I appreciate irony in daily life. Anyone who has known me for a long time will appreciate the irony inherent in my working for a literary magazine dedicated to Canadian writers and writing. I will admit that I have, in the past, harboured a long-standing hatred for Canadian Literature.
Sacrilege, I know. You’ll be happy to learn that I have since recovered.
It all started in high school. I was a pretty weird kid, and by grade 9 I had developed a love for dead English writers, and a pet love for Ray Bradbury (especially Fahrenheit 451 and October Country). I wanted adventure and ornate language. But my teachers knew what was best for me. They foisted the Canadians on me like a dose of medicine with no sugar to help it down. The last thing I wanted was to read about was the struggles of a middle-aged woman trying to assert her identity in a strangely named prairie town.
Looking back on Who Has Seen The Wind, I can appreciate the language, and I can remember writing out sentences from the novel as I often did (and still do) from those that I read for pleasure. But I couldn’t have cared less about coming-of-age on the prairies, and the writing out of sentences was merely an exercise: “Collect sentences that fit the following themes” (I only remember one of the themes, “the wind,” and I was sick of seeing it).
The obligatory Canlit component was a chore, a black mark on my reading year.
I carried this hatred with me to university, where I enrolled in a Canadian Literature course. Not by choice, mind you—it was the only course that would fit in my schedule. I consoled myself with the thought that maybe it would change my mind about CanLit. Admittedly, my exposure had been limited, given the fact that I avoided the Canadian section in my favourite book stores like the plague. Sadly, the entire first term of the course was devoted to the “culturally biased” writings of explorers and the complaints of settlers (If there’s one thing I can stand, it’s a whiny narrator. Susanna Moodie made me want to beat her about the head). By midway through the second term, which was largely dominated by more stories of the prairies, I was sufficiently convinced that nothing worth reading had ever come out of this country. More recently, an arts management professor made an attempt to summarize the entire history of Canadian Literature in a one hour lecture. It’s not so difficult to imagine, considering she concluded with, “Nothing much has happened in Canadian Literature since the sixties.”
The issue isn’t that all Canadian Writing is dry and irrelevant, of course. But the first book from the Canlit canon that I could fall in love with was The Favourite Game by Leonard Cohen (which I would recommend to anyone), in the last two months of the course. There is something important about this novel that set it apart from everything else I had read in that course. It wasn’t about Canada, it was just a compelling and beautifully written story that happened to be set here. As a high-school student, I was taught that nothing outside the prairies existed in the world of CanLit. I grew up in downtown urban Ontario, and I didn’t give a damn. It’s this thematic thinking that permits people to suggest that Canadian Literature ceased to exist when we moved to more universal themes. The problem, which TNQ touched on during its tumultuous partnership with CNQ, is that the CanLit canon is not based on a compilation of superb writing, it is based on themes. As Douglas Coupland put it,
CanLit is not a place for writers to experiment, and doesn’t claim to be that kind of place. CanLit is about representing a certain kind of allowed world in a specific kind of way, and most writers in Canada are O.K. with that — or are at least relieved to know the rules of the game from the outset and not have to waste time fostering illusions.
I’ve explored the history of this, which has a lot to do with the motivation behind the funding boom in the 1960s which was to fund not just culture in Canada, but Canadian Culture, as distinct from that of our neighbours, England and America. The idea that Canada should support its own authors, scholars, and artists is still a relevant one. It is absolutely important to have our own voices out there, if only to show the rest of the world how it’s done. But in the early days of CanLit, and those of culture funding, we were mostly just responding to the literary and artistic trends of our less polite friends, and the only “logical justification for treating Canadian literature as a separate field of study” was “Literary Nationalism” (T.D. Maclulich).
By the 1970s, when the Writer’s Development Trust produced CanLit guides for teachers, the CanLit Canon was arranged according to theme: prairie literature, women’s literature, Quebec literature, immigrant literature… What we were really missing was a compendium of the spectacular writing that has gone on in this country. (I laugh when Meredith Quartermain informs me that bp Nichol was “condemned by the establishment as writing obscenity” and must share one of those sentences I willingly recorded from Selected Organs: “When sex happened I realized it was all a matter of muscles.”)
These days, I find myself explaining to those who know me, “not to worry, I’m not working for a CanLit Magazine,” but a magazine that publishes excellent writing by people who happen to be Canadian. The distinction is important to me. As an adult, I can appreciate that, like parents, the school system was really trying to do the right thing by me. But the only real result of their CanLit injection was that I wasted a lot of my life avoiding any authors that happened to be Canadian. Things would have been a lot different if they had made me read someone like Amy Jones.
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What’s an “arts management professor”?
Seriously; I’ve never heard of that before. I guess your response means it’s supposed to be self-explanatory, like as in a professor who teaches and studies managing arts and artists, like, say, if you wanted to be a promoter you’d take classes with an arts management professor?
Oh, whoops; I thought that big “What do you think?” up there was your response to my question. D’oh.
Hi Derek,
Thanks for your dedication to our little blog! We don’t yet have any other readers who are willing to hang out for hours to have a conversation with us. I’m sorry that I cannot keep up with you. An arts management professor is an instructor in the field of management as it pertains to arts organizations specifically. Like, for instance, a literary magazine.
Thanks for this Melissa. I, too, have been an avid avoider Can Lit courses. Stone Angel completely turned me off in high school and Sinclair Ross in first year sealed the deal. And yet, years of recovery later, many of my current favorite authors are Canadian (Zoe Whittall!), and I am vastly committed to them precisely because they dive headfirst into the universal issues you mention. Speaking of – I just heard Mariko Tamaki read last night; I can’t wait for her next book! Now, if only we can fund these young and vibrant and Canadian voices…
Fair enough. The principle of arts management studies sounds good, though “nothing much has happened since the sixties” makes it sound like working in the Canadian literary industry — I beg your pardon, the literary industry that happens to be in Canada — is a pretty bleak undertaking. I assume you don’t share that sentiment. But I have to ask, what is it with Canadians and all the self-hatred and embarrassment? Why is it that you feel embarrassed that people might think you work for a Canadian Literature journal? Why does “Canadian Literature” provoke so many Canadians to use the word “hatred”? Why does it have to be that a Canadian literary work has to be “not about Canada” before it can be any good? I understand the distinctions you’re making between regional and universal works, or between a content-based hierarchy like themes and an aesthetic valuation like “excellent writing,” but I don’t buy them. Can you give me an example of a theme or idea in a literary work that is universal, as opposed to regional, or prairie? Do you not worry that these feelings you express about CanLit (feelings that, frankly seem to be shared by so many Canadians, that it’s a wonder there’s any such thing as CanLit) are not just a projection of a massive collective inferiority complex? The thing to remember about being Canadian is, only Canadians care about the question. So the desire to transcend Canadianness and be universal, which you seem to assume British and American writers have accomplished, is really just a paranoid way to make yourselves feel small. British and American readers do not have any notion about the CanLit problem, though they read many Canadian writers, oblivious of which ones qualify as CanLit and which don’t. Nobody outside of Canada cares at all about how embarrassing it feels to be Canadian. Pretty much nobody believes Canadians ought to be embarrassed, except Canadians. Canada is a nation that commands tremendous affection and respect in most other nations and the same is true of Canadian literature, CanLit or otherwise. My advice to you is, stop fretting, stop hating, stop making unnecessary distinctions, and just tell any Canadians who sneer at CanLit that they’re just self-haters. I’m not suggesting you adopt a jingoistic national pride in Canada — perversely, hating CanLit is just another version of “Literary Nationalism”: it’s ressentiment, the belief that to be downtrodden makes one morally good, so one maintains one’s sense of inferiority and downtroddenness at all costs. CanLit-hating presumes that Canada aint worth representing, and if you do, your work is bad. So, no need for “Literary Nationalism” (by the way, that quotation is from a book by Imre Szeman, but Szeman himself is quoting from another writer), just let the whole thing drop, would be my advice. And one final note, that I just can’t resist, Douglas Coupland’s efforts to portray himself as a brave and radical writer who defies “the rules of the game” are histrionic and just so silly. Generation X was a lucky accident, but it’s a terrible piece of writing, and the longer Coupland goes on the more he looks like the embodiment of the self-absorbed, self-important, talentless modern subject that he purports to represent, and critique.
My issue, as I stated, is not with Canadian Literature, but with the way that the CanLit canon is compiled and presented, particularly to high school students (and university students, it would seem). Perhaps a lot has changed since I was in high school, but you can see from the comment above that Laura’s experience, at least, was similar. Had Canadian Literature been presented to me differently, I may not have wasted so much of my life avoiding Canadian authors.
The kind of thinking that enables someone to say that nothing has happened in Canadian literature since the sixties is based on the fact that literature that qualified before then was grouped together by theme—change the subject, and the study falls apart. The idea that we lost our place in the literary world when we stopped writing about homesteads is absurd. I love great Canadian writing. I think we have many reasons to be proud, but it took me a long time to get to that place because of the idea of CanLit that was presented to me. Perhaps the “inferiority complex” you speak of comes from the idea that resplendent writing was not the qualifier for inclusion in the canon until very recently. The Irish literature canon, for example, is not decided based on how green rolling hills are represented; the Irish take pride in their authors because of the quality of their writing (an Irishman beloved to me jokes, “James Joyce invented writing. Then when he got bored, he dismantled it again”). This is the distinction that I am trying to make.
If you’re looking for an example of great Canadian writing, look between our covers, or the covers of any great literary journal in the country. Of course, the current government appears to disagree, or it wouldn’t make a funding cut that is going to negatively impact almost every litmag in Canada.
The writing between The New Quarterly’s covers, and any other litmag in Canada comes from a tradition of Canadian literature whether any of us like it or not. And while some literature chosen for high school students does make people bored with reading in general, there are so many fascinating Canadian texts all over Canada from before confederation up to the next issue of your mag. Have you read Ondaatje?P.K. Page? Lisa Moore? Lynn Coady? Have you actually tried reading Margaret Atwood? I think Canadian literature is far from having lost its place, the question continues to be about what, why, and where Canada is in relation to its many origins. That’s what makes us fascinating. Our gvnts lack of appreciation for the literary arts is connected to their lack of appreciation for any arts or culture in our country. It’s just not on the radar, and this is an awful fact. Back to my comment about Canlit, let’s listen to Atwood for a second here:
“Teaching [Canadian literature] is a political act.
If done badly it can make people even more bored with their country than they already are; if done well, it may suggest to them WHY they have been taught to be bored with their country, and whose interests that boredom serves.” (Margaret Atwood- SURVIVAL, 1972)
You’re right, and I’m glad that I’ve recovered from my Canadian Literature phobia. Yes, I’ve read the authors you’ve mentioned (except P.K. Page—is there something you’d recommend?), just not as part of a curriculum. It’s been suggested that the reason teachers stick with the detested standbys is because there’s no sex in them—The Skin of a Lion, for example, might upset parents with its unchaste relationships, so it’s less work to use what’s known.
Great Atwood quote. I’d also highly recommend her response to Harper’s ridiculous position on the arts, if you haven’t yet read it: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/to-be-creative-is-in-fact-canadian/article712137/
I’m glad you’ve recovered too. I think teachers/curriculum writers at the high school level might have various reasons for avoiding certain texts or sticking with others. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies) brings up possibly uncomfortable questions about sex for young people (and their teachers and parents), but it’s sometimes taught to grade nines. Regardless, it is certainly less work to stick with old hat. I would like to be a teacher of Canlit in a university setting at some point in the near future, so I’m making it my job to love it. I’ve read that Atwood article– she’s been a terrific advocate for the arts and for Canlit since the beginning. Oh, and thanks for adding my link, it’s very encouraging.
Melissa makes some damn good points about the thematic straitjacket that Canadian writing seems to get jammed into. I’m so old I can remember a time in the 1960s where there was no Canadian fiction at all in high school (I went to UTS in downtown Toronto). We sneaked out to bookstores and bought novels by Cohen and Atwood. The Edible Woman was a relevation – finally a smart and funny and urban novel that readers under 30 could relate to.
To be fair to the Canlit establishment, the CBC up until recently fell into this same folksy, rural “if it’s smalltown it must be really Canadian” trap. Enough already. We’re grown up … and our best writers now compare with the best anywhere, whether their stories are set in this country or not.
Surely the smart high school teachers these days are turning their students on to the dozens of smart younger Canadian writers we have now?
Last point … this may not be the golden age of writing, but it surely is the golden age of reading … we have more to read, from more writers from around the world, in more formats, than at any other time in human history. We are blessed to live right now.
Canadian literature absolutely sucks. It has no meaning, rhythm, rhyme or substance. When it comes to ‘quality’ literature, it is usually either sleazy or elitist. There is nothing else. I have yet to read a work by any major Canadian author other than Farley Mowat that I liked.
Hi Stephanie,
Under what circumstances did you find yourself reading so much terrible literature? Who is your favourite American author? What was it about Mowat that you found so appealing?
This is something that has bugged me for a long time. I used to say that if you wanted your work to be considered “Canadian Literature,” you’d better write about Mounties, lumberjacks and beavers frolicking together in the prairies of Saskatewan. Since then, I have moved to Atlantic Canada, so now I know that “fishermen” should be included in that list. If you write SF, forget it. You’re persona non grata. In fact, you don’t exist at all. I know a local SF author and the local “independent” bookstore doesn’t even carry his books. The ghost stories and the fishermen stories, they have those, you can be sure, but there’s no room for the SF writer. It makes me mad. When is this attitude going to end? It’s stupid.
Couldn’t agree more. Can(ned)Lit is prohibitive, insular, and elitist at best. Dominated by a few literary doyennes with their repetitive themes, a bulwark of publishers that mainly publish the same literature for those who don’t want to be challenged to think. Yes, literature that doesn’t clash with the decor. The attempts to “nationalize” the literature are compensatory and exclusionary, if not also arbitrary and baseless. As Ezra Pound says, a nation that does not take especial care with its literature will invariably dry up culturally. It’s rather sad that truly vivacious and intrepid authors from Canada have no choice but to publish internationally where the markets are not so dominated by what Coupland calls the “rules at the outset.”
I think your article is so relevant and true. Our literature in Canada is smothered with old boring white (British) people thinking they are smart. The problem is that they have forgotten heart and soul which is where great works of art come from. This is no different in other art forms such as theatre where we think we are putting on great Canadian plays but really the only people attending are old blue haired people. We need an infusion of “REAL ART” but the establishment keeps the real stuff away. Check out what pieces of crap get funding and you will understand why our country is looked upon as nothing but “helpers and peacekeepers” around the world.
Thanks for the blog.