I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I can't come up with what I really think about Mr. Ames Against Time, the 1949 Governor General Winner for fiction. I feel a writer's block coming on, or perhaps it's already here. Am I too excited by the prospect of another female winner for the Pulitzer(that's not Joyce Carol Oates or Toni Morrison) or too depressed due to my reading of John Cheever's Collected Stories? I dunno.

Well, I do know that this book, Mr. Ames Against Time, by Philip Child, struck me as a little bit melodramatic. Just a wee bit. Perhaps that is what put me off to it. I can't say that I hated it, because I didn't, and it is rare that I hate a book that wins one of these prizes, for I try so very hard to like them at least a little bit. I just didn't love it. It didn't knock me off my feet. Right now I need a KNOCK ME OFF MY FEET kind of book, too.

Mr. Ames is an elderly gentleman who has a son who is involved with the wrong man, the local gangster/hustler. Mr. Ames wishes that his son would be removed from this life, and even goes to the man, Sol Mower, and begs for his son to be released from his service. It is not meant to be, and the situation becomes rapidly worse for everyone involved. Mower has his eyes on Mike Ames' fiance, the beautiful Bernie Avery. Bernie and Mike want to get out from under Mower's thumb, but before that can happen, Mower is poisoned to death and in the throes of dying, names Mike as his killer. Mr. Ames is present for this deathbed confession, and when called to the witness stand, being the ever honest person he is, he confesses that this is what he heard. It, in effect, sends his quite innocent son to the gallows. Mr. Ames spends the rest of the book trying to discover who is the real killer to save his son from the fate that he feels he is completely responsible for. This involves Bernie's father, Moulton Avery, a drunk and hanger-on of Sol's, and Arthur "Smoke," a sometime hitman/two-bit crook/sociopath that is also involved with the Mower enterprise. Smoke was saved as a young boy from the clutches of that which plagues his family(his family is famous for having the criminal gene according to the book)by Mr. Ames, so he feels a little bit indebted to him, but Smoke also doesn't want to go to jail himself. It is his love for Bernie first, but also in the end he caves to what is right.

Child's novel focuses on all the characters in the book as they go through their own personal struggles in order to attempt to save Mike Ames from the gallows or to save themselves from that same destiny. The internal psychological struggles are well-posited, and interesting, but perhaps it is the writing that is too much. It reminds me a lot of when my sister and I watched A Summer Place over ten years ago now. Everyone, for the most part, knows the theme from
A Summer Place, composed by Max Steiner; it's so completely and totally over the top that it sends shivers down your spine. The movie, however is also just like that. At the time(the movie came out in 1959, 10 years after Mr. Ames was published out), it was extremely risque, and was even rated X for its then explicit immoral content. My sister and I wanted to see it(I'm actually pretty sure it was just me who wanted to see it, and my sister, just wanting to spend time with me, wanted to see it mainly for that reason), and found ourselves laughing at and spoofing the over-emotional aspects of the film. This is odd for me, because I usually eat things of a romantic nature up, I've always been a huge Gone With the Wind/Anne of Green Gables/Pride and Prejudice fan, I love the romantic composers with their big, blowsy, over the top pieces. For whatever reason, Mr. Ames Against Time didn't do it for me. Maybe I felt it was trying a little too hard?

One of the other difficulties I had with the book was the fact that I was never really sure exactly where it took place, in Canada or even in the States. My guess is that it took place in the city of Toronto, but that is only an educated guess. This takes away from the book a little, in my opinion. One of the things that can be wonderful about the prize novels is that when they are situated in a specific location, it shows the inner workings of a people in an area, and not only how people are unique to a particular location, but how humankind is NOT unique to a particular location, and despite where we live, we all go through similar struggles with our sense of self, and how we fit into the greater, universal community of people. Mr. Ames definitely focuses on the latter, but because I didn't feel grounded in the former, I spent a few pages going, "Where the fuck does this take place?" so that was wasted energy on my part I suppose. Another difficulty I had with the book was that I struggled to fit it into a prize-winning context. Most books I can at least find something that fits it in nicely(i.e. this is the book about politics, this is the book about the French-Canadian/English-Canadian struggle, this is the book about interracial marriage in the South, etc.), this one I had a hard time figuring out its place. Perhaps, though, that its place is the universal struggles we all face as we come to terms with our lives and the choices that we make. In that case, I guess I can throw this novel a bone.

There were some really thought provoking quotes in it, though. The first one that I liked was when Mr. Ames' landlady is talking to Bernie Avery about a woman's place in society and how much it totally sucks, and how she may have to sleep with Smoke to get information out of him in order to save Mike.

"'Mike's your man, ain't he?' demanded Prancy. 'All right, then, you gotta shoot the works for him. Listen, Bernie, a woman's job ain't play in this world. Bearing babies, bringin' them up, keepin' your man going', givin' life and helpin' them you love to die, stickin' to them and seein' em through come what may--that's a woman's job. A hard, sweatin;, heartbreakin' job, Bernie, and a dirty job sometimes too! Men never see things like they really are. Always makin' dreams about things. Makin' gods out of themselves and ladies outa women!'" (180).

At one point Smoke is running away, after he watches another character, Gipsy, die and gets the real story of his mother from the nurse who took care of her before she died. Smoke has big time abandonment issues towards his mother. The quote is:

"He began to run down the alley. But why he ran he could not tell. For what was the good of running; you couldn't get away from yourself." (218)

My spirituality has become especially heightened in the past nearly two years, but certainly in the past six months. And Mr. Ames at one point in the book seems to think a little bit like I have now for quite a while, possibly my whole life. I like what he thinks here:

"...Supposing, thought Mr. Ames, we were able for only one instant to forget the ending of life; or supposing, even if only for one instant we could feel with all our being that everything we suffer and all the mistakes we make and the sins we do that corrupt and alter us--do not change us forever, but are like chisel cuts carving stone into something that has a wonderful meaning." (236)

A few pages later he continues this thought.

"Leaving the underworld gloom of the shop Mr. Ames looked up toward the clear sky which people thought of as empty space without end except for the stars and planets, and he wondered where prayers were answered from. For answered they were sometimes, though how or by "whom," or why sometimes they were not answered, Mr. Ames did not know. He did not believe that God would put out His finger to stop the minute hand of a watch in order to prove something to Mr. Ames. You could not "see" God and He did not give "signs." All the same, perhaps He did put out His finger and stop time, working a miracle through men's hearts and minds. "Working it in my mind, giving me courage," thought Mr. Ames. "The watch stopping at twelve isn't a sign; that was chance, coincidence. No, not quite. Everything has a purpose, and that was to make me think--what I've just thought."(238)

And a few pages later...

"...No. A new soul for Mr. Avery--or rather a freed soul. Out of his agony, freedom. Out of his agony and out of ours (since we are all bound together beyond separation)--freedom.

And it seemed to Mr. Ames, at that instant, that the birth of all living souls was one birth--all one birth. A life was born--no, say rather, life itself was born. It was a thing to make you stop still and quiet in sudden awe when at last you really understood that prayer was answered from that same place wherever it might be (though all you could see with your eyes was blue, empty sky) from which life itself came into this planet of lifeless rock. Surely the one was as much a miracle as the other, and perhaps, even, they were the same miracle, coming from the desire of the Spirit...And time. Why, if this is so, then there is all the time in the world, thought Mr. Ames suddenly. Or rather, there isn't any time at all, really; only eternity. Is it all planned from the beginning, even the anguish?

[]

'As if we were all one person,' he muttered. 'so that a lost soul is a soul lost from us all, something strayed from our Maker's Wholeness, that must come back some day.' (241)

The last quote is a little bit of a similar thought process to an idea in Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, one that I very much subscribe to when looking at and living my own spiritual life. According to it, when the world was created, G-d took the fresh new light he had made and poured it into each of the vessels of the spheres of the universe. But the light was too powerful and the vessels shattered and burst and the light spilled out all over the universe, embedding themselves in everything. Since then, the light has always strove to return to the Source, and when we do a mitzvah(a good deed) we awaken the sparks of light and the light rises, returning to the Source. In this way, we can start to heal the brokenness of this world, with one mitzvah at a time, as G-d redeems us.

This book has a clearly Christian message, which is made all the more emphatic by a poem written(by the author??) and included at the end as a "Postlude" called "Descent for the Lost", where it talks about the relationship between Judas and Christ, and how Judas challenges Christ's love for him because of what he did to his G-d. In this way, I suppose you could look at Mr. Ames as kind of a Christ-like figure and Smoke as the Judas in the novel, though at the end, Smoke as Judas redeems Mike Ames and therefore Mr. Ames, but also, in the effort of saving a child from a burning house, does a mitzvah, and perhaps is himself redeemed. Who knows, right?

P.S. This blog was actually finished on April 25th though it will have a date of 4/21 or something attached to it. Plus, all the formatting is totally fucked up and I have no idea how to fix it. I will try at a later date to do so. My apologies to anyone forced to read it.:)

Listening to music that I love, in a house that's clean is supposed to make me be motivated to write about one of my very overdue Governor General winners...Ha! I've been procrastinating by reading newspaper articles, showering, playing hand after hand of solitaire. However, I got an email from The Globe and Mail regarding a piece not by Lynn Crosbie, but about her. I had to read it, and THAT was what motivated me to write. I think Lynn Crosbie is one of the most brilliant writers out there, and whenever I get a chance I read her weekly piece in The Globe, a cutting look at society and celebs in our crazy facebook-obsessed world. This article that was about her poetry, however, was about a found poem in her novel Paul's Case, about the Paul Bernardo murders. I probably will never read the book, unfortunately, not for lack of wanting to engage with her prose, but because the subject matter is a little tough for me. The found poem, was so killer(literally), that I felt compelled to put on Tori Amos, and plow through some writing. Maybe at some point, I can be my own version of Lynn, cuttingly writing about books, in a way that makes OTHER people read them.:)

Didn't someone tell me recently that books are dead?

Alan Sullivan's Three Came to Ville Marie, won the Governor General in 1943. The copy I read is the second book that was retrieved from Oklahoma, this one from Oklahoma City University Library. This book is in such rough shape it has a sticker on the front that says that it is too fragile for the bookdrop. Lovely. It's also quite a few weeks overdue at this point. All the more reason to write about it.:) Sullivan's novel is interesting because it is about Canada before it actually really became Canada. It is about Quebec when it is still called New France, when the Iroquois Nation was constantly fighting the Hurons and the French for territory, when the English were encouraging this all, and biding their time, waiting for when it would be their turn to do the shit-kicking. A few years prior to Sullivan's publication, in 1939, Franklin D. McDowell published a novel entitled The Champlain Road, which won the Governor General that year. It is another book that has gone off the radar, and it is, ironically enough, about the same time period, though it is more about the relationships between the priests sent to convert the Natives, rather than the average person trying to make a life for themselves, which is more what Alan Sullivan's work is about.

This is a pretty interesting time period, one that not too many people concern themselves with, I assume, hence the reason why these books are not talked about or read, but it's a formative piece of Canadian history, and how can we know where we're going if we don't know where we've been? I think settling an area is so crucially significant to how an area/country becomes itself, and for whatever reason, westward expansion is what the Americans especially and Canadians as well, focus a lot of their attentions on. Well, the first non-Native people had to arrive sometime, and someone should talk about it at some point...

Three is about three people, Paul de Lorimier and Jules and Jacqueline Vicotte, and how the interconnection of their lives leads them to the New World. The novel's backdrop is first the farmlands of Brittany, but then the realm of courtly intrigue, and finally everyone makes it to the wilderness of the LaChine region of Quebec. Paul de Lorimier is a farmer in Castellon, a wealthy farmer, who is due to marry the daughter of the local aristocrat, named Jacqueline. He is hopelessly, helplessly in love with her, but she is not so enamored. At the start of the novel, she is still sitting on the fence, so to speak, and is not sure if she wants to marry Paul or not. Her mother wants her to, her father(much in the guise of Elizabeth Bennett's father in Pride and Prejudice)wishes for her to marry for love and do what she wants. This is when Jules Vicotte arrives into town, an old school chum of Paul's. Paul is at once overjoyed to see his friend(Paul has no family at all, his parents are both long deceased, and his only "father" as it were is the local Abbe, a good friend and confidante), but soon, Jules will betray Paul by whisking Jacqueline off of her feet. When Paul surprises the two together in a passionate embrace, he throws Jules into Jacqueline's family pond. This leads to a duel(when do we read books that have duels in them anymore? How sad...), in which Paul is unable to hurt his friend(out of a sense of loyalty, etc.) and leaves mid-duel in disgrace. It is after that when he is brought to Versailles and given audience to the King's mistress. It is she, who after speaking with men who have just returned from New France, including Frontenac himself, suggests that Paul start a new life for himself in the wilderness of what is now known as Quebec. There is brief thought of him entering the priesthood, but he instead chooses to be a farmer in Lachine, Quebec, which, back then, was complete and total wilderness(this is the late 1600's remember), but has now been incorporated into the city of Montreal as its own borough, bordered by the borough of LaSalle, and the city of Dorval(which houses one of the city's largest airports). On a complete and total side note, this is all reminding of me of when Emily and Chris and I went to Harlem to visit Alexander Hamilton's house...back in the day(hey! He was part of a duel too!!!), he had tons of land and his house was in the country, now his house is bordered by some of the shittiest parts of New York City...

Back to the story/plot synopsis. I like Paul de Lorimier a lot. He reminds me of myself in some ways, a broken person who is looking to start a new life, but who has many inherently wonderful characteristics that he doesn't necessarily believe in. Paul picks up his own manservant and two native slaves(slaves that he doesn't want but feels compelled to have due to social norms) and begins creating a thriving farm. Little does he know, that the Iroquois nation, which has been quiet for so long, is planning a large revolt, using his slaves as spies/plants, in that regard leaving his farm as the only safe one. Paul doesn't know this as he leaves his farm with a local priest for a trip. He discovers as he cruises down the St. Lawrence, farm after farm burnt to the ground, men and children scalped, burned, crucified; pregnant women with their stomachs cut out, unborn babies in the dirt next to them. You may think this is gruesome, terrible; but I am also forced to think about all of the other atrocities that have been committed by the White majority in wars for civilizations. The natives were rightfully threatened, and then launched back in full attack. WWYD?

Paul and the priest are attacked, and left for dead. It is when they are floating in their own bloodbath that a new ship, sailing from France, carrying Jules and his wife, Jacqueline, discovers their bodies. Jacqueline was the apple of the King's eye, as he was looking for a new mistress. His permanent mistress wanted to get Jacqueline out of the way, and the King wanted to get Jules out of the way, so they both got sent to New France by the King's mistress, unbeknownst to the King...but that is the other plot of the story.

Plot summary and detail can go on forever, so I think I will stop it now. When the three are reunited together, it makes for more plot intrigue, but it also shows the reader who the characters really are. These are the true pioneers of North America, people who fought every single day to stay on their land, who had to be brave. At least, Paul is this man. He is a fucking survivor, and proves himself as he etches a stronghold for himself in the turmoil of late 17th c. Quebec. Jules is a gentleman, who is very upset to be in Quebec, feels it beneath him at first, but then realizes that he is not cut out for it, and that New France takes no prisoners. It is Jacqueline who is the one who changes the most, but, for the better. There are two quotes that I love, that stay with me always...but are not from this book. One is from a Jeanette Winterson novel called Lighthousekeeping, in which one of her characters says, "You can't be another person's honesty, but you can be your own." The other is from the first Harry Potter movie, in which Dumbledore says to Harry, "It is not our abilities that show who we truly are, it is our choices." It is when Paul goes off to defend New France against the Iroquois people and lives through harrowing torture, while Jules, well...I shall leave you to discover that, that shows the reader who Paul really is.

I suppose I have to say that I'm not necessarily in agreement with colonization and westward expansion in the way in which it was done. Perhaps I'm too much of a peace-lovin' freak to think that you can move somewhere else and not have to convert people or kick them out, you can just live next to them and co-exist. I can't say that I totally disagree with it though, because had colonization and westward expansion not happened, I would probably not be living in the city of Seattle writing about books that took place hundreds of years ago. I am one of those people who moved out West from the East, following the Oregon Trail, looking for a life that was better, or at the least so very different that it would allow me the chance to be my own honesty. I made an almost entirely clean break; I moved out here with a down payment on an apartment, no job, not knowing a soul. Nearly 5 years later I'm closing in on Pulitzer/GG number 100, with a decent job working for a major corporation, in a lovely apartment, finding myself with a life that seems to have taken me totally by surprise. It's a good life, it's not always an easy one, but it is mine.

Paul de Lorimier is one of the literary heroes of colonization, and a man who should be remembered in the prize list, for he is one of, what would eventually be, the first French Canadians. Why this book is forgotten and shelved away in the annals of dust-covered former award winners escapes me, except perhaps for the fact that people are too obsessed now with what is new and different that they have a hard time being reminded of the history that got us here. When I picture Lachine, the Lachine before it became Montreal(like Hamilton's house before Harlem), I will picture the little village of Ville Marie, with Paul de Lorimier standing in front of his small log house, flowers blooming in the front, fields full of crops in the distance, holding a musket in his hand, his quiet eyes searching, his face aged from torture and hard work, but his body stalwart and calm. It is an image that I will hold for myself whenever I need to be reminded of who I am and where I come from.

This is the last post for me for the evening...It's already after midnight, and I'm struggling to stay awake, but I really need to do this work, it's just a load off my shoulders that needs to happen, and I can't be buried under library fines forever...I need to write about Kildare Dobbs' Running to Paradise. This, like The Able McLaughlins that I just wrote about, was less than memorable. I had high hopes for this collection of short stories, hence one of the reasons why it was the first in my round of recent interlibrary loan requests that I made. Some dear friend of mine, please remind me in the not too distant future to NOT PUT ANYTHING ON LOAN REQUEST FOR AT LEAST A FEW MONTHS. I need to blow out some of the stuff in my house, and I'm actually really wanting to read some non-Pulitzer stuff at some point soon(Effigy and Alligator anyone???).

God, my head is screaming...I'm trying to remember, too, and not close my eyes.

Kildare Dobbs gets major bonus points for quoting Yeats at the beginning of his book, and one sees where he could have gotten the title of this collection of short stories that are loosely based around his life growing up as an Irish boy, who eventually moves to Canada.

"The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurry upon my way,
For I am running to Paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind:
And there the king is but as the beggar." (W.B. Yeats: 'Running to Paradise')

Dobbs's stories are interesting from an anecdotal standpoint, but not necessarily from a literary standpoint. Though, if we're going for completion of a canon here...I still don't really know why this was picked, actually. I did enjoy the stories for story's sake, like I enjoy going out with a friend for coffee and hearing about their week. Am I going to get a Governor General winning novel out of the excursion? Probably not. Stories of interesting merit were: "John's Castle" which was about a childhood friend of Kildare's who still maintains one of the only castles in one piece in county Carlow Ireland. It's all due to the butler, who with the help of his ladyship, allows the then fledgling IRA to store their weapons in the castle so that it won't be destroyed by them at a later date...Smart, very very smart. Also, "A Benediction of Bishops" is cute because it is about Dobbs as a boy, deciding that in order to be cool he has to collect something that is different. He decides to collect bishops, like they are baseball cards. The only thing is it's not like they make cards out of bishops...So, it's more like the stories he has of knowing the bishops that he can bring to the lunchroom table of his school...He becomes "bishop-watcher", and then a "serious episcopologist." It's a cute story, ending with him going fishing with two of the most famous, at the time, bishops in Ireland.:)

There are stories of when he is at sea, as a young man and there are stories of him when I is a young imperial bureaucrat in Africa, including stories of a black man who takes on one too many wives, and another of a bureaucrat not just a little obsessed with elephant hunting...There is a gem of a quote, though, at the end of "Melakia and Mwalim Joseph", though. Dobbs has to transfer Mwalim Joseph, a schoolteacher that is his friend, and also a polygamist, something there had been an effort to suppress in colonization, because of some trouble with the local tribal Chief's daughter.

"I had Mwalim Joseph transferred at once. The Chief's daughter chose to follow him, and within a few months he had replaced her. I have seldom felt such distress as I did when I said good-bye to Joseph at the railway station. With that wonderful fair-mindedness which all Africans seem to be born with, he took my hand and said, 'You are trying to do right, but you don't know enough about us.' It might have been a judgement of the whole colonial situation." (74)

The two stories that I perhaps loved the best, though, were in the Landed Immigrant section. One is called "Views of Venice" and here we're NOT talking about Italy. We're talking about ONTARIO, and small town neighbors who are convinced the others are out to get them, the two shopkeepers in town, each others only competition both think the other set fires in the town, a crime that according to the author "brought about the fall of Venice, and every man who spoke of it accused his particular enemy. The suspects had only one thing in common: they all sat in the front seat in church." (129) Then there were the female busybodies in the town who kept order as well, or "female vigilantes" as Dobbs calls them. The story that particularly stuck with me, though was the story called "Shocking Charge". It's because it's about homosexuality, something that is talked and written about very little in the prizes. Dobbs starts out by saying:

"A queer news item recently was the report that two Toronto men were found guilty of gross indecency after being accused of using electric shocking equipment for an unspecified act of homosexuality. What sort of charge they got out of it (other than criminal and electric) seems impossible to imagine.

Musing on this report, I find it hard to draw a moral. Perhaps it reflects the passion of North American men for gadgets. Or it may be a tribute to the Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission: Love Better Electrically. To the magistrate trying the case, however, it was the occasion for one of those scholarly asides that make law reports such interesting reading. He said that in Canada--and in this respect we differed from some other countries which he named--homosexuality was always regarded as a serious moral offence.

I wonder if the magistrate is right about this. (The courts, it must be said, are not the arbiters of morals and it is open to us to argue about them.) I have met Canadians who regard homosexuality as a joke, and others who think it a misfortune. I have also met many who believe firmly that Canadians are specially immune to it.

I can only go by my own experience." (134-135)

Dobbs goes on to explain what happens to him, in that he is cruised and picked up by a young gay man after only being in Canada for a few weeks. He is taken to a party where he quickly realizes that he is the only heterosexual there. He says:

"There is nothing that separates us so conclusively from our fellows as a difference in our pleasures. It is this, rather than any doctrinal debate, that exacerbates religious quarrels: between the celibate drunkard and the lecherous total abstainer there yawns an uncrossable gulf. We could forgive even Khrushchov his politics if only he did not prefer the backside of the moon to that of a can-can dancer.

Someone asked if I was gay. Since I was beginning by this time to feel decidedly gloomy, I answered truthfully that I was not.

Everyone in the room stopped talking and stared at me. It was not exactly a hostile look, but it has the effect of hostility. It was the sort of look a group of physicians give to a man the have consulted under the impression that he is a colleague, only to find that he is (a) a chiropractor, (b) an advocate of socialized medicine.

It came to me that the word 'gay' had special connotations of which I had not been aware.

Muttering thanks and apologies, I quickly left the party.

I tell this story not so much to show how widely and adventurously my life has ranged(that too, of course), as to make the point that homosexuality is as much at home in Canada as it is anywhere. The orgy I witnessed did not take place in Paris or London or Cairo but in the stuffiest quarter of what is supposed to be the stuffiest city in Canada. The people who took part in it were not the decadent Europeans or Asians but true-born Canadians. (I cannot remember their names and I shall regard with the gravest of suspicion any attempt by the Attorney-General of Ontario to approach me for them.) And if the Toronto magistrate was right when he said that homosexuality is always regarded in Canada as a serious moral offence, I am left wondering how effective all this viewing with alarm has been.

There is an alternative way of looking at it.

To an African tribe among whom I once lived, unnatural offences seemed not morally wrong but ridiculous. Perhaps it was just coincidence that such offences were almost unknown among them, those that did occur being practised for magical purposes. In the only case that came to my notice, the accused's plea brought howls of laughter from the tribesmen. He said, 'I was following the custom of the government officers.' Quickly entered as a plea of Not Guilty." (137-138)

In 1962 this book won the Governor General for fiction. It would be four years later that Margaret Laurence would win her first Governor General for A Jest of God, a book that definitely has lesbian undertones. I find it impressive that this story talks about homosexuality outright and doesn't necessarily condemn it. Hmmm...I'm too tired for much more interpretation at this point. I think that's enough for this book too, which came from Idaho...:)

I would like to know what else was published in 1924 in the United States. I'm sure there was more than one book published, there always is, right? There had to be other choices than The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson. Okay, I'm not saying the book is terrible...Believe me I've read worse, but it's just not that stunning. It's actually highly forgettable. I'm trying to remember it right now, so that I can write a decent summary and return it to the library. I just find it interesting that THIS was the choice in 1924. In 1923 Willa Cather's One of Ours won, in 1925, Edna Ferber's So Big! won. As far as I'm concerned Willa Cather is a rock star especially in women's literature. Not only has she written some of the great American classics in terms of midwestern farm literature, but she was a lesbian! She wrote with mostly male protagonists and is quoted somewhere as saying(it might be at some point in the intro to my copy of My Antonia, I would have to get my ass up off the couch and look, which is not going to happen right now, as it is late and I am anxiously trying to plow through the review of this and Kildare Dobbs' book)that the reason she wrote with mostly male protagonists is that she was therefore most easily able to write about a character's love for another woman. I love Willa Cather, and probably would have fallen over myself trying to fuck her if I was her contemporary. Edna Ferber, too, is amazing. So Big! blew me away in total surprise, and then when I looked Ferber up and found out that she had also written some of the other great American novels like Giant and Showboat, she made me go, why does no one read her anymore?????

1923, 1924, 1925. Three women won the Pulitzer three years in a row. Women only got the right to vote in this country in 1919. Three women would never win the Pulitzer in succession like that ever again. So early in the history of the prizes, this is very impressive. Sad that the one sandwiched between the other two(have not read Cather's book yet, perhaps very soon, but I have high hopes as I loved her other stuff so much) was not so impressive. I complained to a friend that I thought it was pretty simplistic in terms of plot, and he replied by asking me what did I expect, it was 1924. I was at least able to respond with, look at The Magnificent Ambersons, and So Big! amongst others that were published right around that time. This is when my friends start to smile and pat me on the shoulder, like a good parlour game, and say Em........who else cares about literature in the 1920s except for you?

Okay, brief plot synopsis of The Able McLaughlins and some interpretation, so that it doesn't get completely forgotten...This book centers around Wully McLaughlin and his life post-Civil War, though the book begins and takes some time in the end of the Civil War era. Wully reacquaints himself with his childhood sweetheart Chirstie, whom he has had plans to marry. When he finally returns from the war for good, he goes to Chirstie's house to speak with her, she is frightened of him, won't look at him, and sends him away. It is not too long after that he finds out why. She is pregnant, with the child of his cousin, Peter Keith, who took advantage of her and her innocence while Wully was away at war. In the late 1860s this is really really bad. Really bad. Wully decides, out of his complete and TOTAL love for Chirstie to marry her, and take the child on as his own, taking the blame for having pre-marital sex. He tells Peter that he has to do the honorable thing and leave town forever, that way the child could be raised with an honorable name(Peter had no plans to marry Chirstie)and so that Chirstie could continue her life without fear and anxiety. What is interesting is a couple of things. One, Wully's mother flips out when the child is born prior to the appropriate 9 months after the wedding, and the concern over the townspeople's reaction and the shame is HUGE for her. It makes you really think about where we're at now with all of this and where we were at in 1924 and even in the 1860s. And then, there are other things in the world that still exist, leftover racial prejudices, etc., that make one wonder how far we really have come...but, I digress. The second thing is Peter's mother Libby Keith, is absolutely a train wreck after the disappearance of her son that she basically loses all sanity searching and searching for him.

What's worse? Losing one's sanity over the loss of one's child, or losing one's reputation over the loss of virginity before marriage? What needs protecting more? Clearly the social answer in this book is that the virginity issue is much worse. But, there is slightly more to this story, because it is also about how far some people will go for love...Wully doesn't have to do anything that he does for Chirstie, he could have come home from the Civil War, found out she was pregnant and abandoned her much like his cousin did, considering her damaged goods. What he does instead is MARRY HER. What does that say about his integrity and his undying affection for his young wife??? It is interesting to see what happens to his integrity when Peter is rumored to be back in town...

I guess my only problem with this book was its overly simplistic style. Am I picky about the depth of my novels? Perhaps too much so. But, I kind of think that I have the right to be since I've read now(not when I had read this book, but now as I am CURRENTLY writing) 97 of the books on the combined lists. Mmm Hmm...that's right, 97 baby! 100 earns me some Trophy cupcakes and a lot of champagne. Anyone buying? Anyway, back to McLaughlins. The book depicts an era that needs to be written about, yes; the Midwest in post-Civil War times, but it just isn't enough of a book I think, to stand up to so many of the greats that the Pulitzer prize has turned out. I mean, really, I can list so many fabulous books that just blow this one out of the water. But, it won in 1924, making that historic hat trick of women writers in the mid-1920s and perhaps that is its eventual claim to fame. If you're reading the prizes to read the prizes and get an idea of what won when, like me, then go for it. If you're looking for a great example of American literature, I've got tons OF OTHER EXAMPLES for you.:)

Germaine Guevremont's The Outlander, originally published in French, won the Governor General in 1950 for English Literature. However, much like Ringuet's Thirty Acres, either of Gabrielle Roy's two novels, or even, I don't know, Hugh MacLennan's great masterpiece Two Solitudes, this is a novel very much rooted in French Canada. The Outlander takes place in the Sorel region of Quebec, in a small farming community, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone else's business.

I have said, I know more than once, that I love books about French Canada. I don't know why; but I love them much like I love books about the Deep South in the U.S. These people are salt of the earth; hardworking, tough as nails, early to bed early to rise, pious motherfuckers. Perhaps because they don't have very much, their feelings; their loves and their losses, especially, are deeply felt. Anger is a thunderstorm, broken hearts lead to crevasses that are like those at the bottom of the ocean, running deeper than one can imagine. French Canadians do not forget: you can even see it on the Quebec license plate. The Quebec license plate says: "Je me souviens". What do you think "Je me souviens" refers to? First of all, what does it mean? "Je me souviens" means "I remember." That is a present tense verb. Of course, this could refer to the present moment. At this moment, I remember something that happened in the past...At this moment, I'm actually remembering my life in Quebec and how much I miss it, even though I'm looking at a stunning spring day in Seattle. However, as something on a license plate that everyone in a province has, there is a collective aspect to this "Je me souviens." If everyone in Quebec is "remembering" what is that past thing that everyone in Quebec has the deep-seated potential to remember? "Je me souviens"/"I remember" is referring to remembering when Quebec belonged to the French. It has not been that long (1967?) since Canada has been its own country, but it has been a while since Quebec belonged to the French, as Canada was even split into a "dominion" of Great Britain in 1867. (Like my Canadian history? That's about it, people, though admittedly it's more than most Canadians even at times). There was a referendum in my lifetime(when I was in high school), that's how badly French Canadians can't forget and don't want to. It is a gash that I don't think will ever heal. Quebec is a little bit unique in North America, perhaps California bears some similarities to it, but not in quite the same way. Quebec is a twice conquered land. First the French came over and kicked the living shit out of the Native Americans who lived there for generation upon generation, and then the English kicked the shit out of the French settlers and claimed the land for the King. The soil of Quebec and most of Ontario for that matter, is soaked with the blood of warriors both white and native, drenched in the memory of cultures sabotaged and suppressed. In thinking of all of this, I was reminded of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Now, I'm not sure the two can be compared on exactly the same plane(one could definitely do the "my culture's conflicts suck more than your culture's conflicts" argument), but there are certainly similarities. There is the conquering of a people, there is the constant suppression of a people(this is where English Canada has eased up in the past several years, though), there is the religion question, there is deeply seated resentment and hatred. I called Jean to ask her about her opinion on this, since I don't really know anyone else besides Kate and Jean who would be as equally versed in the Middle East AND Quebec, since I don't really know anyone else out here who is really versed in French-Canadian history. I feel like I'm the only one, and most of my history that I've obtained has been through research related to the project...All of this is to say, French Canada is like an elephant. It will never forget. Anything.

To get off of that political tangent, I have to say that this is all setup for The Outlander. Guevremont's book is all about not forgetting. Not forgetting where you or your neighbors came from, not forgetting the past, but also how all of this memory can cripple us as well. The Outlander begins with a stranger entering the small town of Monk's Inlet near Sorel, Quebec. He knocks on the door and enters the home of the Beauchemin family, one of the more established, better off farming families in the town. He has dinner(supper, whatever) with the family and then he becomes their hired hand. This is a community in which the same families have lived for years and years, arguably centuries. Change does not happen quickly and is viewed with much skepticism. According to Webster's New World College Dictionary, the term "outlander" means foreigner, alien, stranger. Everything about this man is "foreign" to the people of Monk's Inlet; Guevremont goes to great lengths to describe his looks and how distinctive they are. What is hardest for the community, though, is the fact that he doesn't have a past. Well, of course he does, but it is not one that the community knows, nor does he talk about it; they only get glimpses of it through his knowledge of folk songs and through small anecdotes he gives.

The town's skepticism starts to wane, however, as they accept his presence, and he becomes like a member of the Beauchemin family. He is enmeshed in the community, and even his drinking binges are overlooked in an effort not to disgrace the Beauchemins. There is also a budding romance, to an extent, with the unmarried(could argue spinster, but I really sometimes hate that term, for at my age(argh) I would be considered one of those in that day and age) daughter of the farmer next door, Angelina. Everything is shaping up pretty well, there is enough small town drama to make the book interesting, the relationship between Angelina and the stranger ebbs and flows. At the end of book one(The Outlander is divided into three parts which were originally published separately in two[don't you love crazy Quebecois literature?], it seems, the first book is called Le Survenant, the second called Marie-Didace, which is also the name of part three) the stranger decides to leave Monk's Inlet. There is some stress between Amable(son of the patriarch of the Beauchemin family, Didace...All these awesome French-Canadian names! I love it!) and the Stranger, and he also seems to have a bit of ambivalence towards Angelina. He takes off into the night, and the town is basically shattered. It doesn't perhaps seem too evident at first, I think everyone thinks the Stranger is eventually going to return, but soon it becomes clear that he is not going to, at least not for a very very long time. Parts 2 and 3 are all about the aftermath. And, boy is it crushing...and depressing. I kept wishing so hard that the Stranger would return, because things just kept getting worse and worse for everyone all around, they're so mired in their grief. Didace goes out and finds a new wife, the one that the Stranger had introduced him to, so the memory of him still lingers in the house, regardless, and the loss of him is an even bigger hole. Alphonsine, Didace's daughter-in-law feels totally upstaged by the new wife, it causes conflict between her father-in-law and her husband, as well as her. Angelina is devastated by the loss of her one real true beau. The town as a whole doesn't have the energy of the Stranger to prop it up. It's scary how much impact one person can have on a community, especially a small one. I think that this is perhaps less true now, but, there are many cases where it still is.

Part 3 is entitled Marie-Didace, referring to Alphonsine and Amable's daughter, who is the third generation Beauchemin in this work. Alphonsine became pregnant while the Stranger was still living with the Beauchemins, and there is always this hint that perhaps the child is the Stranger's but it is only a guess one can hazard, not a full blown supposition based in any kind of evidence. It is ironic that Part 3 is entitled such, because Marie-Didace, though a character in the section, does not have as vital a role as I thought she might. I thought, wrongly, that perhaps time would skip forward and she would be older(she is still very much a child in this last section), have a relationship of her own, and perhaps we would all be so lucky and the Stranger would return. NOT SO MUCH. It is pretty much a continuation of all the crap from the previous part. This is where my disappointment with Guevremont's work lies. It is a well-written book, don't get me wrong, I just wished, perhaps selfishly that there was some kind of redemptive end. This could be because life isn't always that way, although, for me, I sometimes feel like it is...redemptive, at least. I often, however, look to novels for an escape, and in this case, it did continually drag me down. Without going into too much detail, the end leaves many people dead, and hearts in ruins. On the front of my copy of the book the description above the title reads "The Canadian masterpiece that won five major national and international awards...Rich in emotion, simple yet profound, it depicts the rural French-Canadian reality with rare and poetic authenticity." It is a beautifully written book, that I think, from what I can gather, does depict the French-Canadian reality very well, especially that in the townships and beyond, but what a life...There are a few quotes that I loved, that sum up, I feel, so much of this world, of the French-Canadian farmer.

"Just like the old days, thought Marie-Amanda[only living daughter of Didace Beauchemin]. But the carefree joy of those old days had gone. Her heart was in the grip of bitter recollections: Ephrem had been drowned one day in July; he was not yet sixteen. Mathilde Beauchemin was no longer in the world to try to soothe Didace when Amable became peevish or the two men were at odds. And grandmother no longer pottered about the kitchen lamenting that pralines weren't made as they used to be.

And yet Marie-Amanda would not utter the words that might have relieved her anguish; she did not want to depress the others. She merely walked to the window and stood looking out, as though to beg the unchanging countryside for a reflection of its stability. Dusk was falling, casting a blue shadow on the snow mantling the fields, and the line of mountains, usually humped against the hollow of the sky, was now blended with the plain. Through the mist of her tears Marie-Amanda could scarcely see the landscape. She, at thirty, was already the oldest of the women in the family. It was for her, the eldest daughter, to give a good example. Was life like the river, intent only upon its course, heedless of the banks that it fertilizes or lays waste? Were human beings rushes, impotent to restrain it from obeying its own law--blue rushes, full of vigor in the morning, and by the evening shrunk into dismal husks, sapless and straw-colored? Young rushes would grow up in their place. Inexorable, the river continued on its course; neither she nor anyone could prevent it.

Little Mathilde, astonished to see her mother motionless for so long, clung to Marie-Amanda's skirts." (50)

The other quote that I particularly liked, since I think it resonates a little with my own life, is the following:

"'To become their own masters and make a new life,'--thus it was that so few Frenchmen, being by nature stay-at-homes, came to establish themselves in Canada in the early days of the colony, and that the manorial system was impossible there. He who decides to break away completely from an environment in which he cannot breathe is always an adventurer. He will not again submit himself to the yoke he has flung off. The Frenchman, once he has become a Canadian, would prefer to cultivate a hand breath of land than a seignorial estate on which he would be merely a vassal, owing loyalty, homage, and service to a master." (100)

French Canada is so very interesting...I get to write, very soon, about a book that takes place in New France(Quebec before it was Quebec!) but not before I write about an early Pulitzer winner and a collection of stories by a Canadian writer from the '60s. I am trying desperately to play catch-up so I can begin reading again.