“My Present Age” by Guy Vanderhaege

People rarely fall in love anymore. They interface. They prepare quiche together and hold joint bank accounts. Forge alliances of convenience or desperation, depending on one’s degree of cynicism. But love—unfaltering affection, imprudent passion—apparently has little to do with today’s relationships. It appears that we begin our partnerships assuming bad faith, the way the Inquisitors approached interrogations. Not much to build on there.

What’s more, we seem to have become chronically suspicious of any other kind of alliance. Anything that smacks of feeling—that implies affection, passion, commitment—is considered in poor taste. Neurotic, perhaps even worse. A throwback to a time when it was possible to believe in other antiquated relics—king, country, a divine being.

We rarely even ask any longer what if? What if there was love that didn’t wither on the vine? That grew and prospered in these barren, neutralized, interfacing times? What if even one person believed unambiguously in love—and wasn’t prepared to throw it all over at the first signs of fraying in the relationship thread with an offhand, “it just wasn’t in the cards.”

In My Present Age Guy Vanderhaeghe portrays a man for whom love of that desperate, all-encompassing kind is a reality. And it is a credit to his not inconsiderable talents that he is able to make us believe that an overweight, feckless, and desperate loser might embody the stuff of love and elevate it above the tawdry machinations of Harlequin Romances.

My Present Age concerns the life of Ed, a character Vanderhaeghe introduced to us in his award-winning collection of short stories, Man Descending. He’s in his early thirties, alone and unemployed. At the outset of this novel Ed has quit his job at Eaton’s selling china and is living in a run-down apartment block. His wife, Victoria, has left him, and though he has some money from an insurance policy he cashed, he is near desperation. With a nervous breakdown behind him, confused that life has not worked out according to his fantasies, he is frustrated that he has been abandoned by the only person he’s ever loved (and who, it appears, has ever loved him). Since Victoria has left him, Ed has been unable to do anything. He cannot work; he feels listless; he can hardly muster the courage to get out of bed. He does, however, answer a summons from Victoria to meet him at a chic restaurant, and there falls victim to his obsessive curiosity; in tears, Victoria leaves him without telling him what he later learns from a friend: that she is pregnant. He feels compelled to find the only woman he has ever loved.

Thus begins a curious comedic quest through Saskatoon. A quest reminiscent at once of Bloom’s quest through Dublin, and of another love-tortured Saskatchewan Quixote, Ken Mitchell’s “wandering Rafferty”. Ed sets out in the middle of the February ravages to track down Victoria; he surmises she is staying at a motel, so he is looking for her car. Of course every Quixote needs his Sancho Panza, and Ed’s is a scruffy, semi-literate ex-con who owns a flashy car and wants Ed to read his memoirs, Society’s Revenge: The Stanley Rubacek Story.

Much of the best in Vanderhaeghe’s comic novel concerns the alliance struck between these two outcasts. They huddle in freezing cars, exchanging insults and sipping from a thermos of rum and coffee. Their dialogue is hard and bright, with an exquisite edge that strikes nicely between side-slapping comedy and black wisdom. (Stanley would like to convert the lethargic, lubbery Ed to health foods and daily exercise, while Ed is concerned solely with tracking down his one true love.)

One of their exchanges concerns Ed’s role as the editor of Stanley’s book. Stanley reveals that Ed was not his first choice as literary mentor:

No offence to you, perfessor, but the guy I’d really like to have helped me on The Stanley Rubacek Story is the little jam tart used to be on Merv Griffin all the time years ago. The guy with a voice like Porky Pig without the stutter.
Truman Capote?
Right. That’s him.
He could be difficult to persuade. You wouldn’t get Mr. Capote for a couple of rides in a ‘71 purple Grand Prix.
Well, yeah, didn’t I guess.

Whatever the subject of discussion, Ed cannot keep his mind off Victoria. He is a man desperately in love. Irresponsible, unreliable, cowardly, and obnoxious, he is nevertheless committed to an unusual brand of caring that Vanderhaeghe would like us to believe redeems Ed. Elevates him. Where his contemporaries forge temporary unions and are prepared to abandon the field at the first signs of difficulty, Ed is notable for his perseverance. He will not graciously surrender his wife to a new lover. Instead he tracks her in monomaniacal fashion, hurting strangers, offending allies, betraying friends. His victims are the man in the apartment below his, Mr. McMurtry; an old friend, Marsha; and his college room-mate, Benny. The latter, a successful lawyer, makes this cutting summary of Ed’s life: “You’re going down a bad road, man. Anybody has dealings with you knows that much. My advice to you is to stay out of everybody else’s life and take care of your own. Get some sleep. Eat something.”

When he does find Victoria she is no more kind. In fact she administers a fairly thorough beating, leaving him with the impression that he is a monster and a fool. And so his final actions express resignation and despair: a defeated lover, he retreats to his bed where he indulges in black fantasies about the future.

Before this occurs we have been treated to an unusual tour of Saskatoon—and contemporary values. The former Vanderhaeghe manages well; the latter leaves something to be desired. For in charting these characters’ lives, My Present Age seems to touch surfaces without exploring depths, settling for superficial ironies, easy jokes, entertaining sketches—where more might have been attempted, more achieved. In this regard, Vanderhaeghe’s work reminds one of that distinction Graham Greene made between the novel and what he called the “entertainment”—between serious probings of contemporary values, human relations, and delightful but essential shallow mirrors of those realities. My Present Age seems to remain at the level of “entertainment”, a pleasant read, but not a very compelling novel.

Perhaps one should not expect more, for this is a first novel (and a very accomplished one at that). But Vanderhaeghe was the Governor General’s Award winner for Fiction in 1982. That and the claims on the dust jacket of My Present Age, “Canada’s most important literary debut of the 1980s”, lead one to anticipate great things. Not all that is promised is delivered, but the crisp dialogue, sure pace, believable characters, and diverting humour offer a banquet of pleasures and augur well for Vanderhaeghe’s future. ♦

Wayne Tefs is a Winnipeg novelist and a contributing editor to Arts Manitoba.