Hearth Wild

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

This demanding, multi-layered novel is in the style and tradition of
James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, with numerous puns, humorous twists
of wordplay, and the semantic convolutions characteristic of Joycean
literature. Noble toys, for example, with “liken” and “lichen,”
with a dog’s “bark” and the “bark” of a tree, and refers to a
bookstore in the Rockies as being full of “Self-Alp books.” He
reflects on “the anti-Don, ie the Donkey Oaty” and on “the Joni
[Mitchell]-on-Jon [Whyte] effect, ie ‘not knowing what you’ve got
till it’s gone.’” Infatuated with words and the ambiguity of their
meanings, he often pushes the envelope for new contextual relationships,
as when he describes a tipsy character who “pretended to break an
aerial off, Ariel and Caliban together.” Also like Joyce, Noble
peppers his pages with encyclopedic allusions to the grand masters of
art, literature, philosophy, religion, politics, and history. Into the
mix is thrown a parade of anecdotes and comments about CanLit
celebrities such as Aritha Van Herk, Robert Kroetsch, Alberto Manguel,
Sharon Butala, Mryna Kostash, W.O. Mitchell, Patrick Lane, and Lorna
Crozier.

Noble’s heroes and the primary characters who thread through the
novel are Banff residents such as the recognizable Jon Whyte and other
less easily identified personages like Dr. Rock, Playcefire, Tain, and
Recap (presumably the author himself). The indigenous landmarks of the
Banff Centre, Tunnel Mountain (at one point “Tunnel (Vision)
Mountain”), the Banff Springs Hotel, and other bars and pubs are the
settings for the adventures and episodes Noble describes frequently with
humor and often with sensitivity, especially where Jon Whyte is
concerned.

Noble’s novel is full of creative energy, innovative word wraps, and
tongue-in-cheek humor. At one point, he says of his book, “James Joyce
would have understood it.” Whether the general reader can remains to
be seen.