Anonymity is the big lie of a city. You aren’t anonymous at all. You’re common, really, common like so many pebbles, so many specks of dirt, so many atoms of materiality.
One of the themes explored in the novel is life in the big city. Not just life and not just any big city, but specifically life in the culturally diverse big city of Toronto by culturally diverse characters. Toronto and its history and the larger cultural history of Canada looms large in the background to the narrative of four characters working their way through the story. The question that lingers within the thematic application of this assertion is, of course, what is the difference between mere anonymity and material commonality.
Pope Joan was a bar on Parliament Street. A bar that stood as the last eastern outpost of gay life in downtown Toronto. It had had several reincarnations, the previous one being the Rose, where they played Patsy Cline singing “Crazy” at the end of each night. It was primarily a lesbian bar, though a few gay men and voyeuristic straight couples could be picked out on any given night.
In addition to being a study of cultural diversity in Toronto, the novel also explores diversity within the world sexuality. Like much of the author’s work, lesbian themes permeate the narrative of this work of prose. This particular quote is also notable for alluding to a very interesting, but very little known bit of history. The name of the lesbian bar, Pope Joan, is a reference to a ninth century woman who took the name of John Anglicus is rumored to have actually served as Pope for a short time before the Vatican realized what it had on its hands. The connection between this possible bit of history/possible myth with Patsy Cline singing the most famous song with which she is associated is a more than decent demonstration of associational editing within the form of novel-writing.
There are times when I’ve said to myself, Who the hell are you? That’s a dangerous question. And this is a dangerous city. You could be anybody here. That is what first took me when I walked among people on the streets. Then one morning I sat on the subway train and I heard a laughter and it reminded me of when I was little, and right away I knew it would be easy to disappear here. Who would know?
This is a bit of ironic juxtaposition to that first quote excerpted above. The book opens with a pondering of the impossibility of achieving true anonymity in the city and comes to an end with a reflection upon the possibilities offered by the city to become anyone you want. What is the difference between anonymity and multiple personalities? Again, a big question on the existential conceptualization of anonymity and materiality. Can one truly be of material permanence and also anonymous at the same time? Can one be both anonymous and offers multiple dimensionalities? These are questions lying at the center of the narrative which must be thematically pursued in order to fully understand the storyline unifying all its many major characters.
