{"id":234,"date":"2011-05-19T10:26:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T10:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/?page_id=234"},"modified":"2012-02-05T23:14:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T23:14:29","slug":"amanda-tripp","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/writings\/reviews\/amanda-tripp\/","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Tripp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fiction and Non-Fiction Review<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Cube People<\/em>
\nby Christian McPherson
\nGibson, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2010
\n271 pp.\u00a0 $21.95<\/h6>\n

Colin Macdonald hates his job, his coworkers, and sometimes, himself. Like many of us, Colin feeds his soul with something that stops his government career from sucking the life out of him. Colin writes horror fiction, but more than this, he also puts himself at risk of constant rejection by trying to sell it. His life is a horror story that we can all relate to: the horrors of everyday life, humorously and thankfully tempered by the series of little blessings, and life-changing big ones, that make life ultimately more fun-house than haunted-house. As Colin begins his journey towards fatherhood, Macpherson\u2019s novel tells the story of a man becoming, well, a better man, thanks to the absurdities, horrors, and joys of adult urban life.<\/p>\n

Christian McPherson\u2019s The Cube People<\/em> is a cocktail of genre work that has something for every reader to enjoy. Though the novel follows in the footsteps of novelists interested in exploring the angst of white collar workers (the kind of novel now diligently studied in Am Lit graduate seminars), it also ventures into the campy worlds of science fiction, blood-and-guts schlock horror, and a certain kind of fantasy, all the while sustaining the episodic carnival with a sincerely touching family narrative that is honest, funny, relatable, and very loving.<\/p>\n

One of the many pleasures to be gotten out of The Cube People<\/em> is its simplicity, and out of this simplicity comes its best moments of humor. Mcpherson doesn\u2019t need to work too hard to make you laugh, and indeed, is at his best when he doesn\u2019t, because the story he\u2019s telling is about laughing to stay sane when your world is crashing down around your ears. Local Ottawa readers will get an extra hit of pleasure in recognition, finally able to experience what our Toronto and Montreal compatriots feel when a novel takes them to their favorite restaurant or movie theatre. Indeed McPherson doesn\u2019t shy away from the realities of downtown Ottawa at all, and as person who shares that space, I see myself and my neighbors reflected in his well-wrought episodes and minor characters. Perhaps more importantly, McPherson gives voice to an invisible but fundamental backbone of the national capital\u2019s in-humor and main complaint: the federal government and its workers. Again, the representation of this absurdly inefficient body is not altogether unsympathetic, nor is it unkind, instead, it\u2019s the representation that only one who has worked in, or tried desperately to work around, such a system can publicly give without insult or injury. Certainly, those who haven\u2019t even worked for the government will recognize and echo the protagonist Colin Macdonald\u2019s nearly hysterical if silent frustration, perhaps even getting some real life relief.<\/p>\n

Clearly then, the important place of horror narrative in the novel is no accident, but McPherson\u2019s real artful move is in resisting the temptation to drive home that connection too firmly, or too finally, instead allowing the underlying motif of violence and perversity to expand and color all aspects of the every-man embodied by Colin. From his family life to his friendships to his work and even his leisure, his frustration boils to a point of violent explosion, the energy of which is funneled directly into either the creation of his novels, or the more artful creation of his first person narration. There is a kind of heroism in the character\u2019s triple-identities – the underwhelmed and underwhelming IT-taxes-guy, the truly sympathetic but terrified family man, and the frustrated artist who can\u2019t seem to get a break – because Colin\u2019s concern with his integrity and identity is one that is increasingly pertinent to a culture where a person\u2019s 9-5 job is rarely what they truly consider to be their life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Fatherhood 4.0: iDad Applications Across Cultures<\/em>
\nby Dalton Higgins
\nLondon, ON: Insomniac Press, 2010
\n195 pp. $19.95<\/h6>\n

Fatherhood 4.0<\/em> is an altogether different kind of approach to the question of what fatherhood means in today\u2019s world, but Higgins shares McPherson\u2019s bottom line about daddyhood, which is that its an identity that needs showcasing, and sometimes, also needs a little help. Higgins\u2019 non-fiction text is a collection of interviews, poetic works, and essays with, by, and about fathers of the 21st century. Though Higgins does include voices from the \u201cdominant culture\u201d, his focus is primarily on a community of daddies that he explains has been<\/p>\n

under-served, and is also desperately in need of support and more healthy media representation: people of color, or, as he abbreviates, POC.<\/p>\n

Higgins begins his text by explaining why this group deserves, and indeed, requires special and attentive discussion and self-representation, noting that fatherlessness in minority groups (which he rightly notes, are not actually going to be minorities for very long) is a key factor in the cycles of poverty, violence and self-destruction, not to mention the cycle of fatherlessness itself, that haunts black and South Asian communities in Canada. Though he interviews a wide range of minority groups, and includes a touching personal essay by a pregnant trans-father, his text focuses on these particular cultural minorities, and seems to be rooted in the communities of Toronto, where the impact of fatherlessness is unavoidably visible on street corners, in alleyways, and in education records. Rightly though, Higgins makes a point of noting that white fathers are not exempt from these cycles, nor are any other cultural or ethnic groups, and he makes sure that the book includes fathers from many walks of life, with their own different family structures, and sexual orientations.<\/p>\n

Fatherhood 4.0<\/em> is an engaging read, and part of the credit of that needs to go to the lively guiding narration of its host, Higgins himself. As a relatively young father, Higgins brings his own hipness and personal openness to the table, and so by explaining the relationships he has with the fathers he interviews, the\u00a0 book literally does the work it advocates, of bringing fathers together to discuss their influence in their children\u2019s lives, and the impact their own fathers had on theirs. This action based project is perhaps the best thing about Fatherhood 4.0<\/em>: it is honest about the fact that the book is a beginning, not a finale. It aims to bring fathers together in stories and self-exploration, and this is about more than reading a book – Higgins\u2019 text ends with a poetic piece that really inspires thought and, he must certainly be hoping, social action.<\/p>\n

Fatherhood\u2019<\/em>s interviewees are, thankfully, not all model fathers, though they all are invested in their own personal brand of fatherhood, and though culture certainly contributes to their stories, their narratives aren\u2019t only important for POC to read. In fact, these interviews are probably important for anyone who has been a father, or has had one: the speakers are full of humor about their experiences, and share their own experiences candidly and comfortably. And, with interviewees ranging from Lawrence Hill (author of The Book of Negroes <\/em>to Charles Spearin (of Broken Social Scene), with many other inspiring and varied stories in between, there is something for everybody. Notably though,\u00a0 the best reads are actually those that seem the furthest from your own story, and turn out to have a fundamental kernel, or even an off-side quirk, of familiarity. And this, one can imagine, is probably exactly what Higgins was hoping for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fiction and Non-Fiction Review The Cube People by Christian McPherson Gibson, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2010 271 pp.\u00a0 $21.95 Colin Macdonald hates his job, his coworkers, and sometimes, himself. Like many of us, Colin feeds his soul with something that stops his government career from sucking the life out of him. Colin writes horror fiction, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":77,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-234","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/234\/revisions\/917"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}