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Loved this beginning to end
Book Review
By Derryll White
Kroetsch, Robert (1992). The Puppeteer.
The author of ‘The Studhorse Man’, ‘Badlands’, several other novels and a number of volumes of beautiful cutting edge poetry, Robert Kroetsch has always pushed the boundaries of the known, the comfortable.
When I discovered this volume in the back of an old bookstore sadly going out of business, I knew I was in for a delightful read. Sure enough, the first page put me in the rain in one of my favourite cities, Vancouver, and in the house of a writer. I immediately thought of Gladys Hindmarch, my favourite Vancouver author.
Kroetsch is always ahead of himself, writing in a space not yet occupied. I like it. “The catalogue of human error begins with the hands.” What’s that you say? And then I go, of course, “catalogue” therefore writing therefore “hands.” But then I have to think more because that is too simple. Then about two sentences later Kroetsch is trying to “step around his own presence.” I love this rhythm – read, stop, think, go back, think, then the Ford light bulb goes on – cognition.
And then there is always the local with Kroetsch. Sitting in Hot Shots in Cranbrook watching the storm clouds occlude Mt. Fisher, Lakit and the whole range of the Rockies, it is great to read about Elephant Mountain, Mount Loki and the approach to Ainsworth. The local is always comfortable, even when shrouded in death and mystery. Then Kroetsch unveils a mysterious photographer named Karen. There are no mysteries I think, I know Karen well.
Part of this novel for me focuses on describing the unknown. It moves fast and transforms the known into luminous icons of a future yet to be discovered. Kroetsch plays so fast with known behaviour that the characters become Ella Fitzgerald as she scats – making up their own sense of self sentence by sentence, thought by thought. It is indelibly beautiful on the tongue, the mind.
In the end, perhaps, the novel is all about seeing, a guide book of senses. Don’t read about it, don’t write a book – look!
Oh yes, I loved ‘The Puppeteer’ beginning to end.
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LOVE – “I need a lover who could aim a gun at his own soul. And pull the trigger.”
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LIFE – “There is only one life available, at best, to each of us. Wear it for real.”
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IRONY – “Henry’s irony was as predictable as his morning stool.”
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SIGHT – “He was a man who waited. Perhaps waiting above all else is what renders us, each, invisible.”
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VANCOUVER – “Vancouver was soggy, under a dark blanket of cloud that squashed the night onto the pavement.”
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LIFE – “….it was better to risk everything yourself rather than having someone do it for you. ‘You mean,’ Maggie had asked over chocolate cake, ‘close your eyes and leap?’ Inez didn’t hesitate. She was having raspberry mousse. ‘Open your eyes and leap,’ she said.”
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LOVE – “He had once been her lover and after that his life had not ever known the security of solid ground.”
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LIFE – “I lived the death that waiting is. I refuse to live only to die.”
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PAST – “The past has a way of presenting itself as success.”
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PRESENT – “….you order pizza without thinking of the beauty of it all. That’s where you fail. You don’t know how to make the present present.”
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OPPORTUNITY – “She had a way of pursing her lips after she spoke; no matter what she said, she proceeded after to offer a kiss.”
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PERSPECTIVE – “There was always someone waiting, even if it was only the version of herself that was supposed to be at work, writing the life she would have lived, if she hadn’t, in one reckless moment of caring too much or caring not at all, agreed to marry a man named Henry Ketch.”
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HISTORY – “….he didn’t know anything about history. What he looked at was what he saw.”
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MOUNTAIN SPIRIT – “But the only sound was the ravens, and believe me, when you’re out in the bush that’s racket enough.”
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COUNTENANCE – “His hazel eyes seemed lost in the serious contemplation of nothing. His nose was strong and might have been accidentally left out in the rain by its face.”
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WEATHER – “Fog so thick this morning the rain couldn’t fall.”
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GOALS – “At first they were only leaving, not going anywhere, the three women. The departure was enough.”
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INTENTION – “I was doing my best,’ Josie said. ‘That’s all I intended.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.