Dangers and possibilities of a slip of the tongue
The Slip offers comedy with bite. It also reserves ample space for heart.
Brimming with divisive topics that blare from headlines — from feminism and the domestic division of labour to overpriced real estate and outraged student politics — and characters readers can almost recognize (most especially a conservative female newspaper columnist who writes, her antagonist claims, about “politics, economics, religion, literature, gender issues, and various other topics she knows nothing about”), Mark Sampson, whose story collection The Secrets Men Keep skewered other contemporary targets, mirthfully anatomizes the complex entanglements of the here and now. Entertainingly satiric, Sampson nonetheless holds out the hope that freeing ourselves from cultural mires isn’t a total impossibility.
Set over nine grey and blustery Toronto days in 2015 and narrated by star philosophy professor and overweight red-bearded public intellectual Philip Sharpe, the novel traces the drastic consequences of a tongue slip. During a heated CBC debate about corporate responsibility with the “knows nothing” newspaper columnist, Sharpe — who is never without an opinion — makes a pair of verbal gaffes. For much of the week he remains cognizant of just one. As tensions build, he can’t comprehend why faculty, students, anonymous Facebook commentators, and random citizens seem so incensed by his presence.
For a self-made man (hardscrabble PEI origins, scholarship excellence at Oxford) with “Dare to be wise” on his office door, who views himself as a personal course correction for a Canada that’s become a “hotbed of anti-intellectualism, religious ex- tremism, neo-conservatism, and privatization,” Sharpe often fits the profile of an arrogant jerk. He rants, dismisses others (including his wife), feels insulted or annoyed by opposing views, feels sorry for himself, and rants some more. And drinks his signature cocktail (the Bloody Joseph, recipe included), by the tankard.
Unlike Sharpe’s spiritual brother, Harry Salter, who stomped throughout Don Gillmor’s Mount Pleasant full of woe-is-me and ire about the stupidity of the world, Sampson’s middle-aged white guy ultimately exhibits signs of growing self-awareness. True, that growth might be glacial and, quite possibly, temporary. Though hopeful, Sampson understands that there are surer bets than new tricks for old dogs. From Up River and For One Night Only is Brett Josef Grubisic’s most recent novel.