Cowboys & Bleeding Hearts: Essays on Violence, Health, and Identity
by Ron Charach
Hamilton: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers, Ltd., 2009, ISBN 978-1894987356, 200 pp., $19 paper.

The title of Ron Charach's collection of essays on violence, health, and identity--Cowboys & Bleeding Hearts--yokes together seemingly disparate elements in an almost surreal manner. Indeed, the book's abstract cover design further encourages a surrealistic reading of the essays within. Yet, these works engage the most realistic elements in our lives from the perspective of a psychiatrist and poet who exposes the absurdities of the pressing realities at the heart of gun violence. As we discover in one of the later essays, "cowboys" refer to right wing, conservative politicians, while "bleeding hearts" allude to leftwing, liberal ideologies.

Although Charach's politics lean toward the left of centre, his balanced views keep him close to centrist thinking, for he is critical of extremes at both ends of the spectrum. The four epigraphs to this collection attest to Charach's multi-faceted approach to politics, religion, and psychiatry. A sentence from Montaigne serves as the first epigraph: "I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself." With wit and wisdom, Charach also attempts to make sense of society's contradictions. Gandhi supplies the second epigraph: "What do I think of Western Civilization? I think it would be a very good idea." The third epigraph comes from Eric Hoffer: "The well-adjusted make poor prophets." And the final epigraph belongs to Azar Nafisi: "You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist."

Through several brief essays that first appeared as letters to the editor of various newspapers, Section One focuses on gun violence. As interesting and important as each of these individual letters appears, one could argue that they could have been amalgamated as one lengthy essay, since some repetition occurs. Charach's dual roles as poet and psychiatrist recur, as does his stance against guns and violence in his variations on a theme. These are mere quibbles, however, in an otherwise impressive book. The poet's wit is displayed in some of his titles: "When a Good Man Turns Gunman," "Arms and the Man," "Pop, Pop, Pop: The Sound of Violence," and "The Trouble with Tasers." Poetic wit, combined with the psychiatrist's wisdom, constantly engages the reader on subjects vital to personal and societal health.

Charach attributes widespread gun use to the user's need to bolster his sense of manhood, to Hollywood's glorification of weapons, and to paternal absence. Citing personal examples from his wife's American family, Charach traces the history of racism and the frontier mentality, and concludes that the "need for guns by the bedside has much to do with these deeply suppressed collective memories, all the stronger in those who harbour racism, whether consciously or unconsciously" (29). His wide-ranging discussion includes Para-Ordnance (Canada's only gun manufacturer), a series of American films devoted to violence, and Sandy Froman, the President of the National Rifle Association. A small woman brought up in a liberal family in the San Francisco area, Froman became convinced of the need to be armed when a man with a screwdriver tried to enter her apartment, and her calls for help failed to catch the would-be intruder. From that time on, she vowed never to depend on law enforcement for her personal safety. Yet, statistics show that Froman's change of heart does not offer a solution to the problem.

"Gun Violence" concludes with a brief piece on St. Valentine and St. Sebastian, two winter martyrs killed by older men. Arrows through hearts remind us of the real and symbolic deaths associated with Valentine's Day, as well as the connections to "bleeding hearts."

Section Two deals with health, as Charach explores "mythic marijuana," pornography, alternative medicine, and the relationship between poetry and psychiatry. Having been in the position of listener for so many years, the psychiatrist finds catharsis in the release of writing where he occasionally bares his own body and soul in matters of personal pain. He guides us through the medical system so that we empathize with him, just as he empathizes with his patients. From acupuncture to chiropractors to orthotics, the patient/psychiatrist runs the full gamut of alternative treatments and arrives at two sensible conclusions: (1) look for someone who is sympathetic to your plight and who respects your physical limits; (2) beware of one-size-fits-all solutions. Adding that optimism may be the best medicine, he offers his mother's personal advice: "It's a great life . . . if you don't weaken." Charach's chicken soup for the soul is tasty and wholesome.

Section Three contains several essays devoted to religion and identity. The author blames both conservatives and liberals for the rise of corporate greed and chaos in the global economic system. "The naive liberal ethos of expanded home ownership was compounded by the reckless cowboy ethos of deregulation . . ." (128). In "Canaries of the Mind-Shaft" he exposes current anti-Semitism. Once again, the self-styled bleeding heart liberal gives a nuanced view of the situation in the Middle East. "Even though Northern [sic] Israel has been harassed for eight years by Hamas rockets, even though suicide bombs killed, maimed or traumatized thousands, even though Israeli innovation and democracy makes the country the David of the Middle East, effective Palestinian and sympathetic European PR have no problem portraying Israel more as Goliath and the Palestinians as slingshot-wielding underdogs in this battle" (141).

With all of Charach's gifts as poet, psychiatrist, and essayist, it would be interesting to see him turn to the genre of fiction, where his empathy toward patients would no doubt result in imaginative characters on the page.

Michael Greenstein has taught at several universities in Canada and abroad, and is the author of "Third Solitudes" and an anthology of Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada.

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