FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
PAUL'S CASE
by Lynn Crosbie,
Insomniac Press, 185 pp.Paul's Case has been a source of concern since its unveiling at the Canadian Bookseller's Convention in the summer of this year - many booksellers refused to carry it due to its subject matter, front cover (Paul Bernardo looking surly) and occasionally violent contents.
Lynn Crosbie's first novel definitely evades easy categorization. The back cover claims it is a work of "out-post literature/critical fiction/true crime." The controversy surrounding this collection is perhaps overstated in the same way as the media detritus that accumulates around events having little or no bearing on everyday life. Perhaps it is the ease with which this novel falls into comparison with the media circus surrounding the trial which makes it a hard dish to swallow. If you're going to write a "literary tour de force," why would you write it about this? If your favorite writer wrote something about O.J. Simpson (assuming you're not a fan of post-trial declarations of guilt, innocence or indifference) would you feel the same way about them?
The overall form of the novel is 52 letters sent once a week for a year from a woman to Paul Bernardo in his cell. The letters themselves vary vastly in voice and content, but have an overall aura of vengeance to be meted out by the woman. Though the woman never identifies herself, one may deduce that she herself is given to ranting and seems to believe that a man who wished to become the next "great white hope" of rap music will appreciate quotes from a stable of literary critics and poets belonging almost exclusively to the realm of those with a doctorate in English.
These "letters" soon give way to a plethora of forms from comics to poetry to cards, postcards and vague meditations sotto voice to full out scream. Crosbie's prose is sure-footed but the structure succumbs to its own vagaries. What does the letter writer hope to accomplish? What is her stake in the crimes committed? If it was her on trial she would do well to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. The deeper one gets into Paul's Case the more the rope frays, but there's nothing to tie it all together again.
In the final analysis, the book is a loosely affiliated group of pastiches. What is novel here is taking an interesting idea in form and applying it to a banal subject.
Richard Jagodzinski
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