W.D. Clarke

SKINNER BOXED

“And so the truth, Dr. Ed would maintain, is always a little darker, always a few shades more opaque, than one would prefer to admit...”

Dr. Ed, the professor of psychiatry at the university and the department head at University Hospital, woke up breathing heavily, and sat bolt upright, with an instant-on alertness that he had not experienced in years. His wife takes no notice of this. She is a self-medicating sleep-walker and an enthusiast of the narcotic action of (both over-the-counter and prescription) nighttime cold and headache medications, and would not regain consciousness until she was good and ready.

He dreamt. His yesterday’s dream had carried him over to today’s morning. Unusual for him. To dream that is. Details are forgotten, but he does remember the feeling. The sensation of a particular kind of presence, the presence of a kind of absence, in the thoracic region of his anterior body, slightly to the left of the midline.

Take note of this ‘presence’ or should I say absence of something? Dr. Ed sure does. But his professional life has to continue. Dr. Ed goes into work. Dr. Ed sees his patients: A pair of pre-pubescent male twins with attention deficit disorder and a severe personality disorder, medication-resistant teenage-onset schizophrenics, a privately paying queue-jumper pharmaceutical tourist with a multiple personality disorder albeit self-diagnosed, an overweight patient nicknamed ‘The Emu’ who suffers manic episodes after stopping her lithium intake, Mrs. Missy Plumtree, a doctoral candidate in English literature, who is also prone to periods of emotional volatility like hitting her head against a telephone pole to get her husband’s attention.

Now let’s get to know Dr. Ed better. Let’s talk Dr. Ed, or rather about what Dr. Ed hates in life:

Cats
Mushrooms
Physical Disability
Small Towns
Loud Music
Tears (Especially his Wife’s)
Dandelions
Aggressive Females
Chrysler Cars
Unions
Sports
Controversy
Arguments
Emotional Displays
Imitation Leather
German Opera
Evangelical Ministers
His wife’s TV preferences
Telemarketers
Politicians
Civil Servants
Spiritual People
Street People
Fat People
Loud People
Bald People
Messy People
Immigrant People
Foreign People
Old People
Young People
Little People
Sick People
Weak People
Other People

Quite a list, right?

Does this list truly reflect Dr. Ed’s personal opinions, affirms his world view? It was composed by his wife’s hand, after all. I mean come on, this is Dr. Ed we are talking about here. Dr. Ed with his legendarily even temper, the one who never allows himself to feel. The one who acts accordingly. With his steel reputation of dispassionate fair-mindedness. He fancies himself a beacon of light for the great many in the dark, a part of this unreasonable world acting well... unreasonably. Not a grudge carrier. Therefore, just trying to illuminate a path for his wife. A wife who also writes lists like the above example. But doesn’t a wife know her husband rather intimately?

List aside, his wife’s opinion aside, Dr. Ed is a busy guy. He is experimenting with an experimental new drug named Alba, the newest development on the pharmacological front, which targets the brain receptors for ‘feelings’ of overwhelming guilt, burden and loss. A clinical trial, free of charge curtesy of the pharmaceutical giant Eumeta PLC.

A for-sure, friggin’ bloody miracle for “…sub-clinical, functional patients...: those who ‘get by’ from day to day, those who experience no major, incapacitating crises, but who diagnostic profile placed them significantly outside the first standard deviation.”

Not all is bad for Ed after all. He gets to spearhead this clinical trial, has a nice office with refinement of civilised Rome. And he even drives a Mazda RX-7, the best sports car in the world. Not to mention, and this must be mentioned, he eats flown in Nova Scotian sauerkraut. That’s right. Do you? Do I? I bet the answer is No. But Dr. Ed does.

If only he could resolve issues with his wife. Stuck in a mysterious marriage rut. His wife never being home. Always out, shopping. It consumes her. But once upon a time, she wasn’t as predictable as she was now. She was actually very UN-predictable and wild, reminding Dr. Ed of his mother and an old flame whose heart he broke in his youth. She may be crazy. But the good crazy, electric crazy, crazy with energy, which a man like Dr. Ed finds appealing.

“A bit of drama, a sense of danger, the knowledge of never knowing where one stands, the necessity of risk-taking, the primacy of continual courtship.”

But it all came with too high a price for taming this unsuccessful sculptress and very much a perturbed, energized electron. Archimedean solids, acrylic cubes. Who one day ceased her sculpturing and commenced her shopping, a pattern of procuration. A person whose catalogue of needs and wants could never be assuaged. Single-handedly buoying up the local economy.

And now other issues pile on. Don’t they always. Max is missing (the sliver of bright light in Dr. Ed's life. Just Max & he, he & Max). His current wife is missing. His ex-wife pops up after a lengthy interval of 27 years. He is receiving cryptic messages from fraser@hoteldieu.org. And he is now a not-exactly proud owner of a hypertrophied genetically modified Mr. Potato Head nose which has been broken in place of a bad review. All leaving him in such a state where he is quite beside himself. And did I mention a secret ‘son’? Yes, there’s one of those, named Ted. A one sided reunion with his now-adult son. Ted. Teddy. Tedster. Theodore.

That’s a lot, isn’t it? But it’s gotten you curious, hasn’t it? About Dr. Ed and his abilities to overcome. To problem solve. This man who is usually... no, always, in complete control, now dealing with unprecedented circumstances. Dr. Ed has a switch. A switch he can flick located somewhere in his mind. Whenever he overreacts, he simply flicks the switch. Which diverted negative emotions and stores them for later processing. But his switch isn’t that easy to flick these days. Hack, his centre of gravity, isn’t even locatable.

It all feels like a weird dream, doesn’t it? Except this is Dr. Ed’s reality. And folks, what a reality it is. This isn’t skunkpiss beer, this is the good stuff. This isn’t that old Canadian novel about broken families and prairies full of wheat. This is the new Canadiana movement.

“Art was merely the expression of a kind of failure in life, and, if you sat and ‘thought’ it over for a second or two, who needed that?”

Well, I do. Imagine thinking W.D. Clarke’s vision was a failure. That this wasn’t the definition of art. High art. Great art. The man is a wordsmith, forever toying with the reader, leading us down labyrinthine paths. This is a carefully constructed, lovingly dotted upon work with Pynchonian intelligence and plenty of its own characteristic traits to stand on its own, while still paying homage. Witty, wonderful, clinical yet playful, diabolically clever really. Shame on us all letting this writer sit around. He should be read and reviewed weekly. He is that good. If no one has given him his flowers, allow me to do so now. Here you are, Bill. You deserve it.

LOVE'S ALCHEMY

A novella told through dialogue, with a multitude of characters and shiting time periods. One character named Ame ties it all together. That's A-M-E. Not to be confused with Amy. Everyone gets it wrong. But you shouldn't. Let me help you. Pronounced Ahh-may. Named by her Japanese mother after the rain. Also means 'soul' in French.

At a birthday party for a friend, everyone wants to hear a particular tale from her life, one which she has recounted many times before but not to all the people at the party. Not to David, The Entrepreneur whom she is being matched with (who also reminds her of Roger, but we will get to Roger in a river flowing second). This story takes us back in time to Tokyo. When Ame used to live in Japan back between '86 & '89. She'd spend some time there as a kid, returned as an adult with her then boyfriend, Tim, the Edmontonian Canuck. While also pursued by Roger Scruton, nicknamed the most approachable nickname in the history of nicknames, The Kid.

The Kid is a Tory speech writer with a compulsion for pissing in rivers. Don't ask me. Ask Roger why he enjoys pissing in the rivers. I prefer the toilet. A tree if stranded in the Canadian wilderness. But I do not go out of my way to find a river. That I don't do. But Roger does. Ame knows about Roger's dirty little secret but allows it to slide. On the whole, she finds him fairly entertaining. His banter takes her back, back to McGill, back to those heady classes in Joyce. They originally met as undergrads at McGill, she from Victoria, he from Shawinigan, but both living on St. Viatur and both double-majoring in Poli-Sci and English. There is something about him that draws her in. A magnetism not based on looks.

But Roger isn't particularly special, just one in a long line of suitors chasing after Ame. There was also Gerald, Isaac, Tim, Roger and now David. All interconnected. Providing us with episodic glimpsing. Making us piece it all together. Trying to piece together Ame and understand what it is that she wants.

Is Ame serious? Semi-serious? About love? About anything. Will she invest? Will she commit? Is she looking for something less demanding, emotionally? What are her thoughts on love and connectivity? Is there love? True connection? or are we "...too jaded to believe that what we see when we connect with someone is anything other than a reflection of our own desires and needs?" And will Ame forever be the one 'who got away' for so many from her past and perhaps present and near future?

This novella is a succulent Bosc pear. Take a bite. This story is a moment of transport, a rise and fall of breath, a shallow in-breath followed by a deep collapsing exhalation.

And now is the time for the test, dear readers. Can you eat the slippery mountain potato with chopsticks? If you can, you win a killer diller beer. Trust me, you want this beer, my friends.… (más)

The writing style in White Mythology was unexpected and a bit difficult at first but it's so intriguing and different from anything I've read that it really didn't put me off and made me feel quite accomplished by the end after managing to piece everything together as it wasn’t dumbed down like many books of this kind. I found the novellas to be very clever and stimulating right up to the very end and would love to read more from WD Clarke. Something new and challenging was just what I needed and that’s exactly what I got with White Mythology.… (más)

The stream-of-consciousness style executed in Clark's WHITE MYTHOLOGY rivals Virginia Woolf. Because of this very trying stylistic choice, this is not the easiest read you will ever approach, however it is well worth the effort.

The first novella, Skinner Boxed, takes you on a wild ride through a few difficult days of a not-so-young but not-so-old psychiatrist dealing with his materialistic, missing wife, a new found son, and a lost love that has reentered his life. His coping mechanism are far from clinical and beautifully depicts the desperate humanity contained within us all. Love's Alchemy, the second novella, jumps around in time and main character while constantly building towards a singular tale. It is difficult to follow, but I could not put it down.

This read is not for the faint of heart or the absent minded reader. It is intense and complicated and demands your entire attention to really grasp everything that is going on. This is the kind of book I would expect to find in one of my graduate level literature courses.… (más)