\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

OPINIONS & NOTESGale's Contemporary Authors vol. 12 ($80.00)includes a sketch on Marian Engel (a sketchamply supplemented by the special issue thatRoom of One's Own devoted to her in 1984) ;Contemporary Literary Criticism vol. 28($80.00) summarizes Waddington and Hoodcommentary; and the new ContemporaryAuthors Autobiography series vol. 1 ($70.00)includes a long and valuable entry on (andby) Josef Skvorecky. Oxford has reprinted inpaper ($16.95) the useful second ( 1971 ) editionof J. E. Girlot's A Dictionary of Symbols.And also from Oxford is the splendid ConciseScience Dictionary ($24.95), an invaluableclear guidebook both for the science-mindedand the technologically illiterate layman;every classroom should have one, and everyreader of modern writing. Contemporary LiteraryCriticism vols. 27 and 29 (Gale, $80.00and $82.00) excerpts criticism on R. G. Everson,Timothy Findley, W. P. Kinsella, andJane Rule, and on Clark Blaise, Michael Ondaatje,Anne Hébert, and Michel Tremblay.Children's Literature Review vol. 7 (Gale,$70.00) opens with a survey by Sheila Egoffcalled "The Same, Only Different: CanadianChildren's Literature in a North AmericanContext." Among other recent reference worksare Linda Hoad's Literary Manuscripts at theNational Library of Canada (a short checklist); Gernot U. Gabel's valuable CanadianLiterature: An Index to Theses Accepted byCanadian Universities /955-/960 (EditionGemini, DM 36), which (for all its virtues,and it does appear to have been very thorough)nonetheless misses at least DorothyLivesay's thesis and my own; and John RobertColombo's well-packed and densely illustratedCanadian Literary Landmarks (Hounslow,$35.00; pa. $19.95). Colombo's book is atourist's glimpse of literary associations —there's a picture of Birney's father's ranchhousein the hills above Erickson, for example,and a quotation from a Wilson story reflectingon the puzzle of Louis Hémon in Chapleau.There are a number of substantive entries,and yet every reader will want more. I shouldlike to have seen more specific B.C. references(perhaps the Joe Fortes monument for Wilson'sInnocent Traveller) ; too often the commentsflag in generalizations ("A good manywriters . . . were associated ... to name a handful").Or in misleading statements (to call"Lulu Island" — a suburb about the area ofVancouver city — "a small island" in theFraser estuary "that Dorothy Livesay oncevisited" in order to write Call My PeopleHome, is to distort reality a little). But this isan enthusiast's book, full of affection. And it'snow possible for the General Reader to walkevery inch of this country, it seems, book inhand, finding other books — and writers everywhere— springing to mind.LAST PAGERandom Notes: ( 1 ) When you get to be afamous writer, you can republish your earlyworks, or you die and somebody collects you.Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner (Little,ls aBrown, $18.95) book of the first kind,bringing together five early stories; the lateElizabeth Bishop's The Collected Prose (Farrar,Strauss, Giroux, n.p.) is of the secondsort: Robert Giroux's affectionate anthologyof nine essays and eight stories, some editedfrom manuscript and all marked by Bishop'sexacting search for effective image and affectivecadence. Pynchon professes embarrassmentat his early craftsmanship ; devotees may nonethelessfind signs here of his later metatextualintellect. Few general readers will find engagingnarratives, however — it is an effortfulread. Bishop's book, by contrast, is an absorbingadventure in image and memory —memory mostly of Brazil, where Bishop lived,and of the quality of person she met there;and of her Nova Scotia childhood — in theessay "Primer Class" and the extraordinarilymoving story "In The Village," which framethe other works. One delightful discovery inbetween is the memoir of her experience as amarker for a suspect correspondence school ofwriting. But it is to the Maritime pieces onereturns: to the terrifying constant presence ofher mother's illness, to the wit and the wordplaythat throw this reality into relief, and tothe prize and wound of independence the poetcalls love.(2) Next books are sometimes no better thanfirst books. Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale(Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch/Academic Press,$ ! 9-95) starts off as a marvel, an adventurein the violent imagination of New York: whena master mechanic refuses violence and findshe must flee from the pursuers who turn onhim, his horse begins to fly and takes him offto winter and the dreamed-of Eden of thefuture. But the novel wears itself soon intocops-and-robbers verbosity: the Americandream touched by John Wayne, Pegasus, andHan Solo. Graham Jackson's The Decline of203