Category Archives: Fiction

October 29, 2013 · 1:25 pm

Stoner: Overlooked Gem

Published in 1965 John William’s *Stoner* reads like something written forty years earlier. I’m not sure how I’d never heard of the book before, though a quick search of the internet suggests no one else has either (thanks mum for point it out to me). It was reissued in 2006 by New York Review of Books with an accompanying set of quotes from famous people (Tom Hanks endorses it!) pointing out its relative obscurity. So! If you’re looking for that hipster book that will set you apart as a reader who knows what’s what… No really, this book well deserves much more attention (something beyond a Wikipedia *stub* for instance).

Except it’s sort of a thematically appropriate obsolescence and obscurity. The novel takes a realist and measured approach to the question of what makes our lives meaningful – recognition? reputation? family? career? – and ultimately concludes that most of us – including our titular character and protagonist – will die unremarkable and unremembered (just like the book!). Against the idea that this obscurity is to be bemoaned or fought, the novel suggest that by embracing the small, idiosyncratic “purposes” that enliven our individual lives we can find, if not notoriety, then contentment. This message is one well worth considering in an era of ubiquitous fame and instant-celebrity. Instead of imagining that life fulfilment will come from celebrity, or even posthumous remembrance, the novel suggests that it is the quotidian and the insignificant that afford life its purpose and satisfaction.

In a similar vein the novel poses that the disasters that befall us (our protagonist is an English professor at a small American college who cannot communicate his desires, married to an unhappy and angry woman, father to an unhappy and angry daughter) as smaller – even to ourselves – than we might imagine. Disasters of workplace tension are nothing compared to the personal horror of making the wrong choice in a partner or abandoning our parents’ dreams for us to pursue our own. 

A humble book about a humble man that is, in this humility, simply extraordinary.    

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October 1, 2013 · 1:24 pm

The Orenda: Ambivalent

The Orenda* is well plotted historical fiction with reasonably complex characters, but its thematic questions are muddy. The plot, narrated from the three, alternating first person perspectives of Bird (the warrior), Snow Falls (the damsel) and Christophe (the Jesuit) has a classic development. In a three act structure the plot introduces our three characters and their relationships, sets the conflicts and sees the climax and resolution. The structure appropriately mirrors what Boyden has setup as a climactic moment in indigenous-settler relationships – that is, the historical period narrated is imagined as a “tipping point,” to borrow from another Canadian writer. The “resolution” bleeds into the reader present with a concluding paragraph from the chorus of the novel who reminds the reader that while these events took place in the historical past, the relationships/resonances continue.

The chorus also makes the argument that what appears from the present as obvious mistakes on the part of Wendat, were not at all obvious at the time. I suppose this is where my ambivalence emerges. If the narrative wants to ask questions about historic responsibility for the death of indigenous peoples and cultures – and indeed the book offers this up as a sort of genocide – and if it wants to ask these questions in a complicated way, it aims to do so through narrative point of view. By showing three different perspectives on events the text weaves form and content to emphasize not only multiple perspectives in historiography, but multiple perspectives in “present” events: that even while, or maybe especially while, an event unfolds the outcome – (the reader’s present) is not at all known or certain. That individuals act in the immediate moment in ways that best align with their personal and cultural values and beliefs, and that to hold any one person accountable for not foreseeing the future is unfair.

As unfair, perhaps, as not assigning *some* accountability within the text for what can only be read as unjust values and beliefs. If the text holds that personal values and beliefs dictate behaviour, the text also introduces as sort of moral relativism that excuses behaviours and beliefs that cause harm and stem from arrogance. In particular I’m referencing the text’s position on the Jesuit priest Christophe. While we can see that his behaviour is guided by his beliefs, the text passes no judgement – to a fault, I think – on these behaviours/beliefs, instead suggesting that Christophe acts in the only way he possibly could based on his belief structure. Historical blame gets diffused into this sort of relativism and happenstance. Except that the Wendat people Christophe lives with change *their* behaviours and beliefs – so change is possible! – in response to living with him for years. Why then, can we we not see some change in Christophe? 

The unwillingness to adopt or present a *position* on the history can be seen again in the descriptions of torture. The Haudenosaunee and Wendat routinely torture one another; in a few lines the Jesuits compare this torture to torture occurring as part of the Spanish Inquisition, as a way, I suspect, of suggesting that neither is more “savage” than ther other, just practicing their particular beliefs in ways appropriate to their respective (cultures). This point is one Boyden raises in interviews, too, I suspect as a way of diffusing criticism that the narrative presents the indigenous as “savage torturers.” Except by equating one form of torture with another the narrative repeats this kind of moral equivalency and so, moral ambivalence. I’m dissatisfied with this equivalence/ambivalence because it seems to me from the perspective of the present – and from the present reading into this past – the events that led us to today are not (at all) open to relativism and ambivalence. Responsibility ought to be assigned in the past, and responsibility ought to be acknowledged/taken in the present.

That said, I’m excited and curious to hear how the book gets taken up by the reading public. With all the “buzz” the book is getting I’m confident it will be on many reading and prize lists and it will most certainly stimulate lively conversation – an outcome the book well deserves. I look forward to hearing what you think and to talking about the book and the history-present it describes.

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September 11, 2013 · 5:13 pm

The Last Crossing: Marvellous

Of the many things I enjoyed about Guy Vanderhaeghe’s *The Last Crossing* I most enjoyed his use of narrative voice. The book moves between characters third person limited perspective with delineated sections for each and in ways that allows the same event to be experienced “differently” by the reader as it is shown from a different voice. This narration is particularly appropriate in that this book, set in the 1860s in the (eventual) American and Canadian northwest, is historical fiction: a genre that demands we readers think about the whose perspective is being offered *and* about how multiple versions of history contradict, complicated and confuse an idea of “what really happened.”

I love Charles Gaunt as a character best of all. Charles opens the book as he receives a letter advising him to return to Canada. The bulk of the narrative is then taken up explaining why Gaunt might want to return to Canada – what and who is there for him? and the book closes with the return to Gaunt’s present as he decides what to do about the letter. I love Charles because he sees his own limitations and failings and does not shy away from them. He realizes, too, those things about himself he cannot know – a sort of conscious ignorance and accepts that this ignorance will impact his decisions. He’s just the sort of thoughtful and reflective person I’d like to be.

In any case – I enjoyed the book. I found it provocative as well as “readable” – that ineffable quality of just being a pageturner. It’s well worth the read. Though you’ve probably already read it being as I’m showing up to the party a decade late (made more hilarious – to me at least – in that this book would have been/is *perfect* for my now complete dissertation. Oh well – even more enjoyable to discover it now when I can just “enjoy” it and its complexities without wondering how I’ll explain and analyze each passage). 

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September 4, 2013 · 12:41 am

A Hologram for the King: Shimmered, but didn’t fully form

I love Dave Eggers. In the unabashed, sincere way that would likely be scorned by the irony-lovers of McSweeney’s, I just love him. Since reading *A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius* I’ve lined up for everything he’s written. I’ve found his work playful, smart, (sincere) and wise. I’ve marvelled at his triumphant shifts in genre and narrative voice as he shows naysayers that he’s not (simply) the navel-gazing memoirist of AHWOSG (as it is known), but a writer of robust talent able to shift in mood, tone and voice in ways that marvel only in comparison with his other works (which is to say, each individual work doesn’t read like a self-referential return to earlier works, but rather a reader who has read his past works can draw these comparisons and applaud the dexterity of his craft). 

So it is a tempered criticism I offer of *A Hologram for the King* – one marked by my recognition that I could be (simultaneously) (and unintentionally) holding Eggers to a higher standard *because* I admire him so much OR I could be overly generous because Eggers holds a choice place in my pantheon of favourite authors (a blog for another day, suffice to say John Steinbeck, Margaret Laurence and William Trevor keep him in good company). 

The plot (with *Spoilers*) in a few sentences? Alan, failed businessman, has a last ditch opportunity to make his fortune selling holographic technology to Saudia Arabia. After a series of Kafkaesque bureaucratic failures he succeeds in delivering his pitch, but fails to land the deal when the Saudi king opts to go – as did the rest of American business – with the cheaper Chinese firm. Meanwhile Alan struggles to make sense of his middleage, his failed fatherhood, his frustrated sexuality and his degenerating body: he, like America, is falling apart and ailing. 

It’s a book that masters the Thematic Moment – the repeated realization that the description or the dialogue is meant to be Symbolic and Important and Worth Noting. Case in point a scene where Alan wades into the waters outside the (holographic) city (note the holographic city is in and of itself meant to be Symbolic and Worth Noting) and registers the difference in this water from that of his home. Heady times for one wading his feet. It’s only a complaint insofar as each scene has this predetermined weight that makes the reading feel unnecessarily heavy: we are embarking in each paragraph – willing or not – on something thematically momentous. The end result is that the character, the plot and the scenes do not unfold with nuance or grace, but rather a sort of clumsy seriousnessness that weighs down potential authenticity of charm. 

Still, this is a criticism that recognizes its own limitations. I was frustrated with the lack of “events” in the plot even while I realized the thematic importance of showing the impotence of the narrator (see? am I being overly generous?). I was troubled by the manner in which all other characters read as placeholders for characteristics or affects desired or needed by our narrator (Alan), even while I realized the “holographic” metaphor –  as one meant to remind us that most, if not all of our interactions with other people, institutions, identities – requires the characters to be void of depth or substance. 

So while I can argue the literary merits of the artistic choices, and could write a persuasive essay on the thematic significance of Alan’s tumor, or Alan’s near (but again failed) shooting of a young Arab boy, or the contrasting significance of indoor/outdoor settings – and I’d believe all of this to be true and earnest, the truth is: I just didn’t like the book. 

There, I said it: I just didn’t enjoy it. I wanted, so much, to love it. And I think it has much to recommend it. I think it makes great material for teaching tenth grade English, or American foreign and trade policies. I just don’t think it’s one of much enjoyment. 

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