Painting Place: The Life and Work of David B. Milne by David Silcox (review)

HUMANITIES 297 and in her art. The nervous breakdowns remain enigmas, and there are veiled references to the strained relationsltips between de la Roche and her two adopted children. Since many of the principals are still alive, Bratton must have found himself hamstrung in articulating these issues. Thebook is organized into twenty-five or twenty-six(dependingon how you COtUlt, still I couldn't find thirty-two) sections ranging in length from one to fourteen pages. There are twenty-one illustrations, an introduction, a very useful chronology, an index, some journal entries, a transcript of a conversation, an interview with Timothy Findley as well as an appendix containing one ofhis speeches, and a bibliography. The sections follow one another more or less chronologically, although there is enough jumping forward and backward to send the readernow and again to the Chronology to find out just where and when something happened. What Bratton finally settles into is a concerted effort'to find the links between de la Roche's life and the events and characters in her novels. In this effort he is always interesting and insightful. An evolving set of attitudes emerges, beginning with the author's romantic emphasis on instinctive life, spontaneity, pagan joy, nature, and sexual and artistic freedominPossession, Delight, andJalna, and endingwith a pes~imistic view that American mass culture, materialism, technology, and egalitarianideals are taking over peoples' lives. Her Loyalist British ideals (aSSigned a , rugged masculine principle) resulted in an ambivalence towards America (assigned as feminine and represented by Alayne Archer in Variable Winds at Jalna). Her later works suggest that the Whiteoaks embody a Loyalist vision - a J devotion to the family and to the land as basic components of a separate order based on nature; [and] whenever Alayne opposes their masculinity she is also deconstructing a mythology.' At the end of her life, Mazo de la Roche seemed to abandon belief in a balance between freedom and tradition and to insist that tradition was the only safe haven. Bratton's prose is very readable and his approach to his subject is restrained and compassionate. He never tries to do more than he set out to do - get the facts rights (his detective work is admirable) and chase down what must remain shadows. Inside these mode~t parameters, he is very successful. Ifound the Findleyinterview and speechto be distractionsmore than anything else and the book can do without them. The form of the study was somewhat refreshing, but readers unfamiliar with the earlier biographies may find themselves a little frustrated. (JOHN ORANGE) David Silcox. Painting Place: The Life and Work ofDavid B. Milne University of Toronto Press. 426. $65-00 Narratives of Canadian art as they have been written and presented on the walls of art institutions across the country have tended to treat David B. LETTERS IN CANADA .l:mowrle(lgE~able audience. with the In(:lwae(l; and here Silcox from Milne's book. Milne "'_,·..............,rt .... n.1'"\ ..UOt:l..u the kick1 events in their lives. abut the New art scene that more has to do with the amount -..,-ny,,,,,,,,.., to take a HUMANITIES 299 which has been told by others elsewhere, that same readeris leftwondering about the significance of the American artist Robert Henri, when his name is evoked without elaboration or illustration. This would assume the knowledge of a specialist. Less prose would have allowed for a greater number of better-quality illustrations. The abundant but often illegible thumbnail illustrations that we find here are more appropriate to the catalogue raisonne, which we are told is forthcoming. How much more satisfying it would be to read this book alongside the fully illustrated catalogue. I realize that this first book is meant to stanel on its own, but it represents a rather unhappy compromise in this respect: the small illustrations are plentiful but not comprehensive , and there are not enough large colour plates, which Milne deserves. Nevertheless, collectors of Canadian art/books, and everyone interested in Milne, must have this book. (CHRISTINE BOYANOSKl) Ginette Michaud with collaboration of Sherry Simon. Joyce Atelier des rnodemes series. Editions Hurtubise. 156. $14.95 In the new L'atelier des modernes series, the books are...