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The Dreamlife of Bridges (Anvil, 2004)
Robert Strandquist illuminates the precarious human gravity of his fellow man in a novel partially inspired by bad luck, Social Assistance and the travails of love.
It's an average day at the shoemaker's shop where Leo works until a woman comes through the door pushing a stroller containing two white geese. Leo reluctantly agrees to make custom booties for the birds.
"He finds a lovely piece of alligator, but it's wrong, somehow, for a goose. He digs up a couple of scraps of fine brown cow lining... He caresses the thin leather with his thumbs, turning it over in his mind and eventually the challenges coalesce into specifics and potential weaves itself into an idea, a place to begin.";
So begins Robert Strandquist's first novel The Dreamlife of Bridges, the story of Leo, a divorced father trying to cope with his son's suicide. Leo just wants to keep to himself, but bad luck sticks to him like glue. He's a handyman capable of fixing most things except himself.
Leo's walk home to False Creek shows his dark frame of mind as he passes between the brewery's chain-link fence and the rail yard siding "where a couple of boxcars have been wasting gravity for the past week."; The Burrard Bridge, at its apex, "achieves a height sufficient to clear the masts of ships and gives suicides a better than fifty-fifty chance.";
June is Leo's upstairs neighbour. She's a separated stock trader fighting to retain custody of her son. A blown fuse creates darkness and the opportunity for romance. "The scent she's wearing has a stormy wildness about it, and he longs for the sheltering nape of being in love, to be out of reach of his memories. He wants to get on his knees and beg her to love him. But the glare of banality breaks over them when June locates the switch.";
They're both damaged goods but they give dinner a try. The mood is broken when two social workers and an RCMP officer arrive to check on June's boy.
Late for work one too many times, Leo gets fired from the shoemaker's. He finds cheap housing-shared with the goose woman, an explosives artist, a cyclist, an intellectual and a young female student-and gets fired from a string of blue collar jobs. Returning from Social Services, wanting only to curl up in bed, he finds the contents of his room strewn on the sidewalk. He has slept with the young student and the goose woman is jealous. "His scaffolding pride crumples around his feet and he just stands there waiting for the first breeze to knock him over."; With no place to stay, little money and less pride, Leo ditches his possessions for a life on the streets. "He could take his room back, occupy it by force, demand his rights under the law, but for some reason this was easier, to just walk away."; It's hard to fight back when you're tired.
Strandquist carries on with two story lines. June cavorts with a sleazy stock trader and drinks too much while Leo copes with life on the street. But the story belongs to Leo, as he beats recycling trucks to the punch and savours the luxury of laundry day. "He finds a clock and winds it up, creating a major personal crisis when he can't turn the alarm off... He surrenders his absurd pride. It makes no difference if he's a bum or somebody else is. There has to be a bum, a mannequin for people to dress up with their moods. Places to shit are at a premium.";
After the catharsis of losing everything, he finds himself back with the goose woman and her unlikely housemates-part of a family again. But as with Strandquist's stories in his collection The Inanimate World, it's the writing that matters as much as the plot. There are surprises on each page, geysers of inventiveness, so the downbeat landscape of Leo's precarious life is never, never dull. We pull for him because he's a sentient being like us, and we recognize bits of ourselves in Strandquist's frequent moments of brilliance.
Leo gets pleasure from eating a sandwich. "The tough crust, the yielding cheese, the cheerful cucumber, tomato with mayonnaise-together it all equaled a deep and lovely kiss.";
Born in Vancouver in 1952, Robert Strandquist grew up in Nelson and Kelowna. After a brief period in Lethbridge, he graduated from UVic's Writing Department, then received his M.A. from UBC in 1986.
"I didn't set out to write a topical book,"; he says, in reference to B.C.'s new Welfare legislation taking effect, "but I find social conscience seems to go with language in some inextricable way.
"Sure, I have politics like anybody else. I find it is deeply disturbing, what is happening. It's really a shame that in the past hundred years, or even much longer than that, we have developed an infrastructure to support people and that it is being pulled out from under us in a matter of months. But I never set out with a political agenda.
"I just set out with a character and let him or her lead the book wherever it goes. There's a lot of me in Leo. I've had to run into a few walls. I've had to look at myself in the mirror a few times. I have lived on welfare at one point. But I don't plan. Planning to me would be death. My reasons for writing stories are always different from how they turn out. My intention is just to explore myself and enjoy the language.
"The day I become didactic I will stop writing.";
1-895636-46-9
-by Jeremy Twigg
[BCBW Summer 2004]
It's an average day at the shoemaker's shop where Leo works until a woman comes through the door pushing a stroller containing two white geese. Leo reluctantly agrees to make custom booties for the birds.
"He finds a lovely piece of alligator, but it's wrong, somehow, for a goose. He digs up a couple of scraps of fine brown cow lining... He caresses the thin leather with his thumbs, turning it over in his mind and eventually the challenges coalesce into specifics and potential weaves itself into an idea, a place to begin.";
So begins Robert Strandquist's first novel The Dreamlife of Bridges, the story of Leo, a divorced father trying to cope with his son's suicide. Leo just wants to keep to himself, but bad luck sticks to him like glue. He's a handyman capable of fixing most things except himself.
Leo's walk home to False Creek shows his dark frame of mind as he passes between the brewery's chain-link fence and the rail yard siding "where a couple of boxcars have been wasting gravity for the past week."; The Burrard Bridge, at its apex, "achieves a height sufficient to clear the masts of ships and gives suicides a better than fifty-fifty chance.";
June is Leo's upstairs neighbour. She's a separated stock trader fighting to retain custody of her son. A blown fuse creates darkness and the opportunity for romance. "The scent she's wearing has a stormy wildness about it, and he longs for the sheltering nape of being in love, to be out of reach of his memories. He wants to get on his knees and beg her to love him. But the glare of banality breaks over them when June locates the switch.";
They're both damaged goods but they give dinner a try. The mood is broken when two social workers and an RCMP officer arrive to check on June's boy.
Late for work one too many times, Leo gets fired from the shoemaker's. He finds cheap housing-shared with the goose woman, an explosives artist, a cyclist, an intellectual and a young female student-and gets fired from a string of blue collar jobs. Returning from Social Services, wanting only to curl up in bed, he finds the contents of his room strewn on the sidewalk. He has slept with the young student and the goose woman is jealous. "His scaffolding pride crumples around his feet and he just stands there waiting for the first breeze to knock him over."; With no place to stay, little money and less pride, Leo ditches his possessions for a life on the streets. "He could take his room back, occupy it by force, demand his rights under the law, but for some reason this was easier, to just walk away."; It's hard to fight back when you're tired.
Strandquist carries on with two story lines. June cavorts with a sleazy stock trader and drinks too much while Leo copes with life on the street. But the story belongs to Leo, as he beats recycling trucks to the punch and savours the luxury of laundry day. "He finds a clock and winds it up, creating a major personal crisis when he can't turn the alarm off... He surrenders his absurd pride. It makes no difference if he's a bum or somebody else is. There has to be a bum, a mannequin for people to dress up with their moods. Places to shit are at a premium.";
After the catharsis of losing everything, he finds himself back with the goose woman and her unlikely housemates-part of a family again. But as with Strandquist's stories in his collection The Inanimate World, it's the writing that matters as much as the plot. There are surprises on each page, geysers of inventiveness, so the downbeat landscape of Leo's precarious life is never, never dull. We pull for him because he's a sentient being like us, and we recognize bits of ourselves in Strandquist's frequent moments of brilliance.
Leo gets pleasure from eating a sandwich. "The tough crust, the yielding cheese, the cheerful cucumber, tomato with mayonnaise-together it all equaled a deep and lovely kiss.";
Born in Vancouver in 1952, Robert Strandquist grew up in Nelson and Kelowna. After a brief period in Lethbridge, he graduated from UVic's Writing Department, then received his M.A. from UBC in 1986.
"I didn't set out to write a topical book,"; he says, in reference to B.C.'s new Welfare legislation taking effect, "but I find social conscience seems to go with language in some inextricable way.
"Sure, I have politics like anybody else. I find it is deeply disturbing, what is happening. It's really a shame that in the past hundred years, or even much longer than that, we have developed an infrastructure to support people and that it is being pulled out from under us in a matter of months. But I never set out with a political agenda.
"I just set out with a character and let him or her lead the book wherever it goes. There's a lot of me in Leo. I've had to run into a few walls. I've had to look at myself in the mirror a few times. I have lived on welfare at one point. But I don't plan. Planning to me would be death. My reasons for writing stories are always different from how they turn out. My intention is just to explore myself and enjoy the language.
"The day I become didactic I will stop writing.";
1-895636-46-9
-by Jeremy Twigg
[BCBW Summer 2004]
Submitted on May 19, 2004 in By David.
