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Jericho (Random House, 2005)
In his second novel Jericho (Random House, $32.95), released earlier this year, George Fetherling introduces an unconventional and mostly hopeless love triangle between an over-the-hill marijuana dealer named Bishop, a rural Alberta ingénue-cum-hairdresser named Beth and a lesbian social worker named Theresa who is in permanent rebellion against her upbringing as a Dutch Catholic.
Beth is supposedly searching for her father on skid row, but that doesn't enter much into the story. She basically finds the unscrupulous Bishop instead. The character of Bishop, a minor league Manson figure, is the most riveting aspect of Fetherling's frequently brilliant narrative that is divided haphazardly between the three characters in alternating segments of varying lengths.
Bishop is an alluring crackpot who can rationalize just about anything, the sort of brash person who sees a pregnant woman on a bus and tells her not to worry, he can help deliver her child in an emergency. Physically he resembles the drummer in Fleetwood Mac, balding on top, long haired, a petty criminal, a petty guru.
Raised by his grandfather in the fictional district of Snaketown in Windsor, Bishop is the son of a prostitute. A degenerate and a manipulator, he has nonetheless been blessed with an astonishing knack for saying bizarre but strangely poetic nonsense.
In an interview Fetherling has said this novel emerged from a line he wrote for a rejected Toronto Life article about a gang murder in the 1930s: "When I finally caught up with Cappy Smith, he was down in Chinatown, winding his watch.";
This line appears on page 77, followed by about 50 pages of background material for Bishop that reads like a major chunk of a different novel parachuted into Jericho for lack of a demanding editor. If the detour back to Snaketown is something of a wrong turn, one can seldom find fault with the boldness of the writing.
"There is simply no one more Protestant,"; he writes, "than a Vancouver lesbian in her thirties, living in some tasteful condo with her lover and her houseplants, close to the amenities.";
That title Jericho doesn't refer to the Jericho Beach area of Vancouver; it's a biblical reference pertaining to Bishop's hideaway in the B.C. bush, north of Alexis Creek, off a logging road, between Williams Lake and Bella Coola. The threesome ultimately heads for the hills in a stolen postal van that they paint green.
It's not the story that counts so much as Fetherling's writing. Unfortunately we don't get to see or learn about exactly how the psycho-babbling Theresa decided to join Bishop's mostly ridiculous rampage. We are left to presume she jumped aboard because she has the hots for Beth and she hopes to protect her from Bishop's megalomania.
This is a very funny book most of the time, with strikingly original asides and social commentary, but ultimately it's more Dostoevsky than Dickens. There is something brave about careening towards the darkness, whether it's done via sexuality, outlaw behaviour or writing, and Fetherling's ability to dispense with his critical mindset in favour of an exploratory one will be surprising to anyone who has perceived him as primarily a brainy person, abstracted on high.
Jericho is risky and alive, and memorable in the long run for its presentation of a remarkable archetype. For anyone familiar with the underpinnings of West Coast culture, it's possible to view "Bishop"; as one more weirdly deluded messianic figure in a rich tradition of mavericks and cult leaders who have cultivated egocentric madness in B.C.
[Alan Twigg, 2005]
Beth is supposedly searching for her father on skid row, but that doesn't enter much into the story. She basically finds the unscrupulous Bishop instead. The character of Bishop, a minor league Manson figure, is the most riveting aspect of Fetherling's frequently brilliant narrative that is divided haphazardly between the three characters in alternating segments of varying lengths.
Bishop is an alluring crackpot who can rationalize just about anything, the sort of brash person who sees a pregnant woman on a bus and tells her not to worry, he can help deliver her child in an emergency. Physically he resembles the drummer in Fleetwood Mac, balding on top, long haired, a petty criminal, a petty guru.
Raised by his grandfather in the fictional district of Snaketown in Windsor, Bishop is the son of a prostitute. A degenerate and a manipulator, he has nonetheless been blessed with an astonishing knack for saying bizarre but strangely poetic nonsense.
In an interview Fetherling has said this novel emerged from a line he wrote for a rejected Toronto Life article about a gang murder in the 1930s: "When I finally caught up with Cappy Smith, he was down in Chinatown, winding his watch.";
This line appears on page 77, followed by about 50 pages of background material for Bishop that reads like a major chunk of a different novel parachuted into Jericho for lack of a demanding editor. If the detour back to Snaketown is something of a wrong turn, one can seldom find fault with the boldness of the writing.
"There is simply no one more Protestant,"; he writes, "than a Vancouver lesbian in her thirties, living in some tasteful condo with her lover and her houseplants, close to the amenities.";
That title Jericho doesn't refer to the Jericho Beach area of Vancouver; it's a biblical reference pertaining to Bishop's hideaway in the B.C. bush, north of Alexis Creek, off a logging road, between Williams Lake and Bella Coola. The threesome ultimately heads for the hills in a stolen postal van that they paint green.
It's not the story that counts so much as Fetherling's writing. Unfortunately we don't get to see or learn about exactly how the psycho-babbling Theresa decided to join Bishop's mostly ridiculous rampage. We are left to presume she jumped aboard because she has the hots for Beth and she hopes to protect her from Bishop's megalomania.
This is a very funny book most of the time, with strikingly original asides and social commentary, but ultimately it's more Dostoevsky than Dickens. There is something brave about careening towards the darkness, whether it's done via sexuality, outlaw behaviour or writing, and Fetherling's ability to dispense with his critical mindset in favour of an exploratory one will be surprising to anyone who has perceived him as primarily a brainy person, abstracted on high.
Jericho is risky and alive, and memorable in the long run for its presentation of a remarkable archetype. For anyone familiar with the underpinnings of West Coast culture, it's possible to view "Bishop"; as one more weirdly deluded messianic figure in a rich tradition of mavericks and cult leaders who have cultivated egocentric madness in B.C.
[Alan Twigg, 2005]
Submitted on January 28, 2005 in By David.
