WHO TO CALL: Community Editor Andrew McCredie “NOBODY KNOWS quite what to make. of me,” novelist - Keith Maillard chuckles on a cov- — ered patio adjacent to the den of his home in one of the older, quieter nooks of the North Shore. . “t don’t write about ‘growing up in Moose Jaw. ?m a Canadian, but I grew up in West Virginia. That’s where my roots are, so I write more about that.” To confound the conventional wisdom of Canlit even n fur- ther, after half-a-dozen published novels; includiug the acclaimed Alex Driving Scuth, Motet, which won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in: 1990, and Light In The Company Of - Women, short-listed for the same prize last year, the 53-year-old Maillard published his first book of poems, Dementia — — ‘Americana (Ronsdale Press, $10.95) and walked off with the 1995 Gerry Lampert Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. . “Twas stunned. Nobody was more surprised than me, Maillard admits about the award. “I wrote poetry in my 20's, - but it was the kind of stuff no more than two or three close friends would understand.” Yet the sequence of “free sonnets” which lead off the. book, “The intervention of The Duke: Poems Written In _A Time Of War", is the complex, deeply struc- ‘-tured work of a mature. | :. poetic talent. Where did it -come from, full-blown, with no waming? “You can laugh at this, if you want.”. Maillard says, “But it began with a vivid dream I had at the time of the Gulf War. In the dream I saw a book I-hadn’t written but I knew 1 would John Moore spotlight feature: write. The book Opened and I read the title; The Intervention of ; / the Duke." ‘Though Maillard n maintains for the record, “op still have no - idea exactly what that title means”, the image suggests both America’s celluloid Ares, John “Duke” Wayne and the “Iron: - Duke”, Wellington, whose defeat of Napoleon brought peace to: “Europe for almost a century. In the 1960s Maillard was active -: adn the anti-Vieam War movement. Moving to Canada i in: 1970, “he became a Canadian citizel in 1976. - . ‘.. “As soon as I could,” he says. “I felt that if ] was going ‘to live j in this country I ought to have a stake in it” Even so, almost 20 years later, the CNN-televised sight of . nother, country, embarking « on another overseas military, _ adventure was, so deeply disturbing that “The Intervention of... the Duke’ sonnets emerged in the pre-class quiet of his office at UBC, where he has taiight creative writing for seven years. : iY meric is still have faith in the idea that ‘the m Christmas & Mids prints. Entertainment Editor Layne Christensen 985-2131 (147} 985-2131 (118) ‘ety architect Stanford White three times in the head in ‘court, White was portrayed alternately as a pillar of soci- ! shabby genteel is where | come from.” All Sewing’ & quitting - Books in’ stock Assorted fabrics , Notions, Trims : - white horse’ is going to ride into town and make every-. thing alright.” Maillard observes wistfully. That belief is one of the symptoms of a more generalized “dementia Americana” he deals with in the long tille poem about the notorious Harry Thaw murder case at the turn of the century, ‘ On June 25, 1906, Harry ‘Thaw shot New York soci- front of a Madison Square Garden full of witnesses. Thaw did it, supposedly, becuuse White had “corrupted” his beautiful wife, Evelyn Nesbit, when she was 15. In ety or jaded lecher, Thaw as a congenital idiot and sexual pervert or Defender of Womanhood, Evelyn as a preco- . cious manipulative tart or The Last American Virgin. “You have to remember” Maillard stresses, “That - when Evelyn testified in open coun, she said things women didn’t even talk about among themselves. What she said was as scandalous as the testimony in the Bernardo trial, for its time. President Teddy Roosevelt even tried to have reports of the testimony suppressed." The Thaw case, Maillard points out, marked the beginning of another kind of “Dementia Americana™ the tendency to treat the sordid tragedies of real life as pub- lic entertainment. Though E.L. Doctorow used the Thaw case in his novel, Ragtime. Maillard — who had studied the case while researching his novel, Light in The Company Of Women — retumed to it because he found Doctorow’s ironic self-conscicusly revisionist tone “too. smartass” and because, “He got Evelyn wrong. “Evelyn was no working class waif” Maillard insists, “She was from shabby genteel people and they have a- Jifferent agenda than the working-class, | Know because Where Maillard comes from is Wheeling. West of William Faulkner, as Raysburg. W.Va. = ““Raysburg” may well be the ideal vantage point from which to'survey the history of the United States, In the Civil War, West Virginia was nominally Union, though many of it's " poorer citizens were Confederate sympathizers, Though he tejected Doctorow’s ironic revisionist approach (*‘I tried to write a turn of the century novel people today would want to read.”) : Maillard also singled out the tum of the century as the’ crucial . ad in American history, the time * when America went , wrong, but still could have gone right”. Raysburg of the early 1900's is a town whose leading fami--” lies, enriched.’ by having. been on the’ winning side in the War, have. become mega-rich in the era before i income. tax and ‘are becoming part of an American “aristocracy of wealth"!’ » Light In The Company Of Women is the story ofa man who 4 has to choose between the America of the. Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and the America idealized in the paintings of i strenne ye ike eavywe jights ends (ne sete neers 1 _is the most interesting thing you can‘do with language.” CAITICS ' AVERAGE’ selection of LASER DISCS! - New release Super Nintendo &: Sega Genesis arriving . EVERY. WEEK!: 9 : _ Pheto submitt ACCOMPLISHED NORTH Vancouver writer Keith Maillar examines the turn of the century, — a time “when Americ * Virginia, a town he continues to fictionalize, in the manner went wrong, but stil could have gone right" —: in his firs ever book of poetry, entitled Dementia Americana. oe Norman Rockwell. Maillard’s ‘soon to-be-published no Hazard Zones: also retums to the contemporary “Raysburg” of his own youth, He is currently at work on‘a novel that re-exam ines the American * ‘country-club’ girl”, poxirayed as shallow an materialistic or “doomed” by generations of male writers.» : Will he write more poetry? Absolutely: “I still think poetry. - Maillard credits hi‘students at UBC with keeping him stim , ulated and plugged-in: “Some people think an academic envi-- ronment is bad for a writer. I think it’s wonderful. I’m constant ly in touch with what young people think is exciting and i impo tant in writing. “The only problem.” he admits with the sigh of aman | who still has'a lot of work to do, “Is that-I keep getting older but they're always the same age.” SEX & NUDITY: “MPAA RATING . Thriller, wegen Tarte efi FANTASTIC PRE = All 3rd floor videos’, 3: VIDEOS FOR 3 PAYS :