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Open Books: Event Archive
November 09, 2007 08:00 PM
TROY JOLLIMORE
Troy Jollimore's National Book Critics Circle Award-winning book, Tom
Thomson in Purgatory ($13.95 MARGIE), finds Tom Thomson able to see from his balcony "those famous inscriptions coalesce: / 'Abandon all hope ye who enter here' / and 'Absolutely no outside food or drink.'" In the book's
quirkily funny first section the character of Thomson is introduced. The
second section, the title sequence, is where Thomson takes center stage. It
is a giddily flowing rush of 14-line poems (sonnets?) that combine fractured
syntax with over-the-top pathos. "He has inflicted more distress on damsels
/ than saved them from. The dragon, friends, c'est Tom." The result is a
compelling study of the title character and the world that is his and not
his. Critics have likened this work to John Berryman's Dream Songs for
good reason. Jollimore uses an exceedingly snappy, entertaining voice to
describe a kind of contemporary film noir-ish loner, the conflicted
anti-hero on the margins of culture. Tom's self-regard and self-disgust
flower in the telling. Literary allusions are seamlessly incorporated, as in
this nod to Theodore Roethke, when Thomson "lays head in gutter, travels
high and low, / and learns by going where he hates to go."
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