Enduring Dreams: An Exploration of Arctic Landscape

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

In this marvelously ambitious book, John Moss (a critic of Canadian
fiction and a long-distance runner) articulates his awareness of the
Arctic—and of the strange interrelation between the Arctic and himself
(or any self that tries to come to terms with it). Enduring Dreams is a
collection of prose fragments, poems, and bits of poems, arranged like
film in cuts; it contains narrative, meditation, but only occasionally
description in the customary sense of the word. And above all it is an
obsessed brooding on the interconnection between Arctic, language, and
silence.

The book appears with, on the back jacket, enthusiastic “advance
praise” from an impressive list of writers: Linda Hutcheon, Hugh Hood,
Daphne Marlatt, Robert Kroetsch. Together they hail it as a postmodern
masterpiece, and I can understand why. At the same time, I’m just a
little uneasy. There are some magnificent moments: trying to write about
the Arctic in Mexico, coming away from a lecture realizing that his
slides were “like game we mount on shining walls for public
admiration, documenting only us.” When he creates such moments, Moss
is superb. But when he solemnly tells us that “narrative writes
narrative ... solipsism is endless” and that “history is no longer
possible,” or when he takes on Stephen Hawking in theorizing about
Time, I have my doubts.

For the first 50 pages, I was totally absorbed. Then I began to wonder
if these self-consciously contrived fragments were any more convincing
than the carefully imposed smoothness of traditional narrative. I
suspect, awkwardly, that in a century this book will be at least as
dated as those Moss now quotes from the past. And I’m puzzled that his
verse seems so obviously less poetic than (at its best) his prose.

But I applaud the attempt greatly. Anyone interested in the Arctic or
in language—or both—should read this book. Moss writing while
walking, Moss running, thinking, remembering, is impressive—even if,
in the last analysis, it may not quite succeed. The enterprise is all.

An uneven, rich book, but it is the richness that counts.