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HUMANITIES 393 the holographic model. Not surprisingly, the model works best when paired with Brossard=s Picture Theory, Philip=s Looking for Livingstone, and Régine Robin=s La Québécoite B works that are self-reflexively invested in attempts to reconfigure linear modes of perception. The chapter on Culleton=s April Raintree is least persuasive. Given that Culleton herself has stated that she drew her inspiration for the formal design of the novel from soap operas, it is difficult to accept the study=s essentialist tendency to read April Raintree as an example of Native writing based on an >oral epistemology.= To its credit, Thompson=s study prompts readers to think beyond traditional, linear notions of mimesis, and to focus less on what is described than on how a text creates its effects. It remains to be seen, however, whether this >holographic cognitive strategy= can, as Thompson claims, be transported beyond the context in which it was developed to aid us in mapping the disorienting postmodern hyperspace we currently inhabit. (MARLENE GOLDMAN) T.F. Rigelhof. This Is Our Writing Porcupine=s Quill. 214. $18.95 A collection of eleven very separate essays, This Is Our Writing attempts to evaluate the work of a handful of Canadian fiction writers, presumably to add to the discussion of what should make up a Canadian canon. The collection gets cluttered and confusing when it veers off to examine the philosophy of George Grant, as well as to display some largely irrelevant photographs of the author=s neighbour, Gabor Szilasi. Too often Rigelhof chats about his personal tastes in music, etc, or he digresses to include anecdotes about incidents in his life or in his neighbourhood. If these areas of interest are supposed to enlighten us about his standards of literary evaluation, they are not very helpful. In fact the >Our= of the title becomes more and more ambiguous, since it could refer to >Canadian= (there are long lists of Canadian writers), >Montreal= (the focus is mainly on Montreal writers), or the >royal our= (Rigelhof declaiming his personal preferences). Three-quarters of the book=s cover displays a photograph of Rigelhof looking confused, perplexed and a little irate. The photo sums up the tone and attitudes in the essays: egotistical, by turns arrogant, irritating, engaging, and always reaching for controversy where none really exists. Rigelhof=s critical approach in many of the essays is to set up a straw man and then to burn it down. An essay on Robertson Davies, for example, purports to tackle John Irving=s statement that Davies is >the greatest comic novelist since Charles Dickens.= Rigelhof=s answer is a rant that is partly an ad hominem attack and partly a critique of Davies=s narrative voice and style, some traits of which can be found in Rigelhof=s own prose. Another critical approach is to quarrel with a critic=s assessment of a novel on the grounds 394 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 that it is not sensitive to the things to which Rigelhof is sensitive. Other essays simply assert which book by an author is his or her best one: Cohen=s The Favorite Game, Laurence=s A Jest of God, Richler=s St. Urbain=s Horseman. Hugh Hood and Norman Levine are praised for the ways they use Montreal as a setting for their stories. The essays are replete with long quotations, which implies that the intended readership is not an academic one. There is no bibliography, index, or footnotes. The final criterion for judging a passage or an author is so vague, subjective, even arbitrary, that one wonders why Rigelhof bothers with this game of evaluation in the first place. Is it to recommend to the unwashed class what books they should read for enlightenment and which ones they must enjoy? The questions are not directly addressed. In fact Rigelhof avoids them by shifting ground to descriptions of his past, his neighbours, and to gossip about who or what was really behind various passages. One gets the impression that his primary interests are matters of taste and not matters of literary critical theory. The impression that the reader is left with is that these essays...

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