The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition by Craig Stewart Walker (review)

Reviews CRAIG STEWART WALKER. The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002. Pp. 467. $70.00 (Hb); $27.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Sherrill Grace, University ofBritish Colwnbia The Buried Astrolabe is a major contribution to the critical discussion of Canadian drama; it is also a frustrating book. Before I go on to praise the many contributions this study makes to the field or to engage with some of the issues it explores, let me explain why I find the book frustrating. Walker explicitly notes his intention that each chapter of his study stand on its own, and he invites his readers to read only that section of particular interest to them. As a reviewer, however, I read straight through; indeed, as a student of Canadian drama, I wanted to read straight through - but I could not find the through-line. The ideas set forth in the prologue did not cohere for me; the metaphor of a buried astrolabe as an image of the Western dramatic tradition buried in the fertile soil of the Canadian imagination just did not convince . Equally frustrating was Walker's explanation of the sublime as a key'to understanding the mythopoesis of Canadian writing, which must "transcend a sense of belatedness" (18). If I understand him correctly, Walker uses his "poetic sublime" (14) as a way of transcending tired debates about national identity, regionalism, and those qualities that represent Canadian-ness in a play. Much is riding on the articulation of these ideas in the prologue: these ideas promise a vision of a whole that is more than its parts. When I finished the book, I expected an epilogue, something to return me to the opening discussion . to revisit not "Where is here?" but "How we got here from there," how the mindscapes and plays of James Reaney, Michael Cook, Sharon PolModern Drama. 45:2 (Summer 2002) 302 Reviews 303 lock, Michel Tremblay, George F. Walker, and Judith Thompson had provided me with a better map of the "Canadian dramatic imagination." One way to rectify this problem would have been a more nuanced discussion of the sublime, one that took Ian MacLaren's excellent studies of the subject into account - his essays "The Aesthetic Map of the North" (1985) and "Samuel Hearne and the Landscapes of Discovery" (1984), for example. Another way of developing a through-line might have been to include more visuals in the text, for the sublime is inextricable from the visual arts. Indeed, a further problem I had with the book was its lack of visual illustration. Only one image is included - a Roy Lichtenstein in the Walker chapter - and it is of minimal relevance. Of course, it is difficult to get the permissions for production shots; an author can run into refusals to permit reproduction of an artist's work, and a publisher can refuse to make an expensive book more expensive by including illustrations. Nevertheless, a few judicious images would have anchored the discussion at crucial points and assisted a reader's appreciation of the choices made by a playwright. In each of his six chapters, Walker undertakes a full discussion of his chosen playwrights, and his choices make sense. Reaney, Cook, Pollock, Tremblay , Walker, and Thompson all have substantial oeuvres, have been extensively published and anthologized, and' have been widely performed. They are also very different, so they reflect well the wide-ranging uses of the stage, the variety of dramatic styles. and the possibilities for aesthetic vision in contemporary Canadian drama. If I miss anything in these choices, it is the non-white imagination, and again I wish Walker had pushed at his chosen boundaries in an epilogue, where he might have briefly considered Tomson Highway, Marie Clements, George Elliott Ciarke, and Guillermo Verdecchia. I especially enjoyed the Reaney chapter, perhaps because I find his work difficult. Walker's analysis of Reaney's development of a poetic theatre that is simple yet highly complex illuminates the dramatist's philosophy of theatre, in which concepts of play, symbol, and myth join to create a dramaturgy that is both regional and universal. I also like his chapter on Pollock, the playwright I...