living in a house full of women
with responsibilities piling up like
calabashes
and his writing earning less and less
with every year of his career.
Eden was not up to Melville's expectations, so he ran away, but "reality," with its dreary practicalities, proved to be worse.
he other side of the
Norris persona comes out when he speaks in the voice of a
gauche, gum-chewing tourist seeking the exotic, but finding
the everyday, and not being all that appalled because it
suits the quality of mind of this character type. In the
insipid diction of the homogenized, modern world he gives us
the images which that brainless mass marketed society has
scattered about, in even the most exotic of settings. He
observes that "The sides of the road were unfortunately
littered with Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Budweiser cans and
styrofoam Big Mac boxes" ("Exploring Canada" 100) and
relates how "the Polynesian band was playing a sappy version
of that old chestnut 'More' when Barbara, Carol and I walked
into the Banana Court Bar, reputed to be the centre of
cultural life on Rarotonga" (45). This is not the voice of a
seeker of wisdom and truth, but of someone looking for a
good time. Such a man cannot be made distraught by the gap
between the Garden and reality, because he is incapable of
conceiving of the Garden.
ary di Michele says
that in In the Spirit of the
Age(1986)
Norris laments "the death of romance" and that "he is
nostalgic for Romance and writes in that mode" (31). She
characterizes him as "the post-feminist man" (31) and,
reductively, attributes the death of
