Peace Shall Destroy Many (34 page)

As it developed, the controversy was largely behind the times even while it happened. By the early sixties, more and more Mennonite young people were leaving the farm for education and the professions. The language of the churches rapidly changed to English and when, five years later, the
Free Press
ran their condensed version of the novel, I heard not a murmur. In the thirty-nine years since its publication, tens of thousands of copies of
Peace Shall Destroy Many
have been sold, many of them to Mennonite colleges and schools where students are required to read it, not only in literature courses, but sometimes in history and sociology courses as well.

From 1962 to 1998 the novel was in print with McClelland & Stewart. When this edition by Vintage Cana
da became a possibility, I thought: it’s been years since I’ve read it completely; perhaps I should go over it and fix the diction, eliminate a few
anachronistic ideas, whatever…. But the more I read, the more I realized that this “bungling apprentice of my youth,” to borrow a fine phrase from Vladimir Nabokov (in his foreword to
Despair)
, was more of a stranger to me than I had anticipated. I very much like his lyricism and architectural sense, I respect his verve, his tenderness, his more or less implacable convictions, his longing for the “bare feet in the dust” and “the world, the guns” clarity he seems to accept without question as human reality. But his persistent, sometimes adamantine fervours, his sudden, clumsy, echoing constructions—these should not be “fixed.” This novel has a youthful “message to bring in its teeth,” (Nabokov again), so I will dare once more to say “Stet.” Let it stand.

Except for one word. I have deleted a word that the original editors in their wisdom inserted after my last check of the page proofs, one small word in a key sentence of the novel that I have pondered since I first saw it in the book in 1962. The sentence appears on
this page
“… he [Thom] realized that two wars did not confront him; only one’s [own] two faces. And he was felled before both.” When the editors added “own,” the double meaning of “one” was of course eliminated, and so the reflexive binary of “two wars” and “two faces”—clumsy or not—disappeared. Now, after nearly four decades, I have made up my mind: to try and capture once more that original intention.

Rudy Wiebe

Edmonton, Alberta,

July, 2001

Rudy Wiebe, widely published internationally and winner of numerous awards, including two Governor General’s Awards, is the author of nine novels, four short-story collections, three books of essays and
Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman
, which he co-authored with Yvonne Johnson. Rudy Wiebe is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and lives in Edmonton.