Author Archives: grutter

Absorbing novel recreates Aleutians campaign

The Wind is not a River

By Brian Payton

Harper Collins

$29.99;  308 pages

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

War has provided storytellers with material for thousands of years. Whatever one’s viewpoint, there is a terrible fascination in extremes;  for fiction writers, examining the best and worst of individual behaviour against the collective excesses of armed conflict is irresistible.

Brian Payton’s absorbing second novel, The Wind is not a River, is part of this long tradition. In essence, the novel is a love story played out against the background of a Second World War campaign. That may sound familiar, but there is nothing predictable, from first to last, about Payton’s foray down a well-worn path.

For a start, the campaign is in the northern Pacific, and involves the only battle fought on American soil. Then, Payton’s protagonists are a young, happily married couple living in Seattle. John Easley is a journalist usually occupied with National Geographic projects; his wife, Helen, works in a store. After his sudden puzzling ejection from the Aleutian islands, and his brother’s death, John feels compelled to return to Alaska, despite a quarrel with Helen which both regret.

“Someone wants this battle fought beyond the view of prying eyes. What were they hiding in the Aleutians?…Easley was one of a handful of journalists with any knowledge of this corner of the world. What kind of writer shrinks from such a duty?”

Wearing his brother’s RCAF uniform, John talks his way into the role of an observer in the Aleutian theatre and a flight on a routine sortie. His plane crashes over the island of Attu; he survives, along with 19-year-old Karl Bitburg. Three thousand miles away, Helen struggles with her father’s poor health, and her own growing conviction of her husband’s peril. Despite her complete lack of qualifications, she is hired as part of a USO troupe and sets off on an epic search into the unknown.

Unknown, because Payton’s other protagonist and constant presence in the novel is the terrifying isolation of the Aleutian islands. Flung in an arc from the Alaskan mainland across the North Pacific towards Japan, they are sparsely inhabited. The climate is relentlessly hostile—cold, wind, and fog, rain or snow.

“…it becomes clear that the island does not offer up shelter gladly. Beaches curl round coves and end on rocky headlands. Up from the high tide line are rolling fields of rye slicked tight against the land. Then, after some two hundred feet of elevation gain, snow. Neither tree nor shrub worthy of the term. No bushes laden with summer berries. No grazing cattle or sheep, or even deer, rabbits, or squirrels. The only possible sources of protein are also visitors here—birds of the sky and fish of the sea.”

John’s life is pared to an increasingly desperate struggle to survive.

Payton alternates between John’s and Helen’s narratives, a device which provides momentum and grapples attention. There is a visceral excitement in the race against time as Helen fumbles her way through song and dance routines, moving ever closer to the husband she believes is still alive, while John endures the lonely road to physical and spiritual exhaustion until another quirk in the fortunes of war snatches him south again.

The fact that neither is aware of how close they come is heartrendingly realistic. Like the fog ebbing and flowing over the island, concealing and revealing, the censorship and secrecy about the Aleutian campaign, which ignite John’s journalistic instincts in the first place, and hamper Helen’s dogged search, isolate the couple in an opaque and bewildering world in which the only familiarity or strength lies in memory and belief in love.

Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cukoo’s Child will be released shortly. 

 

Technology helps us manage ourselves

The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering The World Around Us

McClelland and Stewart

$19.95, 229 pages

Reviewed by Jenny Aitken

Nora Young is a well-known Canadian broadcaster and writer who lives in Toronto and hosts CBC Radio One’s Spark, a program that focuses on how technology affects the world around us. In 2012, she released the book The Virtual Self: How our Digital Lives Are Altering The World Around Us, which has since gone on to become a national bestseller. She also visited the University of Victoria recently to discuss the implications of technology with students.

In The Virtual Self, Young explores the concept of self-tracking and how technology is changing the way people manage and register information. Using examples that range from Benjamin Franklin’s journal entries to the social media posts that helped pinpoint the location of a pipe-bomb in 2010, Young identifies different methods of self-tracking that increase self-awareness and make people more accountable for the way they spend their time.

One thread of this self-tracking relates to weight management. As Young explains, the web is rich with services to help people lose weight and stay fit through recording diet and exercises. In the book, Young identifies several technologies that are helping people shed pounds, such as FitBit, a small wrist monitor that tracks calories, exercise and even sleep by using 3-D motion sensors. There are also countless websites, such as FitDay.com, dedicated to giving specific information about the nutritional information for different foods in order to make it easier to keep tabs on how many calories users consume in a day.

Although Young discusses the benefits of these technologies, she acknowledges the concern that if people are too vigilant about their tracking, the danger is that “sources of bodily delight and physical expressiveness, such as running or eating a meal, are reduced to stats driven, objectified activities.” By demonstrating the positives as well as the negatives of these budding technologies, the reader is given a comprehensive look at the technological tools available today.

I appreciated that Young not only describes these technologies, but also tries them herself, creating authenticity and character in a research-driven book.

In The Virtual Self, Young examines surprising uses of tracking technology that could greatly improve the health of users. From the asthma inhalers that have a GPS to better monitor where flare-ups occur, to Twitter feeds that pin-point and monitor the spread of infectious diseases, tracking technology offers many opportunities to advance our health.

The Virtual Self is well-written and packed with historical and contemporary examples. It opened my eyes to opportunities available to me, many readily accessible through the Internet or my iPhone. Several books already outline how technology is shaping our society, but few do it with such a fresh voice or attention to detail. Young puts it nicely, “Self-tracking is our gin. It’s an almost impulsive desire to document the actual states of being and physical presence.” If that’s the case, we can all drink up.

Jenny Aitken is about to enter the technology-rich job market after finishing her undergraduate education.

 

 

From Penguins to Paintings: CNF Night in Canada

By Liz Snell

It’s not often that invasive ivy, clumsy penguins, and cheap reproductions of famous paintings get to hang out together. At “CNF Night in Canada”, a precursor to WordsThaw, The Malahat Review’s annual literary symposium, the three non-fiction readers (Malea Acker, Jay Ruzesky, and Madeline Sonik) respectively covered each topic.

In the basement Russell’s Vintage, light glinted off the gold spines of old books around the little stage below the staircase. Malea Acker read from her book “Gardens Aflame”, which is about Vancouver Island’s endangered Garry oak ecosystem. Her hands gestured gracefully and frequently as she read about removing invasive species from Trial Island, an ecological reserve just off Victoria that is home to many rare species of flora. Full of specific plant names, Acker’s writing evoked the particularity of the windswept island environment.

Jay Ruzesky read from his book “In Antarctica: An Amundsun Pilgrimage”, which recounts his journey to Antarctica to follow in the footsteps of explorer Roald Amundsun, Ruzesky’s distant relative. He read an excerpt about asking for a bank loan to finance his expedition; the audience laughed as he recounted the employee’s incredulous response: “There’s no candid camera here?”

In an excerpt from the Antarctic expedition, Ruzesky captured the humour of penguins “clean as scrubbed potatoes” and their endearing awkwardness: “I think we love them like we do because of their imperfections.”

The penguin passage also touched on how serious discussions around the environment can often become, and how penguins are a kind of relief from that. “There’s something about humour that’s its own kind of reverence,” he read, which seems an apt description of his reading as well.

Madeline Sonik shared an essay about her childhood, when her father became obsessed with buying reproductions of masterworks from a local gas station. He gave his children a bogus education on the paintings’ significance, encouraging them to speak with “great pretension and confidence” about art, regardless of their knowledge. Sonik demonstrated a deft hand for capturing her family’s antics and kept the audience laughing.

An open Q & A period followed the readings. In response to a question about how the authors see themselves situated in the Canadian lit scene, Ruzesky commented on the difficulty of keeping up with the constantly emerging talented authors. The three authors’ general consensus was that the literary community has been very supportive of their work, despite, according to Acker, “some fractiousness and disagreement, which is a healthy part of a growing community.” That support seemed apparent in the packed room. Though Canadian literary events probably won’t be filling stadiums with towel-swinging fans any time soon, “CNF Night in Canada” proved our writers (and readers) still have their sticks on the ice.

The Question I Dread

By Jenny Aitken

Now that I’m in my final year at university, I’m being asked The Question on almost a daily basis.  It is The Question every undergrad dreads, especially ones studying creative writing.

People look at me expectantly, “So, what’s your plan for after you graduate?”

It happens everywhere now. The grocery store, the library, when I run into an old family friend, anytime I speak to my Grandpa on the phone…

People ask The Question. I just sigh.  And I wrack my brain for an answer that will A) satisfy their concern that I will not be homeless and unemployed, but still B) be a dull enough response to receive no follow-up questions.

“I’ll probably attempt to get a job in journalism. When that invariably fails I will work at Tim Horton’s, and spend the majority of my time stuffing free donut crullers in my mouth to compensate for making minimum wage.”

Somehow I doubt that will satisfy them. No, I have to be optimistic, yet not too optimistic. Answering the Dreaded Question actually becomes quite an art form.

“I’ll probably move back in with my parents and look for work. Something stable so I can get some experience. Work my way up from there.”

That should do the trick.

I hate The Question because it is so loaded.  My interrogations squad doesn’t mean what am I going to do post-grad in terms of where will I go eat or will I frame my diploma. No, my persecutors mean what is my plan for my life.  For my career. How do I plan to make money, pay off my debts, put food on the table? And the real answer, the one I desperately want to say but never do, is that I don’t know. I don’t. After four years of university I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do, other then avoid all talk about “my future”.

Worse still are the Five-Year Planners. Not only do they expect you to know what you will do upon graduating, they also expect you to have a whole five years of your life mapped out, with goals and accomplishments to be achieved at specific times along the way.

I always wonder how they would feel if our roles were reversed.  What if I answered right back with where they think they’ll be in five years? What their plan is?  “So Joe, think in five you might have finally got the courage to leave your wife?” or “Margaret, what’s your plan now that your company is letting staff go? Think you’ll make the cut?”

But of course I would never do that, because people aren’t trying to drive me crazy with The Question. They’re asking because they care about me, want me to succeed and probably feel like they have to.

Maybe from now on I should just quote Timbuk3:  “I’m doing all right, getting good grades, the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

This will not answer The Question, but maybe, if I’m lucky, it will allow me a bit more time to figure out the answer.

Jenny Aitken is a student at the University of Victoria.

Proud: parsing a farce

February 7, 2013

Playwright: Michael Healey

Director: Glynis Leyshon

Belfry Theatre, Victoria

February 4-March 9

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

Photo by David Cooper

When I emerged from the Belfry Theatre after seeing actor-playwright Michael Healy’s latest play, Proud, I felt confused. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.

Billed as “political satire” by its distinguished director, Glynis Leyshon, Proud was somehow unsatisfying despite “crackling” dialogue, fast pacing and polished acting by some of Canada’s finest, including Rick Roberts. Roberts, you may recall, played Jack Layton in the CBC biopic. In Proud, he shows his range by playing an unnamed Prime Minister modelled after our current Prime Minister. Now that’s versatility.

Proud proposes an alternative universe in which the Conservatives won Quebec in the last federal election and the Prime Minister has a massive majority including a feisty political neophyte named Jisbella Lyth, played assertively by Celine Stubel.

The Prime Minister, and his Chief of Staff, Cary, played by award winning actor Charlie Gallant, soon learn Jisbella has something in common with them: political amorality. Recognizing a kindred spirit, the PM concludes Jisbella is worth mentoring—and using. Having Jisbella author an anti-abortion (“pro-life”) bill to distract the press so the PM can slip through a change to government unnoticed seems like a fine idea to them all.

What’s the big change the PM wants to slip through on the QT? Muzzling government scientists? Ditching environmental laws? No, the PM wants to reduce the size of the Privy Council Office—a modest goal.

So where is the dramatic conflict in this play? There isn’t any, and, artistically, that’s this play’s main problem.

There are others. A fourth character, Jisbella’s grown-up son, played by UVic Theatre grad Kieran Wilson, talks about political morality from the vantage point of 2029, when the Prime Minister is still in power; but he’s too removed from the principal action of the play to matter. Finally, Proud is a “talky” play. During all the political yak, the Chief-of-Staff makes the point that “politics is fundamentally an emotional event.” Plays are also fundamentally emotional events, and a play that’s too talky can kill emotional response in the audience.

It might be argued that laughter is an emotional response, and it can’t be denied that Proud is humourous. But analyzing its humour reveals its genre confusion.

Although satire, like farce, is usually humourous, unlike farce, satire has a greater purpose: to draw attention to troubling social issues and offer constructive social criticism. Proud doesn’t do that. Since all the principal characters agree that political amorality is just fine, that issue isn’t examined; and since the PM’s goals are so modest and reasonable, no substantive issues are critiqued. Proud confused me because I expected satire; but what it offers isn’t satire: it’s only farce.

So if we can’t be proud of Proud as political satire, what can we be proud of?

We can be proud of Michael Healey for not giving up when Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, fearing a libel suit from the Prime Minister (the real one), nixed his play despite the fact he had been a playwright-in-residence there for more than a decade.

We can be proud that other theatre companies all across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver staged readings of Proud, both to raise money for its independent production and to support the principle of free artistic expression.

And we can be proud that the Canadian public rallied to the cause by contributing almost $18,000 in twenties and hundreds in response to a crowd-funding campaign to pay for its premiere in Toronto.

As a work of art, Proud may disappoint; but the circumstances surrounding its realization are cause for celebration.

Joy Fisher graduated from UVic in 2013 with a BFA in writing. She is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.  

Comic-strip memoir on prostitution shockingly authentic

Paying For It

By Chester Brown

Published by Drawn & Quarterly

290 pages, $19.95

By Lachlan Ross

Taking the prostitution debate into “comic-strip memoir” form, Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown documents his relations with sex workers. The Toronto-based writer’s eighth book depicts a 14-year period (from 1996-2010) during which 36-year-old Brown gives up on the “romantic love ideal” after his girlfriend dumps him. Rather than mourning the failed relationship and searching for a new partner, Brown continues living with his ex, but searches sex sources online.

Paying For It illustrates Brown’s interactions with prostitutes, both sexually and personally, while also including his friendships with ex-girlfriends and close friends. His friends’ reactions to his new lifestyle choice make for numerous debates, sparking the topic of ethics in prostitution. Brown’s clear advocacy of decriminalizing prostitution is backed by endless encounters with professional sex. While Brown notes in a foreword that he didn’t include all conversations to uphold women’s anonymity, the behaviours and reactions of Brown and the escorts create an understanding of why women work and why Johns pay.

Brown’s blatant honesty comes across on the page in thought bubbles during scenes. On page 137, during paid sex, he thinks, “She’s deliberately placing her hair over her face. She’s ashamed. She doesn’t want me to be able to see her face while I’m screwing her… I feel bad for her, but not so bad that I’m giving her a tip.”

While this account may upset some readers, the inclusion of thoughts like this made me believe in Brown as a reliable narrator. His character’s thoughts often don’t match his speech during both sexual interactions and conversations; I think that is a credible human trait. While Brown is a soft-spoken gentleman in speech, he has thoughts like, “That she seems to be in pain is kind of a turn-on for me, but I also feel bad for her.  I’m gonna cut this short and come quickly.” (188) I think this conflict between his outer persona as an introvert cartoonist and his up-front thoughts make for an authentic protagonist, to whom I felt connected.

Brown accepts that not every interaction is successful, but the reader grows with Brown in his journey, discovering what he likes and doesn’t like about each woman. Brown guides with strong narrative voice, forcing me to wrestle alongside him with the ethics of prostitution.

The blatant cynicism expressed by one friend, matched with the logical voice of another, provide both emotional and reasonable concern for Brown’s involvement in the sex trade. The scenes with ex-girlfriend, Sook-Yin, with whom he is still living after their break up for the majority of the book, adds odd twists and comic relief as Brown is also forced to live with her new boyfriends.

Paying For It is an entertaining read.  Brown’s skillful cartoons and sometimes brutally straightforward dialogue make for a frank account of life as a John. His story drew me in; I felt engulfed by a life I had previously not considered. The book shows a regular, honest, man paying for a service, and presents his argument that most Johns aren’t bad people. While some readers may be off put by the content of this memoir, this is a great read for those who can withstand the surprisingly graphic comic strips. For those who pick up the book expecting something different, jaws may hit the floor; this book isn’t for churchgoers.

            Lachlan Ross is a fourth-year student and athlete.

Leacock-winner’s characters warm-hearted at core

Dance, Gladys, Dance

By Cassie Stocks

NeWest Press

300 pages; $19.95

By Joy Fisher

When 27-year-old Frieda Zweig answers an ad about a beautiful old phonograph for sale, she’s hoping to meet Gladys, who’s selling the phonograph because she’s giving up dancing and needs the room for baking. Frieda, in retreat from a broken romance and determined to give up her attempts to become a visual artist, hopes Gladys can show her how to lead a “normal” life.

Instead,  answering the ad puts Frieda in touch with the paranormal .  Gladys, it turns out, is a ghost, albeit a friendly one who has Frieda’s best interests at heart. When she answers the ad, Frieda meets an elderly but lively man named Mr. Hausselman, who teaches photography at the local art centre. “Mr. H.,” as Frieda soon comes to call him, offers her a room in his house at a price she can’t turn down. Thus begins an adventure that will ultimately lead Frieda on a path of personal growth.

Gladys and Mr. H are just two of many colourful characters convincingly drawn by Cassie Stocks—an accomplishment worth celebrating in the author of a first novel — which has won the 2013 Stephen Leacock Award for humour.

There’s Norman, Frieda’s ex, a well-meaning fellow who feels duty-bound to keep his promise to his dead father to manage the family’s string of porno shops; Norman’s mother, Lady March, who fancies herself a spiritualist but isn’t afraid to bare it all for a worthy cause; Ginnie, Frieda’s art school mate, who’s determinedly climbing the corporate ladder in the commercial art world; Mr. H’s son, Whitman, a Hollywood filmmaker who buys his best screenplays from Marilyn, a brilliant druggie who lives in a Winnipeg flophouse; Mr. H’s neighbour, Miss Kesstle who crochets incessantly and, though never married, has a solid maternal instinct; and a doomed girl named Girl who is the last of Gladys’s line.

It’s a little easier to understand how this novice author managed to create such diverse characters when you read her bio. No spring chicken when this novel was finally published, Stocks is described as “a biker chick, a university student, an actress, and a rich man’s gardener.” She had also worked as a waitress, an office clerk, an aircraft cleaner, had raised chickens and had even been the “caretaker of a hydroponic pot factory.” In short, by the time she wrote this book, Stocks had already lived a long and diverse life, and she clearly poured all of her experiences into her characters.

And almost all of them, in spite of their individual differences, eventually come to have the best interests of the others at heart. The book is set in Winnipeg and is imbued with all the solidarity and fellow-feeling of the participants in the Winnipeg General Strike. These characters eventually organize a sit-in on the roof of the local art centre when the city decides to sell the building to a chain store. They succeed in saving the centre, of course, and, in the process, weave a web of support for one another that’s also revitalizing for the reader.

And what of Gladys? Well, in the end, Gladys dances one more time while Frieda cheers her on, and then she disappears for good, but not before Frieda reclaims her own identity as an artist by getting out her paints to capture the dancing image on canvas.

“I hoped you’d do it,” Gladys says to Frieda, when she sees Frieda plying her brush once again. “Mission complete.”

This is not a profound novel, but it’s a warm-hearted one. I loved hanging out with the characters in this book.

Joy Fisher graduated from UVic in 2013 with a BFA in writing.

 

Ozeki’s meta-fiction challenges reader

A Tale for the Time Being

By Ruth Ozeki

Viking Penguin

422 pages, $30

Reviewed by Vivian Moreau

For those of you who walk West Coast beaches with eyes trawling for washed-up treasure, the Man Booker Prize-nominated A Tale for the Time Being may be a vicarious pleasure. But if you’re hoping for a narrative sustained over 422 pages, you may be a bit disappointed. But just a bit because Ruth Ozeki’s story —  that veers from Tokyo’s seedy Electric Town to a moss-embraced monastery —  is readable, timely, and for the most part, fun.

It’s post Fukushima, and a barnacle-encrusted garbage bag washes up on a British Columbia Gulf island – likely Cortez but it’s never named – and inside is a Hello Kitty lunchbox with a 10-year-old diary, a circa-Second World War wristwatch, and a bundle of letters from the same wartime era. It’s picked up by Ruth – the character shares the same name as the author – who begins to read the diary in her rural wooded home.

Teenager Nao has recently moved to Japan from California with her parents. Her father is listless to the point of suicide after losing his Silicon Valley job; her mother spends her days watching jellyfish at the aquarium. Tormented by her bullying classmates and teacher, Nao skips school to write in a manga cafe. She intends to chronicle the story of her activist-turned-Zen Buddhist nun great-grandmother Yasutani Jiko, who, at 104, lives Yoda-like in a tiny, mountainside monastery. Nao had been sent to spend the summer at the monastery, where Jiko serenely unravels the secrets behind Nao’s burns, scars, and anger. By the end of summer, Nao is wiser, having learned some of Jiko’s secrets.

But did Nao survive the tsunami, Ruth wonders as she reads the journal in allotments, not wanting to get to the end too quickly. In alternating chapters, Ruth’s narrative of her small island life filled with clichéd rural folks is an annoyance, but perhaps meant to be. Ruth the Character is a frustrated writer that Ruth the Author takes on a meta-fiction dalliance, ruminating on reader/writer relationships that push the true reader  — you and me — away from who we really want to hear about: Nao.

Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist and filmmaker, does have a gift: her ability to create believably the delicate, healing monastery life as well as the frenetic pop-culture-infused Tokyo that alternately shelters and abuses Nao. Also remarkable is Nao’s fresh voice, the teenager moving between those worlds:

“And because we’re friends, here’s something else I will share with you. It’s kind of personal, but it’s really helped me out a lot. It’s Jiko’s instructions on how to develop your superpower. I thought she was kidding when she said it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when a really, really old person is kidding or not, especially if she’s a nun.”

Ozeki has worked as a bar hostess in Japan and also sets Nao in that eerie workplace for a short time. But Nao figures out she has more important things to do, like write in her journal, the time transporter that connects Nao, Ruth the reader/writer, Ozeki the author, and you and me, the readers. The meta-fiction- Zen-Buddhist-traverse works in some places, with footnotes that could be fiction or not. “Can’t find reference to medical cafes or Bedtown. Is she making this up?” character Ruth asks, tripping up the reader. Is this the same Ruth who explains in footnotes that Ijime is Japanese for bullying and omuraisu is a rice pilaf-filled omelette seasoned with ketchup and butter?

Meta-fiction when taken too far is like a plot spoiler. It can deflate verisimilitude, that diaphanous place to which fiction readers either float or strain. As with the waves Juki uses as life metaphor to explain to Nao the futility of flailing against the inevitable, sometimes it’s best to not try too hard. Nao’s conclusion is akin to the reader’s experience in absorbing A Tale for the Time Being: “I never completely understand what she’s saying, but I like that she tries to explain it to me anyway. It’s nice of her.”

Vivian Moreau is a Victoria freelance writer and editor.

Cabaret: Alive and Well in Victoria

Cabaret

Book by Joe Masteroff; music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb

Directed by Roger Carr

Langham Court Theatre

Victoria

January 15-February 1

 Reviewed by Joy Fisher

 Some plays grow stale over time while others retain their vitality, sparkling with relevance decades after their first production. Cabaret falls into the latter category.

Opening on Broadway in 1966, Cabaret was one of two plays inspired by Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, based on the author’s life in Berlin between 1930 and 1933. The other play, I Am a Camera, written by John Van Druten, preceded Cabaret by 15 years, and, while I Am a Camera was not without critical acclaim, its success was severely curtailed by the acerbic commentary of New York Herald Tribune critic Walter Kerr. Kerr summed up his opinion with these words: “Me no Leica.” The play closed after 214 performances.

The original production of Cabaret, on the other hand, ran 1,165 performances. Furthermore, Cabaret has been revived every decade since, and its 1998 Broadway revival ran 2,377 performances, becoming the third longest-running revival in Broadway musical theatre history.

Why the difference? Kerr once wrote a book called How Not to Write a Play in which he asserted that plays will always be more successful if they are highly entertaining. He argued that entertainment can be at once enjoyable and artistically sophisticated.

The current Langham Court production, based on the 1998 Broadway revival, is both. While acknowledging the gay theme with a kiss between the main character, Cliff Bradshaw, played by Griffin Lea, and one of the Kit Kat nightclub’s “boys,” director Carr has chosen to emphasize the political theme inherent in the years of Hitler’s rise to power. It was an astute choice, for, while stories of gay history are quite rightly in vogue in these days of gay liberation, the theme of political oppression whispers daily in the ears of all of us.

In this charged atmosphere, the main story of the ill-fated romance between Cliff and Sally Bowles, played by Chelsea Kutyn, pales in comparison with that between Fraulein Schneider, touchingly acted by Susie Mullen, and Jewish fruit vendor Herr Schulz, played, heart in hand, by Alf Small. Cliff and Sally, after all, are expatriates, free to leave whenever they want, while Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schulz have no such free choice: they must act out their doomed affair in the land of their birth.

The starkness of their situation is highlighted by the song and dance number “If You Could See Her,” in which the Emcee of the Kit-Kat Club, admirably played by Kyle Kushner, dances with a partner in a gorilla suit pleading for the right to love the person of his choice.  “If you could see her as I do,” he sings, “she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.”

Kushner is in large part the reason this shocking narrative is entertaining. Projecting a guileless exterior, he nevertheless effectively conveys an inner knowledge of the evil of the world. When, at the end of the play, he rips away his cabaret costume to reveal himself in the striped uniform of a concentration camp prisoner, only the audience is startled.

It’s not surprising that the entire run of this production of Cabaret is sold old. If you are unable to slip into one of the remaining performances by hanging around the lobby begging, as I did with puppy dog eyes, for an unclaimed ticket, don’t despair. Another Broadway revival is scheduled for 2014.

Joy Fisher graduated from UVic in 2013 with a BFA in writing. She is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glover’s stories engrossing, polished

Savage Love

By Douglas Glover

Goose Lane

264 pages, $29.95

Reviewed by Susan Sanford Blades

Turn to any page of Douglas Glover’s Savage Love and you’ll find yourself engrossed in a world without convention, where an emaciated woman in otter-skin coat and hunting boots becomes a universal sex symbol or a man falls in love with a legless mute and proceeds to kill anyone who comes “like lambs through the front door.”

This is Glover’s tenth book of fiction, his sixth book of short stories. He won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 2003 for his novel, Elle, but as of yet has been overlooked by awards juries for his latest effort.  That’s a shock, as this is a tight, accomplished book of stories, published in the year of the story by a man who, literally, wrote the book on writing fiction (Attack of the Copula Spiders, Biblioasis, 2012).

Savage Love begins with a two-page Prelude, “Dancers at the Dawn,” in which stated language is “much better for describing things that don’t exist than for pinning down reality.” Glover dances with this writer’s paradox throughout the book. He pins down what is real—realer than real—in language that is graceful, muscular, challenging (no one has me reaching for the dictionary like Douglas Glover), all the while decrying it for its ineptitude. In the tongue-in-cheek “The Lost Language of Ng,” for instance, “the more achieved Ng intellectuals . . . eschewed speaking altogether and communicated by ‘signs and thoughts.’ ”

The remainder of the book is separated into Fugues, Intermezzo Microstories, and The Comedies. Each piece is a theme-heavy meditation told in eloquent language, with characters described in details that are contradictory, astonishing, and beautiful (much like humans themselves), with quick, original plot lines—sometimes so fast-moving as to make the story itself seem implausible thus allowing his reader to hone in on its elements, which, I believe, is Glover’s intent.

Throughout the book, Glover rips open the skin, digs deep, and exposes the beating heart of life (“I am already nostalgic for the yeasty richness of life, its sudden turns and dramas, its deep sadness, its mysterious and gorgeous purposelessness”), the “inhuman endlessness of desire,” and, of course, love (“whatever happened between us, it would end badly, that all love ended badly, that we would one day part out of boredom or disgust, or that we would grow old and not be the people we were this minute”).

His characters are never dull (even the cardigan-sweater-wearing librarians among them); his endings often sheer quirky brilliance (“except for the catering assistant found with a pitchfork in her throat behind the barn after the reception, everyone lives happily ever after. For a while.”)

At times I found myself wanting for the mundane, for a peek at the mechanics of humanity via an exposed slip, Munro-style, rather than a Glover-style gawk at the meaning of life via the gruesome edge of death. But an author cannot satisfy all of his reader’s desires and Savage Love is a celebration of what Douglas Glover—and the short story—can achieve.

Susan Sanford Blades is a Victoria writer.