Since my last posting, I have finished three more books, bringing my grand total of novels read for the project up to 101. I am currently in the process of finishing Willa Cather's One of Ours, a Pulitzer winner from the 20s. In the next 48 hours, however (at least this is the plan), I am going to write about 99, 100 and 101. That way I can get caught up before I go on a much needed vacation.

For book #99, I read Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Englishman's Boy. I was a bit apprehensive in reading this book, only because I read the Canada Reads selection a few years ago, which was Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing. I dunno. The book was not that gripping, and felt oddly similar to Rudy Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers which I read right around the same time, and which I felt, if I was to compare, was a better novel(and won the Governor General). That being said, I'm glad that I had that disappointing experience, because I think my expectations for another Vanderhaeghe novel were substantially lowered. The Englishman's Boy was excellent. Page-wise it is not an exceptionally long novel (333 pp.), but it is rich and full of story, of character development, of prose that makes you think. I think what I also liked about the book was that the subject matter was different from what normally shows up on the lists, as well as it spanned both the U.S and Canada, fitting for a project like mine.

The novel The Englishman's Boy has two different narrative strands that weave together in the end to create a complete picture. In the beginning, we are faced with some unsavory "cowboys" (though I wouldn't necessarily go as far as to give them that lofty qualification), who go to sleep for the night in the U.S. prairies and Native Americans steal all of their horses. It is the decision of the head of the gang, Hardwick, to pursue the Natives, eventually into the Canadian prairies, get the horses back and seek revenge. Related to this story strand is a young boy, left to his own devices in the world, who is the servant to an Englishman coming to the Prairies to seek adventure and fortune, possibly to escape some kind of situation at home that he would sooner forget. The Englishman, while staying a saloon, dies from illness, and the "boy" is left once again to his own devices. He takes the Englishman's guns and clothes, leaves behind nearly all of the rest of his master's possessions including the overwhelming amount of his money; takes some to pay the innkeeper, leaving the rest as a way to cover the funeral, and heads out, alone. He has a tough exterior, and a fierce desire to protect himself, but inside he is still very much a boy learning how to be a man. In a saloon, where he stabs a man who threatens him, is where he meets Hardwick and his gang, and at this point he has a home base, and a job: to travel with the men and help get the horses back.

The novel takes a dramatic shift forward an undetermined amount of years, but at the minimum about 30, to Hollywood in the 1920s, when talkies were still not quite available, but when the U.S was mesmerized by all things silver screen. What an era! Cecile B. DeMille, Goldwynn and other men who formed the production studios that we now all know very well are mentioned, as well as female actresses like Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford. This is before Graummann build his now famous Chinese theater, and has an Egyptian one instead...I can tell you that before I read this book, I had very little knowledge about Hollywood, especially in the era before the talking pictures, but now I at least have a vague idea. At the center of this very young town, in the reader's eye at least, is a young man from Saskatchewan, who has come to Hollywood to make a living, a fortune, perhaps, and while looking after his mentally ill mother. This particular man is a scenerist, writing out the cards that the audience will read on-screen, that will fill in the gaps that cannot be provided because there is no speaking. Through a series of circumstances, he makes the acquaintance of a wealthy newcomer to Hollywood who has bought out a production company, and who has a quixotic eye for film. He wants to make the GREAT American Western...He wants to tell the story of the American West as history has meant for it to be told. He wants its grittiness, its authenticity, its truth, to shine through the camera lens. Our narrator is to be his detective, and search out a man that Damon Ira Chance believes to hold the secrets to an old West, an uncultured, tough-as-nails West. This man is Shorty McAdoo, a sometime cowboy extra in Hollywood Westerns of the time. Producer/Director Chance wants our narrator to find him, and get him to tell his story, which will subsequently become the Greatest Western Ever Told(at least up until that point).

As the opening narrative of the Englishman's boy and his involvement in what is to become one of the bloodiest massacres of the Canadian West, the Cypress Hills Massacre, continues to unfold, so too does the story of our narrator Harry with his discovery of Shorty McAdoo, and his embroiling in Hollywood politics of the 1920s. Eventually Harry convinces Shorty to tell his story, and it goes to Chance, who changes it to suit his needs, enraging Shorty and deeply troubling Harry's sense of morality. We the readers don't know what the left-out details are until much later, when more of the Englishman's boy's story is revealed. And, as the gut-wrenching, vomit-worthy details come to light, we see the Englishman's boy, and in a parallel, Harry 30 years later, struggle with their sense of right and wrong, of justice and fairness in a world that seems all too corrupt. Choosing the moral high road leaves both characters in a far worse position, and the movie gets done without them. The outcome is not without its own tragedy, however.

There were many great characters in this book that I haven't yet mentioned, some of which are fleshed out more than others, but all of them drive the narrative forward. Rachel Gold is my particular favorite, probably subconsciously for me because she is a woman and I always love strong women characters amongst a male majority. Rachel Gold writes screenplays in a misogynistic environment where she is outnumbered both in sex AND religion. She is described as stunningly beautiful by Harry(who is unabashedly and not so secretly head over heels in love with her), and definitely catches the eye of many men in Hollywood. She churns out pulp-y screenplays so that she can save up money to write the great American novel that she knows she never will. But, she is charming, in an educated Dorothy Parker-esque way, and takes no shit from anyone, still maintaining a heart for Harry and his ill mother. She is also a particularly easy way for Vanderhaeghe to show the anti-semitism starting to bloom in the film industry as Jews of many different backgrounds came out to start production companies and direct films. A foreshadowing, too, of the shake-out of the world as Hitler began to take power nearly 10 years later.

There are many other great characters. Harry's mother, trapped in her mind, staying in a home outside of Hollywood. Vanderhaeghe's description of her scrubbing one particular spot in the window is heart-wrenching in its detail. The Englishman's boy's friend named Grace, is also a great secondary character. There is Fitzsimmons, Chance's right hand man, who is a piece of shit, but every book needs a Judas of some kind.

At the heart of this novel is what we are forced to do as human beings when we come to a moral crossroads, and how we live with ourselves when we make our choice. Some people survive despite being dealt a bad hand or even despite making poor choices; some others crumble under the weight of their bad judgement. Others still receive their karmic come-uppance. Ultimately, it is up to all of us as humans to wrestle with our demons as we can and hopefully they shape us, not destroy us.

There are, as always, a few quotes that I thought were particularly good.

The first is when Chance is talking about his hero, D.W. Griffith, explaining his philosophy to Harry.

"'And then there is something else Mr. Griffith taught us by example. How to make a profit from fact. No motion picture since has approached the profitability of The Birth of a Nation. It was pure genius on his part to advertise his motion picture as fact. Americans are a practical people, they like facts. Facts are solid, they're dependable. The average American feels foolish when he enjoys a made-up story, feels sheepish, childish, a mooner, a dreamer. But entertain him with facts and you give him permission to enjoy himself without guilt. He needn't feel swindled, or hoodwinked, a hick sold a bill of goods by a carnival barker. He prefers to feel virtuous because he's learned something useful, informed himself, improved himself.

'You mark my words, Harry, there'll come a day when the public won't swallow any of our stories unless they believe them to be real. Everybody wants the real thing, or thinks they do. Truth is stranger than fiction, someone said. It may not be, but it's more satisfying. Facts are the bread America wants to eat. The poetry of facts is the poetry of the American soul.

'Of course, he qualifies, 'the facts in picture-making must be shaped by intuition.' He pauses dramatically. 'I learned that at the feet of Bergson. I am a Bergsonian,' he declares, a little like Aimee Semple McPherson might declare she is a Christian.'" (18-19)

The next quote is from Rachel, and it definitely gives one a taste of who she is and what she believes...

"'The true test of any scenario,' Rachel was fond of saying, 'is to read it to a cameraman. Cameramen are invariably Irish and invariably drunk. If they can grasp the plot, the moral, the theme of your simple tale through an alchoholic haze, you can be assured you have struck the proper intellectual level. If one of these sons of the Emerald Isle happens to weep upon hearing your masterpiece, what can I say except - El Dorado! A word to the wise. Never consult a story editor about your script. Story editors are people who once harboured higher literary ambitions-such as writing fiction for one of the better women's magazines. A house divided against itself cannot stand, Vincent, and story editors are cracked from top to bottom, conscience-stricken souls who berate themselves for selling out for a mess of pottage. They are whores who delude themselves they only lent their cherries, not irretrievably lost them. I, on the other hand, know exactly who popped me, when, where, and for how much.'" (36-37)

(Rachel by the way divides men into two categories: menschs and gigolos...:))

Another quote is the producer/director Chance speaking again. He is a little Welles-ian, but Orson Welles would have only been a child when this book takes place. Chance is a pretty unlikeable dude, but he does have interesting things to say.

"...Sitting through Griffith's picture is like sitting through one of those dark summer nights when a thunderstorm breaks: instants of brilliant illumination when the the things which flash before your eyes - a tree waving in the wind, a river in spate, your bedroom chair - burn into your brain in a way they never would in the steady, even light of day. There is no logical explanation as to why or how this happens. Images take root in your mind, hot and bright, like an image on a photoplate. Once they etch themselves there, they can't be obliterated, can't be scratched out. They burn themselves in the mind. Because there's no arguing with pictures. You simply accept or reject them. What's up there on the screen moves too fast to permit analysis or argument. You can't control the flow of images the way you can control a book - by rereading a chapter, rereading a paragraph, rereading a sentence. A book invites argument, invites reconsideration, invites thought. A moving picture is beyond thought. Like feeling, it simply is. The principle of a book is persuasion; the principle of a movie is revelation. Martin Luther was converted in a lightning storm, a conversion accomplished in the bowels and not the mind. A lesson for all of us in this business to remember.'

I am interested in what Chance has to say. It must show in my face; he leans forward in his chair, lowering his voice. 'Birth became America's history lesson on the Civil War. For the first time, everybody, rich and poor, Northerner and Southerner, native and immigrant, found themselves pupils in the same history class. A class conducted in Philadelphia and New York, in little Iowa theatres and converted saloons in Wyoming. The movie theatre became the biggest night school any teacher had ever dreamed of; one big classroom stretching from Maine to California, an entire nation sitting at Griffith's feet. In New York alone, eight hundred thousand people saw Birth, more people than there are students in all the colleges in all the states of the Union. Think about it, Harry. If Lincoln was the Great Emancipator, Griffith is the Great Educator. Whatever bits of history the average American knows, he's learned from Griffith. Griffith marks the birth of spiritual Americanism.'

'And what is this spiritual Americanism, Mr. Chance?'

'Perhaps it can't be defined in words, Harry. Pictures come closest to capturing its meaning. I am a patriot. I was raised a patriot and I will die a patriot. But for years I was troubled by the question, Why have the American people produced no great art? The Germans gave the world their music. The Romans their architecture. The Greeks their tragedies. We recognize the soul of a people in their art. But where is the American soul? I asked myself. Then it dawned on me. The American soul could not find expression in these old arts because the spirit of the American people was not compatible with them, could not be encompassed in them.' Chance shoots me a victorious look. 'You see? The American spirit is a frontier spirit, restless, impatient of constraint, eager for a look over the next hill, the next peek around the bend in the river. The American destiny is forward momentum. What the old frontiersman called westering. What the American spirit required was an art form of forward momentum, an art form as bold and unbounded as the American spirit. A westering art form! It had to wait for motion pictures. The art form of motion!'" (107-108)

Another great part of the book I loved is a discussion between Rachel and Harry about Chance's vision on film.

"She ignores my question and fires back with one of her own. 'And what's the American sprit, Harry?'

The best I can do is one word. 'Expansive.'

'Oh, that nails it, Harry. Just expansive?'

'And everything the word implies. Energy, optimism, confidence. A quicksilver quality. Like the movies themselves. Chance says the movies are the only thing that can capture the American spirit because they are like America herself. It makes a kind of sense to me.'

'Quite the theory, Harry. But for myself, if I want a dose of the American spirit I'll go to Whitman, Twain, or Crane before Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.'

'You're missing the point. Chance wants to make films that are the artistic equal of Leaves of Grass. He might fail but he's go the guts to try. Besides, how many people have read Leaves of Grass in Mencken's Sahara of the Bozarts? Or anywhere else in this country for that matter? And what about the tenements and the ghettos? Immigrants can't read English. Whitman is for the elite. But everybody goes to the movies. It's the movies that have the chance of making everybody - the immigrant, the backwoods Kentuckian, the New York cab driver, maybe even the Ivy League professor - all feel the same thing, feel what it means to be American. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are all very well, but constitutions make states, they don't make a people.'

'And you're a Canadian, Harry. So why is a Canadian so concerned about teaching Americans how to be American?'

'Because I chose this place. And I'm not the only one in Hollywood. America's Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, was born in Toronto; Louis B. Mayer came from Saint John, New Brunswick; Mack Sennett was raised in Quebec. Canada isn't a country at all, it's simply geography. There's no emotion there, not the kind that Chance is talking about. There are no Whitmans, no Twains, no Cranes. Half the English Canadians wish they were really English, and the other half wish they were Americans. If you're going to be anything you have to choose. Even Catholics don't regard Limbo as something permanent. I remember when the ice used to break up on the South Saskatchewan. We'd be woken up in our beds in the middle of the night by a noise like an artillery barrage, you could hear it all over the city, a great crashing and roaring as the ice broke apart and began to move downriver. At first light, everybody would rush out to watch. Hundreds of people gathered on the riverbanks on a cold spring morning, the whole river fracturing, the water smoking up through the cracks, great plates of ice grinding and rubbing against the piles of the bridge with a desperate moan. It always excited me as a kid. I shook with excitement, shook with the ecstasy of movement. We all cheered. What we were cheering nobody knew. But now, here, when I listen to Chance, maybe I understand that my memory is the truest picture of my country, bystanders huddled on a riverbank, cheering as the world sweeps by. In our hearts we preferred the riverbank, preferred to be spectators, preferred to live our little moment of excitement and then forget it. Chance doesn't want Americans to forget to keep moving. I don't think that's ignoble.'" (180-182)

The descriptions in this book are priceless, but the dialogue, as I've tried to capture, seems to say the most thematically at least to me right now, and for my memory's sake. The last quote I picked was because of its anti-semitism. I thought it was an important theme to look at. Chance here is speaking to Harry.

"'Was it something I said about the Jews that got you up on your high horse, Harry? Fitz tells me you're romantically involved with a Jewess - Rachel Gold I think he said her name is. Now I have no objections to such alliances when they are purely physical ones. Surrender your body to a woman if you must, but remember to keep your independence and integrity intact. I suspect this woman has been a bad influence on you. The Jews are a sentimental and emotional people, Harry. We need only look at the pictures they make to confirm it. Which is why they are so dangerous. The morality of necessity - of survival - has no room for sentimentality. The Bolsheviks are not sentimental. The Fascists are not sentimental. The Americans who made this country were not sentimental. Far from it. Do you need proof? While I was researching our picture I made a point of reading the diaries and journals of early traders and settlers. One entry in particular made a great impression on me. It was simply two lines written on September 30, 1869. 'Dug potatoes this morning. Shot an Indian.' That was all. It was not accompanied by any tortured self-examination of conscience. Because the diarist knew his enemy would not have indulged in anything of the kind if he had killed him. The Indian, we might say, was a Bolshevik in a loincloth. Kill or be killed. They both understood compromise between them was impossible.'

'Perhaps it was not up to the Indian to compromise. Ever consider that?'

'What would you advocate, Harry? Offering your throat to the knife because you might be wrong? History deals us our hand and we must play it. We do not choose our enemies. Circumstances choose them for us. I see the enemies who threaten my country. But I refuse to offer my throat to them.' He tips forward in his chair, one hand resting on the bed. 'I am not preaching anything new, Harry. I am only saying what Christ and Abraham Lincoln said before me, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' That is a fact.'" (295-6)
(295-296)

What makes the book so much more complex is that the person that Harry Vincent admires the most for the longest time, Damon Ira Chance, is the one who ultimately sells out on the story, doesn't tell the whole truth for the sake of Hollywood and betrays the morales that he seeks to uphold. This destroys Harry in a way, on a personal level, as Chance doesn't become the Whitman of the film industry at the time, but rather selfishly caters to his own vision rather than to that of the greater film-going good. It is Shorty McAdoo and his friend, the has-been cowboys living on the fringe of society who display a level of integrity that leads to their own ruination, but is also brave.

This is a great book, and definitely one that I would not have read otherwise. I'm tired, and cashed out for writing for the night.