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No Fixed Address: An Amorous Journey (Reprints Series)

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This is a book report from graduate students in the Netherlands (College for Adult Education in Zierikzee) on Aritha van Herks NO FIXED ADDRESS: AN AMOROUS JOURNEY (1986) We made use of the Seal paperback, printed by McClelland & Stewart Limited, Toronto in 1987 (page references NFA-1) and the reprint by Red Deer College Press, Red Deer, Alberta in 1998 (page references NFA-2)

NO FIXED ADDRESS is the fourth book by Aritha van Herk that we have analyzed in class. Like her previous novels JUDITH (1978) and THE TENT PEG (1981), and her fictional autobiography PLACES FAR FROM ELLESMERE, A GEOGRAFICTIONE; EXPLORATIONS ON SITE (1990) , NO FIXED ADDRESS (NFA) deals with a woman on the move, challenging boundaries of male dominated space and place. All four books are situated in the west and north of Canada with a travelling saleswoman as the protagonist of this book roaming west and north in a black Mercedes. A female infiltration and inscription has begun. Aritha van Herks work is particularly interesting to us after her successful performance with her musical assistant Brian Stanko in Zierikzee in November 1996. Born in Canada, van Herk has close ties with her parents native country Holland, from which her family emigrated after World War II. Van Herk reads and understands Dutch well and after a few days in Holland speaks it fluently. The richness of her roots is visible in all her work. In NO FIXED ADDRESS it ranges from obvious references to the snot rag red handkerchief (NFA-1: 41);(NFA-2 : 30) Dutch wooden shoes (NFA-1:145); (NFA-2 : 117) and Dutch cafe (NFA-1: 191); (NFA-2 : 155) to underlying structures of narrative examples of the Dutch-Calvinist bible with its sumptuous array of traditional stories. Like mythology, which van Herk draws freely from, these stories try to explain the world and shed light on social interactions. In NO FIXED ADDRESS we meet Arachne Manteia, only daughter of teacup reader Lanie and (unskilled labourer) Toto. Unwanted by her mother, Arachne from an early age is often left alone and later spurns the socialization of motherhood. No dolls for her but sets of clothespins representing two armies, attacking and decimating each other; a game she played with her father,. (NFA-1: 39; NFA-2: 27). Arachne is rebellious in her youth and leads the Black Widows gang. Like biblical David she conquers the strong Goliathan attackers. (NFA-1: 193; NFA-2: 156). Leaving school early, she becomes a busdriver in Vancouver, meets cartographer Thomas, who left his precious maps in her bus. Maps are important for Arachne; like words they resemble an extra-textual reality, whether landscapes or objects, which are both constructions. Arachne goes beyond maps and words. Arachne drives Thomas to his hometown Calgary in her black 1959 Mercedes. She inherited this car from Gabriel, one of her mothers teacup reading clients. Like the biblical archangel Gabriel proclaimed the annunciation of her name: Arachnid, the Greek equivalent of spider. Spiders are rogues. They eat each other when theres nothing else to catch. (NFA-1: 83; NFA-2: 65). Arachne, a travelling saleswoman of womens underwear, catches men, even kills one and leaves a thread before and after spiralling her weblike Canadian roads and trails. Mythical Arachne in Ovids METAMORPHOSES defies the gods and wins the weaving contest for which she is punished not by death but by being suspended in the air with a noose round her neck. In her pregnancy Lanie watches an injured and also pregnant spider, anchoring its first thread diagonally across the window (NFA-1: 82; NFA-2: 64) weaving her silken web. The English Virago edition has taken this seven-legged spider on the back cover of the book. Arachne is injured too, affected by her youth, and ruthlessly pushes ahead her dissent from fixed addresses. Womens paths are not linear or straight but rather circular and diagonal. Arachnes story is embedded in a documentary foreword and afterword, where the researcher questions the historical entrapment of the female body by uncomfortable clothing, particularly underwear. The researcher records the story of the vanishing Arachne Notebook on a missing person who has left a trail of panties in the far north where all the roads have stopped. (NFA-1: 319); (NFA-2 :260) and where a helicopter pilot saw her last driving her black Mercedes. The few inhabitants of this sparsely populated region witness the blue tail of a comet, emblemmatic of Arachnes disappearance into space. On the level of the story Arachne disappears with a helicopter pilot watching the roadless world below her, knowing she has arrived (NFA-1:310) after witnessing Thomas initials (NFA-2 : 253) buried in the moss. The surreal end implies the impossibility of closure - no death for Arachne but suspension in air whether it is a Christian heaven or the mythological realm of the gods. The message of researcher and Arachne is clear: the thread of female identity continues to be woven, maps of female inscription remain to be written, roads of female subversion have to be driven. As intriguing as Arachnes relationship with Thomas (the middle-class homemaker patiently waiting on/for her), is her relationship with Joseph, an elderly Serbian immigrant, who like his biblical namesake, wants to own graves. They both cherish a skull in a graveyard acknowledging the buried history of Canadas native population. (NFA-1: 18-25; NFA-2 : 9 - 16) Thanatos and Eros, death and sex, are closely linked in this immensely rich novel which by means of biblical and mythical symbols lays bare the intricacies of representation of womens experience.