Who was Private Norman Boyd?

Among the many curiosities to be found in the archival collection at the Beaton Institute, at Cape Breton University, in Sydney, Nova Scotia, is a single sheet of paper that, at first glance, appears to be a letter sent home to his mother in Cape Breton, from a private serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

At the end of the letter, after asking his mother to write to him, and providing his address, the writer adds this odd postscript: "When I enlisted I gave my name as Norman Boyd, so that I would have a chance to get away." What could this mean?

At one point in the letter, the writer identifies a certain John McDonnell as his first cousin, so we might speculate that he gave the name Boyd instead of McDonnell. Unfortunately, the letter provides no clue as to his motivation for enlisting under an alias, or for why he chose the particular name Boyd. Was he trying to get away from something, perhaps a criminal record, and thus the name change would allow him to avoid being tracked down by authorities? Or, was he hedging his bets in the event that he chose to desert the army and make his way back to Canada without being caught? Was he an American citizen?

We may never be able to establish the true identity of Norman Boyd. The letter contains no specific addressee, only the salutation, "Dear mother." As for finding Private Boyd in muster rolls of the Union Army, he only provides his address as Siege Battery B, in the Army of the Potomac. We have no clue as to which regiment, division, or corps, this battery was attached.

Furthermore, we have no idea how this letter came to be part of the collection at the Beaton Institute. One of the critical aspects of archival management is to gather information about the provenance of the items that it receives and curates. Who was in possession of this letter at the time it was donated to the archive? Where did they get it? When? Did they know anything about the writer, the addressee, or any of the other individuals mentioned in the letter? Only those associated with the item can provide these sorts of details. Without this kind of information, items can remain hidden in plain sight. They are not lost. The archive has cataloged the item, and anyone wanting to look at it, merely needs to ask. However, without any context for the item, how would anyone know to ask?

419 by Will Ferguson

Will Ferguson was born in Fort Vermillion, Alberta, in 1964. He studied film production and screenwriting at York University in Toronto, and following graduation he taught English in Japan for five years. He is best known for his humorous writings about Canadian history and culture, and for his travel themed works. He has won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humor three times. He now lives in Calgary with his wife and two sons. His novel, 419, won the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012.

The title, 419, refers to the section of Nigerian criminal code that deals with email scams, and at least at some level, these scams form the unifying thread to which the varied components of the four personal trajectories that make up this book cling for significance. The book reads like one part Heart of Darkness, peppered with a bit of Stockholm syndrome and a dash of Luigi Pirandello, all set in a dystopian travel guide to Nigeria, and especially to the internet sweatshops of Lagos. The story of Winston, the scammer, probably provides the most engaging and sustained narrative, while the stories of Nnambi and Amina, characters who are only introduced 150 pages into the text, seem superfluous and contrived. As for the Laura story, as she tries to avenge her father's suicide, committed in response to being victimized by Winston, I was not convinced by her motivations, her actions, her interactions, or the other members of her family.

I think it is fair to suggest that this book represents Ferguson's first genuine foray into the genre of literary fiction. On its own, I find it difficult to imagine that 419 would be judged as deserving of Canada's most lucrative literary award. So, was Ferguson being rewarded on the basis of his ability to switch genres and produce what many reviewers deemed to be a credible product, or was he being rewarded on the basis of his output to date? Who knows? At least from my perspective, he should stick to humor.

Surnames and Community Identity

Researchers commonly use surname counts as a means of studying settlement patterns, ethnic heritage, and cultural identity in defined geographic areas. Cape Breton Island, with its long history of occupation, for either economic or military purposes, coupled with its relative isolation, provides an excellent site for this sort of analysis, and by way of illustration I examined the surname frequencies in three small communities.

Cheticamp is a long-established fishing community with a population of just over 3000, located at the northwest end of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Ingonish, with a population of just over 1200, is located at the Park's southeastern end, and is home to the renowned Keltic Lodge and the top-ranked Highland Links golf course. The town of Mabou, on the west coast of the Island, with a population of just over 1200, was historically associated with coal mining, but is now more closely associated with its cultural strength, as particularly evident in its musicians, such as the internationally acclaimed Rankin Family.

There are 502 households in Mabou, representing 170 different surnames, of which 112 (65.8%) occur only once. The three most common surnames, in terms of households, are Beaton (66), MacDonald (60), and Rankin (28). Together these three represent 30.6% of all households. 

There are 527 households in Ingonish, representing 198 different surnames, of which 133 (67.1%) occur only once. The three most common surnames are Donovan (31), Whitty (24), and in a tie for third place, Barron (18), Doucette (18), and MacLeod (18). Together these five represent 20.6% of all households.

There are 1292 households in Cheticamp, representing 264 different surnames, of which 182 (68.9%) occur only once. The three most common surnames are Aucoin (152), Poirier (100), and Chiasson (85). Together these three represent 26% of all households.

In total, there are 545 different surnames represented across these three communities, but only 14 of these, or 2.5%, are represented in all three communities. They are: Aucoin, Brown, Campbell, Doyle, Fraser, Gillis, Harrison, Leblanc, MacDonald, MacDougall, MacKinnon, MacLean, Murphy, and Thompson.

While there are a number of observations that could be made about these findings, it is perhaps most intriguing to note that in all three cases, two-thirds of the households represent unique surname occurrences. Further, based on the relative density of heritage families we might speculate that Mabou is the most culturally cohesive community, followed by Cheticamp, and then Ingonish.

Siege 13 by Tamas Dobozy

Tamas Dobozy was born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, in 1969, and he received a Ph.D. in English from the University of British Columbia. He has published more than 50 short stories, one of which earned him the O. Henry Prize in 2004. He was recipient of the inaugural Fulbright Research Chair in Creative Writing at New York University in 2009. He currently teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Ontario.
Siege 13, a collection of 13 short stories inspired by the ways the siege of Budapest by the Russians in December 1944 impacted the lives of the Hungarian people, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2012. Part personal essay, part exploration of collective memory and identity maintenance, and part alternate world construction, these stories are above all else case studies of "the passing of trauma from one generation to the next" (p. 183).
There is no question that Dobozy is a master storyteller, and his characterizations are magnificent. My issue with this book is that it rapidly becomes too much of a good thing. Reading one or two of these stories would suffice, both in terms of satisfying and educating the reader and with respect to demonstrating the author's mastery. No need to obsess and saturate. I got bored; not by the writing, but by the inevitable sameness of these stories.
I enjoy reading short stories, and in reading this book I came to two realizations. First, I like my short stories to be short. Once they reach 3000 words, they are forced to move beyond singular events or circumstances and thereby cry out either to be divided into separate stories or to be expanded into a novel. Dobozy had enough material here to create a marvelous extended character study in the vein of some of the greatest late nineteenth and early twentieth century epic fiction. Second, I like short story collections to be comprised of works by multiple authors or, if from a single author, to be poly-thematic. Variety is the key, at least for me.
I would have had a much more positive response to these siege stories if I had encountered one as a standalone entry in a literary magazine, or as part of a collection of Canadian short fiction. However, to give the author his due, I have been sufficiently impressed by his writing that I will seek out other examples of his work.

CanLit Adventure

Recently, I won three books in a contest run by Access Copyright, a not-for-profit agency with the mandate to ensure that Canadian authors, artists, and publishers receive fair compensation when their works are copied. The three books were all major award winners: Tamas Dobozy's Siege 13 (Thomas Allen, 2012), winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, Will Ferguson's 419 (Viking, 2012), winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Linda Spalding's The Purchase (McLelland and Stewart, 2012) winner of the Governor General's Prize for Fiction.

Now, let me be brutally honest about my relationship with Canadian literature. When I entered the contest, I had no idea of who these authors were, what they had written previously, or what works they had beaten out to win these prizes. Having attended high school in the 1960s, my introduction to CanLit was more in the nature of the force fed diet of standard works that typified pedagogy and national identity maintenance at the time. So, I dutifully slogged my way through early Margaret Atwood (The Edible Woman), Margaret Laurence (The Stone Angels), Robertson Davies (A Mixture of Frailties), and Mordecai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz). After that, when I read literature, as opposed to popular fiction, it was more often than not either British, or translations of German and Russian works. My tastes over the past few years have shifted more towards the Middle East.
So, by way of engaging in a sort of reclamation of national literary identity, I am embarking on an adventure in CanLit. I am determined to read all three of these prize winning books in their entirety (something I found it difficult to do in the sixties) and publish reviews on this blog.
On a final note, as a Canadian writer of non-fiction (although I am working on my first novel), I was happy to get my check from Access Copyright. At the very least, it signals that someone out there is aware of what I have written.

I can see clearly now

During this past week, I attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). The organization came into existence just over a decade ago for the purpose of leveling the playing field with respect to providing access to scholarly journals for academic researchers and instructors across the country. The primary mechanism for attaining this goal was through negotiating subscription packages with journal vendors as a national consortium. Of course, since its inception, several key variables have changed. The economic well being of Canadian universities, large and small, is not what it once was. The percentage of journals available in electronic form rather than paper has increased dramatically, as has the actual number of available journals. Major vendors have acquired most of the small specialty publishers, thus creating super packages of journals that cover a broad spectrum of disciplinary output. The list goes on. Needless to say, a major assessment of the future value of CKRN needs to take place. However, this is not my immediate concern.

It is commonplace when attending conferences and meetings to acquire various promotional mementos such as tote bags, binders, key chains, and pens. These are usually accompanied by session handouts, tourist maps, discount coupons, and evaluation forms. This year, perhaps as a means of demonstrating fiscal constraint, CRKN decided to provide everyone with a simple name tag and a lens cleaning cloth. No great reams of paper or other clutter to take up room in your suitcase; just a lens cloth.

Here it is, in all its glory, being put to its most obvious of uses. Looking beyond the obvious, and reflecting a more tech-savvy worldview, a colleague pointed out that the cloth was perfect for cleaning the screen of a smartphone or tablet. It's not the usefulness of the object that bothers me. Rather, I'm disturbed by the deeper meaning it potentially conveys.

At the most mundane level, this small token of appreciation could be interpreted as a sympathetic acknowledgement that the vast majority of members attending the meeting had spent decades working as academic librarians, with all the attendant eye strain that such a vocation suggests. While this may amount to forgivable stereotyping, I read a bit more into it. Perhaps the staff of CKRN anticipated that members would be wondering if they were seeing things clearly, as the harsh realities of our current situation were presented to them in various charts, graphs, and lists.

Perhaps the cloth is a metaphor for CRKN itself. In order to see clearly through the great morass that is scholarly publishing, in order to give Canadian researchers and instructors any hope of competing with their international counterparts, in order to prevent the inevitable balkanization that will emerge as rogue institutions decide to fend for themselves, either because they think they can do a better job on their own or because they can no longer afford to do much at all, it is only CRKN that can provide the clear way forward.

To quote Shelley, way out of context: "Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!"

The Three Apples

I finished reading Kingdom of Strangers by Zoe Ferraris several weeks ago, but I was uncertain about how exactly to follow up on my previous post (July 7). When I had only just started reading the book, I was immediately drawn to the author's use of a well-known, yet little understood, verse from the Qur'an (74:30), in which the number nineteen plays a key role.

At the risk of providing too many spoilers, let me just say that the serial killer, who is the central villain in the novel, arranges the many murders he commits in the form of a trilogy designated by three apples.

The 'Story of the Three Apples' can be found in the anthology we generally refer to as the Arabian Nights, but is more correctly called the Thousand and One Nights (alf laylah wa-laylah). The framing narrative for this collection concerns the fate of Scheherazade, who tells a series of nightly stories to her new husband, the Persian king Sharyar, as a means of avoiding being put to death. Sharyar, it seems, is paranoid about the potential for any of his wives to commit adultery. Consequently, he kills them off once their marriage has been consummated. This leaves him in perpetual need of a new virgin to marry, and, from our perspective, probably qualifies him for the title of fiction's first serial killer.

The content of the Arabian Nights, like the content of the Qur'an, is well known by the majority of Muslim Arabs. However, while reading the latter text can be considered an obligation in Islam, reading the former text is largely forbidden.

Kingdom of Strangers is a laudable piece of contemporary crime fiction, albeit one that relies more heavily than most on its context. Ferraris does a commendable job of portraying the sociocultural complexity of Saudi Arabia, and is particularly adept at using the stark, arid geography of the region to accentuate her story. I do have a couple of small criticisms, and a caution for readers.

First, from a readability perspective, the book does get bogged down about two-thirds of the way through, as what are perhaps a few too many sub-plots wrestle their way towards resolution. Second, as a service to her readers, Ferraris provides a brief glossary of the Arabic terms she uses throughout her novel, but there is an interesting omission. On page 317, she has Katya say to herself, "Ya majnoun," just as she has her big aha moment about the three apples. This expression, which means something like, "Oh, you retard," does not appear in the glossary.

For those readers whose knowledge and experience of Islam and the Middle East are somewhat limited, one should be cautious about equating the culture of Saudi Arabia with the culture of all Islamic societies. And, perhaps even more importantly, one should be cautious about equating the official Saudi interpretation of Islam with the broader and highly variable interpretations of Islam that exist across cultural and ethnic divides, in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.