When contributing editor Zachariah Wells read Andre Alexis’ critical essay “The Long Decline” in a recent issue of The Walrus, he had a nagging feeling of déjà vu. A couple of days later, he realized why…

February 1, 2010

Dear Mr. Alexis,

Thank you very much for submitting your essay, “The Long Decline,” to Canadian Notes & Queries. We are by no means averse to critical prose that casts a harsh light on the work of CNQ editors, as yours does, and we certainly sympathise with your frustration in the face of the inarguable and, it would seem, ineluctable decline of book coverage in Canada’s major dailies (although our Senior Editor, John Metcalf, might demur, since he was already saying, thirty years ago, that “our newspaper reviews are not unusually illiterate”). We also, as I’m sure you know, appreciate pugnacity in the criticism that we publish and your piece is imbued with that quality from beginning to end. That said, I’m afraid we can’t accept your essay, at least not in its present shape.

Because your work shows a fighting spirit we like and because critics willing to be blunt are thin on the ground, our editorial board thought that instead of sending you a form rejection letter, we’d provide you with an editorial critique of your essay, in the sincere hope that if it’s not useful to you in revising this piece, it at least helps you sharpen any future critical undertakings.

Some of the problems with your essay are architectural and others are more in the details. I’ll start with the big picture concerns.

STRUCTURE

I hope it doesn’t seem condescending to trot out a bit of standard-issue undergraduate advice: before you start writing, you should figure out what your thesis is and plot an outline of your essay, ensuring that all major points and sub-points of each paragraph are pertinent to that thesis. It’s clear that you haven’t done this by your second paragraph, in which you ask “Where to start?” The muddle you’re in becomes apparent again later, when you write: “How we reached this pass is difficult to articulate. Or, rather, there are so many interesting narratives, it’s difficult to settle on any single one.” But the demands of the critical essay are such that, before submitting a draft to an editor, the critic, as a minimum requirement, needs to have figured out what narrative it is he’s trying to articulate. The most disappointing aspect of your essay is that it fails to do this, repeatedly.

At the outset, it seems that you are intent on excoriating the tattered hide of newspaper review sections. But you’ve barely got started on this essay about editorial and publishing problems when you abruptly change topics, lamenting how “woefully incompetent” reviewers are “these days.” You make a token gesture back to the disappearance of reviews from “our dying newspapers,” but this is a non-sequitur in your new topic; is the problem not enough reviews, or is the problem too many badly written ones? Some combination thereof, presumably, but you don’t spend enough time developing your arguments for the reader to know what exactly you’re getting at. Another non-sequitur in this paragraph is the assertion that Canada has failed “to produce a single literary critic of any worth, at least since the death of Northrop Frye.” Besides the fact that this is objectively incorrect (since, for example, Peterborough’s own Hugh Kenner, a critic with a substantial international reputation who is widely credited with restoring Ezra Pound’s literary credibility and whose book The Pound Era is a critical classic, was still alive and writing for a good decade after Frye’s death; if by “produced,” you mean that we haven’t had a new critical voice of that stature emerge, I would remind you that Frye has only been dead for 18 years, so we can’t possibly know what critics the country will produce in the post-Frye era), by including this statement in a paragraph about the incompetence of reviewers, you elide the manifest differences between someone who writes a review for a newspaper or periodical and a scholarly critic. Such distinctions between practitioners and genres must be made if a reader is to have a proper idea of what it is you are writing about.

From there, we have another awkward transition to a long, rambly paragraph about British critic James Wood—whose relevance to an essay about Canadian newspapers/reviewing/criticism you don’t make clear—and from there, somehow back to “our reviews,” which begets another non-sequential shift to a paragraph about how John Metcalf—who to the best of my knowledge has never been an employee of a newspaper—is to blame “for this state of affairs.” By this point, you’ve taken so many quicksilver twists that the reader must be forgiven for wondering precisely what state of affairs it is you’re talking about.

Next, we move on—again with no connective tissue to speak of—to a third topic: Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood, whose “academic” approach, we learn, was the burr under Metcalf’s saddle. If you were writing an essay about John Metcalf’s criticism, this might not be a bad place to start. Indeed, the seven paragraphs of this section are easily the most cohesive of your essay—although even here, you tend to wander, saying in one breath that Metcalf is at fault and then later saying that it’s not so much him as the people “who have been influenced by him,” which seems to me a bit like blaming Christ for the sins of St. Paul. Were this section focused on and fleshed out, I have every reason to believe—well, to hope at least—that you’d be able, with editorial assistance, to produce a piece of criticism we could publish.

However, your need to tie in this relatively extended take on Metcalf to the Problem With Today’s Reviewing—the former, given the structure of your essay, amounts to a lengthy digression—sabotages any such hopes. Before you can say anything of real substance about Metcalf’s criticism, you are making another abruptly clumsy segue—“So, one could legitimately say that Metcalf has turned a generation of reviewers away from “academic” evaluations of literature”—back to your original complaint: that Canadian book reviewing has been going downhill for twenty years.

Finally, for reasons that are again far from clear, you end your piece on Canadian review culture by talking about James Wood. It is perhaps apposite that a series of ill-connected pensées should be capped by one last non-sequitur—but it is nevertheless unfortunate.

I have spent so much time on the structure of your piece because I believe that this major flaw of your essay is the chief begetter of its manifest infelicities. Your failure to plan and plot your structure, your negligence when it comes to measuring twice before you cut, has led to a house in which, to borrow from American poet Alan Dugan, “nothing is plumb, level or square.” In such a house, one must force things into place, stretching, bending and cutting in a graceless, Procrustean manner to make everything fit.

Some examples:

LACK OF QUOTATIONS TO SUBSTANTIATE ARGUMENTS

Because you have tried to cram so many things into one essay, you have left yourself little space in which to quote. There are no quotations of any length; the longest you use is no more than a few words. This is a significant lacuna in an essay that is almost 3500 words long, and it calls into serious question the authority of your arguments.

One of the only things you do quote is a remark by Philip Marchand to the effect that

…anyone who does not appreciate the greatness of Tolstoy is “deficient in taste, period.”A dubious opinion, given that Henry James, who has as great a claim to “taste” as Marchand, disliked War and Peace, and the late-career Tolstoy felt that his own early work was too verbose. … Marchand’s statement is about himself, his belief in War and Peace’s greatness. He offers no defence of his opinion, believing that none is required.

This four-word quotation, for which you provide no context, comes from the autobiographical essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer,” which serves as the introduction to Marchand’s book Ripostes—not from a review or a work of criticism. Marchand’s essay, I would add, is considerably more nuanced than you seem willing to admit. He even confesses to the sorts of doubts you say earlier that reviewers never admit to:

Every critic must sometimes suspect, upon feeling baffled by a book, that there are other, more acute readers who actually have understood the author’s intentions—understood them, and relished the results. They are not baffled. But meanwhile, intelligence has failed you, the critic. In a few cases, it may have failed so badly that your remarks will serve to amuse posterity.

He also says that Cat’s Eye—a novel written by a poet, which you say he’s against—is a good book, if not a major one. Marchand is not talking about something so picayune as liking Tolstoy (and let the record show that he has elsewhere sided with James and Tolstoy so far as to prefer Anna Karenina to War and Peace, to which he does not actually refer explicitly in his essay, by the bye). He’s saying that Tolstoy is a major writer who cannot be ignored; unfortunately, Henry James isn’t around to consult, but it’s hard to imagine him disagreeing, since he, after all, couldn’t ignore Tolstoy either. This isn’t about pleasure at all, but about perspective. He’s saying that it makes no sense to put Atwood next to Tolstoy and determine that Atwood is in the same league. By providing a sound-byte and by failing to contextualise that byte, you misrepresent what he is saying. Rather than engage with his argument, you opportunistically poach a pull-quote so that he might serve as your tackling dummy.

Your failure to use quotations is particularly troublesome in an essay that argues against criticism as mere opinion. Of Metcalf, you complain: “He takes sentences or paragraphs that he considers examples of brilliant writing and then does the written equivalent of pointing and saying, “There, you see?”” This is a fair criticism, if true, but not only do you provide no examples of this pointing, you fail to avoid it yourself. Metcalf’s approach, as portrayed by you, at least gives a reader some basis on which to agree or argue with him. As Marchand puts it in the same essay from which his maligned Tolstoy remark was untimely ripped (after juxtaposing two paragraphs and saying, in precise terms, what he likes in one and dislikes in the other): “The reader may feel free, at this point, to make his or her own judgements about the writer’s critical tastes.”

In consistently failing to provide examples, you go one worse than Metcalf and co. Consider, for example, your claim that Metcalf “tends to like finicky prose, and he particularly likes English versions of finicky prose. His own sentences, those he quotes as examples of “good writing,” are often overwritten and, at times, awkward in their frank desire to be good.” One expects at this point to see at the very least an example of such an overwrought, pre-pubescently awkward sentence, but one’s expectations are frustrated. It is truly unfortunate that you didn’t quote anything here because the “finickiness” of a sentence is something that can actually be quantified, using such mathematical tools as the Gunning Fog Index or the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Test. This is precisely the sort of analysis that Marchand does provide in his comparison of sentences by Michael Ondaatje and Russell Smith. The latter, it should be noted, is a writer whose fiction has been edited and published by Metcalf, and yet Marchand’s example of what he sees as a characteristic Smith sentence is demonstrably unfinicky in its diction and syntax. The least you could have done is provide an equally concrete example of what you deem to be “finicky prose.”

Rather than pointing, you gesture vaguely in the general direction of something and sniff, “Need I say more?” Your essay pays lip service to the idea that mere opinion is bad, but its manoeuvres betray another message: their opinions are bad, but mine are good—so good I don’t even need to defend them. You actually make this explicit when you say, “On the evidence, I think Metcalf and I have similar sensibilities. But those who have been influenced by him — Ryan Bigge, for instance — are not on the same level [ed: as Metcalf and by extension as Alexis] and don’t possess the same credibility, though they allow themselves to make the same kinds of pronouncements.” (Ah, so credibility justifies opinion. And how does one go about amassing this capital you call credibility? Or is it bestowed upon one by divine fiat like a birthmark, discernible only to those similarly endowed?) The assumption of one’s rectitude and others’ wrongitude is of course at the heart of most debates and there is nothing inherently wrong with it as a starting point, but it is disingenuous to pretend that one is against opinion as such—in an opinion piece.

POT AND KETTLE-ISMS

This is far from the only example of failing to practise what you preach. In the same essay in which you decry “personal attacks and collegiate vitriol,” as well as certain critics’ practise of “insulting” their targets, you write disdainfully of “a short, pompous man with thick, dark-rimmed glasses (a self-styled “critic”).” Just because, unlike Starnino and Bigge, you don’t name the person you’re belittling doesn’t mean that it isn’t an insult. It just means you’re less brave than they are in dishing it out. Either that, or this bespectacled little man’s a character you’ve invented.

In an essay that begins “Toronto is the city in which I have been disabused of any number of notions, where I have lost a certain innocence,” you later proclaim: “This is neither criticism nor reviewing but autobiography. Marchand is telling me something about himself. Starnino is telling me about his sensibility and how much he believes in his beliefs. Bigge is settling a personal vendetta with McLaren.” (By the way, while I am aware of the details of Bigge vs. McLaren, it is not safe to assume that all your readers will be, so if you’re going to cite the conflict, you really need to explain it.) Throughout your piece, which you admit is prompted by your “idealism,” you tell us of your preferences, your sensibilities, your beliefs. You tell us that Stan Persky is “one of [your] favourite Canadian reviewers,” but you say absolutely nothing about why he is, never mind—pardon the repetition—quoting something from one of his putatively wonderful reviews.

BROADSTROKE GENERALISATIONS

By sidestepping the specific, you wander into the wilds of the general. A few cases in point, besides the aforementioned dismissal of all post-Frygian critics:

1. You argue that the 80s era Globe Books was “an inspiring venue for Canadian intellectual life.” In defense of this thesis, you mention Persky (again, without reference to what made him a worthy critic) and nothing else. One can only assume you’re working from memory and can’t actually recall any other contributors. You do mention Jay Scott, but then admit that he didn’t write for the books section; what you don’t seem to be aware of is that this makes him an irrelevant addition to your essay, unless you think the fact that he quoted Barthes renders him sufficiently bookish to merit a mention.

   
   

2. As noted above, you say that “Canadian literary reviewers are so woefully incompetent, it makes you wonder if there’s something in our culture that poisons critics in their cradles.” A reader can only assume that you believe that there is not a single book reviewer in a country of over 30 million who is even competent at his or her job. This in spite of earlier saying that Globe books editor Martin Levin “still manages to dig up capable reviewers now and then.” Is a capable reviewer not a competent one?

   
   

3. By promoting Metcalf as the prime mover of all incompetent and vicious critics, you do exactly what you say Metcalf is guilty of: you paint yourself into a corner. You concede that it is “rhetorical to blame any single person for the current state of critical affairs.” Personally, another “r” adjective comes to mind to describe such a perversely hyperbolic statement—Metcalf himself would be more than a little surprised to learn of how widespread his pernicious influence has been—but in spite of your caveat lector, you proceed to make the case against Metcalf anyway. Because the case is, by your own admission, dubious, the “facts” you corral to bolster it do not hold up to scrutiny. You say that Solway, Starnino, Marchand and Bigge are followers of Metcalf, as evidenced by the fact that Metcalf has “edited or published” them. While it’s true that Metcalf has edited collections of prose by Solway, Starnino and Marchand, it should be noted that Solway is only a couple of years younger than Metcalf and was engaged in sorties against the literary establishment long before he made contact with him. Further, one could with some accuracy claim that Starnino learned a thing or two from Solway, who actually was a mentor to the younger critic, but the Montreal Gazette had far more to do with giving Starnino his start as a reviewer than Metcalf did. Much as Marchand, as you’ll know from having read “Confessions of a Book Reviewer,” cut his critical teeth in the pages of the Toronto Star. All three of these writers have indeed published books edited by Metcalf, but the vast majority of the content in those books had been previously published by people other than Metcalf. It is certainly reasonable to posit that all four of these men share a certain outlook or sensibility, but it is a Reed Richardsesque stretch to call Solway, Marchand and Starnino Metcalf’s “children,” as you do. With Ryan Bigge, the case is weaker yet—no better than speculation, really. The only piece of evidence I know of linking Bigge to Metcalf is Bigge’s publication of a review of a book by Andrew Pyper in Canadian Notes & Queries. While Metcalf has long been on CNQ’s masthead, he is not the reviews editor. That job, at the time of Bigge’s review, belonged to Michael Darling, who also once commissioned me to write a review for CNQ. I subsequently joined CNQ as an editor and replaced Michael as reviews editor when he stepped down in 2006. I have served in that capacity for approximately four years, during which time I have had very limited exchanges with John Metcalf, who has never once told me what to have reviewed, nor whom I should hire to write for CNQ. I therefore think it entirely probable that Ryan Bigge has never had so much as a conversation with Metcalf, never mind the paranoid notion that Bigge is some kind of Metcalf acolyte.

   
   

4. If the Metcalf, Marchand, Starnino or Bigge of your essay appeared in a novel, say, the author of that novel might justly be charged with creating cardboard characters. It strikes me as a singular failure of imagination on your part—a failure made wilful by the suppression of facts—that you can only see, or choose only to portray, one dimension of these rather complex individuals. You speak of “the shallow, self-aggrandizing rhetoric that now passes for criticism.” Do you really want to go there? In this essay? Do you really believe that all Carmine Starnino does is insult poets? Or was this another rhetorical flourish? You leave an informed reader in the position of having to decide if you’re being ignorant or dishonest and neither option, needless to say, redounds to your credit. Is Bigge’s review of Leah McLaren’s book actually representative of his normal reviewing approach? Is this someone who reviews for the sole purpose of avenging hurts suffered? Is he allowed no mulligans on your course? I’ve already pointed out nuances in Marchand’s writing that you’ve missed/glossed over. Do I really need to remind you that Metcalf—whom you paint as an occasionally amusing curmudgeon with good taste but bad judgment—was appointed to the Order of Canada for his contributions to culture in this country, most notably for his role as mentor and editor to dozens of writers? Don’t take my word for it; how about Alice Munro’s: “I have the feeling he is the one person who can tell what’s fake, what’s shoddy, what’s an evasion, maybe even mark the place where a loss of faith hit you … It won’t matter what compliments you’ve been getting from other quarters.” You should be familiar with those words, as they appear on the jacket of An Aesthetic Underground, a book to which you refer. This isn’t to say that Metcalf is or should be beyond criticism. He isn’t. But he has earned a great deal more respect than you seem willing to grant him. And here’s the thing: your failure to give him his due does no harm to Metcalf, but rather to your own argument against him; assaults this feeble invariably wind up with the assailant more badly wounded than the intended target.

   
   

LIMITED KNOWLEDGE OF THE FIELD

All of these leaps, stretches, elisions, omissions and errors of fact accumulate to convince this reader that you have a very limited knowledge of the field you are writing about. That James Wood’s name is “the one” you hear mentioned is a rather dismal indictment of the literary company you keep. In conversations I have with other writers, names like David Orr, Helen Vendler, Harold Bloom, Tom Paulin, Marjorie Perloff, Michael Hoffmann, Ange Mlinko, James Fenton, the recently deceased Thomas Disch, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Clive James, Stephen Burt, Edna Longley—to name randomly a few off the top of my head—come up routinely. One can certainly argue about the relative merits of each writer’s criticism, but they are by no means low-profile figures; several of them are practically celebrities, at least as well known as Wood, if not better. They are, it is true, primarily critics and/or reviewers of poetry; that they occur to me is reflective of my own primary interests and reading habits. It could be that the fiction field is comparatively barren—my own knowledge of it is too limited to agree or disagree with such a statement, though even I can at least summon the name of Sven Birkerts without undue strain—but if so, you would have done better to restrict the scope of your essay to fiction reviewing or fiction criticism, instead of using the broader “literary” rubric. Since you have invited Solway and Starnino into your essay, however, it is clear that you did not intend to focus exclusively on fiction reviewing. At any rate, if you hope to salvage anything from this essay, I urge you to acquaint yourself with the writing of today’s prominent literary critics. If nothing else, it should provide you many hours of pleasure and stimulation.

I hope you can see, Mr. Alexis, why CNQ can’t accept your submission. If nothing else, it is an affront to the array of very talented reviewers whose work has graced our pages in recent issues, but which seems to have flown over your radar, set as it is to scan the ground immediately in front of you. I suggest you sample some of our back issues before submitting to us again. Read, for example, Anita Lahey’s mettlesome re-appraisal of Gwendolyn MacEwen; James Pollock’s bracing overview of the oeuvre-to-date of Jeffery Donaldson; Carmine Starnino’s generously spirited assessment of Karen Solie’s achievements (a far cry from the insults you seem to suggest is all he’s capable of dispensing). I don’t mean to suggest, either, that CNQ is the only venue for thought-provoking literary reviews. While the newspaper situation does indeed seem rather sad, there are a few smaller-circulation publications dedicated to criticism that is substantial in terms not only of column inches but also in rigour and erudition. Some of these are print magazines, such as Arc and The New Quarterly. Others are internet-based. Speaking of which, I’m puzzled, if not altogether surprised, that you neglected to tell readers that the reviews of Stan Persky, for example, can still be read online at Dooney’s Cafe. Clearly, he’s moved on from the Globe and Mail. Would that you followed his lead.

I’ll detain you no longer, sir. If you decide to rework the material in your essay, you are more than welcome to resubmit the results to us. If, however, you decide to seek another market for the piece as is, I’m sure you’ll have little trouble finding one. As you say, editorial standards in this country are, by and large, depressingly low.

Best regards,

Zachariah Wells

It also may well be one of the best issues we’ve put together. The Short Story issue, appearing concurrently with the biennial convention of the Society for the Study of the Short Story in English, currently going on in Toronto. This issue contains articles by Clark Blaise, Mark Anthony Jarman and Alex Good on the short story; Douglas Glover, Robert Thacker and Nathan whitlock on Alice Munro; Caroline Adderson on Mavis Gallant; Michael Darling on Audrey Thomas; a new story by Rebecca Rosenblum; poetry by Lisa Besner; Ryan Bigge on the 2009 Gillers; the first in our new CNQ Abroad feature, with Murray Wilson’s visit to Robert Graves; a cartoon and fresh design by Seth; the usual gathering of excellent reviews … and much more.

On newsstands and in mailboxes in the next week

In the current issue of The Walrus, regular CNQ contributor Stephen Henighan has an interesting profile of John Ralston Saul.  I must admit: I’ve not read much of Saul’s work.  I remember coming across his Voltaire’s Bastards back when I was a philosophy undergrad, reading a bit of it, sniffing contemptuously, and writing him off as of little  consequence.  My sister-in-law caught me out last year when, at Congress, she picked up his latest book and asked me what I thought of him.  Little, I replied.  She asked me why, and I couldn’t really come up with a reason: inherited prejudice and a too-quick-judgment.  I made a note to give him another try.

Henighan’s excellent essay reminds me that I still need to do so, and that there may be a fair bit more to Saul’s work  than I had originally thought.  The Walrus has posted the essay online, which you can read here.

Though Henighan’s essay is the only one I’ve yet read, this issue of The Walrus surely ranks as one of their most interesting in recent memory.  In addition to the Henighan piece, Mark Kingwell contributes an essay on civility in politics, Steven Heighton contributes a short story, George Bowering remembers AL Purdy, and there’s much else besides.  Worth the purchase price on the newsstand.  Go pick up a copy.

The feel of a Frog Hollow production, however, is entirely Caryl Peters.  Her chapbooks, broadsides and trade books, whether produced, as almost all of the earlier books were, exclusively via letterpress, or with more modern technologies, are works of art: beautifully typeset, designed, illustrated; sometimes hand coloured; often hand stitched or sewn.  Printed on excellent text papers, cover papers, many of the later editions available in both wrappers and even more limited cloth-backed editions.  And sold, for anyone with a sense of the work that goes into the production of these books, for a song.

Mark Callanan’s Sea Legend is no exception.  32 pp. wrap-around jacket, hand-sewn with silk thread into a inner cover of Indian cotton, with an illustrated colour title page, with three colour illustrations internally, it is gorgeous, a production I have admired as it has sat on my desk for weeks now.  I’ve not, however, had a chance to read it until this afternoon.

Two of these poems first appeared in CNQ, so might be familiar to readers of this blog.  Though there is much of the sea, as one would expect in a book with this title, and by a Newfoundalnd-based poet, here, the strongest poems are more tied to the land: I’m thinking of The Meaning of Life, Medieval Woodcut, Snowman, Rain Stick.  Take the last stanze from Woodcut:

The wolf, as always, is just doing a job.

No hard feelings.  No guilt rides her back

on the return journey to the den, her cubs

growling as they nip each other’s skin.

Hunger can only be staved off for so long.

Meat has no name when the spirit is gone.

To check out this and other Frog Hollow Press offerings, please go here.

Yesterday I received The Essential Kenneth Leslie, published this Spring by The Porcupine’s Quill, and edited by CNQ review editor Zachariah Wells. This is part of PQL’s essential Essential series, which includes titles by Don Coles, George Johnston, P. K. Page and James Reaney. T’is a fabulous series, offering a well-edited introduction to these poets, and at 14.95 it’ll still elave enough for a beer at the pub while you read it.

]]> http://notesandqueries.ca/the-essential-kenneth-leslie/feed/ 0 http://notesandqueries.ca/how-to-design-a-book-cover/ http://notesandqueries.ca/how-to-design-a-book-cover/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:45:06 +0000 Daniel Wells http://www.notesandqueries.ca/?p=844

Many who follow Biblioasis and CNQ know that we started as used booksellers, and still maintain an online and by appointment shop.  we’ve only managed to catalogue a little over 7000 items over the last few years, of more than 30,000 currently in stock.  A lot of our stock, whether catalogued or no, would be best classified as Canadiana, and over the last six months I’ve sold some truly rare items, some of which probably will never pass through my hands again.  Some of it, like the issue of the Trireme above, containing what well might be Hugh Hood’s first short story, might be deemed ephemeral; others include rare Contact Press titles, broadsides, galley proofs, mock-covers for important Canadian books which were abandoned, and much else.  There’s the catalogue I sold a few months back Norman Levine wrote for a tour of the St. Ives painters in Canada during the 50s, the first thing he’d penned in St. Ives, the place he called home for the last 40-50 years of his life, and perhaps one of the scarcest Levine items around.  I sold it to the daughter of one of the painters, and it returned to England.  I’m unlikely to see a copy of it again, and wish I’d kept a photograph of it for future reference.

As some of you also know, CNQ began its life more than 40 years ago as an offshoot publication of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada, and its early issues were devoted to the bibliographic particularities of rare Canadiana.  As such, I thought this would be the place to begin documenting some of the books and other interesting items I come across as a periodic feature here on the CNQ blog.  Perhaps it will force me to slow down and document what passes through my hands before I lose it forever.  And it will allow me to play bookseller a little more regularly, as it is something I miss a great deal.

If anyone else out there has an interesting piece of Canadiana they would like to share, send me a short write up and some photographs or scans and I’ll include them here on the CNQ blog.  I’ll try to post something new at least once a week, though I expect you can expect such postings to be, as is true of so much that is CNQ, “charmingly irregular.”

Below is a scan of Hugh Hood’s story The Odyssey in Brief.  Enjoy.

]]> http://notesandqueries.ca/hugh-hoods-odyssey/feed/ 0 http://notesandqueries.ca/giller-prize-jury-announced/ http://notesandqueries.ca/giller-prize-jury-announced/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:49:47 +0000 Daniel Wells http://www.notesandqueries.ca/?p=773 Michael Enright, Claire Messud and Ali Smith will judge the 2010 Giller Prize.

It’s an interesting selection.  Michael Enright is one of my favourite CBC radio personalities, one of the last and best of the old guard.   I was just thinking about him this morning as one of only a handful of CBC radio personalities I still regularly tune in for.  He’s a thoughtful, open, and very able reader and commentator, and I’m happy to see him on the list. (In truth, I’m fond of anyone at the CBC who still regularly wears a bow-tie.)

I’ve never read either Ali Smith or Claire Messud, or at least, I’ve not read either much.  I have two of Ali Smith’s short story collections on my shelves, and I’ve been meaning to read her for some time: as she is known, at least in the U.K., as much for her work as a short story writer, perhaps this will bode well for a few more collections seeing long list inclusions.  The only work from Claire Messud I’ve read was an excerpt from a novel included in the Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories that likely should not have been there (it’s not a short story, and she’d very likely never describe herself as Canadian).  Regardless, she is someone I’ve been meaning to take a look at for some time, and will try and do so over the next few months.

I am quite pleased with the Giller Prize’s decision to make the prize more international.  Though some have argued that bringing in foreign writers to judge our literature is wrong, a form of pandering to foreign taste and judgment, such an argument misses the point.  Canadian literature has suffered for too long from a closed circle approach to meting out its plums, whether these be the operating funding provided by the likes of the Canada Council or other government agencies, award juries, university writer-in-residence positions, and much else: bringing in other voices, other perspectives, from other places, might be one of the only ways to ensure that our literature moves off the proverbial small pond and into the larger currents of international literature.  I, for one, am quite interested to see what this jury comes up with.

For the press release on the newly announced Giller jury and the biographies of its individual jurists, please go here.

]]> http://notesandqueries.ca/giller-prize-jury-announced/feed/ 0 http://notesandqueries.ca/let-the-games-begin-alex-good-and-steven-beattie-on-canada-reads/ http://notesandqueries.ca/let-the-games-begin-alex-good-and-steven-beattie-on-canada-reads/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:43:07 +0000 Daniel Wells http://www.notesandqueries.ca/?p=771 The best part of Canada Reads for the last couple of years has not been the program itself, or (with one or two notable exceptions) the books themselves: rather, it has been the day-by-day commentary by CNQ editor Alex Good and regular contributor Steven Beattie over at the Shakespearean Rag.   This year’s Canada Reads list is so boring and predictable (with the exception of Dickner’s Nikolski, a title I’ve been meaning to read for some time, though I’ve yet to get to it) that I actually managed, blissfully, to forget that the grand event was finally upon us.  I appreciate the reminder: though I only listen to Q when traveling, I’ll make sure to stick to another station for the duration of the competition.  I’ve been working hard lately at keeping my blood pressure down, and Jian and company are unlikely to help (seriously: I can feel a pain in my arm just typing this).  I’d rather watch the Oscars (which is probably on as I write: legions of wits twittering away.)  Of course, should some brave soul choose to defend Ray Smith’s Century next year I would without any sense of shame sing the program’s praises.  Somehow, alas, I don’t expect that will happen.

But I will pay attention to the discussion all this week over at That Shakespearean Rag.  Today Alex and Steven offer their initial thoughts on the program, the list, and the jurists.

INTRODUCTION

Alex Good: I guess this is the third year we’ve been commenting on the “irresistable, if hugely reprehensible” (Stephen Henighan, naturally) Canada Reads program. But the fact that we’ve kept at it for three years suggests that things maybe aren’t as bad as Henighan makes them out to be. Just criticizing the program serves an important function, I think. And then there have been all of the Canada Reads spin-offs this year, which are also worthwhile. It’s all part of our great national literary conversation, right?

Right?

Still, we have been critical in the past. Probably more so than most other write-ups I’ve seen. Which makes it all the more surprising that the CBC keeps encouraging us. I attribute this mainly to the social connections and general affability of one Steven W. (that’s “W” as in “Where’s the launch party?”) Beattie.

So here we are again. Leading off with some general introductory thoughts.

I’ll start by being nice. Whatever you think of the program, you do have to appreciate the effort CBC puts into it. It’s more than just a radio show. The website is also quite impressive. They’ve got a resident blogger named “Flannery” (who seems to be one of those unfortunate media types with no last name), and a whole lot of interesting extra features, from interviews to readings to book club coverage.

Yeah, most of it is pretty fluffy. But still.

The panel this year consists of the usual C-list of Canadian celebrities. Perdita Felicien was the only name I immediately recognized. Apparently Michel Vézina is big in Quebec literary circles, which only goes to show that the two solitudes are still going strong since I’d never heard of him. I’m wary of the ringers. Last year was particularly egregious with Avi (Mr. CBC) Lewis running the table, his only competition coming from fellow broadcast personality Jen Sookfong Lee. This year we have two people coming from similar backgrounds in Simi Sara and Michel Vézina. Isn’t that kind of like having dancers appear as the celebrities on Dancing with the Stars? I mean, radio isn’t easy. I know the others have all been on television and radio, but it’s not like they’re professionals.

The books have been pretty roundly criticized. In part for being titles that are already very well known (prompting cries of “Canada Re-Reads”), and also for being, in the words of more than one joyless critic, “unbelievably boring.”

Fair? Sort of. Blame The Book of Negroes. Serious, dull stuff has a leg up on the competition when it comes to contests like this. Looking back, King Leary seems more and more like an aberration.

For the rest of the discussion please visit here.  And check it out daily.  Should prove interesting.

LH: What do you think the purpose of a review is? If you also write about books on a blog, why? What does blogging let you do differently?

SB: There are those who believe that book reviews should confine themselves to a description of what a book is and avoid any attempt at evaluation. This is perhaps an offshoot of the marketing impulse to use reviews as a mechanism to help sell the book. My own feeling is that, although book reviews can have an effect on sales, they are not marketing tools. Rather, they represent an evaluative assessment of a particular work. Such an assessment should be based on evidence from the book under consideration and should rely on certain literary standards. (A reviewer who cannot see the literary merit in, for example, Moby-Dick or Madame Bovary – whether or not that person actually likes the books – will probably not do well in the business.)

But a good review should give more than a cursory “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to a particular work. It should engage actively with the text and should be cognizant of where the text fits in a literary tradition (or how it breaks from that tradition). It should be honest and discriminating, though not petty or vituperative. And it should be aware of any text on two simultaneous levels: the level of form and the level of content.

Clearly, this requires much of a reviewer: she must be, in Philip Marchand’s words, “very intelligent”; she must be knowledgeable about literary history; she must be courageous enough to offer clear opinions about matters of literary merit, as well as flexible enough to recognize merit in writing that might not be specific to the reviewer’s own taste or approach, if the reviewer is also an author. (Book reviewers, of course, are unique among critics in that they work in the same medium as the artists under review, and therefore have the potential to outperform their subjects.)

Although I regularly write print reviews (for Quill & Quire, where I am review editor, and for Canadian Notes and Queries, among other places), I continue to maintain a literary website, That Shakespearean Rag. The blog allows me certain freedoms that I don’t otherwise enjoy: I’m allowed to set my own agenda and to choose the books I want to cover, and I’m not restricted to a specific word count or a limited spectrum of books available for review. For instance, I can review international books, which I can’t do at Quill, and I can write about books that are not current releases. On the blog I am free to indulge my enthusiasms, rather than being beholden to any particular editorial mandate.

For the rest of the interview, please go here.