The Projectionist

by Michael Helm

A man of failing reputation, Toss Raymond lives alone by the South Saskatchewan River, near the drought-ruined farm town of Mayford. It’s the summer of 1988, a year since Toss’s marriage went south, and he made a public spectacle of himself by thrashing the neighbour who he wrongly thought had cuckolded him. Now, as he finishes what might be his last year as a high school teacher and the school board gathers grounds for his dismissal, Toss has taken up with two newcomers in town, and neither association is likely to help him appear any more upright.

Here in his “summer of sobering first anniversaries,” in a place under siege from both drought and his friend Dewey’s dark inventions, Toss must decide what he will remain true his troublesome desire to follow his heart and his imagination, or his idea of “home” — unhistoried, dying, and likely to leave no trace.

A dense, rich, and entirely rewarding novel, The Projectionist is original, moving, and surprisingly funny.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Canada

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prairie fiction is always worth looking at for the potential that some Cormac McCarthy-like word wizard will put life to those open landscapes, quietly-troubled farm dwellers, threatening weather and loneliness. The story of The Projectionist, Michael Helm's first novel, takes place in a south Saskatchewan town and deals with some of the resident dramas one might expect of a story set amid flat country; bored people and dismal economic prospects. But any resemblance to the prose virtuosity and narrative drive associated with the superb work of Mr. McCarthy will not be found in this novel, which inexplicably received a Giller nomination, putting Mr. Helm in company with such literary legends as Carol Shields and Mordecai Richler.

Supposedly a ponderation of tenuous love lives, weird friendships and the vagaries thereof, The Projectionist does not start as quickly as it might. It is a 53-page slog before anything dramatic or even slightly colourful occurs; an allegation of criminal activity made by that ever-present icon of rural Canlit, an RCMP officer. But this situation soon settles into the dissipating quietude the whole novel suffers from. It passes ultimately into nothing amid the reputed story of a down-but-not-quite-out schoolteacher trying to reconcile the failure of his marriage while romancing the only local woman not already involved in a deadly-dull drylander communion.

If it is essential you know the exact co-ordinates of land which is not even vaguely important to the narrative, never fear, much expository digression will fill you in. Then there are the frequent author-intruded pronouncements: `The musk of a closed room is caused not by airlessness but rather by the minute issuance of each ignored object.', or: `Someone once wrote that the only good that is not subject to chance is that which is outside the world, and that knowing this is beautiful because it projects the soul beyond time.' Huh..?

I gave this novel as much of a try as I could but then about mid-book the bad writing got going with vigour. Try this sentence for a study in mixed metaphor: `A half-hour ahead of Karen and two or three days out front of the holiday crowd, I have time to kill but no one to flush it my way.' Sorry, after that one I decided I could not in good conscience flush this book anyone else's way.

[Susan Maldrie]

Not sure why I didn't finish this book--- I Really dislike reading a book and not finishing it but somehow this ended on my not finished shelf.