Book Review: G.A. Grisenthwaite • by André Narbonne • 2

Book Review: The Trouble With Transcendence by André Narbonne             Taking place the same year as the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee, Home Waltz engages with the quotidian details of life on the Lytton Reserve. Wounded Knee was a watershed historical event that has proved a touchstone for indigenous authors including Tomson Highway and Thomas King. It goes unvisited in Grisenthwaite’s work. AIM is referred to only obliquely. The greatest outside influence on Squito’s life is AM music including non-charting songs by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show and television programs like The Edge of Night and The Partridge Family. The novel is divided into sections of time bookended by “Ungodly Hours” a time of history-as-dream and projection, opening with Squito’s dream-memory of his last meeting with his cousin Erica. Erica became diabetic eating the same junk food diet as Squito, was rejected by her séme [white] boyfriend, and committed suicide. The dream-memory trespasses on a wet dream about another girl, Bernie, who works in the hotel restaurant. Bernie is beautiful, older, and only attainable in dreams. The intrusion of a memory-dream about Erica on an unconscious sex act indicates the impossibility of arriving at self-identity through a sort of sexual transcendence. From get-go, Squito’s pursuit is escapist. On the Lytton Reserve, escapism has the intellectual nutritional value of a bowl of sugar. Indeed, a drunken sex act will lead to the novel’s tragic turn. The narrator’s question, “Could I hate myself as much as Erica hated herself,” might be read as the epic question of the novel.             In his hometown, the protagonist is an outsider in the eyes of white authority, including teachers, visiting police officers, store owners, magistrates. His status as a half-breed/mixed blood nłeʔkepmx makes him a half-outsider to some of his neighbours. The social landscape is one of broken authority. The magistrate is known to masturbate in public, school teachers favour white students, parental guidance includes a father exposing his son’s genitalia in the bar. The following passage is typical of Grisenthwaite’s engaging and unforgiving prose: Skinny’s dad used to drag him into the pub and measure it in front of all kinds of guys. It started back in Grade Seven, when most of us were still looking for the first of our pubes. You’d think having a bunch of old drunks gawking and pawing at your dick would’ve embarrassed him but no, he’d come out waving a wad of singles, sometimes as much as ten dollars, smiling as big as someone who’d just gotten laid. Skinny’s dad probably made a ton of money betting on the size of his son’s dink, maybe not enough to pay the rent and stuff, but his winnings had earned him a lot of drinking money. You could offer me a cool million dollars and it still wouldn’t be enough to get me to whip out my little chief for anyone to gawk at. Skinny’s happy to show his to anyone who asks to see it and even those who don’t.    [  >>>>>   FORWARD ]   + [Distillate © HA&L + André Narbonne {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]