\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

SKETCHES & JOKESALDEN NOWLAN, Will Ye Let theIn? Irwin, $8.95.MummersROBIN SKELTON, The Man Who Sang in HisSleep. Porcupine's Quill, $9.95.BOOKS IN REVIEWANY REVIEW OF ALDEN NOWLAN'S lastbook is bound to be a eulogy — and whynot? The twenty-one stories in Will YeLet the Mumers In? were collected andrevised by Nowlan himself before hisdeath, and they span nearly the whole ofhis writing life, from i960 to 1982. Thebest of them exhibit the humane visionthat Nowlan's readers have come to expect:the patient untangling of complexmotives and the compassion that extendsto persecutors as well as to their victims.This book provides a lot of quiet satisfactionbut few surprises. Nowlan's storieswere continuous with his poems, and wefind the familiar rural and small-towncharacters, alienated from each otherand from their own real feelings, yetunited in a solid community that resistsintrusion. Familiar too is the deliberatelyflat language and the refusal to allowmore than small insights.In his preface Robert Weaver describesthese stories as "a group of sketches."Some of them are too short and too reticentto give more than the most minimalof realizations, but when some of theseshort sketches are read in conjunctionwith the longer stories they resonateagainst them and gain in richness. Likehis poems, Nowlan's stories need to beread in groups.The first and last stories frame the collection."Fall of a City" is about how tobecome an artist in Nowlan's society. Aboy whose imaginative life has beenmocked by an insensitive uncle internalizeshis dream and continues it : "He haddestroyed his city because he could notdestroy his uncle . . . But he did not cryagain. For something very strange happenedto him: he became two persons. .. Every night after that, Teddy wentback to his Kingdom." The last story,"About Memorials," tells what an artistin this society must become, a monumentto other people's vanities and limitations :"Life had given these people so littlethat it was important to them to believethey were each of them a part — not ofme but a person to whom a plaque couldbe erected. Because I had made this possible,they loved me." Both stories areabout acceptance as well as rejection.Teddy recognizes that his uncle can beboth loving and insensitive at the sametime; the poet in "About Memorials"responds to the love beneath the limitationsof his family and native town.Within this frame three subjects standout. One is the need for a home and thedifficulty of recognizing one when youhave found it. The Christmas mummersof the title story appear to treat the academiccouple from Ontario with hostilityand contempt. Yet, as the leader of thetroupe tries to explain, this is their wayof showing acceptance. A second subjectis the sense of menace, how it grows inisolated communities like villages or hospitals,how sometimes people want tofeel menaced because it feeds their senseof self-importance. This theme reaches acomic climax in "Walking on the Ceiling."As Kevin O'Brien, the author'spersona from the earlier "fictional memoir"totters down the hospital corridor,walking for the first time since his nearfataloperation, he overhears an old andparalysed man voicing fears that he andKevin might suddenly start a fight:"God, that's a big bastard .. . I'd sure ashell hate to tangle with him." A thirdrecurring subject is ways in which peopleaccept death, an appropriate irony for afinal collection. All the subjects overlapand interact to give emotional and moraldepth to the simplicity of the individual167