‘The Other Side of Dailiness’: Photography in the Works of Alice Munro, Timothy Findley, Michael Ondaatje, and Margaret Laurence by Lorraine M. York (review)

HUMANITIES 161 journey 'home from exile into identity,' 'by taking one direction, through memory, from the ironic "junction" at which history and memory seem to stand still in the Pegnitz Junction stories.' As the first map to steer our readings into and through the interstices of Gallant's explorations of history and memory, Besner's The Light of Imagination establishes rigorous standards for those planning to chart alternative 'interpretative journeys.' (LESLEY D. CLEMENT) Lorraine M. York. 'The Other Side of Dailiness': Photography in the Works of Alice Munro, Timothy Findley, Michael Ondaatje, and Margaret Laurence Eew Press. 172, illus. $25.00; $15.00 paper To bring together two art forms is a fashionable critical approach, but in her study of the presence of photography in the work of four Canadian writers, Lorraine York has not simply reflected a current trend. She has instead produced an illuminating study that provides a permanently useful perspective on the work of her chosen authors. The quality of York's work is apparent right from the opening pages, which concisely summarize complex theoretical questions that have arisen since the principles of photography came to be scrutinized. The debate between those who find in photography objective truth and those who see it as necessarily subjective, between those who interpret it (in Barthes's formulations, which York adopts) in terms of nature and those who regard it in terms of culture, constitutes an appropriate and effective framework for the subsequent discussions of writers who occupy the entire spectrum from realism to post-modernism. York's method involves some crucial choices. In her opening chapter, she mentions eighteen Canadian writers who have used photography in a significant way in their work. In focusing on only four of these writers Alice Munro, Timothy Findley, Michael Ondaatje, and Margaret Laurence - York has opted to avoid a broad statement about the national culture in favour of an analysis oriented towards styles of writing. If something has been sacrificed in this strategy, the extended treatment York is able to give each writer, combined with. the discernment and precision of her commentary, certainly justifies this decision. In dealing with three of her four writers, York adopts the same approach: an introductory section is followed by subsections which proceed in chronological order, stressing what York regards as evolution and development in each writer's view of photography. Thus we are told that in his early work Findley associated photography with such distasteful motifs as the victimization imposed by the past, unnatural fixity, and violence, but that a turning point in Findley's outlook is to be observed in The Wars, in which photography has more positive associa- 162 LEITERS IN CANADA 1988 tions with writing and reading. Such a view seems more convincing than York's claim that it would be inappropriate to find such patterns of development in Munro, the first writer she discusses. Munro herselffeels that her style and outlook have altered over the years, and it seems reasonable to suppose that her use of photography has also changed to some degree. The subject of photography in fiction could be approached in terms of specific references to photographs in each literary work, or the focus could be widened to include a broader consideration of the analogies in creative method between photography and fiction. It is a tribute to York's comprehensive and ambitious view of her subject that she undertakes both tasks, but she is sometimes not entirely persuasive in making the latter kind of claim. For example, York demonstrates very convincingly that photographs and photographers matter as' a source of metaphor in Munro's stories, but it is less evident that Munro has an essentially 'photographic vision' (that phrase is used several times). Such reservations as I have just expressed do not detract from the general excellence of York's work. The book is a unified study rather than a succession of discrete chapters: each author is carefully related both to the theoretical context and to the writers who have been previously examined; the introductory sections of each chapter look back as well as forward, and are also strengthened by extensive and effective use of interviews with each writer. York's...