Janette Turner Hospital

Janette Turner Hospital

"Here and Now"

As it happened, Alison was wearing black when the phone call came; black velvet, cut low in front with a thin silver chain at her throat.

Thus begins an evocative little sketch of Alison as she receives news from her home in Australia.  Surrounded by ice and snow in Canada, the coldness of the weather is contrasted with the warmth of the celebration she attends for a retiring professor.  But whilst the champagne corks are popping all around her in the joyous environment of the Faculty Club, Alison denies the reality of the news she has just received.  She can trick herself into believing that it hasn't happened yet because of course Brisbane time is in the future for her in Canada.  This denial helps her to get through a speech and some small talk, until she encounters Walter, a type of  "Ancient Mariner" who stops her from leaving and shares his story of woe.  When grief collides with grief the lid is blown from her denial, just as the sewer lids are popping in the streets of Toronto (a puzzling image).

Knowing that Janette Turner Hospital lived in Kingston, Ontario at the same time I did, and imagining this story set at the Queen's University Faculty Club (which does indeed overlook the water) I felt an immediate connection to the setting of this story.  The icy windshield, getting the car out of the driveway before the snow plough comes past, and the slippery parking lot are just a few of the pitch perfect details that contribute to the verisimilitude of a winter in Canada for Alison, the Australian.  In this very short story, just four pages long, Janette Turner Hospital has evoked a shock so disorienting as to unhinge Alison in time and space. Her body and her mind are separate as she returns in her shock to the land of her childhood, and looking out the car window she sees not Lake Ontario, but the Brisbane River.

A Quote:

At the Faculty Club, Alison's car slewed a little on the ice, nudged a parked Toyota, hesitated, then slid obediently into the neighbouring space.  She sat trembling slightly, her hands on the wheel, the engine still running, and stared through the windshield at the Brisbane River.  Here, on the lip of the campus, a membrane of ice already stretched across the water for as far as she could see.  The membrane was thinner than a fingernail, milky white.

 
Janette Turner Hospital's writing:

The Ivory Swing (1982)
The Tiger in the Tiger Pit (1983)
Borderline (1985)
Dislocations (1986) short fiction
Charades (1988)
Isobars (1990) short fiction
A Very Proper Death (1990) crime thriller, under the name Alex Juniper
The Last Magician (1992)
Collected Stories (1995) short fiction
L'Envolee (1995) novella in French
Oyster (1996)
Due Preparations for the Plague (2003)
North of Nowhere, South of Loss (2003) short fiction
Orpheus Lost (2007)

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

"Vanka"

Vanka Zhukov, a boy of nine, who had been for three months apprenticed to Alyahin the shoemaker, was sitting up on Christmas Eve.  Waiting till his master and mistress and the workmen had gone to the midnight service, he took out of his master's cupboard a bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib, and spreading out a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, began writing.

Waiting to go to Christmas Eve church service I had just enough time to read the next story in my anthology.  The synchronicity tickled my fancy.  So did the story.

The pathos of little Vanka, a young boy without parental support or friends calls out for aid in a letter to his grandfather.  Vanka is another incarnation of Andersen's "The Little Match Girl".  In his desperation, Vanka calls up the image of his grandfather, a jovial prankster as he gives snuff to ladies and dogs just to laugh at their reactions. The pathetic is piled onto the pathetic; poor Vanka would run away from his horrible situation but he has no boots.  He is suffering the onset of Nature Deficit Disorder in his urban environment.  He pleads with his grandfather to rescue him from his wretched life.

But, unlike the match girl, there is no kindly grandparent who comes to the rescue (even as an envoy from heaven).  The ending of the story assures us that nothing will change for Vanka; his hopelessly mis-addressed, unstamped letter is the last element of pathos that rescues the story from sentimentality, but we know that it can never reach its intended recipient. However, the paradox is that the undeliverable letter has, in a certain sense, been delivered.  For we, the readers are made aware of Vanka's plight, but are as unable to rescue him as his unnotified grandfather.


Anton Chekhov's Plays:

The Seagull (1896) - a comedy in four acts
Uncle Vanya (1899-1900) - a drama in four acts
Three Sisters (1901) - a drama in four acts
The Cherry Orchard (1904) - a comedy in four acts

Carol Shields

Carol Shields

"The Orange Fish" (from The Orange Fish)

The narrator of this story is a 39-year old man, unhappy in life and marriage, and suffering from an ulcer.  He and his wife are transformed when they purchase a lithograph of an orange fish and hang it in their kitchen.  But of course, this story is not really about a man and a woman and a fish lithograph.  Carol Shields makes some big statements about consumerism, youth worship and the fear of aging, and the healing power of creativity.  If we allow art in all its forms into our lives, it will reveal truth and its potency will transform us.  The irony of the story also reflects another truth: when we try to capture and replicate the originality and power inherent in original expression, it is diluted and becomes meaningless.

Carol Shields strikes a chord.  She is able to take a simple act (the purchase of a piece of art for a bare wall) and make it a profound, life-altering act without reducing it to sentimentality or the ridiculous.  Rarely has a work of short fiction felt so much like a door into an entire world that is fully realised in a few short pages.
 
Writings by Carol Shields:

Small Ceremonies (1976)
The Box Garden (1977)
Happenstance (1980)
A Fairly Conventional Woman (1982)
Various Miracles (short fiction, 1985)
Swann: A Mystery (1987)
The Orange Fish (short fiction, 1989)
The Republic of Love (1992)
The Stone Diaries (1993)
Larry's Party (1997)
Unless (2002)

Ethel Wilson

Ethel Wilson

"We Have to Sit Opposite"

Two married Canadian women travelling from Salzburg to Munich are forced to share a train carriage with another family.  The rudeness of their carriage-mates, as well as the arrogance and aurhoritarian manner of the man brings out the worst in the women, and they retaliate in a creatively deceptive , and uncharacteristic manner.

Her eyes were tightly closed, but her mind was greatly disturbed.  Why had they permitted themselves to be baited?  She pondered on the collective mentality that occupied the seat near to them (knees almost touching) and its results which now filled the atmosphere of the carriage so unpleasantly.  She had met this mentality before, but had not been closely confined with it, as now.  What of a world in which this mentality might ever become dominant?  Then one would be confined with it without appeal or relief.  The thought was shocking. 

 The Ethel Wilson Prize is awarded to the best work of fiction by a resident of British Columbia, and is named in honour of this author.  I enjoy her style of writing, her evocation of place, and character with few well-chosen words.  I look forward to exploring her longer fiction.

Writing by Ethel Wilson included in the New Canadian Library:

Hetty Dorval (1947)
The Innocent Traveller (1949)
The Equations of Love (two novellas, 1952)
Swamp Angel (1954)
Love and Salt Water (1956)
Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories (short fiction, 1961)

O. Henry

"The Furnished Room"

A young man searching five months for his lost love in the city rents a furnished room from a landlady.  There is very little characterisation of either the unnamed young man or the woman for whom he searches.  O. Henry withholds crucial information from the young man, and from the reader, which makes this story seem like a bit of a trick, rather than just a surprise ending.  I did enjoy his powers of description as the young man searches the room.  O. Henry is able to create a quite believable setting through his use of careful observation and evoking all the senses.

Here's a quote:

No.  Always no.  Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative.  So much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools, and choruses; by night among the audiences of the theaters, from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for.  He who had loved her best had tried to find her.  He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of today buried tomorrow in ooze and slime.

"The Ransom of Red Chief"

I read this humorous short story to my daughter (age 10) who hooted with laughter at all the right places.  Written in the first person by a hapless entrepreneur who, along with his beleaguered partner decide to make some money by kidnapping the son of a wealthy man.  What they hadn't counted on was the character of the boy they were dealing with.  One of my favourite aspects of this story for me is the attempt at literary, or elevated language used by the kidnapper who very often, but not always, misses the mark with his malapropisms.

Here's a bit of the story:

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a land scheme in western Illinois.  We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel.  Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things.  We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget.  So it looked good.

L. M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud |Montgomery

"The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's"

I found this story in my copy of The Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women in English, but it was originally published in Chronicles of Avonlea (which is available online here).  A stand-alone story, it is only loosely tied to the other stories in the collection through setting, and minor characters.  Those familiar with the "Anne" books will recognise the names of the Reverend Mr. Allan and his wife, and Dr. Blair from Carmody who play minor roles, along with a mention of Anne Shirley herself.

"The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's" is the story of Miss MacPherson, a cantankerous unmarried lady, and lover of cats who is thrown together with Mr. Alexander Abraham, a cantankerous bachelor, and lover of dogs.  Miss MacPherson tells the story just as though she were relating the experience to a friend, with a strong and distinct narrative voice.  The story is well paced and humorous, slightly farcical, slightly sentimental, but wholly enjoyable.

The first paragraph:

I refused to take that class in Sunday School the first time I was asked.  It was not that I objected to teaching in the Sunday School.  On the contrary, I rather liked the idea; but it was the Rev. Mr. Allan who asked me, and it had always been a matter of principle with me never to do anything a man asked me to do if I could help it.  I was noted for that.  It saves a great deal of trouble and it simplifies everything beautifully.  I had always disliked men.  It must have been born in me, because as far back as I can remember, an antipathy to men and dogs was one of my strongest characteristics.  I was noted for that.  My experiences through life only served to deepen it.  The more I saw of men, the more I liked cats.

James Thurber

James Thurber

 "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

Now why does this title sound so familiar?  I have never read this story before - or anything by Thurber, for that matter, but the name is one I have heard before.  A quick search led me to the movie made of this little short story starring Danny Kaye (which Thurber apparently hated).  Even more surprisingly, apparently a remake is currently in post-production starring Ben Stiller and Sean Penn.

Walter Mitty, a beleaguered husband drives his wife in to town to run some errands.  The drama in the story is limited to a very dull afternoon in which Walter Mitty drops his wife off at the salon, parks the car, attends to some purchases and meets up with  her after her hair appointment.  On their walk back to the car they stop off at a drug store for another purchase.  That's it!  I haven't given anything away here; the actual action is only the backdrop on which the real story occurs.  Emasculated by his nit-picking wife, his social awkwardness and his absentmindedness, Walter Mitty creates for himself an adventurous, heroic (and very masculine) inner fantasy life.  His daydreams and his reality intersect and we are given a glimpse into this "secret life." This story reminds me of nothing so much as Calvin and his alter-ego Spaceman Spiff, and makes me laugh in the same way.  I wonder if Bill Waterson was influenced by Thurber?

A wonderful story, tightly packed, and short with perfectly timed flow and humour.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this little gem.  I liked it so much that I will avoid the movies!

James Thurber created cartoons for The New Yorker.

Catharine Parr Traill

An immigrant to Canada, Catharine Parr Traill and her husband settled near what is now Lakefield, Ontario in 1832.  She wrote many stories and sketches of life in the bush for both British and Canadian publications and is most weel known for her book The Backwoods of Canada.

This sketch begins on a beautiful day of spring melt - a new beginning as old winter is casting off his coat of snow.  This is a transitory period of waiting for the ground is too soggy to make venturing out an easy venture, and the author is still recovering her health from a winter cold.  We are on the cusp of a new life, and the re-awakening of the sleeping world when into this hopeful picture comes news of the seriously ill neighbouring baby.

The harsh realities of life for the early settlers of Upper Canada is captured in this documentary narrative style vignette by Catherine Parr Traill of the death of an infant.  Far from medical help, a young mother, the wife of the manager of the nearby sawmill, sends for her neighbour to help her with her ill baby who is just 8 weeks old.  By the time she arrives the author sees that there is little hope for survival and remains so the mother can have some much-needed rest from her vigil.  But, as was so common in that age and place, the baby dies the following day.

Catharine Parr Traill's writing reveals a Christianity with a stark division between man and nature. As she stands in the doorway (which she does twice in this short narrative), she looks out on the "beauty and magnificence" of a Garden of Eden, whilst behind her in the house lay the effects of original sin - "human suffering and human woe."  She (and all humans) are trapped, like prisoners, in the human condition.  It is the lessons from nature, she instructs us, that show us how to be filled with gratitude, even at such a time.  Learning to read God's bounty in nature is an extension for Catharine Parr Traill of the lessons learned by reading the Bible.  It is not surprising that she is almost as well know for her botanical studies of Canadian flora as for her sketches of life in the bush.

Favourite quote:

'Tis a sweet quiet spot, that burial ground in the woods.  A few rudely sculptured stones - a heap piled here and there - a simple cross of wood, or a sapling tree planted by some pious hand, are the only memorials, to point out where rest the poor emigrant or his children.  But the pines sigh above them a solemn requiem, the wild birds of the forest sing their lullaby, and the pure white lily of the woods and the blue violet, grow as freely on their green mossy graves, as though they slept within the holy shadow of the sanctuary.  Their resting place is indeed hallowed, by the tears and humble prayers of their mournful relations.

Related Books:

Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters From the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America (1836)
Canadian Wild Flowers (1868)
Studies of Plant Life in Canada; or, Gleanings from Forest, Lake and Plain (1885)
Forest and Other Gleanings: The Fugitive Writings of Catharine Parr Traill (1994)

Stephen Leacock

I have decided that from now until the new year, I am going to devote myself to reading short fiction.  I have several anthologies that sit and sit, and I never seem to pick them up.  Well, now is the time, and what better place to start than with Stephen Leacock!

Stephen Leacock

Have you watched this lately: My Financial Career?  I remember that every year when I was a girl we would set up a projector and play rented NFB shorts all day in the darkened choir room whilst the parents were busy with the baked goods, the chicken barbecue and the used clothing tables at the church bazaar.  I have such good memories of The Log Driver's Waltz and The Blackfly Song and of course, the wonderful Paddle to the Sea, and of demanding, "Let's watch it again!"  Now there is a walk down Memory Lane!

But back to Stephen Leacock.  I went through a long Leacock phase when I was a teenager but have not read anything of his since.  I get the impression that his style of humour has fallen somewhat out of favour, but based on these two stories today, and watching the video of My Financial Career (which is the entire text of the short story), I'm still as keen on his writing as I was back in the day. 

"We Have With Us Tonight"
(from My Discovery of England)

After a lecture tour of England, Stephen Leacock wrote about his experiences in My Discovery of England.  "We Have With Us Tonight" deals with various introductions he was given to his audience by chairmen not always as tactful as one would hope.  Here is a sample:

A still more terrible type of chairman is one whose mind is evidently preoccupied and disturbed with some local happening and who comes to the platform with a face imprinted with distress.  Before introducing the lecturer, he refers in moving tones to the local sorrow, whatever it is.  As a prelude to a humorous lecture this is not gay.

Such a chairman fell to my lot one night before a gloomy audience in a London suburb.

"As I look about this hall to-night," he began in a doleful whine, "I see many empty seats."  Here he stifled a sob.  "Nor am I surprised that a great many of our people should prefer to-night to stay quietly at home - "

I had no clue to what he meant.  I merely gathered that some particular sorrow must have overwhelmed the town that day.

"To many it may seem hardly fitting that after the loss our town has sustained we should come out here to listen to a humorous lecture - "

"What's the trouble?"  I whispered to a citizen sitting beside me on the platform.

"Our oldest resident" - he whispered back - "he died this morning."

 "A, B, and C: The Human Element in Mathematics"
(from Literary Lapses)

Erin is preparing for a Math exam tomorrow, and for a little interlude I read this story to her.    Leacock writes about the hard-working men in school mathematical texts named A, B, and C who are constantly digging ditches, driving locomotives in opposite directions, racing in regattas and stacking piles of wood.  It was just the break we needed in the middle of all the graphs and charts and equations.  After a few laughs it was back to the books.

The first time that ever I saw these men was one evening after a regatta.  They had all been rowing in it, and it had transpired that A could row as much in one hour as B in two, or C in four.  B and C had come in dead fagged and C was coughing badly.  "Never mind, old fellow," I heard B say, "I'll fix you up on the sofa and get you some hot tea."  Just then A came blustering in and shouted, "I say, you fellows, Hamlin Smith has shown me three cisterns in his garden and he says we can pump them until tomorrow night.  I bet I can beat you both.  Come on.  You can pump in your rowing things, you know.  Your cistern leaks a little, I think, C."  I heard B growl that it was a dirty shame and that C was used up now, but they went, and presently I could tell from the sound of the water that A was pumping four times as fast as C.

The Painted Door by Sinclair Ross

This is a story that features in virtually every winter-on-the-prairie novel ever written: caught in a blinding blizzard, a character tries to find his way home without freezing to death while at home they watch, worrying at the window for any sign of life on the barren landscape.  Pa did it in On the Banks of Plum Creek, and the Drylanders did it more than once.  In his short story, "The Painted Door," Sinclair Ross focuses not so much on the events of the story, as he does on the wandering thoughts of the lonely Ann as she is once again left on her own in the farmhouse while her husband John is out in the blizzard.  This is the story of her desperation and madness that drive us to the story's dramatic conclusion.

John has decided that he must visit his father five miles across the barren winter prairie landscape to help with his chores and check up on him.  Walking alone across the snowy wilderness is something John does with confidence.  He was raised on the prairie and has endured many such storms.  But Ann reminds him that they had seen a "double ring around the sun," a sure omen of a coming storm.   John is dismissive of her worries, comforting her by saying he will invite their neighbour for dinner and cards, and to expect him back for a late dinner.

Isolated, not only from her husband and their distant neighbours, Ann is also isolated from the landscape in which she lives.  Ann believes that his journey is too dangerous, while admitting that he was knowledgable and experienced.  The house protects Ann from the worst of the storm, but she is haunted by the silence after John leaves:

It was the silence weighing upon her - the frozen silence of the bitter fields and sun-chilled sky - lurking outside as if alive, relentlessly in wait, mile-deep between her now and John.  She listened to it, suddenly tense, motionless.  The fire crackled and the clock ticked.  Always it was there.

To fight off the silence, Ann begins to talk to herself as she paints the door and trim in the kitchen.  She thinks about how their lives have enclosed in upon them, unable to relax when they do have fewer responsibilities in the winter, and no longer involving themselves in the community.  She complains to herself about her life and voices her grievances aloud.  The storm continues to batter the house, causing it to sway and vibrate.  She feels brave enough to attempt to tend the livestock in the barn, but when she steps outside, the storm is angry and fights to get her "as if all its forces were concentrated upon her extinction."

It is at this point that she loses control and has a shift in self-awareness.  Her self-pity have overtaken her, and she breaks free of her restraints in a moment of madness.  These feelings coincide with the arrival of their neighbour, Steven, and in a state between dreaming and waking Ann fills the void for companionship.  She chooses to satisfy herself at the expense of the long-term love and devotion from her husband, John.  The consequences of her action are dramatic and immediate and the tragic irony is that it is only through discovering what she does not want that she loses what she most wants.

I am looking forward to reading As for Me and My House, Sinclair Ross's novel this year, as well as his short story collection Lamp at Noon. 

The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro

Included as the first story in Jane Urquhart's Penquin Book of Canadian Short Stories (2007), it is also the title story from Alice Munro's collection of short stories by the same name.  Somewhere (cottage? packed?) I have the collection, but am only able to read this story on it's own at the moment.  Munro is a master, truly the finest, wordsmith.  She can write a sentence to bring you to your knees with it's perfection, and create a scene with slight of hand.

The family leaves Scotland for the new world and the vividness of live aboard fills all the senses.  When the son is cheeky to the father, Munro describes:

Barely on board the vessel and this seventeen-year-old whelp has taken on knowing airs, he has taken to contradicting his father.  Fatique, astonishement and the weight of the great coat he is wearing prevent Old James from cuffing him.

and,

Agnes comes from a large Hawick family of weavers, who work in the mills now but worked for generations at home.  And working there they learned all the arts of cutting each other down to size, of squabbling and surviving in close quarters.

Alice Munro paints such vivid images, often just on the verge an extreme of comedy or surrealism.  But, we can feel what she expresses happening in the minds of each of the characters as, for instance, the view of the homeland recedes and the tears and sadness turn to boredom and loss of interest.  Each of the characters has a different reaction and Munro honours each: Agnes does not want to move herself, she has different pain to consider; Old James is loyal to his town but not a nationalist, his loyalties are parochial; it is a solemn and majestic moment for Walter, the narrator.  Munro can paint a picture, and the images endure because they are not merely physical, but emotional descriptions.