Lisa Wojna. The Bathroom Book of Canadian Quotes

     Lisa Wojna. The Bathroom Book of Canadian Quotes (2005) Just what it says, and better than I expected. Some of the political have become history, but most are still relevant. Eg, Governments are like underwear. They start smelling pretty bad if you don’t change them once in a while. (Ma Murray)
     A keeper. Probably out of print. ****

R. D. Wingfield. Frost at Christmas

 

R. D. Wingfield. Frost at Christmas (1984) The first Jack Frost novel, with a cutesy title, published in Canada by PaperJacks. My copy is a much-read 2nd hand one I bought at Bearly Used Books in Parry Sound. The title refers only to the time of year. Several crimes interlace, complex plotting is one of Wingfield’s strengths. He’s pretty good on character, too, creating series characters with all the traits that were developed so well in the TV series. Ambience focusses on weather (awful) and work (mixed, with nicely done satire of careerists), and the mean and suburban streets.
     A girl is missing, she turns up murdered by accident. A bank heist, blackmail, an ancient crime, miscellaneous misdemeanours, and a rookie DC who is the Chief Constable’s nephew complicate Frost’s life and enrich the novel with the kind of detail that persuades us we are in a real world.  Frost suffers a gunshot wound, but will survive. According to the Wiki entry, Wingfield wanted this tale to be a one-off, but was persuaded to leave Frost’s survival open. Good decision for fans of Frost, and for the TV series, one of the best ever. ***

Louis L’Amour. Galloway (1970)

     Louis L’Amour. Galloway (1970) A well done potboiler of a Western, with three narrative strands coming together in a satisfying resolution. Fagan Sackett narrates one of them, the other two tell of his brother searching for and finding him, and a distant cousin wandering onto the set because he’s heard some Sacketts are in trouble. The nub of the conflict is a struggle with the Dunns, a lawless bunch who’ve lived off rustling, but now want to settle down and ranch in the same good country that Fagan and Galloway Sackett have selected. But they want it all, and hire an assassin to pick off the Sacketts one by one. Simplified characters, the usual L’Amour sense of place, and of course the unattainable woman as the prize for the hero.
     The book reads like an adaptation of a scenario. The switching from Fagan to other narrators feels like “Meanwhile, back at the ranch”, Fagan’s story is told in a series of set pieces, etc. It’s L’Amour’s ability to  put you into the scene that saves this book from mere formula. **½
Update 20200206: As you can see, my copy was well read.

The Declaration of Independence & The Constitution of the United States

     The Declaration of Independence & The Constitution of the United States (1776 &1784) Published by Penguin Books as part of it 60th anniversary series of reprints.
     Every time I read these documents, I notice things I don’t think I noticed before, or I find some hazy memory corrected or confirmed. This time it was the following, from the Declaration:
     But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Objective evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
    “It is their duty”. Indeed it is. Of course, anyone who takes that seriously these days, and decides to foment revolution on these grounds, will find that most people will consider him an extremely dangerous person. To put it mildly.
     The text has been modernised in spelling, but not in punctuation. 18th century punctuation was somewhat haphazard, and writers were fond of the absolute adverbial phrase, which causes modern readers some trouble in discerning intent. Several articles were clearly responses to political issues of the time, which history has rendered irrelevant. There is entirely too much blaming of the King in the Declaration. By that time, Parliament was already the actual government, with the monarchy only a couple of steps away from a purely symbolic role with no actual power.
     It’s also clear that the Framers were worried that a strong President might take over the Government, much as a strong monarch might. They weren’t very aware of the political developments in England, and so opted for a Republican legislature instead of a Parliamentary one.  The long term result is a weak President, who must rely on both personal qualities and alliances with lawmakers to get his agenda accepted. Ironically, the Framers in effect created an elective monarchy with mid-18th century powers, which don’t amount to much.
     Nevertheless, worth rereading every year or two, if only to remind oneself that a liberal democracy is still an unrealised ideal, but always worth striving and if necessary fighting for. ****

Picturing the Americas. At the AGO to September 20th, 2015.

     The AGO co-operated with the Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo and the Terra Foundation for American Art to present a survey of how Europeans saw the Americas. It’s obvious that from the beginning America was seen as an empty wilderness with a handful of salvages (forest dwellers) hunting and foraging, oblivious to the potential wealth of this untouched continent. Most of the early canvases show a vast wilderness, painted in the sublime style fostered by Romanticism, of varying skill and aesthetic appeal. Most of include a group of small figures to make the scale plausible. I noticed a number of them showed the European in the group waving his hand or pointing at whatever had caught his attention. It seemed the European was the guide and explicator of the landscape, not the native who showed him the trails through the bush.
     These paintings foster the myth that justified the European conquest. That there was a full range of cultures, with the majority of Americans living as farmers and townspeople has been more or less forgotten. There were several empires, and a number of federations built around trade and common cultural themes. Most Americans were killed by the diseases that the invaders brought to them. It wasn’t European weapons that defeated the Americans, it was European microbes. The Pilgrims of North America moved onto ready-made farms, left behind by the people who died of smallpox. That’s why American now means a citizen of the USA.
     Once the Europeans had established themselves, their art became a celebration of the new culture, which has adopted and adapted native motifs and stories. The exhibition ends with early to mid-20th century paintings, in which Canadians, Americans, Brazilians, and so on paint the visions of the land as it is, including railways and cities. But images of the wilderness still dominate. Even paintings of farming in the Mid-west emphasise the otherness of the landscape. Although created by humans, the vast fields seem more alien than the sublime wilderness painted a century earlier.
     Two texts that should be read in conjunction with this show: The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King, and What is America by Ronald Wright. Both retell the history of the Americas as one of the destruction of thriving local peoples and nations by the commercial and imperial ambitions of the European powers. Knowing that history, I saw most of the art as misrepresentations. It shows us how Europeans saw their new world. The native version became the stuff of archeology, a pre-historical narrative. Now that Native artists have begun to reclaim their history we see that early picturings of the Americas were an exercise in amnesia.
     A show worth seeing. As art **½ , as cultural commentary ****.

Politics: Election Issues 1

The desire to win elections makes politicians crazy.

Here we have Stephen Harper echoing his old refrain that cutting taxes will spur investment. It won’t of course. Businesses don’t invest tax savings, they pocket them. The only thing that spurs investment is the opportunity to retain or increase sales. With our economy edging into “official recession”, businesses won’t invest. Where are the customers?

Then we have Thomas Mulcair sounding even more fiscally prudent than Tony Blair did with his New Labour, which was a thinly disguised ploy to persuade the anti-commie nutbars that Labour was not really pink at all. A balanced budget in the first year of an NDP government? I doubt it. For one thing, the books will certainly show a deeper deficit than Harper as admitted, for another, there’s not enough revenue in added taxes and reversing tax giveaways to the wealthiest 20% to fund the new spending. Cutting subsidies for fossil fuels is a good idea, if it prompts oil-patch investors to shift their attention to renewables. But that entails uncertainty, and investors hate uncertainty. Mulcair is assuming a psychology that rarely operates in a for-profit economy.

Justin Trudeau admits that his plan to put us all to work building and repairing infrastructure will mean deficits for a couple of years or more. That’s a good ploy. It makes him sound honest and up front. Will enough voters agree that we have to spend money in order to make money, or will deficit-fear paralyse the little grey cells? Hard to tell. Most voters are moved more by the leader’s persona than by his policies, and Trudeau still seems too young to too many voters.

Harper merely needs to repeat his claim that he’s brought us through tough economic times unscathed, which is taking credit for the passing of the storm and the coming of the sunshine. Mulcair and Trudeau both think that they’re vulnerable to flank attacks from each other, so they fulfill their fears by mounting just such attacks. They should rather attack their common enemy, and assume that the voters will pick the better of the of the local candidates, that would pretty well guarantee a minority government by one of them, But then they would have to cooperate to make it work. 

Right now, I think the face off is between Harper and Mulcair, with Trudeau as the king-maker if Mulcair achieves a minority government, or needs a coalition partner. That might be a good thing. The Liberals’ desire for power, and the NDP’s yearning for ideological purity have stood in the way of the pragmatic answer to Harper’s Conservatives, which is a merger of the two parties. The fact is that Canada is centre left, not centre right. Harper’s base demands ideological purity, too, and only the centre-left split has kept him in power.

Update 20200206: Post-Harper, the fault lines in the Conservative Party have reached the surface. The attack on Andrew Scheer came from the far right. See ... for further comments.

She Stoops to Conquer

She Stoops to Conquer at the Avon Theatre, Stratford. Directed by Martha Henry. Lucy Peacock, Joseph Ziegler, Maeve Beatty et al.
     Charles Marlow arrives at Hardcastle Hall thinking it’s an inn, and behaves abominably to both his father’s friend, Mr Hardcastle, and to his daughter Kate, whom he takes for the barmaid, and who both his father and Mr Hardcastle hope will prove a suitable match. Meanwhile, his friend George Hastings is courting Kate’s cousin by marriage, Constance Neville, niece of Mrs Hardcastle, who wants her son Tony Lumpkin (Kate’s stepbrother) to marry Constance. So you can see there is a lot of scope for misunderstanding and semi-successful attempts at deceptions and trickery.
     The question is whether this 18th century concoction will work in 2015. It was very popular in its time and ever since. The script has never been out of print, and it’s been “revived” every other year or so somewhere in the world.
     Goldsmith wrote the play to suit his audience. The style is wordy, everybody speaks polite English, most of the jokes depend on the class distinctions that mattered so much at the time. And that’s the problem. While I could understand that Marlow was misbehaving towards his host by treating him as an inn-keeper, I didn’t feel it. It wasn’t funny. The problem is that our standards of courtesy have changed, so seeing a gentleman treat another gentleman as a servant doesn’t raise a laugh. It’s just not prank material these days.
      So how do you play it? Do you portray Marlow as a boor, or as a bewildered victim? And how do you play Hardcastle? His protestations at the boorish behaviour of his guest must somehow play off his polite behaviour, since he knows Marlow is a gentleman and treats him as such. No wonder Marlow has a hard time reconciling the courtesy of his host with the poor service of the supposed inn.
     In short, the play’s premise is a problem. Marlow should come across as worthy of Kate. His honest love for her as barmaid suggests that he’s capable of ignoring the strictures of class and rank, but if he’s played as a boor, how are we to take the reveal scene in which he discovers that the barmaid is really Kate Hardcastle, whom he has just politely but firmly rejected? Is he an honourable man? Or is he just focussed on his desires, and just damn lucky that they happen to coincide with his father’s wishes after all?
     “We have all been adamant that these characters shall be real” writes Martha Henry. They should not be stylised modern take-offs on the 18th century roles. So we got a naturalistic interpretation of the roles, which worked quite well, despite the Avon Theatre’s atrocious acoustics, which swallow up conversation-level sound. The audience laughed often, so many of the jokes still work.
     But Goldsmith’s wordy style is not conversational. It’s also much of a muchness: the characters all talk the same way. That means we need more physicality in the acting. Henry writes that she and the cast wanted the characters to “live and breathe”. I suspect that this means she wanted people as like us as possible. She forgot that life-like is not the same as like life. The trick is to make unreality seem real. Goldsmith’s world is not our world. His attacks on sentimentality may suit us; but the expressions of sentimentality were different. Sentimentality is always stylised, it eventually becomes stale cliche. How to refresh the cliche so that it can be satirised? Not easy.
     Henry’s experiment in naturalism is a play that pleased but did not engage me. **½