Monthly Archives: July 2011

In place of feel­ing, we’re served a smor­gas­bord of left­over senti­men­tal­i­ties topped with cheap ironies like stale whipped cream; in place of thought, a cata­logue of lnfor­ma­tion Canada plat­i­tudes; in place of reasoned polit­i­cal analy­sis, an undi­gested lump of anti-​American rhetoric no self-​respecting para­noiac would lay claim to. And, at the end, we have a cop-​out even in terms of the novel itself: another of those weary recon­cil­i­a­tions in which, god help us, Revolt is snuffed out in the great damp blan­ket of lnstant Tran­scen­dence. Women take note: the message here, what Surfac­ing at last comes down to, is that Woman’s place really is, after all, with her Man, just as long as he’s a Cana­dian : “he may have been sent as a trick. But he isn’t an Amer­i­can, l can see that now; he isn’t anything, he is only half-​formed, and for that reason l can trust him.”