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Malcolm Ross -- the man who almost single-handedly invented Canadian literary studies -- said that after 1967, every novel he'd read was influenced by either Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers or Scott Symon's Combat Journal Place d'Armes.

They're similar books. Both feature a member of the Canadian respectable classes who descends into into a kind of schizophrenic animism to deal with all the things he'd held back about himself -- largely sexual. Both books are written in stream-of-consciousness.

And Ross was right -- for about five years after, Canadians wrote nothing but this style. Margaret Atwood wrote this kind of novel twice -- her Surfacing is the only actually enjoyable book in the genre.

(Her Journal of Susanna Moodie is to be avoided -- it's a narrative whose speaker purports to be Susanna Moodie's subconscious, though it sounds suspiciously like Margaret Atwood.)

Cohen's book had managed to survive Canadians tendency to forget everything Canadian, mostly piggybacking on his fame as a musician. Even Cohen fans, though, wince when the book is mentioned.

Combat Journal Place d'Armes was just as influential at the time, and it was the first explicitly gay novel written in this country -- but it's been largely forgotten.

Well, I've read it now, and let me say, it's a very strange book.

( Review Continues: Spoilers for a book you'll never read. )