The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 45

Till- VANCOUVER SUN. SA'IVKDAY, MAY 2, l)lH C9 REVIEW OF BOOKS BESTSELLERS The making of the Modern Man Russell Banks warns readers that his new novel, Cloudsplitter, should not be taken as an interpretation of history but his anachronistic language and ideas suggest otherwise. the strict purposes of story telling," and that "the book should be read solely as a work of fiction, not as a version or interpretation of history." Yes, despite this proviso, he does not take wild liberties with the historical record, and most of his creative alterations or additions simply involve writing his narrator into the story. The large, over-all shape of John Brown's life is presented quite accurately; the hard life of a 19th-century farming family is recreated in massive and authentic detail. Banks also incorporates into his text excerpts from real historical documents ranging from Thomas Weld's Slavery As It Is: The Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses to the curious essay Sambo's Mistakes, written by John Brown as instruction to his black brethren.

But, sadly, all this careful work does not add up to a convincing recreation of the past. Reading Cloudsplitter, I felt a growing disappointment, and I asked myself why I did not, even for a page or two, feel myself drawn into the period of the book. I began to circle single words, phrases and finally long passages that did not ring true. Banks does employ occasional archaisms like "cutpurse," "whilst" and "racialist" and often uses a stiff, formal diction meant to invoke that of the 19th century, but, by and large, his characters talk and think far more like our contemporaries than anyone living over 100 years ago. Banks allows his narrator, Owen Brown born in 1824 and supposedly writing at the turn of the century to employ the thoroughly modern terms "empowered," "no way," "activist," "demonized," and "safe house." Like a member of a therapy group, Owen says that something "grounds me." Like a 1960s campus radical, he says, "We liberated their property." And sometimes he sounds suspiciously like a Princeton professor: "We found ourselves almost overnight made emblematic," and "adept at decoding those closed, tribal communiques." But it is not simply a matter of anachronistic words or phrases; John Brown's body would lie a-mould'ring in its grave for 100 years or more before anyone ARTURO PATTEN GOOD TRY BUT Russell Banks should have written essays.

criminal? You could not tell it from our acts." At Harpers Ferry, Owen betrays his father, refusing to burn the papers that would incriminate John Brown and his northern supporters. "My heretical refusal to play Isaac to my father's Abraham seemed not mine alone" he says. "It felt emblematic to me as if an Age of Heroism had acceded to an Age of Cowardice. As if, in the con-text of those last days at Harpers Ferry and the one great moral issue of our time, I had become a man of another time: a man of the future, I suppose. A Modern man." Here, then, is the central conceit of Cloudsplitter, one that may perhaps account for its apparently deliberate anachronisms: John Brown is the 19th century man who believes himself to be an instrument of the Lord and so can act in a simple, unconflicted way; Owen Brown is the modern man self-reflective, riddled with guilt and ambiguity whose every act is compromised.

Cloudsplitter, Banks has told us, "should be read solely as work of fiction," yet how on earth are we supposed to do that? Banks does not write like E. L. Doctorow or Don DeLillo who distort the past for satirical purposes whose alterations of the historical record are obvious, absurd and often wildly funny, whose books not only can but must be read as works of fiction. Banks has given us something more complicated, less easy to assess. If the author had genuinely wished to adhere to "the strict purposes of story telling," Owen would address the reader directly without the clumsy framing device that asks us to believe we are reading a 758-page letter; the text would not include long excerpts from historical documents or lumps of undigested research (like the listing of all the worldly goods owned by the Brown family); the forward motion of the narrative would not, again and again, stop dead so Owen can muse on race, nature, or how bad he feels; and the book would be at least 200 pages shorter.

But then, of course, it would not be the book that Banks wanted to write. With the phrase "a work of the imagination," novelists have, for a long time now, been claiming special status have been asking not to be held accountable in the way they would if they had written non-fiction. If Banks, for instance, had been writing non-fiction, he would have been expected to cite his sources, to identify the ghostly voices from Franz Fannon to recent feminist theorists we can hear sounding behind the voice of the fictional Owen Brown. Authors are not fully in control of their texts even as they write them; freed from their authors by publication, books proceed into the world on their own two feet, and authorial disclaimers cannot go very far in limiting our reading. Of course Cloudsplitter can be read and, as I see from other reviews of it, is being read as an "interpretation of the text invites that reading.

Banks is addressing his contemporaries, his (as he has Owen Brown say) "fellow Americans," inviting them into a dialogue on matters that are deeply, crucially important. If I would have much preferred for Banks to have written an collection of essays on the problems of race in contemporary America if I would have read such a book with far more sympathy than I read the one he did write mine is obviously a minority opinion. Who knows? Cloudsplitter might be a book that many Americans need to read. 0 Poet and novelist Keith Mail-lard is chair of the creative writing program at UBC. NATIONAL FICTION 1.

Pandora Anne Rice (1). Hor ror and mayhem from the queen of gothic romance. 2. Cold Mountain Charles Fra-zicr (7). A soldier heads home after the American Civil War.

3. Barney's Version Mordecai Richler (4). An aging curmudgeon recalls his encounters with mediocrity in Canada and Europe. 4. lorry's Party Carol Shields (10).

Larry Weller's life reveals much about modern men. 5. The Street lawyer John Gr- isham (3). A young lawyer comes to terms with himself after discovering his prestigious firm's dirty secret. 6.

Girlfriend In a Coma Douglas Coupland (2). The creator of Generation ventures again into fiction. 7. is for Noose Sue Grafton (-). Latest thriller in Grafton's alphabet series.

8. Birthday Letters Ted Hughes (8). The writer's life with his first wife, Sylvia Plath, is chronicled in verse. 9. A Widow for One Year John Irving (-).

Effects of a family tragedy on the young Irving returns to Garp country. 10. Cloudsplitter Russell Banks(5). Story of John Brown and his anti-slavery crusade. NATIONAL NON- FICTION 1.

The Cult of Impotence Linda McQuaig (1). A leftist analysis of corporate power and its possible opposition. 2. The Gift of the Jews Thomas Cahill (2). Examines the influence of the Jews on Western culture.

3. Better Living Mark Kingwell (9). Demolishes several myths about instant happiness. 4. Angela's Ashes Frank Mc-Court (6).

An Irish-American writer on his childhood. 5. The Millionaire Next Door -Thomas Stanley and William Danko (7). Seven common characteristics of wealthy Americans 6. Talking to Heaven James Van Praagh (3).

A medium connects to "the other side." 7. The Man Who Listens to Hors es Monty Roberts (5). A horse trainer learns "the language of equus." 8. Reflections of a Siamese Twin John Ralston Saul (10). A clarion call for a return to liberalism in Canada.

9. Who Killed Canadian History? Jack Granatstein (-). Why is the state of our knowledge of Canada's history so appalling? 10. Simple Abundance Sarah Ban Breathnach (4). Bringing traditional values back into our lives.

Compiled by Maclean's magazine. BRITISH COLUMBIA 1. 100 Best Plants for the Coastal Garden: The Botanical Bones of Great Gardening Steve Whysall (Whitecap Books). Shows gardeners how to make the most of no-nonsense plants. 2.

HeartSmart Flavours of India Krishna Jamal with the Heart Stroke Foundation of Canada (Douglas Mcln-tyre). More than 100 easy-to-follow, healthy recipes. 3. Kayak Routes of the Pacific Northwest Peter McGeeB.C, Marine Trail Association (Greystone Books). Makes you paddle-perfect.

4. The Pleasure of the Crown: Anthropology, Law and First Nations Dara Culhane (Talon Books). An in-depth analysis of the 130-year history of the aboriginal title issue in British Columbia. 5. Jessa Be Nimble, Rebel Be Quick Nikki Tate (Sono Nis Press).

Continuing adventures of Jessa and her pony. 6. Dangerous Waters: Wrecks and Rescues off the B.C. Coast Keith Keller (Harbour Publishing). 7.

Good Dog! Positive Dog Train ing Techniques Deborah Wolfe (Polestar Books) Prac tical guide. 8. Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast Bill Richardson (Douglas Mclntyre). Comic tales of proprietors and guests at a rustic retreat. 9.

Discovering Sauerkraut Alice Wolczuk (Caitlin Press). Everything you need to know about this versatile cabbage dish. 10. Hot Springs of Western Canada Glenn Woodsworth (Gordon Soules). Guide to over 100 hot springs.

Compiled by the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia with the assistance of booksellers in B.C. CLOUDSPLITTER By RUSSELL BANKS Knopf Canada, 758 $34.95 Reviewed by KEITH MAILLARD If Canadian readers have heard of Russell Banks, they will probably know him as the author of The Sweet Hereafter, upon which Atom Egoyan's movie is based. In the U.S. Banks is a well-established literary figure with 12 works of fiction to his credit; he is a professor at Princeton and has won several prestigious awards. His most recent novel, Cloud-splitter, currently on the best seller list in both Canada and the U.S., has generally been greeted with laudatory reviews, including one in The New Yorker that calls it mistakenly, I think "a masterwork of American Literature." Cloudsplitter is an earnest and significant book the product of enormous labour and I am genuinely sorry that I do not like it better than I do.

Because I may well be one of the few reviewers who is not prepared to heap praise upon it, I hope that I might be forgiven for attempting to explain, in some detail, why I believe that it is not successful when considered either as a work of historical fiction or simply as a novel. Banks tells his tale in the voice of Owen Brown, one of the several sons of the famous American abolitionist (anti-slavery advocate), John Brown. In surveys of American history, the word usually used to describe John Brown is "fanatic." He was a devout Christian, and, throughout his entire life, a vehement and vocal opponent of slavery. In the conflict over whether Kansas would enter the union as a free or slave state, Brown distinguished himself in 1856 by instigating and directing the slaughter, with broadswords, of five pro-slavery settlers an act which set off the bitter fighting that would earn the territory the sobriquet "bloody Kansas." Three years later, Brown, with a band of 18 men, seized the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in what was then Virginia.

Although he denied it at his trial, his intention had been to lead an armed insurrection to free the slaves whom he had imagined would rise up in revolt throughout the South when the news of his actions spread. The slaves did not rise up; his tiny band was easily overwhelmed by local militia and the U.S. Marines; two of his sons were killed in the fighting but Owen Brown escaped. John Brown was tried, convicted and hanged. Northern abolitionists made him into a martyr and frequently compared him to Christ.

Southerners saw him as a traitor and a madman. But, however he is viewed, it is clear that John Brown, by his actions at Harpers Ferry and by his death helped to push the States into the Civil War. Cloudsplitter purports to be a letter written by Owen Brown -now an old man living alone on a mountaintop in California -to Miss Mayo, a research assistant to Professor Villard who is writing a book on John Brown. (Oswald Garrison Villard is a real person, the author of the 1910 John Brown: A Biography, which Banks cites as a source.) Owen writes exhaustively about his father's life, actions, and motivations and also relates his own life's story from childhood to his escape from Harper's Ferry. In his author's note at the beginning of the book, Banks cautions us that Cloudsplitter is "a work of the imagination," that "characters and incidents from the life and times of John Brown have been altered and rearranged by the author to suit Good pop NIGHT BEAT: A Shadow History Collected Writing on Rock Roll, Culture and Other Disruptions By MIKAL GILMORE Doubleday, 454 $34.95 Reviewed by JOHN ARMSTRONG The idea that any collection of pieces by a journalist covering pop music might be worthy of collection hardbound, if you please! is enough to make members of the old school har-rumph so loudly they blow port out their nose.

And with good reason. Of all the obsessing "Reading Cloudsplitter, I felt a growing disappointment, and I asked myself why I did not, even for a page or two, feel myself drawn into the period I began to circle single words, phrase and finally long passages that did not ring true." sus. The real John Brown, like any other preacher in those days, would almost certainly have threatened his listeners with hell fire and eternal damnation. "What father called the will of God I now called history," Owen Brown says as though he had become a Marxist somewhat ahead of Marx. "Let me be the victim," he cries out like a guilt-ridden white radical from the 1960s, and later presents us with that unshakable cornerstone of current politically correct theory: "If you yourself are not a victim, you cannot claim to see the world as the victim does." Although the John and Owen Brown in Cloudsplitter are not convincing as 19th-century men, there is a compelling story buried deep within this hugely overwritten book.

The garrulous Owen, constantly instructing us how to read his text, summarizes the story of John Brown: "Father's -progression from activist to martyr, his slow march to willed disaster, can be viewed, not as a descent into madness, but as a reasonable progression." Owen's story is more sinister, and Banks chronicles it in chilling detail. Owen is a white man who is trying to do the right thing, but he is a non-believer who cannot share his father's conviction that they are simply doing the will of God, and he can't ever manage to figure out what the right thing is. Owen's feelings toward the slaves and freed slaves he is trying to help are ambiguous. "I know you want to be natural and peaceful and respectful with colored folks," one of them tells him. "But if you can't, well, maybe you should stick to your own kind.

Lots of good folks, white and colored alike, that's what they do." But he can't stick to his own kind; in his dreams, he's a black man. The first time Owen aims a gun at a slave-catcher, he finds it "wonderfully clarifying." Then, gradually, he discovers that he enjoys killing people. "It was no longer clear to me," he writes, "were we doing this for them, the Negroes; or were we simply using them as an excuse to commit vile crimes against one another? Was our true nature that of the man who sacrifices himself and others for his principles; or was it that of the overthinking things. But that's the rope you walk when writing about pop music as if it mattered, and Gilmore only wobbles occasionally. For the better part he writes things such as this piquant line about the practice of stage-diving (climbing onstage and diving back into the audience): "It makes for a great spectator sport and probably a great participant sport, too, if you prefer bowling from the ball's perspective." The stories, written over a 25-year period, are amended with new insights and information and the last two, lengthy pieces tors, who sought to kill our suffering people, should themselves be killed, and in such manner as should be likely to cause a restraining fear." (My source is Villard's biography of John Brown.) He does not talk about terrorism, because terrorism as we know it a deliberate tactic adopted by an insurrectionary, illegal and often clandestine political organization hadn't been invented yet.

These anachronisms of both diction and thought pattern -do not appear to be mere slips but part of an over-all design, an intentional strategy, that recreates Owen Brown as a contemporary, politically correct leftist as, for instance: Pride, lust, envy these are the certain consequences of race-consciousness, whether you are black or white, just as they are the consequences of thinking constantly of your maleness or femaleness when in the presence of the other sex. It affects you in such a way that you either feel proud of your race or sex, mere incidents of birth, or envy the other's You do not view yourself or the other person simply as a person. "Person," having been adopted in recent years to avoid gender-specific language, has become a positive word for us. In 19th-century colloquial speech it was often a term of opprobrium; when arguing for racial equality, a 19-century writer would probably have said "man." And the particular way these ideas fall together the linking of racism with sexism, the analysis of the psychological effects of these attitudes -would have been impossible much before the 1980s. Similarly anachronistic thought formations abound throughout Cloudsplitter.

Here are a few examples. In a sermon, John Brown says, "Contemplate nothingness for a few short seconds, neighbours, and you will turn away in horror, and then you will give thanks unto the Lord," as though he were a follower of Jean Paul Sartre instead of Je Allman Brothers, and it would be no hardship to read them again. Like the best musicians Gilmore subscribes to Duke Ellington's belief that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. His catholic taste makes for such canny observations as the thought that the All-man's twin-guitar, double-drum sound was equally inspired by western swing and John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. Not that he doesn't go overboard, too: "Warren Zevon perhaps too strongly represents personal concerns as an exemplar of cultural style" might be would be capable of even formulating some of the opinions expressed in this book.

As John Brown is preparing the night raid in which his followers would hack to death five pro-slavery settlers, Banks has him say, "We must strike pure terror into their hearts, Owen. Pure terror. Pure! We must become terrible!" As if to underline the word, Owen shouts back, "I like becoming terrible!" Later, after they have accomplished their bloody work, Owen muses: We who early on had been merely anti-slavery activists and who, slowly over the years in defense of our own rights of protest, had evolved, almost unbeknownst to ourselves, into guerrilla fighters and militiamen we now became terrorists. Although the term "terrorist" would have been available to Owen Brown, it would have not have meant what it does to us; while we might imagine a knee-capping or the bombing of a restaurant, a 19th-century per-son would probably have thought of Robespierre. John Brown Jr.

the real one recalling the events, does not use the words "terrorism" or "terrorist" at all but rather says: "It was now and here resolved that they, their aiders and abet music journalism: Ephemera made durable are only tangentially about music, an obituary of Allen Ginsberg and a story about the last days and death of Timothy Leary, both worth the cover price by themselves. Lastly, it should be mentioned that Gilmore's brother Gary was executed in Utah in 1976, though his moving story A Death in the Family is not reprinted here. His book-length memoir of the time and its repercussions, Shot Through The Heart, is still in print and recommended.O John Armstrong is a Vancouver Sun editorial writer. done over the transitory and ephemeral here in the caboose of the 20th century the deep thoughts of most rock critics would have to be among the least crucial. Mikal Gilmore is one of the very few, along with Lester Bangs, John Savage, Greil Marcus and Nik Cohn in his less-indulgent moments, who deserve to escape the rock-crit ghetto.

The litmus test is how well they can hold your attention while writing about something you care nothing about. For you it might be the Clash or Jerry Lee Lewis, for me it was Keith Jarrett, Michael Jackson and the.