David Cronenberg: A Delicate Balance by Peter Morris (review)

HUMANITIES 345 amoins de choisir la voie de la pedagogie et d'utiliser la chanson pour l'apprentissage du fran<;ais. C'est a partir de l'etude de la carriere de Robert Paquette, Canol Garolou et Paul Demers, principalement, que l'auteur demontre la contingence de la pratique chansonniere ontaroise. Si Paquette a pu profiter d'un bon accueil au Quebec, il en est tout autrement des autres chansonniers ou groupes qui, apres lui, ont tente de percer au Quebec. Leurs noms sont connus, l'une ou l'autre de leur chanson a connu une certaine popularite, mais, dans l'ensemble, ces artistes ant dli se replier sur l'Ontario pour s'assurer de meilleures retombees. Nationalisme ou pas, chauvinisme ou pas, Ie Quebec n/apparait pas obligatoirement comme la terre d'election de la musique francophone canadienne: Ie probleme de la chanson n'est pas un probleme de contenu, mais un probleme de structure d'une industrie precaire qui vacille entre Ie champ de grande production et Ie champ de production restreinte. A cet effet, on peut se demander quel sens donner it«chanson populaire », comme l/annonce Ie titre, notion flottante, s/il en est, que l'auteur elude en introduction, meme s'il y revient parfois en cours d'analyse, sans jamais en fixer la definition. Par ailleurs, Lamothe montre bien que Ie probleme de la chanson ontaroise releve d'une absence d'institution suffisamment forte pour lui assurer la legitimite dont elle aurait besoin pour survivre. Dans l'etat actuel des choses, la chanson ontaroise jouit d'une reconnaissance pancanadienne qui, malgre tout, n'arrive pas as'etablir ademeure au Quebec. L'etude de Maurice Lamothe est precieuse, car elle donne Ia juste mesure de la chanson populaire ontaroise telle queUe a pu se developper depuis les vingt dernieres annees. L'auteur nous fournit egalement une bibliographie exhaustive, une discographie precieuse et des tableaux fort revelateurs des producteurs et de leurs produits. Cette chanson francophone hors Quebec a pu naitre et se developper en resolvant temporairement Ie conflit entre l'art populaire et l'art savant. L'artiste ontarois doit vivre avec cette realite et s'accommoder d'un marche mixte de production restreinte et de grande production. Ala lumiere de cette etude, on peut se demander quel sera son destin pour les vingt prochaines annees. (ROGER CHAMBERLAND) Peter Morris. David Cronenberg: A Delicate Balance ECW Press. 160. $14.95 When I was asked to review this book I looked forward to the task with pleasure. I am an admirer of Peter Morris, who was one of the pioneers of Canadian cinema studies, and I have a strong intellectual interest in Crorienberg's films. The back cover blurb added to the appeal with its promise of titillating biographical details. From its notation of 'controver- 346 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 sy about [the filmmaker's] depiction of women' to its references to racing cars, drugs, and years spent I as a bohemian artist in Central and South America,' the intimation is clear that one is in for a treat. The hard sell made it all the more disappointing when the promised 'good read' never quite materialized. It wasn't, to be fair, a question of execution. The book is well researched, the writing clear and forceful, and the interpretation sound - at least as far as it goes. Despite these felicities, the only word that jumps into my mind when I think of the book as a whole is, well, boring. I spent some time trying to figure out what went wrong. Part of it may be due to the subject himself. However bizarre the films, the person behind the camera seems to have led an almost militantly 'normal' existence . Judging at least from what Morris gives us, one would have to take considerable liberty with the facts (as does the aforementioned blurb) to make it sound as if Cronenberg's life were any more exciting than, say, the average accountant's. It may, on the other hand, simply be the type of publication we are dealing with. As part of ECW'S 'Canadian Biography Series,' Cronenberg is clearly designed to fill a standard marketing niche and to sell cheaply enough to be suitable for use as an undergraduate textbook. There's nothing wrong with this per se, of course, but for the more demanding reader the format does have some drawbacks. One thing that creates problems in the present case, for example, is the standardized length constraints. Even for a subject as young as Cronenberg, the 101 pages given to actual text are hardly enough to squeeze in the basics, let alone elucidate the more profound connections between life and text that make artists' biographies so potentially fascinating. Another, perhaps more serious, is arbitrariness. Books of this ilk are more commonly commissioned than volunteered. I have no idea whether this was the case with Cronenberg, but from the author's tone I suspect strongly that it was. There is no passion here, no burning curiosity about the whys and wherefores of the subject's peculiarities, no sense of either identification or estrangement. It is a telling comment on the whole endeavour, in fact, that virtually every photograph used is a posed portrait of the sort handed out with studio publicity kits. Having said this much, it's only fair that I backtrack a little. If it is true that I was disappointed with this book, it is also true that that my complaints should be taken with a large grain of salt. What I am exercised about, really, is the fact that Morris's Cronenberg is not the full-scale, detail-rich, theory-drenched interpretive biography that I would like to see someone write about this particular filmmaker. The point is, on the other"hand, that it doesn't pretend to be. It presents itself as exactly what it is: a cheap, compact, well-written, and eminently accessible account df a person whose work has attained enough importance in our national cultural pantheon that it is time we knew more about the life that HUMANITIES 347 subtends it. Students will find it useful. Buffs will find it a convenient compilation of information now available only in scattered form. Filmgoers will gain a salutary lesson about the difference between the creator and the work. If it is not the book I hoped for, in other words, this book was still well worth doing. If only because of the extent to which it provides a much-needed complement to the emerging body of Cronenberg critique, in fact, a less petty person than myself would be grateful that ECW mounted the project - and that Morris carried it off as well as he did. (GAILE MCGREGOR) Peter Larisey, 5J. Light for a Cold Land: Lawren Harris's Work and Life - An Interpretation Dundum Press 1993. xiii, 199 $49.99 cloth This is an ambivalent book, divided in its methodology between art analysis and biography, and in the author's assessment of Lawren Harris's art. This is not to say that the study is unsuccessful. Peter Larisey's research is detailed, the writing clear, and his affection for the artist admirable. The book's illustrations, and particularly the many colour plates, are handsome and well integrated into the critical discussion . No one has recounted this crucial Canadian modernist's whole career in such detail before, nor has any other art historian sustained a discussion of the works of the artist's .whole oeuvre. In the absence of sufficient critical debate about Harris, Larisey showed courage to attempt a short book of this scope and ambition. A problem Lawren Harris poses for a critic is that he was a productive and often changing artist from the 1910s to the 1960s. This long maturity, comparable in span to Matisse, took him, as Larisey measures his career, through two major phases as a Canadian landscape artist (both of them as a founding member of the Group of Seven), and then, after about 1930, two further phases as an abstractionist, first in the United States and then in Vancouver. In all this, Harris was not someone whose works fit into an apparently steady trajectory. According to Larisey, he did not evolve towards abstraction, as many modern artists have, but abruptly seized it after a decade of declaring that art needs natural models. Similarly, Harris was an adamant cultural nationalist, who then left Canada and that critical position for over six years, without, it would seem, a great deal of hesitation. These are sudden turns in an outwardly patrician life that knew financial security and early recognition - both unusual for a modern artist - but that was driven inwardly by a great restlessness. For a man with an ebullient and sociable personality, Harris had a number of sharp psychological and artistic crises - in fact, one roughly every ten years. A ...