Vancouver: Representing the
Post-Modern City. Edited by Paul
Delany. Pulp Arsenal Press.

$19.95

HEN | hear the

word ‘culture,’ !

reach for my
revolver,” Reichsmarschall
“Fats” Goering used to say,
_ though it didn’t stop him
footing the art treasures of a
- decadent Europe. _

Lately, I’m having a sirnilar
problem: when someone refers to
“the discourse” or uses words like

“architectonic,” | reach for my
Super-Soaker watergun,

! had to refill it repeatedly
while wading through Vancouver:
- Representing the Post -Modern
. City, which is a shame because
this is the most perceptive and
thought-provoking collection of
essays to emerge from the recent
growth industry in books about
this city. ©

The hardest thing to under-
stand about postmodernism is the °:
writing of most of the people who.
»,, attempt to explain it. In part, this
” is because the term and concept «
has been borrowed from architec-
ture and applied to our eclectic ‘~
“contemporary culture as a whole,”
““ despite the fact that architecture.

" speaks the coded language of.a’
‘paranoid cabalistic secret society.
“Architecture does this because, °

* of all the arts, it is the most public.

Don’t like paintings? Don’t
~ look'at them. Don’t like theatre?
» Don't go to plays. Find literature
objectionable? Don’t read it. TV.
insults your intelligence?"
“Channel-surf, switch it off or t toss.
a beer bottle’ ‘through the screen.
“Ty doing any of the above with a.
ts building.

The fact is that, in a ‘city, archi---

‘tecture impinges on your daily life ©
_more directly than any other art;.

: you five and work in’and with ite
“It is, therefore, the ‘art most vulner-
“able to public opinion; much |

:, More so than the occult obscuran--
“tis of ofdinary academics; |
“which we have indulged as an.
reccentricity since the Middle.
Ages. tow
During the postwar building
boom i in the 1950s, European

- architects’ redeveloped academic
_bafflegab, creating a “code” |

John Moore
BOOK REVIEW

whose only relation to the buiid-
ing cade is its impenetrability; it
effectively included the public out
of any “public” discussion of pub-
lic buildings. itis, after ali, corpo-
rations and governments who sign
the cheques for “big architecture.”
The public just has to live with it,
after paying their increased rates
and taxes.

Not to be outdone at their own
game, traditionally sluggish acad-
emic disciplines have been quick
to upgrade their brands of B.S., so
now we have literary critics,
social scientists, art commenta-
tors, film- makers, all spouting
post-modern jive-jargon that will
make you very glad you invested
in that back-breaking Oxford —

: English Dictionary. You'll need it ;

if you want to read this book.
Refuse to be intimidated.

' Remember, the purpose of any

. Jargon is not greater precision, (as
its users inevitably insist), but to
create an elite who “speak the

Janguage” and an intellectual pro-

“Summer. Morning” 18"x

*NEW LOCATION-

letariat that does not, and are thus
disenfranchised of their right to an
opinion. All such “discourses” are
as thoroughly fascistic as the
monumental buildings of Albert
Speer or the buzzword-loaded
ravings of Herr Schickelgruber’s
Mein Kampf.

Most of the writers on architec-”

ture and related subjects in this
volume ought to be sentenced to
a long term in the Witold
Rybcznski Re-Education Camp for
Writing About Ugly Buildings.

Literary and film criticism fares
only slightly better. George
Bowering’s piece on post-modern
poets is saved by his use of critical
terms in a ‘60s context, Paul
Matthew St. Pierre’s piece on
Brian Fawcett is interesting in
spite of its “architectonic” pos-
ings, but both of them are put to
shame by editor Pau] Delany's
essay on sci-fi writer William
Gibson.

This collection is redeemed
and justified by Bruce Serafin’s
simple, clear, perceptive essay on
the elusive politically correct
ambience of Commercial Drive. .
The question Serafin’s contribu-
tion raises in this context is one of
style and philosophy as opposed
to mere ideology; if he can write’
this straightforwardly about such a
mercurial subject, why does

everyone else who contributed to_

this book take two pages to say

what could be said in 25 words or

nvites: you to come
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& parks of

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