A humorous postmodern read

The Rain Barrel, by George
Bowering, Talonbooks, 272 pp.,
paper.
ISTEN: “YOU wanta
story, watch television ...
we don’t do stories here.”

Heed the words of one of
George Bowering’s characters in
The Rain Barrel if you want to
venture into this book — Open it,
and you enter post-modern land,
where, like a harried white rabbit,
text leads you down a circuitous
route to nowhere — or at least not
to where you expected to be.
(Thought: was Lewis Carroll the
original postmodernist?)

Just as people say about John
Cage, “That's not music!” the
reader of the postmodern cries
“that’s not fiction!” Gotcha.

In this collection, Bowering is
out to undermine your silly little
Assumptions about tidy plots and
well-rounded characters. Forget
that fancy word “dénouement”
you learned in high school; his
narrators admit they clon’t exactly

T’S RA!

zy

Barbara Black
BOOK REVIEW

know what they’re doing, and
they‘re candid about not wanting
to tell you certain details: “Youll
understand if | dont tell you all the
feelings and thoughts that were
going through me around then,”
says the narrator of “The French
East India Company.”

If it weren't for Bowering’s coy
sense of humor, this constant sub-
version might have had me slap-
ping the book shut. Sometimes,
he relents and takes pity on the
reader.

At the end of “Being Audited,”
a comment is inserted: “The read-

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er will wonder whether there
might not have been a niore satis-
fying ending to this story.” The
narrator then provides a pre-
dictable ending which indulges
his own fantasy of being recog-
nized as a “serious writer.” But it’s
too late. Having read the narra-
tor's preceeding narcissistic mut-
terings, we know it’s a phony con-
clusion.

In “Staircase Descended,” nar-
rator navel-gazing is atits height.
The... well, forget the word
“plan... the central problem is
how the narrator will pet out of
bed, and beyond that (supporting,
probleny why he appears to be
invisible to the peaple in the
kitchen, Fortunately, the text is
rife with sarcasm, giving a sort of
vaudeville twist ta the otherwise
Samuel Beckett-fike monologue:

“(fl go on with this | might
have some difficulty with descrip-
tion. | might not do it. You will
not find me throwing around
adjectives, in any case. [ hate the
god-danined slithery unnecessary

corruptive willful Anglo-Saxon
self-satisfied secondary stylish
things. Ha, justa fittle joke there.”

You can’t heat that for the best
derisive definition of adjectives,
which, by the way, the author
himself shuns in favor of naked
simplicity. (But don’t be fooled by
simplicity, either.)

Of the stories in the collection,
“Staircase Descended” is the most
overt about language, The narra-
tor continually revises his words
as he goes, trying to avoid “vulpar
ambiguity” while at the same time
banishing any hopes for “a well-
rehearsed narrative.” The result is
acertain corruptible immediacy,
which surprisingly does not
reduce our belief in the narrator,
hut actually increases it, No mat
ter what he says about being
invisible, our own iniagination
easily supplies-him with material.

Sure, there is an underlying
symbolism in the stories, but
Bowering will no doubt snicker to
hear any critic ascribe too much
importance to it

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