ENDNOTES
hairier than Coupland’s city, and comes with grimy alleyways, a squalid past and suitably grainy black-and-white photographs that make it seem like there is little or no daylight in the Vancouver that Demers inhabits. The text is marred by large block quotes taken from the routines of stand-up comics; these may have been funny live at Yuk Yuk’s but they’re much less so in print—in condensed bold caps, no less. But Demers explores his city thoroughly and readably; the result is textured and calls for lots of dippingback-into; its proper audience is people who live in Vancouver, rather than visitors easily hypnotized by images in picture postcards. Demers can be windy, especially when he ascends (only rarely) into Theory with a capital T and gives in to the temptation to write, for example, of when “the narrative, emotive pull of the hegemon loses some of its power.” He makes a strong claim for street pizza, especially the product found at Uncle Fatih’s on Broadway, but let the reader be warned against the advice of gourmands. For we have eaten the pizza at Fatih’s (after reading Vancouver Special) and we will not be eating it again.
NEPALI NIGHTMARE Jenny Kent
T
he Nepali novel Palpasa Café by the journalist Narayan Wagle (Publication Nepa~laya) addresses the civil war that plagued Nepal for ten years. Based on true events, it follows a Nepali artist, Drishya, and his encounters with a young woman by the name of Palpasa in India and Kathmandu. The prose is dense and flowery and at times its poetic zeal put me off, but I persevered, reminding
Horton Family with Dog. Imperial Oil-Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame Collection. From Tim Horton: From Stanley Cups to Coffee Cups by Don Quinlan (McNally Robinson). When Tim Horton: From Stanley Cups to Coffee Cups arrived in the Geist office, this photo caught everyone’s eye. For a young friend of mine, the photo depicts a mythical world (“I didn’t know people actually lived like that”) like the one depicted in the hbo series Madmen, and for me, a child of the ’50s, this photo looks like so many that were taken of my own family: set up the bright lights and have everyone look at the same thing (not at the camera). I had the same haircut, cotton dress and white socks as the little girl; my mother wore cotton dresses too, and pearls. Even the chesterfield could have been ours. In fact, when I see photos like this, I feel like back then we might have lived in black and white all the time. —Patty Osborne myself that something subtle may have been lost in the translation to English. The story spirals into something more heart-wrenching and meaningful when, following the massacre of the royal family, Drishya is forced out of his art gallery in Kathmandu and returns to his home village on a month-long trek with his college friend Siddartha, now a Maoist leader. The reader is spun through broken reunions, civilian deaths and disappearances, bombed police shelters, and villages emptied of children—all recruited for the
Maoist cause. (Children young enough to be in school use phrases like “Where words don’t work, bullets do.”) We see a country torn asunder by violence. (A boatman explains: “Someone will ask, ‘Why did you take that person across the river? Who was he? Why didn’t you report it?’ and one day I won’t have the right answer.”) Meanwhile, as the hills of his childhood are drenched in blood, Drishya dreams of opening a café for artists. Every room would be a gallery looking out into the mountains, and the café Spring 2010 • G E IST 76 • Page 77