Anxious Gravity

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Few Canadians have heard of Jeff Wells, even though Frank magazine
readers regularly follow his alter ego, grouchy vet Dick Little, as he
expresses his latest “Canadian Beef,” but that may change when
Anxious Gravity, Wells’s first novel, appears in bookstores.

This is the satirical tale of Gideon Gast, the ’70s child of two
Communists. When his mother embraces Jesus and dumps Dad, Gideon follows
her spiritual path, winding up at Overcomer Bible Institute in south
central Alberta. Both Wells’s “born-again” student and his readers
are set up for a comic conflict between God and Mammon.

One does not have to be a Christian fundamentalist to enjoy this novel.
In fact, evangelicals may not be able to identify with a hapless
antihero whose Bible-school teacher sexually initiates him and whose
girlfriend is caught orally gratifying a Brazilian-born, Siamese-twin
evangelist.

The novel is aimed at boomers who understand North American pop
culture. Wells slyly presents it to the reader with a conspiratorial
wink that acknowledges information that may be unknown to its
characters. For example, when Gideon’s grandmother refers to the actor
who replaced Dick York in the television program Bewitched in 1969 as
“that bloody bugger,” one assumes that she used “bugger” to
express her contempt for Dick Sargent. This epithet also means
“homosexual”; Sargent acknowledged his sexual orientation many years
later.

Such “20/20 hindsight” is also applied to politics. Gideon recalls
childhood ideals, stating that “[i]t was 1975 ... and we could still
believe that Pol Pot meant well.” Now he is viewed as Cambodia’s
genocidal dictator.

Canadian content is not neglected. The phrase “If he had a rocket
launcher it would be designed by Braun” uses the lyrics of Bruce
Cockburn’s famous song to describe a left-wing trendy.

Right-wing fundamentalists and left-wing Marxists are trounced by this
fully fledged satirist.