Visser - The Way We Are

visor or vizor (vaiz) n. a piece of armour fixed or hinged to the helmet to protect the face and furnished with slits for the eyes. another name for peak (on a cap). a small movable screen used as protection against glare from the sun. [C14: from Anglo-French viser, from Old French visire, from vis face; see VISAGE]visored or vizoredadj.visorless or vizorlessadj.

visserism (visrizm) n. a concise socio-anthropological insight arrived at by comparing current human behaviour with various alternative models, e.g., classical Graeco-Roman, Martian, etc. an entertainment in which points are made by identifying and skewering absurdities. any observation, esp. on contemporary manners, that provokes shocked laughter; a sly dig. Archaic or literary. the doctrine that all scholarship, e.g., food chemistry, etymology, particle physics, etc., exists to prove that life is rich, funny, and meaningful. [C20: from AngloSouth African-French visser to secure firmly or to screw in]visseriananounvisseredadj.visseraladj.

vista (Vist) n. a view, esp. through a long narrow avenue of trees, buildings, etc., or such a passage or avenue itself; prospect: a vista of arches. a comprehensive mental view of a distant time or a lengthy series of events: the vista of the future [C17: from Italian: a view from vedere to see, from Latin videre]vistaedadj.vistalessadj.

If visserism has not yet taken its rightful place in the dictionary, it is only because lexicographers are, as usual, slow to recognize the imperatives of everyday speech. At Saturday Night magazine, we cant claim to have coined the word (there are earlier citations in the archives of CBCs Morningside, in the literature of gastronomy, and in the records of the Classics Department at the University of Toronto), but it has certainly become indispensable around our offices. For example: Theres a topic ripe for visserism. Or: You should be vissered for that. And: Could he make it more visseral? Weve been saying things like that for the past six years.

It was in May 1988 that Margaret Vissers unique column, The Way We Are, started to adorn the pages of Saturday Night. It was quickly evident to our readers that here was not just a piquant writer but a genuinely original thinker, someone with her own slant on the world around us. Thats not surprising if you know her. Her great trick is to regard everything, absolutely everything on which her attention alights, as exotic.

The typical experience in reading a Visser column is to start off from a comfy, well-bolstered positiona nice tan makes us look healthier, for example, or Valentines Day cards are tackyand then, before we even have our seat-belts fastened, find ourselves whisked away in a series of brisk paragraphs through historical contexts and cultural cross-references to a destination that is neither comfy nor commonplace.

I will never forget the morning Margaret Vissers column on Santa Claus turned up on my desk in advance of a Christmas issue. Santa Claus! I groaned. What in heavens name is there left to sayone way or anotherabout Santa Claus? By the time I got to the end of the column I was sweating. A sex symbol? A spermatic journey down the shaft of a fireplace chimney? Our Santa Claus? Ever since, I have been conscious of the impulse to distract the eyes of my impressionable children from their iconography of Jolly Old St Nick. It just doesnt seem decent any more.

It has been much the same with her columns on high heels, broad beans, bathing suits, and the never-before-imagined possibilities offered by umbrellas. Margaret Visser has found gold in jelly, knitting, kissing, restaurant menus, stripes, the taste of sour, our failure to remember peoples namesall the familiar bric--brac of our daily lives. But far more important than merely pinpointing the curiosities with which we surround ourselves, she has always found a way to relate to our queer behaviours and assumptions to our shared humanity. Margaret Visser is no cool, detatched observer, but a warm and gleeful participant.

I once found myself on a subway train in Toronto sitting beside a younger reader of Saturday Night (our range is between ten and ninety-five) who was flipping through the pages. She was just browsing, looking at the pictures in the longer features and spending altogether too much time on the advertisement for Bermuda. (It was in the middle of winter.) Then, briefly, she took in Margaret Vissers column, flipped a few more pages and then turned back to the column. In this issue, it was on the history and moral significance of blue jeans. The reader herself was wearing blue jeans. At one point while she was into the thick of the column, she actually pinched the fabric of her own clothing to get a tactile fix on its texture. At the end, she let out a little Hmmm.

More hmmms have been uttered at the end of a Visser column, I suspect, than after anything else published in the magazine. They are provoked by her very visserism. Or, to be precise, they are properly called visseral hmmms.

J OHN F RASER
Editor
Saturday Night
March 1994