In which I read two more books with #NovNov in mind, hosted by Rebecca and Cathy: one gentle epistolary immersion into an artist’s rediscovery of light, and the other a back-and-forth contemplation of past-and-present through eighteen short chapters about a surprisingly-Clark-Blais-ish writer.

Dorothy Livesay (1909-1996) began writing The Husband in 1967, when Desmond Pacey encouraged her to return to prose during her residency in eastern Canada that year. She is primarily known for her poetry, and she won the Governor General’s Award twice for it and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. Her 1991 memoir Journey with My Selves truly charmed me (here and here) and The Internet Archive has a copy.

It’s a time of flux for the main character of The Husband too; her husband has had a stroke, and she has been preoccupied with caregiving. It’s been three years, however, and he is much improved: enough so, that she’s been able to resume the painting she set aside long ago.

The short list of characters in the front situates them all in relationship to her: her sister, her maître, her stepson, etc. Which makes sense on one hand, because the story is presented in letters, so the addressee is viewed wholly in relationship to her. But on the other hand, it also draws attention to the fact that the book isn’t titled Her Husband, but The Husband. Which underscores her growing sense of separation from the man she has loved for so long.

Another factor which throws her marriage into stark relief against a weary backdrop is the arrival of a boarder (“her boarder”), a young man who rents the cottage behind the couple’s home. Partly age, and partly inclination, he is much more engaged in the world around him. In contrast, she observes that her husband’s leg still drags when they go out for an evening, and sometimes he is so anxious and lonely that he asks her to sit with him all day.

Whereas the boarder rises early as she does, and they begin to take their breakfast together. Soon they are having long talks about philosophers and poets, about different ways of seeing and ways of being. She is forty-five years old, and she has borne much loss in her life, but she is suddenly rediscovering the joy of artistry and intellectual conversation, amid the intense give-and-take that builds with proximity and curiosity, creativity and passion.

The letters skirt the kind of artificiality that could weaken this concept, because the premise is that she is updating various recipients about specific situations. There’s a reason for it to veer into reportage, for instance, when she is writing to share the news of her husband’s progress in recovery, when she’s writing to his son (her step-son) David. A reason for her describing the development of her relationship with the boarder to her sister—as her painting and his poems are shared— because her sister has instructed her to look for every opportunity to nourish the parts of her creativity that have gone fallow.

Livesay’s preface indicates that this sort of story wouldn’t have been remarkable in Europe at the time of writing, but she didn’t believe it had been written by another woman in Canada, and The Artist’s openness and frank expression of emotion still stands out, decades later.

Clark Blaise, born in 1940, has also been named an Officer of the Order of Canada, but he’s best known for his short fiction. Though born in Fargo, North Dakota and raised throughout the United States (he lived in 30 different places as a boy, before eighth grade), he became a Canadian citizen in 1966 and published his first collection of stories in 1973: A North American Education (he had married the writer Bharati Mukherjee in 1963 when they were both twenty-four).

I wrote about his 2011 Giller-Prize nominated collection, The Meagre Tarmac, here; I enjoyed it so much that I reflexively bought whatever I found of his second-hand thereafter. As a result, I have multiple copies of a few volumes and none of others: he’s likely the Canadian writer I’ve bought most often and read least often. Because Resident Alien (1986) includes a novella, it was a clear choice for #NovNov, but I also wanted to read it because it opens and closes with autobiographical pieces.

At last, via The “Voice of Unhousement” and “Memories of Unhousement”, I finally understood his passages across the present-day border between Canada and the United States, as well as his kaleidoscopic sense of identity, further intensified by his marriage to Bharati Mukherjee (this collection is dedicated to her). I’ve never been able to track where he belongs, and now I understand that I was asking the wrong question. (Winnipeg? Florida? New York? Montreal? Toronto? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.)

“Translation” is the fourth and longest in the Porter Carrier stories; it follows “South”, “Identity”, and “North”, which makes it clear, even in geographic terms, that Philip’s life bears a great deal of resemblance to Clark’s life.

Both move suddenly between countries when family dynamics take an unexpected turn:

“One day in Pittsburgh when he was twelve years old and living in utter harmony even with his epilepsy, his father went to work and learned that he’d been fired without warning. ‘My name was Phil Porter, my father was Reg Porter and we were Americans from Pittsburgh.’”

Both move to Montreal as young men and find the city unique and formative:

“Quebec was both chic and third-world at the same time; unlike New York, everyone smoked. The uncirculated summer air was dense and blue. It was like being in a Bogart movie, or something terribly earnest and existential.”

Both write stories and consider what it means to create a narrative:

“Porter called autobiography the democracy of bafflement. Every success reinvented the form.”

The title suits literally, with Phil contemplating specific word choices in Québécois French, but also metaphorically, as he navigates relationships (with his wife, and with a female cousin, in particular) where he feels a disrupted sense of belonging, akin to never really feeling at home on either side of the geo-political border. And, throughout, his epilepsy also creates a sense of dislocation and disruption, which he struggles to articulate even to those closest to him.

Thanks to Rebecca and Cathy for hosting #NovNov and nudging me to read four novellas this month amidst the MARMing!