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Novel; FIC 019000
May 2004
192 pages
ISBN 0-88984-245-0
$18.95
The Man Who Hated
Emily Bronte
Ray Smith
A comic satire of contemporary Montreal by the man who
redefined experimental prose for Canada. This is a comic counterpart -- not a sequel -- to
Ray Smith's previous novel, The Man Who Loved Jane Austen, his melancholic take
on family division and nationalist politics in late-nineties Quebec.
This is a brisker and lighter novel than Jane, one that returns to
Smith's signature weirdness.
Hired to teach in a junior college, Will Franklyn has come to Montreal
expecting a life to proceed much as it had in Nova Scotia where he grew up,
or in Edmonton or Edinburgh where he studied. But `in Quebec everything -- all
law, all logic, all human behaviour -- is topsy-turvy.' Trusting and bemused,
Will manages -- just -- to stay sane in the midst of lunacy.
In this novel, a companion to his sombre The Man Who Loved Jane Austen,
Ray Smith demonstrates once again that he is a master of comic fiction, leading
us a merry chase round the mountain. The familiar places are there -- Schwartz's,
the St. Viateur Bagel Shop, the Big O -- but lurking behind every familiar certainty
is the unexpected, the bizarre, the topsy-turvy.
`Hired to teach in a junior college, Will Franklyn has come to Montreal expecting life
to continue much as it had done in Nova Scotia, where he grew up, or in Edmonton or Edinburgh,
where he studied. But ``in Quebec, everything -- all law, all logic, all human behaviour, is topsy turvy.''
The book touches on several themes, including the preparations being made for a conference on an Icelandic Saga
to be held in Iceland, lesbianism, sex change, impotence, and prostitution. All these elements
are interspersed into the normal college routine during the academic year.
Will is the sanest, most grounded character in the book. His colleagues in the English department
all have their peculiarities, some more so than others. In the end, true love prevails for only one couple,
and as everything comes to a surprising head after the conference, Gudrun, the Icelandic Ice Maiden,
proves herself the seer she has claimed to be from the outset.
As with most comic fiction, this is a lighthearted look at many deeper issues.
Author Ray Smith, whose previous books include The Man Who Loved Jane Austen,
has demonstrated once again that he is a master of the genre. As he leads us from reality
into the absurd, his writing provokes outright laughter on many occasions. Some readers
may be offended by the description of a sex change in progress and other sexual content.
This caveat aside, I would recommend the book -- although I am still not sure
what the connection to Emily Bronte is!' `Will's old flame, Gudrun, an Icelandic academic and self-proclaimed seer
wreaks havoc, usually accidental, wherever she goes with laugh-out-loud results.
Will's landlady and boss at the college, Heidi Felsen, formerly Hymie Felsen,
is unabashed about showing off her brand new breasts with their brand new
nipple rings.' `Notwithstanding the downbeat and brooding quality of his previous novel,
The Man Who Loved Jane Austen, Smith is essentially a comic novelist,
and he is at his sharpest when he adopts the mode of the satirist. The
sections of the book dealing with the college faculty, in which the
author lampoons notions such as "object-oriented course structures"
(which, amongst other things, try to advance the thesis that Irving
Layton and Leonard Cohen -- the most priapic poets in Canadian
literature?-are actually gay), recall the academic novels of Kingsley
Amis and David Lodge. And the depiction of Marie-Claire, the
French-Canadian "Ministre de la matrimonie et patrimonie sublime de la
nation" is reminiscent of Mordecai Richler at his most trenchant.' `Comic novels like this one are hard to pull off. A lot of writers have
failed miserably. The secret, which Smith has obviously figured out, is not
to worry about making your characters or your story too broad. If you're
writing a farce you want to keep everything, and everybody, three or four steps
removed from reality. ... So crack open The Man Who Hated Emily Bronte,
limber up your cheek muscles, and prepare to laugh. Because once you start,
you won't stop.' Ray Smith's inclusion in the recent Atwood and Bok-edited Anansi anthology
Avant Garde for Thee has probably done more for his current reputation
than the reception of any of his recent novels, all of which sold
to a small but devoted coterie of readers. He is still best known for his
early experimental works, but his last book, The Man Who Loved Jane Austen
was nevertheless widely reviewed ...
`From the top-heavy bureaucracy of Quebec's floundering education
system to anglo angst and the slow but certain death of Montreal,
Smith reaps a sort of harsh literary revenge on all he sees
wrong with contemporary life in this city.' `Throughout the novel sombre subject matter is skillfully
offset by dry humour, creating a sense of balance. It is
from this place of equilibrium that Smith moves us with a
well-told story of a man's personal struggles, while
engaging us with astute social commentary on anglophones who
call Montreal home but who stay ``with the gas tank full''.' `What makes The Man Who Loved Jane Austen Smith's best
work is the success with which he subordinates his formal
preoccupations to his characters and to his story which, in
its propulsive inevitability, is no less heartwrenching and,
ultimately, devastating.' `Watching the social forces around Frank buffet him
into what to most would be an unthinkable position
is watching a great tragedy unfold. All along, the
reader in her ironic position can see the injustices
and the scams, and rage against them, against Frank's
passivity now played out to a ridiculous extreme. Can
it really be that Frank is a metaphor for the anglo
in Quebec? Surely we are not so passive, so infantile,
so other? Even if the villains are caricatures, even
if the events seem too convenient at times, there is
enough in The Man Who Loved Jane Austen to shock us
into uneasy recognition of the anglos' complicity in
their own oppression.' `The Man Who Loved Jane Austen is a slow, inexorable slide
into pain and loss. What makes following this decline worthwhile is Smith's
exacting prose. He captures Montreal in all its beauty and turmoil,
he captures academic life and family life.' `It is to the inner realm of this off-kilter society of a university English
department that Ray Smith takes us in his novel, The Man Who Hated Emily Brontë.
The most easily recognizable character of Smith's gang is the rumpled
and aging academic who writes incomprehensible poetry, relates life
to literary sound bites and maliciously nicknames all who enter the department
with love - Toadies or Hippos, the Black Death or Orchid and Ensign Ass.
As The Man Who Hated Emily Brontë plays out, the reader becomes more
and more aware as to how à propos these names are; as the narrator, Ensign Ass,
moves his way through the degrees of asshood we come to understand
that his straight-laced demeanour, representing the norm society desires,
really is like most of us, a tight-ass. Rounding out the department
are a woman who is mysteriously sexy yet withdrawn, an Icelandic Amazon
who is a walking natural disaster and the department head who is a flouncy
transvestite who has changed from Hymie to Heidi in order to become
the lesbian lover of the Québec provincial minister in charge
of all things cultural. ...
`The Man Who Hated Emily Brontë may not be your ideal neighbour,
but he needs to be invited to the party.'
-- Matt Hartman, Canadian Book Review Annual
-- Joel Yanofsky, the Montreal Gazette
-- Steven W. Beattie, Books in Canada
-- David Pitt, the NoveScotian
-- The Westmount Examiner
-- Kim Bourgeois, the Montreal Review of Books
-- Robert Reid, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record
-- Globe and Mail
-- Victoria Daily Times
-- Robert LeBlanc, the Ultimate Hallucination
photo by Burt Covit
His first book, a collection of experimental short stories
entitled Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada
(1969), was one of the very first works of fiction to be published
by the House of Anansi. Widely acknowledged as a
milestone of early Canadian postmodernism, this
collection was reissued by the Porcupine's Quill in the late eighties.
His other works include the novels Lord Nelson Tavern,
Century, A Night at the Opera (which won the QSPELL Hugh
MacLennan Prize for Fiction), and, most recently, The Man Who Loved Jane Austen.