The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism ed. by Arnold E. Davidson, Cathy N. Davidson, and: Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood by Sherrill Grace (review)

and moaning about what couldn't be changed anyway.' Wiebe's personality is apparent at once in the picture on the cover, which shows him as a wild and woolly Mennonite cowboy, or perhaps a Canadian Tolstoy. The well-chosen title suggests Wiebe's literary concerns, which are also the presiding themes ofthis volume. ForWiebe, the novelist is spokesman and storyteller of his people. He records their tones and accents and makes eloquent their oral traditions. He speaks for their'great voices' heroes and prophets. Magdalene Redekop contributes an excellent article on the voices heard in The Blue Mountains of China, explaining how languages (Low German, High German, Russian, English, Spanish) figure in Mennonite culture, and relating their 'polyglotexperience' to the style and theme of the novel. For Wiebe voice also arises from place: the novelist must speak for and listen to the land. He strives both to 'touch this land with words' and to 'gain new insights from a landscape that assumes voice.' The prairie writer interprets the voice of the land as character, incident, history, legend, and epic. Therefore he speaks as witness - a third theme in this book - for his people and their land. Ultimately he is a 'prophetic witness,' like Pierre Falcon, testifying to past and future. In a complex essay David Jeffrey examines the styles of prophetic utterance in Wiebe's novels, discussing them as aspects of Wiebe's search for peace, a search based on biblical models and uses of language. Instead of an introductory essay Keith offers a brief commentary on each of the twenty-two entries. Acting as master of ceremonies, he gives background information as well as words of guidance, praise, or caution. A Voice in the Land provides some essential documents for Wiebe scholars and gives the general reader a striking portrait of a complex and challenging novelist. (JON KERTZER) Arnold E. Davidson and Cathy N. Davidson, editors. The Art of Margaret Atwood: Essays in Criticism Anansi. 304. $18.95 Sherrill Grace. Violent Duality: A Study of Margaret Atwood Vehicule Press 1980. '54· $14·95, $5·95 paper Like her own heroine in Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood is something of an escape artist, her self-reflexive ironies making any formulations about her art or concerns seem somehow heavy-handed, one-sided, no matter how subtly presented. At the same time, Atwood's work (for all its multiplicity of voice and mode) is recognizably one thing - a repetition of themes and motifs, a characteristic tone - and so encourages the reader to identify this oneness, to pull apparent multiplicity into unity. HUMANITIES 467 In Violent Duality, her brief introductory study of Atwood's work up to 1979, Sherrill Grace adopts this approach. Offering 'an interpretive guide to form and theme ". for readers and students,' Grace organizes her material around the idea indicated in her title. Taking her cue from The Journals ofSusanna Moodie, source of the title and the paradigmatic Atwood work for Grace, she argues that Atwood sees existence as inherently dualistic (or'duplicitous,' to use Grace's favoured term). The human mind refuses to accept this duality, choosing instead to polarize experience in an either/or proposition that destroys and frustrates life. The only way out is the (difficult) acceptance of duplicity. Atwood herself, Grace notes, rarely illustrates such acceptance, her emphasis and strength lying in the analysis of the disease rather than in its cure. The title of chapter 2, 'Tension between Subject and Object,' identifies the particular duality at the heart of Atwood's art, and Grace traces its manifestations in the poetry, short stories, and novels by highlighting themes of self and perception and recurring images like those of mirror and circle. Grace's survey format prevents a tight argument, and the intended audience (general undergraduate students) requires that Grace simplify ideas which she elsewhere (as in her 'Margaret Atwood and the Poetics of Duplicity' in the Davidson collection under review) handles with greater verve and sophistication. While studies like this one are no doubt useful as adjuncts to surveys of Canadian literature, one is grateful that a critic of Grace's skill does not limit herself to them. The Art ofMargaret Atwood, a collection of essays...