Tag Archives: canadian literature

January 15, 2011 · 10:19 pm

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Too many ships; so much brilliance

                                    So it’s something of an admission to confess I’d never read a full collection of Alice Munro’s stories before now. The thing is – as faithful readers will know – I dislike short stories, even (or maybe especially?) short stories by brilliant authors. Before this collection I’d read one of Munro’s stories (“Boys and Girls”) for a class I taught, and really enjoyed it, but all the same resisted reading a full collection because, as with all short story collections, I feel (violently) opposed to the brief introduction to characters, which must inevitably end too early. I appreciate the short story as a compressed form, one which achieves great thematic feats in a short space, and yet all the same, I can’t help feel cheated by what I’ll never find out about characters (this from someone who writes her own – shoddy – short stories).

In any case, this collection (poorly named, I think – far too many ships) almost makes up for the failings of the form by introducing brilliant characters and having some long (novella length?) stories. I even took the new e-reader into the tub because I couldn’t wait to finish a story (new splash bag for the reader comes this week, have no fear).

I will say that amid the triumph of rendering nuanced and hopelessly believable characters in heart-breaking situations, I loved the collection, but didn’t always like it. I felt that after another hopeless ending where things don’t quite work out, or people aren’t reunited, or are miserable, or find their lives are not the lives they ought to be, that I could do with an ending where things work out. And maybe Munro’s talent is in capturing the reality of lives – the impossibility, the failure, the absence, the missed connections – and perhaps I ought to turn to another author if I want to read stories were things feel resolved, but all the same, I wouldn’t have minded a couple of stories to pick me up along the way, to restore some faint sense of hope in humanity. L. suggested that I might read one Munro story a month rather than a whole collection at once, and perhaps she’s right (but there’s no time for that kind of spacing in a year of 100 books…). Maybe I can only handle a confrontation with what is true in small, once a month doses. A complaint about me then, I suppose. Me and my desire – my commitment? my faith? my hope? – for a happy ending needs monthly dosing with Munro. Maybe all of us need monthly Munro to help us find out about others and to remind us that we are, all of us, after all, always in some kind of ‘ship,’ always colliding with others. 

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January 11, 2011 · 11:27 pm

The Diviners: Thanks, Margaret Laurence

     There are some things that enrich my life beyond all expectation or proportion: baths, bike rides, sex, and let me say it now: Margaret Laurence. I’ve long suspected she might be my favourite author (despite my discomfort with A Jest of God, I loved the book; The Stone Angel is near perfect in its characterization of Hagar), but on (re)reading The Diviners I’m ready to settle the matter: Margaret Laurence is my favourite.

I don’t mean to suggest she’s the best author out there (let’s leave conversations of ‘best’ to another day), but when reading her books I feel uncanny feelings. I feel like maybe my fears and hopes and expectations for life have been somehow borrowed from a Laurence novel; put another way, I wonder whether Laurence doesn’t anticipate and – perfectly – describe my feelings through her beautiful and flawed protagonists.

You’re thinking, yes, but in A Jest of God, Rachel is nothing but a simpering pathetic woman who longs for sexual realization, freedom and above all the “strength of conviction,” and in The Diviners Morag seems to embody this very strength (often describing her own strength, vivid in her eyes, and making difficult decisions that no doubt call upon this certain kind of strength). I do wonder though whether Morag’s strength isn’t a kind of yearning too, a recognition of “what means ‘strength of conviction’” and a realization that she doesn’t quite have it (though Christie does, and Jules, too). Maybe I most identify with and admire this yearning, and this imitable belief that you might – but haven’t yet – take what you believe you deserve, or brave enough to be the person you believe yourself to be. Admire yes, but find heart-breaking, too. The recognition that sometimes/often women do not find the strength of their conviction, do not find their strength at all. So when I find myself crying (sobbing) at the end of another Laurence novel, I say thanks to Laurence: thanks for recognizing in me (and presumably in countless others) the yearning and the nascent strength and for giving us characters who both do and do not meet their own expectations.

(If you haven’t yet read anything by Laurence I demand that you go out and do so now. Even if you are not a young woman. Or an artist. Or a mother or father. Or a… She’ll still shine a light into your soul, heart, mind  , a light into you. Read. Oh, read.)

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December 7, 2010 · 5:16 pm

Sanctuary Line: Symbolism Gone Wild

     Im writing about Jane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass for the big T right now, and so I should begin this post with the caveat that my interpretation of Sanctuary Line may be skewed by my frustration with writing about A Map of Glass. That said, even though I am writing endless pages about it, I like A Map of Glass. I do not, however, like Sanctuary Line.

The top lists of 2010 like Sanctuary Line. They like it, I suspect, because it comes heavily laden with symbolism and with the promise that this. is. literary. fiction. Unfortunately the endless symbols of butterflies, transformation, lighthouses, reading, vigilance, connection, and a vital past do not accompany anything like an engaging plot. Instead the reader encounters chapter after chapter of a frustrating (not tantalizing) promise that soon – no! soon! – the “mystery” that explains the disappearance of Liz’s uncle and the tragedy of Liz’s childhood will be revealed. This reader suspected, nay expected, that somehow the over-determined symbolism that weighed down the narrative would, in the final reveal, make sense, would make the plot richer and the experience of slogging through worthwhile. Alas. The big mystery appeared to this reader so surprising, so unexpected that I couldn’t help but wonder if in all my attention to symbolism I had somehow missed the connection between transformation and… (the big reveal).

I have to say I generally admire Urquhart for her poetic descriptions of landscape, her weaving of symbol, plot, metaphor and character, and her ambition in thematic scope. This novel, however, left me feeling frustrated and vaguely discomfited: have I become a poorer reader? Let’s not discount this possibility, it’s been a long semester. But let’s also consider the possibility that this book may have missed the mark, and instead of weaving a delightful tapestry of character, plot, theme and symbol we’re left with a knotted ball of (enter the misplaced metaphor).

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November 10, 2010 · 1:23 pm

A Jest of God: Best Worst Mother

I love Margaret Laurence. (I know I’m supposed to feel some ambivalence about her because she’s sometimes racist, and maybe classist, but for what it’s worth, I don’t care. Sometimes I wonder whether the politics of a writer  can be left aside when considering the merits of the writing. We’ve been talking in class about this idea: whether because an author does terrible things in their work/public life, whether we then need to dismiss their writing because of their unsavory personal story. We concluded in class that, no, you can appreciate the writing while holding the author accountable for their public actions/beliefs. I don’t know if it’s the same when an author writes about their unsavoury ideas, but does so in a beautiful and compelling way.)

Not a problem in “Jest of God,” though. Margaret Laurence is paying attention to the mother-daughter relationship and the power a mother has over a daughter. Our protagonist, Rachel Cameron, is perhaps more anxious than I am (and that’s saying something these days) and her narrative reads painfully as we experience with her her (almost) never-ending monologues of self-doubt, anxiety and self-loathing. Her mother is such a horrible, horrible mother. And Rachel knows it! And the mother does, too! And the novel is more about how the two of them figure out how to make their relationship work. Sort of. It’s also about Rachel figuring out how to be in her own skin without feeling like her skin is crawling.

I appreciate the book for its merits: beautifully plotted, rich character development, haunting narrative voice. I can’t say I enjoyed it though, if only because Rachel’s anxiety was portrayed so well – and her narrative voice captivates that anxiety so well – that I found reading the novel more anxiety producing than relaxing. So I’d suggest this book only so long as you’re reading it safely on a beach somewhere and not, for instance, trying to get your own life sorted.

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