This is a marathon writing day. I already spent the past three hours(with a half hour break for lunch and some watching of 7th Heaven...I wouldn't normally go so quickly into another posting, but I've wasted so much time writing about stuff anyway and if you read my post from earlier today you'll see that this is part of me becoming better at fulfilling what I feel is my purpose. If I don't document these books, who will? But also, the postings allow me to remember, years later, what I thought and what I felt. This is a necessary journal, since I'm already more than halfway through the project and have only glimpses of recollections about many of the books that I've read. Some of these novels, I NOW feel are nearly impossible for me to forget, books that changed my life, that I constantly remember, even just quotes, but that could also be fleeting, and therefore, as this progresses, I must strive to never forget. So, in that vein, here goes another round of documentation, of remembering, of thinking...After this I am going to be soooo brain tired. So, the other book that I NEEDED to talk about today, so that I can be caught up, and I can once again read Pulitzers and Governor Generals(the finalists for this year's GG winner are going to be announced in exactly a week), is Hugh MacLennan's famous novel of French and English Canada, and the conflicts that ensue; Two Solitudes. I may not be entirely correct when I make this claim, but I have heard that this has been called on more than one occasion, the "Great Canadian Novel." When I hear that something has been given such a title, then I become quite a little bit skeptical. By now, if you were in my position, who wouldn't be? But, before reading this novel, of course I have been keeping constant track of the lists, and Hugh MacLennan won 5 GG's, 3 of which were for the English Language Fiction category. So, he like Alice Munro and of course my PERSONAL FAVORITE, Michael Ondaatje, is up there being the most winningst. In that regard, the books must not totally suck of course, right? There has to be some merit to his work, especially for the one that won the first time, since it was what really put him on the map. That's what I hoped. I also hoped that I would get a lot of history and background too, the novel was supposed to have really broken ground on a kind of taboo topic in Canadian history, that of the extreme differences between French and English Canada and the rifts that even today are hard to mend. It was only a little over 10 years ago that Quebec tried to go for secession for the last time(so far). Well, this book did not disappoint at all. In fact I couldn't believe how tremendously a fait accomplit it was. One of the things that I love about books that I read is when the books seem as if they can be applied to any time or any place and still be applicable. This book is definitely highly applicable to Quebec, most effectively Montreal, but the time could be any, which is perhaps a great quality of it, but also a sad quality of it, showing that struggles, the lack of understanding between two cultures that live amongst each other everyday, still exists. It is existed when I lived there, I lived in an English speaking section of Montreal and I lived in a very French section of Montreal, I went to school at an English-speaking University, I used the MacLennan-Stewart library for my undergraduate needs. I ate dinner in a Chinatown that had fought to keep their signage in their native language and not in French first, as the laws now prescribe, since the French-Canadians have placed a stranglehold on business and homeowners in fear of losing their language and culture to an increasingly Anglophone Quebec. Two Solitudes shows the making of this starting from 1917, and finishing on the eve of the second World War(the book was published and won in 1945). It focuses directly on two families, the Tallard family who originate in Saint-Marc, Quebec(I suppose a town modelled after the number of Saint-Marcs de something in the Laurentians/Eastern Townships area, at least somewhat east of Montreal) and the Methuen family, who live in Montreal and who are of Scottish descent. Athanase Tallard is, at the start of the novel, the richest landowner, almost something of an aristocrat in is small parish town; his family has been the largest landowner for hundreds of years. He is limited in his success by his location and his background, he sees his greater success as being linked to the English and working with them, not against them. He has two sons, one from his first marriage in which he was widowed, and a second, much younger son from his much younger second wife. Athanase and his first son do not get along at all, and ostensibly it is because of the father's politics. Marius, clings to his French-Canadian nature, and is extremely hostile towards the English and everything they stand for, believing that they will be French Canada's destruction, when the father, Athanase, believes that French Canada will of course be its own destruction. Whew. You be the judge, sometimes I believe one way, sometimes I believe the other. Paul, Athanase's other son, who is very young at the start of the novel, is the ultimate in assimilation of the two cultures, he is born to a French Canadian and an Irish immigrant mother, he can speak both English and French fluently, understanding the nuances in each. He can float between both cultures. As he ages, though, this seems to separate him even more. Since he does not fit into one or the other entirely, he does not fit into either at all, and is consistently an outsider. This book is ultimately a family saga of the utmost degree, multi-generational, stretching across two families, with many characters playing all kinds of hands. There is also Huntly McQueen, who is not a member of either family but whose actions dictate the course of both families' outcomes. Huntly McQueen epitomizes the English businessman and the control he has over Canada. It is the trust that Tallard puts in McQueen that leads to his downfall, and it is McQueen's control over the Methuen family that almost knocks a burgeoning romance of its course. Captain Yardley, Athanase and then Paul's closest friend, and the father of Janet Methuen and grandfather of Heather Methuen, is technically a member of the Methuen family but since he is only a sea captain, and she married into English Canadian aristocracy if you will, he is also an outsider, but, he, since he was so often at sea, and has that way about him, doesn't take it too much to heart, as Paul does. Yardley, however, also shapes the course of both families in a more benevolent way. Oh you could go on and on, about the wonders of this novel and how it makes one feel. I think for me it hit close to home because MacLennan did such a wonderful job with descriptions. I could feel the way the wind hits your face during the winters in Quebec, the way the city smells, the way early spring feels in the countryside, even when Paul and Heather Methuen are in Nova Scotia towards the end of the novel, I could feel what that was like, smell the salt air. Perhaps it is because I hold so much of my Montreal memories close to my heart, and I have not been back in so long to show anyone, especially someone I love as much as Keren, the haunts we used to have, the beauty of city, the smell of winter amongst the sparkling lights of the city itself and of course the snow. My God, even as I write this, waves of homesickness for a city that I haven't lived in in over 6 years waft over me, threatening to engulf me. Perhaps that is why this novel touched me so. Even writing about a city and a province over 60 years ago, it still conjures up the same emotions for me, a woman who was only 10 when MacLennan died. This is the story of a struggle of a people, but it is also the story of romance, in a Romeo and Juliet kind of fashion, that survives, despite the odds. This and Gwethalyn Graham's Earth and High Heaven are very reminiscent of each other, in slightly different ways, and they only won a year apart(she in 1944, he in 1945), the judges must have had the combo of social consciousness AND romance on their minds. There are soooooo many quotes that I love so much from this book and many of them are because I think they still very much ring true today:

"'The masses are ruled by their own sense of guilt. Therefore nationalism and sex are the two time-tested mediums through which they can be controlled by small groups. Hammer in absolute patriotism and absolute purity as ideals, and you have the masses where you want them. You can always keep them feeling guilty by proving that they are not patriotic and not pure enough.'"(39)--This excerpt is from a book that Marius discovers his father is writing about religion, but I think it rings true for today even in the US, especially with the current political climate.

Another quote which I thought was particularly applicable to the US today, and it is about the US, from English Canadian Huntly McQueen's point of view:
"McQueen rubbed his hands together as he thought how he was going to prove that Canada was sounder than the United States. In the first place, so far as he could see, the Americans were as excitable as Italians. And look at the way they let their women hound them all over the place! If you let the women get that much hold, why not hand the whole country over to them and let them ruin it? He wouldn't be surprised to see them do that very thing before long. He chuckled. The day they elected a female president it would serve them right.

In a state of dreamy contentment, padding slowly along the upper hall to his bedroom, McQueen thought how sharp a contrast he could make between the United States and Canada, if he went about it skillfully. In Canada, first of all, there were the two races: each could be employed to balance the other. Then there were the churches: they were filled every Sunday, and it was possible for the whole nation to excite itself over a theological dispute. But the real point was this: ten per cent of the college graduates, perhaps not the most brilliant men but certainly the most restless of the lot, found it so difficult to get what they wanted in Canada that you could always count on them drifting south to the States. That made enormously for stability above the border. Down there they could write their books and broadcast their ideas, and compared to the average American they were probably fairly stable citizens. Yes, McQueen thought with satisfaction, we have discovered a great social secret in Canada. We have contrived to solve problems which would ruin other countries merely by ignoring their existence." (257)

Another one in which MacLennan touches on sexism...
"'You're the only preson in the world who doesn't make me feel alone,' she said. Her senses seemed to bruise themselves against his silence. 'You don't have to be a French-Canadian to be born in a strait-jacket. Every girl's born in one, unless you're a girl like Daffy." (303)

"Who'll be left? Huntley McQueen, I suppose. What is it about men like him? Men his age? They seem anaethetized against the world we're living in. In your novel, do you think you can really drive it through their heads how people like us feel? They hold on to the ball and won't pass it to one of us, and yet they don't seem to have the least idea waht goal they're playing for! I don't suppose they think we do either...[]Whenever I get bogged down in despair about the States (isn't it funny how all Canadians do that, as if the Americans cared what we felt about them) I walk down Fifth Avenue and look up at that beautiful shaft and then I know that a country able to build such a structure[R.C.A. building] can do anything..." (314)

"'A human being tries to be herself and you condemn her because she does!'
'But Father--I'm her mother! Please remember the things I must consider.'
'Consider my eye! How do you expect people like Paul and Heather to feel towards people like us? Do you think we've deserved their respect? We've sat on them all our lives. We've managed our affairs so badly thet boys like Paul have had to spend their last eight years wandering like tramps from one end of the country to another looking for work. You talk to me about rebellion! I'm telling you something, Janet--the first word any child in the country hears said to it is 'No,' and the first sentence he hears is 'Be careful.' God only knows how it's happened thet way, for when I was a boy it was certainly different. You and your friends--you go crazy if a girl and a boy make love to each other before they're married. But another twenty million people can get killed because our generation can't manage its own affairs and thet's not even immoral! The way things've been going there's sure to be a bust-up thet'll surprise you. People get sick of hearing 'no' all the time. Don't talk to me about rebellion, Janet, for I can't stand to hear it. If you'd done a little rebelling yourself you'd be a happier woman today!'" (325)

And probably my favorite quote, the one that I think sums up the book so very well, and makes me sad for the state of French and English Canada, and makes me so long to return as well:

"Out of the society which had produced and frutstrated him, which in his own way he had learned to accept, he knew that he was at last beating out a harmony. His fingers seemed to be feeling down through the surface of character and action to the roots of the country itself. In all his life, he had never seen an English-Canadian and a French-Canadian hostile to each other face to face. When they disliked, they disliked entirely in the group. And the result of these two group-legends was a Canada oddly naive, so far without any real villains, without overt cruelty or criminal memories, a country strangely innocent in its groping individual common sense, intent on doing the right thing in the way some children are, tongue-tied because it felt others would not be interested in what it had to say; loyal, skilled and proud, race-memories lonely in great spaces." (352)

This book unleashed so many emotions for me, and I'm not sure what it would do for an American who hasn't lived in Quebec, or for that matter a Canadian who hasn't lived in Quebec(though I think every Canadian in some form or another has had a taste of the French-English Canada conflict)...for me it reminds me of the scents and sights and sounds of a city that I long for since it is where I truly became an adult, where I truly began to make my own decisions and where I also, often, felt truly alone. There are parts of the novel where I felt like someone had cut out my chest I missed the city so much, and MacLennan did an obviously wonderful job of bringing me back there, to the country so close to where I grew up, and to the city which for four years was my home. However, the conflict of two opposing groups is not unique to Canada, and though I'm sure many Americans spend a very miniscule amount of their life thinking about Canada the way the Canadians think about Americans, there is a conflict of the conservatives and the liberals, something which could totally rip us apart, in the upcoming election and the years to come. Canada hasn't made that many strides on their French-English conflict, and our conflict, which is all mired up in race and social class as well, seems to be much more crippling...My God, I have spent so much of the day writing...the sun is going down, the air is cold, fall is definitely here, and as I sit in the half darkness of Keren's living room listening to classical music, I think...I should stop before my brain explodes.:) PPs-46, GGs-39.