Nicole Dixon Defends Darryl Whetter’s The Push & the Pull
Click here to read Salty Ink’s introduction to Darryl Whetter, The Push & the Pull, and nominator Nicole Dixon.
Darryl Whetter’s The Push & the Pull is a novel about sex, death and bicycling. This racy novel has what I want (and what is often missing) in Can Lit, packed into a tight pair of cycling shorts: a plot (you know, an actual story), captivating characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, piles of jokes, romance and sex.
In his literary essays for THIS Magazine, Nova Scotia author Whetter has railed against counterfeit Atlantic Canadian literature devoted to the rural past, those washboard elegies and odes to life down pit in the mines. The Push & the Pull is vibrant, contemporary and alive. I’m tired of being expected to connect to mothers and widows of yesteryear just because they’re women living east of Quebec. I prefer Whetter’s stories of educated women torn between heart, crotch and briefcase to outport Gran’s poultice recipe for the croup.
The Push & the Pull is a “bicycle odyssey” set now. Twenty-something Andrew Day bikes from Halifax (where he’s a grad student) to Kingston, Ontario, where he grew up. As a touring cyclist, Andrew must sweat for everything he wants. What he takes on the trip—his ex Betty’s postcards, a copy of St. Urbain’s Horseman—is debated as want vs. need. “Only the worst (New Brunswick) hills,” Whetter writes, “make him doubt his jar of Nutella.” The Buddhist mantra, all suffering is created by desire, figures into the odyssey and is also a theme of the novel.
Whetter knows that journey stories are ultimately about the why, not the where or the how. He deftly juxtaposes the present-tense story on the bike (“that second skeleton”) with the story of Andrew’s father Stan succumbing to a rare illness. Stan’s body is profoundly diminished by disease, but his humanity, and his humour, rarely are. The scenes in which a younger Andrew begins to parent his parent are fiercely honest. Whetter never stoops to the manipulative sentimentality of so much Can Lit. These caregiver scenes are unforgettably humane: we’re asked to understand Stan, not just pity him. Through its vivid combination of athleticism and disease, this brave novel shows strengths can be weaknesses and weaknesses strengths.
From its title on, The Push & the Pull recognizes that we are often torn by opposing desires. One conclusion of the Andrew-Stan storyline finds Andrew able to invite Betty, his first big love, to move into his otherwise empty house. Andrew and Betty have one of those first dates that never stop. Other Maritime stories lament or half-celebrate the procreative consequences of sex; Whetter luxuriates in sex’s wonderful paradoxes: the unions and divisions, the emotions unlocked by the body, the proximity and the distance. When’s the last time an Atlantic novel tempted you to read with just one hand?
Quite simply, these characters are real. I don’t just hear their dialogue—their jokes, confessions and taunts—I feel the words in my mouth. You can smell these characters, can feel a bike (and more) between your legs.
The Push & the Pull alternates between its family story, its romance and its bicycle adventure. Eventually, Andrew’s physical journey and his memories darken, taking us through Stan’s medical descent and the souring of his own romance just as the trip becomes increasingly violent (and riveting). The breakdown with Betty is so delicious I want to see them stay together but also hear them go on scrapping.
As we prop up unprofitable car companies and spend on roads, not rails, as oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, its refreshing to read Andrew’s stories “from the side of the road,” to learn about the consequences of our car culture. I’ve heard Whetter read from the novel several times and always laugh at the account of yahoos accosting Andrew as they drive past: “Ride long enough and you will hear muffle, muffle, ASSHOLE! … Utterly lost to the auto, they cannot see the finer points of challenge, self-propulsion or province-crushing endurance. Nor can they quite master the physics of a projected voice and a moving car.” Whetter’s novel is humourously honest, poignant and sexy, making The Push & the Pull the book Atlantic Canadians should read.
On June 18th, polls will open for the public to vote for the book, by an Atlantic Canadian author, that they think the country should read this summer! Follow the contest here: http://saltyink.com/atlantic-canada-reads-competition/
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A clever defense of a superb book.