ANNE NOTHOF
The Road to Victory is one of four reclamations of the works of Gerald Noxon undertaken by Paul Tiessen and Miguel Mota: in 1986 they co-edited Noxon's previously unpublished novel, Teresina Maria; in 1987 they published a collection of his works, On Malcolm Lowry and Other Writings; and in 1988 Tiessen edited The Letters of Malcolm Lowry and Gerald Noxon. It may be that the resurrection of Gerald Noxon is due primarily to his friendship with Malcolm Lowry, evident in a correspondence which provides critical insight into the progress of Under the Volcano. In 1945 Noxon encouraged Lowry to write a radio adaptation of Moby Dick for Andrew Allan's Stage series. Noxon was rather diffident about his own radio work: in his letters to Lowry he writes about the stress of meeting weekly deadlines and ,churning out dramas for the two series which Andrew has running at the moment, mostly pretty corny' (Letters, Feb 1945, p 105). He was well aware of the impermanence of radio drama, and accepted censorship philosophically: when three of his satires were 'banned at the last moment as being too near the knuckle,' he 'wasn't too sad about it' as he had already been paid (Letters, Mar 1944, p 73). Lowry admired his friend's ability to meet weekly deadlines, but commented sparingly on his radio writing. He encouraged Noxon to complete Teresina Maria and to pursue his poetry.
Between 1944 and 1955, during the 'Golden Age' of radio drama, Noxon was Canada's most prolific radio dramatist. He wrote two 13-week series which focused on the war effort: They Fly for Freedom and Our Canada, followed by a 33-week series entitled News from Europe; and 26 plays for the Stage series-408 plays in total. During the war years Noxon wearied of the weekly routine, and the effort required to read 'an enormous volume of very depressing material from Europe, bundles of private letters that are simply dripping with hate and despair' (Letters, Mar 1944, p 73), but he continued with Background to Battle and The World to Ourselves. His most successful radio play, according to Howard Fink and Alice Frick, was undoubtedly 'Mr. Arcularis,' an adaptation of a short story by his friend, Conrad Aiken (published in All the Bright Company: Radio Drama Produced by Andrew Allan, eds Howard Fink and John Jackson). Lowry praised this production as 'hair-raising and first rate' (Letters p 16). Yet Noxon's commitment was primarily to finding Canada's voice-to reflect the 'mysterious power of the people' (Biographical Preface to The Road to Victory, p 21), and the real life of the country which remained untouched by filmmakers, attempting to express through sound a vision similar to Herman Voaden's. Between 1941 and 1942 Noxon travelled several times across Canada to collect script material for his weekly series. Finally, however, with the post-war cutbacks at the CBC, he was obliged to leave Canada for the United States to make a living wage as a broadcasting instructor at Boston University.
In his Biographical Preface Paul Tiessen explains that the ten radio plays anthologized in The Road to Victory were selected to demonstrate 'the richness and variety of Noxon's radio-drama career, and [to clarify] his influential achievement' (p 22). They were chosen 'for their literary and dramatic qualities and to reflect Noxon's major themes of the 1940s' (p 22). They represent the work of four important radio producers from three Canadian regions: Andrew Allan and Frank Willis in Toronto, Esse Ljungh in Winnipeg, and Rupert Caplan in Montreal; and, fortuitously, seven of the ten plays are the same as those selected by Noxon himself. In their introduction to the anthology Howard Fink and John Jackson provide a diplomatic and charitable context for the collection, which rationalizes the form and content of the plays: several are documentaries written for propaganda purposes during the war to mould national opinion, funded by External Affairs and reflecting the official government position, and therefore not to be considered as 'serious' drama. They constitute a 'water mark' above which Noxon's later plays can be measured. The editors maintain that the 'serious plays are at once more personal and more universal' (p 10), and that the collection demonstrates a 'clear development' of Noxon's radio-drama techniques through the 1940s, many of which were innovative. They conclude that Noxon did contribute significantly to the 'art' of didactic writing and never swerved from his didactic goals, thus establishing criteria for assessment of what follows, but begging the question as to the merits of such an 'art of didactic writing,' not to mention its dubious characteristics such as emotional manipulation, specific historical and political bias, and over-simplification of complex moral and social issues.
Many of Noxon's radio dramas are ambitious and imaginative, using sound collage and original music scores by Lucio Agostini. It is not difficult to imagine the powerful emotive force of such documentaries as the title piece, 'The Road to Victory,' considering the date on which it was first aired: 8 May 1945, the final day of the war in Europe. It looks back over five years and eight months of struggle, using a recitation of place names to chronicle the remorseless 'progress' of the war. Noxon alternates recordings of historic speeches with reactions by individual Canadians, although the emphasis tends to be on the English-Canadian involvement in the war. He sees the war in terms of theatre, which unfortunately suggests some kind of entertainment value:
The world stage is being set for the last and greatest act in the drama of this war. And in the wings, the three master dramatists Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, are planning the curtain: the knockout blow and the kind of world we are to live in afterwards. (p 54)
The naivety of this conclusion, not to mention the absurd mixed metaphor, are now painfully apparent, and the concluding words in the play, spoken by two Canadian soldiers --- expressing the hope that both Canadians and Germans have learned a lesson-is puzzling. What lesson?
In 'The People,' from the Our Canada series, the protagonist, Joe, signs up for the Air Force, but wants to know just what he is fighting for. The explanation is in the form of an historic narrative which dramatises the hardships endured by the 'first Canadians' (precluding the indigenous peoples). Significantly, a strong patriotic note is sounded by the French settlers: 'Men die, Jacques, but their hopes and dreams live on after them. We who are spared must not break faith. We must endure'(p 62).
'The Pillars of Hercules' is a fatuous fantasy predicated on the dream of a young soldier wounded by a bomb explosion in the pub where he was arguing with his girlfriend. Noxon is particularly fond of such dream sequences, a common device for taking the audience into the protagonist's subconscious for a Freudian analysis. In this play, as in 'Pete Goes Home,' 'Just the One, Sir?,' and 'Back from the Sea,' the man's perspective is wholly negative and self-destructive as a consequence of his war experience; the woman's voice is life-affirming and loving. Noxon is tackling the rehabilitation problem, and the psychological trauma which followed the war, but his solutions, which amount to conversions, are simplistic and idealistic.
'Pete Goes Home' bears an uncanny resemblance to Post Mortem, written in 1930 by Noel Coward. Both are 'out-of-body experiences' in which a soldier lives through future events at the instant of his dying. In Coward's play, however, the experience is profoundly disillusioning, as the idealistic young soldier sees that he has died for nothing. Noxon's play takes a more optimistic view, as the dead hero watches his buddy take his place in the community with his family and his girlfriend. This 'spiritual' point of view provides the necessary distance for social comment without sacrificing personal involvement, and can accommodate rapid changes in time and place. As Peter comments, he can 'move around so nice and easy now, without my pack' (p 100). If his pack is his life, however, the assumption in the play that it's 'good to be alive' is somehow discounted. Moreover his family and friends accept his death with remarkable equanimity. Noxon's best writing is evident in his descriptive passages, which eulogize the beauty of nature and the joy of living, and evoke sensuous images of the seasons.
In 'Just the One, Sir?' Noxon's radio technique is formulaic and unimaginative, as his heroine recounts her spiritual awakening to a cynical war veteran. The writing is particularly stilted when Noxon tries to convey strong emotion, and there is little interaction between the characters: the play consists of alternating monologues.
'The House in Brune' combines mystery with allegory to make a statement about the dangers of nuclear weapons and about the relations of labour unions and management. Again it works through dramatised recollection this time, of a stereotypical newspaper reporter cum private detective. 'The Great River' is wholly allegorical, a parable of greed and selfishness with the message that we will all go down together if we don't learn to cooperate. 'Trouble at La Treche,' set in a French town at the end of the war, is a more complex investigation of moral issues, without undue reliance on flashbacks and emotive musical score: it proceeds primarily through a series of balanced debates.
'The Last Disciple' is another adaptation of a short story by Conrad Aiken, but as Alice Frick indicates in Image in the Mind, it 'carried nothing of the impact of its predecessor,' "'Mr. Arcularis"'(p 117). Although it relies heavily on narration and explanation 'The Last Disciple' is an intriguing Freudian mystery story with mythological and religious elements cleverly integrated in a contemporary setting to portray the nature of sin, guilt, and dramatic justice.
The Road to Victory is an opulent text, and it provides important details such as the names of producers, actors, and technicians whenever they are available. Although Gerald Noxon's plays may not always merit the high esteem of the editors, and will probably never again be produced, their publication makes available an important stage in the history of drama in Canada.