“The Fencepost Chronicles” by W.P. Kinsella

The Fencepost Chronicles is the fifth volume in a series of Kinsella stories set in the mythical Ermineskin Indian Reserve of Hobbema, Alberta. The word “mythical,” of course, characterizes all of Kinsella’s work, as readers of his baseball novels, Shoeless Joe and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, will attest. But here the word takes on an added significance. At a time of rising militancy over aboriginal land claims and basic human rights, Kinsella has chosen to ignore the temptations of grisly realism or even satire. Rather, his efforts are consumed by the creation of a purely comic native universe.

For those readers weaned on Sinclair Ross who still believe prairie literature is the last preserve of naturalistic fiction, this enterprise will doubtless come as a surprise. But it is well to remember that regionalism and realism are not synonymous, even on the Prairies, and that Jake and the Kid is every bit as typical of our part of the country as The Lamp at Noon. In fact, if you listen to critics such as Eli Mandel, regional prairie literature is, more often than not, “mythic” rather than realistic in nature.

In his seminal essay, “Images of Prairie Man,” Mandel takes several critics to task for emphasizing the influence of environment on prairie literature and the need for accuracy in description, suggesting that “accurate description really means the imitation of certain easy clichés and stereotypes about landscape and environment.” He distinguishes instead a number of recurring features—the use of non-standard dialect, the grotesque, the tall tale, and the rich humour produced when all three collide—which have nothing to do with “capturing the landscape.” These characteristics are deliberately and obstinately unrealistic.

And what do we find when we come to The Fencepost Chronicles? A narrator named Silas Ermineskin, who talks like this: “We can hear Etta moving around behind the blanket partition, make puffing sounds, and other noises sound like she doing something rude to a piece of venison.” Characters like Mad Etta, so fat she is used as the goalie on the reserve hockey team since, as Silas says, “I think it is a law of physics that you can’t add to something that is already full.” (Etta is later mistaken for a beached whale by Greenpeace members, who attempt to push her back into the ocean while she sunbathes nude on Vancouver’s Wreck Beach.) Stories like “To Look at the Queen,” in which Silas and his friend, Frank Fencepost, discuss Prince Philip’s sex life with you-know-who, and the wonderfully titled “Truth,” in which the hockey team visits a town where the Catholic church has an aisle made of artificial ice and the priest wears hockey pads during marriage ceremonies. In short, a world of pure comic invention, where the Indian sometimes loses and sometimes wins (how unrealistic can you get?), but where, to use Prospero’s words to Miranda, “There’s no harm done.”

Most of the stories in this collection feature comic conflicts between the dumb-like-a-fox inhabitants of the reserve and a series of conventional Indian opponents: the government official, the RCMP and the businessman. But these are so many straw horses, and the purpose seems to be something other than genuine satire, which requires at least a recognition of fault on the part of the intended target. Instead, we have a female RCMP officer who is “so damned liberated that she rolls her own tampons and kick-starts her vibrator”; businessmen like Smilin’ Al Nesterenko, a used-car salesman who remembers his former football days by being driven to work in a green and gold limousine chauffered by a driver in an Edmonton Eskimos uniform; government bureaucrats who foist 4000 Hereford cattle on the reserve in a single day, attempting to facilitate the Indians’ transition from a hunting to a farming people. None of these villains is evil or even deserving of real censure—they, too, are simply inhabitants of a world which operates on a level somewhere above the common disputes of humanity and where literally everything is resolved through the power of laughter.

Granted, there is the odd tidbit of folk wisdom. As Silas says, “If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that businesses never give away anything for free unless they profit ten times over from it. Also, Indians never likely to get any of the free stuff.” And, occasionally, Kinsella even manages to sound cynical, referring to Alberta Culture as “an organization that sometimes gives money to artists and writers as long as they promise to be unsuccessful.” But these are so many drops in an ocean of almost purely fabulist composition. The tall tale, the grotesque and the humorous dominate this collection, and our attention is diverted from social criticism to counting the laughs.

The humour here, admittedly, will not appeal to everyone’s taste. Much of it is scatalogical; all of it is broad. When the reserve is made the beneficiary of a government plan to distribute free running shoes, Mad Etta is forced to send in an outline of her foot:

The Government write her three letters, say she got to trace her foot and send it to them. Finally they send her a letter say she liable to a $500 fine and 60 days in jail if she don’t do as she’s told. Mad Etta sit down on a sheet of paper, trace one of her cheeks, and mail it off. A month or two later come a letter say they only make shoes up to Size 32, and her foot is a Size 57.

Kinsella also relies heavily on the pun and certain jokes are not far removed from “Hee-Haw.” The following exchange between Frank, Silas and assorted members of the IRA (yes, you read it right) is Kinsella at his worst:

‘Do ye want to receive some military training?’ ask a fellow whose name sound like Shamus, ‘we could putcha in touch with the Libyans.’
‘Would that be the Women’s Libyans?’ ask Frank. ‘We got trouble with them in Canada, too.’

Bring on Gordie Tapp.

A more serious complaint can be made of Kinsella’s racial stereotyping. There are more than a few references to the characters’ excessive drinking, indolence and, perhaps more disturbing, child-like incompetence. In the Hereford cattle episode, as his Indian friends cause mistake after mistake, Silas makes a doubly racist analogy:

I remember reading in, I think it was Time magazine about how in Africa, when some little country that been a colony for a thousand years get its independence, the people don’t know how to act. They spend foolishly, act like fools and their country end up in a terrible mess.

It might be argued that, owing to the deliberately mythic, unrealistic universe Kinsella has created, a greater latitude in these matters should be tolerated. Many readers are nevertheless apt, as I was, to be embarrassed by such passages. Nor will the fact that the three gangsters in “The Managers” just happen to be named Gino, Rocco and Mario win friends in other corners.

These reservations aside, this is a diverting group of stories. Just as importantly, The Fencepost Chronicles is a welcome reminder that prairie fiction need not follow the rigid strictures of an outdated naturalism. ♦

Mark Duncan is editing an anthology of Manitoba short fiction and poetry in Toronto. He is a regular contributor to Border Crossings.