Creative talent shown in

Canadian author's first novel

et ees

CLAUDE WIDGEWOOD, the
protagonist of Chipmunk, a first
novel by Len Peterson just pub-
lished by McClelland and Stewart,
is a master artist of the bakery,
proud of the shape and flavor of
the cinamon buns that he makes
for his employer, Mrs. Cadenza.
A Torontonian, Claude is married

_ to the fat Faustina who bewilders
him with her fits of intense amo-
rousness, and he has no friefids,
although he likes to think that
the wrestler, Mott Kilsoodski, is
his buddy. He believes in’ the
greatness of George Drew, the
divinity of free enterprise, and
the principles of the Toronto
Telegram. He hates Communists,
trade unions and_ intellectuals.
Being a member of a big brother

league, he takes a spasmodic in- ;

terest in the welfare of Nick Ya-
kyuchuk, a “juvenile delinquent”
whose mother is a streetwalker.

‘The world of Claude Widge-
wood is safe, narrow, and seem-
ingly solid. But with the attempt
to set up a union at the bakery,
stability evaporates. Claude is
afraid that he will not get the
raise Mr. Cadenza has promised.
him so often. And that is not all
that worries him.

_ His dormant sense of terrér re-
vives as strange things (strange
to Claude) begin to happen. Faus-
tia loses the baby she has been
“Carrying. Mott gets killed in a
wrestling match, Nick’s mother.
marries and moves to Sudbury.
Faustina herself takes ill and is
rushed to the hdspital where she
dies. One more calamity occurs.
A super-efficient concern takes
over the bakery. /

Now everything that had mean-
ing to Claude is gone and s50,
having lost the world He knew,
he decides to find himself a new
one. You might expect he would
become labor-conscious or join
Jehovah’s Witnesses, but instead
he enters the army. ;

As a soldier, he starts ‘to think
of peace, and at a parade he
rushes frantically up to the colo-
nel, crying, “There mustn’t be a
. We gotta have peace!
We better avoid another war.”

He is promptly marched off to

‘locked up to await trial
_ punishment.”

_ ing that much of Chipmunk is
_ grotesque and incoherent, that its
' transitioris are badly managed,

the guardhouse, is

and

where he

THERE IS no sense in “deny-

that its tributary characters have

ne intelligent motivation for their

_ problems which -the authof re-

characters and distorts

tain trick effects.

behaviour, and that it raises large

fuses to solve,

Peterson is not a disciplined
writer, yet. He jazzés up his
their
perspective (and ours), not for
valid artistic reasons, but to ob-

He also wanders about in tech-
nique. Thus, he can be natural-
istic in style, and tersely colorful

_ and evocative in description. But

he prefers to plunge us into a
nightmare of expressionism and

stream - of - consciousness, forms
that are intolerable unless hand-
_led expertly.

This shifting back and forth

robs the story of a systematic
point of view, and forever vitiates
its tragi-comic impact. In part,
this is a fault of editing; Chip-
munk is at least 80 pages too
long.
_ Neither does Peterson play fair
with his main characters. He
passes glibly over the conditions
of their present environment, lin-
gering instead on factors which,
although they are important, do
not fill in the details of Claude
and Faustina as they are now, to-
day. He forces the reader to guess
and improvise, a carry-over of his
radio-writing. b

As a result, Faustina strikes us
as a circus-freak—a comic foil
who gets out of control.

it in a foreword that might bet-
ter have been omitted) clearly
means her to be a symbolic wife-
woman, whose inarticulate desires
and romantic notions bespeak the
awful frustration of her actual
life. 2

. The fact is that Chipmunk is
altogether too oblique in its story
development. Peterson may ar-
gue that. this is deliberate. All
_ the same,-if he re-rrads Chip-
munk, he will find out that what
he leaves out his narrative is
‘often more pertinent than many
of the incidents that he so _lovy-
ingly describes.

CLAUDE WIDGEWOOD him-
self is only a partially convincing
creation, but that he is convin-
cing at all proves that Peterson
is a creative writer. What Claude
does is often arresting; but why
he does it, and whether he is the
kind of person who would do such
things, are unanswered questions.

Peterson tends to think of
Claude as a dramatic individual
in his own right.° That will not
hold. The man is a nonenity who

But |
Peterson (even though he denies -

cannot be personally dramatic.

What he can do is get involved .

in dramatic situations. When,
,however, Claude is rebuffing the
overtures to join the union, or
comparing his buns with those

made by his co-workers, or scan- "

ning the newspapers avidly for
cold-war news, or hanging around
Mott’s training quarters, then he
is a recognizable human being.

Peterson is best when he shows
us Claude Widgewood in his day-
to-day activities; he conveys gra-

Phically Claude’s unimaginative -

mind, his pathetic insecurity, his
desperate desire to be one of the
gang. -

As long as he grapples with
germane, rather than contrived,
problems, Chipmunk is good
reading, and the dialogue has a
fine, flat authenticity of idiom.
Peterson tells a story worthy of
telling and he makes a commen-
dable effort to tell .it honestly.
That his main character should
be a worker (although not in a)
constructive’ sense)
healthy grasp of the modern ma-
terials of life and literature. And
Peterson affirms too the duty of
the artist, to record, interpret,
and, if possible, positively change
the social fabric of our! day.

We hesitate to end this review
on a negative or capricious note,
but something must be said about
the thesis of the book. Appar-
ently is is Peterson’s belief) that
the only people in the world who
really have a chance foi survival
are the indeterminate ones; they
manage to sticl® it out while la-
bor and the bourgeoisie annihi-
late each other in vast battles.

If Peterson is really of this
opinion then he ought to take a
refresher course at once in_his-
tory and economics. The philo-
sophical naivete that mars Chip-
munk would suggest that, ‘in
many ways, it is also the story of
an author in search of a theme.
: : oe “N.C,

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(pa eo “acca uct e Raaere Geeta eae A

- October 27

_ thousands of lips,. only

- the rhythms ‘which these tunes contained.

giving them a Polish character. 2

‘when the armies of Czarist R

pestuous feeling at this very time.

short life, his artistic ‘services
Poles in revolt against the tyrant. mae

self, he underwent other influences.
Schubert. _

by instinct,
all sorts and conditions of men.

somewhat in advance of prevailing tastes.

were the mildest; the. boldest now are accepted almost as
commonplace. int en i eeteoiee oe ae

new audacities.

but to the workmen, But for their patient labors his instrument,
the piano, might not have developed in time the singing tones —
which he exploited. re iule | : 5

integral ornamentation really grew, and which
ally possible, might not have come for another

seductive waltzes, technical studies and introspective preludes, |
voiced the sonorities of the piano in the deepest, most poetical —

Chopin's music reflec
Poland of the people

AS THE PA

point of Scott's remarks mas
directed* at the Polish People’s Republic in honoring a man
who was, according to Scott, “‘a raving anti-Semite”
not without bearing on false and distorted charges of continuing
anti-Semitism in Poland. The worth of Scott's view is effec
tively established by this estimation of Chopin by a British
music critic, H. G. Sear. ee

CHOPIN WAS A supreme

artist, quite at the other end
of the scale from your prime inventor of folk melodies. :

Folk songs, so often born of words, are fashioned by
coming to final rest-when they are

committed to paper. And then no-one is sure how like they
are to the original. ‘

But Chopin, no more and no less than another, was heir to
all this." A lively, impressionable boy, born and bred in Poland,

though his father was French, he must have absorbed hundreds
of such tunes. :

Learning the ‘piano, fingering the keys, he must have become
more and moré aware of the melodic turns, the harmonic twists,

If the spoken word was indeed the starting point of folk
melody, as the best authorities say it was, then the Polish
tongue gave Polish folk song, which was one of Chopin’s —
sources, its special flavor, and influenced his final melodies, |

CHOPIN GREW UP to inherit, too, an ardent patriotism —
for the country of his birth. Something exploded within him |
ussia stormed Warsaw. 3
He made wild ‘insurrectionary notes in his journal. He ©
feared God had tured Russian. i

Ardently he wanted Poland’s national freedom. ,

It is generally accepted that the last of his first 12 piano —
studies, known as the Revolutionary, poured from his tem-

Later, in Paris, where he settled for the

rest of his too- —
were always at the disposal of

- OF course, before Chopin the musician truly became him-

He was ‘also heir to Bach and Mozart, Bellina and

He got his living in a world of social change. Aristocrat
conservative by habit, he rubbed shoulders with -

é
y

_ And even the change he absorbed, expressing it in terms —

Tt is a fact that the mazurkas most popular in his day |
a

f

His audacities

‘are all assimilated; they ‘had nourished.

’

CHOPIN WAS” NOT only heir to the great srgasters

The repetitive action out of which his delicate “system of ©
made it physic- —
generation.
It was Chopin who in fascinating ballades, portly polonaises, —

ense of the word.—-H, G, SEA

.

i

cf

4

4

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 2; 1949 — PAGE 16