Will the real Darren Greer please stand up?
POINT OF Q

I
I consider myself to be a fairly serious reader and a slightly better than average writer. I had been impressed with Darren Greer’s novel, “Tyler’s Cape”, which was a strong first effort about coming of age and coming out to your family in a rural Maritime town. I was not, however, prepared for the radically different voice of his follow-up book, “Still Life With June”.

Full of jaded cynicism, losers who don’t know they’re losers (and losers who do), and a scathing wit with complete disregard for political correctness, “Still Life” deserves to be featured on BIG BAD BOOKS’ bestsellers lists as well as in the windows of struggling, independent queer bookstores everywhere.

II
Darren Greer had recently lived in Ottawa until he moved to the BIG BAD CITY (also known as Toronto) a month or two ago. Despite this gross error in judgment, Greer has impressed me in the past with being a nice, humble and generous-spirited person. After reading this new novel, I have realized that perhaps underneath this gentle demeanor lurks a character much like his narrator, Cameron Dodds.

III
Cameron is a self-confessed thief and liar, in other words, a writer. He goes to gay bars on Christmas to feign sympathy and interest while stealing other people’s lives for his stories. He works at the Sally Ann Cocaine Coral (also known as a drug rehabilitation clinic) to hang out with the losers who don’t know they’re losers for the same reason. He likes to attend the weekly writers’ workshop at the local BIG BAD BOOKS to hear the badly written prose in the hopes that he can steal a few more ideas. In order to shield his true purpose and identity, Cameron/Annie/Bubby/Darrel has so many aliases and personalities that it’s hard even for him to keep track of them all.

IV
At the writer’s workshop, he meets Dagnia/Julie, a “black widow” who gets Cameron to spy on someone from her past who conveniently lives above Cameron’s apartment. Their relationship is antagonistic at first, until Cameron realizes that Dagnia/Julie is almost a bigger loser and liar that he is. As her story evolves, it becomes nearly as tangled and twisted as his is.

V
And then there is June. June can’t help being a loser who doesn’t know she’s a loser because she was born with Down’s Syndrome and Muscular Dystrophy. Cameron starts visiting her at the so-called Sisters Who Gave Good Hope Hospital when he becomes obsessed with the story of her brother, a patient at the Cocaine Coral named Darrel Greene (which sounds suspiciously similar to Darren Greer) who hanged himself in the janitor’s closet.

Assuming the identity of Darrel, Cameron grows attached to June as he gets more material for his stories than he bargained for.

VI
June is the only character who remains simply June, a stubborn, temperamental child in a very large adult body. Or as Cameron/Bubby/Darrel lovingly calls her, “a fucking retard”. She’s a breath of fresh air in this novel and in novels in general.

VII
By now I’m sure you’ve guessed that I’m stealing Greer’s writing style to pass off as my own. I guess that makes me a thief and liar, too. Or am I a loser who knows I’m a loser? I haven’t quite decided yet.

VIII
By the way, I don’t get the whole Roman numeral thing either, but it’s kind of fun, so I’m going with it.

IX
I’m trying to be careful in not revealing too much about the stories twists and turns. The theme of self-identity, whether fact or fiction, is complex and fascinating as people take on roles that are not their own yet can have some truth in them as well. Julie-the-non-writer assumes the identity of Dagnia-the-writer at BIG BAD’s workshop, then becomes Julie-the-ousted-fraud when the real Dagnia-the-writer shows up, and eventually turns into Julie-the-redeemed-and-esteemed-novelist when she finally tries to write her own story, based on her own life, and discovers she can.

X
I can’t even begin to describe Cameron’s story, and I won’t spoil the book by trying.

XI
“Still Life” also gives an interesting glimpse into the irony of fiction writing. How can a book truly be a work of fiction when much of it is often autobiographical or the stolen story of someone else? Fact becomes fiction and vice versa as the old credo “write what you know” is tested beyond its limits. Other idioms like “truth is stranger than fiction” don’t even begin to describe what goes on in this book. It’s brilliant and wonderful to read.

XII
I wonder what Darren Greer has in store for his next work. I wonder if Darren Greer knows himself. I wonder if Darren Greer is really Darren Greer. I wonder…

- printed in ToBe, Volume 2, #7, July, 2003. Book cover by Cormorant Books Inc.