| Book Review Time For New Images
by Joan Vastokas
HILARY STEWART`s books on the art and cultures of the Northwest Coast have had tremendous popular success. As an illustrator as well as author, she has received awards and acclaim. Most successful to date has been her booking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast (1979), with more than 100,000 copies in print. She has done much to promote appreciation among the public for the cultures of British Columbia`s First Nations.
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| | Book Review Whazzappenin` In Lit Grit
by Stanley Fogel
guide for those perplexed by literary scholarship`s abandonment
confident answers in favour of problematic questions
I ALWAYS HATED lit crit. Whozzat wild guy in the Fielding novel? Why DionysUS (my prof told me). The airborne guy in the late Melville book? Must be PegasUS. The dude with the initials J. C. in The Sound and the Fury? Gotta be JesUS. Whazzat flower in a Wordsworth poem? P`raps a gladiolUS. The Bible, the Greek myths, the English country garden - home to university lit majors.
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| | Book Review The Mystery Is The Medium
by Robin Skelton
It`s time to bring crime writing out of the genre ghetto
and into the fictional mainstream
ONCE A CERTAIN kind of book is generally regarded by critical opinion as a "genre;" a ghetto is created. We cease to discuss, for example, John Donne (a metaphysical) in the same essay as Lord Byron (a romantic) though in point of fact the juxtaposition could be interesting.
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| | Book Review Send Us Your Money
by Jeff Walker
LIVING ABROAD CASTS a new light on our own culture, but so can talking to those from abroad who now live here. The Globe and Mail writer Brian Milner talked to scores of megabuck entrepreneurs from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and it is indeed interesting to see Canada and Canadians through their eyes.
On the plus side, a German real-estate magnate, Klaus Vogel, observes:
If you do business in the United States, you can never relax.
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| | Book Review Because Of The War
by Cary Fagan
IN NORMAN LEVINE`S first novel, The Angled Road (1952), the young hero commits a kind of spiritual suicide. David Wrixon, a Canadian flyer in the Second World War, is on a bombing mission when he fantasizes about crashing his plane into the sea. It is an interesting attempt by the young Levine to have this first version of his fictional persona identify with and share the same fate as the war`s victims.
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| | Book Review Complaints Department
by Michael Coren
IT was G. K. CHESTERTON who said that "A modern thinker will find it easier to make up a hundred problems than to make up one riddle. For in the case of the riddle he has to make up the answer." He said it some eight years before the birth of Hugh Hood; which is intriguing, since it could have been in direct reference to the essays of the author in question.
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| | Book Review On Being Wrong
by Brian Fawcett
A COUPLE OF YEARS ago, I wrote a very favourable review of George Faludy`s Notes from the Rainforest (1988) for Books in Canada. That I found myself filled with such admiration for the book surprised me more than a little. Over the years rd developed an irritability with the cynical enthusiasm many Eastern European and Soviet writers and other artists sometimes display for the current version of "freedom of expression" as practised within the Western democracies.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction6
by Gary Draper
"I SAT ON a big rock staring at Arlene`s open grave, just me all alone, and her in a rough plywood box, a very plain box with cheap handles, pine:" That`s the inauspicious opening line of the first story of Catholyn K. Jansen`s Birds of a Feather (Vehicule, 176 pages, $12.95 paper). Here are some of the things that happen, retrospectively, in the next 20 pages. A teacher grabs the narrator (Leenie) by the ponytail as she drinks from the fountain and bashes her teeth into the fountain.
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| | Book Review Letters
Bacque on Basics
IN "MORE BACQUE TALK" (April), Stephen Ambrose says that I quoted without permission from his letter to me. That is not true. I asked for his permission during a visit to his cabin in Wisconsin and he granted it. As soon as I heard that he had warned St Martin`s Press in New York not to use the quote on the dust-jacket of the American edition of Other Losses, I told my publishers not to use it.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction
by Martin Dowding
A WELCOME ADDITION to the growing number of Canadian military historical studies is Tin-Pots and Pirate Ships: Canadian Naval Forces and German Raiders 1880-1918 (McGill-Queen`s, 391 pages, $34.95 cloth). The authors, Michael L. Hadley and Roger Sarty, chart the origins of our navy from the late 19th century to the point at the end of the First World War when we had almost 200 vessels.
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| | Book Review Forgive Your Parents, Forget Your Childhood
by Dennis Mccloskey
A FEW WEEKS BEFORE he died - on November 7, 1990 Hugh MacLennan wrote to me from Montreal, responding to a question I had posed a few weeks earlier: "What advice would you offer a person who aspires to a writing career?" I had asked the author who is best known for his 1945 novel, Two Solitudes. "Get a job which will support you and write as well as you can;" he advised. "In time you may make a breakthrough.
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| | Book Review Problem Pairs
by Alec Mcewen
DEFINITIVE, DEFINITE. Speaking last November in connection with the proposed Goods and Services Tax, Revenue Minister Otto Jelinek remarked that the "only definitive thing" he could say was that the legislation would pass by the beginning of the year
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction
by Gordon Phinn
FANS of THE EARLY Island-centred fiction of V S. Naipaul, or of the late Harold Sonny Ladoo`s two brief, bright novels, may be interested in Samuel Selvon`s Those Who Eat the Cascadura (TSAR, 182 pages, $10.95 paper). Their interest, however, may be short-lived; the novel, though enjoyable, ultimately fails to rise above the cliches of the genre. Nevertheless, as a hibernating Canadian, I was happy to wallow in the sweat drenched merry-go-round of rural life in Trinidad.
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| | Book Review Of Odds And Sods
by Robin Britt
EVERY MAGAZINE should have an odds-and-sods column, so with this issue "The Browser" will take on the daunting challenge of noting thissa and thatta from all over. This month it`s the more esoteric reaches of bibliophilia that demand attention, in particular a couple of staid old literary institutions that have bestirred themselves and put on a more welcoming face vis-a-vis the general public.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction5
by Pat Barclay
CHARACTER, HUMOUR, action, suspense, style- Martyr Burke`s Ivory Joe (Seal Books, 320 pages, $24.95 cloth) has them all. Set in New York and the Deep South in 1954, the novel is partly narrated by Christie Klein, age 10 going on 35. She and her elder sister, Ruthie, have big parental problems.
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| | Book Review Concerning Franklin And His Gallant Crew
by Margaret Atwood
This is a condensed version of one of Margaret Atwoods 1991 Clarendon Lectures at Oxford University, delivered in April of this year.
HIS is THE FIRST of four lectures that afire roughly grouped around certain image-clusters which have appeared and re appeared in Canadian literature, and which are connected with the Canadian North. My first lecture will introduce motifs of the North associated with the disastrous Franklin expedi tion of the mid-19th century.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Non-Fiction2
by M. T. Kelly
THE EARLY HISTORY Peter S. Schmalz writes about in The Ojibway of Southern Ontario (University of Toronto Press, 334 pages, $60 cloth, $24.95 paper) is an epic history, part of a green world that seemslost forever. Yet this story, which was played out 400 years ago, is alive in our society today, not only in the spirits of the land and water, "our place here;" but in what Schmalz calls the "Ojibway Renaissance:` This is a timely, vital book.
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| | Book Review A Bum Trip
by Jim Christy
THE NORTH AMERICAN railroad boom coincided with the end of the American Civil War. Many veterans, who discovered there was nothing waiting for them at home, just kept on going. There was always seasonal work, and anyone so inclined could ride a sidedoor Pullman from ranch to farm, forest to harvest, and keep busy nearly all year round. A genuine hobo, or boomer worker, rode freight from job to job as a point of pride that had its roots in the trade-union and craft movements of Europe.
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| | Book Review Atmospheric Pressures
by Sandra Martin
WHAT, YOU MAY wonder, is an isobar? According to my Concise Oxford Dictionary, an isobar is a line on a map that connects places of equal atmospheric pressure. Janette Turner Hospital, who majored in geography as well as English literature as an undergraduate, has borrowed the term normally associated with meteorology and applied it to fiction: the stories in this collection are like isobars connecting points where the pressure of memory exerts equivalent force.
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| | Book Review Let The Stories Roll
Within chapters, Macfarlane leaps between generations, decades, and continents, but somehow he binds it together. As a writer, I want to study how he does it. As a reader, I find it wonderfully moving.
Raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Macfarlane grew up bemused and enchanted by the stories of his mother`s Newfoundland relatives, the estimable Goodyears of Grand Falls.
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| | Book Review The Way They Were
You thought all those shining literary superstars were overnight successes?
Read on, aspiring writers, and take heart ...
For this 20th anniversary issue, we`ve asked some of Canada`s finest writers to help us celebrate by taking a look back at what they were up to when they were 20. What that usually was, it turns out, was poetry; and, as our contributors are more than ready to admit, these initial forays into verse weren`t exactly earthshaking. Here`s the evidence, in their own words.
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| | Book Review The One True Subject
by Pat Barclay
THIS SLY YET SERIOUS novel follows the travails of its mysterious narrator as he sets out to piece together the life of Thomas Obomsawin, who`s accused of setting fire to his mother`s house and is currently awaiting his trial verdict on "the only public bench in Sioux Junction;` which he`s "liberated" from the Ukrainian Catholic Church. "Obom" is a celebrated painter, whose work hangs in prestigious galleries and museums around the world.
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| | Book Review The Way We Were
Twenty years of snapshots from Books in Canada`s family album
WELL, WE made it. It hasn`t been the smoothest of journeys, but there`s no doubt that it`s been an exciting one. When Books in Canada made its debut in 1971, the centennial-celebration enthusiasms of 1967 had turned into a much more realistic awareness of how uncertain the future looked for small periodicals and publishers
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| | Book Review Praise The Words And Pass The Ammunition
by John Metcalf
Once you get past their promising credentials, these two short-story collections
don`t really have a great deal to offer
RICK HILLIS`S Limbo River comes highly recommended. It won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for 1990 and was first published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The New York Times Book Review described it as "...splendid work indeed:` Russell Banks said of it: "A wonderful book... in the rarefied company of the best of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff...
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| | Book Review A Variance Of Verdicts
by Phyllis Grosskurth
I DO NOT THINK it would be a supreme breach of confidence if I revealed that I was a member of the Canada Council jury that awarded Elizabeth Smart a literary award in, I believe, 1983. I am probably being more indiscreet if I say that I strongly supported her application over the opposition of at least one other jury member.
Now, having read Rosemary Sullivan`s By Heart: Elizabeth Smart, a Life, I found myself wondering if I did the right thing.
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| | Book Review Down On The Farm
by Amy Friedman
I OFTEN WONDER why it is that so many Canadian writers seek and struggle to define this country. Canada is, without doubt, a real and distinct place; and the quest to explain who and what we are, while sometimes provoking a broader, wider, richer notion of our national character, often seems as self-deluded as the adolescent who broods and stews and grumbles, "Leave me alone. I`m trying to find myself.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction3
by Virginia Beaton
ROBIN SKELTON`S puckish sense of humour is evident throughout his latest collection of fiction, Hanky-Panky (Sono Nis, 112 pages, $9.95 paper). The dozen short stories gathered here are an assortment of fables, tall tales, and just plain whoppers.
Like an old-fashioned yarn-spinner, Skelton has crafted these stories to read like anecdotes that drinking buddies might swap in a tavern. Atmosphere and character development are held to a bare minimum; what`s important here is the plot.
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| | Book Review What`S In A Name?
by Doris Cowan
Returning to the tradition of the anonymous reviewer
wouldn`t be such a bad idea ...would it?
CONFESS THAT when I was editor of this magazine there was something that I always wanted to do, but I never had the nerve. But what one doesn`t dare to do one often enjoys recommending to others. Now that I live deep in the country (never mind where), far from the stress, turmoil, and fiendish gossip of Toronto, I have a suggestion to make.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction4
by Richard I.Iarvor
RAMON SEPULVEDA`S stories, collected in Red Rock (Split Quotation, 68 pages, unpriced), segue from the political chaos of the author`s native Chile to the less dangerous but equally bewildering promiscuity of Canada`s bars and bedrooms; however, in attempting to capture the immigrant experience in all its jarring inchoateness and sensual dislocation, they fall prey to a corresponding lack of unity.
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| | Book Review Brief Reviews-Fiction2
by Pat Barclay
SOMEWHERE IN MIDDLE America, or so I read in a magazine, there are two women who write romance novels under a single pseudonym, cackling and falling off the couch with glee at each irresistible idea. Meanwhile, somewhere in middle Canada, David Parry and Patrick Withrow appear to have had a marvellous time concocting The Jacamar Nest (Macmillan, 369 pages, $19.95 cloth) while tossing back a few friendly brews.
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| | Book Review Seasons Of The Sacred
by Maggie Helwig
THOUGH BETTER KNOWN as a playwright, Daniel David Moses has published one previous book of poetry, Delicate Bodies. His second collection, The White Line, should make it clear that he is worth noting as a poet.
Moses` voice is firm and assured, but oddly hard to define, combining a loose colloquial sprawl and a pared-down tenseness, an on-and-off leaning towards traditional fixed forms and rhyme patterns, a mythic imagination and an everyday chattiness
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| | Book Review Dreams And Contrasts
by Barbara Carey
WHEN a number of poetry books are read together, they begin to sort themselves out, in my mind at least, not in terms of good or bad, but according to sensibility - which is revealed through style, tone, and focus. Some stand out in any company; others, appealing on their own, may fade somewhat when in a crowd. John Thompson was a man who shunned crowds.
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| | Children's Books The Ring Of Truth
by David Morley
THE TASK SEEMED simple enough. I was shown a pile of books and
asked, "How old are your children?"
"Five and seven;" I replied, "and there are some older kids on our street, too."
Obviously it was the answer that Books in Canada wanted to hear (or at least it was an answer that sufficed), and I found myself bringing home about a dozen books to be reviewed en famille
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