Weir, Gail

English

University of New Brunswick: Centre for Digital Scholarship Journals

Her stated reason was that “the lunatic audacity of shoving a mild pill at their totalsituation was more than I could stomach” (198). “Her desire to be sensitive to cul-tural difference outweighed her urge to make a feminist intervention” (198). It ishard to see how giving a woman aspirin for menstrual pain could be construed as“meddling.” Laurence used the girl prostitute as material for one of her stories. Inher novel set in Africa, This Side Jordan, a European man, Johnny, “sexually bru-talizes an inexperienced prostitute,” and then brutally rapes an African virgin whohas been bought for him as a bribe (202). “The woman suffers pain so that Johnniecan have a moment of redemption” and recognize Africans as fellow-humans(204). Not every reader would agree with Roy that Laurence is not only “an anti-imperialist writer but also a ground-breaking feminist” (206).Roy’s views on Laurence may not be shared by all, and the Laurence chapterraises some disturbing issues. Her controversial work indicates some of the inade-quacies of her travel writers’ efforts to “map” their own and other cultures, but alsothe necessity of attempting to do so.Roberta BuchananMemorial UniversityRon Pumphrey. Human Beans. St. John’s, 2007, ISBN 1-897317-09-9RON PUMPHREY IS a well-known figure in eastern Canada and especially in hishome-province of Newfoundland and Labrador, mainly because of his 1970s-1980s open line radio programmes where he greeted listeners with his exuberant“Hello my Lovelies.” That audience already knew that he had “the gift of the gab.”With this, the first installment of his autobiography, we discover that, not only canhe tell a good story, he is one of that rare breed who can also translate that gift to pa-per, with words and images that jump off the page and engage the reader.While his previous books were mainly biographies that celebrated the lives ofothers, this work recreates the lives of the author, his immediate family, and thecommunities around them, told, for the most part, from the point of view of thegrowing boy. As with his speaking style, his writing style is flamboyant in thisimaginative retelling of his first eight years. Some names have been changed to pro-tect the innocent, but those familiar with Harbour Grace and Bell Island in the mid-twentieth century will know and remember most of those mentioned. Others willget a good sense of the local citizenry. The book is full of the joys of childhood, witha generous dose of the fears, misgivings, and disappointments. Pumphrey writesabout it all with enthusiasm and great sense of discovery.More than the antics of a young boy growing up in a rapidly-changing world,this is an anthropological study of the era as seen through the fresh eyes of an in-quisitive child. There is honesty and true wonder in his unfolding comprehension ofthe ways of the Depression-era world. This book is rich in folklore, sociology, natu-Reviews 87ral history, linguistics, religious belief systems, and feminism in its infancy. Thereare insights into the all-powerful Roman Catholic church and its great hold on thehearts and minds of its people. We see the ravages of disease before wide-spreadvaccination and today’s wonder drugs, including the now-unknown phenomenonof household quarantine. Invalid family members are cared for at home as a matterof course and there is the ever-present spectre of death. Communities are made upof larger-than-life characters who are accepted as part of the social fabric.We learn about the effects of World War I on Pumphrey’s family. The manwho would become his father was a true man of mystery. The British War Officedeclared Ike Pumphrey dead. To the amazement of all, more than a decade after theend of the war, he showed up back in Harbour Grace with a lump on the back of hishead, reputedly put there by the butt of a German rifle, a blow that caused a loss ofmemory and kept him from home and family for so long. What his life was like inthe interval became the subject of much speculation amongst the local gossips.Meanwhile, Ike’s brother suffered shell-shock and, although he returned home ingood time, he never fully recovered.The book opens in 1929 with the traumatic return of 41-year-old Ike and hissubsequent meeting and courtship of Mary Fleming. She being not even half hisage, her mother is none too thrilled with this union. This part of the book is writtenin a prose style that is reflective of that era and may not be to everyone’s taste today,but perseverance is well worth the effort. The author soon assumes his childhood-memory voice and the words begin to flow smoothly, catching the reader up in hisyouthful exuberance. We feel his sense of wonder as he explores the family’s newhome on Bell Island with its attic playroom crowned by an actual skylight, throughwhich he can watch the stars and moon while dreaming of a life of adventure. Hisreliving of swinging off the dock at Harbour Grace overflows with a joi-de-vivrethat is so rarely experienced in one’s lifetime. As the little boy flies off the dock andover the water clinging to a rope, he realizes for the first time that all things are pos-sible, and the reader’s heart soars with him (204-206).Pumphrey’s recollection of everyday life of 70 years ago is extraordinary. Thereis beauty in the many small details, such as his recollection of his father lighting thefire in the wood/coal kitchen stove, for many readers a now-lost art which was socentral to the daily routine at that time. He dreads the idea of starting school, wherethe school bully, Pug Sweeney, “used to beat up the students whether he liked themor not.” But his parents prevail and he enters the world of priests and nuns whopreach the horrors of sex, sin, and hell. The child interprets canon law as “big gunlaw” (161). His description of his first-grade teacher, Sister Madeline, explaining“eternity” is nothing short of amazing (118-120). On coming face-to-face with histormentor, Pug, one day, he is “immobilizedly alarmed” but manages to execute hisbrazen revenge with all the ingenuity and precision of a Hollywood movie sting op-eration (154).88 ReviewsDescriptive phrases seem to flow as easily as ink from Pumphrey’s pen. Someof his imagery will shock and perhaps appal, while simultaneously evoking memo-ries of one’s own childish shenanigans and shortcomings. There are moments ofsorrow, but many more of humour. Pumphrey is at his most poignant, and funniest,when writing about his dread of his stern, secretive father, who keeps his mysteri-ous box of papers hidden on the top shelf of his wardrobe. What will Ike do when hediscovers that Little Ronnie has stood on tiptoe on a chair and pulled the locked boxdown into “my fear-heaving chest” (87)? It is a revelation to the young boy that hismother is less upset about his breaking open the box than he expected her to be but,instead, is as much interested in its contents as he is. One of the author’s uncles wasan actor/impersonator in the “mini-theatres of British Columbia and Toronto.”When he began crashing St. John’s parties dressed as a naval officer, Ike scoffed atthe irony, saying that he “would get seasick if the wind blew across a saucer of tea”(127). These words are pure poetry, for not only do they draw an indelible picture ofthis man in a single unexpected phrase, but they transport the reader back to thatfirst experience with hot tea, when mother poured the piping-hot liquid from theteacup into the saucer, and then blew on it so that it would cool quickly and not burntender lips.The book’s setting moves from the once-thriving, but by now economically-depressed Harbour Grace, where Ron was born and where his grandparents lived,to Bell Island, where boom times are about to start with an increased demand foriron ore by Germany as it gears up for yet another war. His father found work withDOSCO, the operator of the mines, first as a mess-shack cook, and then as a companypoliceman. The setting then shifts back to Harbour Grace to round out this instal-ment of the author’s life. This latter move illustrates a reality of many families in thedays before the advent of the birth control pill, when older children, often thehard-to- control boys, were shuffled off to live with grandparents to take pressureoff a young mother with too many babies to care for. In this case, Ron was the eldestson and the apple of both his grandmother’s eye and that of his unmarried aunt. Is itany wonder he thought the world revolved around him?The book’s title comes from the child’s misunderstanding of the words hethinks he hears the adults say when they refer to “human beings” in their Irish-Newfoundland accent. It could be subtitled “The Curse of the Torn Caul” as this cir-cumstance of his birth surfaces many times throughout the book as his family triesto understand and explain the wild antics of their boy. To be born “in a caul” (a fetalmembrane) was unique, a symbol of good luck and protection from evil, and a signof future greatness. Unfortunately for little Ronnie, he was born with a torn caul,widely believed to be a sign of doom. “I came into the world not just with a fabledcaul about my face, but a torn caul — some say a shredded one” (19).Ron Pumphrey is the author of twelve previous books: eight volumes of Who’sWho and Why in Newfoundland and Labrador, two books on prominent persons (J.R. Smallwood and the Crosbie family), one of “Newfie” jokes, and one of StrangeReviews 89Facts About Newfoundland. During the 1950s, he wrote numerous articles for suchpublications as the Newfoundland Journal of Commerce and the Atlantic Guard-ian. Starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, he edited fourcommunity newspapers: the Bell Island Reporter, Conception Bay Times, TheTown Crier, and The Suburban Mirror. Over the course of his 77 years he has triedhis hand at an array of occupations to help pay the bills, so many that the term “Jackof all trades” springs to mind. After reading Human Beans, it is clear that this term’snegative follow-up phrase, “master of none,” does not apply. This self-professedeccentric is very much a master storyteller and this, his 13th book, proves it. I lookforward to reading about his next eight years.Gail WeirMemorial UniversityBernice Morgan. Cloud of Bone. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007, ISBN 978-0-676-97938-1dead Indians are safer—in poems, museums…Mary Dalton, from “dead Indians” in Allowing the LightTHERE WAS A TIME when anyone could write about First Nations and other Aborigi-nal people, except perhaps Aboriginal writers who were hard-pressed to find pub-lishers. Then the whole situation changed. Akenashau writers were running a graverisk if they dared to adopt the narrative voice of an Inuk hunter or a Cree grand-mother. At writers’ conferences and literary gatherings, Lee Maracle or Basil John-son or one of dozens of other competent, angry First Nations authors was likely toleap out of the audience and denounce the writer for “appropriation of voice.” DeadIndians, as Mary Dalton so succinctly put it, were indeed safer. Beothuk voices pro-liferated.Times change and it is no longer safe to write even about Beothuks, not leastbecause we are no longer sure they are all underground or locked into museums.The late Ralph Pastore speculated that the Beothuk may have been a branch of theInnu nation, no more different from the people of Natauashish and Sheshatshiu thanthose bands are from one another. Ingeborg Marshall is taking DNA samples frompeople in the Port aux Port area to see if they are truly of Mi’kmaq descent or if theyperhaps carry some Beothuk genes. If it turns out that the akenashau did not exter-minate the Beothuks, it may be a psychological load off their minds, but it will cer-tainly force a new political reality upon us. Should Elizabeth Penashue turn out tobe first-cousin to Shanawdithit, Newfoundlanders are going to have a hard time ig-noring her vociferous protest against the Lower Churchill Development project.90 Reviews

Ron Pumphrey. Human Beans.

https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NFLDS/article/download/10181/10511

Ron Pumphrey. Human Beans.

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of New Brunswick: Centre for Digital Scholarship Journals