(no subject)
Malcolm Ross -- the man who almost single-handedly invented Canadian literary studies -- said that after 1967, every novel he'd read was influenced by either Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers or Scott Symon's Combat Journal Place d'Armes.
They're similar books. Both feature a member of the Canadian respectable classes who descends into into a kind of schizophrenic animism to deal with all the things he'd held back about himself -- largely sexual. Both books are written in stream-of-consciousness.
And Ross was right -- for about five years after, Canadians wrote nothing but this style. Margaret Atwood wrote this kind of novel twice -- her Surfacing is the only actually enjoyable book in the genre.
(Her Journal of Susanna Moodie is to be avoided -- it's a narrative whose speaker purports to be Susanna Moodie's subconscious, though it sounds suspiciously like Margaret Atwood.)
Cohen's book had managed to survive Canadians tendency to forget everything Canadian, mostly piggybacking on his fame as a musician. Even Cohen fans, though, wince when the book is mentioned.
Combat Journal Place d'Armes was just as influential at the time, and it was the first explicitly gay novel written in this country -- but it's been largely forgotten.
Well, I've read it now, and let me say, it's a very strange book.
Wow -- I mean just wow. It's like someone put The Naked Lunch in a blender with a Group of Seven portrait and put it on puree.
It's the story of an angry, Ontario old-Tory, ultra-masculinist, high-church-Anglican of old Loyalist stock whose mind has clearly slipped from him. He's come to Montreal -- leaving wife and kid -- to write a novel. The novel is about the Place d'Armes (seen in Carmen-Sandiego version in my icon), which has come to life in a kind of animist madness.
The author sees the whole landscape as alive, as conscious, and everything and everyone in it as enhancing or destroying a meaningful life. He sees the new English Canada -- non-religious, non-monarchist, civil-service-oriented -- as castrated and repulsive.
Part of what he's trying to deal with is his homosexuality. The climax is literally a climax -- he makes some sort of psychological breakthrough by having sex with another guy. There's plenty of sex up to that point. In fact, pretty much everything is described rather strangely in terms of body parts and sex toys and gay sex acts. It's easy to forget that homosexuality was still illegal when it was written.
It's also fascinating how he seems almost sexually attracted to antiques and architecture.
In all? I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in Canadian literature or gay history in Canada, but I can't recommend it on its own merits. No one would pick up this book just for fun.
That said, it's vastly superior to Beautiful Losers, and I'd highly recommend that future professors replace Beautiful Losers with it on their syllabi -- it's more lucid, more accessible, has more purpose, and deals with a traditionally marginalized community. The only marginalized community in Beautiful Losers are the First Nations ones, which Cohen exploits for his own strange purposes.
Place d'Armes caused a major impact in the gay community when it came out, and passed around to people who would never otherwise have picked up a work of experimental literature -- gay men were just happy to have something that included them, and didn't condemn them. It was recommended to me by NDP member of parliament Bill Siksay.
In all, Cohen reads like a kid who's just been given permission to swear. Symons' point is often lost in the incomplete sentences, strange digressions, and other stream-of-consciousness techniques, but at least there is a point there.
There's also no three-page blocks of random nouns.
But Symon's book is probably going to be forgotten. It came too early for a coming-out novel to be remembered by a mainstream audience, and can't sell on star power like Cohen's novel does. And that's sad, because if even one academic can be saved from Beautiful Losers, the effort is worth it.
They're similar books. Both feature a member of the Canadian respectable classes who descends into into a kind of schizophrenic animism to deal with all the things he'd held back about himself -- largely sexual. Both books are written in stream-of-consciousness.
And Ross was right -- for about five years after, Canadians wrote nothing but this style. Margaret Atwood wrote this kind of novel twice -- her Surfacing is the only actually enjoyable book in the genre.
(Her Journal of Susanna Moodie is to be avoided -- it's a narrative whose speaker purports to be Susanna Moodie's subconscious, though it sounds suspiciously like Margaret Atwood.)
Cohen's book had managed to survive Canadians tendency to forget everything Canadian, mostly piggybacking on his fame as a musician. Even Cohen fans, though, wince when the book is mentioned.
Combat Journal Place d'Armes was just as influential at the time, and it was the first explicitly gay novel written in this country -- but it's been largely forgotten.
Well, I've read it now, and let me say, it's a very strange book.
Wow -- I mean just wow. It's like someone put The Naked Lunch in a blender with a Group of Seven portrait and put it on puree.
It's the story of an angry, Ontario old-Tory, ultra-masculinist, high-church-Anglican of old Loyalist stock whose mind has clearly slipped from him. He's come to Montreal -- leaving wife and kid -- to write a novel. The novel is about the Place d'Armes (seen in Carmen-Sandiego version in my icon), which has come to life in a kind of animist madness.
The author sees the whole landscape as alive, as conscious, and everything and everyone in it as enhancing or destroying a meaningful life. He sees the new English Canada -- non-religious, non-monarchist, civil-service-oriented -- as castrated and repulsive.
Part of what he's trying to deal with is his homosexuality. The climax is literally a climax -- he makes some sort of psychological breakthrough by having sex with another guy. There's plenty of sex up to that point. In fact, pretty much everything is described rather strangely in terms of body parts and sex toys and gay sex acts. It's easy to forget that homosexuality was still illegal when it was written.
It's also fascinating how he seems almost sexually attracted to antiques and architecture.
In all? I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in Canadian literature or gay history in Canada, but I can't recommend it on its own merits. No one would pick up this book just for fun.
That said, it's vastly superior to Beautiful Losers, and I'd highly recommend that future professors replace Beautiful Losers with it on their syllabi -- it's more lucid, more accessible, has more purpose, and deals with a traditionally marginalized community. The only marginalized community in Beautiful Losers are the First Nations ones, which Cohen exploits for his own strange purposes.
Place d'Armes caused a major impact in the gay community when it came out, and passed around to people who would never otherwise have picked up a work of experimental literature -- gay men were just happy to have something that included them, and didn't condemn them. It was recommended to me by NDP member of parliament Bill Siksay.
In all, Cohen reads like a kid who's just been given permission to swear. Symons' point is often lost in the incomplete sentences, strange digressions, and other stream-of-consciousness techniques, but at least there is a point there.
There's also no three-page blocks of random nouns.
But Symon's book is probably going to be forgotten. It came too early for a coming-out novel to be remembered by a mainstream audience, and can't sell on star power like Cohen's novel does. And that's sad, because if even one academic can be saved from Beautiful Losers, the effort is worth it.