Bedrooms of the nation

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

Back in the 1990s, Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press put out an anthology called Carnal Nation: Brave New Sex Fictions. The goal of the editors was to prove that Canadian literature isn’t all “safe and polite,” and that a new generation of homegrown writers was unabashedly embracing sex in fiction.

The anthology did succeed in displaying a modern attitude toward sex in its tales of lust by the light of CNN. But in doing so, it reaffirmed the long-standing observation that our national literature is entirely devoid of erotic sensibilities. In the tales of Carnal Nation – as in the narratives of most CanLit – sex is rarely a pleasurable event. Instead, it is often used as a metaphor for politics, identity, globalization, consumerism – almost everything but sex itself.

Stephen Marche’s quietly brilliant debut novel, Raymond and Hannah, which advertises itself as a blend of “the intellectual and the sexual,” may provide some answers to why CanLit always seems to turn the sexual into the social.

The novel follows the relationship of the title characters, who meet at a party in Toronto. At first, the narrative focuses entirely on their sexual desires and frustrations. Raymond broods over the recent end of a relationship that died after “five sexless weeks,” while Hannah thinks, “I must bring home a man.” The two of them quickly pair off and start swapping sexual secrets and tales of past lovers.

When they move on to Hannah’s apartment to begin an intense affair, readers could be forgiven for thinking somebody in the literary version of Toronto is at last going to get some action. After all, it’s clear not only from the book’s content but also its structure that this is a modern tale. The lovers’ story is told in fragments that jump between points of view and invoke the style of contemporary film. The book also has a stream-of-consciousness element to it, giving readers the sense they are privy to the characters’ darkest secrets.

It comes as a surprise then when the book follows a rather conventional trajectory by veering away from sex as something to be enjoyed. Rather than focus on the erotic elements of the pair’s lovemaking, the Toronto author glosses over them or renders them decidedly unerotic: “In the initial stages of an affair, it is appropriate to remain within the established realms of foreplay and intercourse. At least within the first month, preferably earlier, fellatio and cunnilingus should be added to the repertoire.”

In fact, sex quickly becomes an impossibility, as Hannah flies off to Israel to learn, as she puts it, how to become more Jewish. From then on, the story becomes one of Raymond and Hannah trying to negotiate various obstacles to their intimacy. They communicate via e-mail, and thus their very relationship is disembodied almost as soon as it begins, reduced to bits of digital code and carried out in the gaps between time zones.

The revelation that the trappings of the modern world can be an impediment to intimacy is nothing new to CanLit. Russell Smith has effectively chronicled the distractions of urban life when it comes to romance, and the detached, emotionally dead characters of Michelle Berry and Annabel Lyon suggest that true intimacy is growing increasingly difficult as the violence of our times seeps into our lives.

So while writers from other countries may use symbols of technology to explore the ever-expanding frontiers of sexual fantasy – such as American writer Nicholson Baker’s taboo-busting Vox and The Fermata, in which technology plays a liberating rather than restrictive role – Marche and other Canadian writers keep things in classical territory, sticking to old-fashioned tropes of angst and alienation.

Indeed, Marche’s characters are almost mired in the past. Raymond is a PhD student studying melancholy and Hannah’s explorations of her Jewish roots lead her more deeply into history. In the best literary tradition, these are characters estranged from the modern world.

There’s nothing uniquely Canadian about isolation and failed love affairs, but Marche does invoke the CanLit tradition in several subtle ways. First, there’s the vast distance separating the lovers – what could be more Canadian than that? How about the negotiation of ethnic identities? Hannah’s relocation to Israel and her attempt to discover her heritage begins an uncertain process in which the characters feel each other out (no pun intended), a course that threatens to destroy the whole relationship. This is the cultural mosaic in a nutshell.

When Raymond commits an action that causes the end of their liaison, they can’t simply walk away from it, but must find a way to create a new relationship, to find a new order for their lives.

The background to their efforts is the landscape of Israel, where the elements of modern life meet history, sometimes clashing but sometimes creating new ways of living. Raymond and Hannah’s past, present and future are played out in a hybrid realm of cultural and historical juxtapositions: soldiers with machine guns and the Wailing Wall, the Sabbath and jet lag, People magazine and the Torah, God and Toronto.

And therein lies the crux of the sex-in-CanLit issue. Raymond and Hannah suggests there can be no revelry in sex, no flight into erotic fantasy, because there is no way to escape the entanglements of ethnicity, of history, of technology, of all the things that make up the modern world. No matter how much the characters may wish to escape their lives and their heritages and engage in meaningless, unencumbered sex, they cannot. The reality of their lives always remains and intrudes on their very desires.

In this sense, Marche has much in common with older writers such as Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro, who refuse the easy seductions of erotic fulfillment and sex for sex’s sake because they understand romance, love and lust are not only embedded in history, they are formed out of it and return to it.

Marche sums this up in the conclusion to Raymond and Hannah, which is a meditation upon the lovers’ bodies. It is a dreamlike passage that attempts to escape into sheer physicality, but even here the reality of the world encroaches: “From her mouth, the smell of magnolias and gasoline and fishrot, and in his eyes: immigrants constantly greeting their families in airports.”

Erotic? No. Sexy? Yes. In a Canadian sort of way.

Peter Darbyshire is books editor at the Vancouver Province and author of the novel Please.

Letters:

So, are Canadian writers not writing about sex for pleasures, or are Canadian publishers not accepting writers who write about sex for pleasure?

Amy Whitmore
St. Andrews, New Brunswick

I don't mean to quibble, but it's more than a little misleading to neglect to mention that Del Jordon is still a child when she "develops a flirtation" with an adult war veteran in Lives of Girls and Women. At best it's careless; at worst, it's like believing Humbert Humbert when he exclaims that Lolita seduced him. I understand that the list of "sex" scenes was compiled to illuminate the general weirdness of sex in CanLit. Would not a mention of Del's age have aided such an illumination?

Cheratra
Vancouver, British Columbia