Books

Smoke Show
Clint Burnham
Arsenal Pulp Press

Michael-Oliver Harding
The Link (Concordia University)

MONTREAL (CUP) — “Oh yeah well you know like, umm, yeah, well, you know like whatevah, umm, so like you know ( . . . ).” If you’re up for 186 more pages of where that came from, then I suggest you pick up Vancouver writer Clint Burnham’s debut novel Smoke Show at once.

Described as “the linguistic equivalent of pictorial realism” by poet Sharon Thesen, Smoke Show takes us into the living rooms of struggling yet apathetic young Vancouverite couples in desperate need of direction. Their days consist of smoking pot, trivial chats and more pot smoking. Burnham attempts to give birth to a potent book about our generation’s passivity by collecting bits of “found” dialogue and commenting on lowbrow culture, but the result is far from intoxicating.

To his credit, Smoke Show makes a strong case suggesting a very dispiriting future for these characters. Their incapacity to follow through on actions or defend deep-rooted opinions make up the core of this book, and we are reminded of these handicaps with each passing “well like” and “umm, you know, whatever.” The only thing they seem to have worked out is their rolling schedule and a consensus to smoke outside “because it’s not good for the kid.”

Burnham proposes a forceful reading of his lazy bunch as induced into a state of mental slumber by the consumer society that has shaped its every utterance and every thought. With no aspirations in sight, these has-been teens can’t move ahead and take control over their lives; they would much rather find a comfy spot on the couch, spark a fatty and let the good times roll.

Although Burnham’s approach to writing is quite innovative, there is an upsetting lack of cohesion to the disparate pages that prevents the material from coming to life. Smoke Show’s creative spin lies in its format, with Burnham filling up certain pages with text while leaving others practically empty. This disparity reflects his characters’ ambivalence; they don’t care about anything, let alone an idea or train of thought, enough to carry it over to the next page and develop some kind of conclusion.

All conversations are broken down into pages, so while there may be a discussion about Pamela Anderson Lee’s Native mother on one page, on the next you’ll simply find the words, “Yeah, but you know, I’ll see.” Scattered bits and pieces of conversations thrown together in a novel format could work if there was some kind of evolution to the worldview presented, but with each page comes another arbitrary discussion; the only conclusion one can draw from Burnham’s work is that his stoner bunch can’t commit to anything other than meaningless gossip.

The pacing of the book is consistent in its completely disjointed rhythm, and the vernacular employed to give a voice to these lost souls works well to emphasize their disregard for established social norms. While Burnham’s post-modern take on uneducated adults lounging around and waiting for their welfare cheques is interesting for the first 10 pages, his technique quickly rubs me the wrong way.

The readers are supposed to fill in the gaps — every other page is practically blank — and complete the story, which is all well and good, because who wants everything defined in a didactic, Harlequin romance novel kind of way? The problem lies in the fact that there is nothing with which to fill these narrative gaps, precisely because there is no narrative and, hence, no evolution in the characters.

Smoke Show is completely fabricated from the first “like” to the last “you know.” Burnham never gives his characters the chance to set themselves apart from one other, as he continuously hammers home their vacuous, superficial identity. He simply hovers over their lives and constructs their character through tiny snippets, irksomely reinforcing his very obvious position. His writing feels so contrived and gimmicky that I felt compelled to put the book down on numerous occasions during this one-hour read.

At $18.95, this is definitely not something poor students, overwhelmed with government loans, should consider investing a penny in. Just buy yourself a metro ticket and change cars at every stop: you’ll experience a similar kind of incoherence to what Burnham was aiming for, but chances are you’ll leave the subway feeling slightly more optimistic than Burnham.