The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis.

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Vancouver writer and art critic Aaron Peck has written a first novel that succeeds on several levels. Building on the familiar conceit of a found manuscript, Peck’s two “editors” find in a writers’ retreat a manuscript by the missing archivist Bernard Willis—a manuscript addressed: To Whomever: Please Take. “We have spent the past four years,” say the editors (who are lovers) in an epilogue, “pain-stakingly ordering it, and preparing it for publication. We can only guess what kind of response it will receive.” Peck has said his book “developed out of a conceptual experiment [in which] he was asked to contribute a parallel-text to an exhibition catalog.” He enjoyed this process so much, he continues, “that after completion I continued writing in this form.”

The “editors” present the writings without much conjecture as to why Bernard disappeared. “The story of Bernard Willis puzzles us,” they say. “Motivation for his disappearance is scant, left to interpretation.” The manuscript itself is fascinating; an intensely personal account of meanderings into varying styles and personalities. Willis and his friends seem to aim their thoughts and sensibilities at the philosophical, literary, and artistic signposts of many periods: classical, Renaissance, post-modern. There are discussions among Bernard and his girlfriends, Lily and Claire. There are arguments, misunderstandings. There is much travelling; Vancouver, Paris, and San Francisco are all rendered carefully and with visual certainty in the naming of neighbourhoods and landmarks.

The chief theme of the book is the importance of language and communication. The conversations, the travelogue details, the physical confrontations between Bernard and his coterie of friends do not explain his disappearance. They do, however, provide hints here and there of his bewilderment. In one of his book’s opening epigrams, Peck quotes Vancouver poet Robin Blaser: “In the long run of our talking-reading-writing lives, now and again we come upon language—that dear, homemade music—as utter shock, even collision.” Recommended.