The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

Keith Maillard finds that O'Hagan refuses
to be directed in his responses. Other items,
however—such as the letter from Lovat
Dickson, which is intended to relate an early
recollection of O'Hagan—seem superfluous,
especially since a lengthy footnote is
required to explain the letter's significance.
Oral storytelling, native "authenticity,"
and cultural appropriation are issues examined
by other critical articles in the collection.
Tay John focuses partly on a white
narrator, Jack Denham, and his encounters
with "Tay John" in the mountains of British
Columbia, and has therefore been compared
to Margaret Laurence's "The Loons."
Ralph Maud's article explains the background
of the "Tay John" stories and speculates
about O'Hagan's sources for First
Nations customs; he finally assures the
reader that O'Hagan's "claim to ethnographic
validity is...sound". This tendency
to legitimate O'Hagan's presentation of the
Shuswap and Métis—reading the novel for
its measure of truth and objectivity—is
another connection between Fee's collection
and Sparrow's study of Laurence. It is
interesting, in fact, that both Tay John and
Laurence's African writings focus on, or
emerge from, encounters of white settler
and indigene, and that they confront the
difficulty of communicating an unfamiliar
oral tradition through a written text.
Fiona Sparrow's Into Africa with Margaret
Laurence presents the results of exhaustive
research into Laurence's fascination with
Africa, with African literature, and with
European explorers such as Richard
Burton. The scope of the book is certainly
impressive, and it contributes a great deal
to current studies of Laurence; however,
Sparrow also expends considerable space in
unnecessary evaluative criticism, praising
Laurence's accurate portrayals of African
cultures and peoples. Like Ralph Maud,
Sparrow comments on Laurence's "uncompromising
standards of truthful reporting
and careful research", where it might have
been more useful to examine the appropriateness
of employing realism to inscribe an
oral tradition. Moreover, many of
Sparrow's statements echo Conrad's
ambiguous descriptions of the "dark continent";
for instance, she responds to W.H.
New's depiction of Laurence as an outsider
to West African culture by suggesting that
Laurence "penetrated deeply into the society
she wrote about and illuminated it from
within".
Despite these weaknesses, Sparrow's study
does present an invaluable new perspective
on Laurence's Manawaka writings, by
showing how Laurence may have returned
to Canada as an "outsider". Moreover, in
her examination of Laurence's Long Drums
and Cannons—a critique of African texts—
Sparrow suggests that Laurence shares with
Chinua Achebe a focus on social commentary.
It would be worthwhile to examine
more fully the effects of Laurence's African
experiences upon the Manawaka stories,
since Sparrow's text does hint at a different
relation between Laurence and the Canadian
literary tradition than is usually adopted.
Fee's collection similarly suggests that
O'Hagan was an "outsider" to the Canadian
nationalist canon, and urges a closer examination
of his writing than this study is able
to provide. Both of these surveys, then,
serve as encouragement and resource for
further critical work, as well as presenting
us with a fresh perspective on the more
"uncomfortable tradition" of Canadian
writers and texts.