Thursday, May 31, 2007

sisters are doing it for themselves

It has been a loooooooooong day, but this blog entry marks the completion of my second-last novel from the pre-Confederation period. This means that once I survive Wacousta (doubtful as it is whether or not this is even possible), I will be finished colonial canlit. WA-HOO! Not having to read any more of this stuff is, like, a major success in my mind. It also represents the first section of my comps list that I have successfully read in its allotted timeslot.

St. Ursula's Convent Or, the Nun of Canada, Containing Scenes From Real Life
[Colonial Lit is all about the catchy catch titles.]
by Julia Catherine Beckwith Hart

As Louisa I loved you far above a brother's affection, and trembled to indulge it. My love was pure, but I feared some happy mortal would snatch from me my beloved sister. As Adelaide, I love you with increased ardour. Judge, then, if possible, the extent of my affection. I fear not death, Adelaide. It is parting with you I dread. To see you snatched away from me, by the devouring waves, I cannot dwell on the idea!

My brother, my Dudley, said Adelaide, rest assured that your affection surpasses not mine. What could have sustained me, when the unexpected discovery deprived me of every known relative? What could then have consoled me, but my love for you.

[The book is entirely composed in this schlocky, syrupy, please-let-me-die manner, by the way.]

Some books are Great Books because they are true masterpieces. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jamaica Kincaid -- from all points in history and walks of life, we find literature that shapes the way people think, the way they view the world, and the way they make sense of their own place in history and society. Those books are great because they are texts that speak to the human condition. They are important books because they shape minds. Their power to influence, change, and inspire make them Great.

Other books are Great Books because they are historically important. They are landmark texts because they break new ground, change genres, or chronicle historically significant moments. These are books that we read because we should, because they are historical documents. These books don't have to change minds. They don't actually even have to be good. But we read them because they show us our progression as people, and we read them because they teach us where we have come from.

Part of the project of learning a field is that you have to read books from both the Great Books stacks -- the literary greats, and the historical greats. Most of the works in this colonial period are important for their historical place, but are also good works of literature in their own right. The Strickland sisters may not be scintillating to my tastes, but they craft a good narrative. Beckwith Hart's novel, however, is extremely important historically, being the first novel ever written by a person born in Canada. It's also awful. Just awful. Beckwith Hart was seventeen years old when she put pen to paper, and it shows in the most painful ways possible. Not only are there blatant incoherencies that should really have been caught by an editor (verb tense shifts, changing from third to first person, constant repetition of sentences, no normalcy in the choice between double quotation marks or single, missed words and spelling) -- or at least should have been caught by the editor of this edition and contemporized / normalized -- but the plot is really, really, really terrible. Really.

The problem for the novel rests in the fact that there is no conflict. Ever. Everything that seems like it could be a conflict is resolved by, "Everyone believes in God and therefore no one panics and deliverance arrives nearly immediately." That doesn't mean there aren't absolutely ridiculously bizarre circumstances evoked in the name of the quest for conflict. Shipwrecks, people getting shot, trapped inside mine shafts for no apparent reason, attacked by pirates, deaths, baby-swapping, incest -- it's all there. The best scene in the whole book is when Adelaide, the protagonist, discovers that she has been switched at birth with Lady Louisa -- but she was destined to marry Lady Louisa's brother, who is really her brother! Oh no! She announces it to the family, and Lady Louisa's brother says, basically, "That's okay, I was hotter for my sister anyway and now that she's not my biological sister we can be married!" And everyone rejoices at the romance of it all.

Jesus Christ.

Actually, he's a pretty major character in the novel, too; no one acts, because they are all too busy waiting for Jesus to fix things. I have no problem with people who choose to live their life in this way, but it sure as hell makes for especially boring fiction.

The other problem is that any conflicts that do arise tend to be told as stories -- told in the past tense by the person who is in peril in the story, SO YOU ALREADY KNOW HE'S OKAY AND THEREFORE THERE IS NO CONFLICT. Ugh, I am never going to get these hours back.

Fascinatingly, even though this book is written by a Canadian born in Canada, everyone still ends the novel running for England or France. No one wraps up the plot in Canada. There's talk of returning in the end, but no one actually does it. This returns me to my earlier question -- what makes Canada so easy to leave? Even people born here write narratives, in this time period at least, about getting the hell out. (I'm trademarking the term 'Get The Hell Out Narrative,' heretofore referred to as the GTHO Narrative.) And the thing is, the new Lady Louisa goes to England and retires to the country, so it's not like she's seeking an urban society that isn't available in Canada in this period. There's no reason to not return to Canada, but it just seems more natural -- even to a Canadian-born writer -- to set a happy ending in another country. Talk about self-loathing!

444444444444vvvvv90ty <--- this, for the record, is what Swift has to say about the novel.

I do want to point out what I think is very interesting about the colonial period of literature in Canada, and that is the gynocentrism of the period. Every writer of note here, with the exception of John Richardson, who wrote Wacousta, is a woman. There are clearly a lot of practical reasons for this -- men were primarily taken up with the outdoor work of settlement, whether that was the hands-on work of farming, or soldiering, or any of the other active roles assigned to men. One of the benefits of being banished to the indoors and the kitchen garden seems to be that it affords time to write. What's interesting though is that there seems to have been a market for women's writing in particular. The Strickland sisters had a brother, Samuel, who wrote a book much like Moodie's many years before Moodie did -- yet no one reads Samuel Strickland in second-year CanLit class. I can't think of a place I have seen him mentioned outside of books by the Strickland sisters. I don't know what to make of this feminized period in our literature, but I'm very sad to say that it comes to a sharp end as the Confederation period emerges.

Atwood believes that Canada has been historically a good place for women writers because, as a nation marginalized by the US and the UK, we have been more willing to accept marginalized writers or writers of marginalized backgrounds. If you think of the canonical Canadian writers, there's lots of "minor writers" (in the Deleuzian sense of writers who write from a place of reduced power in comparison with the hegemonic forces of a society): Cohen [Jewish], Atwood [woman], Richler [Jewish], Laurence [woman] -- not to say we don't have our own history of while male dominance, because we do (Davies, I'm looking in your direction, you old goat). But there seems to have always been a place at least somewhere in Canadian literature, moreso perhaps per capita than in the US or the UK, for "minor writers" to develop a voice. The preponderance of writing by female authors is perhaps indicative of this idea.

In the end, we all probably should read this book. But it's not very good. If you don't read it, I won't judge you for it. I kind of feel like reading this book should add a tiny gold star to my degree.

According to the guy who edited this book, those who dislike it simply don't understand it. Colour me confused then, but this book is one of the most incoherent things I have ever sat down to read. She claims to be encouraging "native genius" through her writing but sister, this ain't it. Reviewers at the time called this book "a reviewers misery," and I'm willing to agree that it is also a grad student's misery, too! According to one reviewer:

Had this not been the first native novel that ever appeared in Canada, no consideration could have induced us to give its title a place among our pages.

But hey, she's from Fredericton.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

finally, proof you didn't have to be a giant bitch to be a strickland sister

I'm floored by the difference between Catharine Parr Traill and her sister, Susanna Moodie. When I picked up this book I was fully expecting Roughing it in the Bush 2: Rougher, Bushier, and With More Hatred for the Indians. I was pleasantly surprised to find such a different voice in this text... But let me get to the blog entry with haste, because I have to get to the gym so that I can go and see Shrek the Third having accomplished much and with zero guilt. Hot.

The Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters from the Wife of and Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America

[you can tell it's a bestseller, with that catchy title]
by Catharine Parr Traill (the non-bitchy Strickland sister)

... they complain that their wives are always pining for home, and lamenting that ever they crossed the seas. This seems to be the general complaint with all classes; the women are discontented and unhappy. Few enter with their whole heart into a settler's life. They miss the little domestic comforts they had been used to enjoy; they regret the friends and relations they left in the old country; and they cannot endure the loneliness of the backwoods.

This prospect does not discourage me: I know I shall find plenty of occupation within-doors, and I have sources of enjoyment when I walk abroad that will keep me from being dull. Besides, have I not a right to be cheerful and contented for the sake of my beloved partner? The change is not greater for me than him; and if for his sake I have voluntarily left home, and friends, and country, shall I therefore sadden him by useless regrets?

But I shall very soon be put to the test.

Catharine Parr Traill is Susanna Moodie's younger sister, and like Moodie, Traill married a half-pay officer and moved across the world to try her hand at starting a brand new life with her husband. Like Moodie, she and her husband cleared a patch of land, started a family, and were poor as dirt in the new country. Like Moodie, Traill was a permanent resident of Canada, and was eventually buried in her new land -- like Moodie, she never found her way back to England.

That's about where the similarities end, however, because where Moodie retains a subtle disdain for Canada throughout her narrative, and seems to sit constantly in judgement of the people and things around her, Traill has a child-like openness and excitement for all that her new country has to offer.

The difference in the two is evident from the opening. Where Moodie starts her narrative in England, which allows for her to constantly be looking backwards to her original home and allows for a constant hearkening back, Traill begins her narrative en route to Canada. At the opening of Traill's text, she is eager to touch Newfoundland and move into her new home -- she is looking towards a new future. This subtle choice of whether to start the narrative in England or heading for Canada colours the whole thrust of the text, and determines whether the narrative will be forward-moving or looking backwards. This means that Traill's narrative is significantly more positive-seeming for the reader, who instead of reading about the author's regrets, gets a more hopeful narrative.

The narrative is also more hopeful because it is a series of letters home that refer to things people are writing to her. Moodie feels extremely isolated in the bush and is angry at how everyone back in England, she believes, has forsaken her. She sees it as natural that everyone forgets about the poor, disadvantaged emigrant. Traill, conversely, shows through her text that a connection to home can be retained, no matter how infrequent -- and this from the poorer sister, the one who couldn't send letters except with people travelling to New York who could get the letters onto the boats at no charge. For Traill, it is important to convey to her readers that all of home is not lost in coming abroad. Also, through her nature sketches, botanical research, and home taxidermy, she proves not only that England's influence is needed in the colonies, but also that Canada has something to teach and send back to the mother country. Traill takes steps here to create a Canadian identity and find Canadian-ness both as opposed to and in relation to England and the United States.

Traill also finds an important connection to the land. Where Moodie says that her major connection to the land is that she has buried her children there, and thus she connects to the land through life, Traill's connection is more creative. Traill names the plants of the new world -- calling herself a "fairy godmother" -- and thus her closest connection to Canada is through life and creation. It's no wonder she remains more positive than does her sister!

In short, Traill avoids standing in judgement against people. For example, where Moodie condemned the Logging Bee as a time and place for debauchery and drunkenness at her own expense, Traill embraces the event. She doesn't condemn the drinking, but instead understands the needs of people who work hard and expend a lot of energy. She doesn't begrudge the efforts it takes to feed the group, but instead enjoys and revels in the company and the novelty of the experience. Finally, instead of looking at all that isn't done at the end of the bee (although she does comment that she didn't know what went into building a house at first!), she is grateful for the work of her friends. Traill's positive attitude and lack of judgement make the text, overall, significantly more enjoyable to read than Moodie's narrative.

That isn't to say the book isn't without issues. In the depiction of Aboriginal people, Traill is most impressed by those who have become Europeanized and Christianized -- and indeed, Traill sees this in all the First Nations who surround her, which suggests that Traill is making a trope out of these people to support her own philosophy. Traill, throughout the narrative, tries to show the balance that can be struck between what the old and the new worlds have to offer. Where Moodie saw the "half-breeds" as embodying the worst of all possible worlds, for Traill they are the embodiment of the success that comes from standing half-way between the old and the new worlds, and they show her that the success of Canada is in European immigrants adopting those Aboriginal skills that are useful. This is certainly problematic (and somewhat userous), but it's at least a more problematic and troubled reading of the situation than Moodie's own.

Monday, May 28, 2007

a rough experience through the bush, indeed

Dear Dr. E----- P-----. Consider this my official confession that, though I sat diligently in your second-year literature class, I read very few of the assigned texts. I could likely find a reason why that was your fault, but that would be fairly disingenuous. I was just kind of more interested in teaching than in keeping up in your class. As a result, my A- in your class is the only A- that I'm actually mad about because I could probably have worked a lot harder. For instance, you assigned Roughing It in the Bush. I opted to not read it, and look at how that bit me in the ass -- now I have to read the freaking thing in two days. So I apologize (a) for making you think I was paying attention in your class, and (b) for shooting myself in the goddamn foot for not taking any notes on this book. Sheesh. Kinda wishing I had been a better student in your CanLit class, because looking at my comps list I really could have at least had an idea of some of these if I wanted to.

Roughing It in the Bush
by Susanna Moodie

Reader! It is not my intention to trouble you with the sequel of our history. I have given you a faithful picture of life in the backwoods of Canada, and I leave you to draw your own conclusions. To the poor, industrious working man it presents many advantages; to the poor gentleman, none! The former works hard, puts up with coarse, scanty fare, and submits with a good grace, to hardships that would kill a domesticated animal at home. Thus he becomes independent, inasmuch as the land that he has cleared finds him in the common necessaries of life; but it seldom, if ever, in remote situations, accomplishes more than this. The gentleman can neither work so hard, live so coarsely, nor endure so many privations as his poorer but more fortunate neighbour. [...] Difficulties increase, debts grow upon him, he struggles in vain to extricate himself, and finally sees his family sink into hopeless ruin.

If these sketches should prove the means of deterring one family from sinking their property, and shipwrecking all their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada, I shall consider myself amply repaid for revealing the secrets of the prison-house, and feel that I have not toiled and suffered in the wilderness in vain.

Based on the title, you may be expecting a titillating romp through some sort of lesbian dreamworld -- such is not the case. Instead, Susanna Moodie has created a memoir that simultaneously celebrates and completely trashes all that is Canada. On the one hand, Moodie seems to be very proud of her own achievements in coming to Canada and finding strengths and skills she could not have imagined cultivating in England. On the other hand, she tells of pain, torment, suffering, and struggle, and begs people to stay in England if that is where they more naturally belong. Indeed, Moodie seems ambivalent towards Canada -- likely because, unlike the other writers I have explored so far in the colonial period, Moodie was Canadian for keeps. There was no turning back and no changing the mind for Moodie. She knew her family could not return, and that Canada was officially her new home. Where Brooke and Jameson were both merely passing through, trying Canada as a lark with a concrete exit strategy, Moodie is a true pioneer, having to make the best of Canada for the good of her family. Furthermore, though having emerged from the same or similar class of society as Brooke and Jameson, the latter retained their socio-economic status where Moodie had to experience absolute destitution (which in my opinion nuances and layers her writing and discussions of the different people in England). Finally, of course, Jameson and Brooke were urban women (even when there isn't much to write home about it terms of urbanity), where Moodie, of course, roughed it in the bush.

I think part of what is so interesting in this book is that Moodie is ambivalent on not only Canada, but on herself, the people around her, and even her husband. Most interesting is her ideas about feminism and the abilities of women. In stark contrast to the unabashedly feminist Anna Jameson, Moodie doesn't seem to know where she herself stands on the rights and responsibilities of women. She pays very little attention to social structures and sociopolitical matters, and indeed fully leaves the political matters to be written about by her (deathly dull, boring, and insufferable) husband who is given over to writing about three or four chapters on the specific political climate of Canada. As a result, we never get to know what Moodie herself thinks of the way women are treated in Aboriginal society, which is a shame because those observations are what offered so much insight into the views of women's issues for both Jameson and Brooke.

Moodie clearly views women as the weaker sex, and says as much regularly. But it is not merely her overt references to her own weakness and the weakness of other women. Sometimes such overt discussions of feminine failure cloak more progressive actualities -- speech being one thing, and act another. Not so for Mrs. Moodie. Most telling is the fact that she is constantly surprised by her own capabilities. She never believes she can do anything before she sets out. Whether the task at hand is milking a cow, navigating a canoe, gifting a stranger with food, or making financial decisions, Moodie is always likely to assume failure. The ridiculous thing, though, is that, in comparison with her husband, Moodie is a successful Bushwoman. It is the choices of her husband that lead to the economic ruin of the family, and it is not her husband's hard work but rather her letter to the lieutenant-governor that secures the full-time military post that saves them from the bush. Moodie has every reason, by about page 300 at least, to believe in herself and have faith in her own strength. But she continues to berate her sex and look down upon her own options, choices, and abilities. Moreover, she is shocked by her every success, and complacent with her every failure. Though her husband leaves her regularly, by the end of the book, to tend to the farm alone, she does not see it as work she is suited to, and fears failure at every turn. She tends to put this down to her femininity, which she fears is lost among the people of the bush.

One interesting social observation Moodie shares in the text is her perceptions of the Chippewa people -- this contrasts so intensely with Jameson's experience that it is worthy of note. Where Jameson was charmed and delighted by the Chippewa, Moodie is disgusted. She sees them as ugly, stupid, and unpleasant, and while she makes friends with some eventually, it is with a constant reminder of her own superiority to them. Jameson, conversely, found devoted friendships among the Chippewa, who she really seemed to see as her equals. Where Moodie focuses long sections on the appearance of the Chippewa, as though she can't quite believe how ugly she finds them to be, Jameson felt no such need. This is interesting especially as Moodie was closer in social status to the Chippewa than was Jameson by their respective points in the narrative -- it seems as though Moodie is desperate to draw a line between her own poverty and the poverty of the Aboriginal people, and define the latter group as a definite other in comparison with her own family.

Another point where Moodie shows her biases is in her discussion of the charivari. This barbarous custom is a way of punishing "disgraceful" marriages, but it's also a clear form of racialized violence -- in Moodie's account, a young black man is killed by a mob for marrying a white woman, and it is all taken as good fun by the community -- regrets are uttered, but no one is ever prosecuted for the crime. Moodie has an outward show of outrage at the custom, but this outrage is undercut by the fact that she prefaces the story by telling the reader she will turn to lighter things. She seems to tell the story with an eye to local colour, but the result is instead quite horrifying indeed.

In the end, I was surprised by how readable I found Moodie's account of bush life. A better writer than Jameson, I think -- Jameson is very much a journalist and gives lots of details, but Moodie is careful to ensure that every chapter (save those written by her husband) includes lots of interest building up to a major conflict, which gives fuel to the reader than Jameson fails to offer. In the end, I think it's a book every Canadian should probably read once... If only to be grateful for how far we have come!

Incidentally, if you want to "rough it" in the area where Susanna Moodie did, there's now a spa not far from her original farmstead. My Mum and I have both been there and can attest to its awesomeness -- certainly better than Moodie's accommodations, I assure you!

Friday, May 25, 2007

working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living

Just a note to say... I'm canning the clocking in / clocking out aspect of studying for my comps. I'm making myself insane, and really I'm reading more than eight hors a day but just not in single large chunks. Trying to fit everything in to a specific clocking in or clocking out is really just making me more anxious than is necessary.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

i've had just about enough of pre-confed canlit, and it only took two books to get me here

Really, I've had an assful of the whole colonial period of literature. I'm glad I'm starting out the summer with this stuff, because I think reading these books while being eaten by mosquitos would make me certifiably insane. Forseriously, has anyone -- ANYONE -- ever read one of these books for pleasure since about 1910? Argh. This is all such a far cry from my ultra contemporary pop culture studies interests.

Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada
by Anna Brownell Jameson

But when I hear some men declare that they cannot endure to see women eat, and others speak of brilliant health and strength in young girls as being rude and vulgar, with various notions of the same kind too grossly absurd and perverted even for ridicule, I cannot wonder at any nonsensical affectations I meet with in my own sex.

[On alcohol.] But all their taxes, and prohibitions, and excise laws, will do little good, unless they facilitate the means of education. In society, the same evening, the appearance of a very young, very pretty, sad looking creature with her first baby at her side, completed the impression of disgust and affright with which the continual spectacle of this vile habit strikes me since I have been in this country.

Anna Brownell Jameson was a feminist and a challenger of the status quo. According to her biography, Jameson came to Canada in 1836 at the behest of her estranged husband, who was the attorney general of Upper Canada and was hoping to become Vice-Chancellor. He needed his wife to come to Canada in order to show a steady domestic force at home to improve his chances at gaining the post; she, conversely, came to Canada with the intention of putting together an amicable divorce settlement so that she could live comfortably in England separated from her husband. Jameson never had any intention of staying in Canada, and conceptualized her travel memoir en route to Canada as a means of passing her time as she came to an arrangement with her husband.

The book itself is a series of sketches, and is about 300 pages too long. The first 150 pages or so, the Winter Studies section, is deathly, painfully boring. Jameson is essentially trapped in her Toronto home, without friends -- she comments that everyone uses the winter to do their visiting, but that she doesn't know anyone to visit. As a result, she talks endlessly about the lack of society in Toronto, and the few visitors who come by, but she's not particularly insightful in this section. She does have some interesting discussions of gender and social issues in these pages. For example, on witnessing a fire in Toronto and hearing someone approve of the idea because it will allow for new construction of brick housing, Jameson is disgusting, and comments on the folly of any government or social structure that depends on the pain of one to create benefit for another. These glimmers are interesting, but without any plot on connectivity to these sketches -- not even a discussion of her personal life, the people she meets, the friend she is writing to and so on -- it is hard to connect to the text. Where Brooke wrote a timeless love story that said little, Jameson says much without offering any common ground of connection.

The second section, however, dealing with Jameson's summer rambles, is the real meat of the book. There are two major flaws with this section -- it, too, just runs far too long, and again, we miss key information to string the sketches together. While this section is generally held together as a simple travel narrative where Jameson goes about exploring the wilds of Canada with her various friends and guides, there is never any reason for why the trip occurs. Even the expression of simple curiosity would help, but instead the reader is left occasionally wondering why a wealthy woman from England would even attempt such a hazardous journey.

There is a lot of good in this section. Interesting to me was the focus on Aboriginal people in this book -- very different from the background characters in Brooke's novel, for Jameson the Aboriginals are the driving force of her curiosity and the learning she accomplishes. Jameson writes of the Native people she encounters with far more compassion and far less judgement than does Brooke. Where Brooke's characters assert that the British bear no responsibility for the alcoholism among the Native population, Jameson holds the British to task for the situation and recounts stories of Aboriginals being involuntarily drugged with drink in order to ensure that they will trade more loosely their furs and goods. This is not to say that Jameson is without her prejudices -- she is struck by the "dirtiness" and "smell" of the Native populations -- but interestingly enough Jameson is aware of her prejudices and is certain that she is in the wrong for making some of her assumptions. She absolutely comes across as percieving herself as superior to the Aboriginal population, but she's certainly aware of the problems in her own perceptions.

Jameson is a social reformer and a feminist, and as such her view of Canadian society is fascinating because she sees both the positive and negative in the new world. She is neither fully engrossed with the world, nor is she disgusted by it like Brooke seems to be. This, for once, is not at least a tale of how to get the hell out of Canada. Indeed, though Jameson never intended to stay in North America, she actually expresses sadness and disappointment in not being able to stay. For Jameson, too, the wilderness is not to be feared so much as it is to be appreciated, and she encourages other women to take on the challenges and adventures that she has.

As much as one would love to read more about the personal relationship between Jameson and her husband, it's obvious why it's not there. On the whole, it's a more interesting text by far than Brooke's novel... But a plot really wouldn't go amiss. I'm not such a fan of the non-fiction these days, it seems.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

how to escape canada without really trying

Back to the books today -- hopefully the nice weather will stick around as my reading is far more productive when I can sit out on the balcony reading my colonial literature and imagining I'm reading anything else...

The History of Emily Montague
by Frances Brooke

Idleness is the reigning passion here.

... in all respects naturally inferior to the Europeans ...

The general moral character of the Canadians: they are simple and hospitable, yet extremely attentive to interest, where it does not interfere with that laziness which is their governing passion.

... the uncultivated wilds of Canada, the seat of barbarism and ignorance ...

Who knew that the first novel ever written in Canada -- nay, in North America -- was the work of a woman? Frances Brooke wrote The History of Emily Montague in 1769, between the conquest of Quebec and the American Revolutionary War. It's an interesting snapshot, then, of a peaceful lull in the early life of a besieged colony.

The plot of the story is a straightforward one. Ed Rivers, a hopeful man seeking fortune in British North America, encounters the beautiful parentless Emily Montague upon his arrival in Quebec. It's a simple story -- boy meets girl, but girl is betrothed to well-appointed but boring suitor. Girl realizes charms of boy, and takes first opportunity to end engagement with suitor. Boy can't reveal how much he cares for girl because he lacks the fortune to make her his wife. Girl thinks boy intends to marry another. All is eventually settled and the couple seem destined to find happiness together, when WHAM -- boy's mother takes ill, and boy and girl are swept back to England where they cannot marry as they do not have the wealth to make it work in England like they could in the colonies. Family in England bands together to make it possible for the couple to wed, and just as they are settling in to a life of wedded bliss and meager means, it is revealed that girl's long-lost father is a bajillionaire, pleased by the match, and willing to hand over his vast fortune to boy in order that he may look after girl.

Really, it could have been written by Jane Austen, and the novel itself does not depend upon Canada at all for its story, themes, or characters. Canada is mere backdrop in this novel, and the Natives and Quebecois are equally wooden set pieces. The book could have been set anywhere, but that it is set in Canada is interesting for the commentary that is provided about the early life of the colony. Of note, however, is the fact that the characters themselves really comment very little on the fact that they are in Canada -- other than tangential commentary on the weather and the rudeness of the Quebecois women. Interestingly, though, Brooke seems to be aware of the interest of her readers in the culture of Canada, and so she creates the character of William Fermor, father to Emily Montague's best friend Bell, whose voice is only heard through his letters back to England about the comings and goings of Canadians. It's interesting in that these letters add nearly nothing to the plot -- we seem instead to have two narratives: a plot that could occur anywhere, be it an English country manor or the wilds of Quebec, and a narrative that is exclusively about life in Canada, almost completely unrelated to the primary narrative of the text.

I think an interesting factor here is that, while everyone in the novel talks about finding peace and happiness eventually in the Canadian wilderness, no one stays in Canada. By the end of the novel, every single character has funked off back to England to stay permanently. Indeed, the last 100 pages or so of the novel take place entirely in England, and in those last hundred pages I think the experience of colonial life in Canada is mentioned maybe five times. So as exciting as it is to read the first novel set in Canada and featuring Canadians actually written by a writer living in Canada, it's disappointing to see just how little of an impact the Canadian experience has on the characters in the novel, and it's frustrating to see that the rich experiences of a new place are treated basically as a mere backdrop to the events of the novel.

That's not to say that Frances Brooke doesn't do some very interesting things in this novel. Brooke is actually a very contemporary thinker in a lot of ways, and uses the lives and loves of her characters to argue for a number of positive and progressive ideas, including:

  • education for women
  • the right of women to choose their own spouses
  • the importance of marriage being for love rather than circumstance or arrangement
  • equality within the married home
  • allowing Quebecois to retain their religion and language

And actually, the list goes on from there. Even more interesting is that because this is an epistolary novel (a novel-in-letters), the reader is exposed to the viewpoints of people of varying gender, class, and so on -- and these progressive beliefs are universally espoused by the characters. Indeed, the young husbands are the most active proponants of the proto-feminist ideals in the text, such as the right of women to be educated (and even the assertion that it is only socialization that keeps young women ignorant in comparison to young men). While this is a very positive thing, it is unfortunate that these views are often brought about only through contrasting with the Native populations in negative and stereotypical ways -- instead of seeing the strength in Native women's right to choose the chief of her people, for example, Brooke's Bell sees only weakness in their inability to choose their own husbands. This when women's sufferage was not even to be hinted at in England, and certainly not in Canada! Brooke is so eager to make the point of who is the better at domestic life (the white, British colonists) that she misses the subtle strengths of alternate political systems (the Aboriginal social structure that seems more focused on equality).

In short, Brooke's novel is interesting in some ways and certainly has a lot to say about the gender relations of its time. As a Canadian novel, however -- well, all but about 50 pages of it could have occured anywhere else but here, and as such it seems odd to consider it a work of Canadian literature. Like much of the literature of this period, it's in many ways a book about escaping Canada, not about settling here. Does Brooke's 5 years in Quebec make her one novel about this place Canadian? At times, the depictions of Canada are heart-warming and show a real connection to the place, but in the end the novel doesn't need Canada to survive. Canadian culture, however, may need this novel. I wonder at our willingness to grasp onto early examples of CanCon... Even unflattering ones where Canada is merely a stand-in for any miserable place that may be escaped by young lovers.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

never again shall i be accused of pomo-phobia

A week filled with such action and yet so little progress. I'll admit outright that The Canadian Postmodern took me way, way longer to read than I was anticipating -- I constantly had to go back and reread sections that I thought I understood, because it took me twenty pages to figure out just how much I didn't understand! But it's also been a week of the increasingly more important (TM). I had an interesting day yesterday sitting in on the pre-trial motions for Dr. Morgentaler's lawsuit against the province, and with house guests coming this weekend my head has been anywhere but in my books. Bad Brenna! But I'm just trying to take this one step at a time and not get overwhelmed by it...

The Canadian Postmoder: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction
by Linda Hutcheon

Postmodernism, as I see it, is more paradoxical and problematic, as witnessed perhaps by the continuing debates on its definition. It both sets up and subverts the powers and conventions of art. It uses and abuses them in order to suggest that we question both the modernist autonomy and any realist notion of transparent reference. In other words, the postmodern novel is neither self-sufficiently art nor a simple mirror to or window onto the world outside. Yet in another sense, as we shall see, it exploits the power of both concepts of the function of art.

I'm both excited and nervous about saying this, but I think I finally get postmodernity. And, since my master's thesis focused on postmodern novels (though not on their postmodernity in and of itself), I'm embarrassed to make this discovery after year one of my Ph.D. But, all of that just goes to show that Hutcheon's text is a book I should have read years ago, and as much as it was a bit of an intellectual decathalon to get through it, I'm pleased to have done so.

Hutcheon's basic premise is to lay out the characteristics of postmodern fiction and to explore the ways Canadian novels from the 70s and 80s (especially) embody these ideas. She also touches on issues like the prominence of female writing in this period (something I was once-upon-a-time-ago going to do my doctoral thesis on) and its connection to the postmodern.

Postmodernism, to Hutcheon's eye, represents a loss of faith in the realist narrative tradition in Canada. Realist fiction is an act of mimesis -- the real exists somewhere "out there," and the book is an approximation of the so-called "real." This draws a distinct line between what is real and what is fiction. Also, realism asserts that there are certain "universal truths," but postmodernism tries to question the ground those truths rely on. There is no "universal" because "universal" has traditionally really meant white, male, central Canadian, heterosexual, and so on. This separation is one of the key things postmodern fiction teases and plays with, through the use of historical documents, autobiography, and through the narrator-as-character / narrator-as-reader-proxy, where the narrator (or occasionally, other figure) is granted the opportunity to interact with the reader of the novel and with the text itself.

Indeed, for Hutcheon, that is what seperates the postmodern from the modern: postmodern fiction demands a reader work hard. The reader makes the meaning in a postmodern novel, rather than the author leading the reader to a predetermined point. This isn't to say that the author doesn't construct a story, but more that the reader is left to put the pieces together in the end. Rather than a predetermined conclusion, the reader's own connections are equally important to "plot."

Hutcheon quotes Susan Swan, who wrote, "To be from Canada is to feel as women feel -- cut off from the base of power." This, Hutcheon suggests, is why postmodern literature has been so embraced by Canadian writers. Just as women sought to interrogate male-created universals, Canadian writers have sought to interrogate American- and British-created universals. Hutcheon argues that Canadians are not baggage-less, as some have argued, but instead the baggage is different, and as we have learned to address our own history through narratives we are learning also to interrogate our own assumptions and our own "universals." This historic powerlessness, also, has made Canada a more welcoming place for women writers to assert their own challenges to expected norms, because Canada as a whole is doing the same thing.

In its metafiction and self-referentiality, however, Canadian writing does not deny the realist tradition. Instead, through the use of parody, it tends to poke fun at the assertions of universality inherent to realism, without abandoning the form entirely. Nor is the narrative denied because, as Jameson has argued, narrative is the way humans make sense of the world. Instead, Canadian writing subverts from within rather than from without, to try to better a tradition rather than upend it.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

from "Gold Man" by Elizabeth Brewster

I come from a country
of slow and diffident words
of broken rhythms
of unsaid feelings.

Next time I am born
I intend to come
from a different country.

survival of the bleakest

Survival
by Margaret Atwood

Certainly, Canadian authors spend a disproportionate amount of time making sure that their heroes die or fail. [... Even] when Canadian writers are writing clumsy or manipulated endings, they are much less likely to manipulate in a positive than in a negative direction: that is, the author is less likely to produce a sudden inheritance from a rich old uncle or the surprising news that his hero is really the son of a count than he is to conjure up an unexpected natural disaster or an out-of-control car, tree, or minor character so that the protagonist may achieve a satisfactory failure. Why should this be so? Could it be that Canadians have a will to lose which is as strong and pervasive as the Americans' will to win?

You might decide at this point that most Canadian authors with any pretensions to seriousness are neurotic or morbid, and settle down instead for a good read with Anne of Green Gables (though it's about an orphan...). But if the coincidence intrigues you -- so many writers in such a small country, and all with the same neurosis -- then I will offer you a theory.

Throughout my undergraduate education, I sat through class after class after class of depressing Canadian literature. I think it was second or third year where my schedule was such that, in one day, I had a class on The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence in Canadian Literature, followed by Earle Birney's David in The Canadian Long Poem, and then I wrapped up the day with an evening class on immigrant novels, that day featuring Obasan by Joy Kogawa. By the time I got home that night all I could wonder was, "Why does studying three works of CanLit in one day result in the need for a bottle or two of Prozac? Why are we so depressing?"

It was exciting, then, for me to pick up Margaret Atwood's 1972 sensation and discover that other people were thinking it, too. The interesting thing about academic study of CanLit is that in the second year of an undergraduate degree, everyone is willing to say that our literature has a depressive streak running through it, but by the upper levels people stop talking about it. Mention that a book is kind of on the dark side in a graduate class and you might as well have said, "I like it!" Reader response, you know, is the lowest form of criticism. It's enough to give a girl a complex -- I know this bleak world view was here yesterday -- so it was great to find out that the Smartest Woman in Canada (TM), Maggie Atwood, had the same questions for the CanLit canon in 1972 that I was mulling over in a windowless classroom in 2002.

The theory of why that Atwood offers us in Survival is really quite a simple one: Canadians are victims, in various stages of victimitude, and as a result our literature is equally about victims. "Let us suppose," she starts, "for he sake of argument, that Canada as a whole is a victim, or an 'oppressed minority,' or 'exploited.' Let us suppose in short that Canada is a colony." Not what you'd call a shocking revelation -- in all my readings so far, and in all my commentaries, I've talked about the ways in which Canada has been colonized: literally (by England) and figuratively (by America). Atwood suggests that if you "stick a pin in Canadian literature at random, nine times out of ten you'll hit a victim." And she's right. Sometimes they are victims of abstract concepts, like poverty or isolation. Sometimes they are literally victims of physical attack. Often, they are victims of domineering family members (especially grandparents, who populate the CanLit landscape as angry, cruel, beaten people). I've been sitting here since early this morning, combing my CanLit shelves, search for victimless books and I can't think of one. Life of Pi? Victim of a shipwreck. Fall On Your Knees? Rape victim, incest victim, victim of wartime atrocities, victim of a horrific marriage, and more. David Adams Richards has never written a character in his life who isn't a victim of Ontario, either a victim of its oppression of the maritimes or a victim of its way of life. Even my favourite character in all of CanLit, Michael Winter's Gabriel English, is a victim of himself, caught up in his own neuroses and lack of self worth in comparing himself to the rest of Canada, and Canada to the US.

If you can think of a relatively major work of Canadian literature that doesn't centre on victimhood and victimization, I would love to know it.

Atwood is clear as to why this sense exists -- we Canadians have been locked in a Victor/Victim cycle for a very long time. Settlers were victimized by the land upon arrival here, so they in turn victimized the native inhabitants. As society grew, we became victims of England's will, only ever gaining as much power as she saw fit. In return, English Canada victimized French Canada, and French Canada victimized women (right to vote in 1940, for Christ's sake [literally!]). In the modern day, we are victims of cultural colonialism, absorbed as we are in American news and entertainment. (Now, on Entertainment Tonight: Canada! 2 1/2 minutes on Sarah Polley followed by 19 1/2 minutes on Paris Hilton's jail cell -- how will she decorate?) It's no accident that survival has emerged as the central theme across the Canadian canon. We survived the wilderness, we survived enough to become an autonomous nation, and now we are struggling to survive as America's Attic. Our literature is rooted in that reality.

Atwood points out that even our heroes are heroes because they were first victims. Louis Riel, Adam Dollard, the Newfoundland Regiment in WWI -- our heroes fall. Even things that are successes, Atwood points out, eventually devolve into failure: we held back the Americans in 1812 and they took over culturally and financial anyway; Sir John A. MacDonald stitched the country together with a railroad and it fell apart regardless.

What is interesting is the way that, as a victim culture, we have come to revere the institutions of law and order on a cultural level. Atwood asks us to think of any other country that uses a policeman as its national symbol, and where Americans seek Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, we are guaranteed the right to Life, Liberty and Security of the Person -- the latter certain to be enacted through the guiding principles of Peace, Order, and Good Government. Rebellions in Canada have never become Revolutions not necessarily because Canadians didn't support the ideas the rebels stood for, but because Canadians in general -- on a social level -- do not support the act of rebellion, full stop.

I would love to use Survival to teach a CanLit course some day. Atwood breaks the text into twelve chapters, each with an accompanying reading list. I think a great full year CanLit survey could see semester one (CanLit: Survival to 1970) following Atwood's ideas, reading some of the novels she suggests, and then semester two (1970-present) uses those ideas as a jumping off point to see what has changed and what has stayed the same in the years that have passed -- years that have been an important flourishing for Canadian Literature. On the whole, I freaking love this book -- if you have even a passing interest in Canadian literature, it's an easy and enlightening look at our own history and culture.

Friday, May 11, 2007

how to embrace the wilderness and influence people

I'm sitting in my study carrel at Harriet Irving Library wishing the thunderstorm would start already because the air is so thick right now. It's fitting, then, that I've just finished a book about embracing the wilderness in Canadian literature -- Jones is certain that wilderness must enter the garrison to allow the garrison to breathe new life; I think a thunderstorm could do the same thing for Fredericton today.

Butterfly on Rock
by D. G. Jones

The evidence of our literature, and also of our history, would indicate that we are a people who have tried to live primarily on the basis of faith rather than belief. We have persistently placed our confidence in principles, doctrines, rules, rather than in ourselves or in the spontaneous processes of nature. And only too often we carry this faith, or these faiths, as a burden; we do not altogether believe in the doctrine or tradition we live by.

This text, I have to say, is immensely readable -- it was a nice change from Contexts in Canadian Criticism, which was a little bit dry. Jones' primary argument is that literature in Canada has moved from a garrisoned, insular mentality that feared the world of the outside, to a literature that seeks out the wilderness outside the garrison in order to give the garrison a new life. Furthermore, in that stepping out of the garrison and into the wilderness, literature in Canada has sought to accept nature on nature's own terms -- death, violence, and all -- in order to find peace. For the literature of a people consumed by their identity with the land, this is crucial; peace must necessarily be found in nature's death grasp, because only when we cease to fear the wilderness can we embrace its wonders.

In the above quote, Jones argues that this path taken by our literature has at times stood in opposition to the developing social order in Canada. To embrace the chaotic natural world and to place your fate solely in her hands is necessarily to turn your back on the established order -- the church, the town hall, the military all oppose the freedom and randomness of the natural order. As society tried to stay stagnant, literature opened the garrison up to the wilderness and allowed the one force to challenge the other. In the end, a kind of balance has been reached between the two forces that embraces the good in both opportunities. In an established society that ignores the natural, there are basically two gods: the Church, and technology. As Jones argues:

Within society they could choose between the conventional Christian idealism and the newer secular idealism inspired by technology. One was increasingly moribund,* the other increasingly dynamic, but each tended to do violence to human nature and to eliminate all spontaneous joy in life.

Part of the problem with idealism is that it assumes a potential perfection. If we have an idealized idea of something, anything, then we are saying that that item is or can be perfect. Jones argues that life in a colony is hard, it is exhausting, but it is never perfect. A Canadian settler loses much in striving for any ideal, especially one constructed out and way in Rome or London or New York. The spontaneous joy that is missing can re-enter the experience by allowing the natural world back in. Nature is only spontaneous; she acts, reacts, and responds not based on deliberative thought, order from Rome, or developed invention. Nature acts on instinct which is by nature spontaneous. Within the garrison ruled by Church and technology there can be no spontaneity -- but our literature can allow the wilderness entry into the garrison, thereby allowing for the experience of spontaneity. This is the time of the Confederation Poets, who emerged from a garrison culture that oppressed them, and were the first to step into the wilderness to uncover the alternatives to the status quo.

In the end, Jones argues, the key to surviving Canada is making peace with nature. To live in fear of the wilderness in a country like Canada is to only life a partial life. He suggests, "Our love of the world, and our communion with the world, issues from our recognition that it is both our victim and our executioner. He who would have it otherwise remains consciously or unconsciously the alienated man." To be one with Canada, then, requires making the choice to accept nature on her terms -- she can be our victim, and give us the food we eat, the skins we wear, and the materials we construct our homes with. But in one unfortunate winter storm or unexpected spring thaw or unadulterated summer heat wave, she can be our executioner. Indeed, for the early settlers, she was more executioner than victim; today, perhaps, the tide has turned. But to live with nature is to respect her; it is to accept her gifts and fear her wrath in equal measure.

We need to understand the wilderness, Jones argues, by ceasing to love broad universals ("I love the freedom of this country, I love the vastness of it"), to instead embrace "the evanescent and mortal particulars" of Canadian life. Don't love the abstract, Jones warns, because the abstract eventually falls away. We have to love the particular and the concrete, the things that create the idea of the abstract.

But where does all this discussion of the wilderness leave contemporary writers? Can we really say that Douglas Coupland goes out in search of a wilderness to allow into the garrison? Jones tackles the idea of contemporary (for him, so post-1960s) English-Canadian writing as follows:

They have set out to take an inventory of the world by scarcely uttered, the world of the excluded or ignored. It would comprehend whatever is crude, whatever is lonely, whatever has failed, whatever inhabits the silence of the deserted streets, the open highways, the abandoned farms. It is the wilderness of experience that does not conform to the cultural maps of the history books, sermons, political speeches, slick magazines and ads. And it is the wilderness of language in with the official voices of the culture fail to articulate the meaning or the actual sensation of living and tend to become gibberish.

So in that sense, Coupland is a writer of the wilderness. It could be said that the crude, the lonely, the failed, and the silent have always made up the characters whose stories he seeks to tell. This is an idea I'm interested to hear any one's thoughts on -- to what extent can we still talk about the wilderness as a touchstone of contemporary Canadian literature? To me, it all boils down to one question: are we colonial, or are we post-colonial? Because as long as we remain a colonial society, we will be forever locked within our garrisons, desperate for our literature to grant us access to the wilderness that will breathe new life into our experiences.

* Totally had to look this up. It means at the point of death, or losing vitality.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

concern over time lines

I seem to be only making it through about 100 pages of theory a day. This is pretty good for me, as far as theory is concerned, because I'm very very slow when it comes to non-fiction. And it takes time to make notes, and try to digest what I'm reading. But I'm still worried about how I'm going to get through all this criticism.

I think things will pick up when I get into the fiction again. Indeed, I know it will. But I still have my concerns.

day two through three of contexts of canadian criticism

Contexts of Canadian Criticism
edited by Eli Mandel

We were born saying "No" to the Enlightenment and "No" to the American Revolution, and for a century and a half we have regularly indulged in outbursts of anti-American feeling and rejected the best that American thought and society has had to offer us.

Ouch. Feel damned, much? That's from William Kilbourn's article in this collection, "The Writing of Canadian Literature," but it echoes the ideas I talked about in my last posting and the ideas that dominate this book. Half the articles want to define Canada in terms of the US, half want to stop defining Canada in terms of the US, and the rest are pretty sure we're all just the retarded cousin of the US anyway so what's the point?

It's a little depressing.

I'm not afraid to say that I'm patriotic, and while I'm in no way unwilling to admit that America has some incredible accomplishments and beautiful history (Boston, I'm looking at you), I'm very proud of the literature that has emerged in Canada -- certainly no other country has experienced the express maturity that Canadian lit has in the last hundred years. Milton Wilson claims a certain parochialness for Canadian readers, arguing that we demand from our writers (especially our poets) "tamaracks and totempoles" -- that is, we judge our poets by how much Canadiana they can cram into a lyric poem. I don't think this observation is bad, but I'm also hard-pressed to see it as in some way "wrong." Canada is a young country, and as sick as we all are of CBC specials determining our identity, we are too young and of a history too peaceful to have forged a concrete identity (if such a thing can ever exist) as yet. It's normal and natural to look to our writers to, as many critics in this collection state, myth-make for us.

We don't have a Revolution to bind us together, and we don't have a shared goal of the pursuit of happiness. We instead have an act of Parliament and the promise of peace, order, and good government; of life, liberty, and security of the person. Our past is not romantic unless we turn to the personal and the experiential to make it so. This is the role of literature in a young country.

That's not to say it's the only function of national literature, especially not in contemporary, cosmopolitan (!) Canada, but at the time this collection was put together (1971), Canada had just turned 100 and culturally we still didn't know where to hang our hats. The literature since 1967 in this country has taken remarkable strides to be less self-consciously Canadian (a book can be set on the prairies without the very existance of the characters on the land being a struggle, now, and with out constantly evoking images of conquest and rape, for example -- this wasn't possible in Margaret Lawrence's day, and we have come a long way in a very short space of time). Writers no longer feel compelled to write of the wilderness that none of us experience or to explain their desire to set a text in St. Andrews when Cape Cod could do just as well. There is an acceptance, finally, that literature happens here -- that stories worth telling happen here -- and they don't necessarily have to be cloaked in mythic symbols of the epic struggle against wilderness. They can just be stories.

Northrop Frye has often noted that the literature of a country is only as mature as its society. In the 1960s, as Canada was just starting to come into itself as an independent nation (remember we didn't have our own patriated constitution until 1982, for god's sake), Frye remarked, "The Canadian poet, though he might be youger than Eliot or Yeats, writes in an environment for which it would be difficult to find a counterpart in England without going back to a period prior to the age of Chaucer." And he didn't mean my cat, Chaucer, he meant circa 1300 Chaucer. Frye refers here to the fact that pre-Chaucerian society was similar to Canada in that England, from 1066 on, was forging an identity for itself. Chaucer was such a huge literary figure for England because he was part of that nation's myth-making -- an act still in progress over two hundred years after 1066.

So, like, timeline wise, everyone needs to cut Canada some freaking slack.

Monday, May 7, 2007

and so it begins

Well, rather abysmal day one progress, it must be said. Due to having to run the car in to the shop and running errands and so on I somehow only managed to read for about four very scattered hours, one of them sitting in a McDonald's and one in a Speedy Muffler. I've only made it about a third of the way in to my first text -- not good at all -- and as it is I keep falling asleep mid-page. It seems I have forgotten how to study in all these exam-free years. I can tell this is going to be a challenge.

I thought I ought to blog my work day before I become too tired to make sense.

Contexts of Canadian Criticism
edited by Eli Mandel

This country is something that must be chosen -- it is so easy to leave -- and if we do choose it we are still choosing a violent duality.

Okay, that quote is really from Margaret Atwood, but Mandel quotes it in his introduction and I think it's an apt summation of the beginning sections of this collection of foundational critical texts outlining the context of Canadian literature and literary criticism. Canadian literature tends to found itself upon rifts -- upon the things which divide us. English / French. East / West. Wilderness / Civilization. Canadians are paranoid schizophrenics, defining themselves constantly in terms of an other.

"Well now, I can't say what New Brunswickers are, but let me tell you all the ways we aren't like Central Canadians!" (Yeah, Central Canadians can drive! Ba-dum-ching!)

In terms of literature, this tends to manifest itself in an impossibility of knowing what we want to read as Canadians -- historically, the result has been that we read whatever America and Britain tell us is good. In the first essay in this collection, E. K. Brown points out that a pair of positive reviews from New York tend to mean more in the grand scheme of literary sales than the universal lauding of every literary journal from Vancouver to St. John's. So why is this? Brown points to three factors that stifle literary expression in Canada -- economic realities in Canada, the colonial mindset, and frontier mentality.

Economic problems have always stood in between Canadian novelists and a living wage. The problem has historically been a mere numbers game -- in the 1960s, the Canadian population sat at 12 million (incidentally, at that time this was the same as the population of New England). Add to this the fact that, in the 60s, 1/3 of the population spoke and read predominantly in French, and the total possible market for English-Canadian literature shrinks to 8 million people. If you're a bookseller in Vancouver and the only distributor of CanLit is in Toronto, and you have to pay to ship the books out to BC, do you take a risk on the new Marian Engels -- which you will have to work to promote -- or do you buy up the LA Times bestseller list and ride the publicity wave for those novels?

More importantly, Brown argues, is the reality that Canadians see Canada as a second-rate nation. Quoting Hugh McLennan ("everything in this country is second-rate" -- even you, Hughie?), he points to the literature of the pre-1960s as being painfully anti-Canadian. Callaghan's novels were set in a Toronto never called Toronto so it could be easily mistaken for Chicago, for example. Furthermore, Canadians at this time were stuck between a desire for independence finally from Britain and a certainty that if Britain would just re-adopt us everything would be okay. Canadians then (and, I would argue, now) were stymied: are we colonial or post-colonial? And which do we desire to be? Dependent people, Brown suggests, cannot create great art.

Finally, the mindset of the frontier -- a desire for practicality above all else -- devalues the role of art in society. Canadians were so used to perceiving ourselves in terms of the work of nation-building, and so used to interpreting the world through a Puritanical lens, that art becomes merely diversion. The value of art is only in terms of its ability to render an escape from a day's labour; literature is not a means of understanding or interpreting the world, then, but instead a place to hide from it. It's the Da Vinci Code-ization of national literature, essentially.

Reading this book has so far been extremely frustrating. It is so steeped in its reality as a text from 1971 that it is occasionally maddening to pursue. Everytime a writer says that there has never been a Canadian author of note in the US since the creator of Sam Slick, I just want to scream, "Wait 20 years! You're going to be SO WRONG! Even OPRAH wants us!" But some of the arguments -- especially the idea of validation for our art coming from the US ("Look! CNN's talkin' 'bout Little Mosque on the Prairie Again!") -- are so painfully eternal that I wonder if we'll ever break out from under them.

I also had this little brain wave/fart earlier this afternoon:

In the introduction to this text, Eli Mandel points out that both Marshall McLuhan and T.S. Eliot believed that every piece of art created changes the way in which art is created, but further that any new art wholly transforms the entire body of art, because the old art is potentially viewed through the filter of the new art.

This led me to a new realization.

Canonicity is irrelevant.

Be it resolved that comic books are, to all intents and purposes, non-canonical. But if all art alters the art that came before, comic books act upon the literature of the canon as much -- nay, more, because of a wider field of current readership -- than does good Billy S (William Shakespeare). The keepers of the canon may seek to push comic books out and away as much as they can, but insodoing they are defining themselves in the light of comic books -- they are defining themselves in terms of comic books by saying, "Everything that is, we are not."

Comic books are already canonical, because the canon (a) cannot exist without the lens of comic books in contemporary life, and (b) because the canon seeks to define itself on comic books' own terms.

Ergo, the canon is irrelevant.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

... make that 3!

I also need a third book that somehow slipped my mind.

Highway, Tomson. Rose.

... remains missing in action.

... and then there were two ...

I am now left with only two books outstanding from my comprehensive list -- everything else has been either successful tracked down and purchased, procured from the library, or are en route to me from various used bookstores dotted across the country -- and one big Amazon order, too.

The last two contenders are...

Johnston, Wayne. Custodian of Paradise.
Ondaatje, Michael. The Cinnamon Peeler.

(but that's only because I'm being really stubborn about not paying full price for either of them and because the UNB library doesn't have either book at the Fredericton location -- though both are in Saint John, which may require a quick drive down at some point.)

... and when I get the rest of the books delivered, I'll post another picture with all the books in one place (daunting!). As it is, I'm going to get a good night's sleep and get ready to start my first day of reading tomorrow.

And if you want to keep me honest about my goal to spend 40 hours a week (minimum) studying, you can log in to http://compthis.tickspot.com using the e-mail address compthis@gmail.com and the password bydsjdpb (isn't that easy to remember?). I'll be using this site to log my hours, track my progress, and stick to my 40 hour / week goal -- so feel free to harass me if I let the side down.