Five Legs (1969), and a digression on James Joyce

     Graeme Gibson Five Legs (1969) I’ve read bits and pieces of this book for several years. I should say I’ve tried to read this book for many years. It made a splash when it first appeared (my copy is a First Edition), but as it turns out the ripples dissipated very quickly.  It looks like Gibson tries to do a Joycean stream-of-consciousness, but he’s no James Joyce. Not that this is in itself a disability, but it becomes one when you want to write like Joyce. Joyce is overrated in my opinion; Ulysses is barely readable (another book I’ve read at over the years), and Finnegan’s Wake will forever be merely a time- and academy-bound curiosity. No amount of scholarly interpretation will convince me that it’s worth the effort of deciphering the book for myself. Why should I, when the scholars have done such a good job of it?
     A book whose interpreters do a better job of telling the tale than the author did becomes a mere puzzle, and when it comes to puzzles we all have our tastes. I prefer jigsaws and crosswords. If I’m told that Ulysses does in fact trace the ancient legend of the title in a modern life and setting, I’m left wondering why I shouldn’t read the original. Reading Joyce’s book doesn’t dispel that wonder, but at least the digressions and pastiches have a charm apart from Joyce’s Grand Theme. In fact, I think they are more important than the self-conscious imitation of an old Greek tale. Joyce’s earlier work is better, especially the Portrait of the Artist. Perhaps Joyce didn’t trust the stories he had to tell, and felt he had to make them obscure in the telling to demonstrate that they had in fact the significance he ascribed to them. They certainly did, and the technique doesn’t add to that significance. For most readers it detracts, because it interposes itself between the tale and the reader.
     I was unable to discern much of a narrative in Gibson’s book; the central thread seems to concern the narrators’ trouble with women, but just exactly what that trouble is isn’t very clear. It appears to begin with the failure to impregnate his wife. But he is difficult to empathise with, despite Gibson’s obvious attempts to make his anguish palpable. But broken syntax and allusive phrases merely reveal a typically fractured consciousness, not necessarily an interesting mind. As for interesting digressions, there ain’t any.
     Perhaps Gibson thought that an avant-garde technique would lend significance. Perhaps he thought that a common-place mind would be more interesting when its working is exposed. We do have a puzzle here, but as I said above, that’s not enough. The puzzle must be worth solving, for its intellectual difficulty and/or for the solution. I didn’t find the rewards of solving the puzzle on either count sufficient to keep me reading. The stream-of-consciousness becomes an irritating impediment, and the solution (insofar as I’ve understood it) is mere commonplace. No stars. (2002)
     Update 2013: The book is out of print. Amazon offers 6 used copies of Five Legs/Communion. Various online entries report his work promoting Canadian writing, as well as his enthusiasm for bird watching. His Bedside Book of Birds looks like it's worth reading.