Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic (review)

Fourteen years after its original publication, Rudy Wiebe's Playing Dead: A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic has been republished by NeWest Press as the inaugural text in its series 'Landmark Editions.' According to the new afterword by Robert Kroetsch, this series seeks to bring back into print 'important books by western Canadian writers, books that have become a part of the Canadian canon.' Given the growing number of publications on the North since the early 1990s, evidenced by more than a dozen entries added to Wiebe's updated bibliography, this new edition is timely. Playing Dead reminds us that Wiebe is one of the key writers in Canada who, like Kroetsch, has been fascinated and haunted by northern narratives of nation for decades.

In the five essays that constitute Playing Dead, including a new Prelude and Coda, Wiebe repeatedly reminds us that his main goal is to understand the North and its history, to learn its secrets and mysteries, and to comprehend it as both a physical region and an idea in his own head: 'I desire true NORTH, not PASSAGE to anywhere.' Wiebe examines how the Arctic is tied up with questions of national identity. More specifically, he seeks 'to understand why Canadians have so little comprehension of our own nordicity, that we are a northern nation and that, until we grasp imaginatively and realize imaginatively in word, song, image and consciousness that North is both the true nature of our world and also our graspable destiny we will always go whoring after the mocking palm trees and beaches of the Caribbean and Florida and Hawaii.' If we know about our northern past, Wiebe suggests, we can avoid 'the stupidities of our ancestors.' We can do better in the future.

Everyone has a story, says Wiebe in Playing Dead, but not all stories are being told or heard. The personal essay is the ideal form for Wiebe to reflect on how stories act as repositories of memory, how they are never just about individuals but about relationships, and how they are our primary tools of education, maybe even survival. By quoting extensively from prose, poems, and songs, as well as adding eleven illustrations to the earlier two, Wiebe also makes us realize that stories about the North derive from a wide range of sources. In each essay, Wiebe quotes at length from the writings of European explorers such as George Back, John Franklin, Robert Hood, and Samuel Hearne. He helps us appreciate their accomplishments at the same time as he enables us to see the biases of their perspectives. For effective juxtapositions, Wiebe turns to northerners who are telling their own stories. On one occasion, he quotes from George Best's record (1576) of Martin Frobisher's encounter with the Inuit and follows it with the Netsilik Inuit story of how the Native people of the Boothia Penninsula met Sir John Ross in 1829. Another time, he draws on Joe Nasugaluaq's diary to provide details about Vilhjalmur Stefansson's relationship with Pannigabluk, the Inuit woman who remains absent in Stefansson's own texts. Wiebe's carefully orchestrated essays show rather than tell us how stories are shaped by perspective. In fact, he insists that our own perspectives need to be re-examined. The upside-down map of the Canadian Arctic (updated and retitled) urges us to do so right at the beginning of the book. It places the North at the centre, giving names to northern rivers and places, while southern Canada remains a white empty space at the top of the page.

A contemplation - that is how Wiebe describes Playing Dead in the subtitle. The term fits beautifully. These essays do not give answers to questions; they are neither hypotheses nor accusations (even though Wiebe holds many strong opinions). They are thoughtful observations that convey both Wiebe's deep knowledge and his unfaltering love of the North. As a reader...