The thrill of discovering D.M. Fraser is only eclipsed by the joy of finding him again, when you have long since given him up for dead. (Don) Fraser was an enigmatic bug of a man who fled to the more tolerant social climes of the West Coast from Nova Scotia after the Summer of Love. A latter-day Lowry figure, he lived gently, drank daily and died avoiding the yuppie melee.

As well, during the Georgia Straight's muddled and literate middle phase, back in the days when Tom Harrison kept the paper going by intelligently covering the music scene, Straight editor Bob Mercer commissioned D.M. Fraser to write a regular-as-he-could-make it column called 'Manners.' This was when Main Street-where Fraser lived-still had stores that sold junk instead of antiques.

'Manners' turned out to be the right title for encapsulating Fraser's witty poignancy. Thanks to Pulp Press, he published two fiction collections in his lifetime, Classs Warfare (1974) and The Voice of Emma Sachs (1983). After Fraser died in 1985, he appeared on the cover of BCBW's second issue. Since then his literary executor, friend and publisher Stephen Osborne has made attempts to revive interest in Fraser, but the collective memory of the little man's slurred speech, suit jackets and heartfelt confessions has faded.

The smart set, and those in danger of learning too much confidence at writing schools, might do well to go slumming in Fraser's sentimental Slough of Respond. They can start with 'Revisionism and Lesser Sorrows' in which a nameless narrator confesses his touching friendship with a charismatic but inarticulate fellow outsider named Dumbo Nelson.

Each sentence is finely wrought and faintly cheeky-as if the brainy refugee from uptight Nova Scotia is getting away with something by confessing the details of a resolutely gentle life. Leaving a party, arm in arm, two comrades depart, "not in the manner of lovers or even drinking buddies, but like near-senile bachelor brothers" holding each other up.

A longing for greater intimacy remains unconsummated, perhaps impossible. Fraser concludes, wistfully, "Meanwhile in the gathering night, I am free to remake history as I see fit."

If there's a stylistic peer or protégé for Fraser it might be Mark Anthony Jarman. In 'Righteous Speedboat' a would-be NHLer watches the pro ~ draft in a 'loser bar,' yearning to be picked, knowing he's ruined his chances by punching out a coach. "Need be I'll go to the moon, I'll skate on Mars." A rich jerk within earshot keeps bragging, to disinterested women and to revolving bartenders, about owning a fishing retreat with a speedboat. Whereas Fraser would be tender, seeking absolution for all, Jarman is critically edged yet the sentence-by-sentence, shorthand leaping logic of the prose is equally exhilarating to interpret and ride. What is a 'scunty-eyed coach?' It doesn't matter. You get it.

Some of the most memorable stories are Zsuzsi Gartner's 'Measuring Death in Column Inches', a memoir-like diary of a neophpyte working nightshift on the rewrite desk of a Vancouver daily, and Madeleine Thien's 'Four Days from Oregon.' No one would blink if the latter had Alice Munro's name on it. An unstable mother of three daughters-nine, seven and six-absconds with her children and her lover to Oregon for a runaway camping trip, only to find lasting happiness, as recalled by the six-year-old, in her own womanhood.

Terence Young's detailed 'Yellow with Black Horns' also imagines a six-year-old daughter trying to oversee her four-year-old brother's birthday party and its much-anticipated pinata-bashing climax, as her parents marriage founders perhaps temporarily, perhaps fatally. The daughter desperately resists change, variations from the family script. This story only lacks a more satisfying ending to merit the word brilliant.

Eden Robinson's 'Traplines' and some of Linda Svendsen's 'Marine Life' are incontestably worthy inclusions. Kevin Roberts' 'Troller' and Maria Hindmarch's 'Ucluelet' are overtly coastal, as is Jack Hodgins' opener 'After the Season,' set in a remote fishing camp during off-season.

A solitary schoolteacher named Hamilton Grey, soured on humanity, takes refuge from a gale, and in doing so he interrupts the annual rite of rutting between a salty wharfinger and the semi-reluctant Prosperina in her 50s who runs the cafe. She and the schoolteacher climb a hill over looking the camp. "As soon as a human being chooses to pay attention to his five senses," he claims, "he's electing to live in hell." Such philosophical dialogue doesn't compensate for a passionless narrative. This is an idea for a story, unfleshed.

Keith Harrison shouldn't be criticized for his ordering of these stories-it's hard enough just to pick 'em-but it's easy to suggest Audrey Thomas' 'The Man with Clam Eyes' would have served as a more appropriate and inspiring opener. Thomas has been our foremost practitioner of the short story within B.C. for decades-and this first person tale about the transformative power of nature best captures the reflective bleating quality of much of this anthology.

"I came to the sea because my heart was broken." It's an irresistible beginning. A forlorn woman on a Gulf Island abandons her sorrow to become a mermaid thanks to the enticements of a Spanish sailor arising from the sea. "My heart darts here and there like a frightened fish." It's confident, moving and surprising. "My breasts bloom in the moonlight."

Evelyn Lau's stunning 'Fresh Girls' is all too believable. It reflects the sense of competition between prostitutes in a modern whorehouse, as tempered by the narrator's oddly clear-eyed despair. "The men can tell the ones who've been here long, they smell like the back room, five ashtrays operating at once and the taste of packaged soup on their tongues." Still in her Lolita years, Lau's narrator grimly contemplates the trick of turning 20.

In contrast, P.K Page's 'A Kind of Fiction' reflects the onset of infirmary after a well-to-do woman suffers an unseen fall. Priding herself on self-containment, she invents a parallel character for herself, an old woman who she continually bumps into. When the pair of elderly women eventually merge, the narrator's self-recognition leads to tears of grief for unresolved family matters. Told in the third person, it's perhaps the most complex story in the anthology, weirdly personal yet removed from self-pity.

Named only Dett and Sheedy, a mathematical employee and an illogical boss in Timothy Taylor's 'Silent Cruise' juggle the risks of stockbroking and horsetrack betting. Wayde Compton's storyless but intriguing 'Diamond' describes the negritudes of a 25-yearold half-white, half-black intellectual's search for identity and belonging in a nightclub where he dances and briefly sheds his conflicts. Compton and Taylor are both bound for literary glory.

Other stories are by Murray Logan, Liza Potvin, Jenny Fjellgaard, Annabel Lyon, Danielle Lagah, Carol Windley, Ron Smith, Stephen Guppy, Shani Mootoo, Caroline Adderson, George Bowering, Cynthia Flood, John Harris and Alice Munro--who concludes the anthology with 'Cortes Island', first published in New Yorker. There are only a couple of clunkers.

Hundreds of other writers could have been included. They should relax, enjoy the tapestry. Writing is not a competition.
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[BCBW Spring 2002]