The Order of Good Cheer
by Bill Gaston
Anansi, 2008; 391 pp.; $29.95

The Order of Good Cheer maintains a precarious balance between comedy and tragedy. It is tragic because most of the novel is mired in the ennui of not one but two winters of discontent. It is comic because it describes what is necessary to combat the listlessness, depression and sickness that often accompany such a season – namely, good food and drink, the love of friends and family – and sex.

Based on actual events and historical figures – Samuel de Champlain prominent among them – author Bill Gaston provides a fictitious account of the French experience of winter in what is now the Annapolis Basin of Nova Scotia in the early seventeenth century. This scenario, in alternating chapters, is presented against an invented description of present-day British Columbian port-town Prince Rupert.

Wishing to avoid a repeat of the previous winter where “the scurve” laid to a slow wasting death dozens of men, Samuel de Champlain has it upright in his mind ways “to survive the winter that is almost upon them.” What Champlain is thinking of is nothing short of a party, many parties in fact, intended to ward off sickness. “What he wants is for the men to know that it is not this night only, and not the next night only, but rather a feast that does not stop. A state of good humour, of thanks and of appreciation, ongoing in its effect.”

Similarly, but less urgent than Champlain’s more poetic attempts to ward off immediate death – and also separated by the span of 400 years – are Andy Winslow’s efforts to enliven the oppressive atmosphere of a northwest coast winter. Andy Winslow’s winter – the reader’s winter too – is particularly daunting. Accompanying long lost love Laura Schultz’s return to her hometown, are the vagaries of Andy’s annoying proverb spouting and charmless mother, mid-life crisis afflicted “best friend” Drew, and Andy’s own subtle sense of failure and lack of ambition. Behind all this is Gaston’s astute and timely commentary that focuses on the anxieties plaguing our own peculiar epoch.

Gaston beautifully renders Port Royal using the bare essentials of land, sea, forest and sky – underneath which mingle in an odd codependence men from the old world and their indigenous observers: “… on this path, amid all these glistening and seemingly beckoning leaves, shoots, cones, curls, pods, hoods, mosses, of which at least half he is ignorant, the savages’ knowledge of what here is food seems like wisdom of the most miraculous kind.” And at the same time that the French need the knowledge of the Mi’qmah to survive in the wilderness, the native people, particularly the “sagamore” Membertou, covet membership into the white man’s strange and powerful religion.

Although the horrors of death by the scurve are graphically depicted, the heightened and formal language with which Gaston writes of Port Royal gives the reader both a compelling and almost idealized account of the first Europeans’ experiences of North America.

Cluttered by comparison is Gaston’s portrayal of contemporary Prince Rupert, where the myriad anxieties pressing on its characters seem to drag down the pace of the novel. Throughout the chapters dedicated to Andy’s (our) time, there regularly appears, direct, and not so direct, references to global warming and other environmental worries. When we are first introduced to Andy and his community we are presented with a mysterious die-off of fish – the fresh bodies of which have washed up on the shore of Prince Rupert leaving residents to contemplate whether or not the fish should be consumed for fear of poisoning. In a more subtle poke at consumer culture and the necessary damage it inflicts upon the environment and those that buy into it, Gaston writes, “He gave Dan Clark’s car “the inch” as he passed it … holding thumb and forefinger an inch apart whenever a Hummer went by, showing the driver how large his penis must be for wanting such a car.” The on-going social commentary in these chapters is no doubt specific to the cultural moment and many readers will be appreciative of Gaston’s sharp eye, but the details of modern times seem to read like accessories, which detract from the characters and the mostly enjoyable narrative of which they are a part.

All the swirling anxieties that the novel dredges up lend a sense of despair to The Order of Good Cheer. However, the novel is more geared toward that which its title suggests. Side character, seventeenth-century carpenter Lucien and his experience of sexual intimacy with “savage” Ndene, along with Andy and Laura’s longing for each other, pulls the story out of the sadness and anxiety where it seems content to wallow.

Surrounded by storms of sorrow and doubt, in the end, The Order of Good Cheer clings to hope and believes in love.

The Culture of Flushing: A social and Legal History of Sewage
By Jamie Benidickson
UBC Press, 2007; 404 pp.; $29.95

The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage, by University of Ottawa law professor Jamie Benidickson is primarily an exhaustive, and at times dense, account of western civilization’s environmentally unsound relationship (can there be any other?) with sewage. Focusing mainly on the industrial history of Great Britain, the U.S. and Canada, Benidickson delves into the cultural and legal assumptions that have led to the on-going blasé attitude most people, communities and businesses take in regard to water’s ability to remove waste.

Certainly waste removal and sewage are the central areas of analysis here, but overtly The Culture of Flushing seems to be not so much about sewage but rather about humanity’s blithe relationship with water itself and by extension the natural world. Not surprisingly, and at almost every page, Benidickson shows that relationship to be based on convenient but ultimately inadequate assumptions about the ability of natural systems to withstand the pollution created by human habitation and industry. Moreover, and to devastating effect, Benidickson shows that these assumptions – based in part on a lack of scientific understanding, and, more often than not, willful ignorance on behalf of individuals, municipalities and business interests – helped endorse the primacy of human needs and desires over the maintenance of the ecological integrity of natural systems, with bodies of water being the prime example. Generally speaking, The Culture of Flushing can be read as a modern history of humanity’s disregard for the planet.

Although his book is essentially a detailed scholarly work – Benidickson cites liberally, and at length, from legal sources (sometimes dating back as far as the 17th century) among others – The Culture of Flushing is highly accessible to general readers. And despite the ostensibly dreary nature of the subject matter – after all, who wants to read about, excuse me, shit – it manages to be mostly fascinating, literary and, at times, even entertaining. Benidickson, with bookish aplomb, describes a repulsive scene where literary greats Aldous Huxley and Thomas Mann walking along a beach near Los Angeles were “struck by the sight of myriad small whitish objects reminiscent of dead caterpillars. On closer inspection the caterpillars revealed themselves to be condoms.” Quoting Huxley, Benidickson continues by writing: “ ‘ten million emblems and mementos of Modern Love,’ an ‘orgiastic profusion’ that had poured out of Los Angeles’ nearby raw sewage outfall.”

All details aside, legal, literary or otherwise, there is a pro-environmental message to Benidickson’s book. By way of a brief history of sewage, he seems to present the reader with the dire ramifications of humanity’s casual tendency to flush away our wastes when he states in the introduction:

Water became a ‘sink’ by design. Indeed, observers have been known to remark that “water is one of the most valuable media for the disposal of municipal, industrial and agricultural residuals.” All too frequently, it has been assumed that this is a primary purpose of water and waterways. It has even been argued on occasion that such usage enjoys the exalted legal status of a right, a central element of our perilous fantasy that the planet was created for human convenience.

However, for the majority of the book, the author is content to play the observer, letting the lurid details of the development of sewage systems, or their lack, and all attendant damages speak for themselves.

It is impossible not to be dumbfounded by the almost endless examples of environmental folly and negligence to be found in this volume. The reader is presented with the all too depressing accounts of business interests consistently, and unsurprisingly, trumping the needs of other riparians (water users), or municipalities balking at the cost of sewage treatment facilities. Perhaps the book’s main weakness is that it does not seem to offer any solutions to the continuing problem, indeed crisis, of human caused pollution. The Culture of Flushing seems rather to content itself with a historical analysis in the hope that such an examination will somehow contribute to more adequate environmental policy in the future.

Let’s hope it does.

The Bone Cage
By Angie Abdou
Newest Press, 2007; 235 pp.; $22.95

The Bone Cage, Angie Abdou’s first novel, follows the lives of fictitious Olympic hopefuls Sadie Jorgenson and Tom “Digger” Stapleton. The novel focuses primarily on the rigors of their training as the two athletes (Sadie is a speed swimmer and Digger is a wrestler) prepare for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Abdou, a competative swimmer herself, certainly has first-hand knowledge of the privations of training. She captures the physical and mental strain that Sadie and Digger must endure with a fair degree of writerly acumen. But as a former competative athlete, I know that besides being physically and mentally difficult, training for any athletic discipline can be intensely boring. As I worked my way through The Bone Cage, I found Abdou’s descriptions of training and competition, while vivid and accurate, to be lacking in any real drama. But I do not think this is the fault of Abdou’s abilities as a writer; rather, I think it is a general flaw found in most sports writing. The problem being, that sports writing, whether journalism or fiction, in the absence of real drama, artificially tries to create importance out of what is, in the end, unimportant.

Perhaps anticipating readers’ disdain at having to plow through another account of yet another grueling training session, Abdou fills out her story with detours from the main athletic narrative. For example, Sadie’s life in the pool is juxtaposed against that of her family, specifically that of her grandmother who is languishing in a hospital – a victim of adult onset diabetes and the ravages of old age. The comparison between the youth and strength of Sadie and the failing health and body of her grandmother will be obvious and superficial to some. But to be fair, it is in the tension between youth and age and the limited time we all live under where Abdou is able to pull her story out of the plodding chronicles of Sadie and Digger and their strict training schedules and give her novel some life.

It is not as if Abdou has written carelessly about her two main characters; there is a certain affection for both that seems to be coming from Abdou’s own intimate understanding of sport. However, Digger and Sadie’s lives are so circumscribed by their dedication to their respective athletic pursuits that they are necessarily rendered as dull and uninteresting in spite of the fact that they are both headed to the Olympics – the pinnacle of all athletic dreams.

Perhaps in an attempt to make her characters more human and less the single-minded machines that Olympians must be in order to have the remotest chance at a medal, Abdou vaguely delves into her characters’ sex lives. But this only comes across as tacked-on and shallow – an editorial afterthought designed to prevent readers’ attention from fading. Also, seemingly to maintain reader care, the narration is written exclusively in the present tense. In this case, such a compositional choice only draws attention to itself as “technique” – automatically suggesting, for me at least, that there is something lacking in the story.

Sport occupies odd territory in our equally odd cultural epoch. Existing somewhat as a paradox, sport is primarily viewed as entertainment – frivolous or otherwise – but at the same time it has been given an elevated status. In the absence of real drama, however, the attempt to create a story out of what is fundamentally a trivial subject will lead to a boring tale – in real life or in fiction.

Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling
By Heath McCoy
ECW Press, 2007; 333 pp.; $22.95

Back in the early 80s when I was about 11 or 12 I remember gathering with my pre-adolescent friends on Saturday afternoons in Brad Johnston’s parent’s basement. There in the formica wood-paneled room hung with cheap oil paintings depicting scenes that looked like they were taken from a Louis Lamour novel, we would watch Stampede Wrestling. Despite the cheap production values, the action was always over-the-top and predictably violent. But even at our tender age we suspected that the painful submission holds and body-slams administered by the likes of Bad News Allen and the Cuban Assassin were a fiction. In our vocabulary back then we’d shout at the screen, “Oh that’s sooo fake,” and roll our eyes. In Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling, journalist Heath McCoy seems to acknowledge our former youthful suspicions by writing about “professional” wrestling primarily as staged entertainment. At the same time, however, he writes with a sentimental attachment that praises the sheer athleticism and, indeed, pain and suffering that went into creating the gloriously absurd spectacle that was Stampede Wrestling.

Written mostly in a sensational journalistic style, Pain and Passion comes across more as a series of outrageous anecdotes and less of a historical account. Indeed, the book has a slapdash feel to it, but this seems to be more a reflection of the subject matter than anything else. As anyone who has watched mainstream wrestling will know (well maybe not everyone but at least a few) there is a contrived recklessness to the “sport” that is part and parcel of its charm – such as it is. Regardless of its lowbrow status, McCoy has gone to great lengths to put together an intensely detailed history of a genuine Canadian “cultural” institution. But rather than be attracted to Pain and Passion as a historical account by itself, readers may be more drawn to the lurid, and seemingly endless, tales of life on the road and in the ring as a Stampede wrestler.

Certainly McCoy writes with serious praise about the athletic requirements of wrestling: “wrestling, for all of its theatrics, should be an athletic exhibition first and foremost, not some circus of depravity.” But it is always the depravity of wrestling to which audiences are drawn; likewise, it is the depraved spectacle of wrestling to which McCoy’s book constantly returns. Whether it is the vague homoeroticism inherent in two men wearing briefs and leather knee-high lace-up boots grappling with one another or watching a “heel” (bad guy) like Abdullah the Butcher purposely cut himself or his opponent with a hidden razor and bleed all over the ring, wrestling is nothing if not a depraved spectacle.

For all of its exaggerated violence and melodrama, professional wrestling can perhaps best be thought of as story telling, as basic and visceral as it is. As 70s Stampede Wrestling mainstay “Cowboy” Dan Krofatt says, “Why do soap operas on TV last for years and years?… They’re propelled not through violence but through story telling.” As we suspected when we were kids, there seems to be more fiction than fact in the ridiculous extravaganza of wrestling. But like anyone who likes a good story we stuck around for the blood. And there is plenty of blood and good story telling in Pain and Passion.

No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart
By Tom Slee
Between the Lines, 2006; 240 pp.; $24.95

In 1776, moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith in his tome, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, came up with the famous concept of the invisible hand of the market. For anyone who was sleeping through Economics 100, what he meant was that through the pursuit of self-interest within a market framework, individuals inadvertently promote the general welfare of the society they occupy. This of course is a simplistic account of Adam Smith’s 18th century metaphor. Smith presented a far more complicated theory of markets that many of his present-day supporters are willing to admit, and yet mainstream economists and neoconservatives everywhere continue to preach a shallow faith in the market. It is this simplistic faith that Tom Slee’s book No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart, primarily criticizes.

For Slee, the proponents of mainstream economic thought argue that the choices individual consumers make in a market context automatically lead to the best outcomes. Referring to the neoconservative faith in markets and individual choice as “MarketThink, ” Slee writes, “In the world according to MarketThink, the combination of choice and the market is a mechanism for solving problems and improving outcomes…” Certainly, most people would be hard-pressed to argue in favour of limited choice and the inherently anti-democratic values that that implies. And at no point does Slee say that choice and markets are necessarily bad things; neither does his book read like an anti-capitalist rant. But what No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart effectively shows, is that in spite of the rationalizing of the neocons and their toady economists, individual choice operating within a market framework very often results in poor outcomes.

How could this be true? How could the market fail us?

Using game theory, Slee presents theoretical situations where “players” are given a set of choices designed to result in the best possible outcome for each player. Naturally, the players are expected to make the choices that will improve their situations. But as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the most commonly used game in Slee’s book shows, “each player’s outcome depends on the choices of all participants.” That is, the choices of each player necessarily affect, negatively or positively, the outcomes for the other players. But the rationale of each player to play for what he or she thinks is the best outcome necessarily leads to all players being worse off had they not entered the game in the first place. The choices offered by the game, and by extension choice in the marketplace, are, in essence, false.

Even though the scenarios presented in the games are massively simplified versions of reality, Slee makes the inescapable point that in the games, as in reality, peoples’ choices affect other people. When choices affect other people, externalities emerge. For the purposes of Slee’s book, externalities are measurable costs created through the actions of others that aren’t immediately paid for. For Slee, this is a situation that MarketThink irresponsibly ignores. Indeed, the MarketThink worldview wants to believe that people are isolated economic actors whose choices only lead to outcomes that affect them exclusively. Remember when arch neocon Margaret Thatcher brazenly declared that there was no such thing as society, rather only individuals and families? If it were only that simple.

The problem of externalities shows that choices are rarely, if at all, made in a vacuum. Take the example of an individual consumer “choosing” to buy an SUV. Let’s say that for this theoretical consumer, buying an SUV is the best possible choice he can make: it’s cool; it appears safe; it’s got a powerful engine. For this consumer, these are all measurable benefits. At the same time however, the choice to buy this SUV has measurable costs on other people: it takes up more space on the road; it consumes more gasoline; it contributes to a greater degree to air pollution. All of these costs are external to the initial purchase, and yet are very real and, moreover, not immediately borne by our theoretical consumer.

Perhaps SUV’s are an easy target, but it is clear that the coincidence of markets and choice are not providing a positive outcome here. MarketThink would have us believe that we are automatically better off given an array of choices within a market framework. But as Slee writes, such an assumption is both unrealistic and totally misleading:

MarketThink is a simplified picture of the world in which choices are independent of each other, and in which the link between choice and outcome is simple. But once we acknowledge that tangled choices are ubiquitous, then it follows that we must use a picture that includes externalities if we are to avoid being misled.

Slee’s reliance on game theory may come across as sterile and superfluous to some readers – he writes at length in dry technical prose on the artificial scenarios he has created. Readers may be left puzzled why he does this when there are dozens of examples from the real world that demonstrate the fallibility of the market. However, in his use of game theory, Slee seems to be adopting the discourse of the proponents of MarketThink. By wielding the same set of rational principles, that is, by referring to the cold logic of numbers, Slee undermines the basic assumptions supporting market forces and shows them to be at best simplistic and not a true accounting of the world at all.

Adam Smith would be impressed.

Conversations In Tehran
By Jean-Daniel Lafond & Fred A. Reed
Talonbooks, 2006; 224 pp,; $19.95

If mainstream media accounts are true, then Iran is a country ruled by an irrational religious fanatic lording it over an equally irrational and fanatical population. The news feeds carried by CNN and Fox News are so predictable as to become clichés: crowds of angry men shouting “Death to America” while burning that country’s esteemed flag; Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vaguely criminal mug questioning Israel’s right to exist. According to mainstream media, that Iran is part of an “Axis of Evil” is a forgone conclusion.

Surely there must be more to this poorly understood country than ashes of American flags and threats shrouded in nuclear ambitions. Fortunately, Conversations In Tehran by Jean-Daniel Lafond and Fred A. Reed completely and eloquently undermines the largely unchallenged assumption that Iran is a one-dimensional religious state. Concentrating on Iran’s recent past with an examination of its reform movement – generally begun with the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 – and its perhaps inevitable failure, Lafond and Reed clearly and dramatically present a diverse, complicated and complex nation on the cusp of breaking into the modern world.

Both expatriates (Lafond is from France and Reed is from the U.S.) living in Canada, the two men have created a piece of writing that captures the reality of the city, and by extension the country, of which they are reporting. Perhaps furnished with Lafond’s documentary filmmaker’s eye, the city of Tehran and its 10 million occupants are described in immediate and concrete detail: “To the east, an entire district of warehouses marches to the infernal din of trucks loading and unloading … The air stinks of sulfur, whistles with the hiss of welding torches, echoes with the roar of motors as they spew a cocktail of oil and gasoline fumes into the polluted air.”

Like a documentary film, Conversations In Tehran is presented as a series of interviews with the people involved in Iran’s reform movement. Lafond and Reed set up the scenes – occasionally providing a brief history lesson focusing mainly on the post-1979 Islamic revolution – but let their subjects tell their own stories. Through these interviews the reader is introduced to both the history and present condition of contemporary Iran – a situation that has been largely hidden from western awareness. With western mainstream media showing only the dangerous and close-minded men of a fanatical regime, to hear of a press once critical of Iran’s religious leaders, or to hear of established women’s movements based on hidden and complex networks of support will be, for many, forgivably surprising.

It is not for lack of support that the reform movement failed. The 1997 elections saw 70 percent of eligible voters cast ballots for reformist Mohammad Khatami. But the presidency of Iran is largely symbolic; real power lies with the mullahs who hover directly above the president. However, that such a large majority of voters would vote for change is an indication that Iran’s religious leaders’ choke hold on power is limited and perhaps growing weak.

The west would do well to keep this in mind.

Greener than Eden
By Michael Kohn
Cormorant Books, 2006; 253 pp,; $22.95

About a third of the way into Greener than Eden, Noah, the novel’s central character, gets punched out by the beautiful and mysterious Cass. This sudden act of violence is the point where Torontonian Michael Kohn’s novel about a gang of tree planters changes from a slog through various contrivances into a mostly enjoyable piece of writing.

As it turns out, violence, in its different manifestations – the punishment of physical labour, implied and outright threats, the brandishment of weapons, as well as outright fisticuffs – is a constant feature of Greener than Eden and provides a theme of sorts to its mostly episodic structure.

Escaping his problems in Toronto, slacker university student, half-committed activist and “ex-con” Noah Abramson signs on to work as a tree planter somewhere on the blasted heath of northwestern Ontario. Immediately, the reader is thrust into a wilderness scarred by clear-cut logging and populated by mostly young, and mostly male, tree planters who stoop and dig holes for, if they are “highballers,” up to 5000 conifer seedlings a day.

Greener than Eden starts in the middle of the action where Kohn vividly depicts a world of dirt, beat-up trucks, moose and blackflies. Noah and love interest Cass, whose lives intersect six pages into the story, are both on the run from bad situations. Similar to Cass and Noah is Guatemalan ex-patriot Aleron – on the run too, but from troubles far worse than anything a middle-class Canadian can have thrust upon him or her. In terms of character development, the novel focuses on these three; the rest of the story features less fleshed-out characters who come to the reader through occasional dialogue or a passing description.

In its descriptions, Greener than Eden seems to be operating on two levels: one favours a heightened poetic language, and the other is content with concrete realities. As much as the poetry sometimes succeeds – “I had to get farther out, needed to open up every pore, wanted wind in my ear” – it often rings hollow – “I drink hungrily from my canteen, and eat thirstily.” But when the language is stripped of the mediation of poetry, the narrative cracks like a whip. Specifically, in the novel’s portrayal of violence, its threat or its consequence, Kohn’s writing is immediate and visceral. In a scene where a hostile exchange between the tree planters and their redneck logger opposites takes place, the tension jumps off the page.

The violence portrayed in Greener than Eden seems to act as a kind of counterpart to the tree-bereft landscape in which Noah and his coworkers must earn a living. Environmentalists often make the argument that clear-cut logging is a prime example of man’s violent regard for the natural world. Is it any surprise then that violence should erupt in such a brutalized landscape?