Canadian Book Challenge

As Kate mentioned here, A Mixture of Frailties is the book where Robertson Davies finally, firmly made the shift from dramatist to novelist. Not to get all “no true Scotsman” on you, but I think, given how his next eight novels play out, a case can be made that A Mixture of Frailties is the first “true” Robertson Davies novel. That’s not exactly the case I’m going to be making here, but this will be setting the pattern for most of the remainder of these books. In my comments on Tempest-Tost I discussed the first of the three elements Davies brings together in constructing the identities of his aristocracy of the spirit: self-knowledge. In my discussion of Leaven of Malice I discussed the second element: the conceit. I’m not certain I was clear in how conceits fit in to the framework I’m talking about, as I also spoke about how… Continue Reading →

I wrote in my discussion of Tempest-Tost that I was interested in tracing the development of Davies’ system of identity construction through all eleven of his novels, and that Tempest-Tost offered insight into the first of what I believe to be the three major elements of that system: the kind of self-knowledge achieved by his élite, the aristocracy of the spirit (I was perhaps not entirely clear that, while it takes a number of factors for Davies to elevate a character to that aristocracy, it is his or her self-knowledge that is of chief importance). In that first volume, Davies presents us mostly with characters who have already managed the trick of fully constructing their identities, and so we are largely only capable of seeing the end result, not the process or the tools. For Davies identity is like a jewel; it must be cut before it can be said… Continue Reading →

I could write ten thousand words and still not convey the complexity of the position Robertson Davies’ work holds in my life. I somehow managed to make it through high school without reading any of his work, but his name was tossed around with great reverence, though not so great that he was beyond critique. There were a few battered copies of The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks floating around the classroom, and these were used as evidence of Davies’ obsolete sense of humour and the special quality he had of being “more British than the British.” It was not meant to be complimentary. No doubt Fifth Business was available somewhere in the school library, but I never encountered it. Still, he loomed large, the Grand Old Man of Canadian letters alongside Margaret Laurence, the Grand Old Dame. I went through a period of discovery when I first entered university. The… Continue Reading →

Packed deep in the centre of Cockroach is a powerful moral disconnect, a narrator struggling to place himself in a world of shifting rights and wrongs, all wrapped in the framework of the immigrant experience. Rawi Hage never glamourizes immigrant life in Montréal, but despite the frankness with which he depicts its various confusions, humiliations and consolations, he writes with such verve, with such wit and energy, that Cockroach never feels dreary or oppressive. Instead one is swept along by the narrator’s amazingly compelling voice; it makes even the most fantastic elements of the novel feel genuine. I found myself missing that voice long after I finished the book. Hage’s characters are not likeable people; if I met any one of them on the street I’m certain that I wouldn’t like a single one. I doubt I would even find them all that interesting. But on the page they crackle… Continue Reading →

I find myself frequently on the lookout for books, Canadian books in particular, that deal explicitly with issues of masculinity. Given all the controversy in the last several years over things like the ratio of male to female prize winners and bylines in magazines (not something I put a huge amount of stock in, but whatever), you’d think books like that would be pretty easy to find. It turns out they aren’t. Rust and Bone isn’t really about masculinity, of course. It looks like it is, what with the emphasis on various blood sports and failed or failing relationships (no matter how stoic the man, no matter how rough-and-tumble, we can each of us be swiftly and thoroughly demolished by a woman). This book is about anatomy. The titular story opens with a fascinatingly detailed description of the bones of the hand that leads into an equally detailed and fascinating… Continue Reading →

I’d been anticipating the release of Rebecca Rosenblum’s debut book since I first read her work in The New Quarterly‘s Salon des Refusés issue (it turns out that I’d been running into her on the blog circuit for quite a few months prior to that, though). I don’t often keep my eye on what’s being published in any given year. I don’t make very much money, and since new books cost more than old books, and I still have a great many classics that I want to read, as a rule I tend to buy and read older books almost exclusively. Once is a worthy exception to this rule. I suppose I might be spoiling the plots of a few of the stories I discuss below, but like with most literary fiction, the plot really isn’t the point (nor is it the best part or Rosenblum’s fiction, so I don’t… Continue Reading →

Being a relative newcomer to the Canadian literary scene (I think it’s safe to say that I’ve only been aware of “the scene” for about six or seven years, which makes me a definite newcomer), John Metcalf’s books are like UFOs. People talk about Metcalf and his books. Some people even claim to have read them (especially people who have been around since the ’70s). Bringing up his name is always controversial. But what happens if you go out looking for his books on your own? You’re not likely to find one at all. Bad UFO metaphors aside, here in Toronto, the capital of Canada’s publishing industry, I had to go to nine bookstores to find even a single copy (I found two, both used and both nearly two decades old), and the staff at less than half of those stores even knew who I was asking about. Mr. Metcalf’s… Continue Reading →

Flight Paths of the Emperor marks my third consecutive book by a Salon des Refusés author. I was much impressed by the short story, “Five Paintings of the New Japan”, which was reprinted in the New Quarterly‘s contribution to the Salon, and when I found a copy of the first printing of this book two weeks ago I jumped on it. (The image on the cover of my edition is the same as the one shown, but the design and layout of the cover as a whole is quite different.) It’s not difficult to explain what holds these stories together; they all seem to be about Canadians experiencing Japanese (or in one story, Chinese) culture, and butting heads with that culture, and with their own assumptions. Many of the characters and settings seem to carry over from one story to the next. That doesn’t sound very exciting, I know, but… Continue Reading →

I picked this book up because of Mr. Beattie‘s appreciative essay in the Salon des Refusés issue of Canadian Notes and Queries. I hope that he won’t mind my quoting from it. He wrote: The only thing that can be said definitively about Jarman’s stories is that they do not resemble the kind of blandly naturalistic pieces of psychological realism that are normally associated with Canadian short stories. […] Some writers write from the head, others write from the heart. Jarman writes from the gut. Jarman’s stories are not places to turn for comfort or succour. He is a ridgidly unsentimental writer, who eschews pat resolutions and reassuring platitudes. […] Instead, he writes subversively about outcasts and roughnecks, men who are desperately trying to eke out an existence on the margins of a society that seems ferociously inimical. The stories are told with a heightened awareness of language and its… Continue Reading →