Notes on Literature: *The Colony of Unrequited Dreams*
Big Red Jeff Rubard
"Wayne Johnston's" novel of Newfoundland is a serious piece of
*Americana*: few understand the continent and its exigencies, or lack
thereof with respect to certain issues, unless they understand the
central *concet* of the novel. What a "Newfie", even if they are famed
for stupidity, knows is this: Communism was a British scam, for they
had it in the Commonwealth of Canada and not in the "independent"
colony of Newfoundland, although Newfoundlanders were always inventing
ways to "turn a dollar into fifty cents" and profit there-from;
certainly two creatures as strange as "Joe Smallwood" [curs't, for his
family had changed their name and it sounded Jewish, which was
unfortunate since the orig. name was not Jewish, although they were
Jewish, enough anyway, apparently] and Sheilagh Fielding [blest with a
fine patronymic, for it sounded Jewish and this convenient on account
of her being Jewish, though the "country" prove misleading on some
points].
Over a long life in the Eastern isle, Mr. Smallwood and Fielding
(whose "Condensed History of Newfoundland" is, *mirabile dictu*, what
you think it is) take the vocabulary and practices of socialism to
pieces, with trips to New York (paralleled in "American" life by New
York), vignettes involving Dorothy Day, the serious business of
Northern Capitalism, and a *secret couverte* of the sort that the
*unifie* Commonwealth permits even today. Quite the thing for
realising even that Nova Scotians must needs understand the
limitations on their enthusiasm for Futurist progress, certainly in a
day-and-age when the NDP portends nostalgic memories: Can a "health"
not quite real, in favor of the "hard yards" of life lived seriously
among a mass al-ways -- obviously, *obviously*, not to the fullest.
And yet *our* land, enough, it is; where there are no "unrequited
dreams" as there can be no such thing, only realities which *somehow*
fail to satisfy, even in Colony None.
Jeff Rubard
Jeff Rubard
Hi, Rachel. Nice touch with Ratmansky.