Mariposa Podcast Transcript
1948 Leacock Medal Winner
Sarah
Binks by Paul Hiebert
For Audio of Podcast Return to Home Page
This is an
interview with Joel Salt, an expert in digital scholarship at the University of
Saskatchewan Library who produced the university’s Paul Hiebert Digital Archive.
He discussed Hiebert’s 1948 Leacock Medal
winner Sarah Binks. The book is
poetry collection packaged in a mock biography written by Hiebert, a University
of Manitoba chemistry professor. Many
readers regard Sarah is iconic, and a book that comes as close to being
the quintessentially Canadian work. It is also very funny.
The imaginary
Sarah writes bad poetry, lots of it, and this ability to produce quantity over
quality brings her fame in her native province of Saskatchewan. Readers might
laugh at some of Sarah's poetry in isolation, but it is the book’s over-the-top
gushing account of her modest life experience and its celebration of her talent
that amplifies the humour.
The Paul Hiebert
archive assembled by Joel Salt includes the author's own copy of the original
manuscript of Sarah Binks, as well as the original of its sequel, Willows
Revisited and other materials such as CBC radio interviews and a recording
of the performance of Sarah Binks the musical in Biggar Saskatchewan. At
first, the book seems to be a lampoon of life in the prairies. But as Joel
points out, it also mocks the field of literary criticism and shows a lot of
affection for the West.
DBD
Thanks a lot
Joel for doing this, but particularly for doing the digital archive at the
University of Saskatchewan on Paul Hiebert. When we first conversed, I thought
it was kind of funny that Hiebert would donate his materials to the University
of Saskatchewan, given that Sarah was imaginary and her connection with
Saskatchewan was imaginary. But you educated me by saying, you thought that his
message was not so much making fun of Saskatchewan and the people there but saying,
in his own way, I am one of you.
Joel
Salt (JS)
So, Sarah
Binks was created in his mind or solidified in his mind when he was working
in Prussia, Saskatchewan, later renamed Leader as a teacher. And so he had this
strong connection with Saskatchewan, even though he wasn't born here. And I
think he kept that understanding of that connection with the book. And so when
it came time for his materials to go to the (archive), he sent a letter
province to us saying, “Hey, I don't see why you could possibly want this. But
libraries are queer. And so if you think it's worth having, if you think it's
worth the space on the shelf, I'll happily send it your way.”
And so I think that it's important to
understand his respect for Saskatchewan, for the people of Saskatchewan, and
for farmers. And he later wrote an article called The Comic Spirit at 40, below
for Mosaic. And he brings up Twain and Leacock in it, and says that they
knew those places, and thus had affection for them. And the one you know, and
says the ones who really loved the West can always laugh at it and with it. So
he understood that the way that Leacock was looking at Orillia and poking fun
at it, with that, inside wink that only someone who is of the place can do. I
think that's what he's trying to do with Saskatchewan, with Sarah Binks.
And so any bit of parody or satire, I think, lacks the bite that a few people
have ascribed to him. I think it's very much a part of the book that the people
of Saskatchewan themselves know who we are. And there's a very self reflexive
understanding of that mild satire.
DBD
Actually is
quite easy to draw parallels between Sunshine Sketches and Sarah
Binks in that in Sunshine Sketches, Leacock was over the top in his
description of all things wonderful in Mariposa, and this over the top
description of Sarah's talents and achievements, sort of resonate there.
I recently stumbled
on something on the web by a person who claimed to have known Hiebert
personally. And she thought that he was making fun of his hometown residents in
Manitoba, but he wanted to distance himself and talk about Saskatchewan. So the
last time I looked there, they were skim through sir banks. I was struck by the
number of times he talked generically about the prairies and the West, framing
it all. So yeah, it did make me think of your comment of him wanting or feeling
that he was one of views, Saskatchewan honors, or wieners.
JS
He does also an
article tell a really great story about trying to find a publisher for this
manuscript, and he sends one to an American editor, who takes it very
seriously, and marks it up correct spelling comments even finds a way to
compliment a few of the poems and sends it back and says, I think perhaps as a
Canadian, you're over- estimating the poet's talents.
And I think this
is the kind of this is the kind of thing that the people who get the joke live
for, because there's this sense of Sarah Binks, and as a as a whole as a
work is very Canadian in that it's distinctly not American,
DBD
Sarah
Binks is rich on many levels. But one of the
ones that strikes me from time to time, is the notion that the humor is
ostensibly about a lack of culture in the West. And yet, the book itself is a
literary work that is very much of the West, that sort of undermines and
deflates that proposition that there was no culture in early 20th century,
Saskatchewan. But there was and it took a specific kind of skill set to
approach it. A lot of reviews of Sarah Binks conclude that it's more of
a satire of literary criticism, as much as a satire of life in the West. Does
that resonate with you?
JS
Yeah, I think I
think there's a lot of targets in here. And, and most of the targets are hit with
feather arrows. I think two areas get hit the hardest - one would be poor Mathilda
Schwantzhacker, who is maybe the one time he was mean, but the other the other
one is the academic community. And I think that, first of all, he's a part of
it. So he himself is included in the mighty strokes of the pen he makes. But I
think also the sense of Saskatchewan or the West as being remote from the urban
centers, remote from culture. I think that's one avenue that he gets at that is
by producing these fictional academics who take themselves too seriously and
are the often the ones themselves who are wrong.
So we can laugh
at Sarah's bad poetry. But when the narrator goes through and says that Sara
beings is such, such off the land, that she could take the leaves of her poetry
and spread it back across to fertilize it, he doesn't understand the joke he
just made. So there's a sense again, that the people the self reflexivity of
it, the people of Saskatchewan, and we were all Sarah Binks, or at least we
were at one point, right, that's the idea. We all had to her naivete in her,
whatever. And that there's some sort of beauty in that, and that the hard-nosed
academic doesn't understand it, and never will. And I think that's another way
of pushing the other way. And an obtuse way of saying, this is our community,
this is the way that it works. And to be a part of it is to really know that.
DBD
I love the way
you've articulated those thoughts, Joel, in the fact that the University of
Saskatchewan has embraced Sarah and hopefully use that resource to turn the
tables on anybody who thinks that Saskatchewan is worth mocking: it's a
beautiful place.
JS
That's right.
JS
One last thing I
can say too, for anyone who doesn't maybe get to the end of the book, or in a
very similar way to Leacock. And any sense of malice that you might perceive
probably should disappear.
Because the poem
in the L’Envoi isn't strong. Hiebert after all is Sarah. But there are no
targets. There are no jokes. There's no irony or parody or satire in the L’Envoi.
And in the final stanza he writes, “Oh, the years have gone forever, hurdy
gurdy, hubble bubble, but the autumn nights still bring me like a breath across
the stubble, like a land breeze in the tropics, full of murmur and delight.
Sounds of separators drumming, in the pale moonlight, sounds of dogs and
creaking wagons and the heavy smell of grain and the call of distant voices
that I'll never hear again.” A call to
his past and beautiful nostalgia that that is a recollection of a joyous
experience of living in the prairies.
DBD
Again, I'm
indebted to you Joel for pointing that out because that does resonate
vigorously with the L’Envoi in Sunshine Sketches because as you read it,
he never actually reaches Maripose, trying to go back to something that is kind
of vaporous. So, thanks again for doing this and thanks for doing the digital archive.
JS
Of course, always
happy to talk about Sarah Binks.