sewn paper
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Stories; FIC 029000
April 2004
224 pages
ISBN 0-88984-239-6
$18.95
Mike Barnes:
extremes and extraordinary humanity
Chris Watson
Reprinted from View Magazine
Mike Barnes has been a man of many
trades -- steelworker, dishwasher, janitor, clock salesman,
fishing guide and more -- but he returns to Hamilton next
Wednesday in connection with his most notorious job.
Barnes is the author of three well-received books: Calm
Jazz Sea, a book of poetry, The Syllabus, a novel, and
Aquarium, a book of short stories that won him an award
in 1999 for the best first book of stories written by a
Canadian. His fourth book, a second collection of stories
entitled Contrary Angel, was published last month by
Porcupine's Quill.
Contrary Angel is a lively, engaging collection, and a
great place to become acquainted with Barnes' muscular,
natural prose style. By turns funny and disturbing, erotic
and revolting, the eleven stories that comprise this book
will undoubtedly, and at the least, provoke a reaction in
the reader -- and the value of a provoked-reaction should
not be over-looked. The book ends with a great four-story
sequence called `Doctors' -- it is really more a novella
than a series of stories -- which follows a girl's
tumultuous life through to adulthood and is alone worth
picking up the book to read. Another good reason to read
the book (if you love all things Hamilton, which of course
you do) is that Barnes grew up in and around our fair city.
Although he was born in the States, Barnes' parents are
both Canadian; they moved back to the Hamilton area
when Barnes was two, and he grew up in various places
around the region (Hamilton, Ancaster, Waterdown),
eventually studying at McMaster. While he lives in Toronto
now, he hasn't forgotten The Hammer: in fact, it shows
up quite prominently in Contrary Angels, particularly in
its opening story `Don and Ron.'
But apart from providing interesting settings, has
Hamilton shaped Barnes' writing? `That's hard to say,' he
muses. `I know it has, I've talked to another writer from
Hamilton about that, but we've had a hard time putting
our finger on it... I think every place you live does shape
your writing. When I think of Hamilton and my writing, I
think of the extremes that were very evident to me living
in the city... I think the extremes of the city gave me a taste
for that, for the extremes.'
And indeed, there are some extremes found in the
stories of Contrary Angel: there is suicide and
love-making, people pee on restaurant floors and crap
their own pants. But the extremes are always balanced by
the extraordinary humanity of Barnes' characters; the
characters you encounter in the pages of his book are real
people, with real lives, loves, ambitions and jobs. Perhaps
this is why Barnes also has an affinity for Hamilton as a
working city. `I guess you could say that about any city,'
he ponders, `I mean, Toronto is [a working city] too, but
there was always more of a feel of people working [in
Hamilton], that work mattered, that it was a big part of
life. That shows up in my writing... I like writing where
people have jobs and you can see inside their jobs... It
might not focus on their jobs, but they're living in this
world and working.'
Work apparently carries meaning with
Barnes -- remember all those jobs? -- as both an author
and a person. Currently, he works as an English tutor. So
what's more demanding: teaching English, or writing it?
`I find them both really demanding,' Barnes says. `With
one-on-one tutoring, the challenge is to try and find what
that particular student needs, which is often difficult to
figure out, and often difficult to provide. But I enjoy that, it
takes me out of myself. It's someone else's world, their
difficulties -- I think I'd go a little nuts if I was just a
full-time writer, stuck in my own head all the time.'
Barnes' stories provide ample evidence of his ability to
put himself into someone else's world. The story
`Cogagwee' -- about Tom Longboat, the local Onondaga
Indian who made a name for himself as a runner early in
the last century -- is a stand-out in Contrary Angel.
(Barnes says he may read the story when he comes to
town next week, since Longboat is a local hero and some
of the story takes place in and around Hamilton.) While
writing a story from the point-of-view of a real,
once-living person seems like it might be a daunting task,
it wasn't for Barnes.
`Actually, I found that to be one of the most natural
stories for me to write in the book,' he says. `It may be
because I'm really not trying to capture his voice, I have no
idea what his voice would really be. I think that's why I put
in the subtitle, `Walks around the Life of Tom Longboat,'
because I almost felt like I was speaking from behind
him, or from the side of him... From some place near him,
but not actually his life. Once I found the kind of rhythm
of the voice, it seemed to flow out very easily. I had a lot of
fun writing that story. It felt very peaceful writing it.
`That's one of the parts of the writing process I enjoy
most,' Barnes adds, in reference to the difficultly (or lack
thereof) of writing characters with lives so different from
his own. `I know a lot of people are autobiographical
writers, but I feel I'm expressing more of myself when I
write a character who stands far apart from me... If I can
imagine someone who's really different than me, I'm
tapping aspects of myself that I didn't even know were
there.'
Despite the appearance, throughout the stories in
Contrary Angel, of Canadian people and places Barnes'
work is decidedly not, to borrow an ugly academic phrase,
Can-Lit. `I guess the fact that nothing's leaping to mind
probably means no,' Barnes says when asked if he can
identify anything specifically Canadian about his work. `I
read all kinds of different authors and different genres
from all over the world, and I can see pieces of them in
my writing or pieces of my writing in what they're doing,
but I guess the answer would have to be no.'
Since Barnes' writing can't really be pigeonholed as
`Canadian,' how are we to define his stories, his
characters and narratives? `There might be a clue in the
title, actually,' he reveals. `The title phrase comes from
the first story. It's used to describe a character, but it
might be used to capture something... The character may
have a spiritual side, they have beliefs, or more often
they're looking for beliefs, but they're not these ethereal
creatures of light and goodness. They live very much in
this world. They're real, sold, flawed, often stubborn. But
yet they're capable of being magnificent at times in spite
of these limitations...'
Success in spite of limitations also applies to Barnes'
ability within what could be seen as the confines of the
short story format. `It's a lot less forgiving than the novel
form,' he relates. `I read lots of novels, and when you
read a novel it might be 300 pages long, and if you find
even a 50-page section, which is quite a number of pages,
but if you find a 50-page section boring, or it has a slow
start, you'll forgive it that as long as it gets you there in
the end. But a short story, and this is even more true of a
poem, you really don't have that leeway. The reader isn't
going to give you that much time, so it's all got to be there
very quickly. I think that's why, for me, writing short
stories is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition.'
Fortunately for his readers, Barnes' work is decidedly a
more all than nothing affair. You'll have a chance to judge
that for yourself, however: Mike Barnes will read from his
work on Wednesday, June 9, at the Gallery on the Bay (231
Bay N.). Natalee Caple and David Bezmozgis will also
appear.