeexprrrs. In the mornings he elks tits1 in thediition of Moscow, then in the diitionof Rome: before sunset things ate the otherray around. After the dubious experimentof the Lublin Poles and the failure of Polishnuion~lism lo nm along Soviet lines, thereis no third diilion for modem Poland. Gil,philosophizing with a hammer, is owned bya stttte to which he doesn’t belong. and theChurch lays claim to his soul. Sotitetbing,according to Wolf. has got to give, andsomething does -violently.

Wolf sets the nonalor to spy on Gil, withP zoom lens and a tape recorder. Wolf livesricatiously: he is a voyeur with a mission.“As soon as I hear the word intellectual,”he declares. echoing Hemtat Goering. “Islip the safety-catch off my cameta.” Thecantem may not kill. but Wolf does like lohave his photos composed. On location inAfrica. he itttetmpts an execution la gel theperfectshot. (Themethodishead-bashingbytm iron club swung personally by a dictamrcslled Scorpion.) “Well. what really happetted?” he asks the bemused nunfor.

“They lived a minute longer.”Voyeurismofannhasortlierbehindonc

ofthe extremely sad and funny scenes in tbiibook. A priest, using local kids lo play theprisoners, has written a morality play out oftheGerber-Gil stoqj. featuring an “Angel”who hauls Father Guber’s corporeal spiritup a ladder to hwett. and a “Devil” as aconcentralion-camp guard. The priest ex-plains to the ttarmtor: “As the author -and. 1 would admit in confidence, some-times as a human being -I consider thatevil exists immanently, just as good does.But since good stems from God and evilfmm the Devil there’s no room for futiledebate. The whole thing’s perfectlystraightforward. That’s how it’s shown inthe play.” Indeed it is.

Three quarters of the way through thisshort novel. Brychl kills off his mostintetresting character when the Rome-Moscow express jumps the rails. The nar-mtor is on tbe scene to tword Giis rqvengeand \VolTs death, becoming. like hiq men-tor, a thattatogmpher. Zw,n closes ac itopens witb the namttot in hospital tiller hehas crashed his Porsche Cartea - acontrived “full-citcle” ending. No doubtthe black lens-like moth% lbal crater the textare meant to make this rnoe arresting. (Theproduction job was absolutely hideous: thebook looks as if it’s been set by lbe squareinch. blotch ‘II’ fade printing with lies utt-even enough lo detail the eye.) A pity allthis. I suspect a restmctured book. and itthmws Zoom out of focus. blurting its

moral and metaphysical repolution so thatthe background of the death camp fallsaway. a faded image in a long lens. It wassurely mote than that. 0

The Buck Room. by Ann Copeland,ObemnRess. 149uws.Jl5clothGSBNO88750 307 li anti 56.95 paper &EN 088750 309 8).

The Bcmlhouse Ott&ion. bv Jan Gould.Gray’s Publishing Ltd., 20i &es, $6.95paper (ISBN 0 88826 073 3).

By MICHAEL SMITH

THE CHIEF VIRTIJE of Ann Copeland’s firstcollection of short stories. At Peace -published just last fall -was her portrayalof the “manipulative numce, the religiousmasks of power” that exist behind awnvent’r walls. Perhaps her fluency insidethe &ister is partly to blame for herperception of the outside world. Tbc eightstories in her new collection, Tke RackRoom. are seldom divotced fmm Cathcd-icism (several feature priests), and tend loshare a notion of tidiness that only surviveainside a dosed wmmunity. Too often,

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LADIES IN WAITINGby Gwsn DavisA fart-paced novel about vane”trying to make It in post-WatergalaWashington D.C. Gwen Davis’ mostprovocative novel yet-a steaming.stripped lo the boner expod of the“In” crowd: the power-obsessedmen and the sexy, .ambitiouswomen who servics and give solaceto them. May $14.85

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v:hmexposedto therealworld, Copeland’sown manipul;rtive nuances t&e refuge inthe guise of rather phony coincidence.

In the title story, for instance, afitting-mom attendant in an exclusive shopis dercribing her favowite customer -anelegant. heavily madevp matron who trieson dozens of dresses, but “wet buys. Thenarrator. a widow. is worried about hateenaged daughter, who’s get@ seriouswith Hubert. some bard-luck boy who liveswith his aunt. On her way to meet him forthe first time, tbe narrator witnesses anaccident in which thevictimis huchaishedcustomer. She soon discovers the customerws Hubert’s guardian. an impoverisheddishwasher whose shopping trips werenothing but wishful fantasy. Similarly. in“My Fsther’s House.” austere Great Aunt

stack things too much in ha own favor -by meladramaticnlly giving a drunken,rednecked motel owna, in addition to lotsof other reasons for hatbtg long-haired,dope-smokb?g kids, a bmtba who diedfrom an overdose.

This is the first book of fiction to comefmni Gray’s Publishing Ltd. Prbtted onnewsprint. it’s nothing fancy. But it is agood choice to st&t witi. 0

suitor who died in battleoverseas. Whentheaunt has a seizure during a sermon by a newyou”9 priest. the girl discovers that thepriest and the suitor share the same last“XIX.

These are the two most obvious plottv.%& - tbe kind of easy wrapup youcspect at the end of a TV show (which ip. ofcome. another closed world). Otherstotiesare marred by tlteir neatness, such av theglib fates of three spinster sistets in “AWoman’s Touch.” Copeland deals in“character” stories but. like television. Ihecharxters are frequently packaged intostereotypes - Great Aunt Anna. forrrample. or the selfish priest in “Mis-carriage,” or a milksop father in “Cassie.”They are well-madestories -once the idealin story writing - but, as such. they tlblwith the pitfalls of cIich6. By COntTast,though both have flaws, “Beginning” (in

and “Return” (about tb; tmin trip ho&.from visiting a first grandchild) M moreinteresting. becausetheirmnclusions aren’tforegone.

Jan Gould’s The Bwrhousc Qucsdon is afirst collection of plainly written storiepabout the people who live on one of the gulfislands off the coast of British Columbia.Though their subjects are somewhatsimilar. there’s noneoftbenavativeflashofa Jack Hodgim here. Gould’s stories owemore to the workmanlike tradition of HughG;lmer. and IV. D. Valgardson’s Manitobastories. mostly because they’re plortcd[things happen to the characters, and (hat’swhat makes them characters). All of thestories are competent. and whilesametbingholds them back from being brilliant, still,nonuofthr eight comes upiwpelessly lame.

Several are set-pieces. In “pin Earlyblomiy Message” a snobbish mainlandnurse doesn’t recognize tie worth of ayoung tirhemtrm until she’s bound to losehim. In “The Glories of Greece” a v~oman-iring famxr kills his brother and thebrother’s wife because she was the onlyv:oman hedidn’t manage tocharm. In “Oh,That Virgin Hair” a girl must choosebetween her future on the island and theproposal of ha first lover. Only once. in“The Latest Island News.” does Gould

Dragon Spoor USBN b 88924 076 0)and Final Act (ISBN 0 88924 077 9). byJack H. Crisp, Simon & Pi, each 218pages and $10.95 cloth.

By PHIL SURGUY

THWZ AI(E ‘THE first two books in what lsplanned as an open-ended sties of spy-adventure thrillers. Escb one is labelled “ASpecial Opemtions Executive Novel.” TheSOE was an acNeI British espionage outfitthat carried cut drngemus operations inoccupied Europe during the Second WorldWar. The general premise of the series isthat the SOE is still in e~.istenc~ andempowered to shanghai its former membersback into active swice whenever it needsthem. Thus each novel will have a differenthem and supportbtg cast.

DraSon Spoor is a dismal effmt, mm-inircent of the glut of .gade-C ripoffs oftie lames Bond and Michael Cab%? moviesthat came out in the 1960s. It was nevercleat whclhw tbe titers and pmducen ofthose pointlessly violent, inanely plottedsecret-agent flicks were totally ignorant ofwhat a good tbtilla is, greedily contemptu-ous of the form, or impelled by a ghastlycombination of both attitudes.

Fill Act is a much better book. thoughnot anywhere near being of the first rank.It’s about a middle-aged Canadian play-wright who gets mixed up in a war betweentwo British criminal organizations and turnsto his old SOE commander for help. Theviolent physical action is generally a lot lessrandom than in Dragon Spoor and theauthor does a good job of keeping hero andreader guessing for a long time about what’sreally going on. But there is adiitrcssinglack ofsophiitication about thestmy and thepeople in it. There are also MO manyannoyingly illogical end silly details. suresigns dtat the author hasn’t yet completelythought out. hasn’t thoroughly imagined.the fictional world he is trying to create; andthat is something he must .do if he and hispublisher have any ambitions beyondscooping out a little niche in the cheappaperback merket. Two more SOE novelshave alteady been written and a fifth,Dateline Rio. is at the outline stage. 0

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The Decter’s Sweetheart end otherstoricc. by L. M. Montgomery, sclcctcd byCethainc McLay, McGraw-Hill Ryuson,190 pages, $7.95 cloth (ISBN 0 070 8 2 7 9 0 7 ) .

By MARY AlNSLlB SMlTkI

LUCY ~WAUD t.to~~w~~~vcallcd herself enindefatigable mibbler. Born in ,I874 inPrince Edwend Island. she began writing esc young child, and bed her first poetry andstories published nt 16. Before she tumcd tolonger fiction end hit Ihe jeckpot in 1908witb .hcr first novel, Anne of GreenGaMes. she wcs already an estcblishcdw~~,sellingbcthjuvenileandadultpie~estc tbe leading journals ofhcrdey. Even aftertbe secccss of Anne, she conthued topmduce shmt sterice as well 89 19 more.novels before h& death in 1942. T h eDocmr’s Sw”heCrrr Contains 14 Of tb*lestorlcs. pebllshcd between 1899 end 193%secrcbcd act and collected by Cctbcrlnel&Lay of the University of Calgary.

McLay says in her introduction thatMontgomery’s notebooks record the sale ofmore than 500 stories. Fewer than 50 havepreviously appeared in book form andMcLay has e double pwposc in presentingtbis new collccticm. First, she wants to mckcmm-c smrics available for dtc enjoyment ofMontgomery Mdcrs; secondly, she scg-gcsts tbat cs tbe stories ere crmngcd cbmno-logically. spaming mest of Montgomery’sccreer. tbcy show ha development es ecraftsman and cs e writer concerned with cwi& range of themes and issue+

Tbc Iirst of there aims presents noproblem. Sentimental and dated as they mayseem today, Montgomery’s writings stillmettcr e greet deal to e great many peoplewho can think of Prince Edward Islcndonly in terms of her fictional crcatlons. Shewas II telentcd story-teller who could createa wondctiidly strong sense of place endtime: The Dam’s SWe~hear~ providesanother glimpse of this sccenz world. TrueMontgomery fans will recognize thatcl&cars and events ti’om sane of thesestehia crc used again in later novels.

But es for the ssond purpose -to showthat Montgomay had e greater depth to hawriting than hcs previously been suspected

- McLay asks far too much of tbescstories. Montgomery hcrself cynically ad-mitted c diffcrcnce between writing smnc-thing good enough to plecse hcrsclf tidwriting to please cditms end m&e money.0bviius1y many of these stories vlcrc vnit-fen 10 conform to the conventions of tbctime, and. 89 such, erc hardly mmc thanhistorical curiosities. They crc mmenccswith stock chcracta in mclodmmatlc sitca-tions. For example. in “Emily’s He.+band.” e young married couple have livedapmt for five years following a qeerrcl.Emily hears that her husband ls dying oftyphoid: she stmgglcs tbmugb c scvcrc

, storm to hi bedside; he recovera. and tbcyerc reunited. In the title story, e countrydoetar waits faithfully foi tbe return of hisyoung sweetbat whose rich 8wdinns,diiappmving of her rcnl attachments, havetaken her off to the city. She does rctum tomauy her doctor. again after c five-yearseparation. In feet. cll but tbrcc of tbc 14stories end with conjugal uniting - orreuniting.

Some storks do provide e change ofpcce. In “By Gmce of Julius Caesar,” twomiddle-aged women. CcnvaSSing for tbechurch. climbalcddertemaftcptoerapce vicious-looking dog. The dog’s owner, alonely widower. lrmevcs the ladder endrefuses to let them down until one cgws tamarry him. Stories like’ this. which breakfrom melodmmetic patterns and arc intcn-donally humomes. arc tbc best of tbccollection.

Bet ascntielly, ell the stcrics ere -esMontgomery intended them to be -women’s magazine fiction. To treat tbcm Yanything more significant is ineppmprlateand, for tbis reason, McLay’s introductionjars. She discusses Theme, chcmcter, plotstmcture, setting. point ofview. humour-laying it alI out like the intmductien to ehigh-school English textbook. Somclimcsthis serious trcatmcnt borders on theridiculous, cs when McLay tries D justify

~tintgomcry’s 0uhageous use of coin-cidencc in some of ha plots.

The book also provides a concisechronology of the events of Montgomery’slife end e list of books by end about her.Annoyingly. e cceple of the fccts in tbechronology crc inconsistent witb the infcr-mctionin the bibliography.

Montgomery admittcd that ha sh’cngtbwcs in writing for young girls and thesesmries -presumably for adult reedcrs -crenotcsgoedcs bcrbestjuvenile fiction. Ifthese rep&nt the best of her hundreds ofstill uncollected stories. Montgomery fansprobably won’t have to make muchroom ontheir bookshelves for future volumes. 0

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Somebody Told. Me I Look LikeEver~mea. by Raymond Filip, pulp Ress,61 pa&zs, 33.50 paper (ISBN 0 88978058 7).

Peeling Oranges in the Shade, by JadeHamwa. The Paget Ress, unpaginaod,uup+ed. cloth (ISBN 0 920348 06 81.

Tributarim, An Anthology: N’rhr toWrltcr. edited by Barry DempsNr, MmalcResslVal1e.y Editions, 112 pages. $10.00cloth~SBNO8896Z092xlaudS4.95paperIISBN 0 88962 091 1).

By A. F. IHOFtlTZ

THE D~.FFECTION and pain of thewunded outsider in a technical society thatdeifies the “normal” - thii is what strikesus in a turbulent eruption of language fromRaymond Fllip’s first full-scale culhxtlonof poems. Sonwbody ToId Me I Lo&dLik Ewryman. The slyle is NmUlNOUS,packed. laden with parodies of jYgon andof8cialese and pxudo-inNllecNal Slang.studded with puns and word games. often

leadis tivm one point to another ac muchby sound paltern ss by Ihought.

Filip’s signature Is the bitter, hypa-‘active. tndy ratless wit of tbis style.Thou8b he is capable of lyricism. even in ilhis wads are nervo~~sly act&, 0s in thispass%=

Hi? subject, roughly speaking, is definedbyII single line he utters in the person of theCanadian Immigrant: “I am the inalienabletight N alienation.” Wip lives in a humanworld crushed and pushed aside by the

dures f& &h the human is iimplymaNrial.

Hi social criticism develops organicallyfmm an uncompmmising engagement with+uNbiogrdphy and the cuncnN situationaround him. The book staru with Filip’sown physicd deformity, accepting it aa asign of huuoumble alienation fmm (aedoppcwition to) a society that is truly “deformed,” It progresses thmugh vignettea offamily breakdown. and moves into broad-der c~tsidemdun of Canudiun society. Al-ways Filip sticks close to real sights,sounds, experiences. and speech. He re-

fuses to symbolize and universalll. butthrough strug8Ie with rea6ties mansga tomake hi images bU0 cuncmN exampler Ofman’s present sNNs Y “Displaced Pa-sun.”

‘Ibis wrking is far fmm perfect, and slipsofNneandevengmmmvindicareLhat~8pis an “unschooled” pou. But witb a certainabandon heatNmpts N Nke on the wholeofConNmporary confusion. The result iswith- chunks uf fmnedc and a8grlevedwit such IU “Snow WhiN and the Group ofseven,” “Message parlor Tricks,” and“Auditions Befme a.Mbmr.”

Jack Hammu’s peerins Oranges in theShade inimduces a poetry altogerha differ-cm: calm, intimate, mditudve. visionary.Akhough thii is a first bwk. it is distin-guished fur the perfect finish of its rich andunique luguage.

Working in the Mallarm tradition ofstyle. Rannan anempts tu mirror and ex-plofe the cesseless flux of experience,conceived msinly 89 the individual’s insetsensory. emotional, and inNllec.Nal dialec-tic. But the work rejects symboliitzslheticbm. and also avoids Revelation.dogma, chance. miracle, surrealism:“Dreams and happenstance.” HaunMsays, *‘are not prime Value.” lust& thepaetry is muted 8rmly in common Nulities-KU rather, in our subjective experience oflhem.

For the conNmpo~ry human being,adrift in complete relativism, Hammu’s

Provocative, passion-ate, intelligent, and witty,Slmone Signoret leadsseveral liver. Wlth ama*ing frankness. she high-lights her roles In cele-__. .brated lilms. her matTtage to slnge~actor YveSMontend: her life in New York and Hollywood and

This Canadian physiotherapist has put togetheran excellent handbook, which can be used by any-one with total confidence. The Easy-Does-R Pro-

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poetry implii of least e teotpotay nsolu- soon finds “the odoua of the place repul-lion. That@ the leers and despairs ate not sive” and onconducive to proper study of

tht t&s flux not as a tltki bet ;dveoture.“the Boglii classics,” and he manages.._ “by happy coincidence” to land e job es a

New tunm, same teacher qttly foot miles from where he

ondl &?ppmstetted oat on page one. A year Later hebecomes e hmoit in e shack oo his cousin’sfemt, where he de&s himself the tempte-tions of tbe flesh and waits for “the

Prairie Symphony, by Wilftid Eggles-citcumstanccg to conspire so’ thet greet

ton. Borealis Ress, 271 pges, $10.95clotbpoetry add spring almost spooteomusly

(lSBN 0 919594 99 9).into being.” After e sttiteble period ofinspired but unpmfiteblecreativity --about

By WAYNE GRADYfouryears-heotovestoCalgary,wherehemaoagestowriteanepicpoem which brings

‘*i,tuc~ OF THE raogc land of Album and‘*to pulsating vivid reality the megtdficent

Sasketchewan.” wrote Wilfrid Eggleston inpageant of evolving life and drama” of the

The Frotuier and Canadian Lerrers (19.57).Rebies. “Tim the exotic and fabulous em

“especially that part widdn ‘palliser’s Tti-of the dinosaurs to tbe Red River cuts and

angle’, is similar in general character to thetbe echoing whistle of the locomotive and

steppes of eastem Russia end westernthe coves wagon of tbe optimistic home-

Siberia, end destined forever to be sparselysteader” befote being maeitidly hit by e

settled eithet by mncbers or large-scaletrain and. ptrsumsbly. kttoeked to his

wheat fanners. Such eras have not elseseoses.

where in the world ever been the home of,Put two t&es Cbtistooher back into

vigorous colhuel mettifestetions of * liter-society. He w&es up f tbe home of

At&t f&t&ler.ary type.. . :’ Eg&.ston argued tbet “na-

StephenHeller, editorofThe Alberta Farm-

tive letters in coy new eras mest await theer. the publication of the United Farmers’

ha been coming to attention over the I@ growthanddevelopmentofsdequa~edoca-Association Chtistoohet is cetteht oo in dte

two years, yet all three were excluded,whether by decision ot oversight, tium

tional facilities. publications . . . sti~ulet-essocietion, the Wh’eat Pod. -&&im. IT-

ieg associations of artists,” and the like.form movetoeots, reconstruction, sociel-

V&hicole Rers’s highly publicized 1978 Twenty-two years later Bggleston is singingism. the CCF. and otha popular diversions

eotholorv of recent ooetrv in Montreal.Their I&!: is clearly &p&t to that of all

the same song: Pmirie Symphony mas-of Prairie life in the Dtiy Thitties. Only

querades es e novel. but it is really a clumsyafter this social rehabilitation, you see, ceo

but two or three of the ootbologized poets. novelization of the fmtttiet thesis of Cam-e ttoe Mist settle down with I good wotoeo

Tributaries is an anthology 6hoseiheme dint litemtttre.end get on with the business of writing

is poets wiling to and aboul other poets. Christopher Niles is e young man who. inpoems that capture “the tmgedy and

This m&es for rathu tbbt. eesy-reeding the mid-1920s. finds himoelf ill-suited tocomedv of life.” The novel ends with

stuff tbat is often mildly eotertaining and life one dii femt in Pellire?sTtisngle. thetChrist&ha driving madly to Clover Hill to

sometimes a bit cloying. Editor Barry area of bald-headed pnbie in southeastmeetoo v&Gail. the beautiful exooneot of

Dempster has managed to conal a good Albene between Medicine Hat sod Lztb-educational refo& reciting lines’ftom thepoehy ofThomes Herdy and “watching oat

hiA poets, who address ee& aher and alsobridge koown doting the Depression esNext Year Countty. Stunned by a vision one

for sharp rocks.”

ovine on vetious literen lominaries iodud-it& Rill:c, Pound, and &vefy. A few of the

day while hoeing Russian thistle in his trackLike the carlia book, fmirie Symphony

garden. Christopher decides to devote thetries to show tbet tree native en cemtot

poems echieve memorable quality, such es rest of hi life to poetry. He promptly leaversimply spring oet of Ihe soil, but most be

Al Pordy’s ramble and M. ‘Ihvis Lane’s the farm to take e job in Web You’s Cefe innortoted by e sophisticated, cultonl coto-

tribute to Derek Walcott. 0 Judith River. but “his fastidioos stomach”monity ftwd From the frontier straggle forexiste& and having plenty of leisure andeducation to appreciate Art. It’s a thesisnovel. end the thesis is oebtstekinelv spelledout &in and again. ‘*i&d anyott;_’ &is-topha wonders et one point. “evet livedsolely from his singing? Yes. in e happierage, in a much more appreciative society.But did it happen any longer? Cenebtly noton the fmntier.”

The trouble is dtet Eggleston himselfknows less about art and the inner life of theMisl thee he does’about the steppa ofevtem Rossio and western Siberia. Acompetent journalist, he chartsChristopher’s progress from em~tyotdcBymn to triumphant master of vers libre,but what it is thet compels Christopher tomake that journey is not even hinted et.There k much talk of “visions” and“inspiration.” but little evidence that thesehove anything to do with genius. Qtristo-pher somehow exudes poetry es neighboutsexude odoen of thebem. We are told he is avoracious ruder. but not one of the bookshe devours is named (except for e pslsiog

24 Books in Canada. May 1979

_.. ..-- _--_-..__. ‘I- _.-.-.._. T--_-l,*~“._^- _--- . . . . _...r,_..:...~~~. . ., __. . .v.-...- --

reference to Look Homeward, Angel); wean? assured of Chrlstqher’s mature sndprolific development as a poet, but we arenot shot-m a a single line of the msster’swork. It’s as if Eggleston were writing abiography of a mm he had never known,md about whose mental life he can onlygttese. “Why would a healthy youth sit forhour aiter hour with his nose stuck in abook,” wonders Cbriitopher’s cousin. “ormaking scribbles witbnpen?“Thequestionis crucial to the novel’s only theme, and it is“ever tmswered. Cl

Peter Lougheedt A Biography. byAllan Hustskk. McClellmtd & Stewart. 249pages. S14.95 cloth (ISBN 07710 4299 x).

By DAVID LEWIS

THE AUTHOR ~twpublisherwereobviouslyin a hurry to put this book on the marketbefore the 1979 Albetta election. for onedoes not find either P tsble of contents at thefmnt or sn index st the back. The chaptersare headed only by Roman numerals. sothere is no key anywhere to the themes ofthe bookqrthecontentsofany seetionofit.

I mention this annoying lsck of gttihbecause it typifies the book itself. Althoughthe work succeeds in painting a picture ofLougheed, it lacks adequste explanation oftbe political. social, and economic condi-tions that enabled Lougheed to tske over aparty for which he had done nothing beforehe becaine leader. This is a pity beeease, ifthe author’s reportage is accurate,Lougheed is indeed a remarkable. thoughnot sdminble, political leader.

Here ls a man who “ever attended apolitical meeting beforedeciding toseektheleadership of the Alberta ConservativePatty. Nowhere in the book is there asuggestion that at the time he had atty.political idess M aims other than winning,first the leadership, then the govemment.Indeed. scconiing to the author, Lougheedmight just as easily have become a Liberal.“It could have gone either way.” he isalleged to have admitted.

If the Facts the book describes st’e 80cutate -1 mut emphasize this because I do

not myself know the Albezta Pre.mier -Lougheed knew nnhing about party pm-gtmns orabout theorganization hesetouttolead.Tbii may well have been an advantage,since he could build everything in his ownimage, and this he did. His image is drawnby the infomtstion that “a select gmup ofConsetvstive businessmen in both Calgaryand Edmonton. . . considered Peter an idealrepresentative of their class.” These sre theelements in the province whq went afterhim, and he has not disappointed them.

What awnmdsapetson with my political

backgmund isnotonly lhstamansolacliingin elementmy political commitment shouldthink of becoming B party leader, but thatth~einmnVolofthepartyshouldseelthimout. Lougheed had been a smart corporateexecutive with the Mamdx Cotporation,wss a reliable cntpomte lawyer, and hisgmndfatha had been a Tory senator. Apparently tbls WBO enough for the btass. Andthey have qety reason to be pmud of theirjudgement, for their chin leanted fast q otonly how to win but also how to govern.

The book shows Ln~heed to be autbori-tarian and rwbless. “Petet NM the go”-emmettt like a corpomtion.” we are told.He holds the r&s of power exclusively inhis hands and exercises tight wntml ovahis cabinet and the civil service. This mayexplain why so many ofhis fomter ministersdid not run in the recent election despite thefact that therewas nodoubtabout tbcresult.

The Pxmier apparently intimidates me-dia people to such an extent that the author,a vetemtt reporter himself. is moved towrite. ‘V3mscientious political reporting israre in Alberta,” and to add: “Any criticalrepotting of Lougheed in Albetta is seen bythe Remia ss &tent Cansdian props-danda.” We are told that when televisionwss introduced into the ‘Legislalurc.Lougheed insisted on a physical arrange-ment that resulk in the cantem alwaysfscing the government benches. so thatopposition speakers “appear on the screenIS disembodied voices.” This is more than

’ partisan; it is ruthless.Plnslly, the author expresses the view

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that “L.ougheed’s administmtion reflectstbe hopes. prejudices and ambitions of theupper-middle class to the exclusion of all:~tbem.” Thus, tbebookis not sycophantic.The events are described in skalghtfonnardfashion, but there. is a lack of depth in the

in xvhich he hao played a key role.1

Vlllenee Itt Canada, edited by MayAlice Beyer Gammon, Melhuen, 286psga,$10.95papa(ISBNO438931705).

The F%wetttlmt of Youthful Crime:The Great Stumble Forward, by James C.Haelder.Melhuen,252pages,$lO.93~p~(ISBN 9 458 93180 2).

Bv ELRANOR SWAINSON

“,Ot.ENCE AND.DBLtNQ”ENCY me. on theUpSWi”~ these days,. and if these ruynlsociological works ore any indication, wecan’t expect much improvement. In Via-lmcc in Canada the editor’s stated purposeis to examine violence from different per:spstives in order m identify areas requiringfurther research. Fifteen conttibuton fmmseveral disciplines approach the topic inSkikingIy different ways. and tbe curiousthing here is that all the interesting articleswere written by non-sociologists.

The book is divided into four puts,dealing respectively with an “overview ofthe origins of violence,” “domestic vio-lence ” “violence and theadminiskationofjust&z,” and “violence and the media.”Since this volume purports to be aboutCanada, a more effective first section (andone which might have lent this study somecohesiveness) would have included.specifically, an “overview” of violencewithin the Cattadivl context, viz. KennethMeNaught’s “Violence in Canadian His-tory.” Since Gammon ls acquainted withthis article, I find its exclusion surprising.

Domestic violence is direussed in tamsof wife-heating and child abuse. Though ofinterest for Dr. James Wilkes’s brief butcomprehensive article (one of the moreintelligent statements in the book). this

The topic of rape is inevitable in such atrendy collection. and Maureen McTecr hascontributed a useful essay that clearlyillustrates why existing Canadian legisla-tion is inadequate. Also included in partthree are some fascinating figures on Cans-dian murder, courtesy of Statistics Canada.

No discussion of violence these dayswould be compRte without a look at themedia. And so included in part four are atouch of McLuhanism. M unbelievablysilly article on youth hockey, and a rathersuggestive article by the Queen’s F’rlnter on

the roles played by tbe media. the police,and the participants in public demonstm-tions.

That violence is itiherent in mankind isclear fmmeven acursayreading OftheOIdTestament. That it assumes diflwnt formsand value in varying circumstances shouldbe obvious. Yet a number of contributon tothis pretentious itudy labour these points attiresome length, couching them in socio-logical terminology that strikea this readerasliulemorethaneommonscnsedrrssedupin contempomry jargon.

James Hackler’s honest and meticulouslyresearched volume is a retiwhlng change.Hackler states at the outset that his purposeis to discuss not tbe causaliy of juveniledelinquency,‘hut what to do about it. Thepmhlem, he argue.~mnvincbtgly, is enor-mously wmplex and must be approachedwith LL sense of adventure tempered byreason and modemtion.

Haelder heli&s that Canada shouldavoid mistakes made in the U.S. in the pst.and he discusses a number of these. inconsiderable detail. Study after study isquoted. leading to the conclusion that fewadvances have been made in the field ofdelinquency. Incarceration is known to beexpensive and is widely regarded m in-humane. Prevention and treeatment pm-grams, it seems. don’t work in most casesand may exacerbate the problem. Uncon-trolled contml groups and a variety ofvested interests make accumte evaluationvirtually impossible: even the most pmmis-ing data, cautions the author, should beviewed with scepticism. “Experts” BIG toooften inexpert, and in any case, socialpolicy is formulated. not by experts, but by

ihe mtionale of scientific fin&n&.What then of the future? Hackler wonders

whether juvenile delinquency is one of Iheprices we pay for individualism and whethersometimes doing nothing might in fact hethe wisest course. AltemdveIy he suggestsa pot-pawrl of possible progmms, mnging

: from old-fashionedcensure and punishmentto diversion. vocational training, and bans-actional analysis. Such measures. he pointsout, have some intrinsic value. UIX cheaperlhan incarceration, and may pkve to h&esome.impsct on delinquency inthe longmn.At any rate. they don’t appear m do anyharm.

Hackler would like future research toreveal how social pmblcms come to hedefined, and why people so &en insist thatsomething has to be done. Tbarthe publicwill continue to dema‘nd programs to pmvent andlor treat delinquency is an under-lying premise of this book. Perhaps theeditor is mistaken. Given the current publicmood, I suspect that a widespread knowl-edge of the statistical data so scrupulouslypresented by Mr. Hackla might be morelikelv to kiaer B demand for the return ofthe l&h. 6-

---_-- _.__-_I~_ ~.__~ ___.

TheDog Crkiss. by his Nowell. McClel-kmd & Stewert. 270 paqe$. $7.95 papert.ISBNO77lO 6795 x).

By W. A. MARSANO

A COUPLE OF interesting things happened inToronto in 1977. (Yes, that meny.)One VIPSthis: during the summer, an II-you-oldshoeshine boy w% lured to P homosexualparty. sexurlly abused and then murdered- drowned in a sink - nsullig in eoinflamed public outrage. It was one of tboeefew times one could honestly say “thepeople took to the street%” There wereaegty mtri-homorexusl mllies that camedangerously close to mob violence. Therewere instances of homosexuals being beatenon the streets. Totonm’s police and munici-pal government came down on the “sinsttip” of lower Yonge Street like a billyclub, and its message parlors were shutdown in almost no time atell.

Another was this: them was a small msh- two or three cases -of small childtenbeing horribly savaged by vicious pet dogs,msultbtg in no civic outcry whstweva.Two of the beasts were Nazi Shepherds;they got off with little mom thee e “Baddoggie!” The third, II Doberman, WBSgaed et the pound while nllying Dober-man ov:tter$ pamded without. trying to SB~the brute’s life.

I don’t wmt to be suspected of eppmvingthe hemssment ofhomoxxuals. I do wattt topoint out the cellousness of people whoremain indifferent m crimes ctmsed byman’s bert friend. I admit that the dogs’victims did not. et least, lose their lives -but they will live to fear another day. Athree- or live-year-old child wvho’hap beenfeciolly disfigured by a sevege animal -tothe extent of tequiriy mom th$n 140stitches -will liveio unavoidable tenvr forthe rest of it$ life. And I will admit toprejudice. m not shting dte prevailingDirney-coluumd view of the mtimal king-dom. Nevertheless. I CM clap with only onehand for Itis Nowell.

Nwell has tackled $n emotional subjectwith mere reason. and the result is aninformative but ineffective tmct thatpreaches to the converted and misses thesinners by n mile (1.6 kilometres).

She tries to be fair. She bem no grudgeagainst the honest dog. or the intelligentowner who keeps his pet from fouling lawnsand menacing children. who keeps itleeshrd and keeps it quiet. But, heavy-hvlded and moralistic in the-t Nadmw-que wy. she can’t resist d;sapprm~by: ofthe huge quantities of food that pets eat(some of which would do mom good.dminedly, in the prqrein-staved T&d 3

World); of the billions of dollars spent in petboutiques: of stupid fads like dogpsycbiry. Dumb? Yes. But none of outbusiness. If a man wanlo m send hi dog msutmnet camp and later bury it in PawRiot Gatdens. it’s his money, not oom. Andit never pays to be humourless: the fact thatQueen Elizabeth II’s pet promenade has eNew York City fire hydrant for Americandogs and an Edwaniian lamppost for Britishotter suggests satire. not insensitive ex-tmvagance.

But the intelliient dog owner can leansomething hem. Nowell repotts that many“pedigreed” dogs are frauds sold by bmed-err who are am$tmu$ at best and cm& etworst, and that lack of control of pedigreep$pen may make them about as reliablees a purchased diploma. She cnvem thepet-food industry well. ma!xing it clear thatsome mmmfacturem encourage unhealthyfeedbtg thmugh their advettising mtd that,as of the book’s publication, only oneCanadian packer’s pet foods have pvsedthe nuttitional tests of the Canadian Veteri-nary Medical Association, even thoughadoption of CMVA standards would costonly four cents a ase.. or one sixth of e cente am. Them is D detailed chaptet ondog-bomediseases. mostofthemrevoltbtg,that am dangerous m human beings. butthis, mo. is flawed by an appmmtt urge toindict: the wont disease covered (toxo-plasmosis. which affects pregnant womenand results in crippling birth defects) isspread by MU.

Those who don’t like dogs, their cease-less barking and the old familiar fxces thatfoul the streets and lawns. will dso lean? elot about the appatettt bteffectiveeess offre.e spaying and neuteting clinics (which ishow dog lovers make es pay for their petcare); about the millions of strays that aterounded up. killed (by injection, gessing..or“high-akitude decomptession”) and laterincinemted (much to the dismay of that oddbmed of dog lover whose interest in animalsir expraed only when tbe animals emabout m be killed): and about the very smallchance of getting elected officials to do_anything about the pmblem.

But the irresponsible dog owttet will beunmucbed by all of tbii - unless he ismoved m bwional hostility of the kind thatresulted inthelewleroftbeChildree BeforeDogs organization being attecked by doglows, who pelted her with dogsidt. (Par-don thevulgarity, but, as NoweU points out,that is whet it is.)

The plain fact is that such people caremore fat their dogs thee fat theii fellowman. They d@t believe that tbek dogsbark, bite ot defecate -or that anyone haa tight to complain about them. For now,the only response m this smug. uncmingdenial is inetticulate mge - but it has gonebeyondthat in tbepast. h the l&30% in NewYork, small boys with clubs killed dogs inthe streets. and were paid a bounty of 50cents a head. Is something like that epossibility? Maybe. Nowell says NorthAmerica’s dog population will double by

In this new book. written in msponse tothe enthusiasm that greeted her earliercollection, Through the &yes of u Wo-man, Canadian poet Nancy-Gey Rots-tein takes the reader on three excitingadventures in one - the “Distant Jour-ney” to faraway places and exoticlocales; the “Human Journey.” whereuniversal emotions and experiences thattranscend culture am explored: andfinally. the “Homeward Journey.” themost emotional and personal of all expe-riences.

LONGMAN CANADA LIMITED @Q55 Barber Greene Road. Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2AI -

May. 1978. Ewks in Canada

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198-k dog-home diresses and dog attacks\s;ill prohshly rise proportionately.

Too me”y dog owners do”‘1 care. and thedog* eren.1 ~, fsult. They are, nelly. Y-rociate victims. The problem is the SOBSwho inflict their dogs on the rest of us. Theycome in all shapes. Recently I took mythree-yeu-old deughter Emily to the psrk toploy wkh my neighbows kids in the snow.As v:c trudged along. Emily towed on tbetoboggen behind. I spotted e woman and en

unlcasbed dog heeding tovnrd es. eboa 50feet wey. I begs” angling my little group“way to the right. bet we couldn’t get farenough ewsy. and es we drew abreast, thedog chsrgcd my da&l% barking terribly.Emily. seated. is about 20 inches high; thedog. a huge. mslemutish thing. towedover her. tensed end threatening. I wesfrightened stiff and Emily wss scresming.Fo’or(un;ltcly, two of the other childreninterposed themselves, end I turned 10 the *dog’s owner, trying to say not whal I felt,which wes fear and hatred, but somethingintclligcm. like “Call off your dog.” Thewomen understood. the deer. in her limitedway. She tleshed e criminally stupid smileat me yld said brightly, “Don’t worry -she’s only playing.” 0

Readers will quickly warmto the author’s comedy

a” unliberatedMrs. rather than

Job, who wants all theattention. love and

supporl she can get -andlhen some. $14.95

28 Books in Canada, May 1979

Silemx Is My Homeland, by GileanDouglas, Thor& Nelson and Sons, illor-wed by Stephanie Scott Brown. I60pages. $10.25 clolh (ISBN 0 8117 15213).

Love in the Do8 House, by MollyDouglas. Nelson. Foster snd Scolt, 160~,$10.95clothUSBN0919324320l.

A New Kind of Cmmtw. by Dorothy&men, Doubleday, 125 p&e& ti.95clotitGSBN 0 385 13628 5).

ReaeatlonalFtwmi”g. by Eric Winter. means warmth. humour. end occssionelMcGmw-Hill Ryeaon. il1ust.rsted. 1 6 2pages, 512.95 cloth USBN 007 0827087).

expsnsi~cness, end Recrmdoncrl Farmingcerteinly possesses these qualities.

By SUSAN LESLIE

c,w”~ame PARR TII*I~.L begs” her C.M-dion Sert/er’s Guide by suggesting thet allwould-he Cenedian homesteeders posethemselves the sobering question, “Heve Isufficient energy of character to enable mcto conform to the changes that await me i”my new mode of life?” A century later. lifein the Cenadian backwoods slill requiresenergy of charecter, end sll those em-barking on it --nnd certainly those attempt-ing to write about it -should teke meatare0ftbeimoraIraoerces. Mrs. Tmlllwes. ofco&se, a tough customer, snd did nolrecommend homesteading for “idle sen-sualists” or otherwise self-indulgent per-sons. I suspect that. faced with these fourbooks on country life in Canada, she wouldfind three of the four authors unsuiteble“uterial.

Eric Wintier, author of RecreationalFarming. would, I think, meet wilh Mrs.~mill’s “pprovsl. He is pmcticsl. dignified,

besically concerned wilh getting on with tbejob. He.likeMrs. Tmill. obviously believesit is “bet& to be up end doing” than to

or why one is there.Mr. Winter writes for the city-dwellers

who are not prepared to sterve orgenicelly.but would like to tive themselves hum their33-foot lots e”d the local supcnnarket.Part-time farming. or ametew farming -

other sources - seems a reesonsble corn-promise behveen country peace end citycomforts.

Recreadonal Farming begins with edeteiled discussion of how to find a suitablepiece of land. The details ere all prkcticskhow to read plant berdiness-zone “ups. thesignificence of degree days. and the impor-tsnt atkibutes of barns. Mr. Winter goes%”to deal with soil survey maps and the meritsofhedgerows. Whilehe hesnotattemptedacomplete compendium for part-time farm-ers, Mr. Winter does write enough aboutdiffaent modes of small-wle forming -

raising pigs, bee-keeping, trout-fanning,gmzing beef cattle. breeding rabbits sndgrowing hay -that one can begin to thinkseriously about thent. He sensibly finishesbll book with e list of free governmentpublicsdons that might be useful to hisicadcrs.

While this is all very business-like stuff,Recreadonal Formic is no drew muluel.Mr. Winter confesses in his preface that heset out to write this book because he wentedto “mite something long end loose sfterfive years with nothing more to show thanoffice notes “nd smell papets.” Well, theyeer spent writing Recrearional Farmingwas a pmduetlvs one, and he ought to feeleontent that he ha4 written something the1 isnot only long and loose. bet also useful end

Aod now for the also-rans, though infairness to Domlhy Oilman. Molly Doug-las, and Gilun Douglas. it should bementioned that they were noi nece.ssarlly inthe smne mce es Mr. Winter.

I f Gilean Doeglos sees hemelf in ebackwoods litemry tmdilio”. it is o”cestablished by Henry Tboreou. and not byMrs. Tmill. HerSilence Is My Homelandisa colleclion of wilderness musings. end nots guide to anything. A former newspepper

en ebidone; cabin sot&here in soath-west British Columbia, and decided on firstsight thet this cebin would be home. She isobviously I study woman. She has msn-egedto be self-sufficient, living otTwhat hersmell garden provides, and what she canforageorfishforln hersurroundings. Sheisalso quite knowledgeable about tbe woods.Like Mrr. Trail1 before her. she ls fssci-“ated by wildflowers. and m&es t?eqoe”t

sndunashamedly wriDsonaboutthedoingsof Mrs. Barrow’s Goldeneye Duck andGussie the Gnbe. Eve” this coy nonsense.

ofthebih. - - -But effectionate field notes jesi emu’1

enough. Nature wiling is extremelydifficult to do well. Many of us are deludedinto believing that our encounters wilhscmic gmndew ere profound. ““iqoC mo-ments. Well. the greatness of the 8reatoutdoors ain’t news. And since il doesn’thave novelty going for it, nature, es subjeclmener. hss to be worked by e specialsebsibility before it ten be presented in Itfresh. unsentimental way. Douglas raog-“izes the problem:

It ls se ditlicett te &es&be the happincsr ofrimplicky. thejoy of little lbings. puhsps Iseend se”tiMnul and eweal when Pwivrileof what fbe axe. tbe moemains. the rivene”d my Little csbln mesnt to “le.

I’m afraid I think she does.A New Kind of Cormn~y by Dorothy

Gilman nx.mbles Silence Ix h4_v Homelandin certein trivial weys: older women wriler

’ moves to the country. thinks about her life.

and procccdr to record and publish herr~tlectionr. But while Clilean DougIns isengaged in serious subsistence agicullm.Oilman think’ occasionally ofraising herb’.She is not attempting to survive done in thebush: her country home is n house in a NovaScotian fishing village. With the proceedslone awmes) from her previous books -described on the jacket a’ “the widely tadMrs. Pollifos novel’” - she has settledinto P life of solitude and conlemplalicn.Her book is subtitled %t exploration intoour etrential aloneness and the wonderfulcounty of the inner self.” Gilman is hardlybreaking bail in virgin ten’ilory: ‘he refersfi~qucntly to such prrdecesror’ a’ Thoreau,Miwice Nicol. and Abraham Maslow. That‘he is notcontcndingwith crops orlive%ckot the raw elements doe’ not diminish the‘cd& of Gilman’s adventure. She h’s set cutdetermined to find tebiih:

I inriued on bring. On mattering. at least.to myself. Without prop. Cold turkey.

Lighting out for there territories of tbe spiritr~+rc’ some courage, though I’m ‘weMts. Trail1 would dismiss it a’uttcrtrifling.

It i’ cleat that Gilman is I? pmctiwdvxiter. She knows the value of anecdote,and wire’ a strong. efficient ~msc. Butwhile A i&w Kind of Cmmr~ hao largeambition’, it is D. mode’1 book. It is thin andnot very taxing and I left it feeling I’d had amildly stimulating conversation with atbenpisl.

Molly Douglas, author of Love In TheDqq Iimrse. doe’ not have the same higha’pintictt’ BS Dorothy Gilman or GilcanDouglas. I assume her aim is to be a briskand amu’iy ‘tory-teller. Her bock isdefinitely chatty. and this. I gather, is theintended effect. Molly Douglas. her hus-band Christopher. and their sons mwed to adairy fum in Mcnitcbn some ycnrs ago.tl’his adventure is chronicled in a previousDouglo’ work, Going It’rrr with Annrrbellc.)Because the dairy business wps ratheruncettain. tltey fell into dog breeding tbsupplement the family income. The dcgs-mostly long-coat chihuahuas - ‘rc imm-duced about page 20. and t?om there on in,they arc the ‘tory. There are tragic dogdeath’ and heroic dog rewtc’: there is coydog romance and sniggering dog sex. Butthen. right at the beginning. Ms. Douglasdoes give the reader fair wming. Sheannounce’ that “Christopher and I areEnglish and we love dog’.” I’m ‘we thatother people who ‘hare these traits will findLow In T/w Dog House delightfol.

The enduring mythology. a’ Brie Winterputs it. of “the goodness of the coutmy andthe badness of the town” htu resulted inmany books. Some. one feels, have moretodo with producing D cash income forcountry dweller’, than they do with litera-ture or love of the outdoors. About suchbookr there i’ always the sense that theouthots have entered on wilderness 01country life for it’ own sake. and thendecided to make literary hay from theircuperiencc. There is nothing intrinsicallywrong with that motive - except that it

‘eems frequently to lead to self-indulgentbooks. Maybe such authors would be betteradvised to turn their effotts to some morefruitful enterprise. Maetame;. perhaps, orbee-keeping? 0,

In Deface of Federalism: The Viewfmm Quebec, by Gilla Wandc. tmn’l~tedfrom the French by JoLaPicrre, McClelland8t Stewart, 128 page’. SS.95 dotb OSBN0.57104563 8).

Canada’s Third OptIon, editcdby S. D.Berkowitz and Robert K. Logan, Macmil-lan, 282 page’. $8.95 cloth (ISBN 0 77051589 4).

By JORN GREGORY

btost ~00Ks cw the national unity questionin text11 year’ have asked, “What doesQuebec want?” or, “Whsl can the tc’t ofCanada do for Quebec?” Rofes’a’ La-lade, Berkowitz, and Logan now havepublished works that go beyond these oftenplaintive questions and add new voices to

thedebate.Lslande’s In De/cnce of Fedendi~m

addrcs’e’ the pertinent question. ‘Whatdoes Quebec have now?” Pllblishcd inFrench in 1972, and well translated by JoLaPiette, the bock nmain’ remarkably upto date. It opens with a useful review of themain theories of federalism as a politicaland social organization. It then builds onthis foundation to argue again’1 the mostcommon challenges heard in Quebecagpin’l Canadian federalism, many ofwhich, say’ Lzdandc, spring front a mutowlegalism to which the French CanadianQite. aditionally (and conservatively)educated in the law. are pntticularly su’-ceptible.

Lalande goes on to attack the wntcntionthat Quebec must always be a minoritywithin Confederation. This point. alwaysmore psychological than political, rwltsfrom the trauma of the Conquest. Lalandecalls it an excuse for inaction in the samevein BP the “colony” theoty and otherpolitical pmgmtns basal on culhual in-‘ccurity. Even where he is less convincing,such as in his criticism of Qucba” right toself-determination. he does raise manydifficulties usually ignored in pcpul+rrhetoric on the subject. While L&ode doernot pretend that all has been, or is, petfcclfor Quebec in Confcdctaticn, he will notcondemn Met&m on the basis of it’history. A political and social system thatallow’ the progress and aosetliveness ofQuebcckers over the last 15 years simplydoes not deserve ‘ummary dismissal. HadWandc revised his wbrk for this translationhe might have noted that the cutrent scp-

May. 1879, Books in Canada

by Barbara GordonIn 1976, Barbara Gordon: SLIDcessful TV producer and Valiumjunkie, decided to go off thedrug cold turkey. She was lucky:she could kave died; insteadshe blew her mind away. Herslow and painful return to healthis told in this riveting odyssey ofsuffering and rebirth.

$11.95

A UOKE UC3 MEAIL,An Autobiographyby Gerald FordGerald Ford stepped into theU.S. presidency at a time whenthe country was still reeling fromWatergate. In this candid auto-biography, Ford tells it as itwas -the tough choices, themistakes, the times of terror.Readers will come to know Fordas until now, only his intimatefriends and family have knownhim.

$16.95

VO!JJ%i4 MEAR ME~AU~Mll6\3~by R. L. GordonRonald and Amy Deverall. Theirson Tim. A happy family enjoy-ing life, the theatre and eachotheruntil Ronalddiesand AmyDeverall must tell her son thetruth about her life and that ofthe man she loved.Canadian author, R. L. Gordon,.unfolds a fascinating story oflove and growth set against theglittering world of internationaltheatie.

$10.95

I 3_. -__- ____. -_._---__> - - _.... --.- .--.

amtin leaders dmast all formed theiropinions in the early 1960s or before., andstill justif) their polllies with statisticsfrom. for csample. the Bi snd Bi Corn-n&ion. which used the best data available--in 1965.

Beri:ov:iu and Logan expand the secondqtwtion to. “What can Canedn do aboutevqtbing:‘” Canada has three options: tocontinue tbc auu~ quo as well as Possible:tolrt@oebccgoitssepamtewey:ortomakefundament4 constitutional and socialchanges in a systematic_wey. The edilomadmit tbat there is no risk-free choice, butsuot@y urge the tbii option.

The contributors to tbc volume set forthtltc shortcomings of the present sociery endpropose more or less radical solutions.From the conventional ooliticel discussion.lading off with fedeml’and Patti Q&bbccoiicabibinct ministers. the book examines thecultuml &is with Milton Acorn, MarshallMcluhnn. end Bi and Bi Commissionmrmbcrs: regionalism and the ecottotoy,inctudiy wlfare. health services, cotwr-vmion and tesoutce management: and socialtbrcots to unity. such es legel inequities,health aed cducvtion problems and en-vironmental and scientific failings. In sum-mation, Senatw Lamontegne pleads for enew basis for conrensus and the editors tieup tbc contributions and make their ream-mmdnionr. The volume closes with ethorough list of nntnes and addresses oforganizations acrms tbe country that ereconcurned with national unity in the broadseme.

If thue is a cootmoe theme in the thlloption. it is e strong faith in the state end,behind it. “the people.” This shows et bertP great deal of wishful tbinldng. Most of thenuthorr ate ~&emirs, with the predictableacademic vx&t~ess of building modelsfrom obstmctions. of talking in univetsels-both for damning and pmising -and ofignoring obvious political objections totbcir schemes. As e result. many of theinnovative suggestions veer 0lT into utt-acceptable absolutes. Anthony Scott ~twpow, on interesting reallocation of politicalcomprtenfcs according ta the economicpotential of public service. Unfortunatelyhe thee wilesoffpolitlcsaitrelevant, eventhough the Quebec debate is more politicalthan economic, and in B world of scarcitythe allocation of w&ttues among levels ofgovemntem \rill always be contentious.The uditorh propose that Canada should becompletely bilingurl. Considering the fierceopposition to the present policy of officialbilinguslirm. mete tokenism In much of thecaunny. how cm such dreamingbehelpful?

FGI wkers who profess faith in “theP.WplC.” the contIibntca feel t?ee to con-demn policies that have sting popularwpport. such as harsh prison sentences andcheap gacoline. They will often !mt allowthat people of good will have built thepresent society. and thatitbasnotbeendonccompletely wrong. Writing as if we couldall gzt along togefher happily with a bitmore clear thinking end P bit less foreigndomination will not teke us very far. The

30 Books in Canada. May 1879

possibility of coating an effective politicalwill is even titrther from their minds thanfrom Pmfessm Lelende’s. Being sensible isnever very insplrbtg, of cotuse. end it cat

and it is often stimulating. If the con-hibutors, and editors, had telexed some oftheir academic passion for absolutes, itwould have been even more helpful andmuch less initatbtg. 0

You Cannot Die. by Iat Curie,Methuen, 288 pges, $9.95 cloth (ISBN458 93750 9).

BY RICHARD LUBBOCK

THUS IS THE original bad-news book. Tlterewe were, paddling along among the ice andwreckage of the let&Xlth century, happyand confident that we would soon passtbmugh thegates of all-merciful Death,eedsuec~mb toibe ohlitentive psychotherapyof acute mars (as it is known to the readersof medical dictionaries), when along comesIen Cuttie and ~ss”ms us. cool es custard.that it cannot happen. You Cannor oft’, heinsists. 1 do not wish to know that.

FornmoteJy for tbesqticel reader, notesingle idea of this work is &Iible despite.

in ihe of Scien~e.*Science is said tomove this. and to move that. Irrefutable&ientific tests litter ?wtie’s pages es far estbeewcen see. It’s enoughto makea fellowheli&e in the cumtiv~powers of Neo-Citmn, but not in survival aftet death. To bemore precise. metempsychosis. the tmns-migration of souls, is the ultimate targettoward which Mr. Curie relentlesslydrives.

“I chenge but I cannot die,” sang thepoet Shelley, but neither Shelley nor hisghost sing bt these wooden pges. TheAugusten poet Ovid devoted the entire 15thbook of his Metamomhoses to e chetminrrend seductive interp&ion of tbe met&

4-. -._ .,.. -.-A.-...-- -.---..--I..-.-_. I_i_._... _______,_C _.._ T_._,* ._:

the sixth century B.C. But neitha Pytheg-oras nor Ovid is mentioned by Curie, and

there’s nothing poetic or charming in hismanner. Perhaps Curie is ashamed that hissubject matter has such tte ancient blstoty.Fe&l lest it appeat old-hat, he makes bisspeculation :‘scientilic” and hot-diiety,dog up to date. ARcr all. seieoce is whetdrags the qorvds in. in this day and age ofSmr If’urs and hand calculators. Although,lo be feir, he does toss in en occaslonelepigraphic chapter heading fmm Keats,Heraclitus, or the Tibetan Book of theDead.

Argunrerrrum ad hominem seems to be thechief persuasive strategy of this tit, anddoctorsofphilosopby mtdmediclneendutti-versity dePartmeets are referred to repeat-edly by titless tbwgh the mere ineantetloesof the syllables of their names proviaedthe slightest guemntee for logical thought orrational understanding. On the contrary. Tojudge from Ymt Conrwt Die. exposure touniversity aining even at the lowest levelleads to irreversible rating of the little graycells. On page 173, for exemple, the authorbrandishes e clustet of four AmericanPh.D.sat tbereadw, followe.dinshottorderby the nemes of e Brazilian psychiatrist anda Chicego physicfen. Such I fusillade ofdegreedom may stun the critical powera oftbe naive reedex, but I feel impelled tointerpret the ret%.rences es evidence of theneumtoxic pmpettla of “higher” educe-

tion. and think it e mettec to lay befmeRalph Nader or tbe Sierra Club.

The book consists largely of a pollutionof experiences repotted by people who havehovered at or new the point of death. Isuppose you could call them ’ ‘pmiomortal”expetienees by analogy with periodontaldisease (or pyorrhea). I cannot doubt thereality of the experiences any more than Idoubt that some people see stats when theyare punched in the eye. In fact. I heve metpeople with petimnottel experiences torecount. and they seem to me to he mm-pletely sane end sincere. But that does notensure that these people have actually“died” in the strictest sense of the word(meaning rigor mortid, cooling of the body,clouding of the corneas. and so forth) andeven at that it would not entail tbet tbeitvisions mustt’necessarlly be interpreted esevidence of en aReWe. There ere otherpossibilities, such os the action of stnss onthe ~)ervous system. to be disposed of beforewe fell back with despair upon the im-morality hypothesis.

Curtie has accumulaed dozens of perk+mortal and related “psychic” anecdotes inhis book, apparently labowbtg undo thedelusion that e mere collection of evidencepmdueec. by some sheet mess-effect, theresult of scientific Proof. That simply Isn’tso. scieece, es is well keown. ptuceeds bythe method of conjecture end refutalon:conjectutes, such as a tbemy ofgmvitatiott.are plucked out of the air. and then attemptseremadetotest themtodestmction. Solon.9as a conjecture remains um-etiuted it istentatively held to be ttue. but no scientifictheory is ever expected to survive fotwer.Science ten disprove things, but hu neverproven anytbbtg.

__LI- . .._ .._ _.I._~~ ._. _. .I-~___. _..r.__.-~._~.~- .-_____ .__._ -il

The most that can be said for the yamsr&ted by Curtie’s pseudo-dead subjects,und for all other research into the paa-psychological realm. is thtd they do notuppeer to cons% entirely of fraud and lies. Ido not believe that existing methods ofscientific invesrigation have any value in thestudy of metempsychosis. M anything temotelylike il. On theolherhand. Cuniesndhi friends end nedets ae hze to usself endbelieve uny dumned rubbish they please.

I choose not to credit a single shred of it.If there is any good 81 all in this world it liesscMy in the fuct that I een look forward tudeath and etemaiannihila6on. And that, IIN%. marks tie end of the matter. 0u

Multinationals end the Peaceableliingdom. by Harry Antonides. ClarkeIrwin. 248 pages. $13.95 cloth (ISBN 07720 I196 61.

By DAN HILTS

The book is divided into three parts. Thelitst deals with the origins, growth. size.and influence of the multinationals. Theauthort&s a deepbreath. a firm gripon Ihereader’s lapel, and after 67 pages of factsend figures, statistics and tebles. concludesthat the multinationals are large, wealthy,and powerful. Part Two deals with IGsponses tu the multinationals, and partThree looks at tbe mota of The F’mblem.Euch pan ends with a two-page summaryend at the back of the book me the co”-

Antonides is well-teed and not &raid toshow it. Each chaptet begins with two,usuully three, long quotations. andthroughout the text then are long quolationsfmm e wide variety of soutces. The bookwan.1 so much witten as essembled. 11covers so much economic, political. andphilosophical ground that e de&&d discus-sion of the ideas is nn possible here. Buthow does the author manage lo go fromglobal economic pmblemo. some of whichM caused by multinational corpatations.through modem men’s social, motel andpoliticel qusndaries. including Canada’srelations with the United States, to somepossible solutions? He does, it wilh Godinstead of e godd editor. The book shouldhave been reduced UI the prefece. the threesummaries. end the conclusions - whichwould have been fewer then 20 wes -enduublished as a lone article in e small

IN THE 18th and 19th centuries it wasn’tuncommon for those with the time. themoney. and the pmselytizing zeal to publish elusions end 34 pages of notes. kgazine. 0 -

et lhekown expense their version of howthe world worked, what wes wrong with it,and what could be done to fix it. The authorwould mail copies to his Giends. pss themout et parties, and tty to get booksellers tustock them. Sometimes impottunl M in-teresting works gained attention this way.~fu~tineffonals andrhc Peaceable Kbzgdom

,is in that tradition, except that it wes notptinled privately, it ls not en impottantwork, und it is interesting only tu dmse withe penchant for arcane dogma.

Htmy Antonides is e follower of thePhilosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea,formulated in the Nelherlsnds in the 19thcentury. relined in the l92Os, end nurturedet the Free Univetshy of Amsterdam end theInslitule for Chrisdan Sludies in Toronto.This group hes “developed a new philos-ophy tuklng its statting poinl in biblicalrevelation and eoncentmting on the themesof creation, sin and redemption.”

Antonides believes lhal the mulli-nationals are rhe most visible and woni-some tesuh of modem business end tech-nology. which have divetted man from hisinnate spirituality to e destructivematerialism. That’s why things haven’tbeen going so well lately. The beleagueredmultinationals not only havelo worry aboutfluctuating exchange tates. cktss-eetion lawsuits, natlonaliwtion. texes. kidnappings,end bribing politicians, but now they mustalso looknewouslyto the heavens-Godisnot amused.

A Canadian Child’s Yearby Fran Newman & Claudette Boulanger

“It is difficult to think of a book that so completelyevokes the environment and activities of Canadianchildren as does Sw~flnkes & Snowbi~tr.”

-from the afterword by Sheila Egoff.

o 8 l/Z” x 10 112” laminated hardcover book.0 56 pages. 24 full-page, full-co~our ilh%tratiOnS.o For ages B-12. Available Feb. ‘79.o $6.95 until Aug. 30 ‘79. $?95 thereafter.

123 Newklrk Rd.: Richmond Hill, Ont.rrlu. UC3CS.

cmg@pqprsby Morris Wok

. . 3

A surfeit of bodies: French skeletons,Miller’s anatomy, and the plague years

THE LAIT ~1x6 I reviewed Raymond Sous-ter - in the Globe and &foil six or sevat~‘eats ago - I suggested that he wax a

troubkd by his dida&cism, a”*h”tbilityrestral” himself from adding trite punchlines to sane of his best poems. Sousterresponded to my criticism in his nextcollection with a two-line poem titled“Thanks to Morris Wolfe”: “It’s finallyout: he wote. “I’ve been over-rated-/Now 1’11 be more loved and far lesshated.”

I don’t k”ow whether it’s because I’ve

my critical faculti& have mahued. (ordegmemted). but reading Sower’s latestcollection. Ranging In (141 pages,Oberon. 86.95). I found myself much lesstroubled by what 1 complained aboutetiier. Oh, therearestill poemsthstarc twoor three lines too long --“What to Do Withthe Robin.” for instum. or “F&e” AppleBlossoms.” And then are still poems thatsaabit tooeute-theoneaboutthec”t, forexample, who’s “always cat-napping/whenI go by in the nmmingl(“o doubt dog-titedlfrom a hard night’s mousing).”

But these seem hut minor Raw in a poetrhae quiet perceptions are Bn ;rlmostconstant delight. “Souster, youbstud”/he writes. “Admit now your firstrcactionian hearing of his death by heat-ftdlurelin a lousy New York cab./was thismost unfeeling. &llous thought:ljust think,from tomormv: on/the prices of my Lowell~o/co”ld e&Iv double!”

As always. m&y of his best poems deal\vhb dle past. someti”les nostalgiczdly.sometimes imnic~ly: the Maple Leafs’Burher Jackson yrd Charlie Conachet playing street hockey on a Christmas morning;Bobby’ Hackett blowing “that sweef righthorn” of his on his final visit to Tm’onto:Somter’s father d&ping a gun-pit af VimyRidge “and finding the skeletons/of twoFrench poilrr. shreds of uniform I stillclinginb to their bone&/who’d died thereatuacki~ I in P not-so-good yearlof a warsupposed to e”d/\h”t “ll wus are startedfor.” Maybe the time has come for acollected Souster.

0 0 *11.w~ OF us know the wmdafully eclecticDr. lonothhul Millet through such work ashis satirical revue Beyond rhc Fringe; his6lm version of Alice in Wonderland: hisNew Yorlxr land orher) essays cm a varietyof subjcca; and his perceptive little book.UrLn/w~. in the Foonnns Modem Masterssties. (Reading McLuhan. says Miller.altered the way he lo&d “t the world. The

32 Boo!c in Canada. May 1078

irony is, he wtitar, “I c&t remember asidle observation [by McLubvl] which Inow hold. to be true, IIM indeed 8 singletheory which eve” begins m hold war.“)

Now Miller harmark a major co”trlbu-lion in his %vn” field -medicine. TheBody in Question (352 pages, ClarkeItwii. S21.50) based on his 13-pat. BBCtelevision series, ls a compelling histmy ofv perception of our own bodies. Par&x-lady surprising (to me, anyway) is Miller’ssuggestion that it’s only tally in the pastquattex centuty “I so that we’ve cane tounderstand how the b”dy worksa”d protectsitself m itr own “miwte haraital.” Tbisgmwth in under&ding hao come largely,sws Miller. from machinw that in one wav_or another replicate the functions of thebody. We didn’t really undersrand how theheat worked until we’d invented the pump(in the 17th century); the invention ofautomatic gun-turrets hlu given us anunderslsnding of voluntary muscularmoveme”t; a”d so on.

Miller delllhts in raising questions thatseem simple-minded: what is pain? What isblond? He the” pmceeds, in beautifullycleat prose. 10 denmnsttate that the answerisn’t nearly as simple as we might believe.Even when he’s telling us thinga that wehave some lmowledge of, he does so in away that’s fresh and that pushcc our under-statding. “We have retained in tbe blood-s&am,” he writes, %ctive representativesof “UT original one-celled ~cestots. whiteblood cells. “nd these stmll freely thtoughthe circulation, rePdy to make themselves“vailable when dte inflammamry call isnised.“There’s a similar freshness aboutMiller’s choice of illustrations. Al firstglance tbey seem Cuiously idiosyncmtic. attimes eve” gmtesque. But they almwt

slllbily differently. In that sense, Sodyin Duesdon reminds me of John Beater’sIV&s of Seeing. I hope a” inexpe&ceditionofthebookbeconw availablescum.

***THB TO”OONTO Star devoted a full “ae toMargaretTrudeau theday’before..he&ial-ized autobiography began. Two t&ds con-sisted of a” advwtisement urging people mread the sordid tak that would unfohi in theStar wet the next live days. The rest was a”article headed “Maggie’s antics have ‘sbat-tad her parents”; it otTered us whatpurported m be inside gossip “bout just howhumiliated the Sinelairs are.

If I m” a bookston, I would have pinnedthat page over a display of ChristopherLasch’s new book, The Culture al Nercls-slst” (2Ml pages. Musso”. $15.95). The

iuxtanosition wadd have bee” iust right.ktr &cording m social critic L&h. capSal-ist society is o* its last leps. Th=svm”mt”sarem be~ou”deverywhere-i”“~~~““t~livea we’ve all become voyeurs and bypccchonddacs. on the one hvld eager m havethe goads on one another and on the otherwet searching for w”ys to apsuge our ownbattered egoa. bfmwhile. lhe imtiiutionsthat have been the focus of our public lives-church, school. a”d government -arein decline all around us. “Even Canada.”writes the gloomy Lusch, “lo”g a bastionifstolid bourseoisdepe”dability.nowfaas inthe sepa&t movement ln C&&cc a threatto it.5 vay existence as a “&M.”

Obviously. there’s .tmne truth in wh”tLpacb hu m say. But there’s much that’slnitstlng about his book. His sryle laponderous. And he tells us nothing that thebeat American so&l critics -me” such BT

P”ulGoodma”a”d EdgarZ. Frkdenberg -haven’t told uli before Bnd better. Ndless this hook should do extremely well.The wad “narcissism” in the titlegwsn-fees that it’ll nuke voyeurs tbink thatthey’re getting the goods and hypoehon-d&s tbe.t they’re getting the cure.

D :I *tfmpEwrtttakestbetimemreadBarbamTuchman’s brillianl new book. A DlsttmtMirror: The Calvmltolu FourteenthCentury (677 pages, Knopf, $21.00). Be-cause, asTuchman@mnouncedTck-ma”)~“ints cut, “If our last decade “I two of~llapsing&sumption has been a period ofunusual discomfort. it is reassuring m k”nowthat the humvl species hao lived throughworse before.” Despair. she implies, lsfolly.

%bmaetwtmdiscovw~e~~~society of the worst diiartet in recordedhistory -the Black Death -which killedens third of tbe population between I$iaand Iceland i” the yews 1348-1350 alone.But she famditdifficult m isokitetheeffectsof pestilence from the effects of all the othertravails of the period. It was * horrmdouslime. Feudalism was breaking down. Theknighthood falled m protect: the Churchfailed to lead. No government was able mmaintain order. Bands of unemployed mer-cwar*5 mvaed the counuvside. “Pm-pie.” says Tuchmvl in hex ex&isite prose;“felt subiect to events beyond dtetcontml.swept, l&e tlotsvn at s& hither and y”” ina universe without reaso” ap pmpcse. Theylived tbmugh a period which suffered andstmggled without visible advance. Theylonged for a remedy. for a revival of faidt,for stability and order that “ever came.”

I’m not competent 10 judge medievalistGeoffrey Bstraclough’s criticisms ofTuehman’s historical scholarshiu. Heargues that she ought m have siayed &at ofnwriodht whkbshelsnotasuecl”list. BuImuch of the appeal of rl Di&m Mirror isthat an intelligent generalist has provided uswith something that all the specklists withall their knowledge have fiiled (0 do - afascinating overview of a period aboutwhich most of us are almost totally ip““rant 0

the lbiiowJs~ by Michael Smith

Here comes the Master Gatherer, wastingtrees to make himself a target once again

JOHN ~0s~~~ coumso i s a self-maletarget. There’s such a glut of his trivialbooks th;u they practically beg to be crit-icized; and of course. since his mainconcern seems to be self-promotion, anypubliiity is good publicity. He trips li’ompublisher to publisher as if the entireindustry were his own privatevanity press. Imean. trees have given their lives for suchbooks as Colombo’s Names B Nlckoames(NC Press. 212 pages). stupendously ova-priced at %I 1.95 cloth. After all, thisself-styled “checklist” is btiy half abook. since it’s printed double-spaced endeverything’s entered twice, ill an Engliih-French, French-English dictionary. Thus areader may lock up Judy La Marsh endmake the astonishing diicovety that hernickname is Judy. then look up Judp anddiscover Judy La Marsh. Naturally. theoemes that interested me most werewriters’pseudonyms (for example, John Glassco,a.k.a. Nordyk Nodleman and HidekiOk&. among others). but many more arelost to obscurity because there aren’t anyr?rplulstory notes. I’m sure. for one thing,that nobody except Colombo really thinksof Alexci Kosygin es chief Golden Eagle.but there’s an entry to that eKect. He also

confuses Barry Broadfoot. the autbor, withDave Bmadfoot. the comedian. and thereue cryptic double enkies for football play-ers Nomde Kwong (Lim Kwong Yew) andNomtie Quong (the China Clipper). Sincethese w&t cross-referenced. presumablythey played for different teams. Old footballfans will be curloos. too. about ll’iffiomLougheed (the Blue-eyed Shefk), report-edly Premier of Alberta. (Does P&rknow?) Colombo’s self-gratifying enhy forhimself is Mester Gatherer. lo the interestsof inmesing his collection. allow’ me tosuggest another: Schlock Absorber.

Esrle Blmey’s Big Bird in the Bosh(Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 95 pages.a.95 paper and $10.00 cloth) ls anotherbook that probably wouldn’t have beenpublished if its author weren’t sa welll:norrr. lt includes Bimey’s short stories“Waiting for Queen Emrno” (which Irecognized from public-school days es“Endime in Ebony”) end “Mickey Wa eSwell Guy.” and en excerpt from hisDepression novel, Down the Long Table.Much of the rest is literary marginelia. suches a guest column for Eric Nicol from theVancouver Prmke. a liiht piece on uni-versity students’ illiteracies from Sefwdo.vJliglu. eed an interestiy discourse onduelliy. The title story is about a dumbEast Kootenay bush me&r who discoverse phoenix (he calls it a “feenick”) on hi

property. Writtee in d&t, it wes wiselyrejected by Canadian magazines for twoyears before Mademoiselle bought it “forabout five times what any Toronto editorwould have oaid.” Biiev feels smug aboutthis. _

@hen there’s a handful of genuine verilybooks. Mahony’s Mlnote Mm by ChrisStewart and Lynn Hudson (Stewert &Hudsnn Books. Box 157. Riverhunt. Sesk.S O H 3P0, 12i pages, h.95 papei is thistory of the Saskatchewan ProvincialPolice, a force that existed under Com-missioner Charles Aunustus Mahoov from1917 to 1928. One-of their cases sointerested the w-authors that they’ve ex-pan&d it into e separate 35page pamphlet.Murder in Uniform --the story of a RoyalNorth West Mounted Police officer, JohnWilson, who murdered his pregnant wife in1918, then married another woman only 48hous later. Amund the same tboc a half-poundcontainercfopiumcouldbemadefor$4.50 (the price of a soporific paperbacktoday) in Stanley. B.C., according to AndSo . . .That’s How It Happened by W. M.Hong(Box229, Wells, B_.C. VOK 2RO.255pages. SF.95 paper). A retked,pmspeclor,Hong, 77. has included a lot of technicalb~formalion. plus maps and photos, in his~ollectionscfthcStYlley_Barkcrvillcarea

from 1900 to 1975, but some of the earlyhismrlcal materiel about Chinese immi-grants is fascinating. Also noted: IiistorlcalBelk (89 pages. f5.95 paper), rexarch into.various school bells, chwch bells. andothers in Northern Ontario. rUeded by lbeCanada Couneil and compiled by VemaSt&ok Freed (Box 665. Station B, Sud-buy. Onl.).

I don’t know why Jim Brown’s TheP&e Mlnlster’s Pocket (Blue MountainBooks, 56 pages. 54.95 and $12.95 cloth)wes published es a book - though judgingfrom the number of times his name appearson their be&list. Bmwn most know thepublishers pretty well. It’s a very little fable(large type, lots ofspacblilling illostretionsby Julii Zangmo) about what happens whenthebeaver. caribou, and Queen, who liveonvarious coins in the prime minister’spocket, decide to hop on the Bluenose (theship on the dime) and vamoose. In short,nothing much.

And finally. let me add m my liot of IdeasWhose Time Has Come and Gone: LadsaClark’s Annual, 1843 by Beverly FinkCline (Pmss Fme6pic. 6 4 pagea, RI.95paper), the third volume in e series ofmmuels featuring IPlh-century verse. illus-trations, music. and eomme~~ary. Anyonewho feels driven hi study the archaicmatotderiogs of such blstoricel figures esDr. William “Tii” Dunlopcan find themin profusion elsewhere, rather then madthem in snippets here. Besides. Dunlop,Susanne Moodie, Catherine Pen TrailI, etal. do it better then the semi-fictionalentries bttenpersed among tbcdocumenteryitems by Cline in her guise as Louisa Clark.Evidently Cline is dcdicatiog her life m theproduction of these books. Somebodyshould teJl he? m stop. 0

by Pier Giorgio DI Clcco

Doing splits between man and God andbridging schisms with a found brassiere

THE LtosT DEUGHTFUL book of poetry inthis column’s crop is Marty Gervais’ TheBelievable Body (Fidlehead. 47 pages,.$3.50), e iwsatile collection of love lyria.pomeitores, and meditations on hiends andmen-woman relations. Geneis shows him-self m be a virtuoso of free verse. longpoems, anecdotal pieca. found poems. andimagistic poems - all handled equallywell. The poetry is informed by agenexosityfor its subject. Geneis hes e point of view,but headmits thattheworldhelives inlstheoily “beliivable” one, and he isn’l out mchange it. It’s perhaps for thii reason that hecan provide some hilarious poems onwomen’s liberation, melesexuality,andtbemedia manipulation of our schisms. Thetitle poem is a found poem fmm e Weekend

&fagorlnc brassiere advertisement:‘When I you give, it gives. Wbueva youtouch. I it touches back. And egaiost yourbody I it feels like your body.” Gervels’bock subtly argoes for the organic and,against tbe split buween mind and body,sexuality ebd emotion, form and content.Tbe poems themselves have no such im-balance. Meanwhile, hue’s a book ofpoems that doesn’t leave the concern withsexual politics to the “metrlerchy” ofCanadian writers. The “mountain men”school of poets should follow suit.

Patrick white’s poetry (The God in theRafters.Boreelis. 72pages,S3.95)ismoreconcemzd with tbe visionary, tbe splitbetween man and God, heaven end earth.the wished-for world and the world es is.

May. 1979, q ocke in Canada 93

---.---._ __ ._.-- . .-.-.-.-_-..

These are important themes. but the dangerir that the reader may feel left out of theseIiereulean dialogues. As in the poetry oflnlng Layton. one mat identify with thehuman stance and be persuaded to hear arpalaman on behalf of the human wndi-lion. In the lesser poems, pomposity over-takes boldness: but where the poems SUE-wed. as in White’s “An Attempt alPrayer.” the reader ls gmteful to have leftthe mundane world for those debates forwhich the mundane is only a disguise. Onedoesn’t want to argue with such an openingline 89: “Lord, I am in love with yourplanet.” If the thesis is artistically tenable.then the poem becomes a welcome additionto that rarest of Canadian genres. thecelebntive: if the poem fails, it is accusedofthe ridiilouoorlhemaudlin. Shcutofeithercstr~~eonpohouldncognirethat the reachhas exceeded the gmsp. White’s sense ofrhythm is impressive. It never fails him,though the poems occasionally do.

Mik Zzis (Intrigues in the House ofMirrors. Absolute 0 Kelvin Ink, 42 pages,84.951 gives us ;m apprenticeship volume,exploring his Italian roots. but more funda-mentally exploring layuage. As the titlesuggests. the exploration is fragmented andtentative. The problem is not one of m&s,but of methodology. Zizis is trying to forgea roiceoutofinlluences asdispamtearTomMarshall and Diane. Wakoskl. This leadshim into open-field composition. prosepoems or free verse in stanzas even when

lhe tone doesn’t require these modechanges. The book is poignant if seen as aquest. a painful progress report from thehouse of language.

M. C. Warrior (Qtdtting Time, M&odBoolcr, 3M W. Pender St.. Vonwuva. 28pages. unpriced) is a Weal Coast poetwriting out of his experience in BritishColumbia logging camps. Warrior has adefinite voice, unclouded. undiitmcted bytither the metaphysical or the existential:“After a certain/point all rational/thoughtceascl.” In tact Warrior’s poems forestallinteJlechmliz.9tion. He rracts immediatelyto his physical envlmnment. to corruptpolitics. or to the hoards of class oppms-sion. This is the phetry of revolt, necessary,urgent, spontaneous, and unmindful of theother side of the argument. If Warrior isregional. he ls regional in the bat sense.Like Wayman. he is rooted in tbe WestCoast landscape and writes of global in-justices in Chile. in Ottawa. or anywhereelse. A commendable firat book.

Borealis Press bar released its second in aseries of Ottawa anthologies oltitled Poetaof the Capital 11 (136 pages. $5.95). ItprovideJ~genao”ssamplingof~~~kofBrenda Fleet, George Johnston. JoyKogawa. Christopher Levenson. RobinMathews, Seymour Mayne. and CarolShields. Thee are fairly good choices, butonehearslittleoflhe workofnewerpoelsinthecapital. Brenda Fleet publishes so rarelythat it is at least good to see another

selection of her poems. Kogawa is at herconsistent best. She is M underrated mat?.+man eclipsed by her more topicat content-poraries. Johnston’s selection. on the otherhand. suffers from topicality and referencesto Ottawa. Levenson’s selection is repraentative and includes his outstandinglong poem. “The loumey Back.” CarolShields’s talents lie in the area of fiction,and nntuially her more notable poems arecharacter portraiLs. And then there ls RobinMathews who, if not a pact, is at least in thecapital. lamenting the foreign influence ofPablo Neruda on young Canadian poets.

The quarterly magazine Review Ormva(Box 4789. Station 6.Ottawa)has chm@its name to Author to avoidconfusion withThe Onam Revue. Since the colowfuldeath of The Canadian Review, it is nowone of only two magazines devoted topublishing poetry regularly in Ottawa. Theformat of Anrhos is sthactive.. the editingjudicious, and its scope intenmtlontd. Thewinter. 1978. issue boats good cnn-tributions from Seymour Mayne and MiieDoyle as well as translations of NordicPoetry by George Johnston and kanslalionrof Eugenio Montale by Antonino Mana.Ottawa’s other poetry magazine is Arc(Department of English. Carleton Univer-sity, $4.00 for two issuw). Its first issueincludes poems by Don Cole% ClaudeLima% and Robert Gibbs among others aswell as provocative essays by D. G. Jonesand Doug Barbour. 0

city of Toronto

Book Award

1979OXFORD

1978 $4.95

Gdvernor-General’s

Literary Award for Poetry

34 Books In Canada. May 1078

cadetias by Michael Thorpe- 1

Why does CanLit say okay to John McCraebut insist that Frank Preweti blew it?CANLIT: wmT is il? Tbe responses mJanwy’s Books in Canada survey. “Bal-ancing the Books.” prompted me to ask thisquestion yet again - following as it didupon a curious experience arising tirn anyticlc of mine. The questionnaire in-evitably provided some imlances of theissue in its crudest form. Among thero_caIled Canadian novels dubbed “under-rated” were works by two English writers.hlalcolm Lowy nnd Wyndham Lewis, bothof r;hom happened to live rmd write inCanada for a while. Neither, however,made even the fomml gesture that strangelyen& Brim Moore in tbe CanLit regiment- ttddng citizenship (then t&king off forHollywood and a confirmed reversion tonon-Canadian subject-matter). But shouldcitizenship be the criterion? After all.Lowry at least felt astrong sphitual’aflinhyfor that part of the West Coast where helived. He even took pride in the thought thatin Lrnder the ~olconu he had written “thegreat Canadian novel.” But in what sense itcould haw been that I cannot see. since notonly xxx its author utterly English in birth,upbringing, education, and mental outlook,but also the novel is set entb’ely outsideCanada (recalled from a hot distance asFbmin’s “genteel Siberia”). I supposeLowry was influenced by his possessiveCanadian supporters and felt, gratefully,Canadiat. The preposterous acquisition ofLowry ha by now became 3 mere retIeK; ’CPSU~ allluricms such as this, from ‘W. J.Keilh’s introduction to the New CanadianLibrary edition of Ruby Wiebe’s The BhrcJLwnrains of China. tue kiequenl: “When-ever I em asked to name the Canadiannovels that 1 consider worthy to stand withthe best fmm other countries and cultures,The Blue Afmufrains qf China (along withMdcolm Lowry’s Under rhf Vo/cuno) isinvariably the first to spring to mind.”Urrdrr rhe Wcuno B pmduct of Canadianculture? Surely so precise a critic as Keithknows better.

As for Wyndham Lewis. if T/w Se&Ctmdcmned is a Canadian novel - asGeorge \Voodcock. for onc; persists inarserting -then Krvtgaroo is Australian.Aaron’s Rtxi Italian, and The PlumedSwpenr Mexican; but I an not aware thatany of those countries feels the need towengthen its culture by appropriatingD. H. Lawrence as a national aulhor. Whyshould Canadians go on making theseanomalous attributions? Is CanLit so im-poverished. still, in its native tight? I don’tthink so.

So far. it may seem I’am pleading thatnationality should determine what is Cana-

din. Since several admired wrilero longresident in Canada remain technicallyAmerican citizens, I can see why tbatcriterion might appear uncomfortably rigid.Yea il is the only one that makes sense inintemaimtal practice. The Fmtcb didn’tclaim Henry Miller or Vladimir Nabokov(Samuel Beckett belongs to French liten-tun because he has written in French, butonly in the same sense as all writers inEnglish belong to that universal entity,English liierature); the Americans will notattempt to enml Sokhenitsyn. Let’s try tobeclear who’s who. witboul making anyonesuffer for it.

This brings me to the more personalexperience I refer&d to. which recenllysharpened my sense of the absurdity of the’situation. It muse fmm a critical essay Iwrote on an overlooked Canadian poet.Rank Prewett (1893-1962). Rewett grewup in his native Ontario, won a place atOxford b&we the Fizst World War, butquickly joined up. During the war he metRobert Graves and @fried Sassoon. bothof whom encouraged his poetic effirts. Hewas also noticed by Eddie Marsh, whoincluded him in his Georgian Poetry en-thologies. ARer the wc and Oxford.Rewett returned briefly to Canada, thenwent b&to England where, apart from afew more years spent here in the 1920s. hepublished his poetry. He did so continusllyfor at least his last 30 yeas. His Col!ectedPeems. selected and intmduced by Gnves.was posthumously published by CasseU ini%4. My article was declined by twojournals specializing in CanLit. Their n-fiwls wen polite: one could not give thespace to PII @dmittedly) minor figure; theother. while complimentary about theankle’s style, turned it down on the quaintgrounds that Rewelt was not really Cana-dian except “by bii’ and that hi poetrylacked Canadian content. It was suggested.perhaps because 1 have published studies oftwo English war poets. that I might beinterested in attempting an assessment ofIuhn McCrae.

Here, then, were three curiosities worthpandering. While evidently an Englishmanwho chooses to live in Canada for someyears may be adopted as a Canadian writer.a Canadian who does the revax is notCanadian enough. Not, I suspect, unleos heearns a considerable reputation; thenationalist critics come running then (forexample. toMavis Gallant). Secondly. whatis Canadian content. in poetry of all things?Mention of Canadian places. manners.social and political issues. perhaps. Butwhatof rheunivedrthatmovea poet such

‘Ow ahn conmy Canada’:Iking an Account ofthefwional As$r&ion§ oftllheIPrincipal Eat&cape AP&&in PAontreal and Torontoll86~ll890Dennis Reid,Narional Gallery of Canada.

An examination of a neglectedperiod in Canadian art. this bookcomplements an exhibit of thesame name appearing in Toronto.at the Art Gallery of Ontario,IO May - 20 June.$29.95 (cloth)

The Birds of CanadaN Earl Godfrey. National Museumof Natwai Sciences.Sixth large printing of Canada’smost authoritative bird book.$22.50 (cloth)

Gaelic Songs in Nova ScotiaH.&n Creighron and CahunMacLeod. National Museum of Man.Visit the Gathering of the Clansin Nova Scotia this summer andtake along this book. It contains93 Gaelic songs recorded byHelen Creighton and translaledby Calum MacLeod, with briefdescriptions of each song’scamposition and history.89.50 (paper)

May. 1870. Books h Canada 88

.-. _. ---. _.

as Fnwett tmd cpuntless otims. CanadianWlklt)- love and loss. solitude. beliefand doubt. moral choice. the “placeless”experiences of the human condition? Thiswas not the point. of course. Fxwfett’sCanadimtncss was too little evident in hispoetry or his life. (The article was, at thethii attempt. accepted by a Canadlljournal that takea P broad view of thesuprvlalional qualky of modem poetry inEnglish.)

My third cause for retlection stems fmm

at assessing McCma. Now.do. v:hy will AleCrae? Well. he went toMcGill (nor OxfonQ where be was tightlyadmiied as both IIIM and surgeon. and itw% with a McGill unit he joined the BritishEspcditionwy Force. Of course, it wnsMcCrae, v:e all know, who made thefamous Canadian contribution to FirstWorld WY ooeuv. “In Flanders Fields.” Isthat aCam&np&x?No. it’s a poem. Andvihat of the 30 fueitive oleces oosthumouslvcollected and puilisheh und& tbal poem’;title by the Rye- Press in l920? There h(1 romantic-historical fragment on Quebec- “Helen. guerdon of the strong” -butthe rest could have been written anywhereatBat time by any minm poet saturated in theEnglish Romantic tradition. as wereMcCr~e and most of his 19th~century Cana-dian forenmners. Rewett is a more in-dividual port, with a more complex sensi-bility struggling against the limitations ofconventional form; McCme’s ls meagre,immature v- *at gives no promise of~wrenler things had he lived. The notion dwdthe nuthor of “In Flandeders Fields” meritsCanadian interest and idenfity. whileRcrv.zn does not. has no grounds in logic orcritical coasistc?cy - only in muddlednationalistlcsentim~.

On the strength of one poem’s popularreputation. McCrae’s Guelph home hasbecame a place of pilgrimage. Imaginesimilar reverence being accorded by theEnglish to the birthplace of LaurenceBinycm. theaulhorofaeomp~blepiceeofpopular sentiment, “For the Fallen”! Butthen the English have Wilfred Owen,Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg. DoesMcCne’s slight achievement really deserve50 much fuss? When will this kind of thingbe outgrow,?

No one who reads can doubt that it isdeeprooted and spreading. The obligatoryreminder. in publishing and reviewing indds corrrrrry. of the nationality of e writereveryone knows is Canadian has de-generated into P sort of infantile posse%ive-nesis. The plaln silliness this leads to isillustrated by blurbs such as this (from aNev: Canadian Library edition): “A uniqueautobiography. filled with lhe passionateagony. and paradox of a vital Canadiantalent - novelist Frederick Philip Grove,who gave us rllusrrr ofthe Mill. . .” It was\xitteo about In Scorch of ,?f?ser/. Mexcessively lying autobiography by a writerborn and reued in Germany. who was 30when he camu here, having already pub-lished in Germany. snd whose “memoirs”’36 BODIS in Canada, May, 1979

breathe nothing so “passionately” as a

centres. “Vital Canadian talent” indeed!A piquant further imny io that tbii

PsaicularGmvebookisoneofhis~t, itslanguage anything but vital. its romanticfabrication of his early life tbe stuff ofnovelettes. This is not fo deny that, fmm thepublication of Over Pmiria Pails, Gmveentered Canadian literature. Wbat seemsabsurd ls the anxious stress on hi Cana-dianness, especially in such a book.Grove’s olace in Cenadiin literature mw becornpat& to Conrad’s in English Con&l’snovels belong there, but no one eva has orever will puff (hem as those of “a vitalEnglish talent.” Now that we do have aConradian figure among us. the Czechnovelist in exile Josef Skvmecky, it wills&y MI be long before an eager criticprcsres him into the CanLit regiment.

The ramificatiiats of this issue are seem-ingly epdless. I am taken aback when I findincluded amone Oberon’s 77: Best CQM-dian Smries oie by an American witerlivine here, set in Nashville, Tennessee. Orm&t inule 1978 volume. Lt story set in19th~century Massachusetts. by JoyceCarol Oat-, who just happens fo live inCamda. What both stories share ls publiotion in Canadian journals, and their authorshappen to llve here. Are these sufficient

I doubt that An&an readers will take theOatea story for one of the best Canadianstories of 1977.

I da not suggest that all whose opinion -in criticism, reviewing, teaching - isinfluential in bmbtg *canon of Canadianliterature contribute to the kiinds of eon&

sion I’ve illustrated. The chief culprit is thepushing publisher, but there are quiteenough opinion-fomxrs prepared to sid andabet him. Too many who may deplore tbesituation let things go by defaull. Too rarelyone meets so cheering ait example asMordecai Richler’s acknowledging asCanadian in “Balancing the Booka” sogood a pan as David Wevill, who ha0 nowbeen resident in England almost as long asRewett was. Richler. of course, knowsthere’s another London.

\Ve are far from establiihing a canon ofCanadian literature, but surely wecan agreethat the work of a native Canadian belongsto it whether he has limited ldmvelf to Cheparish pump or spent most dhii writing lifein Timbuktu. Equally we can surely agreewith W. H. New (in The Liremry HismryofCanada) in regarding aJoyceCam1 Oattsar“the distinguished American novelist . . .resident in Windsor since 1967 [who] didnot turn her attention to Canadian life atall:’ Would that she, and Lowry, andWyndham Lewis, were Canadian whets:thetwoEnglishmen weshouldsu~lynotlceas writers who make some creative use ofCanada and wholie Canadian work tnusLinterest us without becoming ours.Similarly. the West Indian immigrantwriters. the late Harold “Sonny” Lad00and Austin C. Clarke belong to Caribbeanlitemmre. Readers will. I hope. supplyfurther examples themselves. If we begin tolook aI this critically. clearer lines willsurely emerge. Let’s have more c?mmonsense, less special pleading: the canon willt&e shape and the Canadian identity be-come, in lime, leas of a hodgepodge andmorebfa genuine mosaic. 0

by Douglas Hill

Biological thrills, Labrador chills,and teachers’ rites in rural Albert5

POLITICAL THRULE@ of the biological sort- “One of our gums ls missing, Gen-eral!” - have become mmmonplsee inrecent years, stimulated by the honifictechnological advances of Vietnam and themore lunatic endeavou~~ of the NorthAmerican defense and security establish-ments. Much of Thor fiction, some of kCanadian. ls so bad, so contrived andfmmuliitic. that I gave it up for a while.Hambro’s Itch. by Howard Robens andJack Wassaman (Doubleday, 301 pages.$9.95 clolh), though hardly perfect, is thereal thing again.

I’m noI *we about tbe novel’s quali-fications for this column. Though theaction begins in Vancauva (where bothau~horrlive)s?dadsinihehighArctic.Lhlbook is pitched to a U.S. readership: checkout the casual description of Canadianmoney (“one purplish bill, one gray

green”), the predominantly Americangeography and context (San Francisco andWashington, D.C.). the presumption ofaudience familivity with the interrelatedstmcwes. official and underemund. ofAmerican gownmental power.iut since ithas two other inmedients in full measure -topicaMy of sibject and plausibility ofgimmick -why not claim it?

Hambro’s Itch works the convention ofthe naive observer (lwe a newspapemmn)drawn my the mysterious death of hititmc&e) to attempt to unravel a jusr-imaginable conspiracy of apocalypticimplications (the gemi thing). The plot isintricate. careFu11~ pieced twetha for sus-pense and full of s&rises,-dmugh a fewminorstrategic impmbabililies intrude. Theauthors package their central issue-world.overpopulation - neatly. The requisitetechnical information is worked in con-

Thoughtful Canadiansunderstand the importawn ofbuilding their own collectionsof our finest books for them-zvlves and their families. Togrow up sormonded by Cana-dian books is to grow upwitba sense of what it means to bea Canadian Tbe Readers' Clubof Canada was established in

tbe opportunity to add any orall to your own family library.

The Capdim Readerfeatures views and reviews byCaoada’s leading critics andauthors, such as Robert P’ul-ford, I.M. Own, Robert.Weaver, Klldare Dobbs, PeterMartin, and Ramsay Cook.

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chance to read and collect the sod children’s selections.bast books our writers pro- wbetheryouliveioduce-books by writers such Come-by-Chance or the queenas Pierre Berton, Margaret Cha?lotteIdands,asaReaders’Atwood, Peter C. Newman, Club member you have quickMargaret Laurence. Reference and easy access to the Cana-books. History books. Public disc books that you want,affairs books that bring to lifetbe great issues of our time inCanada. Art books. Books foradults, children, the wholefamily.

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vincingly: only once, with a dorcn page3 ofenpkm&m ins&d heavy+a”dedly neartheend, does thestory falter.

Siiclness 1;eeps Kfambro’s Itch + thetkt rank in its geme.. It’s all quite expett,but it’s synthetic, sterile. The style is coola”d taut. yet the “anative fails w crateatmosphere. and the stilted, almost riNdlltic dialogue precluda i”sight i”w tltecharacters’ molives. F’lmlly, o f CO”ISC.one’spulsemustberheleptolalhriUa.Andmine pcrlxd up.

WIIiv/avz, by P. S. Moore (BMkwater,457 pages. $2.50 paper), is also *thriller.but it’s eert&ly “ot slick. It’s one splintetyedge. crack. a”dk”othole after another. Butv&t it lacks in finesse it mcue thancmnpens;lres for in raw enegy and urnelf-conreio~~s, unaddtemted Ca”ndtmmess.

The book has flaws -oh boy! It suffersby turns from preachiness, pmllxlty. andjournalese; it lacks c”mmas freqaatIy andhyphens entirely, and “mv and the” perpet-rates a” avesomeiy jumbled and ponderoussentmce. But again - it -ES. it am-v&es, it “vrh. It’s got an inventive,violent scenario (the invwio”. in the law190%. of a newly independent Labrador bythe military force of a revolutionary Quebecseparatist iany) yld strong, int&esting. ifessentially stereotyped characters.

The political mix of the novel isfascinating. I cm best describe it asDovm-North home-brew - a fetment ofreactionary imarchism that seems purebushcamp and outport. Fmm the timt glaaof Tang-for b&&t w the last Msryxenophobic belch against bureaucracies,welfare. and unemployment insurance.Ii’i//hra&a tast*I authentic. It’s strong SNff,

N&“d Newspaper Award for aiticnlwriting. Many book people regard him asthemostinfluentialiirerarycritieincanada.French does most of his work at home. HisofEceoffthemainnewsa~the Globebjust large enough to contain a desk, twochairs, a Clii cabinet, and a large woodencabinet cnmmed with rad buried underbooks. When Phil Surguy visited him thexelatecmaFridayaftemoo”there.werel2”ewhooks (“T&y% mall”‘) on the desk:

but it gels the& done H’ith a kick.a** Books itt Canada: What are the most

THE MYTH OF the novice teacher ievningapparent difirences between the Canadian

about life and love in P o”+mom school l”Iltermy and publishing climates now and

the West is an lndiipensable element of thewhen you began nearly ZOyearsago?

r&f. -ThIstIecreeIr (Borealis. 231 pages,

$4.95 papa), by Neil Iianna (the dust-jacket calls her Diana Nell, but “ever mind

BIG: Kfowmanybookscome through here?

Frenfh: It varies with the -011. September to Christmas is chaos, then it fallsoff dmmaicdiy and we have w rely o”a iotofthe Anxricanand British things thatwe haven’t had time w look at. Canadianpublishing seems w be more cyclical thanmost other countries. Hardly anything ispubliihed in January and February and

pmcasion’of elderly ZI im-Frendtt I guess it breaks down into two

pelled by fares greater than themselves.distinct periods: before 1967 and after.

each. sensibility in one hand, strap in theThings happened as a result of Bxpn and the

other. adding a voice N the cdlectiveGmtem&xl, and the rise of ati the Ned*publishers, Anansi and s” on. But befow‘67 there !vere Canadi~boolts being pub-lished. There wasn’t a wumatlc watemhedin ‘67 ac far as authors go. I think as far aspublishers go there may have been. becauseit was in the euphoria of post-Centennialthat the “ew publishers came along. Isuppose tie signiticant thing that happaedas-iresult of Bxpo and the& p&l&herswas the rise of cuituni “stiondism. whichresulted in the s”iit in the Canadian BookPublish& Cm&ii. The Cansdin-ownedpublishers split off and formed their owngmopandUlercwaoaIotoftmsionlherr~a while, and that still isn’t resolved. ofcoutse. But I can’t remember thinking,“My God, this has bee” a tenibie year forCanadian iitemturr.” There’s always beensomething interesting going on, some yearsmore than others, but it’s bea a steadygrowth, I thiti. William French

ibout that), is a more reavardii versionthat most. It starts slowly, but develops inwr clear-eyed, sensltlve. occasionally mw-i”g account of a teacha’s tirst year i”Alberta in thelate 1924%. Rmnris ““stylist-the wrltlng is u”comfortabIy prsious *ttimes, forced or mechanical at others -buton the vJhoie she explores her subjects withcare snd respect. a”d the~ythms of seasonad school-year carry things along pleas-yltly. The book feels lii just barelyflctionatized autobiography, but the experl-ence offa% the heroine atough challmgesand predicaments - fmm forest fire wlearning disabilities w bedbugs - to fillthree novels. 058 Boo!e in Canada, May, 1079

Eureka! How William French discoveredthe First Law of Reviewing in his bath

WUI_~AU FRXNCH was born i” London,Ont., in 1926 and in 1948 WIU a member ofthe timt class ever w graduate in journalismfrom the University of Western Ontario.Apart horn a par at Harvard on a Nicma”Fdlowshtp, he has spat his earee~ with theToronto Globeand Mail. Since 1960, whenhe succeeded the venerable William ArthurDeacon, he has been the Globe’s literaryeditor. Until 1971 he was responsible formuducinn the Sa~rdav book mee and&“Qib&~ w it onere&v and a-b&chatcoiunm. The” the adminisbarive sidcof thepage was handed ova w other people mdprcnch assumed hi current responsibilityfor three columns a week, usually two bookreviews and either an author inkrview orcommentondevelopmentsinlhepublishingindustry. He hw won se.veml awards,

BiCt Does fhar mrm~ ddngs LVC bettertoday r/ran they were yes&day. 0, Ieas~ interms qfpulplrblishcrs adpublishing?

Frenfh:Wehavewseparatethetvmthings:the health of publishing and the quality ofwhat is published. Publiihers say they are in&&le, but they always say they are l”tmuble. The decline of text boolcp as asource of revenue certainly hurt somepublishers, and those that relied on incomefrom text books to support their trade“mrket obviously are feeling the pinch.McCieiia”d & Stewart? God. I don’t lolow.Are they in trouble?BIG: You keep hearing farm&c smriuabowrheirhu@debr.

French: Yeah. ure.. But ye81 N year theypublish more and more books, so I don’tImow. I’ve learned w take publiihers’prognostications with some cynicism. Mostof them are still publiihing. There an “mreCanadiin books published now than therewere when I first started. Whether it’s betterquality. I guess in some ways it is. If onlybecause there Brc “Ion? people pnbIishi”g,the chsnfea of getttw better qudlty aregrzauer. We have not yet, I thtnk. reached aiitefaNn of world stature. but we’re gettingthere. Ma and DOLT Canadian authors axepublished routinely in the United States sodBritain, because what they write is of suchquality that it doesn’t matter that thellsubject is somewhat exotic for the averageAmerican or British zeader.

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nothing in June and July. I remember JimLorimer complaining cboul the low numbaof Ccncdiatt books that were being rcvicwcdby the Globe and &fail. and hc had tcken cbase period when nothing wcs being pub-lished. We couldn’t review sty Cancdienbool:s bccause thcrc wetett~t any!

Rettch: I try not to be conscious of it. Firstof all. the Globe and &fail book section cs cwhole. not just my conttibtttion, the wholesection, d‘ws ttttxact anention. and it’sgenerally ptctty good. But part of the cc-claim it gets is because there isn’t all thatmuch competition. What else is thcrc? Idon’t know what Nwlcan’s is doing thesedays whh its book section. It’s hard to findutypcttcm. ctty controlling philosophy. It’sc hodgepodge. Sarurday hlighr, well it’sonce c month. It’s nice to get P tcllcetivcview. but if you want to keep really up todate yoo have to be more frequent. Books inCasda? Readers have to go to find themyczine: it’s cot dumped on thcll doo&like the Cl& is. The TomtuoSrar7 I1 goesup cod down. TheSrur doesn’t seem to havethe keen interest and respect for books thatthe G/&e does.

BiCt How ware we you ofyour personalpaskion? DO you cwr @d publishers orurulwn ’ *rtdriwting ” you?

Frettch: Not cs much as you might thick.Fublishbtg is really c very civilized occopc-lion. Publishers will cxpcct publicity. ofcourse. but there’s no stmcg-amting. therearc no heavies. One of the hazards of thisbusiness. of course. is that the litcmrycommunity is tcclly very smell. And youcan’t help but cncoctttct authors and mccithem and like them or dislike them on cpcrsoncl baris. But say you like somebody.then become hiendly with them even, thenthey wile c book and you have to review it.It’s il lousy book.

BiCt Have Jwr clone rhar open?

!&cncht Not that often. but I’ve done it.

I+ettch: There’s been a cenain coolness.But I think they respect my right to say whatI think. whether they cgrce with me ot not.They usually don’t if it’s negctive. Ideally,the re\*icwcr should be e monk, live in accvc cod come down for the mail once eweek. but I’m not monkish. So you justhave to tckc the risk of offending people.And I do. Of course. I’m in c prlvllegedposition beesuse. unlike the movie rcvicweror the dmma ctitic, I don’t have to reviewallthebooks. IfIdon’t wcnttorcvicwotte. Ican give it to someone else.

BiCt II’S brrrr said #haI authors ger evenangrier ~~krw rhcy’re sm rcriewdm all.French: Yeah. Igetroorecsllsfmmauthorswanting to hnor why wcdidn’trcview theirbook thmt fmm authors whose books havebeen criticized. It seems to be a kbtd of

unwritten rule in the bwincss the1 co authordoesn’t respond to c review. The onlyincident I ten think of rreenlly when aocutbor did tcspottd wes M. T. Kelly on andio program the other morning. He wotea book called I Do Remember :he Fail. Lfirst novel, which I didn’t like -and saidso. He didn’t identify the reviewer 01 thepaper. but he said it wcs the Iit% review ofthe novel that cppcarcd end I gccss minews first. He said he wanted to firebomb myoffice and rake e baJebal1 hat to my kidneys,which I thought wcs mthct over-reacting.

BlCt Is if much effort to conrinue reading aboofinJlenyourtnowy’r~g~~tohowlogive ir a bad review? When you disb%e if?

&cach:Itecdtofallcskcpccsily whenI’mtwding a bming book and I have to keepjabbing myself to stay awake. I’vc’ttcvctreviewed a book I haven’t wmpletely recd.But. my God, sometimes it’s co effort cad IwishthatI’dmadeadiffcrcntchoice.Btttbythm time I’ve invested too much time in itand, with an immbtent deadline the ncxldcy. I can’t rewcc my steps; I’ve got tostick with it. But thcreareotherhobks that,while they may get negative twicws. creb a d in intcrcsting ways and there’s nopmblem with them. Over the years I’vedcvclopcd one method of determining thevalue of a book. During the wbttcr when it’sreally coldoutsideIrccdclot inthebathtub.It’s wemt and cozy and, lcstinctively. if IIii the book, 1 try to keep it dty; if I don’tlike the book instinctively and it gets wetGd splarhcd oti, I don’t give c damnbecause, who cercs, k’s not e good bookcoywcy. So that’s French’s Fust Law ofReviewing!

BiCt Do y’ou give prior@ to Canadianb&s mw American and British rifles?

Frcacht Between September and Christ-mas. I would think without checking beck.that 90 per cent of my rcvicws crc ofCanadian books. And it’s not timtt cayscttse of obligation or nationclism. I’m not cnationalist. But we’re published in Canada.in Tomnlo. our audience is Canadian andthese erc the books that we should givepriority to. But if1 have tochoosebetween emiddle-level Canadian author and cmiddle-level American author, I’ll choosethe Canadian. Now. if 1 have to choosebctwecn c middle-level Canadian and an

*Updike or e new Graham Greene. theproblem gets more complex. Well, itdoun’t really; I choose the Greene. Thenagain, somebody else will do the Canadianone I have decided cot to do.

Freak I’ve never been conscious of it andI hope I’ve ncva been guilty of it. I don’tthink the double stendcrd goes coy good toanybody.BiCt CanJou seelrny specifcdinrtion thatCanLit is taking at the moment? Are you

THE BEAUl=ORT SISTERSby Jon ClearyQulta possibly the most compulalval~good mad of the s.?aso”. U.S. Book-othe-Month Club Choice $1295

EDWARD VI Iby Giles St. A&yn.I adds fresh Dlums to the familiarpudding. .well:roundad and lively.”TOmnfO Star$24.95

TWltlG#‘T OFTWEGENERALSby H.H. KirstII this is the pinnacle ol a ra-markable career: Publishers Week4$12.95

CREATURE COMFORTSby Joan Ward-HarrisBeautifully written. Brings the forestallve. Major serializations probable.$12.95

EXPLORING ENGLANDEdited by Mlchaal JacksonThe best travellers’ guide to Englandwe’ve ever seen! $9.95

QUICKSILVERby Norman HartleyThesecond thriller from theauthoroiThe Viking Process. $11.95

WILD JUSTICEby Wilbur SmithThe latest masterpiece from theworld’s No. 1 adventura.wrltar.110,000 firat printing. UK LiteraryGuild Main Choice. $14.95

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In bookstores now!COLLINS PUBLISHE:WS

May. 1979, Books in Canada 39

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r@xisrir. pmimisdc. or iwe thin@ justchqgirt.q Alma?

Frencht It seems to be chugging along inthe sauc old grc~wc. with no real break-tbnntghs that I ca” see at the moment. Idott’tknaeofany authorwithawxthwbilemvluscript who cotddn’t ,gct it publishedthese days. I suppose one of the main threatsat the mmnent is in the Wail book atomsituation. because of the price-cutting. I feel

that undermined the indcpctidentboolxllur. becsuse I think WC need them.Bit2 Who’s nndcwining them?

Frcncht The chains. C&s and Classicsfirst ad then Smiths Sot into dIscotmtingbooks. Tberc’ll be ao attempt to bring in anet-price agreement. fixing the price ofbooks. but somehow that doesn’t seem theanswereitber.

EIC: Do you not ogrcc wi:h a net-pricep&q. VI don’r_wu think it will work?

French: If it ano to a crunch and we had Mchoose belwen having nothing but chainstows or the kind of system we have nowritb a wide variety of independent bookstores suppmted by a net-price: agreement. Iwndd support the net-price agwment. Onthe other hand, I’m ttn sure that I want JackhkCleUand setting the price of books. Theforccs of the market have to come in thererumwhere But these has not yet been asystem dwired that can take cue of bothproblems. From the coosum& point ofview. the lower the price the better. Butthere comes a point when it statls under-mining the industry and you have. to say“Whoah!” But 3s far as the writing goes.

doesn’t seem to be any shotta& of authors,and I’m optimist* about that part of thefUlUI& 0

COMPACT WAS THE DEVILsicLung uFm readiy your Mcrcb issue. I wmdawhy you bothacd to publish Dmicl Frmeisarticle on William LeSueurc’ Mackenziebiography.

To stat with. I’m ct c IOU to Sgure out whmhc fomtcd his opinion of the “cocvmtionnl”view 0FMxkmzle. Havicgjw looked into themuter myself. I con say thct most earily cvz?itcblebools altcmately ,how Mcckcoric as dcogcr-ousty”“~tcbleordcvilishlymcliciws.depcodi~on tbc point they wcct to m&c a the time. Tberlo~&rr~lopmentofhic~cdie~lis~,~~Il~t~pmvocattoc the Family Compcct gave him isseldom taken into ccco”nt. In fact. almost allxo”otsoFthcRcbcllloocrcbcsed “poowltiogcofwlous members of the colonial govcmmcnt.hlmy nthun rely oo the Durham Report. which“kimuelv comes dew” to the same cwrcc. Nor

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one OF the great politlc”l witem OF hll ccmury.

~eRcbelllonilrelFirmucdiua~e.Onlyaequcl to pcbx in logic cod superior in style.

Few hlstorlanr bother to mention tbc rerultir@e%cc”tio”s. 01 tbc number of m%gccs from Toryreprisal% Tbe fact tbct tbcrc wcs Agbtlog Forsevcnl ycars after the much on Toronto isuwclly mcntiooed 6nly in wmmlng up.

AcfortbeFamilyCompoot,thcrcisnoneedtovlli@ them. hstcad. it’shardto Rndmueh togivcthem credit For. As Mackenzie hiMelF dctcllcd.they wcnz sa closely related thct nepotism%cxistmcc is undcoicble. Tbcy ndhlurly attcckedanyone who oppmcd them, often on @mypretexts - the pawgcs For which Mcclienriewas tried for lib& Tar ioctcnce, va3-c fcr lesscbuivc than many i n which the Tmy YESMcckcd Reformers. TbcC clrtlon toctin in-cluded bribery and;b”llying. Stmcbm’r “nivcr-ciq,~iOchansm~dcar,~~nolUlestvtoFpublic oducction. but c mccm of contmlli~&cation a n d tmining tha Cornpan’s nutgeneration. Ficclly, tbc pillaging ccrried out byTorieccRatheRckllion wusovioleottbatcvaministers who Enjoyed the Compact’s f&swere horrified. A n d tbls ls tbc group I ’ msuppowd to see Y the vlotim of historicalCOnrpinCy?

Francis. 6mgh. comehow mcmgcs to set tbcCompaet’c OppMsivc acts cc prut OF cc “alter-nmvisloooFsoclcty.“loctT~,bclmplleslotblsphmsctbroeitkcropprcssloonmdcmocmoycrc right or wrong, cod crc mere “opinions” ofhew to run c samtry which are OF equal weight.And, if the opinioos crc to be cqutdly respcotcd,tbcn why “~4 the systems tbcmsclves? Fmoois’view is clcddy a dmgaous ooc.

I haveo*t reed tbc biogmphy. of cow% but iFthe crticlc dcscdbcs it acmmtcly, it simply otTcnmmeoftheineonri~othif-~ths wbicbclrcadytill the hlltory books. There’s no jurtificction forits publlcction -except. pcrbapo. a co indicstioo of liow tong Ccmdims. bcvc been llld toabout lbclr tast”q.

Bnrce By fieldSllcm haccr Univnxlry

Burn&y. B.C.0

SlI:I war. na,“ml,y, very plecsedtoseetbc6neesscyby Daniel Frmcir on William Gcwsoo LeSusur’ssuppressed biogrcphy oF William Lyon M&co-rie (March. 1979) which m M publllhlng thissprly. For your r&en’ bcnctlt 1 shwld poimout that we M pvblishlng the book in pcperbcck.cot cloth. M&c upcolcllyj it should have beenootcd tbct tbc book h being publllhcd in theCartcton Libmry Se&s. a piece oFbibliogmpbicinlmmiuion*ctbvayimpo~tU,yourrrrdCnconsidering tbc dlltinguishcd reputation eojoycdbythlstics.

Vllll D. DuffExccutive~itor. Cnllcge Division

Mcomltlcc oFCmcdcTc%onto

6’ MOUSE BITES BACK

bc damns mv review oF?hcrles tio&?; Hcv”inReioborinthclanuuy OnX)RISetcol"mn~~~inNoble eomc from Mcny’s m of tbc country,I cm indltcd OR the gmu”ddr OF c”ltunl myopiccod Toronto snobbery. what I wmtc cboutHcywirc RaMow stand% “Noble fcils to make P“nivcnaloutoFtbcpMic”lcr.‘* ltshouldcomccsM suprise to Mcrty that tbis is ccllcd theocmchlal and is not cxct”sivc to Alberta. Tor-&to. or Bangkok. Noble’s poems do “talk offarming. OF Albcrtc. of smell towns “cd oclgh-bows.” Should l lie? Will Many grcot tbe Feet

thst there are images OF Farm macblocy in Ihepocmr, country sm. fields. etc.? Will hckacslctcthct to mean “rutlo” cc well? So omchforbatho% Wba Marty n-ally waots irtogetlntothe old tlrcd debate between “conmy mouse.”ad “sity mcac.” How rpoaiog! I coogmtulatc~t~onmanagi~toincludeinhisl~alargcrnv~woFNoME~sbookt~loriginallypmvidedFor. HisdcfmscofNoble’c workscys “mroabouthis smsc 01 public imcge than it dots cbwtNoble. IF I’ve pinched bll rcgloncl “ave. I washappytoobligc. Hischeapshoect’multicieuluual-km’ shmdd cdd more Iuel to Mcrty’s nightowescbout bttcmctionslism.

Flu Gllglo Dl CiicoTDmnm

WITH FURTHER ADO.. .S i iMcrk Ablcy’scnlclc”Witbo”tF”rtbcrAdo.. .‘.(Dcccmbcr. 1978)bcgsarcspo”scfnmo”cwhohcs bea on the othm side oltbc poet’s podium..Judging FmmtbetoccA4r. Ablcy aTcots. itseeMbe attends poetry rcadll For much tkc amercaron others gloat over The Gw Show.

Iqucaloo tbacs”mplionsMr. Ablcymckesiocfm: “Why I.200 poetry rcadll in Ccnadclast year?” Coowcry to his suggestion tbct weneed poetry readings ‘*to keep the oral mditlonclivc.” the exact opposite ls tic, cod always hcsbcm.mctyisfintss*crt,whlobiniupurest Form spdcgs kom the rhythms OF speech

’ (cvldc”cc Woidswortb cod W. C. Willicms).In his rstbetic indllnation. Mr. Abley ova-

loota the pmgmctic orgumcot lor pociry read-iogc. AFter all. they crc the @nc couxc OFinwmeforthcpoet. Ida ~ttbin!~tbat Mr. Ablcynteaoc to be so “ngcocnms cs to day o”r poetstbeix pray days -Few and for between cs they cm- ct least riot until some pllbwcr cota up ilS50.000 award br P Rrrt colleftioo OF poem%blllbt the tboughrl

Mr. Ablcy holds the ill-bred notion that cwriter indulges inpublll rccdll”to bvkin thesale glow of his owe crtistry.” As wcs acglocllySlwctcd by tbc case of Dylcn Tbomcs, tbccckcmvlcdgod mcstcl of th5 art in our time.poeby rcadll crc Fcr From a “scfc” cctivig Fmllx pact.

I oooccde to Mr. Ablcy that there is P poetry Ireading syndrome. I even sympathize with blsdisill”sionmcnt Q Failing to be “cmurcd” ormoved by most rccdidqs. For one. I agree withwhatoocwrlts~thl”kit was Cocmdldcxrlbcdas the purpose of ctt writing: ‘*to omcrtcto.*’liowcvcr. 1 suggest thct it ir bcrd to cmcrtclc cccudllccc if they illc bcllbeot on cmactlcgcukwc, P mast mctiiaot dose OF it. or iF tbcyhcve ulterior motives. such D+ cvrrying points ontheir Frcshmm Eoglllh cmms.

I have long felt tbu pacts (wab their salt)should extricate thcmsclvex from the ccc-demiully cla”stmph&ll cirait OF unititytecturetheatre9. p”blic1ibmrtu,Mgcllales, codmffcc houses. Tbay shmdd attcm9t to mkc tbcllpocoy to people who mrcly have tbe chmcc toexperience modcm wne first hand cod have Mvested i”tcrcst in accepriog what they have tootrcr.

Two poet friends. Greg Cook cod SbcmcL&o, and two musicians olourcxteodcd Family.Richud Knott cod _ L&c. set o”t in c VMalong the byways OF Nova Scotia this 9+sts”mmcr. todo just that. NoneoFthc tOtown wcvisited have rpopulction equal to ma”y Caocdicc“civcrsitics. We cmicd the tooguain-checkname. The Diic pacts B Tbcll Iany Mco. chandicap thalsbould convbcc thecynics tbcy gotco even &kc. .

I don’t rcommed the path we ehosc to thefaictbemed. the 9ampucd. or the “opmfes-

,

ventrilo&dst’s mark& petfmmeece. md had tocompete with the ShmvlittS teat&l’s bullbnmtutd pubcrceet squeals from the midwey; in thelirhermee’s hell, we bed lo telk down e belli-greet charecter (letteos brislling 011 his bared-slwho.forruw~ofhirown,thouShtoncofoerpaemr wes ecteelly mitten l7bmlt him.

But thar v.we cmnpcnsetimts. To me&n efew: the hush that c- ova the childtenwhenever Shyon began to tee& the busload ofelderly ladies t?em e se&x citizens home. whoset tbmugh dte hour prc@am eed thanked esafter. despite tbe off-coloer lee.geage thatcmpped up ie the occesieeal piece; the wmkingclass cape Bmtoncr who openly “ceetid” hislife~lmtg love for pemy ad esked. in e sincerelone. my inlupnnlion of e vexing va byRebenSetvice.

1H.XUltthereeXper*nm iethehopetbetlvfr.Abley will teeam his view tbet Peetty rudingsmust perforce be melaeeholy ot maedlkt aKnits.Oererperimenthes lsidmrertthepepulerthlcorythtit only B&g&h mqjers eed pmlessers. literstycritics. peets tbemselvu. and “heddy-d&lie*”(axardily te Dylan Themes, an obsolete wudmeaning ‘*a sbwh dell. dumpy petsee”) ininterested in the stete of peetry in tbe seventhdecade of these 1900s.

I ce” cmtAdeetly essetl thet peeny reddieSneed not be B “Dirge.” Our Mary Met, willvouch for that.

Hetry ThentonRivet lkbut. N.S.

QCQ CLARIFIESSkCan Quill & Qeirc have a little space in yourlively letters page to set the exced stmbht? Inrefereece te your reply te DouSlas Meet. in theMuch issue of Bwks in Ceeeh. v&d like m.note thatoerteview pegset’estill devetedselelyto reviews of CInldian be&s. Oer policy ofreviewing all Crnedivl titles rvzeived ws in novny eltered by the decision to publish e ppgc ofselected &ign tides reviewd in b&f. TlteForeign ANairs column, compiled by PeelSteewe. doer net dettact front spa= fet mviewsof CYladlan books. Ie fact. the numbs ofCeeedii titles reviewed in QniS B Qein Iseupzcted te increase thll year. The intent o fFereiSn AK& is eet te mete those best-sellingfitl*l meply reviewed in the Amerlue. British.yId Cenadiul prru. bet 10 bring to the etteetienof libmdatu eed boeksellen books tbet receivelittle review spree anywhere.

Although necesrsrily selective, end shoMtheeoerreSulerreviews.thesereviews~Pne~pYlrionofouredilorialmvenge.enervhi*we hope will add to the mwzine’s ese 02 an

titles. _SUSM weker

Edit% Quif/ & QefraTnOttttl

TIiE GUESS WHO PRESSSir:ReSetdinS the ledvet&iiJ dkl in yourh&-h issue.

This Is ell well end gmd, bet wouldn’t it beappropriate for the publisher m identifyhimhcrrelf? You eever knew: semeoee. some-where might w~llt 10 order one efhirlhcr bwlu.Maybe eve” P Seed book sm.-e.

M. F. McBwenUniversi~ of Sesketcbezven Beoksmre

SesketeenEdimis note: We eedentettd the pd is’ beinSclaimed by McClerkm & Newspider.

MANY OF OUR proverbs and axioms sufferhm out-moded metaphor. “The Pen ismightier than the sword” may have hadpunch in Shakespc~e’s time. but today’schild -and this is the International Year ofthe Child - would pmbebly gasp themorel more quickly if we Preached, “TheIBM is heavier than tlte ICBM.” We’ll pby$25 for the best updated proverb orseleclionof proverbs end 523 So.% to Gnnt Bucklerof Wolfville. N.S.. for thii idea. Address:CanWit. No. 43, Books in Canada. 366Adelaide Street East. Toronto M5A 1N4.7%~ deadline is July 1.

BBSULTS OF CANWIT NO. 41

sink the accoutttmcy pmfession. Ittevit-

Gntbe.

ably, lhete were 1. ttumlter of duPlictiotts.Our fwottrite: George Radwanski’sTrudmu back-toback with A Man toMarry. A Man M Bury. by Susan Mus-grave. The winner is Jonathan Williams ofOtlmve. who receives $25 for these choicecombittstions:q Jemes Simpkies’ When Wer the Lmt Tbm

f’m Clemwd Your Navel?lSmdr,y AtIer-noon In rhc Twonro AN Gafkrx by lolu

.q Roth Cmrler’r Floralie. Where A r e

You?lUp A&m City ,YaIf, by JohnSnvcll.

o Stephen Leecock’s My Re,mwkeb,eUeclelThe Men Wit* Sewn Ten. b y .Michael Ondaatje.

o James M. Minitic’s Who’s Yaw FarF&d?” Very Polbicai Lady. ludy La

D Al Perdy’s Luw in (I Bum,ng BuSdb,S IFear cfFg<nS. by James Bxba.

Honourable meniloos:o lock Cermll’s Borrorns Up/The Riglrr

Cheek. by Clebx (Meetmdl) Feechcr.q Metpt Atwood’s Lhmc,ng &I,/%

Dainty hfonsrcrr. by Mibeel Ondsrtie.q Morley CallrShan’r No Man’s

MemlGmndnm Prqferred St& by Greg-oty Clerk.

o Victm C&man’s Speech Suc&/Erir &fur-win& by Donald Jack.

o Oneme Gibscris Five Le&Yhe Myrrcr-WI A’akcd Ma,,. by Alden Nowlee.

-May MecPbeaett. Tomntel **

o Robert Kroetrch*r The StudhorseManlHmd Times. by Charles Dickens.

-Lnis Bergen, Ce@tyl **

q Reed L&esque’s My Quebec/Me Arnw#he Ruins, by Dmmld Ieck.

-_Heinr-Michael Vodka.Agincewt, Ont.

l **

From Canada’s best-loved cookie expert!

Cooling and serving mouth-watering lamb dishes is a speciallabor of Iwe for Jehane Eenoit, for her home is “Noirmouton,”one of Canada’s kugest shheep farms.Tldi renowned goonnet gives the do’s and don’ts of cookinglamb the right way, informaUon about cuts, storiw andpreparation, and suggestions on what to serve with lamb toenhance its succulent goodness. Color illustrations.$9.95 hardcover

A McGraw-Hill Ryereon Eook

May. 1970. Books in Canada 41

a MarBraiUlwatte’r WhyShoof theTeacher?IbforeJoyinHearun, by Morley Ca.lk?gbm.

-Barbara Love. Gmancque, Gnt.***

Malone, by Man Cohn.--Michael 0. Nowlan, Ommoclo. N.B.

**aq 7rvii Laytcn’r The Tighimpe Dancer I

Trudem,, by Gemge 2adwamki.c \Villimn Weinlraub’r The UnderdoRs / A

Pickwbd Hfszay of Onfario. by Roger HallandGordon Dad&.

--Miriam Bake. Montreall **

c ROW Davies’ The Table Talk ofS,m,uel ,Uwchb.wkslThe Ffybq Bull. by\Vnrron Ktrkconnelt.

-G. K. Jobwon. McBride. B.C.

,

--Ron Miles. Ramloopo, B.C.

-hhn K. Poser.Mount Pd. NfId.

Classified roles: 66 per line (40 characters IOthe line). Deadline: first of the month fcr issuedated lollcwlng month. Address: .Scoks InCanadaClassiCed.SfiBAdelaideSLreetEasl,Tcrcntc M5A lN4. Phone: (416) 3336426.

ATflCLtS BOOKS. speclalbing In anli-quadan and scholarly used books. will buysingls items and libraries in all dlsclplines.We are padlculady Interested In philosophy.classIca. lileratcre and crittclsm. art. andmedieval and Syzantlne studies. 633 Spa_dina Ave.. Toronto M5S 252. (416)922-6045.11:90 anI- 7 cm.

THE FOL.LOW~O Canadian books werere.vtewcd in the previous issue of Books inCanada. Our reeommcndations don’tnecessarily retlect the reviews:

FICTIONThe Sweet Second Svmmer of Kitty Malone.

by Malt Cohen. McClellvld & StewarI. Aftuan uneven l&book apprendcesbip, Cohen

Luclen’s lbmbs. by M&m R&on. Dcuble-day. nle faudb llc.vel from a Canadii myr-tery titer who adds a tcuch of Simenon and apinch of Rag Macdcnrld u) brew her own&cam, plots.

NON-FICTION

If.!k!lSRAtJT, latest nwel ol Stephen Gill.$3.00 Vesta Publications, Sex 1641. Corn-wall. Ont. K6H 5V6

OUT OF PAINT q OOl(s -Canadian. HiiIortcol and Literary. CatalogueD free 0”request. Hurcnla-Canadiana Books, Box666. AllIston. Ont. LOM IA0 Men for the Momdabw, by Si Mu@, McClel-

~dBrSlewarr.Arrqui~~a~i5~~~~I of lifeby a poelie park warden in Lbe CanadianR&ii.

“olce oftbe Plonw. by Btll McNeil. Macmtl-Ian. One of tbe belter onal l&cried to unwtndtbii year. mainly because tie15 persons taped- famous and unknown - are undeniablyauthentic even if they am not all picnEar.

POETRY

SHORT STORES ABOUT SASK. 23stcdes cl pioneers. threshers. laughter.tears. Send 33 tc Lea Gybvii. 3405 25thAve.. Refllna. Sask. 545 1U for 160 PP pbk

PDETRY VIEEmEND

FonlVl flfimt3 0 Juns 102.3.7h1s wwand has bemmeanannual mslitubon inIhe cnrld d Csadnn letters. Over 20 Canadianpcm Including Roixtt Kmelsch. The FourHwsemen. and.lamrr Rea!nywill bereadingandconducting norkshcQz In an inspiring laca!8.Studenl Packapes at 354.50 include dormitoryaccommodation and six meals.konomy wages at $88.00 Include chaletacc(lmmoeaiDion and six meals with the poetsthemselves.

42 Books in Canada. May. 1979

Annlversarles, by Don Cola. Macmillan. Animpressive sefond coUecdon fmm a poet whorpeaks in a supple md urbane voice about therealides of our time - from TV rnrtlen tccancer vkdms.

THE FULLOWING Canadian books have beenreceived by 2cck.s in Canada in recentwe&s. Inclusion in this lit does ntipreclude areview or notice in a future issue:

.--

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