SHALL I COMPARE YOU TO A UFO?
the law of small numbers
24 SUSSEX
A LITERARY SCANDAL Ka bow, Ka bow, Kow á é
ST. LAWRENCE RIVER, ALL 3,050 KM
Solitary Woodsman
THE SHINIEST PEOPLE WERE IN THE URANIUM MINES
the recipe for bohemia includes lots of culture and no economy
Museum of Communism
JACK PINE
our one and only tree in a country of trees Stephen Harper among the pastel cushions SHE KILLS HER FIRST (53"!.$ "9 POURING MOLTEN LEAD INTO HIS EAR
YANN MARTEL * EDITH IGLAUER * MICHAEL EDEN REYNOLDS SHEILA HETI * THE ROYAL ART LODGE * ANN DIAMOND MILTON ACORN * FABRICE STRIPPOLI * GEORGE BOWERING MARCUS YOUSSEF * EVELYN LAU * CARMINE STARNINO Language Lessons . . . WITH 3IMON AND -ARIE s LOOKING GRAND in his Simpsons-Sears catalogue suit, shirt & tie In Praise of Female Athletes Who Were Told .O s RANDOMNESs in his eyes s Can I $RIVE TO .UNAVIK 2EPORT THE 3USPICIOUS s $AVID 4HOMPSON "EATS THE $EVIL ON THE +ISISKATCHEWAN 2IVER s 4HE !RTIST AS Coureur de bois s 'EIST &ORTUNE #OOKIE ,IT s 4HE 3ECOND ,IFE OF +IRIL +ADIISKi s WINTER 2009 $6.95
75
In memory of Saeko Usukawa published by The Geist Foundation publisher Stephen Osborne senior editor Mary Schendlinger managing editor Sarah Maitland publishing assistant Michal Kozlowski associate editor C.E. Coughlan executive director Patty Osborne office manager & reader services Kristin Cheung web editor Ross Merriam editorial assistant Sarah Hillier interns Todd Coyne, Leni T. Goggins, Leah Pires, Kate Reid administrative assistants Allison Friebertshauser, Erinna Gilkison, Jenny Kent, Becky McEachern, Emma Myers, Dan Post editorial board Kevin Barefoot, Bartosz Barczak, Trevor Battye, Jill Boettger, Marisa Chandler, Brad Cran, Laurie Edwards, Melissa Edwards, Robert Everett-Green, Derek Fairbridge, Daniel Francis, Helen Godolphin, Lily Gontard, Michael Hayward, Gillian Jerome, Brian Lam, Sarah Leavitt, Thad McIlroy, Billeh Nickerson, Eric Peterson, Leah Rae, Debby Reis, Craig Riggs, Kris Rothstein, Norbert Ruebsaat, Jane Silcott, Paul Tough, Michelle van der Merwe, Carrie Villeneuve, Josh Wallaert, Kathy Vito, Kaleigh Wisman, Barbara Zatyko, Daniel Zomparelli accountant Mindy Abramowitz, cga advertising & marketing Clevers Media cover Rebecca Dolen, Steffen Quong web architects cascadiamedia.ca
Volume 18
Number 75
Winter 2009
NOTES & DISPATCHES
Stephen Osborne 7
David Thompson Beats the Devil on the Kisiskatchewan River Mary Schendlinger 10 In Memoriam Edith Iglauer 11 Sightseeing, Anybody? Marcus Youssef 15 Happy Shiny People Evelyn Lau 17 24 Sussex Veronica Gaylie 18 Hair Piece Norbert Ruebsaat 19 Caleb and Opa on Holiday Jaynne Wellygan 21 Chorus Line Sheila Heti 22 Law of Small Numbers Brad Cran 24 In Praise of Female Athletes Who Were Told No FINDINGS
Yann Martel, Kenneth Sherman, 28 Letter to Harper, Who Knows You Here?, A. F. Moritz, George Bowering, Your Story, Prize Politics, David W. McFadden, Papa in Peru, Bowhead Butchering, John Terpstra, Carmine Starnino, Giants, Vita Brevis, No Paper in Space, Peter Taylor, Justin Nobel, Language Lessons . . . with Simon and Stuart Ross, Marie, Alter Ego, Report the Suspicious, Michael Eden Reynolds, Upon the Conversion of Stephen Harper TransLink, Karen Hofmann CONTEST
Milton Acorn 56 Jackpine Sonnets COMMENT
Stephen Henighan 69 Building Bohemia Alberto Manguel 71 Role Models and Readers
composition Vancouver Desktop distribution Magazines Canada printed in canada by Hemlock Printers first subscriber Jane Springer managing editor emeritus Barbara Zatyko www.geist.com
DEPARTMENTS
6 Letters The Usual Gang 73 Endnotes Meandricus 87 Puzzle Melissa Edwards 88 Caught Mapping
FEATURES
Western Girl 41 Her name was El, and she came from Dana Mills out west When my sister told me about girls, she said, Put on good underwear. Even if you’re fourteen and not taking your pants off yet. Fleuve 47 The St. Lawrence River: Fabrice Strippoli A portrait-in-progress Strippoli drove up the highway and stopped at the side of the road to take pictures of towns along the river his family has known for generations. Fortune Cookie Lit 58 A long and happy life—and more Contest Winners Four great stories inspired by those strangely meaningful scraps stuffed into fortune cookies, by Leslie Vryenhoek, Vaughan Chapman, Yvonne Blomer, Lisa Van de Ven. The Second Life 63 A Bulgarian poet emerges as a literary rascal of Kiril Kadiiski A long-lost early work by a legendary Ann Diamond poet, found by a kindred spirit and then exposed as a fake. Who did it? And why does it matter?
COVER AND PRODUCTION NOTES
The cover of Geist 75 combines design by Steffen Quong (steffenquong.ca) and art by Rebecca Dolen (assemblyoftext.com). The text lines are taken from the issue, and set in several weights of Granjon, a font designed by George William Jones in 1928, based on the Garamond type used in a book printed by Jean Poupy in Paris in 1592. The roman design was taken from Claude Garamond and the italic version from Robert Granjon. Author names are set in Nobel Bold (from Lettergieterij, Amsterdam, 1929). Geist is printed on eco-friendly papers with vegetable-based inks, and is mailed in degradable polybags. Interior stock is Harbour 40 Offset; cover stock is Harbour 100 Cover.
LETTERS
GEIST
Readers Write
Geist is published four times a year by The Geist Foundation. Contents copyright © 2009 The Geist Foundation. All rights reserved. Subscriptions: in Canada: Individuals $24 (4 issues); Institutions $31; in the United States: $32; elsewhere: $32. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Correspondence and inquiries: subscriptions@geist.com, advertising@geist.com, letters@geist.com, editor@geist.com. Include sase with Canadian postage or irc with all submissions and queries. #200 – 341 Water Street, Vancouver, B.C. Canada v6b 1b8. Guidelines are also available at geist.com. issn 1181-6554. Geist swaps its subscriber list with other cultural magazines for one-time mailings. Please contact us if you prefer not to receive these mailings. Publications Mail Agreement 40069678 Registration No. 07582 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Department, #200 – 341 Water Street, Vancouver, B.C. Canada v6b 1b8. Email: geist@geist.com Tel: (604) 681-9161, 1-888-geist-eh; Fax: (604) 669-8250; Web: geist.com Geist is a member of Magazines Canada and the B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers. Indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and available on microfilm from University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan, usa. The Geist Foundation receives assistance from private donors, the Tula Foundation, the Canada Council, the B.C. Arts Council and the B.C. Gaming Branch. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the Publications Assistance Program (pap) and the Canada Magazine Fund.
special thanks to the tula foundation
THE M ANGUEL EFFECT ospital Reading,” the essay by Alberto Manguel on choosing which books to take with him during a hospital stay (Geist 73), spoke volumes to me. I was struck by Manguel’s ability to verbalize what I have gone through and will probably go through many more times in my life—what’s the proper book to choose for the situation? One of his “comfort reading” books, Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman, is mine as well. It sits on my comfort shelf, my emergency pull, so to speak. My other comfort books, which I go back to again and again, are Katherine Neville’s The Eight, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters and Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue. —Nikki Raichlin, Rochester Hills, MI
“H
Until I saw the film Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, I would have agreed with what Alberto Manguel says, so beautifully, about interrogation practices and prisoners of war (“Dante in Guantánamo,” No. 74). This film explores the question of who is to blame for the torture in Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Is it the administration giving the orders, or the soldiers carrying out their duties? Upon hearing the soldier’s personal accounts in this film, seeing their confused and battered mental states and realizing that their suffering may go on until they die, I am no longer sure of my once unforgiving stance on punishing anyone who does harm to others. How should it be dealt with? —Lisa Rai, Vancouver
www.geist.com Page 6 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
Thanks for publishing my photo (Wind Turbine, Glace Bay, N.S.) with Manguel’s “Hospital Reading” in No. 73. I haven’t had much of a chance to read during my own visits to the Sydney City Hospital. A broken wrist from snowboarding at Ben Eoin—it was treated quickly but led to my dismissal from the Pizza Den as delivery boy. An appendectomy—back home, after the operation, I asked my mother if I could remove my bandage and touch the stitches. She was cleaning the tub at the time, and I was sitting on a stool. I woke up in my waterbed. One of my many faintings. One more: in ’92 I saw the Human Pin Cushion perform at Lollapalooza with the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow and decided I should pierce my left nipple. Hip, alternative and sexy. Things didn’t work out well. The room spun and I stood up and bashed my chin on a sink and went out cold. Blood, stitches and a scar that my junior high school students ask me about in the classroom. “Write what you know,” I tell them. —Michael McLeod, Cole Harbour NS OOPS n “Halloween Capital of the World” by Stephen Osborne (Notes & Dispatches, Geist 74), the image of the glyphs that Rebecca Eames drew in place of a signature on her confession of witchcraft was dropped in the course of production. The first one is: and the one that appeared below it, perhaps to indicate that only the mark is hers (and not the confession) is:
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Letters continue on page 85
NOTES & DISPATCHES David Thompson Beats the Devil on the Kisiskatchewan River STEPHEN OSBORNE
Thompson’s free-ranging narrative of the New World must be the only one in which the devil is defeated at checkers
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n the winter of 1787, the apprenticeclerk at a trading post on a distant bend in the Kisiskatchewan River, a boy of seventeen, developed an obsession for the game of checkers, which he learned to play with his companions in the trading post: the resident, the assistant, the steward and the crew of a dozen men waiting in idleness for the ice to break up on the river. He became expert at both the twelve-man and the twenty-
image: the royal art lodge
four-man boards, and when no one would play with him he practised intensely against himself. His name was David Thompson, and he later became the greatest surveyor of the northern plains; his Great Map, which hangs in the Archives of Ontario, describes the vast territory with which he became intimate over a long life, from the shores of Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean, the Athabasca River to the Missouri. In
the narrative that he completed when he was eighty years old, he recalls that his brief career as a champion at checkers along the Kisiskatchewan in 1787 ended one day in April of that year, when a strange incident occurred: having no one to play against, he wrote, I was sitting alone at a small table with the checkerboard before me, when the devil sat down opposite to me, and began to play. The devil, in his features and his colour, Thompson wrote, resembled a Spaniard, he had two short black horns on his forehead, which pointed forward, his head and body down to the waist (for no more of him could be seen) was covered with glossy, black curling hair; his countenance was mild and grave. Thompson says nothing of the inner tension that one might experience while playing checkers with the devil; his narrative is wonderfully empty of subjectivity. The devil, who lost every game but did not lose his temper, is alone the proper subject of these sentences: he kept his temper throughout, but looked more grave as the afternoon wore on; at length he got up or rather disappeared. The whole of this strange incident is still plain before me after sixty-three years, he writes without a note of triumph: after the devil disappeared, all was silence and solitude; it was broad daylight, and my eyes were wide open; I could not decide if it had been a dream, or a reality: I made no vow, but took a resolution never to play a game of chance or skill, or anything that had the appearance of them, and I have kept it. David Thompson was apprenticed when he was fourteen to the Hudson’s Bay Company by the charity school Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 7
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near Westminster Abbey in London, where he learned reading, writing and mathematics. When he began his narrative in Montreal sixty-one years later, memories of his urban childhood had taken on a pastoral colouring. He recalls lingering among the monumental inscriptions in the venerable abbey and its cloisters; and strolling through the city to London Bridge, Chelsea, Vauxhall and St. James’s Park, where, he says, all was beauty to the eye and verdure for the feet. Books were scarce; of those that most pleased him and his schoolmates, he remembered the Arabian Nights, Tales of the Genii, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels, and conceived himself thereby at an early age to have knowledge, as he writes, to say something of any place he might come to, but none of his reading had prepared him for the treeless landscapes and rocky shores of Hudson Bay, certainly, in a country that Sindbad the sailor never saw, as he puts it, for Sindbad makes no mention of mosquitoes. The narrative of Thompson’s exile (he never returned to England) begins on his third day at sea, when a Dutch lugger carrying bootleg gin hove to about half a mile away; a boat was lowered directly and the gunner on Thompson’s ship, whom he recalls as tall and handsome, stepped into it with four men; they were soon on board the lugger, a case of gin was produced, a glass tasted and approved; but when the gunner had paid and made his return, the bottles in the case were found to contain sea water; the gunner got into a fighting humour, as Thompson recalls, but already the Dutchman was luffing off in fine style. The Atlantic crossing lasted six weeks, and must have seemed endless to a teenage boy, but it required only a sentence in the memory of the eighty-year-old man writing the narrative of his life: We now held our course over the western ocean, and near the Page 8 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
islands of America we saw several icebergs, and Hudson’s Straits were so full of ice as to require the time of near a month to pass through them.
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hompson passed his adolescence among men of the fur trade, none of whom emerged as a mentor, and in the narrative he wrote when he was eighty years old we can feel his disappointment in those who might have filled that role, including the handsome gunner duped by bootleggers, and Samuel Hearne, the adventurer and governor of Fort Churchill who hoarded all the writing paper for his own memoirs, and had already lost his reputation by having surrendered his command to the French without firing a shot. Some of the other traders had lost all their learning in the wilderness, as well as their navigational tools; when Thompson arrived at the trading post on the Kisiskatechwan, there was not a single book to be had, not even a Bible. It was during this period of booklessness that he had been joined in his favourite game of draughts by the devil, an event that he relates sixty-three years later with the same careful attention, limber syntax and narrative aplomb that he applies to all that passes through his memory.
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n the fall of the year that he renounced games of skill and chance, Thompson was sent with a trading party to live among the Piegan Blackfoot people in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. He was equipped with a cotton shirt, a blue cloth jacket and leather trousers, to which his employer added another shirt, a leather coat, and blanket and bison robe, forty rounds of ammunition, two long knives, six flints, a few awls, needles, etc., with a few pounds of tobacco, and
a horse to carry himself and his luggage—all of which obliged him, he recalls, to walk the greatest part of the journey, which lasted six weeks and took him more than five hundred miles across the plains, and which he accomplishes in his narrative in a sentence or two just sufficient to pause before a lone white pine lingering in a state of decay among a grove of aspens near the Bow River. This was One Pine, as the tree had been named by the Piegans, for it was the only pine tree for seventy miles or more; its top had been chopped off and it appeared to be dying. The old man with whom Thompson found lodging told him that when the smallpox epidemic entered the tents of people camping near the tree, one of the men applied his prayers to One Pine to save his family from the disease. He continued his supplications for three days, during which time he burned sweetgrass and gave over all three of his horses, which he left hobbled beneath it, and his bow and quiver of arrows, and on the third day, having nothing more to give, as Thompson writes, he offered a bowl of water. When all of his family were dead, and he alone had recovered, the unfortunate man returned to One Pine to remonstrate and to exact revenge for its ingratitude. He took back his horses and the other offerings, climbed the tree to about two-thirds of its height and cut away the crown with his hatchet. He never remarried, but lived instead in the tent of one of his brothers; he went several times to war, and never took a shield with him, and always placed himself in the front of the battle as if he wished to die, yet no enemy arrow ever struck him. The old man who told this story to David Thompson was a Cree who had been adopted by the Piegans; his name was Saukamappee, which translates as Young Man. Saukamappee was at least
NOTES & DISPATCHES
eighty years old when he invited Thompson into his tent. He was about six feet two or three inches, Thompson writes; broad shoulders, strong limbed, hair grey and plentiful, forehead high and nose prominent, his face slightly marked with the smallpox, and altogether his countenance mild, and even playful; although his step was firm and he rode with ease, he no longer hunted, this he left to his sons. Saukamappee was a revered storyteller; he quickly became Thompson’s mentor. Every evening for four months, Thompson writes, he sat and listened without tiring to the narrative old man, as he called him, whose stories, as Thompson heard them, blend the habits and customs, manners, politics and religion, anecdotes of the Chiefs and stories of war and peace. The book that Thompson wrote when he reached Saukamappee’s age is informed by the pleasures of telling stories of the observed world and taking down the stories of others. The stories of the plains wars taken down from Saukamappee (and given in some six thousand words in Thompson’s narrative) form an essential component of a memory that would no longer be possible within a few years of Thompson’s death in 1857.
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he countries that Thompson traversed during subsequent decades were the domain of Cree, Inuit, Piegan, Blood and Siksika, Ojibway, the Mandan and Hidatsa. He assisted the migration of the Iroquois, Algonquin and Nipissing onto the Plains, and after crossing the Rockies, he encountered the Kootenay and Flathead, the Sahaptin and Chinookean peoples. He married Charlotte Small, whose mother was Cree and father European. Their marriage lasted fifty-eight years until their deaths in 1857. His free-ranging narrative is filled with
luminous accounts of wars and migrations, the evolution of nations; the result is a sketch of a ramshackle nation patched together from the oddments of three empires and dozens of Aboriginal clans, tribes and alliances. He was nourished in his travels, he recalls, by bear meat mixed with the rendered grease of the bison made into pemmican and placed in bags of well-dried parchment skin, each bag weighing ninety pounds. Of this strong and wholesome food an Englishman requires little more than a pound each day, but a Canadian eats nearly two pounds a day. Thompson’s Great Map became obsolete with the development of the railway. Land that had been commonly held was transformed into private property (much of it in the hands of the cpr), and the population of the plains emptied out into the reserves, allowing the cpr to advertise the empty prairie as a paradise awaiting the immigrants of Europe. On one of his northern journeys, his party encountered a loons’ nest, from which they removed three eggs but, as he writes, they found them not to be eatable. Two lads lay down near the nest, in the night the pair of loons came, and missing their eggs, fell upon the lads, screeching and screaming, and beating them with their wings; the lads thought themselves attacked by enemies, and roared out for help; two of us threw off our blankets, and seized our guns, the loons seeing this returned to the lake, we were at a loss what to think or do, the lads were frightened out of their wits, in a few minutes we heard the wild call of the loons; the Indian said it was the loons in revenge for the loss of their eggs; and giving them his hearty curse of “death be to you,” told us there was no danger, and the loons left us quiet for the rest of the night. Thompson’s narrative of the New World may not be the only one that Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 9
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includes a personal encounter with the devil, but certainly it is the only one in which the devil is defeated at checkers. Observation of the natural world is the foundation of Thompson’s project. In the northern forest near Hudson Bay he witnessed a stampede of migrating caribou that lasted two full days; he calculated its number at 3,564,000. The Whiskey Jack, he wrote, will alight at the very door, and when brought into the room seems directly quite at home; when spirits is offered, it directly drinks, is soon drunk and fastens itself anywhere until sober. The Grouse has a pleasing, cheerful call. Thompson spells it out: Ka bow, Ka bow, Kow á é. Stephen Osborne is the publisher of Geist and the author of Ice & Fire: Dispatches from the New World. David Thompson’s narrative is included in volume 1 of The Writings of David Thompson, edited by William E. Moreau (McGill-Queen’s, 2009).
In Memoriam SAEKO USUKAWA 1946–2009
I
n July 2009 we said goodbye to Saeko Usukawa, a friend, colleague and contributing editor to Geist. We didn’t know Saeko in 1948, when this picture was taken, but it perfectly portrays the Saeko we knew later on. She was a woman of intelligence, wisdom and taste—not only in clothes and accessories (as can be seen here), and in food, drink, flowers and furniture, but in paper, ink, type fonts and literature itself. She was one of the first subscribers to Geist and she maintained her subscription for the rest of her life, though we’d have given her a free one. She brought interesting writers and artists to the magazine, and took the magazine to interesting readers. Until she became ill a few years ago, she attended all of our events, from the Geist Evenings of Dinner & Diversion in the early 1990s to the more recent issue launches and milestone celebrations. She also served as the Geist signage correspondent (it was she who alerted us to the Poem Construction building site, for example). With Page 10 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
her partner, Peggy Thompson, she co-wrote two pieces published in Geist: “Gulf Island Sojourn” (No. 8) and “Okay, So If the Seventies, Then What? An Evening Without Television” (No. 14). Saeko was well known in the Canadian trade publishing industry as one of the best book editors in the country, and she seemed always to be managing a relentless schedule and workload. Yet whenever a Geist editor sought her advice on a pesky editorial question—whether to insert a comma, where to check an obscure fact, which Dorothy Parker collection had that essay in it—she took the time to listen, consult sources, ponder the alternatives and say something wise, piquant and encouraging. Saeko was one of the best friends a cultural magazine could have. We are very glad to have known her, and to have had her love and generosity through our first twenty years. To read Saeko’s work in Geist, go to geist.com. —Mary Schendlinger
NOTES & DISPATCHES
Sightseeing, Anybody? E D IT H IGL A U E R
The police officer turned us back and told us to forget about Stanley Park and forget about sightseeing anywhere in Vancouver
T
he Vancouver newspapers are filled with daily plans for the oncoming Olympic Games, and I know exactly what travelling around that city will be like for ordinary people. I’ve been there. In November 1997, the international organization apec (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) met in Vancouver, with several stated objectives, such as the improvement of trade between attending countries. The participants included heads of state, among them President Jiang Zemin of China and President Suharto of Indonesia, neither of whom would get a gold medal for honouring human rights. Noisy protestors outside of the buildings where apec met made it clear that not everyone was
photos: erinna gilkison
thrilled with their presence in the city. My friend, the internationally renowned classical pianist Craig Rutenberg, also arrived in Vancouver at the same time, to accompany the Canadian tenor Ben Heppner in a sold-out concert at the Chan Centre on the University of B.C. campus. It was his first visit to Vancouver, and I offered to show him around my favourite city in my adopted country. I take my sightseeing responsibilities with visitors from the United States very seriously, especially a friend I like and respect as much as I do Craig. Early on the Sunday after his arrival I left my house on the Sechelt Peninsula, north of Vancouver, and drove fifty miles to
board the ferry for the forty-minute trip across Howe Sound, then down the ferry ramp at Horseshoe Bay to drive another half hour into Vancouver, straight to the door of Craig’s hotel. On our sightseeing tour I planned to include the awesome stand of great Douglas fir trees in Stanley Park in the middle of the city, several highlights on the ubc campus, especially the famed Nitobe Japanese Garden, and the Museum of Anthropology, designed by the late great architect Arthur Erickson. I would then drive Craig around to see other examples of Erickson’s genius: the downtown plaza called Robson Square, the MacMillan Bloedel office skyscraper, the elegant Simon Fraser University, designed by Erickson and his partner, Geoffrey Massey, on top of a small mountain in nearby Burnaby. Although the media were flooding the country with items about apec, I never gave it a thought in planning our day. Craig was waiting for me at the front entrance of the hotel, an impressively large figure nattily dressed for the occasion in a blue blazer, with a bright red scarf in the open neck of his striped blue shirt. A far cry from the black frock coat, white formal vest and bow tie he would be wearing later as he stepped out onstage at the Chan Centre, bowed to the audience and seated himself at the piano with a flip of his tails. “I’m on holiday today, ready for our great tour,” he said, beaming. “I’ve really been looking forward to this.” “Is there anything that you especially want to see?” I asked. Until now, our friendship had consisted of attending amusing dinners with mutual friends in New York, when Craig could spare an evening from his work as head of the music staff of the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan, and as coach for noted singers all over the music world. Now there were just the two of us and I felt quite shy and a bit nervous; this was a Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 11
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very special day and I had no idea what he would like to see. “You choose!” he said. “Everything interests me. From what I’ve observed already, this is a beautiful city.” We set out for my first choice, Robson Square, the provincial government buildings and courthouse designed by Erickson in downtown Vancouver, in a park-like setting of low trees, green plantings and his signature waterfall that surrounds the provincial offices. But at the first cross street we were stopped by a police officer standing in front of a wooden barrier. He shook his head and waved us toward a road going in the opposite direction. I stuck my head out the window. “I have a guest from the United States with me,” I said, pointing to Craig. “I want to show him Robson Square.” “The streets in this area are closed off,” the officer said. “There’s a meeting of international leaders, apec, going on now, and only vehicles with special permits are allowed inside the barriers.” “I don’t want to stop,” I protested. “I just want to drive around!” He shook his head again as he waved us away. “Security measures,” he said. “There are a lot of important people in attendance.” I decided that my best bet would be to turn around on the main thoroughfare, Georgia Street, and drive into Stanley Park, where we could stop and have lunch at the charming Teahouse at Ferguson Point, but there were barriers every which way. I seemed to be travelling in an ever-widening circle going nowhere, and I tried to hide my disappointment. This was to have been such a memorable day. “We’ll go straight out to the university,” I said. “The Museum of Anthropology is my favourite Erickson building anyway, and it has a fascinating Northwest Coast First Nations collection. I didn’t know anything about Pacific Coast Native culture when I Page 12 • G E IST 75 • Winter 2009
NOTES & DISPATCHES
came, and you probably don’t either.” Craig nodded. “I don’t and I am looking forward to seeing the museum.” When we arrived at the museum, near the edge of the ubc campus, I parked in the lot and we strolled up to the front entrance. A big sign read closed for the day. I protested to the guard stationed at the entrance that it was Sunday, and it was noon, and the museum should be open. “Security measures,” he said. “Very important people are attending an apec meeting here. I don’t think you will get much further on the campus.” We managed to drive a little ways before we were stopped again. This time we could see ahead a fair distance, across an almost deserted campus, to a group of people demonstrating outside one of the buildings. They were shouting at the police, who were trying to herd them away. They kept surging forward, waving their signs that objected to the meetings, and in particular to the presence of the Chinese and Indonesian leaders, on the campus. We sat for quite a while watching, and then I turned the car around and we drove away. By that time only one road was open, and it sent us on a roundabout route to the outskirts of Vancouver. From there I attempted to travel toward Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, without success. Trying to head back into Vancouver, and still hoping to at least reach Stanley Park, I was stopped again by a police officer. I opened the car window again and, with what I judged was a plaintive note in my voice, told him where I was aiming to go and why. He shook his head. “Forget about Stanley Park. Forget about sightseeing,” he advised. “It’s going to be the same everywhere.” This was turning into an awful day. I was aghast, and I tried not to show my embarrassment. In what I hoped was a casual voice I said to Craig, who sat placidly with his hands across his stomach looking like a benevolent Buddha,
“I don’t think I am going to be able to show you much of Vancouver today.” “It certainly doesn’t look like it,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t think of a place to show you that we can get to,” I said. I didn’t have any more ideas about where to go. And then a large sign that read costco loomed up ahead. We were approaching the big discount membership warehouse store where I often shop for supplies when I am in town. I had a sudden crazy thought, born I suppose from desperation and my feeling of failure. “Craig! Have you ever been to Costco?” I asked. He brightened up. “No, but I’ve heard about it and I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like,” he said. “I forgot to bring toothpaste and I could use a new toothbrush. Can I get them at Costco?” “Absolutely,” I shouted, relieved that at last we had a destination. The parking lot was packed, as usual. People were scurrying into the large square building with empty carts, and others were coming out loaded with goods. No security worries here! I parked the car, and we grabbed a cart and headed for the entrance. I said, “This isn’t exactly what I had planned for today.” Craig’s eyes sparkled behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “Well I guess not!” he said. “It’s fine. I might never get another chance to see a Costco! I’m delighted!” It was lunchtime and after all that driving around we were hungry. Our first stop was at a table where a white-aproned grandmotherly woman was serving up samples of lasagna, with packages for sale behind her. Craig reached for a sample in a paper cup and a plastic fork beside it, passed them to me and took another for himself. “Delicious,” he said, wiping his fingers delicately on the paper napkin that accompanied it. I steered our cart to the shaving cream
and toothpaste area before we could forget what we had come for in our excitement over the goodies all around us. Craig placed his two purchases in our cart, and we turned back to the next white-covered table to be served another sample offering by another motherly server: a melted cheese and tuna mixture that went very well with the lasagna. We moved along with our cart, enthusiastically gobbling down Costco’s best samples. This being Sunday, the whole store was alive with little tables, where dabs of smoked salmon, prosciutto, slivers of hot chicken pie, and bits of exotic cheeses served on seasoned crackers and bagel chips were being presented to shoppers, along with roasted almonds, French truffles, a very tasty fruit drink of unrecognizable ingredients and, in a little pleated paper cup, the best pickled herring I have ever had. “Mmm, mmm,” Craig said, reaching for a second helping of herring. “Delicious!” Along the aisles, I picked up cans of coffee and salmon, packages of smoked salmon and prosciutto, jars of green olives and cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, which I always need, and the bottles of delightful small sweet pickles I can never find elsewhere. I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. “Time for lunch!” I exclaimed. “Let’s go!” Craig laughed. “We’ve just had lunch!” he said. He was looking very pleased. The apec meetings that week cast a long shadow over public events in Vancouver. A few days after we tried to visit ubc, the police used pepper spray to drive away students demonstrating against apec meetings, since referred to as the “Sergeant Pepper” attacks. I read later that approximately seventeen hundred students in all were involved in the demonstrations. The confrontations between students and police led to a series of court appearances, the Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 13
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appointment of two commissions of inquiry, the condemning of police behaviour and a bad joke by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, about liking pepper on his steak, that enraged many Canadians. The protests also led to a great deal of activity by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, centred on constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and, possibly, some improvements by the police in the delicate art of crowd control. Police behaviour during the 2010 Olympic games will once again be subjected to the critical eyes of a public ready to pounce on any curtailment of sacred rights to free speech and public assembly, and I don’t envy them their job. My day with Craig did not end too badly. When we left Costco I managed to find us a pleasant hotel lounge with comfortable chairs and excellent service where we had a pleasant cup of tea, followed by glasses of chilled white wine. Craig is a great storyteller and his life is full of not only gruelling work, but amusing anecdotes. When I dropped him back at his hotel, I handed him a box of French truffles whose sampling he had admired. He held it up, laughing. “Spoils of the day!” he said. I haven’t given up. The promised sightseeing tour must go on, if and when he can spare the time on one of his infrequent visits to Vancouver. But not in February 2010. No, no, no! The Olympics will have to get along without us.
Edith Iglauer is the author of five books, including Inuit Journey and The Strangers Next Door, and many articles in The New Yorker, Atlantic and other publications. Her most recent piece in Geist was “Aquafun” (No. 73). Read more of her work at geist.com.
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Happy Shiny People M A R C U S Y OU S S E F
An immersive experience in Soviet-era Communism— and customer service
T
he Museum of Communism in downtown Prague is tucked away in a corner on the second floor of a building on Wenceslas Square, above a shiny new McDonald’s. The location is easy to find thanks to the museum’s advertising slogan: We’re above McDonald’s, Across from Benetton. Viva la Imperialism! image: courtesy of the museum of communism
Wenceslas Square, where Václav Havel addressed a million Czechs and Slovaks gathered there in 1989 to rise up against their Communist government, is where the European Soviet empire began to crumble. The theme of the Museum of Communism is unequivocal: Communism—the Dream, the Reality, and the
Nightmare. But not without a bizarre hint of irony: It was a time of happy, shiny people—the shiniest were in the uranium mines, reads one poster. Paranoia, propaganda, military invasions. No, it’s not George W’s America, reads another. Inside the Museum of Communism, threadbare carpets cover the floors and faded posters decorate worn marble pillars in a way that is reminiscent of photos of contemporary Havana. The displays, whose advertising promises an immersive experience, are intended to give visitors a taste of what it was like to live under Communism. The first exhibit is a brief history of what was, for fifty years, Communist Czechoslovakia, presented in standard museum style: black-and-white photographs mounted on display boards, accompanied by quasi-objective explanations in three languages. The museum is served by a dour and morose staff, one of whom grunted for us to hand over the significant admission fee. They all seemed intent on providing an immersive experience in Soviet-era customer service. Like the faceless, oppressed Czechs described in the exhibits, they seem weary, sullen and bored. The final exhibit is a video of Wenceslas Square during the 1989 uprising, assembled from footage shot by the Czech secret police toting Betamax video cameras the size of missile launchers. It documents the vicious beatings of protesting students and citizens by the undercover officers who are making the video. In a weird inversion of the police brutality incidents surreptitiously recorded by bystanders in North America, these police attacks are deliberately documented. The police fan out among the hundreds of thousands of people in the square, randomly selecting, then interrogating and beating individuals in the crowd. We stood in the back of a dark screening room with a dozen or so Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 15
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tourists, most of them Americans, and watched a thirty-something woman with ’80s hair singled out for interrogation on screen. She dutifully answers the secret police’s questions, but not before a look of barely suppressed contempt flashes across her face. It is a glimpse of her honest feelings that is both involuntary and deliberate, and seems to be a microcosm of the fluid moment she is part of, in which one order is replaced by another. In this moment of transition it becomes—for the first time—suddenly, briefly, almost possible to show the waning power what she really thinks. After this fleeting moment, the woman recovers her mask of composure. The police carry billy clubs, after all. Her face hardens, and her responses to the questions (What are you doing here? Have you ever been arrested for illegal activity?) turn monosyllabic and monotone. It’s the flat, nothing-to-gain, nothing-to-lose tone used by a child well practised in the art of taking punishment. The video cuts to a young man wiping tears from his face, who answers the questions openly. His respect for his interrogators is obvious as he tells them where he lives, where he goes to school and his most recent grades, all of which were C’s and B’s. “Except one class,” he adds. “It was an A.” “In what?” the interrogator asks him. “Obedience,” the boy replies. The policeman says nothing. What might it mean to them that a teary-eyed eighteen-year-old who got an A in obedience is risking his life to participate in an attempt to overthrow the state? We stumbled out of the museum into the bright mid-afternoon sunlight of Wenceslas Square, where the interrogations had taken place. Tourists of all colours and ethnicities—the global upper middle class—flowed effortlessly around us, parading up and down under the Gap and Louis Vuitton signs, the size and gaudiness of which rival anything I’ve Page 16 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
seen in San Francisco or New York. On that night, in 1989, when Václav Havel addressed the nation, is this what they thought would come? Since 1989, downtown Prague has been revitalized. The buildings have been restored (many are for sale, and all the for sale signs are written in English). As far as I could tell, no Czechs now live in the downtown core. Every morning before dawn the downtown air filled with diesel fumes as bus after bus disgorged Czechs coming into the city to work as service providers for the four million tourists who visit every year. Prague has become a spectacular backdrop, pretty and authentic enough to make even the most normal activities of shopping and drinking and strip-clubhopping new and exciting. On our third night in Prague, after a few beers, a couple of university students spoke uncertainly about their parents’ generation. “My parents are now unable to make a living,” said one of them. “They do not like the changes.” “Neither do mine,” said another. “It’s good, though.” “Yes. Now we have freedom.” As we stood outside the museum, a group of very wasted young Russian men wearing holiday shorts drank at a patio on the square, staggering around their table until one of them lurched into a camera-toting Vietnamese family. Pulling back, he bumped into one of his buddies, who dropped his pitcher of Pivo, shattering it on the cobblestone. Another turned to look, and then threw up on the pavement.
Marcus Youssef is a playwright, actor and director, and Artistic Producer of Neworld Theatre in Vancouver. His new plays Ali and Ali 7 and Peter Panties will premiere at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre over the next two years.
NOTES & DISPATCHES
24 Sussex EVELYN LAU
My first thought on being invited to the prime minister’s home: Oh crap, now I have to pack a skirt
T
he invitation from 24 Sussex Drive, black script on thick cream paper, read “Business Attire.” Laureen Harper was welcoming a group of B.C. artists visiting Ottawa into her home, a rather brave act considering her husband’s recent, much-reported comment about artists swanning around rich galas. My first thought: Oh crap, now I have to pack a skirt. For this writer, business attire means a stained bathrobe—“real” clothes make me feel too constricted and self-conscious to go about the work of words—but surely that wasn’t the interpretation they were seeking.
image: kate crane
Sometimes it’s hard being a writer; you do not turn down invitations to events you would rather not attend on the off chance you will see or overhear something interesting, some odd gem that sets a poem or story in motion. For years I masked social shyness with alcohol and misbehaviour, but antics that are forgivable in youth are pitiful in approaching middle age, so I now attend receptions stricken with nerves, mineral water fizzing in hand, blushing with the effort of small talk. It is the greatest luxury to say no to an invitation, as I thought of doing to this one,
imagining instead an afternoon sprawled on the bed at the Holiday Inn surrounded by various conveniencestore snacks in crackly bags, while the other artists stood around the prime minister’s house trying not to spill their drinks on the carpet. But curiosity won out, and on the appointed day I walked up the driveway of 24 Sussex, past a flock of pink plastic flamingos gathered on the lawn. Coincidentally, it was also Stephen Harper’s fiftieth birthday, and later the fifty flamingos would appear on the news and leave me with a vertiginous feeling, the sensation of having been somewhere where news was unfolding. The wife of the prime minister was noticeably attractive, with a girlish smile and a mischievous glint in her eye. She had bright blond hair, wore a short, snug dress that bared her arms, and seemed someone men would flock to under different circumstances. Rather than the grim marble and stone interior I was expecting, the house burst inside with sun-drenched colour—there were flowers everywhere, fresh ones in lavish bunches and patterned ones on the furniture. It was difficult to picture Harper lounging among the pastel cushions, his stiff grey hair tight as a helmet on his head, but who knows how people are in their leisure moments? The reception was much like any other party, with better food—tiny, exquisitely formed and somewhat confusing morsels presented on gleaming silver spoons and miniature wooden paddles. And photographers—for the length of the reception, photographers circled the room along its perimeter, clicking away, while we carried on as if we were accustomed to this paparazzi existence. A group of artists in the prime minister’s home, all of us on our best behaviour! T e re was a restlessness in the air, a whish pering underfoot—some literary types had planned to present Mrs. Harper Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 17
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with a letter urging increased funding for the arts, but it turned out they had grown bored composing the letter and spent the day shopping instead. Still, maybe someone would do something outrageous; even the servers seemed hopeful. On the first couple of passes I had turned down a tray of viscous red liquid in what looked like glass test tubes; on the third pass I lifted a tube and eyed it skeptically, at which point the server said, in a tone that almost bordered on glee, “You don’t know what that is, do you?” It was a shooter with a raw oyster nestled in its depths, and the server waited to see how I would navigate this challenge—perhaps the briny creature would stick in my craw, and I would jettison it into someone’s lap across the room—but I liked raw oysters, could slurp them back by the bucketful. He retreated in disappointment. No, nothing would happen today. We behaved ourselves in our dark suits and long skirts, sang happy birthday to the absent birthday boy, confined ourselves to the hall and parlour though we longed to peek into every room and climb the curved staircase to their private quarters. When it was over, a group of us trudged down the driveway, out through the iron gates, past the security guards, into the public street. The fifty pink flamingos had flown from the lawn; there was no evidence they had been there just two hours ago, as if we had hallucinated them. On our arrival, spotting a line of cars at the entrance, our driver had asked if we should circle the block. The policeman directing traffic said, “No, we’ll stop traffic for you.” I suspected we would not hear those sweet words again anytime soon.
told the hairdresser what I wanted. I said I want the back flat. Not a bubble, a wedge, a mushroom, a cartoon, a lifebuoy, a balloon, anything inflatable or architectural. Nothing resembling anything on the end of a ship. Oh, and no bowl cuts. Nothing from the kitchen, period. Nothing reminiscent of animals, birds or fish. Nothing geographical or topographical; nothing remotely resembling fruits, vegetables, rocks or minerals. Nothing to do with anything not hair.
Evelyn Lau is a Vancouver writer and poet, author of nine books, most recently a collection of poetry, Treble (Raincoast, 2005). Read more of her work at geist.com.
In his medieval string shirt from the Vancouver Folk Music Festival the hairdresser stared at me with weary watery eyes.
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Hair Piece VERONICA GAYLIE
The hairdresser poised the scissors over my head
Hair
I
Dust settled on the caps and shoulders of discontinued shampoo bottles, Joico, Paul Mitchell, in the window. The sun blasted. He turned up Pablo Cruise. Oh right, he said. Remembering I was there. He poised the scissors above my head with authority, like it was a sword, like he was a French musketeer, like this was not hair. He waded into the waters of my thick Celtic fro. He did not hesitate. He clipped all around the front and made a pretty little hedge above which he talked faster and faster about karate, Saskatchewan, how animals in the jungle get attacked from behind, just like that image: the royal art lodge
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without warning. It’s nature, he said. You never know when it will hit. I silently prayed, God, get on with it.
Caleb and Opa on Holiday NORBERT RUEBSAAT
A story is not a lie
He sharpened the scissors. The room grew quiet. He turned to the back. He began a monologue about shaman spirituality, his time spent in a sweat lodge. I listened and worried while he chopped and lopped an entire forest of follicles dropped to the linoleum floor, Peter Frampton Oooh baby I love your way drowned out by the electric shaver he mowed across the back of my scalp like an expert grounds keeper before a big game. And then in the mirror I looked past my ears. I saw something. I saw nothing. The feeling grew. Wordless, hairless, I sat glued to that chair by a cheap plastic cape. Hatred for the hairdresser welled in my chest. I stopped him mid-sentence about his time spent in the wilderness.
Veronica Gaylie is a poet and a professor from Vancouver. Her work has been published in Grain, Poetry Review, thetyee.ca and Geist, most recently “Blue Cheese” (No. 73). For more, go to geist.com.
Really? Yup.
BL T
Opa, is bacon good for you or bad for you? Well, it’s kind of in the middle. It’s not really good for you, but it’s not too bad, either. If you don’t eat too much of it. So it’s both—good and bad? Yes. Pause. Is that middle for bacon closer to the bad side or to the good side, or is it exactly in the middle? It’s exactly in the middle. My mom thinks bacon is bad. I know. She’s a vegetarian. Really? When we have lunch and we’re having sandwiches or macaroni or something, she’ll eat a grapefruit. Really? Just a grapefruit? Or salad. Sometimes she’ll eat a salad this big. As big as a whole plate. I see. Pause. Dad says, Don’t starve yourself. What’s your favourite food, Opa? Well, I don’t know right now. I used to like eating wild meat, deer meat or grouse when I was a kid around here. Grouse was my favourite. My dad’s gonna get a gun and go hunting.
illustrations: details from CARVOLUTION by bernie lyon
You know, Opa, the only reason I ordered this bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwich is because of the bacon. But I’m eating the lettuce and tomatoes, too. See? Yes, that’s good. And the chips.
LIES
Opa, you know that sometimes people say things, well, indirectly? They don’t say everything that they mean? Yup. English people do that. Peter, at Oma’s, told me that. It’s not a lie. But it is a lie. Kind of. I see. They leave stuff out. Yes. Pause. Are you thinking about that man in the big camper where we just stopped? Yeah. What about him? When I asked him if he was going to camp here and he said, Well, no, I’m just going to park here for a while . . . Pause. Yeah? Do you think he was lying? Yes. You mean because of that sign that said no overnight camping? Yes. You think he’s going to camp there? Yes. Well, maybe. I’m not sure. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 19
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Maybe he was just telling a story. No. That wasn’t a story.
Yup. Pause. Or it could have been just fifty.
PE NGU IN
STORY
Opa, you know what my hardest word to spell is? No. Penguin. The teacher told us all the animals in their different groups or families and we learned to spell the mammals and the reptiles and the amphibians and then came the birds. I see. And one of the birds, of course, is— I get it. Yeah, penguin. Pause. Well, how do you spell it? P, E, N, G . . . W . . . Nope. What? U. Peng-U? No, pen-gu-in. But that sound is two O’s. I know. The U sound is sometimes spelled by two O’s. There should be a W. Win. I know.
So Caleb, what is the difference between a story and a lie? When you tell something that didn’t happen, that’s not a lie, it’s a story. A story’s not a lie. A story can be something you make up, or it could be something that really happened. But it’s not lying. I see. But if you say a story is true when it’s actually made up, then you’re lying. And if you say something that’s not true, and you don’t tell people that it’s not true, that’s lying, too. I agree. And if you say something that’s true, and you tell people it’s not true, that’s a lie also.
What’s your hardest word to spell, Opa? Neighbour. How do you spell it? N, E, I, G— Oh my God! H— Wow! B, O, U, R. That’s hard. I know. My teacher in grade 4 made me write it on the blackboard five hundred times so I would learn it. Five hundred times?
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SAYING THINGS
Opa, you know how people sometimes say they are not tired, and they are yawning when they say that? Yes. Pause. Are you tired right now? Kind of.
Norbert Ruebsaat (Opa) teaches Media and Communication studies in Vancouver. His most recent piece in Geist was “Horror Show” (No. 71). For more, see geist.com. Caleb Martin-Ruebsaat lives with his parents in the Slocan Valley of B.C., and is working on his first comic book.
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Chorus Line J A YNNE WE LLYGAN
Music is the food of love—and revenge
Two mothers and their ten children, Edmonton, 1960.
W
e were never a musical family. None of us played an instrument or went around singing or whistled while we worked. We were farm people from northern Saskatchewan who spent our days milking the cows, churning butter, growing vegetables by the acre and clearing underbrush by horse and plow, to sustain our family of nine. But we did sing—religious songs, on Saturdays, at the makeshift Seventh Day Adventist “church” in Farmer Yaramha’s living room. My favourite song was “Stand Up, Stand Up for
Jesus,” and I stood proudly to belt it out (a little off-key). My sister Joyce, thinking that “On Our Way Rejoicing” was all about her, beamed with glory every time the word was sung. Seventh-Days weren’t allowed to dance or frolic or sing for the love of music—music had to come by way of the church, so I hung on to those few moments every week when music touched my life. All that changed when I was six years old, and we left our religion and the farm. After twenty-five years in a loveless arranged marriage that produced seven
children, Mother decided to leave her husband for greener pastures—in the city. She packed up the four youngest, all girls, and headed for her sister’s. Clara and her husband, Al, had six children of their own and lived in a tiny two-bedroom house in a scrappy neighbourhood on the east side of Edmonton. Ten children, two mothers and one husband in a single small household—but in spite of the cramped quarters we were a happy family, as we were used to having a lot of children around. Clara’s home was much more fun than the austere old-world atmosphere of the farm. She was a lapsed Seventh-Day, and she and Al were smokers and drinkers who loved pop music. Clara was always spinning tunes on her turntable. She loved the music of Connie Francis and Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone and Fats Domino. Years later, one of my cousins sent me this photo of both the mothers and all the children, in which we look gloriously happy and well-behaved, somehow having managed to tumble over each other to fit in the scope of the lens—me, in the centre, laughing at the sheer joy of it all. There is no evidence of Uncle Al in the photo, so either he was the one behind the camera or someone else took the photo after the infamous “musical night.” Uncle Al left the house every morning looking grand in his Simpsons-Sears catalogue suit, clean shirt and tie, but too often he came home late, drunk and a tad dishevelled, with a smudge of lipstick on his collar—cherry red, right side. One day Aunt Clara, a gal with a sense of humour and a mean streak, started planning a little Friday night “welcome home” song-and-dance revue for Uncle Al. She got all ten children together and taught us one of her favourite pop songs and some choreographed moves to go with it. We practised for days. It wasn’t easy to get ten exuberant, unruly kids to learn an entire song by heart and sing it in a straight Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 21
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cancan chorus line running diagonally through the tiny living room. By Friday we were ready. There was an excited buzz in the house all evening. Mom and Aunt Clara kept all the children together in the living room and wouldn’t allow any of us to go to sleep. If they saw our eyes closing, they ordered us to run around the room or shake all over to wake up. Then, just past midnight, we heard Uncle Al pull into the driveway. We all jumped to attention and scrambled to take our positions in the chorus line, which went from tallest to smallest—Dianna, Edith, Lynda, Al Jr., Joyce, Vern, Melody, me, Dolly and Chi-chi. As Uncle Al turned the doorknob, time stopped and we froze in our matching poses in the cramped line-up: elbows bent, hands up and fingers spread, tipped to the right at chest height, knees bent to the left, waiting for him to stumble through the door. On the count of 1-2-3, we launched into a vigorous cancan and belted out our rendition of the rehearsed song: Lipstick on your collar Told a tale on you, boy Lipstick on your collar Said you were untrue Bet your bottom dollar You and I are through ’Cause lipstick on your collar Told a tale on you! Ten kids kicking the cancan in attempted unison, full of raucous laughter and buffoonery. Uncle didn’t laugh with us. When I saw the sad, defeated look on his face, my little six-year-old heart went out to him. He left us, and years later, I understood what a cruel joke Aunt had involved us innocents in. Not all my music memories ended happily. Jaynne Wellygan is a graphic designer, AutoCAD technician and software instructor. She lives in Vancouver, and at jaynne.com. Page 22 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
Law of Small Numbers SHEILA HETI
Are we looking for meaning in all the wrong places?
L
ast spring, all my friends were in love. Kathryn had a boyfriend. Jesse had a girlfriend. Lauren had a boyfriend. Ryan had a girlfriend. Carl had a girlfriend. Shary had a boyfriend. Rick had a girlfriend. I had a boyfriend. And these were all people who were reputed as being finicky, coy, crabby, self-involved, idealistic, ambitious, needy and insecure. Clearly the gods were looking down
upon the lot of us and saying, Enough. So we talked about it a lot in emails and over the phone and at brunch. What did it mean? Were we all growing up? Had we collectively learned something? Perhaps the weather was great. Or ’cause George Bush was finally gone. How long could it last? Forever, we agreed, stars in our eyes. But if it wasn’t to last, we whispered
illustration: from IT’S MY SKETCHBOOK by rebecca dolen
NOTES & DISPATCHES
in twos, who would be the first to break the spell? We all agreed: Kathryn. She was the most fickle, coy, self-involved, idealistic, ambitious, needy and insecure of the bunch. Unless I was, and when I was out of the conversation, they agreed it would be me. In any case, the worries bubbled up over coffee and eggs: if the spell broke for one of us, would it break for the rest of us as well, and like dominoes we’d be knocked back down to our norm, base, single state? Thankfully, Leonard Mlodinow was coming to town. A few months earlier, we had been passing around his book, The Drunkard’s Walk. The book is about randomness, and its central thrust is that humans, almost biologically, are incapable of grasping the laws of randomness. Even mathematicians have trouble understanding how it works. But its laws live in everything. And I wondered, as I climbed on my bike to go see him, whether randomness wasn’t the main actor in this sudden shift in the love lives of my friends.
T
he Drunkard’s Walk begins with Mlodinow’s hope, his stated purpose: to help us “immunize ourselves against our errors of intuition.” “So,” I began, unfolding my incredibly large sheet of notes, almost blocking my view of him with it. We were sitting in the bright, warmish air at a stone table, on wire chairs, in the outdoor pavilion beside the offices of the Toronto cbc. Upstairs in the building, my friend Kathryn (in love) was working hard, and Jesse (also in love) was working one floor below her. And here I was (still in love), sitting across from Leonard, a man in his fifties with lots of dark hair and the sympathetic face of a best friend’s father. He had written other books, which I had read: a history of geometry and a memoir about his mentorship under the
great physicist Richard P. Feynman, during which time he decided to abandon physics to write (his true love). My huge page of notes flapped in the wind. “We have ideas or intuitions about things,” I began, “or we make connections and we believe that they’re meaningful, but in fact we’re looking for meaning in all the wrong places?” “Sometimes,” he corrected. “Sometimes. So how can a person tell where to look for meaning and where not to look for meaning?” “Well, that’s why I wrote the book,” he said, smiling. “Even though Los Angeles and Canada and other parts of the world are in some ways the wild, they don’t necessarily correspond to where we developed evolutionarily, so sometimes these intuitions that our brains have evolved lead us astray. Scientists call these cognitive illusions, and the best way to fight them is to be aware of them and to consciously say to yourself, Wait a minute—I feel like this is true, but is it really true? ’Cause I know that I tend to make these mistakes.” He gave an example of a cognitive illusion at work. “In one study of Yale university students, researchers flipped a coin a number of times and had the students call out whether it was going to be heads or tails. If you asked a student directly, Can you foretell or control the way the coin is going to land? of course they would say no. But the researchers asked them slightly more subtle questions afterwards, and the answers showed that the students did feel they could control or predict what was going to happen. For instance, researchers asked, Would you get better with practice? and forty percent of the students said yes! If you said, Hey!, and slapped them around, maybe they would have changed their response, but their feeling was that they could.” I chuckled knowingly, even though I
would totally have fallen into the even smaller category of students who, when asked directly if they could foretell or control the way the coin was going to land, would say, pride wounded, Of course! He went on: “We have to be aware that we do this, but even then it’s hard. One of the insidious things about cognitive illusions is they tend to happen on a subconscious level, so even if you can consciously say, I know it’s XYZ, you could behave differently unless you were careful.” “What would you say if I told you that suddenly all of my friends are in love?” I suddenly asked.
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e thought for a moment, then said, “I tell the story in my book of a small town in America. These people were supposed to attend a church meeting, and not one of them showed up on time. They were all fifteen minutes late. Well, ten minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, the church blew up. Some sort of gas thing happened. They would all have been killed, but they all came fifteen minutes or later, and of course they thanked God. Now, that’s an improbable event, but if you look through the whole country and the whole world which is generating these stories, it’s going to happen somewhere, right? What does it prove?” That God exists, I thought quietly, on both a conscious and subconscious level. Then another question rose within me: would my current love end the way my past ones had? Because one inevitably looks upon one’s past experiences and says, Therefore I shouldn’t do this, or Therefore I should do this, or Things, for me, tend to turn out this way. Raising my face to Leonard as one would to a fortune teller, I asked the man with randomness in his eyes about the likelihood Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 23
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of my current love ending in the way of all my twelve loves before. He thought for a moment, then looked down at his hands, which were folded into a ball on the stone table between us. He said carefully, “In statistics there’s a law called the law of large numbers, which says that if you take enough data, there’s a very good chance that the data will reflect the underlying probabilities. Now, psychologists have something they call the law of small numbers. I actually call it the illusion of small numbers, because I’m a scientist, and scientists don’t like calling something a law if it’s not true. So this is a sarcastic law. It says that you can apply the law of large numbers to small numbers. But you can’t, okay? But people do, and there’s a natural tendency in life to do that.”
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ou can’t, I told myself, biking home, narrowly avoiding each car. One’s past isn’t a great enough statistical sample to accurately predict one’s future. This made me so happy. I was free! The past was no indicator because the past was so small. The future was much bigger! When I got home, I called up Kathryn and told her about my meeting. “The law of small numbers is no law?!” she exclaimed, giddy. “Sure it’s not!” I said. And sure enough, several months later, we were the only two dominoes to fall.
Sheila Heti is the author of The Middle Stories and Ticknor, and the creator of the Trampoline Hall lecture series. She frequently conducts interviews for The Believer. Visit her online at sheilaheti.net, and read more of her Geist work at geist.com.
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In Praise of Female Athletes Who Were Told No BRAD CRAN
For the fifteen female ski jumpers petitioning to be included in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
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espite the glory of colour it’s easy to be the butterfly; It’s hard to be the dog or to remain like the river stone. For Christ sake little lady, sit down you’ve been told. Because he thought that a woman short of breath was an affront to good manners, Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympics with only the strength of men in mind. The heft and depth of sport surely could not be good for the reproductive organs of a lady— In 1896 at the first modern Olympics, Stamata Revithi watched the men’s marathon and the next day started out on her own forty-kilometre run. She could not enter the stadium to finish, as the men had done the previous day, so with one lap around the entire stadium she finished the run that was thought impossible for a woman to complete.
The most unaesthetic sight the human eye could contemplate, de Coubertin said, was women’s sport. In 1922 Alice Milliat held a women’s Olympics in Paris where eighteen women broke world records in sport. De Coubertin demanded that Milliat drop the Olympic moniker from her games. She refused until he agreed to integrate ten women’s events into the Olympics. Milliat dropped the Olympic moniker from her games but de Coubertin only added five female track-and-field events to the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. For the 1928 games the Canadian women’s Olympic team practised for the Olympic relay by passing the baton on the deck of the ship that sailed them to Europe. At the same time a contingent of Canadian men travelled to Amsterdam to petition the ioc to do the right thing and drop female sport from the Olympics. The media called the Canadian women’s team the Matchless Six for their athletic ability. The New York Times called one of them, Ethel Catherwood, “the prettiest girl of the games.” She became known as the Saskatoon Lily, for her “flower-like face.” Surely, it was said, the Saskatoon Lily would become a movie star,
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but Catherwood was an athlete. She said she would rather gulp poison than try her hand at motion pictures. She won gold in the high jump and remains the only Canadian woman to win a solo gold in track and field. That same year the women ran the 800 metre race so hard that they crossed the finish line and fell to the ground to catch their breath. The men of the ioc found this disquieting. The 800 meter women’s race was not reinstated until 1968 in Mexico, where Enriqueta Basilio became the first woman to light the Olympic cauldron. Eva Dawes was a weak child and her father thought exercise would strengthen her. He built her a high-jumping pit at her school. At a track meet in 1926 she won two gold medals in the under-18 category. The officials then refused to let her jump with the adults until her father walked onto the pitch, grabbed the microphone and pleaded with the crowd to intervene. The officials let Dawes jump again and she won another gold that day. In 1935 she wanted to see life outside of Ontario so she accepted an invitation to travel to the Soviet Union. When she returned she was suspended from amateur sport for cavorting with communists. The next year she boycotted the Nazi-hosted Olympic Games and sailed for Barcelona to compete in the People’s Olympiad, championed by trade unions, socialists and communists, then cancelled with the first shots of the Spanish Civil War. The athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen gave birth to her second child, immediately started training, and six weeks later competed in the 1946 European Championships. By 1948 she was back in shape and held many world records, but still the media thought she was too old to represent her country and that she should stay home to take care of her children. She won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympics They called her The Flying Housewife. In 1973 the former Wimbledon singles champion Bobby Riggs claimed that women didn’t have the strength to play tennis properly and that he would beat any woman alive by virtue of his manhood. He beat Margaret Court on Mother’s Day of that year. He said, “I want Billie Jean King.
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I want the women’s lib leader!” He wore a “Men’s Liberation” T-shirt to practise for his match with King and said that he wanted to be the number one chauvinist pig. The tennis player Rosie Casals called Riggs “an old man who walks like a duck, can’t see, can’t hear and besides,” she said, “he’s an idiot.” A team of football players carried Billie Jean King into the Astrodome while Bobby Riggs rode in on a chariot pulled by women. Billie Jean King beat him three straight sets in a row. Listen: here they come again, trying to screw things up for the men. In 2005 the president of the International Ski Federation, Gian Franco Kasper, said “Ski jumping is just too dangerous for women. It’s not appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” The chivalry playbook? For the Continental Cup in Germany the men’s ski jumping team slept in a hotel while the women were billeted in a farmhouse and barn, with a pile of manure outside their window, and awoke to a farm cat eating their food. Or they slept in a post office in St. Moritz, and under a dining room table in Trondheim. It is easy to be the butterfly. It is hard to sleep in the barn. Perhaps your breasts are not aerodynamic. Perhaps jumpsuits will increase the popularity of your sport. “Come here little darling, and I’ll teach you how to spread your V-style wider.” At the top of the cantilevered tower you envision yourself in flight and prepare your body to react without thought. You tighten the straps of your helmet, position your goggles, slide onto the starting bar to watch the wind work the flags with the possibility of flight as you slide your feet ahead in the track, fold down and zip into the inrun—you feel the compression of the curve. You are over the knoll. If you bend your knees you lose control. You master the airfoil and steer with the slightest movement of your hands. You look straight ahead and command every turn and nuance of posture. You are flying. There is no other explanation. Your body is muscle and memory held up by the wind.
Brad Cran, Poet Laureate of Vancouver, is the author of The Good Life and, with his partner, Gillian Jerome, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press), winner of the 2009 City of Vancouver Book Award. Read his Geist work at geist.com. Page 26 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
0 , 201 5 1 ARY U N JA D TO E D XTEN E E DLIN DEA
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LETTER TO H ARPER Yann Martel From What Is Stephen Harper Reading?: Yann Martel’s Recommended Reading for a Prime Minister and Book Lovers of All Stripes, published by Vintage Canada in 2009. Every two weeks since April 2007, Martel has sent Prime Minister Harper a book and a letter. What Is Stephen Harper Reading? contains fifty-five of the letters. Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2002, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Self. To Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, A book from an Island revolutionary, From a Canadian writer, With best wishes, Yann Martel
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ear Mr. Harper,
Growing up, I was aware of the title that was popularly given to Milton Acorn: the Peoples’ Poet. I assumed that this was because his poetry was down-to-earth, the language plain, the meaning reaching into the accessible depths of common experience. What I hadn’t realized until much later was that the People’s Poet also had a political edge. That edge is made abundantly clear in the book that accompanies this letter, Acorn’s The Island Means Minago, a varied collection of poems, personal essays and short plays. If you turn to the last pages of the book, you will find information on the publisher: Page 28 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
nc Press is the Canadian Liberation publisher. It is truly a people’s publishing house, distributing books on the struggle for national independence and socialism in Canada and throughout the world. On the next page, towards the bottom, there’s also the following information: nc Press is the largest Canadian distributor of books, periodicals, and records from the People’s Republic of China. An address is given for the organization behind both nc Press and its companion newspaper, New Canada: Canadian Liberation Movement Box 41, Station E, Toronto 4, Ontario Was a revolutionary Canada ever a real possibility? Well, some people, way back in 1975, thought it was. Since then, I imagine the Canadian Liberation Movement has vanished, at least formally under that name, or if it still exists, that Box 41 is a peephole onto a lonely place. But any revolution that uses poetry as one of its weapons has at least one correct thing going for it: the knowledge that artistic expression is central to who and how a people are. I wonder if the Fraser Institute has ever thought of publishing poetry to make its point, and if it hasn’t, why not? The portrait that Milton Acorn draws of Prince Edward Island, his native province, will likely be unfamiliar to you, as will be his reading of Canadian history. Let that be a reminder
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to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities. Hence the need for poets. So Milton Acorn was, of necessity as a poet, a dreamer (a tough one, mind you). He dreamt of a Canada that would be better, fairer, freer. He could not abide what he felt were the American shackles of capitalism and economic colonialism that held us down. He was an Island revolutionary. One might be inclined to smile at the extent to which some people’s dreams are delusions. But better to dream than just to endure. Better to be bold than just to be told. Better to imagine many realities and fight for the one that seems best than just to shrug and retreat further into oneself. The Island Means Minago represents yet another thing a book can be: a time capsule, a snapshot, a museum shelf of old dreams—that is, a reminder of a past future that never became (but is perhaps still worth dreaming about). I’m making it sound as if Minago (Minago is the name the Mi’kmaq gave to P.E.I.) were nothing more than a political tract, which it is not. It is a book of poetry, a cry far richer than a tract. So I’ll finish this letter the proper way, with one of Acorn’s poems: Bump, Bump, Bump Little Heart Bump, bump, bump, little heart along this journey we’ve gone together, you piping all the fuel. You’re fistsize, and fistlike you clench and unclench, clench and unclench keeping this head upright to batter its way through the walls of the day. Yours truly, Yann Martel
W H O K N OWS YOU H E R E ? Kenneth Sherman From What the Furies Bring, published by Porcupine’s Quill in 2009. Kenneth Sherman is a poet and essayist who teaches at Sheridan College and York University.
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have often tried to imagine my paternal grandfather in the village of Lipsk, Poland, in the year 1904 as he prepared to depart for the New World. I used to look at the photographs in A World Vanished and in Remnant: The Last Jews of Poland to help me imagine his village of dilapidated shacks and dirt roads. I do not know if Lipsk contained a yeshiva—a house of learning—redolent of cigarettes and yellowing manuscripts, where old men pressed palms ponderously to foreheads and where young boys—wisps of earlocks creeping out from beneath their black hats—studied at a long table. If there was such a table my grandfather was not seated there. He began his apprenticeship as a tailor at a young age, perhaps because his family needed the extra income, or it may have been that he wanted to find a way out of a place that he described as impoverished, squalid, oppressed and oppressive. He never read The Wisdom of the Fathers, but he was street-wise. And daring. You would have to be, setting out for a New World by yourself at the age of fifteen. It took him a little over one year to work his way across Europe as an itinerant tailor, travelling through Germany, Holland and France, arriving finally in England where he bought steerage to Canada. When he arrived in Toronto in 1905 he was sixteen years old and an experienced tailor. At that time, the city’s garment industry was largely undeveloped, especially the Jewish garment industry. Initially unable to find work as a tailor, he spent his first Canadian winter employed by the city’s Works Department doing the most Canadian thing of all—shovelling snow. The sidewalks on Yonge Street were wooden then. I can picture horse buns steaming in snow, auburn moustaches, plaid scarves, paper notes worth twenty-five cents bearing King Edward’s bearded profile. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 29
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In the spring he landed his first job as a tailor and worked in several sweatshops until he found a more secure position at the large clothing manufacturer, Hoberlin’s. As it turned out, his absence from the yeshiva did not impede his success in the New World. In fact, his early apprenticeship as a tailor—the time he spent at the cutting table instead of the study table—was to his advantage. Though a large proportion of East European Jews
YOU R STORY A. F. Moritz From The Sentinel, published by Anansi in 2008. A. F. Moritz has written fifteen books of poetry. He lives in Toronto and teaches at Victoria College, University of Toronto.
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emember that you once lived, that you were, that you were someplace here (I almost added “with us in our world” but that might not be so). Remember you had a story, even if you never knew. Someone saw or felt you and had to decide, had to make up a history of you, even if it was a lie: that you were nothing and easily forgotten. And so you were, and it was too, he forgot, we all forgot you, and now nobody knows that story that is always being rewritten: just as it meant to do, it vanished with you. Even if the perfect police erased you, knocked at your navel or sex or the space between with ceramic knuckle and wooden stock and slammed through your flimsy door and scraped you from your bed, and took you and so you were warehoused—small change of bones—with crawfish claws and mouse teeth nowhere but in my charnel would-be carnal words, nevertheless remember. Even as I command you this, I know you don’t. There’s nothing to remember and no one to remember it except all of you unknown equally in my voice or anywhere. Page 30 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
would work in the garment industry, only a fraction of them were actually skilled tailors. What attracted the other 90 percent was the fact that it was the only industry where earnings were directly related to individual effort and initiative. This was called ‘piece work’. The more pockets, linings, belts or vests a worker turned out, the more he or she was paid. People with little experience could be taught to do some portion of the garment. Only a few could measure, cut, fit and sew together an entire suit. Many immigrants would work only for Jewish companies where they would have the high holidays free for religious observance. Some chose to work independently, as peddlers, so that, even though the earnings were meagre, they could keep their own hours and have Saturday off for observance of the Sabbath. Taking a job at a gentile firm, my grandfather made his decision early on to leave a portion of his heritage behind. Attending synagogue was not important to him. He was clearly bent on succeeding and quickly understood the importance of hard work and ‘flexibility’. For twelve years he worked at Hoberlin’s. He eventually saved enough money to open a tailor shop on Spadina Avenue. A few years later he moved his business to College, just west of Bathurst. As a child, I had a chance to see my grandfather practically every day since we lived in the apartment above his shop. He was a man of medium height with black hair and a dark complexion that set off his Baltic blue eyes. His ears were overly large. As a child, I likened them to an elephant’s, but years later I heard a woman describe them as Clark Gable ears. He liked the occasional drink and kept a bottle of Seagram and Sons whisky behind a bolt of cloth in the back of the store. ‘It’s good for the blood and the balls,’ he told me when I was older. He had a reluctant smile and his brow was often furrowed as if he were interrogating life. Most of the time he seemed too preoccupied to notice me, but once in a while he would bend down and squeeze my cheek, or pat me on the head, give a short laugh and then walk away. As I grew older, I read into these gestures both affection and something just short of condescension: ‘You’re lucky to be born here,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘But what
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can you really know about the hard knocks of life?’ He’d lived through the Depression and lost much of his European family in the Second World War. I was born in the benign and tranquil Canada of 1950. I had been spared, it seemed, the terrors of history. He was probably thankful for that and at the same time convinced that as a result, I would be soft, naive. Perhaps he didn’t know that I could read that history in his face, in the shifting intonation of his voice when he expressed anxieties, anger or jubilation.
PRIZE POLITICS George Bowering From an interview by Owen Percy, Calgary, 2006. George Bowering is the author of more than eighty books, two of which won Governor General’s Awards for Literature, and he served as the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate from 2002 to 2004. His most recent titles are Baseball Love and Vermeer’s Light: Poems 1996–2006. Owen Percy is a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary. He is writing a critical literary history of the GGS.
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’ve always had the idea of writing a long article about all the books that won the Governor General’s Award—a paragraph for each book. And there’s an infamous list of books that should have won and didn’t. For instance, Phyllis Webb didn’t win the 1980 award for Wilson’s Bowl (Coach House), and everyone was really pissed off. So two years later, her selected poems, The Vision Tree (Talonbooks), was nominated, and it won to make up for it. That’s happened a number of times. In spite of that, and the proliferation of writing prizes, the ggs still have more prestige and authority than other awards. When people are introducing me, or anyone who’s received a gg, they say “winner of the Governor General’s Award . . .” even if it happened thirty years ago. What’s even more boring is “nominated for” or “was on the shortlist for the such-and-such award”—I always think, Aw, c’mon! Some people
even put that on their cv. “Shortlisted for the such-and-such award.” Essentially saying, “I didn’t win the award,” announcing, “loser of the . . .” But when it comes to fiction, I’ve got more interest in the gg than I do in the Giller. I think the Giller is trying to change things now because they’re feeling a bit of heat—it has almost always been a bunch of Toronto writers and Toronto publishers getting together and giving each other an award. They would always throw in one loser, somebody from out West who had published a book of short stories, and the other four nominees would be Ontario writers, Toronto writers, published by McClelland & Stewart or HarperCollins or something like that. Recently—and I’ve seen the lists—it’s been a whole pile of novels that nobody’s ever heard of, which means they’re trying to go the other way, but everyone complains that the Giller list and the Governor General’s lists are always completely different. Usually that has happened, and I think it’s happening now. It’s not an
PAPA I N PE RU David W. McFadden From Be Calm, Honey, a book of 129 sonnets by David W. McFadden, published by Mansfield Press in 2008. McFadden’s books The Art of Darkness and Gypsy Guitar were both nominated for Governor General’s Awards.
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ust when I think I’ve got all I need someone comes by and presents me with something unpredictably unforgettable. Like that nonagenarian in the coffee shop who looked at me a while back and stopped and asked if he could sit down for a moment. He had a story I might like to hear, from the time when he was living in Peru. The Old Man and the Sea was being shot. Hemingway was visiting the set, tossing racial slurs around and making everybody want to strangle him. No need to describe details. They were ugly. The village of Cabo Blanco will never forget. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 31
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accident. Again, I think in recent years—well, since the Giller started in 1994—it almost always goes to some famous Toronto or Ontario writer (which includes Mordecai Richler, because basically that’s the same thing). And so I think the people running the Governor General’s Awards decided to do an anti-Giller shortlist. And in order to do that, you have to be looking
G I A N TS John Terpstra From Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems, copyright © John Terpstra, 2006, and reproduced with the permission of Gaspereau Press, Printers & Publishers. John Terpstra has written seven books of poetry, including The Boys, or, Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter, which was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize.
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here used to be giants, and they loved it here. They’d sit their giant hinds in a row along the top edge of the escarpment, and pick at the loose rock with their hands or their feet, then throw or skip the smoothest stones across the bay, to see who could land one on the sandstrip, three miles away; or they’d spring themselves off the scarp top like you would off a low wall, and go running all the way to the end of the sandbar, and jump across the water to the other side, or jump in, splashing and yelling up the ravines, chasing each other’s echoes. This was only a few thousand years ago, and the giants were still excited about the glaciers, which were just leaving; about not having to wear their coats all the time, and what the ice and water had done, shaping and carving this gentle, wild landscape. They loved it here. I’m telling you, they absolutely loved every living minute here, and they regretted ever having to leave.
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around at the rest of the country a little more, and you have to look at the less conventional writers. It’s been interesting. Miriam Toews, from Manitoba, won it a couple of years ago for A Complicated Kindness—really, an enjoyable book. Not an avant-garde book, but really interesting! It’s a heck of a lot more interesting than, you know, the latest book by Alice Munro or someone like that, as good as that might be. Any award that is done by committee is suspect in one way or another. A group has four or five different ways of deciding how to choose the winner. But one thing that always can happen and sometimes does happen is that a couple of people on the award committee will say, “Oh, that person’s on the committee . . . Well, we know that he’ll want to give the award to so-and-so, and we don’t want so-and-so to get it, so we’ll leave so-and-so at the bottom of our list or we’ll leave him off our list.” That’s horrible. What I really respect more are the Alberta Literary Awards, in which, for each category, a shortlist is named by the judges, and in the end one person looks at the shortlists and decides. I guess that’s a crapshoot too in a lot of ways, but it’s not going to be crooked. And usually the judges are people who are not from that province. They’re from somewhere else. Another factor is personal and professional connections between jury members and award nominees. I was on the gg committee when Fred Wah won the 1985 award for Waiting for Saskatchewan. He’s a good friend of mine. But also on that committee was Paulette Jiles, who lived in the same town as Fred, and Eli Mandel, who was born in the same province as Fred, so what do you do with that? Whenever I’ve sat on a committee I’ve always been scrupulously honest, which means that sometimes my friends have had to lose. After Fred’s award, the winners in the next two years I was on the committee (members serve for three years) were Al Purdy (1986) and Gwen MacEwen (1987). Neither one of them was in my, you know, gang. For both of them, it just so happened that that was the book that I thought was doing it all that year. When the Canada Council convenes the committee or the jury, they try to balance it in terms of geography, age, gender, etc. etc. They don’t try to do it in
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terms of what kind of writing the person does. They try to make the jury as varied as they can, and therefore somehow more objective. As for sales of award-winning books . . . when you win the Governor General’s Award, you might get taken a little bit more seriously by people who don’t know very much about poetry or fiction. But for me, the prize had no effect on sales. None at all. And it never has had—I’ve been told that over and over again about the ggs. Maybe it’s different for fiction. I don’t think my novel Burning Water (1980) sold many more copies right after it won, even though it had the sticker on it and all that business. But my next novel, Caprice, sold far more copies than Burning Water did. Burning Water sold a lot of copies in universities for courses and so on, but Caprice sold more overall, probably because it was the alternate choice for a book club. Of all my novels, that’s the one that has sold the most, and it never won or got a nomination for anything. For the poetry community, I guess it’s better to have such a thing as the gg awards than not to. That is to say, imagine if they were giving out awards every year for theatre and dance and music and lifesaving, and they weren’t giving one out for writing. We would be pissed off as hell. It’s nice that once a year, people go and get dressed up and go to Government House and there’s the Head of State and guys in uniform standing at attention—and they get a really good meal! You can think about it in two ways. You can say, “Oh well, if it’s recognized by the government, then it’s somehow in the bourgeois world and perhaps the writer is selling out.” I don’t think that’s true. If you look at the Governor General’s Awards in poetry over the years, you’ll see some winning books that were, I think, really bad poetry—some that were typical middle-class, old-fashioned who-gives-a-shit stuff—and then some that were really edgy good stuff. Like when Erin Mouré got the gg for Furious (Anansi, 1988). How many people read that book, and how many people can understand what the hell she’s doing there? It’s wonderful! Or like when bpNichol won it. So you haven’t necessarily given up your edge if you win it. Mouré certainly hasn’t—in fact, she’s gotten more difficult!
V I TA B R E V I S Carmine Starnino From This Way Out, published by Gaspereau Press in 2009. Carmine Starnino is a poet, essayist, critic and editor. He won the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the 2006 Bressani Prize. He lives in Montreal.
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hort back and long bangs, but our barber never got it right. Gentile’s place—you know it. Two leather chairs, mirror, clipper, newspaper, radio on low, everything lit in one hue. I’d bring my gq photo. What the hell kind of hairstyle is that? Self-knowledge was always knowledge of what I was not. In my native buzz-cut, I bummed around Chabanel’s neo-realist lots. Its loading docks and sweatshop façades true dead ringers for their film-set selves, later made famous by my handheld shot of factory women running in rain to catch the 121 after work. Such perfectly cast amateurs: transparently simple, scarcely acting. Born there, but never local enough to play the part, I tried to look busy in that open-air theatre of storm clouds and asphalt. We all did. We danced to soundtracks taped off chom. Chose “Beh” over the thee and thou of “I see your point.” Studied the sitcoms, plagiarists of inner-city high-fives. Even our doors were class-conscious: fake-grained, pretend-cut from the knot of some oak. Critics called us an intelligent contribution to the working-class genre, a landmark of contrapuntal clichés: the southerly effect of washing on lines, tomato gardens; the northerly effect of strip clubs, warehouses, high-rises. A stomping ground that never lost the feel of being the place where bad weather always chewed up our shooting time, where Québécois girls were eager body doubles for the nice daughters we later married, where alleyways obliged our alter egos to make good their escape, our mothers calling. I put in long hours shadowing myself as I walked the tracks, stopping to let the trains go by—always a five-minute footage of freight cars, each one empty. I wanted the real thing at work in real time for that foredefeated mood—artistically crude, yes, but how much more genuine! Cut to the angry young man shouting taunts from the overpass. Early Truffaut chasing late Rossellini. I once found a watch still ticking, and left it.
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FINDINGS
N O PAPE R I N SPACE Peter Taylor From “Towards a Paperless Future: Electronic Publishing and You,” a paper written by Peter Taylor in 1993 for Creative Writing 306B, an undergraduate magazine publishing course taught by Stephen Osborne at Simon Fraser University. To read the experimental digital edition of Geist 74, visit geist.com.
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n space, there is no paper. The preferred means of relating written material is by electronic tablet, except for Picard, who hoards real books in his ready room. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation already know that the future of the written word is doomed to live out its existence on some sort of electronic display device, yet even these science fiction fanatics believe that day is far off. Today, on Earth, the number of personal computers in use is over 100 million. The world’s largest computer network, the InterNet, is reported to have over 3 million users. Almost every magazine produced in the world is written,
edited and designed using a computer. If a publication can be completely produced on computer and there is a large number of potential computer readers electronically connected, it should follow that the same publication can be distributed and read using a computer. Current technology limits the quality of electronic publications, so for now the Picards among readers will still prefer the printed page to the electronic. With the recent introduction of handheld personal computers, such as Apple’s Newtontm, the day is coming when every reader will consult their electronic tablet for their latest issue of Geisttm magazine.
Variable Weather, No Guarantees From the Nunavik Tourism Association website (nunavik-tourism.com/ faq.aspx). Nunavik is the arctic region Quebec. About Can I drive to Nunavik? No.
Are maps available? We recommend you buy your maps before coming. Local maps are sometimes available, but detailed maps of the land are more readily available down south.
What’s the weather like? Variable, check the Environment Canada website.
Hunting
Do you have snow year round? No.
Are bow and arrows allowed? Yes.
Will I see northern lights/aurora borealis? You can but there is no guarantee.
How many caribou can I take? 2.
Do people still live in igloos? Many people can still build igloos, although most people now live in houses. Igloos are still used when camping or for survival and can also be found at winter events such as the Puvirnituq Snow Festival.
Why Nunavik? Reliable jet and twin otter air service.
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Can you guarantee that I will get a caribou? Chances are high, although there is no guarantee. It’s about the hunting though, isn’t it, and not just the kill.
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B OW H E A D BU TC H E R I N G Justin Nobel From Justin Nobel’s photo series Nunavik, Summer 2008. Nobel’s work has appeared in Bay Nature, the Chicago Tribune, Montreal Gazette and Audubon. To see more of his Nunavik photographs, visit geist.com.
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n the summer of 2008, Justin Nobel travelled to Nunavik, a group of fourteen communities in northern Quebec inhabited by about 12,000 people, most of them Inuit, and about 4,000 visitors a year, mainly miners and hunters. In the community of Kangiqsujuaq, Nobel photographed the whalers who participated in the first official bowhead whale hunt off Nunavik’s Hudson Strait coast in over a hundred years. Fisheries and Oceans Canada had issued a licence for the 2008 hunt after the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada changed the bowhead’s status from endangered to threatened in 2005. Residents of the area gathered for the butchering of the bowhead meat, which was then given to the communities in Nunavik. However, a bulldozer that was supposed to be brought in to flip the whale had trouble getting to the site, and much of the meat rotted. After three days, the stench of the carcass was so potent that some spectators vomited. During the High Arctic Relocation in 1953 and 1955, the Canadian government moved Inuit families from northern communities, including Nunavik, to the more northern settlements of Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord to strengthen Canada’s sovereignty over the Arctic during the Cold War. The settlers had to adjust to a colder, harsher climate and a very different set of wildlife patterns, and hunting was difficult. During the 1993 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, those who survived gave accounts of unimaginable hardship and deprivation. To honour the Inuit who suffered during the High Arctic Relocation, two monuments will be unveiled in Nunavut in September 2010. The unveiling was scheduled for September 2009, but it was delayed by a year because the stone used for one of the monuments—local Grise Fiord granite—was so hard to work with that the artist broke more than twenty diamond blades in completing the work. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 35
FINDINGS
L AN GUAGE L E SSON S . . . W IT H S IM O N AND M A R I E Stuart Ross From Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, published by Freehand Books in 2009. Stuart Ross is the author of a number of poetry and short story collections, and has published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press). Visit geist.com for more of his work. SHOPPING
simon: Pardon me, but I must pass with my shopping cart. Would you be so kind as to provide sufficient room in the aisle? marie: I see no reason why that cannot be arranged.
U P O N T H E CO N V E R S I O N OF STEPHEN H ARPER Michael Eden Reynolds From Slant Room, Michael Eden Reynolds’s first collection of poetry, published by Porcupine’s Quill in 2009. This poem won second prize in the 2009 prism international poetry contest. Reynolds lives in Whitehorse.
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aking on the pallor of the poet in the thin dawn light he stands alone from breakfast, steps outdoors without shoes, in undershirt, cuffs of his pyjama slacks cupped under-heel. The mountains and most distant fields turn beneath a charge of thunderclouds. A pumpjack in its steady thoughtless prayer is swallowed in a foam of rain and wind-whipped flax. From the stillness of the nearer field a riffle threads its way onto the lawn, as if a giant wing was trailing on the earth. The hairs upon his feet and up his legs are lifted, his pants like tandem windsocks billow— Inside the storm, feet bloodied on the lichen-covered rocks and climbing, his clothes and skin translucent and alive with light: Sweet lord, he cries into the broken sky, if only you will have me, I will be true this time! Page 36 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
simon: Why, Marie, it is you! marie: And, Simon, it is you! This is certainly called a coincidence! simon: I have completed my selection of dry and canned goods. Now I must examine the various fruits and vegetables available. marie: And I have already chose among the perishables. I am now pushing my shopping cart in the direction of the grains and cereals. After that, I will visit the shelves containing the abundant beverages. simon: We certainly are shopping, Marie. marie: Yes, Simon, we certainly are. simon: On some future date in the near future I would very much like to cook dinner for you, Marie. I propose to prepare a very pleasant recipe. marie: That would be a unique pleasure for me, Simon. I accept your invitation with gusto. simon: Do you hear the announcement now emanating from the loudspeaker, Marie? There is a special on Belgian wine in aisle six. marie: Wine is a type of alcohol. Shall we go to aisle six together, Simon? simon: Yes, Marie. Please give me a moment to turn my shopping cart around so that we are facing the same direction. marie: Shopping in company is always better than shopping alone! TRAVELLING
marie: I am planning to take a vacation, Simon. simon: A vacation? Will you leave the city, Marie? marie: Yes, Simon. I will leave the city on a train. simon: Do you frown upon boats and aeroplanes? marie: I have researched the prices for various forms of transportation, and I have found that most economical is the train. simon: You will see many things through the window of your train, Marie. Please take your camera. marie: I will be travelling at night, so I will be sleeping. If I wake up, I will look out the window and see only darkness. simon: How many days will your vacation last?
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marie: Could you ask that question another way, Simon? simon: For what number of days will you be absent from the city? marie: I will be absent for at least ninety days. Perhaps one hundred and eighty. simon: Will you visit many places of interest? marie: Yes. simon: Send me a postcard, please, Marie. I will look in my mailbox each day and see if I can find it. marie: I will send you a postcard, Simon. On it I will describe where I am and what I am doing. simon: I have recently read a book which offers many tips to the traveller. I believe these tips will serve you well. marie: Please share the tips with me, Simon. simon: Will you accept them in the spirit in which they are being offered? marie: Yes. simon: Do not fall asleep on the train, as you will be robbed by a fellow passenger who endeavoured to make your acquaintance earlier in the evening. When bribing customs officials or law enforcement offers, never say, “Do you accept bribes?” Say instead, “Is there a custom in your country that we might undertake at this moment? In my country, we have such a custom.” Giving small amounts of money to beggar children does nothing to aid their lot in life. It merely serves to make them dependent on travellers, and they will never be motivated to learn a proper trade. Offer these children, instead, the wisdom of your years and of your superior way of life. marie: These are very helpful tips, Simon. I will remember them. Do you have any suggestions concerning dining customs? simon: Yes, Marie, I have such a suggestion, or perhaps advice nugget. Although it is exciting to plunge into the culture and customs of your new environment, be wary of eating the local fare. These countries do not have the same kinds of sanitary food-preparation regulations that we enjoy in our country, and your digestive system, which includes both stomach and bowels, may suffer an unpleasant
shock. If you are invited into the home of a native an offered food, your host will always understand if you wish to decline the food offered. The natives are well aware of the sensitivity of the foreigner’s stomach! Also, please refrain from taking photographs of military installations and personnel, as you may be compromising the national security of the country. After all, they are just doing their job. I hope you will find these suggestions useful, Marie. I await your postcard with eager anticipation. marie: Life with the guerrilla army will be a refreshing change, Simon.
ALTER E GO Karen Hofmann From Water Strider, published by Frontenac House in 2008. Karen Hofmann lives in Kamloops.
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atsy’s daughter Sarah met a woman who had an alter ego named Edna. On Tuesdays this woman would dress in Edna’s clothes, clean the house. On Monday night the woman would tell her kids to pick up their toys; Edna did not care about their toys, she said. Edna would just throw them away. The woman’s husband wanted to fire Edna to save money, but the woman insisted she be kept on. She didn’t tell her family the truth about Edna until the kids were all grown up and gone from home. If I had an alter ego, she’d be called Nikki and she’d wear sleek jeans and midriff-baring tops and ride on the backs of motorcycles driven by 27-year-old guys. She’d drink in bars along the East Trans-Canada in mid-afternoon. On Mondays, she’d tell her kids to leave their clothes on the floor. She’d come home Tuesdays, kick off her high-heeled boots, shake out her smoky hair. Tell her husband, “Tie me up.” Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 37
FINDINGS
R E P O RT T H E SU S P I C I O U S
From “Transit Secure,” a public-awareness advertising campaign mounted in the Vancouver area in March 2009 by TransLink (South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority) in anticipation of the February 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The posters appear at public transit sites and urge passengers to report suspicious activity to the authorities. “Call a Paranormal Investigator” was posted in spring 2009. The fall 2009 campaign, now underway, includes the other sets of images. “Transit Secure,” created for TransLink by Tribal DDB of Vancouver— Daryl Gardiner, Creative Director; Jeff Galbraith, Copywriter; Frank Hoedl, Photographer—won two prizes in the 29th Annual AdWheel Awards, presented by the American Public Transportation Association in 2009. This feature was developed for Geist by Thad McIlroy. To comment on the “Transit Secure” campaign, go to geist.com.
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FINDINGS
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illustration: jeremy bruneel
Western Girl Dana Mills
Girls with any taste like thin guys, with clothes that’re too tight
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e and Ryan sat on the tanks behind Eric’s Corner Store and Butcher and Arcade and Pool Hall, smoking, looking out over the ball field and the orchards, and talking about the new girl at the counter. She’ll never come out with us if we don’t got wheels, Ryan said. Especially since she’s western. My uncle trucked out there and said everyone’s got a vehicle. We don’t have our licences, though. I’ve got my beginner’s. Come on. And you know Dad’s let me drive up to my Uncle Jake’s since I turned fifteen. Dad and Mum are going to the races tomorrow. With the truck and trailer. So around recess we’ll come back and get the Datsun. Then we’ll come up here to Eric’s and pick up El. I wonder what her real name is, I said. What do you mean? El’s short for something. Like Elizabeth. El kind of sounds like Elizabeth. That’s Liz or Beth. My aunt Elizabeth goes by Beth. Maybe the letter L, then. If it’s short for something. Like J for Jason or B for Brad. Then we’ll never guess. Could be Laura, Luba, anything, Ryan said. Doesn’t matter, though. I’ll just get her name tomorrow. We’ll be cruising around the Valley and maybe we’ll drive up to the lighthouse and we’ll roll the windows down and we’ll be smoking and the wind’ll fly in and make our hair all crazy and I’ll lean over and say, “So, what’s your name again? No, no, your real name.” Something like that.
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got up early enough to hear Dad leave for work. When my sister, June, told me about girls, she said, Put on good underwear. Even if you’re fourteen and not taking your pants off yet, she might see them when you bend over. If the elastic’s gone, she’ll know they’re old. And wear things that fit nice. Girls with any taste like thin guys. With clothes that’re too tight. I rooted through my closet to see what she’d picked out for me at Frenchy’s, the used-clothes store where she spent half her time before she left. I’d never actually worn any of the shirts and pants—the “pieces,” she Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 41
called them. I pulled out a yellow tie. It was safe. You didn’t get too big for ties. Even skinny leather ones. Think of musicians, June said. Girls love guys in bands. I tried on my black jeans and collared shirt. I went into Dad’s room and closed the door so Riley couldn’t get in. I stood in front of Dad’s mirror. I looked just like the guy June went away with. I definitely wasn’t going to wear my old
SHE
TOOK
DEEP
D R A G S,
THE
WAY
A
PERFECT
runners so I dug out the pair of shoes I’d worn to the funeral. I shone them up with Dad’s black polish.
pulled onto the road and drove toward Eric’s Corner Store and Butcher and Arcade and Pool Hall . . . and Place Where El Works.
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W
met Ryan at the smoking section before school. He had on his best jeans and a button-up shirt. Neither of them fit. He looked me over. Nice clothes, he said. Little tight, though, don’t you think? Better tight than too loose. What—that your dad’s shirt? Don’t tell me my clothes’re loose! We’ve got to be a team, he said. After recess, we traded three smokes for a lift to the reserve. We put our money together and bought a new pack. Then we took the old tracks and cut through the woods. We crossed the highway and walked the rest of the way to Ryan’s from there.
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he Datsun was three different colours and covered in dead-leaf stains. The windshield looked like countries on a map. Go up and grab some music, Ryan said. Bring the tape with the white-out. And the one with the masking tape across the top. The smell that sometimes came off Ryan was just as strong in the house as it was in the barns because of the jackets and boots in the hall. When I got back outside, he was patting down the seats with duct tape. Here, he said, passing me the roll and standing like he was about to be
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frisked. Get me, will you. I don’t want horse all over me. When he was clean, Ryan opened the new pack of smokes and put in his second-favourite tape. Some kind of rap he’d taped off the radio came pounding out the back. Here we go! I couldn’t tell what was a drumbeat and what was my heart as we ducked around the potholes,
e parked away from the door but we could still see her at the counter. She was head-to-toe in black like the host of a music video show. The clothes made her skin look even paler than it did when I first saw her. And they made her seem more blond, too, the way kids’ hair bleaches after being in pools all summer. She wore earrings that went from the top of her ears to the floppy part at the bottom, as if they were one big wire sewn through her lobes like the binding on a scribbler. Why the hell should I go in? Ryan took out another smoke and lit it. Save some of those. We might need them for later. Not if you don’t go in and get her, we won’t. We can’t keep sitting out here. She’ll think we’re a couple of creeps. Just go in. I felt like throwing up. June used to tell me how girls like guys who take risks, especially shy guys who take risks, guys who find risks harder than anything but take them for a girl anyway, even if they look awkward and red-faced. So right in the middle of one of Ryan’s whines about how he was the one who got the car, I opened the door and jumped out and ran up the steps to Eric’s. Hi, she said. She looked me up and down. She didn’t smirk at my clothes like Ryan or the kids at school.
Hi, I said. It took a minute for her eyes to come back up and meet mine. Dev, Eric shouted from the back as he heaved a slab of meat onto some wax paper. You got a big meeting in the boardroom or what? Me and Ryan got a couple frees, I said. Eric, you busy right now? Why? I was wondering if El wanted to come out.
Ryan snorted. Think I’d make her sit in back? She’ll sit where you’re sitting. You’ll have to climb through the seats when she gets in.
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l was sitting on Eric’s front steps waiting for us. Ryan drove up beside her. Don’t honk, I said. I’m not going to honk, he whispered. God.
WOMAN IN A MOVIE WOULD SMOKE IN A TAXI Eric laughed. Why don’t you ask her yourself? Something inside me wouldn’t let me turn to her. My cheeks and ears were hot. My throat closed up. It all right if I go? she yelled to Eric. Did he ask you yet? No. But I get what he’s saying. I think I’m going to go out. Give me half an hour, Eric said. Once I finish with this cut you can go out till the break of dawn if you want.
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ran out and jumped off the steps, my tie whacking me in the face. She’s coming out in half an hour. Go! We can’t just sit here! As we drove around, Ryan smoked most of his half of the pack. What’re we going to do with her? Just drive? Go into town? Shouldn’t go into town, Ryan said. Too many cops. Maybe we should go to my place. She’ll love the horses. I thought the horses were at the race. Not all. The Russians are still there. If we end up driving around, we’re not going to keep listening to rap, are we? She might like country better. I’ll just ask her what she likes when she gets in, Ryan said. I’ll put down the window and lean over and say, “So, how you liking the tunes, darling?” Something like that. Where’s she going to sit, though? The back?
Just get in back. I’d thought about whether I should climb through the seats once we arrived or whether I should show up already in the back like someone’s grandmother. But instead I got out as soon as we parked, like I suddenly had the urge to be a real gentleman. Hi, El, I said. Want shotgun? I stood by the door like I was her chauffeur. She looked me up and down, the same way she did before. Nice jeans, she said. I don’t mind sitting in back. How about a cigarette, El said once we were out of sight of Eric’s. I’m dying. Ryan passed her one from his side of the pack. Where do you want to go? he asked. I don’t know. What’s there to do? We could drive up to the shore. Isn’t it too cold to swim this time of year? I looked at Ryan out of the corner of my eye. People didn’t swim in the bay. They just walked on the beach and lit fires there. We could have a bonfire, Ryan said. Round up some driftwood. Why? It’s not that cold, is it? Ryan and I looked at each other without being obvious about it. What about horses? You like horses, right? Horses? No. I’m sick of them. That’s one of the reasons I came out east. Oh, Ryan said. Not even Russians? Russian horses? Yeah. Russian men are bad enough. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 43
I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not. Not even ponies? El didn’t answer. In my mirror I could see her sit back and take deep drags on her cigarette, the way a perfect woman in a movie would smoke in a taxi. We could go to my place, I said. What’s there to do there? There’s pool. We’ve got a table in the basement. You play? A little. But you’ve got to be eighteen to get in the bars back home. And my eighteenth was just last week. Last week? A pain shot through my chest—I thought she was seventeen at the most. Happy birthday, I said. Ryan laughed. You going to sing to her now or what? No, it’s sweet he said that, El said.
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hen we pulled up in front of our place, I saw how rotten-looking it really was. It was almost October but the Christmas tree was still leaning against the house like a dried-out, hollow bug. And pieces of engines had sat on the lawn for so long that green tusks sprang up where the mower couldn’t reach. Thin weeds as tall as people grew out of the leaves in the rain gutter along the roof, which Dad said he couldn’t empty because Riley’d just climb the ladder and get on the house again, showing off for the neighbours’ dogs. Then he’d whine to get down and squirm in your arms and you might both fall. The neighbours’ houses were just as bad. Riley started scratching when he heard the key. When I opened the door a hair, enough to squeeze through without letting him out, a nasty smell escaped. Riley! What’d you do? I told El and Ryan to wait outside and have another cigarette. I ran in and picked up the empty soup cans and apple cores. Riley ripped the damn garbage open again, I said. Sorry. It’s pretty bad. But if you plug your nose we can go right to the basement. No big deal, El said. Dad’s got five dogs. They do that kind of thing all the time. Riley wouldn’t leave El alone. He jumped up and pawed her stomach every step she took. But
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she didn’t care. What! What! She got down on her knees and whispered to him, What? You need attention? You been inside on such a nice day? It was the first time he’d gotten any real love since June went. I fed him and took him back to the irrigation ponds and threw sticks and carrots in the water, but fetch wasn’t the same as having a girl rub your ears and use that voice with you. Sorry, I said to El. Riley, stop. No, it’s okay, she said. I don’t mind. What? What do you want?
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yan was breaking and talking about what he didn’t like about horses when footsteps clomped across the floor upstairs. Riley’s nails skidded everywhere. Even with Riley’s noise, I could tell it was more than just Dad. Dad opened the door to the basement. Who’s there? Dev? Hi, Dad. What’re you doing home early? More like what’re you doing home in the middle of the day. We got frees. Who’s car’s that in the driveway? Ryan and I looked at each other. Dad snorted when we didn’t answer. Well, whoever’s it is, can they come up and park it on the road? I got a friend and I’m not making her leave her car there. And who’s “we,” anyway? You got half your class down there? A woman laughed upstairs. Me and Ryan and El, I said. Who’s El? Hi, El said. I’m Eric’s niece. Corner-store Eric. You should run up and move the Datsun, I said to Ryan. Won’t he care? He doesn’t know you just got your beginner’s. And you’ll have to move it anyway if you want to get it back on time. You’ve only got your beginner’s? El stared at Ryan, then at me. How old are you guys, anyway? Sixteen. But Dev’s only fifteen. Fifteen and a half. Almost. I thought you were at least seventeen. Thanks, El, Ryan said.
Why don’t you just drop the car off at your place and walk back? I said. Then you won’t have to worry about getting it back later. And no one’ll see it on the road.
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l broke but the balls didn’t move much. She put the cue down and looked at me. That same strange look as before. It was like there was a joke between us and she was about to laugh. Why do you stare like that? No reason, she said. Just you remind me of my first boyfriend. In grade nine. My face burned, it was blushing so bad. I don’t know anyone like you, I said. What do me and him have in common, then? Just your looks. Maybe the way you dress a bit. And I like how you came in the store and asked me. Come here. Before he comes back. El grabbed my tie and pulled me to her. I looked out through my eyelashes so that she wouldn’t be able to tell I was watching. She was staring back. She put her face to mine like we were birds. She pulled away. She looked down at my lips. She came back in. She licked at me along my jaw. She made sounds and I tried to make them too. Even with the smoke taste, I could tell what her breath was really like. She ran her fingers up my neck and into my hair. The way her fingertips moved made me want to sob. I set my face on her neck, her collarbone. I moved my tears around her skin with my lips. I focussed on El’s breathing and the hundreds of ways someone can take a breath. You’re only my second kiss, I said. You’re such a geek. I love it. You’re what all girls want, deep down. Really? That’s what I’ve been telling myself to justify kissing a fifteen-year-old. Fifteen and a half, I said. Almost, she said, and she pressed her tongue against her teeth and moved in to me again.
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yan knocked on the basement window. The door’s locked, he said through the glass. Come up and let me in, Dev.
El pulled me to her and our noses touched. I moved us both to the side so Ryan could see us. Should we let him in? I whispered. I didn’t hear it if you didn’t. A half hour later, he was still waiting on the grass outside the window. In the last bits of dark, he got up and walked away. El sat on the pool table with her legs around my waist and the back part of her shirt rolled up. Sweat trickled along her backbone. Who’s that? She pointed to the picture on top of the tv. The old family. Old? With Mum and my sister. El gave me a push so that she had enough room to get up off the table. She brought the picture under the lights. Your mom is really gorgeous. Like a doll. She and your sister look so different. She looks so strong. Strong? June, you mean? Look at her shoulders. They’re as wide as your dad’s. Did she and your mom leave or something? June took off a while ago. With her boyfriend. This guy from Kentville. He treated her okay, I guess. He always bought her roses. Only they never opened. Just drooped over and died. I hate that, El said. They look like sad people like that. It’s worse than if someone hadn’t even got them for you at all.
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flicked the light on in the kitchen and looked out the window. There was a car beside Dad’s that I didn’t recognize. Riley got up from in front of Dad’s door and came flying down the hall. He slid across the kitchen floor and jumped on El’s thighs. Riley, what did I tell you? Get down. El checked the clock on the stove. I should get back to Eric’s. How far’s it to walk? You shouldn’t walk in the dark. I’ll get Dad to drive you. I tapped on his door. Shuffling and whispering came through from the other side. What is it, Dev? I could see through the crack that he was lying in bed with no shirt on, watching the blackand-white. The person beside him was hiding under the sheets. Didn’t she care that there was a Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 45
whole closet full of Mum’s clothes right in front of her that Dad hadn’t even shut? I put my mouth up to the crack. Can you drive El home?
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l was standing outside in the dark with Riley. I could see her breath come out when she talked to him. I’m not supposed to let him out, I said. He tears around with the neighbours’ dogs. He doesn’t understand cars too good either. I got ahold of Riley’s collar and yanked him to the house. Come on, Riley, I said. I got him inside and closed the door. El lit up a cigarette. She’d had her own pack the whole time. So you never told me why your sister left. I didn’t know how much I should say—I hadn’t even gotten her name. You don’t have to, she said. No, it’s okay. June started acting up after the funeral. Then her and Dad didn’t get along any more. Dad tried hard. He even bought her the dog. June tried some. But really they drove each other crazy. She blamed him for a lot. I think she wanted to get back at him by leaving Riley here. Where’s she now? I heard out West. Someone calls sometimes and hangs up. Probably it’s her. I pressed star-69 and it said 4-0-3-something. Did you call it back? Once. But this guy answered and said I had the wrong number when I asked for her. It wasn’t her boyfriend. Let’s call it back! I’ll talk to him! I don’t know where the number went. You don’t know where it went? El stared at me. But you might never see her again.
I said we’re coming. Keep that closed. There was some thumping and the sound of jeans sliding on and then a zipper. Then the door opened. This woman I recognized from the cash at Frenchy’s came out. She wore perfume and kept tucking her hair behind her ears, though it didn’t stay there long because of how curly it was. Hi, Devin, she said, using the voice you’d use with a ten-year-old. I’m Penny. I’m friends with your dad. Nice tie, she said. You said your friend needs a drive? I followed her to the front door. If you could, I said. It’s not too far. Try not to let that dog out, Dev, Dad yelled from his room. But Riley was already in the yard again with El. I pushed the door open. How’d he get out? I don’t know, she said. He’s not allowed out. I know. You already said. I tried to grab Riley but he ran across the yard. He barked and panted like it was a game. He ran around and around the mower. Come on, I said. Don’t do this now. Come here. Penny started up her car and waited there with the brake lights on until I had the dog in my hands. Bye, Riley, El said. Maybe I’ll see you again. Then she got in and shut the door. As the car backed out, Dad opened his bedroom window and stared into the headlights. His face looked old. Maybe because he hadn’t smiled like that for a while and he didn’t have his glasses on. Riley tried to get away and run to the car. No, don’t bark, I whispered. I got down on my knees and hugged his ribs. Shh, I said. He hadn’t been like this since June left. Don’t worry. She’ll be back.
S
he finished her smoke and there was still no light from Dad’s room. The tv kept flashing in the window. El walked to the end of the driveway. Wait. Hold on. I ran inside and knocked on Dad’s door again. Can’t you drive El home?
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Dana Mills lives in the Annapolis Valley. Read his short story “Steaming for Godthab,” which was shortlisted for the 2008 Journey Prize, at geist.com.
Fleuve The St. Lawrence Photographs of Fabrice Strippoli Text by Michal Kozlowski and Leah Pires The St. Lawrence River is rich with history, myth and legend
Quebec City.
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Polar bear exhibit, Aquarium du Québec, Saint-Foy.
At Tadoussac he sailed out to photograph the water. Horse sleigh race on the Plains of Abraham.
I
n the language of the Iroquois, the St. Lawrence River is denoted by a word with many syllables: Kaniatarowanenneh, meaning “big waterway.” Carl Jung cites as examples of onomatopoeic remnants in modern languages the words for river: river, rûschen, ruscello, ruisseau, rûschen. All refer to the rush of water—that which cascades down mountain slopes, crashes into rock, surges when snow melts in the spring. But when water leaves the tributaries in Quebec and enters the St. Lawrence, it no longer rushes, but winds and flows within between its wide banks, and the onomatopoeic, at least in its English form, is lost. Here we can borrow from the French and refer to the St. Lawrence as fleuve, a word that echoes flowing water and is restricted to rivers that empty into the sea. In the St. Lawrence system, a drop of rain that falls into Lake Superior makes its way through the Great Lakes and down the St. Lawrence for two hundred years before it finally empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
I
n the late 1970s, when Fabrice Strippoli was a child, his father, a translator for the Quebec government (he spoke twelve languages) and an avid photographer, used to take him to Cap Tourmente, a wetland bird sanctuary on the north shore of the St. Lawrence east of Quebec City. There his father snapped photographs—thousands of them—of greater snow geese floating on the river. Cap Tourmente sits at the junction of the St. Lawrence lowlands and the Canadian Shield. It was named by Samuel de Champlain, who wrote of his trip up the St. Lawrence in 1608: “Coasting along from Isle aux Coudres, we reached a cape which we named Cap de Tourmente, five leagues distant; and we gave it this name because, however little wind there may be, the water rises there as if it were full tide.” In 1626, Champlain built a farm on the riverbank at Cap Tourmente. Two years later the British set it on fire. Before that, the St. Lawrence Iroquois lived there in longhouses. They fished in the river, farmed the land and hunted in the surrounding forests. Strippoli’s own lineage begins on the St. Lawrence. An Irish ancestor sailed past Cap Tourmente in 1632 on the second passenger ship to arrive in Canada—before then, all vessels transported military and government personnel. She arrived at the port in Mascouche and married an Iroquois man from the area. The
Carnaval de Quebec, Québec City.
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Quebec City.
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Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, Quebec City.
The devil granted the men a flying canoe Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, Plains of Abraham.
two of them moved to Charlesbourg and settled there. Much of Strippoli’s family entered Canada in the same way—via the St. Lawrence—and settled on both sides of the river. Some woodworkers settled in Hull; others followed the building of the railway and put up hotels wherever tracks were laid down. Strippoli’s mother came from Hull, his father from Italy. Strippoli was born in Quebec City. When he was fourteen, the family moved to Toronto. Three years later, Strippoli joined the Canadian Army, borrowed a camera from a friend and began to photograph the world around him. He soon quit the army but kept the camera. He studied photography at Ryerson Polytechnic in Toronto in the 1990s, where he received his degree in 1997. Since then he has become one of the most accomplished darkroom printers in the country. During his studies at Ryerson, Strippoli worked two day jobs to support himself, and at night he walked through the streets of Toronto and took pictures of the city. These photographs of Toronto comprise his project Dark City, which took him eleven years to complete. It is one of the few projects he has finished working on. Those still underway include his work in the Camargue region of France, photographing the white Camargue horses and the cowboys of the area, known as the manadier, and in the Basque region of Spain and France, photographing hunters of the palombe, a species of pigeon. Strippoli was drawn to the Basques for their similarities to Quebecers and their historical ties to Quebec: they fished cod in the St. Lawrence well before the French and English arrived there. The Basques were some of the first white men to set foot in Canada, and their legacy is still to be found in towns along the St. Lawrence: Port aux Basques, TroisPistoles, the islands of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. Strippoli wanted to photograph the St. Lawrence in the simplest way he could: he got into his car and drove up the highway and stopped at the side of the road to take pictures of the towns along the river. At Tadoussac, the oldest French settlement in North America that still exists, he sailed out to photograph the water. When he returned to land, he partied in the boatyard. Each boat had a different party with a different kind of music in it; this is the fraternity that draws Strippoli to Quebec. The people in these photographs are strangers who would stop to have a beer with Strippoli, talk for a while and then move on. After the wedding party, Quebec City.
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Sunrise, Sept-ﾃ四es.
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South shore.
She kills her first husband by pouring molten lead into his ear. South of Havre-Saint-Pierre.
T
he banks of the St. Lawrence are inhabited by legends and folk tales, which come from a blend of the French tradition brought to Quebec and the historically close ties between Quebecers and the First Nations of the Quebec region. One such folk tale is that of La Chasse-Gallerie, the Legend of the Flying Canoe, based on a French legend of a nobleman who loved to hunt and a Native legend about a flying canoe. A group of lumberjacks were working in an isolated logging camp in the Gatineau Valley on New Year’s Eve at the end of the nineteenth century. Because the Ottawa River was frozen, the men made a pact with the devil in order to return to Quebec City to be with their families for the New Year’s party. The devil granted the men a flying canoe on the condition that they would return to the logging camp that night, otherwise he would take their souls. After the party, the men raced back to the camp in the flying canoe. They crashed in the sky, and the next morning, when they awoke in their bunks at the camp, one of them was missing. Strippoli learned this and other legends as a child. One tells of a pianist who loses all of his money and breaks into a house, but his hands are cut off when the window he has climbed through falls onto his wrists. When he discovers three pianos inside the house, he kills himself. Some nights he can still be heard playing. In another tale, a woman falls in love with a sailor. Her father does not approve of the sailor and disowns her. She and the sailor move to an island where they live alone. One day the sailor goes out in their boat, and he never comes back. The woman loses her wedding ring on the beach, and her ghost still searches the beach for the ring. After hearing this story, a man goes to the beach and finds a gold ring. He dies within a couple of weeks. Everyone who has owned the ring has died soon after it came into their possession. In the tale of Marie-Joseph Corriveau, she kills her first husband by pouring molten lead into his ear. She tries to choke her second husband; he survives and forgives her, and she beats him to death. Her father tries to save her by claiming that he killed the man, and he is hanged, but Marie-Joseph Corriveau is not pardoned. She is locked up in a metal cage and left to die. Her ghost makes so much noise that the men of the town bury the cage in a cemetery. The ghost still harasses people when they go out at night. Another story tells of Father La Brosse, a Jesuit who served at Tadoussac. When he died, the bells in all of the churches where he
Rivière-au-Tonnerre.
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had served rang out on their own. His body was laid in a church in Tadoussac. The Montagnais, one of the First Nations along the St. Lawrence, used to talk to him through a hole in his tomb. The name St. Lawrence was bestowed upon the river by Jacques Cartier when he entered the mouth of the river on the day of St. Lawrence’s Feast. St. Lawrence, or Laurentius, was an archdeacon of Rome in the third century. Some historical accounts claim he was responsible for the safekeeping of the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper.
F
abrice Strippoli began photographing the St. Lawrence in the early 1990s, and he says he will continue to go back to Quebec to photograph the city and the river for the rest of his life. Most of his projects take years to complete; he returns to Page 54 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
a place over and over to allow his work time to mature. Strippoli believes that all of these endeavours and all of these trips are somehow connected, and despite the different locations and subjects, all will merge into one large body of photographic work with a central theme: place and the people who live there. Fabrice Strippoli was born in Quebec City and moved to Toronto at age fourteen. He earned his BA from Ryerson Polytechnic University and now operates a darkroom studio in Toronto. His work has been displayed at galleries around the world and can see at fabricefoto.com. View his most recent Geist work, “Dark City” (No. 51), at geist.com. Michal Kozlowski is publishing assistant at Geist and editor at Narwhal magazine. Read his work at geist.com and narwhalmagazine.com. Leah Pires is a Vancouver-born art enthusiast studying at McGill in Montreal. She likes to ride her bike and update her blog.
CONTEST
Jackpine Sonnets Milton Acorn From Jackpine Sonnets, published by Steel Rail Educational Publishing in 1977. The jackpine sonnet is a poetic genre created by the Canadian poet Milton Acorn (1923–1986), a Governor General’s Award–winning poet from Prince Edward Island who wrote eighteen books of poetry, six of which were published posthumously.
Love in the Nineteen Fifties
U.F.O.
On that beach with light shifting breaths Of breezes touching us like gentle Curious, strong, all-surrounding presences Watching, and you watching . . . I stuck a gull’s Tailfeather askew ten white degrees Out of perpendicular to match The slant of the nearest sail on that diseased Warm doubt of a day. Grief hope and fury Were all there, speaking tentatively In a jury just met. Wants too early Stirring your blood, vision, nerves and mine Over that tilting token in the sand; Having made a sign, still wanted a sign While low lightblue waves just tapped the island.
Shall I compare you to a u.f.o? You’re just as mysterious. Shall I compare a u.f.o. to you? Those vehicles exist. I saw one sure As the fact you’re gone and I’ve tried Hate as a cure for love In covens of thorn with roses, where I hide From complicated beauty more like yours; Rating my half-cut death as fate When I’d promised fate more future than that.
in that time the wise rarely swore to anything since most words were lies
A
lthough Milton Acorn claimed to avoid the repeated use of any poetic form, he frequently returned to the sonnet, a fourteen-line poem that presents a dialectic argument in a set rhyme scheme. Acorn gave name to a new genre of poetry, one that approximated the sonnet but was not restricted by rules of verse, rhyme or line count. He named this new form after the jack pine, an opportunistic northern tree that fills available space without a set growth pattern and develops into surprising shapes. In 1969, Acorn’s collection I Tasted My Blood was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in Poetry and Drama, but he lost to George Bowering and Gwendolyn MacEwan (Acorn’s ex-wife). The following year, a group of
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It shone like the sun: but only for an eye Which sought it out; otherwise just a strange Moveable star it was. Nor did it glare Or illuminate the scene around it. Until my look fitted onto that stare Winter had combined all other seasons. On other planets other things change And I’d loved you too long, at most for half a reason
poets gathered at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto to present Acorn with a cash prize and a medal inscribed “Peoples’ Poet.” In 1987, the poet Ted Plantos established the Milton Acorn Memorial Peoples’ Poetry Award, which is still presented to poets every year: winners include Al Purdy, Evelyn Lau and Ken Babstock. Acorn eventually won the Governor General’s Award in 1975 for his poetry collection The Island Means Minago. The year 2010 marks the fortieth anniversary of Acorn’s Peoples’ Poet Award, and in celebration of his contribution to Canadian poetry, Geist is hosting the Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest. See next page for details on the contest and a guide to writing a jackpine sonnet.
CONTEST
Fortune Cookie Lit Winners of the Geist Fortune Cookie Contest: stories inspired by fortunes found in fortune cookies
Impatient Leslie Vryenhoek Patience can make great things happen
W
hen the doughy man with the grocery bags comes toward her, she shrinks against the wall so no part of him brushes any part of her. She doesn’t look up when he mumbles Excuse me, and she stays stuck to the rough stucco while he struggles to open the door. Unattractive people make Patience uncomfortable. Eight nights in a row, no one’s asked why she’s sitting in front of an apartment building where she doesn’t live. The first night, her ass only tentatively perched on the concrete steps in case she had to stand suddenly, she was sure someone would. She’d even planned an answer: I’m watching the traffic. She couldn’t imagine anyone having a problem with that. Still, she was prepared to move across the street if push came to shove off, though over there one of Winnipeg’s fat elms would be blocking her view of the busiest part of the intersection. Anyway, she’s relieved no one’s asked. She wouldn’t want to say, precisely, what she’s watching for, and she couldn’t really explain how, as she’d stepped off the #11 bus, the broken glass and bits of car had pointed her to exactly this spot. Nearby, a bag has latched onto a lilac bush by one plastic handle. It puffs up importantly with every rare breeze. Yesterday, Patience’s mother called this weather sultry, then rubbed up against the man she refers to as her Next Potential Page 58 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
Husband. Patience thinks the air feels more like dangerous. She considers the bag. She’s heard they make their way to the sea and kill whales. Or maybe it’s dolphins. Whatever. She’s a fan of marine mammals, at least in theory, but she’s decided against capturing that bag and shoving it in her pocket. These jeans don’t have pockets and frankly, the bag seems harmless. Patience wants larger threats: burning buildings, hostage takings, fiery car crashes. She wants to pull someone from the brink with her split-second clear thinking. She daydreams about finding missing children—usually, although not exclusively, alive—and then about discouraging praise from the media. There’s a lot of heroes out here today, she imagines saying into the camera, especially this little guy. Patience knows it’s just a matter of time before she does some great thing. She hopes it will happen soon. She’s already twenty-two and suspects time is sanding her down. At the call centre, she’s noticed that older people never wonder if they smell smoke, and during the last fire drill they just moseyed out, gabbing, not even touching the stairwell door to check if it was warm before opening it. This made her think, What if a real fire started, coincidentally, just before a scheduled alarm? The wind picks up and Patience gives up for the night. On her way past the lilac she grabs the bag, sends it on its way. She doesn’t see it fill
FORTUNE COOKIE LIT
St. Stephen, New Brunswick.
behind her, fly into the intersection and through an open car window, but she does feel the crash in her bones. “Impatient” won first prize in the Geist Fortune Cookie Contest. Leslie Vryenhoek is a writer, poet and communications specialist whose work has appeared in publications across Canada and internationally. Her first collection of short fiction, Scrabble Lessons, was published by Oolichan in 2009. She lives in St. John’s.
1963 Vaughan Chapman Love works in mysterious ways
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ll summer long, brother and sister fought on the brown couch with gold threads in front of the window that looked out to the cliff down to the creek. The brother sat to the right, the sister to the left. One two three four go! At each other. He with a yellow corduroy pillow, she with a blue. Fist over pillow. All morning. Every morning. All summer long. They lay down sometimes brother and sister.
photo: rob bellinger
He with his head to the right, she with her head to the left. One two three four go! At each other. Hard-muscled legs twisting legs twisting heel to pubis strike down heel to pubis hard. All morning. Every morning. All summer long. On the brown couch with gold threads where evenings their mother dreamed of a man where she worked packing meat all day long bloody hands swiping her apron. And their father turned soundlessly into a secretary’s driveway where she could not raise the child, could not raise the child on her own. The brother. The sister. All summer long. Clenched. And standing now. In the kitchen. One two three—pennies! From the tobacco tin. Flying! Gun-metal smell. Hitting one forehead other chin fridge arms stove floor sink and in the hallway, dark hallway you stand in front of the stairs up to where you slept with father who loved me and I slept with mother who loved you and you hit me, brother, punched me until we ripped each other’s soft cheeks to hold one another under our nails and see how flesh blanches before red begins.
“1963” won a second prize in the Geist Fortune Cookie Contest. Vaughan Chapman is at work on a book of poems. She lives in Surrey, B.C., and online at vaughanchapman.com. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 59
FORTUNE COOKIE LIT
In a Zen Garden
Montreal, Quebec.
Yvonne Blomer Make the best use of all available technology
K
egon hears the knock, but does not answer it: bamboo on rock. He smiles to the mirror-pool, picks, from his teeth, gomae seed with grass blade.
On his knees, pats moss grass— toes it as he stands in Mountain Pose, moves to Crane Pose, big toe thumbs the moss smooth. In Warrior— hands swish at fallen leaves—Hoover Pose: he pockets a pink candy wrapper, still sticky. Bamboo rake at hand, Kegon sweeps a sun shape into rock-pebble bed—swoosh of air as he spins the rake, hangs it, his arms like buckets of water, to tiptoe to stone path, spins jo-pole,
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flicks dried bird shit off bonsai’d maple leaf and with pink candy wrapper, scoops it. Rock-sculpted sun stays its shape in white stone. In shaded corner, Kegon spots chipped rock, fallen from stone lantern—jams globule of candy wrapper’d guano, smears and reattaches chipped lantern corner, it holds. Kegon bows to slow-sinking evening sun. Swings, pole, sojutsu, knocks lowest peach from highest branch— catches peach in right hand, hobo sticks pole, walks in leafy shade. Kegon twirls rake pole, bats peach pit to neighbouring bathhouse.
Hears it ping on gomi bin. Bell of stone on metal He one-handed quick flips rake pole to lean on bamboo fence, nods to life’s connectedness, turns on slipper’d heel, walks tall so evergreen scents his finger-combed hair, bows to koi in pond, lets them clean their own house. Kegon finds moss rock pillow, grass-coated ledge, and beds. Eyes closed, he finds the silver screen inside his temple mind.
“In a Zen Garden” won a second prize in the Geist Fortune Cookie Contest. Yvonne Blomer’s poetry is in the anthology Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and her first book of poetry, a broken mirror, fallen leaf, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She lives in Victoria, B.C.
photo: cedric sam
FORTUNE COOKIE LIT
White Wedding Lisa Van de Ven You’ll go through many changes, before settling down happily
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nd the trapeze artist pirouettes mid-air. The stilt walker teeters, giraffe legs genuflecting. “Next, what’s next?” the crowd seems to say. A colourful clown, doing somersaults through the ring. But the bride. Where is the bride? For a moment, there’s just a glimpse of her hand, that slip of a hand, hidden in the depths of her sister’s meaty arm; the sister pushes through the tableau of gawking wedding guests, dragging that tiny, frail bridal body behind. The bride’s head hunches down, avoiding the stares. Soft-pink fingernails digging deeply into her sister’s skin. One or two in the audience (from the groom’s side, no doubt) wonder if she might break in half from the stress of it. Bones torn asunder, blood slipping through to stain crimson the white wedding dress. Blood sports. Her new husband—Bernard, never Bernie—isn’t with her for the moment, but he isn’t missing either. No, no, there he is: poised up front, on the edge of the circus ring. Steps away from the lions and tigers that crouch in cages, waiting for their moments to begin. Big, beefy Bernard, and a few young women on the guest list imagine him wrestling those very animals, shirt off and muscles sheened with sweat. Instead, he’s arguing with the ringmaster—a real ringmaster, straight from a famous three-ring!—and for a short time the show stands still, the restless guests return to their tables even as the jealous young ladies continue to admire the groom. Bernard’s arms flailing, his big body refusing (always refusing) to stand still. But his simple black suit outshone by his parents, poised beside him now: her in a red-feathered skirt, him in a peacock-blue top hat. More appropriate for the occasion, one woman, somebody’s aunt, thinks as she
photo: silas polkinghorne
Calgary, Alberta.
hacks off another piece of prime rib. She’s wearing cream linen, for those who might wonder. “More! More!” The crowd again. Until Bernard’s parents each raise one hand, each with a finger extended. Asking from the guests just a moment. Everything you’ve been waiting for is about to begin. This is their creation, this circus-themed event, a celebration for their third of seven sons, and it is—has been—everything they imagined. And so, as the crowd simmers some—returning to their rather lovely crème brûlées—Bernard’s parents begin to flail their arms as well and the ringmaster rearranges his face into an exaggerated grimace. He knows how to work a crowd. Right then is when the bride arrives, hand still clenching her sister’s arm. She lifts her head and Bernard stops flailing. His parents, noticing, deflate as well. The ringmaster sighs, his whole body in it. When they kiss, the groom hides his wife’s body with his own, only her hand on his back visible to the crowd. She holds on lightly, and the jealous young women sit down, dejected. “White Wedding” won third prize in the Geist Fortune Cookie Contest. Lisa Van de Ven is a freelance writer who, during the day, writes about real-life things for newspapers and magazines. She lives in Toronto. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 61
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski Ann Diamond He has been called “the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation.” Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
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met the Bulgarian poet Kiril Kadiiski in the fall of 2002, at the Festival Internationale de la Poésie in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. At this annual gathering, not only are poets from all over the world put up in the fancy Hôtel Gouverneur, they are continuously fed in local restaurants and cafés, where patrons take in poetry along with plates of food with names like Saumon Meunière aux triples asperges. Unlike most of the poets at the conference, who dressed down, Kiril always wore the same expensive brown tweed suit, which, by the looks of it, he’d paid a lot for in Paris. Behind his worldly facade, he struck me as odd and needy, and he took full advantage of the gastronomic nirvana. When he became bored with the long conferences and media events that took up the time between meals, he would slip out to a Chinese buffet a few blocks from the hotel and load his plate with chow mein, sweet and sour ribs, fried won tons and other delicacies you might not come across in Bulgaria. One afternoon he invited me to go with him for a late lunch, and there he asked me if I would translate a few of his poems from French to English. I agreed to consider it, and he gave me a copy of La mort de l’Hirondelle Blanche, a published collection of sonnets. We ate together a few more times, and on our last day in Trois-Rivières, we visited the studio of a Vancouver-born woman who made livres d’artiste. Kiril spent a long time closely examining the typefaces and papers, and talking prices with the artist. The following summer I landed in Greece and found the copy of Kiril’s book in my luggage, having carried it with me from Kamloops to California to Germany. Now that I had a home for a while, I had time to unpack it and read it, and I liked it. I translated ten of the sonnets and emailed them to Kiril. He liked the translations, showed them to friends, who also approved, and sent me more poems. He also offered to pay me—a pittance, but he was living in Sofia, and I found I enjoyed translating. It took me away from my own history and into someone else’s life through poems that were often lyrical and personal, and sometimes autobiographical. Before I knew it, I was buried in French translations of Kiril Kadiiski, and striving to complete the assignment and make something in English that resembled what I imagined was the original Bulgarian, of which I knew not one word. It was heavy going and I also had my own book, which I was writing in a wooden cabin behind the house on the island of Lemnos, a short walk from the beach, in 35-degree heat that knocked the cicadas out of the treetops while my Greek boyfriend threatened to cut off the electricity to my laptop if I didn’t stop typing, typing, typing. As I sweated Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 63
through the pages, I sometimes thought, Kiril Kadiiski publishes too much—he should be more selective. I often felt like the maid, sorting through a man’s dirty laundry. I would throw out a few worn-out socks and keep the nicer shirts and ties. I remembered his suit, the one he had worn to all the readings in Trois-Rivières. An academic kind of suit, but also elegant—nothing Communist about it. Nothing very Communist about his poetry, either, for that matter. As I translated page after page, his painstakingly detailed biography took on life and drama. Born in the era of Stalinism, he emerged in the poems as an individualist, a misplaced spiritual seeker deprived by history of a monastery. What impressed me was his sincerity, a quality of innocence, what one critic called a sense of wonder—rare commodities these days in the West. In his best poems, he shone like a choirboy, in poems exploring the vast incomprehensible frontiers that once divided Communism from capitalism. It rains, it pours. Mayakovsky is alone in Moscow And wears a silvery futurist wig.
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... I will toast you from the cup of my skull, brimming with verse! ... Alas, I must be off. I have sworn to overcome all obstacles. ... Up ahead, puddles of light. I’ll wade right across them, I’ll march forward, side by side with the Moscow trees. —“The End of the Day” (1979) Perhaps later those frontiers dissolved into a no man’s land of the Slavic, post-Communist soul. Or perhaps while wading through mud and barbed wire in the Long March from one set of metaphors to the next, Kiril Kadiiski took a wrong turn? It’s hard to say. Sometime after 1989, his name was included on a list of intellectuals banned from the Bulgarian media, and—as Communism fell—he took part in the first free literary reading at the University of illustrations: allison friebertshauser
Sofia. In the ensuing chaos, as systems crashed, he saw the outstretched hands of fellow poets beckoning him to Paris, and he grabbed his chance. From then on, he spent more and more time in France, where he became famous and made many friends, including Miriam Cendrars, daughter of the poet-adventurer Blaise Cendrars, whose earliest published writing, which had been lost for decades, Kiril miraculously discovered in Sofia in 1995. That much of his history I knew, vaguely, from having translated hundreds of pages in my cabin, and later in the tiny public library at Lemnos, presided over by the world’s most talkative librarian. In 2004, Kiril moved to Paris to take up a position as head of the Bulgarian Cultural Centre. It dawned on me that he might actually be important. That would explain the handsome tweed suit. I tried, half-heartedly and unsuccessfully, to negotiate a higher rate for my work. Kiril said he was poor at the moment, with a wife and children to support back in Bulgaria, but when he won the Nobel Prize, I’d be on the platform with him. He emailed me some letters of recommen-
dation written by his friends to the Nobel committee; these also need to be translated.
T
wo more years went by, and corrections were beamed back and forth between Sofia, Paris, Lemnos, Montreal and Vancouver. Kiril found a publisher for the poems, but the deal fell through. Meanwhile, I kept translating his cv, which he was constantly updating, with bulleted highlights of a life in poetry that began at age seventeen, when he wrote his first poem. He was also a respected translator who had once worked for Bulgarian state radio, and he had won some important European poetry prizes, including the Prix Max Jacob. In 1995, his chance discovery of a rare copy of Blaise Cendrars’ The Legend of Novgorod in a used bookstore in Sofia, Bulgaria, became the literary event of the year in France, making Kiril the toast of Paris. Prizes and honours followed, along with poetry cruises down the Danube and the Black Sea and around the Mediterranean, and an invitation to the 1998 Poetry Olympics in Stockholm, where he won two poetry medals. Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 65
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Finally, in 2006, the hefty trilingual edition of his collected poems appeared in print in Paris and Sofia, co-published by L’Esprit des Péninsules and Saint Clement of Ohrid University Press, translated into French by Sylvia Wagenstein and Nicole Laurent-Catrice, and into English by Ann Diamond. I couldn’t imagine this enormous black-jacketed production, weighing a kilo and entitled Poems & Poèmes, becoming a bestseller. Having missed the Paris launch, I awaited the reviews. None appeared, but then these things take time. And in June 2007, Kiril sent me an article calling him “the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation” in the pages of no less a publication than Le Nouvel Observateur.
I
n Greece that summer, my boyfriend and I made a living by renting rooms to backpackers, including a group of three Bulgarian tourists, two of whom spoke French. I mentioned my translations of Kadiiski. They told me that an article on the “greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation” had recently been published in Le Figaro. Had I seen it? No. They doubted that he was really the greatest, and their eyebrows remained raised for the rest of the conversation. They were hiding something, I could sense it. Their tone implied intrigue and literary espionage. Besides, said one of them, who came from a town in the mountains of Rhodopes, his poetry is much too personal for a Bulgarian. I said it was difficult for me, a Canadian, to make such judgements, although I found his manners at times a bit overstated, perhaps even comically so. Still, I said, he has written some very good and a few great poems. The Bulgarians nodded. They went away after photographing our dog and epileptic cat, and highlights of our day trip
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to the archaeological sites of Lemnos. They promised to send email from Luxembourg. Again I waited for news, but nothing came. I let it drop. Too much else to do and think about. In September 2008, Kiril sent me a new cycle of thirty-five sonnets and asked me to translate them. I was shocked by their melancholy tone, bordering on suicidal. What had happened? He phoned and asked if I could find him a North American publisher. I said I would try. My hard disk had crashed, so I had to Google my own translations of his cv to send out to editors. That’s how I happened to stumble upon a series of blogs and a French Wikipedia entry about a major literary scandal in France. I also read the article in Le Figaro that the Bulgarians had mentioned; it accused Kiril Kadiiski of forging The Legend of Novgorod, the lost early poem by the legendary Blaise Cendrars, and selling it to a Swiss collector for $50,000. Apparently, just as he was launching his 792-page trilingual tome, a Russian doctoral student examining The Legend of Novgorod for her thesis had discovered certain discrepancies, including a computer-generated typeface that strongly suggested the book was a fake. Faked by whom? Suspicion had landed on its discoverer, Kiril Kadiiski. Blogs lit up with strings of witty comments by armies of amateur critics, and the consensus was that the Bulgarian poet did it. There was no getting around the forensic evidence, specifically the computer font known as Izhitsa. My heart raced as I read the blogs and comments. For the first time since our meeting in 2002, Kadiiski made sense to me. All along, I had underestimated him as an oddity. The peculiar bearing, the expensive suit, the lists of publications and prizes that had failed to impress me, even as I laboured to translate them. Now his sudden emergence as a literary
S U S P I C I O N
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rascal hit me like news of a resurrection. Just as Sylvia Plath’s poems gained a ghostly resonance once I’d soaked up the lurid details of her relationship with Ted Hughes, Kadiiski’s stature seemed to grow along with the stack of unflattering press reports. It was Negative Capability in action.
H
ad Kadiiski always wanted to be Blaise Cendrars? Both were sent to boarding school and ran away to Russia. The Legend of Novgorod was itself somewhat legendary. Said to have been Cendrars’s first published poem, its existence has never been proven. In his memoirs, Cendrars claimed to have written it in French at age seventeen as he crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian. In Moscow a publisher remembered only as “R. R.” later translated the poem into Russian and privately published a limited edition of sixteen copies, in a gesture aimed at encouraging the young Swiss poet, whose real name was Freddy Sauser. Sauser could have settled into a more predictable life as a Swiss banker’s son, but instead he chose to become a writer, traveller, filmmaker, fabulator, under the pen name of Blaise Cendrars. Kadiiski’s life (in a Communist country) seemed destined to be more confined. In an early act of dissidence, he rebelled against the limits of speech in Communist Bulgaria where “the only way to escape the system was to learn to make use of metaphors and euphemisms.” Later he travelled to Budapest and Vienna, repeatedly tried to publish his poems, and was repeatedly rejected for membership in the Bulgarian Writers Union. He married and settled down in Bulgaria, where he became a wellknown translator, working for national radio. He had already set his sights on France when he began translating the great symbolists—
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Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire—into Bulgarian. Did romantic enthusiasm change into perceived opportunity at some point? If Kadiiski did get the idea that he could write Cendrars’s lost poem and pass it off as the genuine article, fate had handed him the means. He had mastered Russian. Having grown up in Bulgaria under Communism, he knew the culture and history by heart. How easy to imagine himself as the seventeen-year-old Cendrars on a whirlwind tour of a country careening into revolution. Another parallel: Kiril wrote his first poem at seventeen. Later, as a young poet, he travelled to Russia as a guest of the Soviet writers’ union. He went to Moscow and Leningrad and grasped the romantic mentality that fired the young Cendrars to travel the Trans-Siberian in 1905 and, two years later, to write a long poem for the girl he left behind, who died in a fire. Cendrars, who never shrank from battle, lost an arm in the First World War. After that nothing could stop him: the one-armed veteran learned to write with his left hand and climbed the ranks of symbolist poets. Then he left them behind to set sail on a round-the-world voyage, and eventually washed up on the shores of modernism, becoming a twentieth-century literary hero. A man who believed in nothing, and everything. Cendrars was prone to invention and hyperbole, to put it mildly; therefore, The Legend of Novgorod may be just that, a legend. But Cendrars insisted that it had been published in Moscow. What an opportunity for Kadiiski, a state-supported translator at war with the apparatchiks of Bulgaria. A frustrated poet attempting to defect from the country of his birth. A man with a family to support. He had the contacts in France, who regarded him and his work favourably. He had the motive, the poetry and literary background to back him up, and the chance to Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 67
PERHAPS HE SPOKE TO TOO MANY CHESHIRE CATS
create a sensation. All he lacked was the means to emigrate. In a way, what could be more natural? A scholar, translator and publisher of literature. Someone who ran his own publishing company in Bulgaria. Someone with a background in Samizdat publishing, and a knowledge of the literary world and an interest in small presses that produce limited editions—as I saw in TroisRivières, where he showed such keen interest in the livres d’artiste. Kadiiski may even have thought he was the reincarnation of Cendrars—a fairly common fantasy among writers, one that can throw open creative doors. As Cendrars’s ghost, he could escape to Brazil on a freighter and become a well-known capitalist trading in oil—or to Paris and hang out with gypsies and other famous poets. He could follow the path of fame without getting lost in the jungle—after all, if it worked for him, why not for me? Perhaps that’s why fraud is so attractive, because a counterfeit is at one remove from reality, and this adds a special excitement.
M
eanwhile, naïve and unsuspecting in my spider-infested cabin between the castle and the chicken coops of Lemnos, where my Greek boyfriend railed against the neighbour’s roosters, I had performed the humble task of translating Kiril’s collected works. The hundreds of poems I laboured over were, to my knowledge, original. But all of this effort was nothing compared to the meticulous planning and execution that had gone into conceiving, writing, designing, printing, aging, planting, discovering and finally promoting The Legend of Novgorod. How many late-night hours did the forger spend at the com-
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puter, correcting pre-Revolutionary Russian spelling and grammar, selecting fonts, painstakingly ensuring that every detail of the pamphlet corresponded to descriptions scattered through Cendrars’s voluminous memoirs? The only slip-up that could not be explained: the computer-generated font known as Izhitsa. If Kadiiski did it, this was a minor slip-up, considering that all this time he was supporting a family in Bulgaria, gaining fame in France as a poet, moving steadily upward in literary circles, winning major awards and becoming an internationally known figure. Can one scandal bury a man’s whole career? I must say, I am prone to rooting for fallen angels like Kiril Kadiiski. He may have financed his escape from Bulgaria by faking the discovery. And deep down, he may have felt that Cendrars would approve. Perhaps, like Alice chasing the White Rabbit, he spoke to too many Cheshire cats and talking sheep in roadside cafés, or to Humpty Dumpty, who asserted that the self is a fiction and life is only a dream. Perhaps he believed he could wake from the dream in France, the land of poetry, through the monumental effort of imagining and creating this elaborate forgery, then arranging to come across it by chance one day, in a used bookstore in Sofia. What would Cendrars make of it? Something wonderful, I am sure. Twenty or fifty years from now, will we be reading the poetry of Kiril Kadiiski? Time will tell.
Ann Diamond is a Montreal-born writer of fiction, poetry and journalism. See her translation of Kiril Kadiiski’s poem “Granite Music” in Carte Blanche (carteblanche.org). See her Geist work and read an interview with her at geist.com.
COMMENT
Building Bohemia The recipe for bohemia includes lots of culture and no economy
Stephen Henighan
A
ccording to my mother, I visited of culture and no economy. As an impeEast Berlin before the Wall was built. I rial capital drained by its division during made the trip in embryonic form, and the Cold War, Berlin is perfectly eventually entered the world in Ham- equipped for this role. When the Wall burg. In spite of having no ancestral ties went up in 1961, Communist East Gerto Germany, since leaving the country many took possession of most of the as an infant, I have returned twelve city’s cultural treasures. The Brandentimes, for visits ranging in length from a burg Gate, the magnificent museums, few days to a few weeks. I’ve never com- the national opera, most of the theatres, pletely mastered the language—I read the Humboldt University, the central novels with a dictionary—but the fasci- avenue of Unter den Linden, and the nation of Germany remains strong. In main square of Alexanderplatz, were all summer 2009, during the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I returned to East Berlin. I rented a small flat in Prenzlauer Berg, where I had stayed for the first time in 1993. Then it was a district of close-set apartment buildings whose buttresslike balconies, covered with pocked, disintegrating grey stucco, gave them a sombre appearance. A gargantuan statue of Ernst ThälKostbar, Prenzlauer Berg. mann, an early leader of the German Communist Party, domi- in the east. West Berlin got the zoo. A nated the horizon. Formerly the very shard of the capitalist world afloat in the discreet gay neighbourhood of East sea of Communist East Germany, it was Germany, at the time of my first visit it cut off both from its own past and from was home to a sprinkling of cafés that the economic dynamism that characterhad sprouted amid the prevailing grey- ized West Germany in the 1960s. The ness. Today Prenzlauer Berg is one of clever industrialists who rebuilt the the most exciting neighbourhoods in bombed-out wreckage of 1945 into the Europe, and Berlin is arguably Europe’s world’s most successful manufacturing most energetic city, one of the few cer- economy put their money into the Ruhr Valley, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich tifiable sites of an active bohemia. The recipe for bohemia includes lots and Hamburg; they avoided investing in
photo: axel kuhlmann
the dull, barricaded western sector of a once-great city near the Polish border, whose population was draining away and which was hemmed in on all sides by Soviet tanks. (As West Berliners used to say: “Every direction you drive in is East.”) Visitors to West Berlin rolled into the Zoologischer Garten train station, descended into a bleak parking lot across from the elephant pit in the zoo, fought their way through a couple of blocks of sex shops and peep shows and landed on the Kurfürstendamm, one of Europe’s most expensive shopping streets. But it was a castle built on air: a shopfront for capitalism maintained by nato subsidy. In East Berlin, meanwhile, little was built for forty years other than the vast, soulless boulevard of Stalinallee, tailor-made for parading tanks, and a tall silver television tower in Alexanderplatz whose purpose was to oblige Westerners peering over the Wall to concede that East Germany, too, had technology; everything else stagnated. Stagnation during a period of vigorous capitalism is the necessary prelude to bohemian creativity. In 1991 when Germany reunited and named Berlin as its capital, a massive building campaign began. Nearly twenty years later, the building continues. The no man’s land that used to surround the Reichstag when the Berlin Wall ran directly behind it has been converted into an elegant modernist civil service quarter arching over a bend in the Spree River. The museums have been renovated and modernized. Yet almost two decades after demonstrators shifted their chants from Wir sind das Volk (We are the people) to Wir sind ein Volk (We are one people), West Germans and East Germans barely
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mix and maintain quite different cultures. One of the few districts where mixing has occurred is Prenzlauer Berg.
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n returning to Prenzlauer Berg last summer, I hardly recognized it. Sandblasting, renovation and repainting have honed the older apartment buildings to tapered elegance. Squads of cyclists race down the red bicycle lanes on the sidewalks. Nearly every block has a small bookstore, new or second-hand, reflecting the owner’s taste and interests. The other shops are also small and independent: fruit and vegetable outlets run by Vietnamese families, cycling shops, Internet cafés and more inexpensive restaurants than I could count. Any night of the week, it seemed, I could walk into the opening of an exhibition at an art gallery. At these events, as many people were speaking English or Russian as German. The suffocation of Greenwich Village by real estate development has dispatched New York artists to East Berlin, where they can afford studio space; similar motives have attracted artists from Moscow and London. In a corner store run by a West African man who sold traditional carvings alongside cigarettes and beer, I was told that Prenzlauer Berg has eighty-eight identifiable ethnic communities, in addition to both East and West Germans. A frenzied intercultural dating scene animates the cafés; yet, in apparent contradiction to the district’s air of youthful insouciance, and its identification as one of Berlin’s three gay neighbourhoods, Prenzlauer Berg has the most prolific women in Germany. Local women average more than two children each, possibly the highest rate in Europe. Young mothers in tank tops, pushing prams with thin, tattooed arms, take over the sidewalks in the morning hours. Parks that East German commissars built for factory workers are overrun with infants. There are two keys to this cauldron
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of creativity. One is affordability. Berlin has little economic activity other than government and tourism. This is particularly pronounced in Prenzlauer Berg, where people have jobs rather than careers, drifting from an art gallery to a graphic design studio to the workshop of a local fashion designer, none of whom may stay in business long. Even the entrepreneurs who renovated my apartment building were rock musicians who started their business on government grants. The second, less obvious, but possibly even more significant factor underlying Prenzlauer Berg’s bohemian culture, is the way in which residual symbols of East German socialism have been assimilated into the neighbourhood’s ethos. After a fierce debate in the mid-1990s, plans to remove socialist street names and statues were reversed, and many of these distinctive “eastern” features were retained. Ernst Thälmann continues to tower over the park that bears his name. If Prenzlauer Berg incarnates some positive features of globalization, such as vibrant intercultural interaction, while it has avoided such crass or demeaning consequences as big-box uniformity and homeless people, it is because the neighbourhood’s residents, who vote for a bewildering array of left-wing political parties, have inherited a public sphere that assists them in articulating opposition to negative features of contemporary capitalism. Bohemia exists because people support policies to maintain it. This may be the most important lesson Prenzlauer Berg has to teach us.
Stephen Henighan’s most recent book of fiction is A Grave in the Air (Thistledown, 2007), stories of Germany and Eastern Europe. Read more of his work at geist.com.
COMMENT
Role Models and Readers Agreeing and disagreeing with the pugnacious John Ruskin
Alberto Manguel
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n summer 2009, I received a letter from Professor Michael Thorne of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, letting me know that that venerable institution had decided to award me an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters. My reaction to the news was threefold. First, gratified astonishment at the discovery that the University Board, probably in state of midsummer whimsy, had picked my name for this splendid honour. Second, shameful acceptance of the fact that, while most of my learned colleagues have had to work hard in school for many years, I, having dropped out of university after a single semester, was about to receive a doctorate free of charge. If further evidence were needed of the unfairness of all things human, there it is. However, in his kind letter, Professor Thorne speaks of honouring individuals “who will serve as a role model to those graduating.” This, I explained with regret in my answer to Professor Thorne, was a role I felt obliged to decline. I would accept the honour with great pride—but on condition of not having to act as a role model. Role models are always disappointing. James Joyce, in his old age, was stopped by an admirer on the street, who bowed to him and exclaimed: “Master! May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?” To which Joyce answered: “No, it’s done lots of other things besides.” All appointed role models have done “lots of other things besides.” Third, and more seriously, my reaction to the news was delight in the
image: john ruskin in VANITY FAIR, 1872
knowledge that this university, so recklessly granting me this honour, was named after one of my best-beloved writers, the pugnacious John Ruskin. He is not one of my role models: I wouldn’t want to follow the example of his private life, nor do I endorse all of
his fiery opinions. However, I wholeheartedly share most of Ruskin’s beliefs: that art and literature, far from helping us escape from reality, push our noses into reality and encourage us to take action against daily acts of injustice; that beauty has a restorative power; that greed is society’s greatest evil. And, above all, that people are in general more intelligent than they are led to believe, and that art is for everyone. On all this I agree with Ruskin. On November 12, I was asked to
address the students graduating this year from Anglia Ruskin University. I began by pointing out that these students, receiving their diplomas after many years of hard work, were about to enter a world in which the things Ruskin fought against are still rife: a world in ecological danger, in which the policies of greed make it very difficult to find decent jobs, a world that puts forward the values of the quick and easy instead of the values of reflective slowness and the pleasures of difficulty to which the university would have accustomed them. In spite of this, I said, I believed that they could, and would, succeed. The reason is that every one of these students (from all over the world and ranging in age from seventeen to seventy) had an ability that has enabled us, as a species, to survive up to now—and, if we use it wisely, will enable us to survive in the future: the ability to imagine. The biologist Richard Dawkins has argued that imagination was developed by humans in order to experience the world before we experience it in the flesh; to learn, for instance, that a lion will bite you if you put your hand in its maw, before you physically put your hand in its maw. Ruskin’s mother didn’t believe in this educational imagination. Once, when baby Ruskin reached out to touch a lit candle, his mother stopped the nurse who was about to pull away his hand. “Let him do it,” she said. “Then he will learn.” And presumably, Ruskin did learn that flames can burn us. But we don’t need to burn our hand in order to learn that. We can read about it in books, and about all other manner of dangers and delights. We can learn about the world in the stories that we have imagined in order to put the world into words. Reading can be a pleasant cautionary experience. Maybe, if we had read Dickens’s Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 71
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Martin Chuzzelwit more carefully, we would have recognized in the dealings of the Eden Land Corporation the dynamics of the American real estate schemes that crashed the world economy; if we had remembered the words of the ’umble Uriah Heep in David Copperfield we would have understood what these companies’ speeches of contrition really meant. Maybe, if we had paid more attention to the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, as he tells Alice that there’s no room at the tea table when, in fact, as Alice points out, there’s plenty of room, we would have spotted the selfish Mad Hatters who say that there’s no room for new Alices at the work table. Maybe if we had stopped to consider the ruthless, power-hungry motives of Agamemnon in the Iliad, ready to sacrifice his daughter to obtain fair winds for his fleet, we would know the real motives behind the warmongers of today. Again, I don’t agree with Ruskin on everything. For example, in spite of
being a brilliantly keen reader, Ruskin was rather shy in recognizing the extraordinary power we readers have. He said that we read in order to get at the author’s meaning—not to find our own. I think he was wrong. I think we very much read to find our own meaning, in the author’s meaning. We read to lend words to our experience. As we read, we translate, as it were, the author’s words into our own experience, enlarging the meaning of those words, generation after generation. Not finding just any meaning, of course, if we read honestly, but meanings that many times escaped even the author, who is often the least shrewd of the readers of that text. We read to understand our intuition of the world, to discover that someone a thousand miles and years away has put into words our most intimate desires and our most secret fears. Reading is a collaborative act. This power that we, as readers, have, is one of the many powers society tries
to keep hidden from us. Consumer society is afraid of our individual powers, and wants us to believe that we are too stupid to make our own choices. We mustn’t let anyone tell us that we are not clever enough, or talented enough, or fit enough for whatever it is we want to do. There will be (because there always are) financial considerations, family considerations, considerations of health and prejudice and lack of opportunity, but in most cases, in spite of the overwhelming odds against us, we can and will imagine ways to overcome them. G. K. Chesterton said that the most extraordinary thing about miracles is that they happen. I believe we are capable of performing miracles. Alberto Manguel is the award-winning author of hundreds of works, most recently The Blind Bookkeeper and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography, both long essays, and All Men are Liars, a novel. Read more of his Geist work at geist.com.
artists in this issue Rob Bellinger is a photographer who lives in the northeastern U.S. See more of his work at rbellinger.com. Jeremy Bruneel is an award-winning illustrator whose work has been published in Saturday Night, B.C. Business, the Globe and Mail, the Georgia Straight and other periodicals. Kate Crane is a mixed-media artist and compulsive art journaler who lives in England. She writes for a craft magazine and was published by Somerset. See her work at thekathrynwheel.blogspot .com. Rebecca Dolen is the co-founder of the Regional Assembly of Text, a stationery shop in Vancouver. She has illustrated the last four Geist covers. Page 72 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
Allison Friebertshauser is an illustrator and writer who knew all those years of doodling through school would pay off one day. Maybe she’ll even update her website: allisonfriebs.wordpress.com. Erinna Gilkison is a book editor who enjoys eating real food. She is from New Zealand and lives and works in Vancouver. Axel Kuhlmann is a photographer and an apolitical scientist who lives and works in Berlin. Visit him at abbilder.com. Bernie Lyon is an illustrator who lives in Vancouver and blogs at splinterinyour eye.blogspot.com with Lee Bacchus, a photographer and writer. To see the full Carvolution image, visit geist.com.
The Royal Art Lodge (1996–2008) was an art collective founded by Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, Drue Langlois, Jonathan Pylypchuk and Adrian Williams in Winnipeg. See their work at royalartlodge.com. Silas Polkinghorne is a photographer and journalist from Saskatoon who now studies law at the University of Victoria and will soon pursue a public-interest legal practice. Cedric Sam is an it and digital media specialist who was born and raised in Montreal and now lives in Hong Kong. Visit him at cedric.sam.name.
ENDNOTES
Reviews, comments, curiosa
The Artist as Coureur de bois Tom Thomson, godfather of the Group of Seven, drowned in an Ontario lake under mysterious circumstances, and ever since, his reputation has been the stuff of legend
Daniel Francis
T
he story of Tom Thomson’s life invariably begins with his death. Both a tragedy and a mystery, it has invited enough speculation to fill several books. On July 8, 1917, Thomson, a thirtynine-year-old artist from Toronto, goes paddling in Algonquin Park. Later his overturned canoe is found floating in the water. A fruitless search is organized, but a week later, a young girl out fishing with her father snags a body on her line. The father reports the discovery and two local men retrieve the corpse, which turns out to be the missing painter. Perhaps it was an accident. But Thomson was an expert canoeist; it made no sense that he should fall into the water and drown (even if he was, as rumour has it, standing up to take a piss). Perhaps he killed himself. There were theories of a disappointment in love. Perhaps it was murder. There was that gash on his forehead and fishing line tangled around his leg. Though they have been asked again and again, the questions have never been resolved. With Thomson’s death, his reputation took flight, and it is the reputation— legend is a better word—that is the subject of Sherrill Grace’s latest
book, Inventing Tom Thomson (McGillQueen’s University Press). “I can think of no other modern Canadian, in any field of endeavour, who has been as obsessively invented and reinvented as Tom Thomson,” Grace writes. She states emphatically that her book is not a biography. It is more a meta-biography, a book about other books (and paintings, photographs, films, exhibitions and plays), a book about “what others have done with Thomson’s biography.” “The Canadian way of death is death by accident,” Margaret Atwood wrote in Survival. If this is so, if a country can be said to have “a way of death,” then Tom Thomson’s is our exemplar. But so is his life. For one thing, he pioneered a new role for the artist. Arthur Lismer, a fellow painter, wrote of him: “He could drop a line in places, and catch a fish where other experienced fishermen had failed. He identified a bird song, and noted changes in the weather. He could find his way over open water to a portage or a camp on a night as black as ink.” This was a novel, distinctly Canadian, way of describing an artist, the
painter as coureur de bois, an adventurer who goes out into the woods and tracks down a painting like a hunter going after a bear. In reality, Thomson came to the wilderness quite late in his life. He grew up on a farm and passed his early adulthood in urban settings (Seattle and Toronto). When, at age thirty-four, he made his first trip to Algonquin Park in 1912, he had to borrow a packsack. Something clicked, however, and thereafter Thomson spent every summer in the park, retreating to Toronto only for the winter months. His paintings done during this period, especially The West Wind and The Jack Pine, remain iconic images of the Canadian landscape. “It grows in the national ethos as our one and only tree in a country of trees,” the artist Harold Town wrote about the central image in the former; the latter is the only modern painting reproduced in the federal government’s recently published guide for new immigrants. Thomson’s familiarity with the outdoors impressed his artist friends, who, after his death, went on to form the Group of Seven. They saw him as an untutored genius whose inspiration sprang directly from the raw Canadian landscape, unmediated by the dead hand of tradition. This was the image Group members created for themselves as well, backwoods painters who were capturing the true Canada for the first
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time, artistic pathfinders following in the footsteps of the explorers and the fur traders. The country was ready for such a role model in the years before and during the Great War. Canadians were still wondering how to find their place in the world. Many nations seek their identity in history, but as a young country, Canada did not have much. So Canadians looked to geography and were happy to find meaning in the wild, unsettled landscape of the Shield country (“the North” as people thought of it then, even if Algonquin Park lies within a half day’s drive of Toronto). Many Canadians also shared an anxiety about the forces of industrialism that were reshaping their society, not always for the better. In response they sought solace in the regenerative power of nature and particularly in the image of Canada as a great white North, a blank slate on which a different country could be written. Thomson’s life and art
seemed to be a throwback to a simpler, more authentic time and a connection to a simpler, more authentic place. “If there is one quality or image that all inventions of Tom Thomson share and exploit, it is the association of the man and his art with some notion of the North, and, thereby, with Canada itself,” Grace writes. “In this portrait of Tom Thomson, Canada pictures itself.” Grace, who is a professor of literature at the University of British Columbia, argues that Thomson also came to represent a prototype for the ideal of Canadian masculinity. Successive biographers and hagiographers re-created him as “a simple man, spiritually in touch with nature, priest-like in his pure celebration of the wilderness, handsome but untouchable and solitary, good- natured but reserved.” Other than Pierre Trudeau, and perhaps Grey Owl, it is hard to think of any public figure who has embodied this idea of the Canadian male better than Thomson. Among all the myths and inventions, Grace concludes that Thomson was a volatile loner, probably a man with bipolar disorder who self-medicated with booze, someone whom she may not have liked if they had met. But what makes Thomson so attractive to her as a subject, if not a personality, is the way he has become the embodiment of an imagined Canada (northern, wild, empty, unspoiled) and an imagined Canadian (solitary woodsman, sensitive nature lover, New World pioneer). In the end Grace’s book is about the country, not the artist at all; in her hands the invention of Tom Thomson becomes the invention of a version of Canada.
Daniel Francis is a writer and historian. His most recent project is an online history of coastal British Columbia, at knowbc.blogspot.com. To read more of his Geist work, visit geist.com.
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CAULIFLOWERS AND TRACTORS Lily Gontard
T
he “found” book often brings me
more pleasure than the full-price, sought-after book because of the haphazard events that bring us together. A book often makes its way into my hands via someone else’s recommendation, but the true foundling catches my eye in unexpected places—such as the local laundromat, where a clamour of books, mostly lascivious paperbacks, perch on the window sill. My two favourite reads last summer were both secondhand and strangely thematic of my summer. In July I became enamoured of the cream-coloured heads of cauliflower in my garden. Yes, I was fascinated by, even wondered at, the growth of these vegetables in our hostile Yukon climate. It’s this near-inexplicable emotional reaction that humans have to various plants that Michael Pollan examines in The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (Random House). The book was published in 2001, but I found my presumably well-travelled copy in the spring of 2009, dedicated “with happy memories and much love” from Gillian, at the Caribou Laundromat in the minuscule northern town of Atlin, B.C. The apple, the tulip, the potato and marijuana are each examined through aspects of desire aroused at the height of their popularity. Sweetness: the apple’s transition from the sour fruit juiced into homemade cider in frontier America to the wholesome symbol of mom’s apple pie. Beauty: from bulb to petal, the utterly useless tulip, a plant without any purpose but to drive the Dutch crazy with its beauty. Control:
ENDNOTES
the potato, controlled to the point of becoming the perfect crop. Intoxication: marijuana, the plant that has gained a modern following akin to that of the tulipomania. Pollan mixes fact and anecdote as he recounts his journey on the historic trail of these four plants. The obsession that brought each of them to iconic status in a certain era made me feel less self-conscious about my own amour for the sweet cauliflower in my garden. It’s a fun and interesting read for both green thumbs and those who kill plants just by looking at them, and pbs adapted the book for a tv documentary that you can watch at video.pbs.org. My friend Kate, who reads books at a speed that I envy, gave me A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (Penguin) when my mother was passing her final days in an Ottawa hospice. My older sister and I
too much like my own life—the book had me laughing out loud from start to finish. It’s a turbo-charged read, guaranteed to be finished over a weekend, even for snail’s-pace readers like myself. The characters are rich and the situation is more clotted than Devonshire cream, but just as deliciously decadent. There is a dash or two of sober Ukrainian history, and a Reader’s Digest version of the history of tractors. It didn’t change my life—or maybe it did (the acrimony between my sister and me has diminished and there are irregular emails across the five thousand kilometres that separate us)—but Tractors gave me a heck of a lot of joy when I needed to laugh the most.
THE BEATS GO ON Michael Hayward
W
atching the 1959 film Pull My Daisy is an exercise in literary nos-
were the picture of sororal harmony, but only at our mother’s
talgia: a glimpse into a vanished corner of Beat-era bohemia on New York’s Lower East Side. Gregory Corso and Allen
bedside. Elsewhere it was quarrel as usual
Ginsberg essentially play themselves: bohemian poets who drop in to the “pad”
(something about the teak furniture). “What was Kate thinking?” I asked myself when I started to
of their more straitlaced friend, a railway brakeman (the artist Larry Rivers playing a character based on Neal Cassady), and disrupt a meal at which a bishop is the guest of honour. This is effectively a silent film, with voice-over narration written and delivered by Jack Kerouac and jazzy music provided by David Amram, who also plays a character named Mezz McGillicuddy. Pull My Daisy had no great success as a work of art in its day, and was probably never intended to be more than an experiment with film; over the years, however, it has acquired the
read Lewycka’s story of sisters who’ve become enemies after the elder finagles a codicil from their dying mother shortly before her death. Luckily for me in my paranoia, the warring sisters set aside their differences to protect their widowed Ukrainian octogenarian father from marrying a buxom thirty-something Ukrainian vamp in England. (My own papa is safely settled in a nursing home, power of attorney securely shared between my sister and myself.) The sisters then join forces with their father to chase the woman back to Ukraine. Aside from my initial discomfort—this plot was a little
Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 75
ENDNOTES
status of a legend—just as work from the Beat Generation writers has inexorably made its way into the modern American canon. There’s a sweetness and innocence about it all: we’re watching a group of friends just having a bit of self-conscious fun. Perhaps “bittersweetness” would be a better term: of the film’s main participants, only three— Amram, Robert Frank and the poet Peter Orlovsky—are still alive. Pull My Daisy is one of three short films (the others are The Sin of Jesus, 1961, and Me and My Brother, 1969) to be found in Volume 1 of Robert Frank: The Complete Film Works (Steidl). As far as I know, this is the first appearance of Pull My Daisy on dvd, and I applaud Steidl for its ongoing program to make all of Frank’s work—film, photography and writing— available once again. In nature, decay begins the moment an organism dies, and the body begins to feed legions of lesser life forms as the various carrion insects and microorganisms play their appointed roles. Contemplating two recent collections of letters from the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, it is tempting to compare this life-and-death process with the field of literature, and the attendant work of the literary biographers and executors who labour to collect, collate, annotate and edit the secondary efforts—journals, notebooks and letters— of the departed literary lions. The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (Da Capo) covers the period from 1941 to 1997, the year of Ginsberg’s death. A note from Bill Morgan, editor of the book, gives a sense of the winnowing involved in forming this collection: “after having unearthed more than 3,700 Ginsberg
Page 76 • G E IST 75 • Winter 2009
ENDNOTES
letters from every corner of the world,
in India, seduction (more than once) by a
I’ve pared them down to this edition of 165 of the very best”; the thought of
plate of mango slices, emigration halfway across the world, serious talks by shocked school principals, bul-
different lives than he has, turn away. They cannot forgive him either. The stories, which feel like chapters, are narrated by
imagination. Fortunately Bill Morgan also served as editor for The Selected
lying by the spirit of a
different people and skip back and forth in time and place to create a multi-faceted,
dead mother, a liberat-
well-written and engrossing work.
Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary
ing haircut and a fateful airplane flight all
3,700
extant
letters
staggers
the
Snyder (Counterpoint); as a result the two volumes complement each other
deployed so that the disembodied voice can find someone to love.
rather than competing. The
selection
of
Ginsberg/Snyder letters is the more engaging of the two collections because we are witness to the evolution of a singular, deep friendship, and we can hear both sides of a conversation that spanned several continents and more than four decades. As I worked my way through these letters, I couldn’t help wondering what the next generation of literary biographers and executors will make of the digital detritus left by the tech-savvy writers of today: the e-mail messages, the blogs, the tweets. Somehow The Collected Tweets of Mavis Gallant just doesn’t seem a likely frontlist title.
STARTING OVER, OR NOT Patty Osborne
I
n A Little Distillery in Nowgong by Ashok Mathur (Arsenal Pulp Press), an ordinary Parsi family takes a multigenerational, multi-continental journey (which may or may not be predestined) that starts when a young boy begins talking (in his head at least) to a disembodied voice that claims to be his yet-to-be-born grandchild. The story carries on, twisting and turning in unpredictable ways, from India to England to Canada and then, perhaps, back to England. Once you start reading, you’ll have to go along for the full ride, a ride that includes the best rum
Meanwhile the world goes through a war, India is partitioned and the streets and hospitals of Delhi are filled with rioters,
“Aquilonia is a place of great and terrible beauty . . . but one false step and the hills, the trees, even the stars, can develop fangs that tear you to shreds.” This is how Lina Medaglia describes a mountain village in Italy that is the centrepiece for
rock ’n’ roll hits the airwaves and televi-
her novel The Demons of Aquilonia (Inanna), a story that slowly reveals the
sion worms its way into every living room. What’s an ordinary Parsi family to do as their children embrace new ways?
darkness below the surface of a large extended family and a
Watch, adapt and carry on.
close-knit community, and shows how the scars left on a young
In the linked short stories that make up Barnacle Love by Anthony De Sa (Doubleday), Manuel, a young Portuguese fisherman, boards a ship bound for the Grand Banks, gets lost and then rescued while he’s out in his dory, narrowly misses being
arrested
and deported, and eventually makes a new life in Toronto, a life
that is just as difficult as his life had been at home on the tiny island of Sno Miguel, but in different ways. In the early stories, Manuel is strong, handsome and full of confidence that he will succeed in the New World. But as he grows older and his born-in-Canada son takes up the narrative, we see him as an underemployed immigrant who still speaks broken English and who is ultimately disappointed in himself for not living up to the high hopes that surrounded him when he was a golden boy back in San Miguel. While Manuel, who cannot forgive himself, rages (often while drunk), his Canadian children, who have lived such
girl can stay with her even after she and her immediate family cross the ocean to Canada. The story switches between Toronto and Aquilonia and between then and now to show us how the main character, Licia, over half a lifetime, learns about and comes to understand and recover from the web of secrets and abuse that made her despise the picturesque village. No wonder a person would welcome a clean new country like Canada: wouldn’t it be nice if it were true that we have no demons here? This story feels like an autobiography but flows like a well-constructed novel.
READING THE TERRAIN Michael Hayward
S
tranger Wycott’s Place (New Star) is the seventeenth title published under the Transmontanus imprint, “a series of short illustrated books about some of the more unusual aspects of life
Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 77
ENDNOTES
in a corner of the world currently known as British Columbia.” The corner that author John Schreiber explores while searching
for
traces
of
William
“Stranger” Wycott, is B.C.’s CaribooChilcotin: a high, dry, grassy and pineforested plateau located roughly north and west of the Fraser River canyon. It was—and is—a rich land for raising cattle, and some of the province’s first homesteaders
settled
there
in
the
mid-1800s and tried to do just that. When Schreiber looks up at the hills and ridgelines, he also sees traces of the original, pre-homesteading cultures, “those ghostly 1,000- to 10,000-year-old trails that crisscross this country.” What better way to get to know a place than by walking through it? “Old trails live, and the way to keep a trail alive, I’m told, is to walk on it”; so walk he does. Stranger Wycott’s Place is an excellent example of how one can “re-imagine” a once-true story, a demonstration of how to put flesh on a few fragmentary historic bones. Schreiber does a great job of grafting “facts” (good old-fashioned archival material) onto the oral record (stories that still circulate in the region), and he writes a nice, tight sentence too. I’ve driven through some of the region that Schreiber describes in Stranger Wycott’s Place, but reading this book made me realize how much I didn’t see; it makes me want to go back again, slow down, and walk those ghostly trails. The founding (and eventual failure) of the community of Walhachin, situated in sagebrush country—the dry benchland just west of Kamloops, B.C.—is one of many fascinating stories from the early settler days of the province. Walhachin’s founders envisaged a prosperous future for the town, with extensive orchards Page 78 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
farmed by pioneering upper-class English land-holders, and many Brits were
novel, and its back cover displays blurbs
persuaded to emigrate to Walhachin in
Michael Ondaatje and Zadie Smith. The
the early 1900s, seduced by this over-optimistic vision. Theresa Kish-
book opens with a third- person account of a press junket to the Venice Biennale,
kan’s novel The Age of Water Lilies
by Jeffrey Atman, a burned-out British
(Brindle & Glass) is set partly in the Walhachin of 1913 and partly in 1960s
journalist who almost bails on the assignment (deleting the email message he’s
Victoria, where Tessa, a girl of seven,
poised to send to his editor: “I can’t do
befriends Miss Oakden, “an elderly lady [who] poured tea into cups of thin china
this shit any more”) before eventually deciding to go. The trip turns out to be a
mottled with roses and offered biscuits
hedonistic,
from a tin crowned with the dour Queen Victoria.” The Age of Water Lilies is essen-
fuelled experience, where work is the farthest thing from Jeffrey Atman’s mind.
tially Miss Oakden’s story, beginning with
The second half of the book presents a darker vision: a first-person narrative told by an unnamed British
her days as a spirited young woman living in Walhachin, chafed by the constraints imposed by parents and the rest of the
by William Boyd, David Mitchell,
floor joists of Stewart Monumental Works near Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, is described as breathing “the dust of both the
drink-and-canapé-
journalist on assignment in the Indian holy city of Varanasi.
immigrant British community, who try to maintain the strict social conventions of Victorian England while living on the Empire’s frontier. Kishkan has a poet’s gift for language (Tessa, playing in the granite sand that has settled beneath the
erotic,
As days stretch into weeks he gradually goes native, and begins a long, slow slide into madness in the shadow of the burning ghats. What makes Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi so engaging is the feeling that Dyer has put his own middle-age angst on public display: it is surely no coincidence that both characters, like Dyer, are
dead and their markers stung with salt, broken by gulls”), as well as an evident love for the rich history and the astringent beauty of B.C.’s interior. The Age of Water Lilies is proof that compelling stories can be set locally; that romance and adventure can spring from Walhachin just as well as they can from Paris, New Delhi or Rome.
world-weary journalists of “a certain age.” There’s a trusting vulnerability to such behaviour, as well as an undeniable intelligence behind Dyer’s observations and in his writing, a combination that will probably allow him to continue writing about anything—and in any form— he damn well wants.
Geoff Dyer is one of those fortunate and nimble writers who has been able to write in many different literary forms—novel, essay, biography, journalism—without being pigeonholed, and who has still somehow escaped the damning label of “dilettante.” Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (Canongate) is Dyer’s latest
POLITICS TIMES TWO Daniel Francis
W
hile watching the acclaimed film Frost/Nixon on video, I was struck by how little of those historic events I recalled, even though I had lived through them. I had no memory of the famous
ENDNOTES
interviews; certainly didn’t watch them on television at the time. (“The kids were little,” my wife suggested. “We were too
and I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. I shouldn’t have. Ignatieff is an elegant writer who has produced several
busy changing diapers.”) I decided to
admirable books, but this time his back-
remedy my memory lapse by picking up Rick Perlstein’s recent book, Nixonland
ground as scholar and intellectual is overcome by his obvious desire to ingratiate
(Simon & Schuster), and suddenly I was
himself with the voting public. The title recalls—inadvertently, I assume—Sam-
asail on a sea of nostalgia. The 1960s reappeared in all their confusion (I am tempted to say “like an acid flashback,”
uel Johnson’s observation that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
but of course I never inhaled): the peace
Ignatieff is no scoundrel, but he does
marches, the assassinations, the riots, the show trials. And, central to it all, that
seem to be someone who is trying too hard to be liked. A mixture of superficial
ghastly man Nixon. Then I understood why I did not remember his conversations with Frost. By the time they aired
family history and trite homilies about
2
New Books
BY BILL MACDONALD
Canada, True Patriot Love feels like it began life as a serious project that was
on television, in 1977, I had turned away in disgust from the world of U.S. politics and was doing my best not to pay atten-
subverted by the author’s need to estab-
tion. While Nixonland is full of incident, the reader must wade
ing outside the country,” he seems to be saying, “but with such an impressive family tree how can I be anything else but
A Spooky Lighthouse Story
through a lot of bad prose to find it. Perlstein, a contributor
100 percent Canuck?” It is an unusual
18.95
to Newsweek magazine, suffers from a malady common to many journalists who write books: he thinks that telling a story is just a matter of lining up the facts in chronological order. As a result, he is a reliable chronicler of the era, but a hopeless guide. His book feels like he has just emptied his notebooks onto the blank page. My attempt to stay interested in spite of this implacable “one damn thing after another” finally failed round about 1970. But Nixonland will remain on the shelf as a useful reference to the period and a reminder, if I need one, of just how crazy America went in the ’60s.
A
s a general rule I avoid reading political pamphlets, but Michael Ignatieff, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party and our would-be prime minister, claims that his latest book, True Patriot Love (Viking Canada), is nothing of the sort
lish his bona fides as a caring Canadian. “I may have spent most of my adult life liv-
approach to politics: if you can’t vote for me, vote for my relatives. The most entertaining part of the book is watching Ignatieff turn inside out trying to distance himself from his curmudgeonly Uncle George, a.k.a. George Grant, author of the classic Lament for a Nation. Grant’s fatalistic views about the death of a distinct Canadian identity are no longer fashionable, at least in the precincts of the Liberal Party, and so Ignatieff must disown them. Grant was wrong, his nephew writes. And who has proved him wrong? Why, the Liberal Party, of course, whose wise policies (bilingualism, the flag, multiculturalism, Expo 67, to name just a few) rescued Canada from doomsayers like his uncle. Eventually the voters will decide for themselves whether they agree with Ignatieff’s version of history, or whether, as the Tories would prefer, they Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 79
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www.borealispress.com ph 613.828.0150 or fireweedcrafts@gmail.com 807.767.2705
ENDNOTES
00
5
95
resent being preached at by someone
5
5
5
5
75
whose adult life until recently was spent in the service of other goals in other places. Meanwhile, I can’t think that his
5
00
100
latest book will win him many converts.
.com
25
5
0
REMAKING HISTORY Michael Hayward
D
anton (Criterion), a 1983 film by
the Polish director Andrzej Wajda, about the French Revolution, is a claustrophobic examination of the processes
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by which political idealists become disillusioned pragmatists—in other words, professional politicians. Wajda shows us how corruption takes root at the very heart of things; even the noblest principles, he seems to say, eventually become rhetorical weapons that are wielded to achieve almost any end. It is November 1793 in Paris; the flame of the French Revolution is guttering as the Revolutionaries split into factions headed by Danton and Robespierre, who meet in the shadow of the guillotine with their respective supporters to plot each other’s downfall. Gérard Depardieu plays Danton as a rough-hewn man of the people, convinced that justice will prevail, and enormously confident—to the point of hubris—in his rhetorical gifts. But as one minor character observes: “This is a political trial. It has nothing to do with justice.” Danton stakes everything on his ability to rally “the people” to his defence: oratory as a lever that enables one man to move the masses; democracy as a process that can always be subverted by those who know which buttons to push and when. Robespierre, however, proves better adapted to the exigencies of the endgame, and Danton . . . well, saying any more would only spoil the ending. It is tempting to
100
95
75
25
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ENDNOTES
tragic accidental death and family secrets. At first this all seems melodramatic, but as the years roll by from the 1920s to the 1940s and beyond, the Evans family becomes so complex and the characters so familiar that we almost recognize the stories as our own. The most intriguing aspect of the novel is its focus on the many Newfoundlanders who left the island to find work in New York, and stayed to raise families while always thinking of home. The siblings Bert, Jim and Rose all
“Silly glasses mens club,” from It’s My Sketch Book: A Collection of Drawings from the Sketch Book of Rebecca Dolen, published by Perro Verlag Books by Artists in 2009. Rebecca Dolen also created the illustrations and collaborated on the design of covers for Geist 72, 73, 74 and 75. It’s My Sketch Book also includes “Mr. Mitten,” “Good Hair,” “My Cat vs. Whale Shark” and other features. Perro Verlag produces beautiful, unusual handmade books. See more at perroverlag.com.
seek their fortune in Brooklyn, and none can anticipate the directions their lives will take. Their sister Annie stays at home, marrying
late
but
raising two of her siblings’ children and providing a rock for the family members as their fortunes change. It’s a migration I knew nothing about, and
watch this film as one would watch newsreel footage documenting events exactly as they occurred, but contemporary events inevitably introduce their own subtext: it is worth noting that Danton was filmed during the Solidarnosc years in Poland. As the screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière points out in one of the short documentaries included in this Criterion edition, cinema is “the only way we have to rebuild and remake history.”
ELSEWHERE Kris Rothstein
D
ree is a scattered, lovable, totally weird teenager who sometimes makes such unexpected connections that it’s hard to keep up with her thoughts and actions. She is the heroine of Jocelyn Brown’s novel The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1–19 (Coach House), and yes, by the time you finish the book you will understand the title. Dree’s dad has just died and
she and her browbeaten mother and per-
the author, Trudy J. Morgan-Cole,
fect sister are stranded in gross Edmonton weather and late for the memorial pancake brunch, which kind of sums up their lives.
provides all the details without trying to overstuff the story with historical facts.
Dree knows her dad was far from perfect, but he could organize a killer treasure hunt and had promised her a
about the future of Newfoundland when it is invited to join Confederation—for most
bit of money to get to a big craft fair in Toronto. For Dree it is craft or die, which is how she meets Jessie, a kindred spirit whose father’s suicide turns out to be connected to a whole string of family secrets that will finally help Dree find her niche. Brown’s complex characters, unusual narrative style and fabulously quirky dialogue make this a fun book with layer after layer to uncover.
America is more familiar than any notion of Canada.
By the Rivers of Brooklyn (Breakwater) includes all of the dramas of three generations of Newfoundlanders: an illegitimate child, a loveless marriage,
Just as fascinating is the family discussion
of
the
Newfoundlander
characters,
Albert Fraser is a man living through tough times. His impoverished English family moves to British Columbia, where fourteen-year-old Al goes to work in a mine and then volunteers for the army. He returns home not a hero but a bit of an embarrassment and something of a ghost. In Underground (Cormorant), June Hutton creates a believable character, perhaps too real in that we can never really understand his desires or motivations; the novel is almost more a story of a lost generation than of one character or one issue. We are taken deep into Al’s psyche as he suffers the aftermath of Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 81
ENDNOTES
World War i: the violence that caused him
contain complete sentences or thoughts,
to brutally kill an enemy, the physical reminder of being shelled—metal splinters
and they are indeed often ambiguous.”
that emerge from his body for half a century, the trauma of being buried alive during a bombing. Al’s meagre post-war living is destroyed by the Depression. He becomes homeless and jobless and is sent to a labour camp. He then finds his way to the Spanish Civil War, not so much
Despite these disclaimers, Notebooks 1951–1959 will be fascinating to anyone interested in Camus’s writing or in the process of writing generally. Some of the fragments here showed up in Camus’s novel The Fall and in the posthumously published The First Man. There are also dozens of single-paragraph seeds—plot
because he has been politicized but because he feels it is something he
summaries, bits of dialogue, etc.—for
can do well. Hutton is
cumulative effect is a pervasive sense of loss and a host of unanswerable questions
concerned with creating atmosphere and this she accomplishes well; even parts of the story that drag a little are dense with details of sound and sight. And
novels that Camus never got to write. The
as to what Camus might have made from these fragmentary notes had his life not been so tragically cut short. At first by personal inclination and later
although the period research shows through too obviously in spots, Underground definitely captures a sense of the
to evade Nazi persecution, the literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin led a somewhat nomadic life, in the course of
past and a time of great upheaval.
which he distributed a series of literary caches—notes and early essay drafts— among a small circle of correspondents
RAW MATERIALS Michael Hayward
D
uring his lifetime, the Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus
had formal typescripts made from seven of his cahiers (writer’s notebooks), and two volumes of the notebooks (containing six of the transcribed cahiers) were published shortly after the author died in an automobile accident in 1960. The entries contained in the third volume, Notebooks 1951–1959 (Ivan R. Dee), cover the last years of Camus’s life and include the seventh cahier as well as a generous selection of related letters and notes. As the book’s translator, Ryan Bloom, points out: “these entries are not always solid pieces of polished prose; they are often notes at the rudimentary level, they do not always Page 82 • G E IST 75 • Winter 2009
and close friends. Some of these caches were lost in the chaotic events and aftermath of World War ii, among them the contents of the briefcase that Benjamin had with him during his failed, and ultimately fatal, attempt to escape from France to Spain in September 1940. What remains of this scattered material can be found in the Walter Benjamin Archive, the physical location of which is not made clear by the book Walter Benjamin’s Archive (Verso; translated by Esther Leslie). Each of the book’s thirteen chapters explores a different aspect of this trove of Benjamin ephemera: chapter 7 is devoted to “Picture Postcards”; chapter 9 focuses on “Graphic Forms.” Chapter 6 examines Benjamin’s notebooks, which Erdmut Wizisla (in the introduction to that
ENDNOTES
chapter) ranks with the notebooks of other prominent literary figures, including “the black Efalin books with Brecht’s Fatzer fragment, [and] Proust’s Carnets.” Walter Benjamin’s Archive is lavishly illustrated in colour, with
came with a fainter hope, but Sontag asked her son, explicitly and implicitly, to share her conviction that she would win, she would be the exception, she would beat the odds—as she had beaten them twice before, in bouts with breast cancer and
directed by Marc Webb, lives up to its glowing reviews. The film is, dare I say it, a modern indie version of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Aside from the obvious plot parallels—slightly undersized leading males falling for tall, beautiful, quirky
uterine cancer. In describing Rieff’s book, publicists and reviewers have said that
women—the film’s eclectic style (from the
Sontag was a woman who “loved life,” who
bird of happiness in the campy musical
was “fiercely alive.” That is true, but in Rieff’s more complicated (and interesting)
sequence) and non-linear plot structure invite comparison to
considered another step in a process like a secular canonization of a figure who has,
version, Sontag’s fighting spirit owed as
the film that rede-
much to her refusal to give in, as to her
fined the romantic
in recent decades, begun to acquire many of the trappings of a literary saint.
passion for living. “My earliest childhood decision,” she wrote in her journal: “By
comedy when it was released in 1977. As with Annie Hall, the
numerous reproductions of postcards, envelopes and letters, as well as handwritten journal pages. They combine to create a sort of “shrine between hard covers”;
the
book
might
even
be
God, they won’t get me.” In her last year, when she was offered interventions that
FIGHTING SPIRIT Mary Schendlinger
I
n his book Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir (Simon &
Schuster), David Rieff offers an account of the death of his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, that says a lot about her life as well. Sontag died in 2004 from complications of a particularly mean blood cancer. The only thing worse than the illness was the treatments, but Sontag endured
them, sought them, threw herself into them. The riskier and more gruelling they were, the deeper her conviction that she would survive. She spent days on the telephone and Internet, searching for new research, explanations, clinics, treatments; and she drew in family and close friends to help her. When her doctors had exhausted every conventional treatment, she flew across the country to undergo a bone-marrow transplant; when that failed, leaving behind some excruciating symptoms (“torture is not too strong or hyperbolic a word,” Rieff writes), she began taking an experimental drug even though the staff at the clinic thought it “medically futile.” Each new treatment
were essentially palliative, she declared, “I am not interested in quality of life!” What was a devoted son to do? Rieff’s love for his mother and his need to console her were as instinctive as his habit, as a writer and thinker, of grappling with the truth. So he closed off a few emotional passageways in order to say what she wanted to hear, or at least not to say what she didn’t want to hear. And throughout this smart, unsentimental memoir about Sontag—which a lesser writer, and a lesser man, would have hijacked—he searches his heart. Did he do the right thing in “impersonating an optimist”? Was it an act of dishonesty? charity? emotional courage? “There are those who can reconcile themselves to death,” he writes, “and those who can’t.” In naming the two, and in choosing not to assign moral ratings to them, Rieff offers abiding love for his mother and respect for her choices in how to live, and how to die.
CELEBRATING IMPERFECTION Emma Myers
T
he decision to see a summer flick always involves the risk of disappointment, but (500) Days of Summer,
use of the split screen to the cartoon blue-
key to the success of (500) Days of Summer is the narrative technique. By visually mimicking the post-breakup psychological process of “sifting through the pieces” of a relationship gone wrong, it rises above traditional Hollywood rom-coms, rejecting myths of closure, unity and perfection and instead celebrating and poking some fun at imperfection and uncertainty. Rather than a sappy, predictable saga, it is a series of comically endearing moments that provide vicarious psychotherapeutic catharsis. (500) Days also re-evaluates the “happy ending.” We are warned at the start of the film that although this is a story of “boy meets girl,” it is not a love story. It is immaterial whether the couple ends up together, for each gains something from the relationship: for Summer it is the affirmation that love and fate do exist, and for Tom it is the inspiration to pursue a career in architecture. At the end of the film, as Tom moves from Summer to Autumn, we can almost hear Woody Allen’s voice reinforcing the film’s message with the punchline of an old joke: that relationships are “crazy and irrational, but we keep going through them because most of us need the eggs.” Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 83
ENDNOTES
humour and our inevitable ends. During
LAUGHING WITH DEATH Dan Post
his opening remarks, Wake hinted that the event may have been mistitled—it named an impossibility of sorts—but to my sur-
“A
re you here for Living With
Death?” said the cheery volunteer. I took the program from her and headed
prise I left that night with death on my mind and felt contented to know that even though dying was still a very serious thing,
into the Waterfront Theatre on Granville
it was also the punchline of one long cos-
Island, where Debra Adelaide, Lisa Moore and Bonnie Burnard were reading from
mic joke, and I could live with that.
their recent books at the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival. The solemn dimming of the lights set the mood
LONGPEN UNDER THE LIBRARY
for the aptly surnamed host and artistic
Michal Kozlowski & Sarah Maitland
director Hal Wake, who delivered an opening eulogy for the recently deceased public funding for arts organizations in
M
argaret Atwood (kind of) signed books at this year’s Vancouver
B.C. But the mourning didn’t last long. Soon after the authors were introduced, the proceedings began to feel more like the
Word on the Street, and we had the honour of (kind of) seeing the LongPen with which she did it. By the time we got down
relaxed gathering suggested by Mr. Wake’s name. Adelaide’s opening sentence of her selection had us laughing at her character
under the library and through the hallway that always smells of aged cheddar and
Delia, who ordered her own casket, then stored it on her veranda. Moore chose to read about her protagonist not in moments of grief but rather in the passionate throes of young love. By the time the floor opened for discussion, we were chuckling with Bonnie Burnard as she spoke of her own victory over death, shaking her fist figuratively at her newly vulnerable self. These three generations of female authors, whose newest novels A Household Guide to Dying (Adelaide), February (Moore) and Suddenly (Burnard) approach death and grief in different ways, proved during their readings and interaction with the crowd that death no longer commands the stone-faced silence it once did. They suggested that we’re free now to laugh at death unabashedly, free to explore the lighter side of mortality without offending others, and free to accept the kinship between
Page 84 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
into the tiny room where the LongPen had performed, the show was over and the LongPen was already back in its box. But the tech guy who was packing up the room showed us the squiggly line that the LongPen had inscribed in his copy of The Year of the Flood, which could be read as: “Thank you, Margaret Atwood.” He said that while testing the LongPen before the show he had had to ask Atwood if the squiggle is what her signature is supposed to look like. The giant screen on which Atwood’s likeness had appeared loomed above us, white and shiny. Atwood’s presence seemed to linger in the room. We could only say things like “Wow” and “This is making my day” and “No, no, the photo of the box is enough.” Outside the room, Nardwar, the annoying, tartan-wearing interviewer, stood in the hallway that smells of aged cheddar, but we didn’t take a picture of him.
LETTERS
Letters continued from page 6
SAI NTS AND SPOOKS alloween Capital of America” by Stephen Osborne (No. 74), about his ancestor in Salem during the witch trials, is fascinating and beautifully written. Recently, at a friend’s funeral in a Presbyterian chapel at McGill University, I noticed that the walls were decorated with portraits of early Calvinists, like John Knox, described as “mystics” and “saints.” They were also noted witch burners. —Ann Diamond, Montreal
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Columbia cabinet minister defended the proposed harmonized sales tax by saying that a rising tide lifts all boats. I would have thought that after the tsunami and hurricane Katrina, he’d have looked for a new metaphor. —Dave Thomson, White Rock BC MILEAGE t’s nice to read about the graces of growing older and staying smart and feisty in this reflective piece by an Old Broad who writes well (“Grey Matters” by Mary Schendlinger, No. 74). It’s also encouraging to hear about what seems to be a calmer life on the horizon, while still in the throes of early middle age, with its hot flushes, night sweats and mad interior monologues. —Anon, Cyberspace
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ORWELL AND M E was grazing your website when I happened upon your suggestion, in Guidelines for Contributors, to read George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” on the decline of writing in English. About a third of the way through, I felt as if I had driven into a bog and all four wheels were submerged to the axles. So much of what I had ever written was reduced to ashes by his treatise. Oops, sorry—what I meant to say was that my entire body of work seemed suddenly cheap and superficial. No, wait, all of my writing to date was exposed as mediocre and trite. I tried to take solace in the fact that his dissertation was not directed at me personally, but rather the entire user-base of the language, speakers and writers who have allowed English to float down a metaphorical Niagara River in an equally metaphorical barrel, oblivious to the impending disaster. Oh, I’m sorry, what I meant was that the English language is drowning in a sea of metaphors . . . No, no, no, let me try again. The language is diminished
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Isaac loves to bend, rip, chew and slobber on all printed material, but he spent a little more time than usual on this issue of Geist.
W RI T I NG I N T ONG UES huttle Survivors” by David Albahari (No. 74) is wonderful. I enjoy reading him in English as much as I enjoy reading him in Serbian. As a matter of fact, I am not aware of the language at all. —Bojana Perisic, Toronto
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WAR A ND TAXES tephen Henighan’s observations about public opinion and Canadian troops in Afghanistan (“Don’t Support Our Troops,” No. 74) reminds me of a tv interview I saw, in which a British
S
by the overuse of metaphors. From now on I must avoid cliché and (oh damn it) foreign words, and words derived recently from Latin or Greek. Pretentious words—sorry again, ostentatious, specious . . . Oh crap, how about highfalutin is that sufficiently proletarian? Whoops, I mean is that basic enough? Anyway everything must now follow the kiss principle. What’s that, you never heard of “Keep it simple, stupid”? My ability to organize a coherent thought has been ransacked, nay, destroyed. I am reduced to a noun, a verb and an occasional object or predicate, preferably monosyllabic. I feel like I am writing for Dick and Jane. I can’t even complain about the white bull. I am weary, not eating well. My writing career is finished. I need another drink . . . Damn you, Orwell . . . sleepy . . . oh so sleepy . . . —Andy Youtz, Denver CO STAN FAN Through 2009, Geist has celebrated what would have been the sixtieth birthday of the Canadian singer-songwriter Stan Rogers (1949–1983), by posting readers’ Stanecdotes. For more, go to geist.com/stanrogers.
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spent many summers aboard the Toronto Brigantine tall ships, as a participant and, later on, a crew member. I still remember how the crew assembled every day at Eight Bells. As the sun was setting we all sang Stan’s “Barrett’s Privateers”— the entire ship’s crew. Some knew the lyrics better than others, but by the end of any cruise all of us knew every last word. Those experiences fostered my passion for Stan, and ever since I have played his songs over and over, thinking back to the rolling decks of those tall ships in my youth. Thank you, Stan, for the wonderful memories you create through your music. —Julie Cornell, Cyberspace Winter 2009 • G E IST 75 • Page 85
LETTERS
GEEKVILLE love the way your content management system is set up, especially for photo essays and galleries. Gorgeous work! Give your design team for web and print a high-five for me. —Jodie Thomson, Victoria
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GEISTWORLD was lucky enough to visit the Galapagos Islands last spring, in time for the 474th anniversary (March 10, 1535) of their being discovered accidentally by Bishop Tomas de Berlanga, who drifted off course en route to Peru. And three more anniversaries: the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, the 150th of the publication of On the Origin of Species and the 50th of the islands’ designation as a national park. I took along my Geist (see photo below), and I read, walked and swam among animals who didn’t look at me as a threat or predator, but merely as an extension of their landscape. Like all responsible tourists, I was careful to leave nothing behind— except for my Geist, which I gave to the unforgettable Santa Lucia Cloud Forest Reserve (Bosque Nublado de Santa Lucia), north of Quito, a communityowned ecotourism lodge. I hope other visitors will find Geist’s take on Canadian culture and ideas just as fresh and exciting. —Suzanne Newman, Winnipeg
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Suzanne Newman on the Galapagos Islands.
Page 86 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
Two things. First, I really enjoyed “Wild Tide,” a series of fiction miniatures in Geist 73 written by Andrea Johnston. Her biographical note tells me that she must be the Andrea Johnston who lived in our basement suite for the five years it took her and her partner to build a boat and sail away. Andrea began writing fiction around the time she and her partner moved in (1996?), and the best part of that writing, in my opinion, could have found its way into this form. If you could pass on my email to her, I would be most grateful. Second, sometimes I write things on my blog (mtwebsit. blogspot.com) that remind me of why I read Geist—a dispatch-like entry on October 10, for example. Interested readers can go to the blog site and search “Yachats.” —Michael Turner, La Habana The author of “Wild Tide” and other pieces in Geist is indeed the Andrea Johnston who used to live in Turner’s basement suite. Geist was glad to put them back in touch. MANNER OF SPEAKI NG Geist has been fascinated for many years by regional variations in Canadian English. In the early 1990s we began to compile them into a word hoard we call the Cross-Canada Phrasebook-in-Progress. We’re working on a new online presentation of this trove; meanwhile, see an early version at geist.com/cross-canada -phrasebook and let us know what you call stuff. When we were young and we bugged our parents about what was for supper, my dad would often reply, “legs of chairs and pump handles.” It might be English, as his mother was a Londoner. I’ve never heard the phrase in Canada —has anyone else? —Norman Gidney, Metchosin BC
Regarding “Where is Back East?” by Alana Mairs, at geist.com/blogs: the term “back east” has to do with the St. Lawrence River, which runs north on the map but actually flows downriver toward the Gulf of St. Lawrence. So in earlier times, when the river was the main transportation route, vessels would sail downriver from the Great Lakes to Quebec and the east coast—hence, “down east.” —Anon, Cyberspace I wonder why people say “back east” but not “back west”? Is it because so much immigration started in western Canada, so you’d go “back west” to visit people from “back home”? —Karen Benson, Vancouver I’ve been a vocal cheerleader for “out east” ever since the night I had dinner at a friend’s, and his mom referred to “back east” and he mentioned that he always says “out east,” having been born and bred in Victoria, and she got really mad and said, “It’s ‘back east,’ not ‘out east,’ that’s how the language evolved!” and he said, “Exactly! It’s still evolving!” As far as I’m concerned, “out east” begins beyond Hope. —Mike Leyne, Vancouver Interesting . . . and here I thought “back east” meant Malawi. —Zameer Andani, Vancouver SEND YOUR LETTER S TO:
The Editor, Geist letters@geist.com, Fax 604-669-8250, #200 – 341 Water Street Vancouver BC, v6b 1b8 Letters to Geist may be edited for clarity, brevity and taste. Authors of published letters will receive a Geist Map, suitable for framing.
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The winner will be selected at random from correct solutions received and will be awarded a one-year subscription to Geist or—if already a subscriber—a Geist magnet. Good luck! ACROSS 1 Easterners had enforcers as its Teutonic secret 4 Two of them had an appliance while the others held onto their trousers 8 An intricate trap that can entangle its victim, especially when he lies still 10 Bill was unprepared to deal with impairment 11 He went over at 9 and got away soon after 13 That dam Riel got the bends when those slaves drove around 14 She pretends she’s prostrate but she just rests 16 The third point was for that recent adulterous visitor to mark 18 Gracias for the mean, but isn’t it kind of corny? 20 Don’t let that hic try to tell you he’ll take you out for noodles to get your energy flowing 21 In Montreal, she’s considered a divine woman, at least in one area (abbrev) 23 Delight me by making another attempt at relative–instructor group (abbrev) 24 They often meet secretly in a silo 25 Patriotic gang of collectors celebrate in April (abbrev) 26 Scarper away from that woolly beast on this 28 Funny, the smart one of the three looked like a beetle 30 The radio station was all at sea over illegalities 32 Can’t face feeling harried? Just add beer 33 Put those tables together for the birds 35 That’s not my behind before me (2) 37 It rubs me the wrong way when a singer is causing non-existence 40 He always tries to collect that dull grey horse 41 Is it that season again? Yes! 42 In what he calls his old-fashioned way, he inputs the number 43 William didn’t cover up the fact that he ate at noon
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DOWN 1 I’ll wager you should visit the doctor to find out 2 Around here, part of it runs through the gas 3 To take them over, the best time is April 4 We were happy when Irving’s masonry fence fell down (2) 5 Officer, do you have any idea how to help me? 6 Fasten the necklace firmly to my scalp 7 Lily’s potion could be good for my godfather, the candy addict 8 Dishonourable division displayed shallow fame (3) 9 Broadbent used a line to go after after McDougall’s communication and stop passage (2) 12 None equalled that degree 15 Makeshift outburst from that instrument can cause painful performance, usually in the road (abbrev) 17 Half of those $40,000 literary prizes plus a chess piece make a good story 19 Winny said that information barrier caused a lot of Inuit rancour (2) 20 Chuck always stops for a chicken pot pie at the frontier 22 He gets fuelled up at megastores because he likes to be measured in yards 27 Even those plastic muscles couldn’t put a brake on the bulge
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29 One-eyed Scandinavian liked both war and poetry 31 The French feel bored and so do the English 34 Scary lab tool seems like it could erupt 36 Not easy to explain why those two won’t go in there 38 Sounds like that company made the black stuff after Thanksgiving 39 Perfect being is surpised to be part of the puzzle The winners for puzzle #74 were Jim Lowe and Brian Goth, our puzzler team from Elizaville, New York. Congratulations. L O N G W E E K E N D
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CAUGHT MAPPING
The Wall & The Fall t h e c a n a d i a n ma p o f t h e b e r l i n w a l l by Melissa Edwards
modified Geistonic projection
For more Geist maps and the Geist Atlas of Canada, visit geist.com. Page 88 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009