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220 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 more complex distinctions between types of power here, since early postmodern theory's occasionally sloppy theorizing of power has been recently critiqued and sharpened by the interventions of theorists of colour, feminists, and post-colonial theorists, to name a few by no means mutually exclusive examples. Otherwise, rather amazing assumptions about agency and subjugation may remain uninterrogated, as in the following comment: 'there is an incompatibility between Offred's narration and the position of subjugation she occupies as a Handmaid. One might wonder why and how such a narrative intelligence could be subjugated in this way.' 'One' could, but only if one were also given to wondering , along the same lines, how bright, resourceful women get raped. My own resistant reading of Deer's argument about The Handmaid's Tale is, I suppose, exactly the sort of response he admits and foresees at the end of his book, since I have foregone in this instance the I submissive and praising mode' of reviewing. Praise is indeed deserved in Deer's convincing treatments of The Double Hook, Badlands, and The New Ancestors , in chapters where an ideological-rhetorical reading is handled with more theoretical cogency and consistency. Besides, to be truthful, I would rather read this book, disturbed though I've been at moments, than a bland critical mixture of plot resumes and platitudes that stirs no waters and offends no one. (LORRAINE YORK) Paul Delany, editor. Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City Arsenal Pulp Press. 296. $19.95 paper As this well-edited book makes abundantly clear, the future is certainly not what it used to be. Paul Delany, a professor of English at Simon Fraser University, has assembled an unusual collection of essays on architecture , culture, feminism, ethnicity, poetry, literature, art, landscape, and film that individually and collectively make a persuasive case for Vancouver 's being Canada's most stunning example of urban postmodernism. This is a dense book in a luxuriant sense, packed with information, insights, ideas, and commentary. Though it makes for heavy slogging at times, it is intensely interesting and rewarding to read. Generally the prose is fluid and graceful, and there is much here to nourish and delight the mind. Full of photographs and illustrations, the book is attractively produced and brings this postmodern city visually to life. The front cover appropriately has a photograph of a model of Moshe Safdie's startling postmodern Vancouver public library, which has recently opened. Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City is a fine example of Roland Barthes's observation that 'the city is a discourse.' Delany'S perceptive and helpful introductory chapter fully opens the door(s) into the texts that follow, as he alerts us to the fact that 'the postmodem city is a place where different semiotic systems are juxtaposed, instead of a place where HUMANITIES 221 culture unfolds or accumulates through time.' With the postmodernist uncoupling from the totalizing visions of modernism, fully underway globally by the early 1970s, historically peripheral cities like Vancouver (unlike cities such as Vienna, London, Paris, New York) radiated a new vitality born of the powerful mix of an electronic flowing in of global culture and the rapid emergence of profuse, exciting local cultures. Delany also contributes another fine essay to the collection: on Vancouver's most celebrated author, William Gibson, who introduced the term 'cyberspace' in his 1984 novel Neuromancer. In this essay he analyses the only one of Gibson's works which has Vancouver as its setting, the short story 'The Winter Market.' The story deals with postmodemism's central themes: the commodification of all aspects of existence and the decomposition of social systems relentlessly sliding into entropy and 'the junkpile.' Delany brilliantly uses his discussion of Gibson's story to illustrate the dark side of postmodernism within the Vancouver context. There are several engaging chapters on architecture: one is devoted to a discussion of the work of Richard Henriquez, who has been described as 'an imaginative architect with the eyes of an artist.' Alberto PerezGomez , who teaches the history of architecture at McGill, argues that Henriquez's style can only be called postmodern if this word is understood in its broader cultural meaning as...

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