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Accelerated Paces: Travels Across Borders and Other Imaginary Boundaries

by Jim Oaten

Long before Oprah publicly eviscerated James Frey for exaggerating aspects of his biography, another notorious writer regularly employed hyperbole, embellishment, and outright lies in his “non-fiction” work. It takes Vancouver-based author Jim Oaten 162 pages before he name-checks Hunter S. Thompson and his particular brand of Gonzo journalism, but the American writer’s influence is all over the essay collection Accelerated Paces.

Whether it is a description of role-playing a cat in a mental health centre, careering through the streets of Mombasa in a taxi, or even attending a Robert McKee story seminar, Oaten’s writing constantly teeters on the blissed-out edge of chaos. Here is his description of Times Square: “In the centre of the city, a commercial supernova. Everywhere, the greedy pulse of storeys-high neon and a mind-melting roll of LED animations, their millions of multi-coloured bulbs screaming ‘buy’ at the unbelievably crowded sidewalks below.” For Oaten, verisimilitude is debased coinage, and the truth of a situation is captured in the vividness
of language.

This approach leaves the author ample room to embellish. Oaten acknowledges the slipperiness of memory in “Neither Here Nor There,” about his mother’s Alzheimer’s: “Take your first memory, for example. Is it yours? Or did someone tell it to you?” The piece concludes with Oaten realizing that as his mother sinks further into her disease, she becomes “less present” and “more like something I just made up.”

The practice of making things up to get at a larger truth leads Oaten to insert fictional pieces into and alongside the essays. Sometimes this works well, as with the story of an adolescent boy on summer vacation that is interspersed with the description of the McKee seminar. It works less well in entirely fictional pieces, such as the short story “Ghosts,” which feels out of place in this brief volume.

Also out of place is the short piece “Hello Kitty, Goodbye Wallet,” which is not a personal story so much as pure journalism: an examination of the Japanese company Sanrio’s dominance in the global toy market. Accelerated Paces is at its best when it remains focused on Oaten’s own experiences, and views them through the funhouse mirror of the author’s adrenaline-fuelled sensibility.

 

Reviewer: Steven W. Beattie

Publisher: Anvil Press

DETAILS

Price: $18

Page Count: 166 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-895636-93-2

Released: Dec.

Issue Date: 2009-1

Categories: Memoir & Biography

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