Pacific Rim shots
of our neighdors

The Colors of Heaven. Short Stories From the Pacific Rim. Edited
with an introduction by Trevor Carolan. Vintage Books. $14.

he once unimaginably vast Pacific Ocean is shrinking.

Fibre optics and satellite telecommunications are

turning it into an ornamental pond across which we
begin to recognize our neighbors. Now when we speak of
“the mysterious East,’ we're as likely to mean Ottawa or
Toronto as the countries of the Asian Pacific Rim.

Yet the ‘‘mysterious’’ sobriquet
still lingers about the Far East.
CNN can show us what's happen-
ing in Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
or Indonesia, but it cannot tell us
why in a five-minute video-bite.

We may be intrigued and amus-
ed by the Sumo wrestling on PBS’s
Today’s Japan, but without know-
ledge of its ancient mythological
roots, we're incapable of ap-
preciating its real importance to
the Japanese.

To us, it remains a quaint, Mon-
ty Python-esque version of the
salad-oil circus of the WWF,
which | ence tried to explain toa
Japanese visitor with references to
the mythic grapplings of Heracles
and Antaeus, until | realized I'd
floated into the deep end of the
sake bottle.

What we don’t understand, we
mistrust, eyeing our new
neighbors and immigrants with
xenophobic unease.

- tronically, in the electronic age,
the simplest and by far the most
pleasurable way to get a handle on

(TNR arr ETRY

44 Carolan sidesteps
the obvious samurai
phalanx of well-known
male writers ...99

another culture is to read its litera-
ture, :

This collection of stories from
the Pacific Rim offers an in-
valuable opportunity to look
behind the globe-girdling video
curtain and into the lives of the
people swimming at the other end
of the paoai.

Editor Trevor Carolan has made
a superb job of a difficult task,
selecting stories which combine
both literary excellence and social
realisrn for maximum impact in the
West.

Due in part to the mixed bless-
ings of writer Yukio Mishima’s
politicized public suicide in 1970
and the Nobel Prize awarded to
Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese fic-
tion has been increasingly ac-
cessible to Western readers for
two decades.

Carolan sidesteps the obvious

BOOK REVIEW

samurai phalanx of well-known
male writers to present two fine
female writers, Kuniko Mukoda
and Yoshiko Shibaki.

More important still are the
selections from Korea, mainland
China, Malaysia, Singapore and
the Philippines, countries whose
world-class writers don’t usually
make it onto our best-seller lists
but whoa clearly deserve a globa!
audience.

We are sometimes critical of
immigrants who seem to know
every trick in the book and then
some when it comes to dealing
with government bureaucracy.

Stories like Bei Dao’s “13
Happiness Street” and) F. Sionil
Jose’s “‘Progress’’ offer some in-
sight into civil systems so in-
humanly corrupt that to call them
“Kafa-esque”’ is like saying the
Holocaust was “unpleasant.”

Think about it.

The most remarkable thing
about these stories is the way they
reveal our Common humanity; in
spite of culture, color or creed, we
are all-motivated by the same
dreams and desires, corrupted by
the same petty greeds and lusts,
tempered by the sane endless ring
of volcanic fire. .

Trevor Caralan teaches literature
and East-West comparative studies
in Vancouver.

His acclaimed co-translation of
Embracing the Tao: The Book of
the Heart {a modern Taoist work)
last year was a welcome reminder
that Taoism is not a quaint ‘‘dead
religion’’ or irrelevantly ‘‘an-
cient” philosophy, but a vibrant,
profoundly perceptive world-view
that makes anxiety-ridden Western
scientific rationalism look like the
invention of schoolkids squabbling
over who's going to be second
captain-first pick.

To Mr. Carolan, for this fine col-
tection of self-portraits from our
Pacific neighbors, nine bows.

Ferry Building invites
artists to submit work

THE FERRY Building Gallery is
about to begin its spring jurying
and all North Shore artists are in-
vited to submit work.

Where once only West Van-
couver residents were eligible for
entry, all North Shore residents —
past and present — are permitted
to enter this year’s jurying for ex-
hibition in the Ferry Building or
West Vancouver Memorial
Library.

Artists wishing to exhibit: their
work in’ either venue this year

should drop their work off at Klee
Wyck on April 2 between 3 and 7
p.m.

Judges ask that artists submit
three finished works, 20 slides or
prints, a curriculum vitae, a writ-
ten cotcept of the show, and a
$10 jury fee. Applications are
availabie at the Ferry Building, Silk
Purse, West Vancouver Recreation
Centre, Pioneer Crafts and
Capilano College’s art department.

For more information. . phone
curator Sara Wansbrough at 925-
3605. ;

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