I try not to get into arguments, or even comparisons really, about national literatures. I don’t think whether Canadian books or American books are better is relevant to much of anything, or possible to determine in any case. Who is to judge? As a Canadian I am far more likely to grasp the cultural subtext of what’s going on in a Canadian book, and vice versa. There’s no point, really. However. I also don’t like having The Great Gatsby shoved down my throat every five minutes as to why, no matter how many Atwoods we produce (not quite the metric I would use, but no matter), American literature will always dominate the continent in terms of literary quality. The fact that I find Gatsby trite and dull doesn’t mean I automatically have a book to throw back in response, my nationalist dander having been raised. There’s The Afterlife of George Cartwright, but it doesn’t really have a large place in the Canadian consciousness, Robertson Davies was too much like Dickens for Canadians (who seem to believe that serious literature also has to be in some way dark), and if I ever line up with the people who consider Atwood and Ondaatje the cream-of-the-crop I do hope you’ll do the right thing and put a slug in my brain and have done with it. Carol Shields wrote better short stories than novels, although The Stone Diaries is usually my rejoinder. However, I’ve found a new answer: Famous Last Words knocks Gatsby on its over-kissed ass.
Timothy Findley has long held a place of honour in the Canadian literary pantheon, but I’m embarrassed to say this is my first true encounter with his work. I tried The Piano Man’s Daughter in high school, but couldn’t get past the first chapter. I was not the best of readers. People have been thrusting Not Wanted on the Voyage and The Wars at me for years; I should have relented.
The book has two framing narratives that can also be looked at as a single frame with a cleverly manipulated timeline. The major frame is the omnipotent third-person narrator tracking American army officers investigating the hotel in Austria that was the scene of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’s death, mere weeks—or possibly only days—after WWII has ended. What they find is his murdered corpse and a book-length confessional that he has carved into the walls of the hotel. The other frame is in the same third-person voice, but instead follows Mauberley’s escape from Ezra Pound’s home in Italy (he is the fictional title-character of a volume of Pound’s semi-autobiographical poems, and their lives follow similar moral trajectories), his journey into Austria and his struggle and murder in the hotel. The main narrative is the confession carved into the walls.
Findley’s authorial voice is so confident and outright skilled that it takes almost no time to fall into, although his punctuation is idiosyncratic and can be jarring at times. Even characters who appear only briefly feel as though they lived and breathed (although many of them actually did). The Duke and Duchess of Windsor play unexpectedly large roles, as does Nazi officer Rudolf von Ribbentrop.
It would honestly be pointless to go much deeper into this book here; the plot is at the same time a story of war and its aftermath, political intrigue, failed relationships, ruined cultures and a murder mystery that fizzles out quite appropriately, almost casually offering a solution to a real-world counterpart. The threads that weave in and out are surprisingly easy to keep track of despite their complexity, and though the momentum of the book is mostly due to a series of compelling psychological portraits, it never fails to keep the reader on the edge of their seat.
I assure you that should any pointless arguments regarding national literatures arise in my future, Mr. Findley and I will lay the Canadian smack down.
On the horizon: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman.
