Lögberg-Heimskringla - 26.01.1990, Side 2

2 • Lögbeig - Helmskringla • Föstudagur 27. Janúar 1990
The Prowler
A Book Revieui
by Margaret Sweatman
This is a pleasant task: to read this
book, to respond to it here. Kristjana Gun-
nars’novel (trulynovel) called The Prowler,
isagreatpleasure. Itstayswithyou, breath-
ing.
It’s a very gracefiil book, and poetic.
Gunnars breaksup the narrative by means
of techniques more commonly associated
with poetry. Anecdotes, and images, sin-
gular and reverberant words: the echoes
set off by the repetition and recontextuali-
zation of these things shape moments of
poetic deifinition, occasionally in the form
of a mildly ironic, ever-gentle, aphorism.
These moments, too, have a murmuring
quality to them. Sentences are detached,
and detachable, in the indicative mood,
like lines of poetry. It is a book of sus-
tained dignity - a kind of ancient voice
whispering. Very strangely, it is a love
story. Very strangely. We come to under-
stand thatwe are speakingto one another
across unfathomable silences, on the edge,
on the verge of love.
The text has a desire to censor the stories
it does not love.
Because ofthat it is impossible that this
is a love story.
Ifl were notfull oflove there would be no
words on the page. There would be no text,
no book.
As you can see, Gunnars employs
cOntradiction, silence, white space, rhyth-
mically and thematically. The Prowler is
full of chasms, fjords, oceans. It’s full of
deficiency, a sorrowfiil sense of desire,
denial, hungering for vegetables, trees,
sunlight, speech.
fyrfr ád gígmser, Pegar
vid bö&uSttro olcfcuf * fir&í-
num brojjg.sstctpju> og 6g,
tóriist atfl í etnu bandartsfcur
twr&a&ur hafc víö
Kwk> »tú5 og horfbt i Ofcfcur
M«Í5.tuí;d, og ég íhugabí
vandtifga hvab skyldi g-crtt
wt»1. Yft varutt
:»t' íj> ríiutt ?*'•'
“The Prowler”
by Kristjana Gunnars
102pp. / Red Deer College Press
I walked out on a sandspit. It was an
overcast day. The sand was black, the sea
was black, the sky was almost black. As I
walked, seals emergedfrom the water. They
stuck theirheads outofthesea andfollowed
measlwent. Iwalkedsofarandso longthat
the tide rose behind me, closing access to the
mainland. I was out on an island ofsand
that was preparing to go under.
The stony beach, the reluctant garden,
the “constant wind,” a landscape which
seems familiar to me, in a way, here on the
prairies - painfully resistant, stern, un-
yielding, lovely to the careful eye. From
this uncompromising land, small stories
grow, and they mustbe nurtured patiently.
She has named the book after us, the
readers; we are the prowlers. I think she
has named us well. Maybe because she is
writing in the first person, I am a voyeur in
these pages. Part of my pleasure, despite
myself, is to see the writer behind the tale,
to makethe tactile connection with a voice.
And to live another’s life, the astonishing
commonplace.
It is true we grazed like sheep in the
mountains. Icannotdenyit. In thespringit
was a preoccupation to huntfor those sour
dark green leaves that grew among the
grasses in the hills. The ones we calledsour-
dogs. Andlate daisies, carefully pickingout
theyellow disks. On theshore wegathered
wild rhubarb, nibbling as we went.
The writer, this melodious voice, is
dissolving, evaporating like dew; she has
several guises. She speaks of “the text,”
retums to her story with further contribu-
tions, arapprochement, and a distancing:
the impersonal Text, the numbered en-
tries, an artificial, abstract (and therefore,
somehow peaceful) narrative. This is
paratactic-the grammatical denial of logic
and of hierarchies. The denial of begin-
nings and endings. Parataxis is elliptical;
by this means, the narrative makes sud-
den advances, or retreats, delays, replays.
And this, a novel: the de-construction of a
voice, the repetitions that make up her
life, in the incidents that somehow inform
her, as she lucidly and significantly sees
herself in dream and memory.
The Book Of All Sorts
A Book Review
by Daisy Neijmann
Marion Johnson is a welcome new
name in the field of Icelandic Canadian
literatúre. She is a second generation
Icelandic Canadian, which means that,
timewise, she is still fairly close to her
Icelandic roots. Her stories, however,
hardly bear traces of this. They are writ-
ten in the Canadian post-modem tradi-
tion, and they evolve typically Canadian
sceneswhichwillundoubtedlymakemany
Canadian readers smile in recognition at
the familiar characters and occmrences.
As the author satirically indicates in one of
the stories: the main characters are repre-
sentative of “the Canadian nuclear fam-
ily”, while all characters grouped together
form “the Canadian mosaic”.
The book is made up of three main
stories, which are divided into connecting
parts. The three stories themselves are
interconnected as well. Nearly all the
characters are representations of the
major, overlapping concems in the book
rather than characters in their own right.
Themeninthebookcould begrouped
and labelled “the modera, understanding,
rational, yet confused male type”. They
are orderly, meticulous intellectuals; suc-
cessful in their spheres of society, con-
vinced of being in control, tryirig to be
helpful Confrontations with the ambitions
or emotional problems of wives, patients,
female student, however, expose them as
naive, narrow-visioned beings, whose lives
and successes are too much rooted in a
fálse reality - that is symbolized by their
scientific or economic spheres and inter-
ests.
The children are portrayed veiy viv-
idly as perceptive, strong-willed small indi-
viduals who try to deal with their lives and
emotions in their own way, and who rebel
against authority and adult expectations.
The author succeeds very well in stripping
off the layers of distorted views that adults,
especially parents, so often have of chil-
dren. As characters, they have, therefore,
the most real, personal feel to them.
The protagonists in all three stories
are female. They are searching for them-
selves, for their goals and place in life.
These women share an acute sensitivity
and a deep interest in soul-searching,
symbolized by their interest in shaman-
ism, visionaries, magic, and, more gener-
ally, the humanities. They struggle with an
early-imposed emotional repression and a
sense of failure which has left them crippled.
For them, the price for success in a male
rational world eventually tums out to be
too high to pay. They tend, therefore, to-
wardslivespromisingsecurity, madeafraid
as they have been of their deep-rooted
longing for non-conformity, emotion, and
adventure. Yet their failures have made
them more receptive to compassion, a sense
of empathy, and a broader vision of life.
Such concatenation seems indebted to
the poet H.D., whom Gunnars quotes:
“You are contained int he things you
love... ”ButunlikeH.D„ Gunnarslocates
herself (or herselves) in a political, mate-
rial, “reality”. She writes:
... 7 was thinking of ways to refute
psychoanalysis. My argument was that
human psychology is determined by politics.
And politics is determined by diet. That is,
those who eat best win.
Theresistanceto “humanpsychology”,
and to depth, remains an argument in The
Prowler. And I feel it as a source of pain
and tendemess. In some ways, Gunnars is
seeking her origins here; at least, in my
ignorance, I have imagined Iceland
through this book. She sees the political
in the personal, located in history. And in
Gunnars’ harids, history is a multiple affair:
“the past resembles a deck ofcards... The
cards are shuffed whenever a game is
played. "There is a small girl in a cold war.
She would like to be warm and dry, but
she is instructed, it is the land that must be
clothed. Such a well-trained conscience
makes of reading and writing a selfish
truancy.
Is this a quintessential Icelandic style?
Gunnars writes that America is the land of
flowers, trees, of “unearned prizes”. I am
one of those who hasthrived onuneamed
prizes, and one of the results is an affec-
tion for an abundant sort of writing, elabo-
rate plenitude, whereas Gunnars’ style is
quite spare, avoiding metaphor. It is a
serious book, which is not to say that
Gunnars is humourless; she is ironic,
mocks herself and the game of story-tell-
ing. I probably resemble one of her care-
less Americans. But I greatly admire this
book. There is much to discover here.
rrnT’ *
JOIN
ICELANDIC
CANADIAN FRÓN
Scnd membcrship fcc of
$15.00 single or $25.00 family
to
lcclandic Canadian Frón
764 Erin Streel
Winnipcg, Manitoba R3G 2W4
Telephone: 774-8047
“The Book Of All Sorts”
by Maríon Johnson
168 pp. / Nightwood Edition
The tone of voice in the book is con-
sistently satirical, and attempts at playful-
ness with the typically Canadian setting
and average types.
In places the author succeeds, but
overall the self-conscious voice comment-
ing on itself and its own story, and the
theorizing speeches of the main charac-
ters seem too deliberate and contrived to
really affect the reader to the extent that
the book’s concerns require.
Nevertheless, The Book ofAll Sorts makes
pleasant reading and is quite promising.
1015-806 Ailegheny Dríve
Winnipeg, MB, Can. R3T 5L2
or Telephone
(204) 269-4529
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