by Kenneth J. Harvey
Random House, 2006
Suburban Pornography
by Matthew Firth
Anvil Press, 2006
Additional material from the TDR archives:
Reviewed by Michael Bryson
On the cover of Kenneth J. Harvey’s
stark and stunning new novel, Inside, a blurb attributed to
Alistair MacLeod proclaims Harvey "a writer like no other." On
the back cover, this theme is reprised in a blurb from Bill Gaston, who
claims: "No one else can write like this." At this point, it
might be useful to remember a blurb from John Donne: "No man is an
island." One might also recall the universe of literary archetypes
richly articulated by Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism,
among other texts. All writers are like other writers, might be the
pertinent paraphrase. Harvey is not such an isolated scribbler as the
marketing copy on the skin of his new novel would have us believe. And
yet, to be sure there is something unique, even isolating about Harvey’s
fiction. Something that requires more engagement than over-simplified
praise.
Such an engagement might begin by looking at the cover of Matthew
Firth’s new short story collection, Suburban Pornography.
There, Harvey himself is blurbed, warning readers to "watch out, because
here comes Canada’s Bukowski." Here the isolation begins to lift;
the literary family begins to reveal itself. We might also note that a blurb on Firth’s 2001
collection, Can You Take Me There, Now?, by Hal Niedzviecki also
announced him as "Canada’s Bukowski." Harvey blurbed that
book, too: "This is not just CanLit, but a gutsy brand of writing
that is long overdue. This is GritLit."
GritLit. That’s a good brand label
for Inside, too. And Harvey is not the sole proprietor of it, though he’s one of a
handful of Canadian writers who do it consistently. With Inside,
however, Harvey deserves more than a nod as the leader of Canadian
GritLit. Because Inside is WorldLit, as the other blurb on the
back cover suggests: "An extravagantly haunted imagination."
That blurb is from J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yes, Inside is that good. Though the juries of both
the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2006 Governor General’s Award
passed up rewarding this book. Shame on them. GritLit is good enough
for Nobel Prize winners, but it still struggles within CanLit. Silly.
Inside is the story of a violent man in Newfoundland
released from prison due to DNA analysis. He may not be a murderer after
all. On the other hand, he may be. No one is quite sure, though no one
doubts he is a violent man. He is released from prison into a media
circus and soon enough receives a large sum of money from the government
for his period of wrongful incarceration. The money is a big thrill to
his wife, who otherwise couldn’t care less whether he lived or died.
Nor could his children. His granddaughter, on the other hand, is such a
shock to his emotions that she seems powered by magic. Out of prison, the
protagonist of Inside remains locked, yes, "inside" a
world of blunted emotions, violent relationships and eviscerated hope.
Harvey relates his story in short,
sharp sentences. Many of them fragments. The protagonist’s point of
view is clearly established. Driven home in relentless fashion. The
reader yearns for resolution but is repeatedly thwarted. The world
depicted is ripe with need and largely barren of fulfillment. Our hero
is released from prison and everyone he knows drinks themselves into a
stupor. Our hero discovers surprising things about people. His best
friend, a stellar bar brawler, is a secret painter. His ex-girlfriend
still loves him. About himself, he discovers he can still play the piano
surprisingly well. But all these discoveries do not lead to contentment,
let alone reason for optimism. Violence is ever-present. His son dies.
His other son would prefer to see him dead. His daughter wants to love him,
but can't; she is
living with an abusive man.
Margaret Atwood has been richly and
repeatedly rewarded for writing other-worldly dystopias; Harvey’s
this-worldly dystopia has been too much ignored.
*
Matthew Firth’s Suburban
Pornography depicts a dystopia of a different sort. Where Inside
has a narrative driven forward by male characters unable to control
their instinct to inflict violence, Suburban Pornography is a
collection of 17 stories largely about men and sex.
Like Harvey’s fiction, Firth’s stories present a dark view
of the world. If you're looking for a similar sentiment, the movie "Sin
City" offers a close approximate.
Freud’s concept of the unconscious came to mind when I was about halfway through this collection. In Freud’s view, the
unconscious is a threesome, comprised of the id, ego and super-ego. The
"id," you’ll remember, is the dark matter. It is defined by
Oxford as "the inherited instinctive impulses of the individual as
part of the unconscious." The "ego" provides a sense of self, and
the "superego" helps the self operate within social rules. The
conflict between the three is the conflict of the unconscious, and the
struggle of each individual to live a meaningful life.
In dystopia of Surburban
Pornography there is quite a lot of "id," not quite
so much "ego," and hardly any "superego"
at all. In other words, there are no happy endings. Firth is up to
something quite specific here. Unfettered articulation of the dark
matter.
In 2003, he published an essay in TDR called How to Write
Sex Fiction (Not Erotica), in which he outlined his approach:
I write about sex. I don’t write
erotica. Erotica is far too fluffy a term for my liking. I prefer to
call what I write (sometimes, not always) sex fiction. Because my
fiction often has a sexual dimension to it, a blunt sexual component
that differs from what is commonly called erotica.
Erotica is quite different from sex
writing and from pornographic writing. While erotica, as it is
commonly known, is certainly sexual and sometimes pornographic, the
term has become sanitized; it is sex writing that is
commercially-driven, formulaic, and not terribly realistic. Erotica
is closer to fantasy than reality, whereas sex fiction is closer to
reality. Porn fiction is somewhere in between.
Sex fiction, Firth argued, "is a
different beast":
It has a few similarities – or
can have similarities – with erotic fiction. It can be arousing.
It can describe fairly standard sex scenarios. Where it differs is
with respect to fantasy versus reality. Sex fiction is not about
embellishing sexual activity, about exaggerating the intensity of
orgasms for the purpose of bragging, about depicting sexual
situations most of us can only dream of. Sex fiction is writing
about sex by accurately portraying how people fuck. The goal is
authenticity, believable characters and believable acts. And sex for
real, living, breathing humans is not always as mind-blowing as the
sex depicted in erotica. Sex for the average Jane or Joe can be
lousy, can be quick and dirty, can be exploitive and hurtful, can be
compassionate and caring – and all sorts of things in between.
The key phrase in the above, I believe,
is "the goal is authenticity." Firth has made this his goal
through three collections of short fiction, beginning with Fresh Meat
(Rush Hour Revisions, 1997) and continuing through Can you Take Me
There, Now? (Boheme Press, 2001) and the current collection. Along
the way, he also co-edited the anthology Grunt and Groan: The New
Fiction Anthology of Work and Sex (Boheme Press, 2002) and has
edited and published the literary magazines, Black Cat #115 (now
defunct) and Front & Centre. He is also the proprietor of
Black Bile Press, a micropress focused on chapbooks of GritLit.
Through all of the above, Firth has attempted to articulate
authentically the world, his world, the world of the working and
un-working poor.
Recently, I introduced Firth at a
reading in Toronto. I noted that Firth grew up in Hamilton and that the
impetus for this work is grounded there. Specifically, I described a drive
from Hamilton from Toronto. To get to Steel Town, you go across the Burlington
Skyway. Then turn right and take the off-ramp into the
"fire-pit" of heavy industry. Just after you get off the
freeway, you pass a row of houses, right in the middle of the
"fire-pit." The last time I was in Hamilton, I said, and this
is honestly true, I passed that row of houses and there was a woman in
the front yard of one of them with a baby carriage. "Those are the
people," I said when I introduced Firth, "that Matthew writes
about in his fiction." The poor and forgotten.
Which perhaps brings us to this notion
of Firth as "Canada’s Bukowski." Whether there has ever been
a "Canadian Bukowski" is a matter of some debate, even if the
debate is within small, ever-withering circles. Has there ever been a
Canadian scribbler with Buk's blunt, "tell-it-like-it-is"
style? Is there a tradition of working class writing in Canada? Well, Al Purdy and
Bukowski had a
famous admiring friendship for a while, which was captured in a book of
their correspondence. Patrick Lane has been writing about working
class labour for decades. Tom Wayman has also. Alden Nowlan
had as horrid a life-story as Bukowski, moreover he
was a better poet. And we haven't even mentioned Milton Acorn or
Stompin’ Tom.
But then, what’s this? All of the
above are poets (and a singer). Where are the working class fiction writers? David
Adams Richards must be king of that pack. Mordecai Richler’s early
work depicted life in the Montreal Jewish slum. Margaret Lawrence didn’t
shy away from depicting poverty. More recently, Dennis E. Bolen's books
have amplified the tradition. Kenneth J.
Harvey's
slim classic Directions for an Opened Body (Mercury, 1990)
definitely laid down some Firth-like territory. Daniel Jones’ The
People One Knows (Mercury, 1994) is another notable member of this
canon. Deserving of mention are Lynn
Coady's Strange
Heaven (Goose Lane, 1998) and Play the Monster
Blind (Doubleday, 2000). Watermelon Row
(Arsenal Pulp, 2000) by Michael
Holmes was filled with sexually blunt and violent atmospheres.
If Firth is "Canada's Bukowski," it's
not because others haven't gone before into the fire-pit of working
class or noir literature. If Firth is CanBuk, it's because his prose
takes a starker stance than others: Firth's narratives
of Canadian inner-city dwellers, low-end job workers and drifting men
are darker, harder, perhaps more perverse or
at least more directly sexualized than arguably any other fiction in
Canadian history.
But what about the new book?
It's stark, dark, hard, perverse. But is it authentic?
Here I have to say: I don't know how to
answer that question. Simply
said, I don’t think fiction can be "authentic." Fiction is
fiction, or as I heard Rudy Wiebe say once, in the language of his Mennonite
grandparents there was no word for fiction. There was only, in their
view, "truth" and "lies." Fiction is lies. Fiction
is by definition artificial; it is art, hopefully; it is artifice.
Fiction is not reporting, it is not journalism. It may be, as some would
argue, a different kind of truth. It may depict emotional truths,
narrative truths, psychological truths that aren’t able to be captured
any other way. Perhaps this is what Firth is getting at when he speaks
of "authenticity," but I don’t think so.
What I think Firth means by
"authenticity" is that life is at base a struggle and, in
particular, it is an economic struggle. The poor know this is
the true reality because they live it most directly. The middle-class
can deny the nature of this struggle because they are
insulated by RRSPs and cable TV. But an even deeper struggle than the
economic struggle is the struggle of the libido: how to fulfill in a
meaningful way the overwhelming imperative of sexual desire? Now mix the
two. How to overcome financial depravity and achieve sexual well-being?
Firth’s fiction suggests it may not be possible. Or if it’s
possible, it’s such a rare event, it constitutes a miracle.
This is the narrative frame of
"authenticity" in Firth’s fiction, just as the narrative
frame of the noir comic book genre such as the movie "Sin
City." Within this world, this artifice, all truths reinforce one
another, creating a sustaining universe. The universe of Suburban
Pornography is dominated by the aching phallus, which is more often
the source of self-loathing than of fulfillment. The cock demands
attention and the narrators do their best to comply, but the world –
and in particular women – block the driving charge. And even when the
penis is attended to, the narrator finds little relief. Shame follows
conquest. And the shift in perspective from the short-term to the
longer-term inflates despair. One goal may have been achieved; the
bigger goal, getting out of the mess, never will be.
An outline
of some
of the plots:
- In the opening story, two boys in grade
eight hide on the roof of a garage and witness two neighbourhood girls
their age perform sex acts on a trio of older boys. Wanting some of that
for himself, the narrator later confronts the girls and asks for some
similar attention. He is spurned.
- In the second story, a nine-year-old
boy cycles with his older brother to a burning house, which they learn
has been set on fire by a disabled boy who was being sexually abused by
his father.
- In the third story, the narrator, a
30-something male, is late for work because his bus doesn’t show up on
time. When he goes to investigate, he finds the bus driver on the floor
of the bus between the legs of an older woman, who tells the intruder to
bugger off.
- In the forth story, the crew of a
garbage truck gets drunk and stoned while on route, while the union and
employer hammer out a new collective agreement. Job action is averted in
more sense than one.
- In the fifth story, a young man has a
sexually violent relationship with an emotionally unbalanced young
woman. They break up.
- In the sixth story, the narrator has a
hole in his side. He is confronted by a troupe of giants, who suddenly
swoop and enter his body through the hole.
Hold on. What?
Yes, you read that right.
What’s authentic about that?
Dunno, but it’s a great little story.
Suburban Pornography
show Firth's writing continues to mature. "August, 1974," for example,
the second story in the collection, captures something rare in
Firth's fiction: innocence. The story is technically masterful,
capturing in seven pages a dense amount of information, much of it
shocking, including the
sentence: "Old man diddled him night after night." This is a
world on fire, a world out of control; at the same time, it is a world teetering on the
possibility of hope.
Bill Gaston has a book out now, nominated for the
Governor General's Award, Gargolyes, which is described as
"marvellous, riotous, Rabelaisian." Firth, however, may be
closer to the anarchic spirit of Rabelais than any other writer in the
country at the moment. Douglas
Glover made Rabelais a character in his GG-winning novel Elle
and also wrote a compelling book-length essay about Cervantes.
It is to these models, centuries old, as well as to writers like Edgar
Allen Poe and Gogol, that seem to suggest a larger family for Firth's alienated,
stumbling, needy characters alone their apocalyptic worlds.
There is much to be unsettled about in Firth's new
work. These stories are difficult; they are at
times ugly. They are quite often, as I've quoted Firth earlier: "quick and
dirty ... exploitive and hurtful." How
are we to read these stories? How are we to judge them? I would suggest
beginning with the big view. In Northrop Frye's archetypal universe, there
is literature for all seasons. Firth is in the same season with the Shakespeare of the tragedies: "life is a tale of sound and fury
signifying nothing" (Macbeth). It is easy to look away
from these stories, as we want to look away from Gloucester when his eyes
are plucked in King Lear. These stories challenge and shake our certainties.
My judgement? On the whole, book over book,
Firth has shown dedication to craft and his stories continue to grow in
complexity and depth. He has pursued his vision, and he has mastered it.
Where to go from here? Myself, I'd like to see
Firth continue to move toward a broader engagement with the world. I'd
like to see him suppress the "id" and write
about larger conflicts of the psyche. Without
abandoning his drive for
"authenticity," Firth should, at the same time, find more occasions to let the light in. Harvey does it in Inside, for example, to great
effect. It makes that novel more than a catalogue of darkness; it lifts it up
as a statement against the void. Because, to awkwardly paraphrase Leonard
Cohen: That's what the cracks are there for. To let the light in.
Finally, women
and children make up a
disproportionate number of the poor; they are often the victims of the
raging phallus, and the myth, too, thereof. Firth's stories can be read as
critiques of macho posturing. There's more he could explore here, by
deviating from the male point of view.
Michael Bryson is the editor of
TDR.
