Perpetual Motion

Roderick McGillis was Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

The epigraph to chapter five of Perpetual Motion speaks of “later-day fairy tales” and this term “fairy tale” describes, as well as any, Graeme Gibson’s novel. Like the fairy tale, it consists of incidents that border on the absurd; its language and characters are earthy, sometimes raw; its attitudes positive, yet commonsensical; and its story simple. Set in southern Ontario, the novel tells the story of Robert Fraser from the time in 1860 when his first son is born and when he unearths with his plough the bones of a pre-historic creature, to the time in 1879 when he fails gloriously to set working the perpetual motion machine that has occupied his dreams and fantasies since before the novel began. We read of his hopes to keep his pre-historic skeleton on his farm, then of his attempt to make something from it in Toronto, of his dream of duplicating the triumph of the Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition, later of his scheme to make money from the thousands of pigeons that flock to his property, his success here that leads him into the hotel business, and finally his complete obsession with perpetual motion. While we follow Fraser’s “radiant poison,” his “ataxic energy,” we also glimpse the effects of its “melancholy orbit.” His son, Angus, becomes a wild boy and disappears into the forest; his wife, Mary, slips into depression and finally into a kind of translucent madness; and his daughter, Alice, becomes fierce and efficient, “like a weasel.”

However, it is Fraser’s exuberance that keeps his failures from utter bleakness. If his story has tragedy, it also has grandeur. His struggle to maintain a stay against confusion enobles him, sets him apart from the vulgar Dr. Tom, the wily Rochefoucault Hackett, the pitiable Dr. Carruthers, and the neighbourly Will Casey. If there is a foil for Fraser, Casey is he. Simple, hard-working, hard-drinking, Casey is practical and settled. He dies, frozen a few hundred yards from the safety of the Fraser home, but he saves his daughter by placing her in the belly of his dead horse.

Perpetual Motion contains many moving and terrible incidents, and wild and wacky set pieces. Indeed, it is in its separate scenes that it impresses: the drinking scene with Fraser, Casey, and Hackett that ends with Casey and Fraser urinating prodigiously; the discussion of hanging that turns on whether Death is male or female; the two pigeon hunts; the pedlar and Will Casey urinating; and Eddie Shantz piercing his hand with a knife and then telling a lurid tale as the blood wells. Scenes such as these unfold with gusto. The novel may not always be easy to follow, the characters may sometimes lack depth and motivation, but the energy of the writing is unflagging. Perpetual Motion will deserve more than one reading.