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Reviewer heralds Canadian “Michael Moore”
Sidney Selvon, editor of
Alberta
’s
Peace River
Record-Gazette, recently likened Hal Sisson to Michael Moore. Selvon said that like
Moore
, Sisson is a “subversive writer and thinker.” About You Should Live So Long, Sisson’s latest novel, Selvon said, “You will not [put down Sisson’s novel] until you have reached the epilogue – and at times, you may howl with laughter: the author is a well-known humorist.”
The bulk of Selvon’s review is reprinted below.
“The comparison with [Michael] Moore is justified in the sense that the two men are actually, like Rousseau or Voltaire, philosophers capable of stirring dissent, always needed by mankind to resists various forms of intellectual, physical, religious and political slavery witnessed throughout history….
“But the comparison with
Moore
stops where Sisson’s own talent as an entertaining novelist and humorous writer prevail over the bold political statements he makes.
“If we put aside his strong assertions, like those of Moore, throughout the novel, that the ultimate political responsibility lies on the United States administration as regards the world’s (and Canada’s) worst problems (I do not totally agree) we discover also a completely new and interesting version of the Creation he has figured out from his immense knowledge of ancient history. He uses some of the world’s oldest historical accounts, much of it sacred literature.
“But this is a story of the Creation told through characters in the novel who are atheists. My belief in God, the supernatural and our immortality (through our souls), strongly entrenched, has not been shaken in any way through reading this account of our beginnings. But the book provides credibility to the speculation that stories about ancient gods fighting epic battles on this planet have extra-terrestrial origins in some unknown planets. And this does not deserve to be considered blasphemy.
“There are passages in the Bible and such other ancient masterpieces as the Ramayana of Ancient India where there appears to be textual evidence that mankind coexisted in very ancient times with beings from a superior civilization who had flying engines from which they viewed the planet and gave (as in the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic) detailed descriptions of the landscape that could not have been possible from the ground.
“A novel, though, is a novel and has to be enjoyed as such however obvious Sisson’s left leaning militancy throughout the book is. I prefer Sisson to
Moore
, because he is more successful than the American writer in subduing the leftist harangue in favour of the supreme mission of fiction writers: to truly entertain their readers.
“Sisson and I met at the Record-Gazette…to pursue an extremely interesting conversation on the mysteries surrounding the origin and the ultimate fate of mankind.
“We discussed the blunders the CIA committed in assassinating or ousting systematically secular…socialist leaders throughout the Middle East, Africa and South America from the 1940s to the 1970s and replacing them by formerly miniscule groups of fundamentalists (in Afghanistan and the Middle East) and ferocious criminals as heads of state in Africa and South America (e.g. Pinochet in Chile). Now the Americans are engaged in a war against terror, i.e. fighting the same forces they financed and armed to the tune of billions of taxpayers’ dollars. It is difficult not to develop leanings to the left, albeit moderately, when reading Sisson and this may not please everybody.
“I would strongly recommend the book, through, even to those who may be quite hostile to left-leaning writers, because we cannot shut ourselves from subversive and irreverent literature unless we have become intolerant of the freedom of writers.”
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