Portrait of a Writer

 
Memoirs of a Book Molesting Childhood and Other Essays
Adele Wiseman
Oxford University Press, Toronto. c 1987
Paperback 200 pps. Price $13.95

This is an impressive collection of essays by one of the grande dames of Canadian letters, a literary coeval of Margaret Laurence; indeed, their writing careers paralleled each other's, and theirs has been a long and warm friendship. Although Ms. Wiseman has never quite been recognized as having the same literary stature as her friend, her talents are formidable - as a writer demonstrating the ability to etch sharp images with the added cachet of indelible wit as is readily evidenced by the mischievous sparkle and delicate tracery of description in her nostalgic second essay "Old Markets, New World."

Ms. Wiseman, a native of Winnipeg where she lived with her family and her equally-book-hungry siblings, inhabited the world of fantasy, possibilities, and ultimate disillusion in that city. She is the author of two novels, the first of which, The Sacrifice, won her the Governor General's Award. She is currently a teacher and lecturer, living in Toronto.

This is a diverse collection of essays. Their very diversity, however, demonstrates a wide-ranging intellect and sharp intuition, coupled happily with an ability to paint evocative, sly and teasing impressions for the reader's delectation. Some of the essays were published previously and I found myself curious as to where each essay had seen publication, when it was written and the impetus for its birth. A short note prefacing each would have been helpful in clearing up the mystery for me.

The first essay, the title-piece of the collection, drew me immediately into its warm and cherished embrace. For it quickly evoked a response in me born of familiarity. Which lover of books and literature has not experienced some of Wiseman's perceptions? Sneaky mealtime, schooltime, bedtime excursions into fiction backgrounded my own childhood and that of countless others. But Ms. Wiseman adds her superb craft in recalling ineluctable experience for her own pleasure, and ours. The clarity of her prose diction evokes one's own memory with the sharp aroma of remembrance; so much so that this reader felt astonished that this writer, whom I have never personally met, could somehow 'know' my own experience so intimately. Her tender guidance in recalling the vital and all-consuming need to read was uncanny. At that time, to read was indeed to exist; necessity and final purpose, a means by which one rushed headlong into life.

But there is also the unhappiness of a coming-to-maturity, realizing that the written word can be, and is, used to manipulate, to perpetuate unjustness, conformity, and outmoded attitudes and systems, racial stereotypes and class structures.

Adele Wiseman's lifelong passion for books had led her to the conclusion that her mind has been refined through the reading crucible to the attainment of purity; of thought, discernment, decision and discrimination. Her one great regret lies in the realization that books, with all their profundities and inanities, cannot be the salvation of mankind. They can, and will, however, remain the lodestone of human knowledge, hopes and aspirations. In each new book one approaches, resides the potential of epiphany.

In the following essay, an absolute delight to read, she draws back the curtain of her memory to let us glimpse the Winnipeg Market of years past, redolent of schmaltz herring, crisp pickles, golden corn and blood-ripe tomatoes. She evokes roistering activity, vivid colour and earthy odours. Again, it is her pen, no one else's which so clearly evokes the long-forgotten/newly-remembered.

Uncle owned a horse which the young Adele viewed akin to a "cousin". Uncle discarded nothing, thrifty soul, gifting his sister's household with gilt-red oranges (sprouting mould) in summer, frozen hens in winter, and orange wrappings year 'round for, as she put it, a final Sunkist wipe ... at a time when bathroom tissue was an unthought-of luxury.

This is the work of an excellent writer, able to pass easily from the lyrical to the prosaic. This reader, for example, discovered the first essay to be utterly lyrical and intensely emotional in its excess of feelings; the love of knowledge (and the occasional jolts of reality) thrusts itself to the level of high consciousness in a burst of exhilaration. Anyone reading this essay with even a faintly similar background in the discovery of the wonderland of reading will readily throb to the appeal of a remembered fascination.

The essay, however, titled "What Price the Heroine", a feminist-writer's interpretation of the social mores which informed Henry James' The Portrait of Lady, while a good piece, is also a self-indulgent exercise for the feminist, writer or not. A piece of fiction should be recognized on its merits, regardless of how we later decry the social conditions which led to its expression. While well written, I found it a dry, academic exercise.

I found the essay "How to Go to China: Core Sample from the Continuous Journey" a most interesting bit of reminiscence. Both because I had been fortunate myself to travel and live for a time in the Orient, and because the essay explores impressions and relates the experiences of a coterie of some of Canada's best-beloved writers, travelling as guests of a group of Chinese writers. The observations, impressions, the ultimate kinship and understanding achieved are happy reading. For me, it was like eavesdropping on literary royalty, and I loved it.

c. 1988 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Outlook, Vol.26, No.6-7