Hugh MacLennan (1907–1990)

10/10

I finished (re)reading this some time ago but am finding time only now, to comment.

I feel like a toddler just learning her first steps, daring to venture into the world when she's so unsure.

This is one of my touchstones, when I need someplace to go.

Montreal, in winter, grounds me in a way that is inexplicable. (But I daresay you'll have to suffer through several tortured paragraphs as I nonetheless try to explain!) : )

My soul was shaped one winter long ago, in a way that has carried show more me, given me strength, courage, resilience, all the days of my life. I pick up this book, and I'm walking again along Avenue du Parc, shivering my way through the breadth/breath of winter to Mont Royal, carrying all my troubles in "my old kit bag". It was one of the most brutal winters Montréal had known in some time -- or so it seemed to my young self -- and seems so, still, in my mind. And I didn't know til much later that it was the most transformative one I would ever live through.

That is the beginning and the end of MacLennan's Watch. It seems that nothing happens at all; that you are only walking through the snow, in an endless loop of repetition; that it is always cold and the trees are barren; that there is only frozen obstacle after frozen obstacle to surmount; and then you wake up one day, to know that you've lived the life you always dreamed you would.

At first, you don't recognize the shapes, and the colours: but let's face it, you were only an apprentice when you started painting, and how could you have imagined, really, that the colours would turn so vivid, the lines become so abstract? But there it is: the very first dots of paint that you laid on the canvas are now plastered across huge country landscapes. Every brush stroke is recognizable.

Such is George and Catherine's story. Such is my story. And I daresay the story of so many millions of others: sometimes, the road not taken is exactly the one you shouldn't have taken after all; and all the regrets that went with the "what ifs" amount to nothing, because you are exactly where you were always meant to be.

George finds out just in time. Catherine knew all along.

The backdrop for the novel -- the political idealism that (mis)shaped the 30s and 40s -- is only a faint and distant landscape, in my mind. Though many consider it the heart of the novel, it is only faintly sketched in to contain, and give shape, to the lifeblood that flows within the main characters; and which hangs like the sword of Damocles over the lives of all of them.

Many have seen this is an existential cri de coeur for-or-against 1930s socialism (depending on which side of the line you stand), but I would barely recognize it as such, because for me it is more deeply personal, and thus more universal than any "ism" could ever be.

It is, rather, the shape of lives lived, for those who wait and watch patiently, without ever knowing that they wait and watch.

It is the one book I return to, everytime I am caught in a proverbial waiting room ... in a time of waiting ... for it always proves to me there is a point in waiting patiently.

While the bigger allegory about Canada, and our place in it, plays a tattoo in the background, for me it is only that. ... only background noise, for the humanity question rings so much harder, and truer, than simply the citizenship question. show less

Warning: This review contains spoilers

****

Hugh MacLennan’s best-known (by reputation, if not by content) novel covers the first three decades of the twentieth century, from the First World War to the Second World War, and follows the lives of one French-Canadian and one English-Canadian family. The stories of the two families combine with Paul Tallard, son of a French father and an English mother, who must learn how to find a place for himself in a society that seems to be split in show more two.

Overall, this was not a terrible book. This sounds like faint praise for a book from one of my favourite authors (mainly on the strength of two of his other books, The Watch that Ends the Night and Barometer Rising), but I had a hard time rating this one. The story itself sweeps the reader right along, and it covers a lot of interesting historical ground.

However, to a 21st-century female reader, more than a few men don’t come off very well. Athanase Tallard causes his family huge upheavals without consulting them, Huntly McQueen is a symbol of Anglo dominance in French Canada, Marius Tallard is a whiny self-absorbed prick, and even Paul has a moment where he seems to be questioning whether marital rape is physically possible. (I’m still in shock about that. WHY did he have to ask that? He wasn’t doing it, he was wondering it about somebody else, but URGH.)

But it’s not just the men who are capable of being jerks. Janet Methuen absolutely infuriated me with her martyrdom and guilt-tripping of her daughter, Heather, who ends up marrying Paul. Janet doesn’t want Heather marrying him because he’s French, and also he doesn’t have a job. Never mind that it’s the Depression and work is hard to come by.

Of course, I could be disproportionately angry with Janet because her guilt-tripping reminded me SO MUCH of my own parents giving me a hard time when my boyfriend had a hard time finding a job after getting his master’s degree. He graduated at exactly the wrong time; the government had a hiring freeze, and the private companies that would normally have hired him were busy going bankrupt or getting creditor protection. So I could sympathize with Heather when Janet was giving her trouble.

Fortunately, John Yardley the sea captain was a bright spot in this book, as were the descriptions of Montreal, Lake Memphramagog, and Halifax. And I certainly don’t regret reading a Canadian classic. But I’d probably suggest that you read Barometer Rising or The Watch that Ends the Night first, if you haven’t tried MacLennan yet. show less

Cross-Country was published after Hugh MacLennan's first three novels had won him great acclaim (Two Solitudes and The Precipice winning him his first and second Governor General's Awards). It's a collection of essays that touch on themes he discusses in his novels: about half the collection discusses the idea of the Canadian identity and his country's place in the world, especially in relation to the United States.

Even without having read (yet) MacLennan's GG-Award-winning novels, I found a show more lot to like about this collection. His writing is very smooth and elegant, and not without a touch of wit. (From his essay on the 1948 Republican convention: "A speech by Governor Duff followed and it might have been interesting if the speaker himself had been interested in what he was saying.") He readily admits when his observations are drawn merely from personal experience, especially in the title essay, which discusses his impressions of the United States from a road trip he and his wife, Dorothy, took to California one winter. And while he does prefer Canada, he is prepared to point out its weak points and where other countries do better; for example, he discusses the "brain drain", especially in the teaching profession at that time, with talented young Canadians fleeing to the States because they are not being given reasons to stay (other than the powers that be saying it's their "duty" -- as MacLennan says, "What do they think Canada is, a mission-field?").

The great thing about this collection, or potentially a point of despair, is that so much of what MacLennan says still resonates today. In his essay "On Discovering Who We Are", he compares Canada and the US in terms of entertainment, noting that many Canadians are tuned in to the World Series and that plenty of US magazines are available in Canadian convenience stores. He asks, how many Americans would be glued to the Canadian universities' football championship? How many US convenience stores would stock magazines such as Maclean's and Chatelaine? The debate continues today on Canadian content quotas and regulations, as well as the extent of American influence on Canadian culture. He also talks about the difficulties of selling Canada as a nation containing things other than Mounties, trappers and husky dogs.

I also liked his essays about his childhood, notably Christmases 1916 and 1917, both of which featured explosions. The 1917 event was the famous Halifax Explosion, also chronicled to great effect in Barometer Rising, while the 1916 event was his family's "own private explosion", caused by gas that had leaked from the city mains into the basement, and his father apparently went down with a lighted match to investigate. (His father subsequently denied this, because the news coverage that said as much made him look kind of stupid; embarrassing for a distinguished doctor.)

If you have read and enjoyed any of MacLennan's work, you will probably like these essays. One thing I should point out is that the first essay in particular is very much a "white guy in the late 1940s" sort of perspective; he compares Canada to a "good wife" and when discussing the founding of Canada he focuses more on the English, French and Scots (the First Nations don't get much of a look-in). But it's not written that way to be mean-spirited; it's just his worldview at that time and did not detract much from my enjoyment of the work. Indeed, I found occasion to quote one of his essays in a conversation with my grandparents, and they were suitably impressed. MacLennan is well worth reading and savouring if you're interested in the Canadian perspective from the mid-20th century. show less

From the very beginning of Barometer Rising, you can tell this is a singular book. The foreword sets the stage when it says that this book "is one of the first ever written to use Halifax, Nova Scotia, as its sole background." Then it blew my mind by saying that there was "as yet no tradition of Canadian literature" at the time Barometer Rising was originally published (1941). CanLit is not even 70 years old at the time this review is being written, and look at all the things we've show more accomplished! It's amazing.

Amazing also describes this book well. The story takes place from a few days before to a day or so after the Halifax Explosion, which occurred on December 6, 1917. It was a horrific event: a munitions ship collided with a relief vessel and caught fire, but only a few people knew what was really inside, so lots of people were out on the street watching the ship burn when it exploded. It is still one of the largest non-atomic explosions in history, or something like that.

But we are not following the crew of this ill-fated vessel. Instead we focus on Neil MacRae, a disgraced soldier who has returned to Halifax, where his lover (and also his cousin) Penelope Wain still lives. She believes he died in Europe, so she has managed to carry on, holding down a very respectable job designing ships. (Respectable from our perspective, of course; most of the male characters think she really shouldn't be doing "men's work".) What will happen if their paths crossed? How much has Penny changed? Has Neil changed? And of course what impact will the Explosion have when it occurs?

This is quite honestly a brilliant book. As a poet, MacLennan is blessed with a gift for description. He picks the right words and uses all of the senses, making the scene come to life. For example, the foghorns whose sounds permeated the walls of the Wain household. You can almost feel the bellow rattling around in your own bones when you read those lines. His protagonists are animated, with active inner thoughts (particularly those of Angus Murray, a medical officer from Neil's battalion). Of course greater dimension is given to Penny, Neil and Angus, but Geoffrey Wain, Penny's father and Neil's uncle, also has more to him than one might think.

MacLennan's description of the Explosion rates its own paragraph. It is utterly breathtaking, speaking to both the quality of his research and his ability to conjure up the perfect image. Even though what happens in the harbour is a matter of historical record and cannot be changed (this is not an alternate history novel), the dread one feels at the Imo approaching the deadly Mont Blanc is palpable, and the moment the ship goes up is sickening.

This is one of those rare books where I feel even a tiny bit comfortable discussing themes and symbols. The barometer mentioned in the title gave me pause, but I can guess that the fact that it's rising means that the pressure is increasing throughout the story -- the confrontation between the various parties involved in the Neil MacRae affair has to come to a head after the tension of the days leading up to the Explosion, which blows everyone's world apart and changes things radically. There is also a theme of the older generations being supplanted by the new, as illustrated by the character of Alec MacKenzie and the anecdote about Angus Murray returning to his father's farm and finding that much of the land his father had painstakingly cleared the trees from was reverting to new forest.

To conclude this review, I shall leave you with a short passage from the last little bit of the book.

No matter what happened to him in the future he would always be able to tell himself that he had survived worse things in the past. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Only one who had experienced ultimate things could comprehend the greatness of that line.

The line in question is from The Aeneid, and one possible translation is "Perhaps it will be pleasing to remember even this one day." Translator Robert Fagles did not propose this translation (I got it off Wikiquote), but he has been quoted as saying that "[the line] is about loss, about overcoming the worst", a statement that can also be fairly applied to this book. Very moving, beautifully written, Barometer Rising is a must-read for Canadian literature fans and anyone interested in historical fiction. show less