books |

Now.

Making the season bright

35 — Wednesday, November 29 , 1989 - North Shore News

TWO NEW BOOKS LIGHTEN UP BOOKSHELVES IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

hat do Toledo,
Ohio and Edmon-
ton, Alberta have
in common?
Absolutely nothing
— except for the amazing fact that
each produced a writer with a flair
for humor, If you're puzzied as to
why this is so amazing then you’ve
obviously never spent much time
in either city. Some people have
all the luck...
if P.J. ORourke was a deli order
he could best be described as a
ham on wry, don’t hold the ergot.
.cerbic, irreverent and ap-
propriately enough the Interna-
tional Aifairs Editor of kolling

MIKE
STEELE

book review

Stone magazine, O'Rourke in-
evitably evokes comparison with
Hunter S. Thompson but with a
writing style fueled by fewer drugs
and less alcohol.

The latest book by this offbeat
humorist is Holidays in Hell, a
travel guide to the shellpocked
sands of foreign lands with a brief
vacation foray into the fiscally and
morally doomed Heritage U.S.A.
thrown in for immoderate
measure. It’s the kind of stuff that
would scare the tanlines off Club
Meddies.

In P.].’s chapter titled “A
Ramble Through Lebanen’’ we are
advised that this fiefdom of free-
fire fundamentalism “is notably
free of tour groups and camera-
toting Japanese” and that the
beaches ‘although occasionally
mined are not crowded.” No kid-

ing.
The Commodore Hotel in Beirut
rates an enthusiastic thumb-up

based on the ready availability of
rooms “during lulls in the
fighting,”’ its basement “which
makes an excellent bomb shelter’
and the antics of the bar's resident
parrot “that does a credible im-
itation of an incoming howitzer
shell and whistles the
Marseillaise.”” Prospective guests
are, however, advised to seek
rooms away fromm the pool as

“it’s harder to hit that side of the
building with artillery.”

From details on Philippine
cuisine (dog stew was rated
“delicious’’) to what it’s like to
spend Christmas in El Salvador (he
expressed severe reservations
about the vulnerability of his hotel
to guerillz attack given a nearby
gully; he was staying at the
Sheraton and, yes, it is the same
hotel recently captured by leftist
guerillas and they did indeed in-
filtrate through that warrisome
‘barranca’), P.j. rips the band-aid
off every festering hell-hole sane
people avoid.

Consider giving Holidays in Hell
(Random House; 257 pp.; $12.50
in paperback) to anyone with a
sense of humor or anyone who
lists Nanaimo an¢ Abbotsford
among his or her favorite funspots.

see

By the time that I’ve received
my 900th or 1,000th book of the
year it’s hard to generate much
excitement for anything between
two covers that isn’t warm and
breathing, but among the few
notable exceptions is the newest
W.P. Kinsella novel.

This Alberta-born, White Rock,
B.C. resident is one of the rela-
tively few Canadian writers to
have achieved critical and popular
acclaim boti at home and abroad.
Better still is the fact that he’s done
so without resorting to the
misery-mongering and tortured
scu!-baring that are inflicted on
the reading public by too many
other CanLit majors.

The Miss Hobema Pageant
(Harper & Collins; 200 pp.; $10.95
in paperdack) reunites readers
with Silas Ermineskin, Frank
Fencepost and the other whimsical
characters who populate the fic-
ticious Ermineskine Indian
Reserve. And what a hilarious re-
union it is.

The 14 short stories in this col-
lection are celebrations of the ab-
surdity of the human condition in
general and the antics of the Er-
mineskin Band in particular, Take
‘Graves’ for example.

in ‘Graves’, Phil Cardinal has
himself buried alive in his front
yard. Why? To attempt a modern
equivalent of the vision quests
undergone by his ancestors in an

KAWAT

attempt to define identity and
purpose.

Naturally the local TV station is
intrigued by a live burial and
dispatches mini-cams and a
mini-minded reporter. The latter,
when informed of the interee’s
reasons, dismisses the event as
unnewsworthy only to be infazm-
ed by the puckish Frank Fencepost
that:

“Your listeners should be in-
terested in an Indian burying
himself. You could pass it off as
progress — white people been
burying us for years — now we
jearn to do it ourselves.”

Government, social prograzns,
sex, drinking, racism, politics — all
bob into view long enough for

Kinsella to plug away at but never
in a bitter, spiteful or conde-
scending way. Kinsella treats his
characters affectionately if objec-
tively and, were they real instead
of the creations of a master story-
teller, 1 have no doubt that they’d
punch him lightly on the shoulder,
stare shyly at their boots and allow
that, even if he is a writer, he's
okay too.

They’‘d probably be right.

see

Next week: Stocking siuffers —
buyer-friendly books for every
family member that are easy on
the budget plus a whole !ot of fun.

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