CA-NA-DA (One little two little three Canadians)
We love thee (Now we are twenty million)
Posted by I.A.M. in BLOG-O-RAMA, books, CANADA, Canada for Foreigners, LIT-O-RAMA, THINKINESS
Since I [Mariane Lepa] started doing Arts News Canada four years ago, I’ve come to appreciate just how much creativity, talent and imagination there is in this country from coast to coast to coast to political border. In fact, I’ve become so immersed in what Canadian artists are doing, I am a little surprised when I’m confronted with Canada’s low-level image beyond our borders.
I expect it from Americans — that’s just how they are (if you’ll permit me the over generalization) — but I don’t expect it from the UK. Certainly with all the conflict Britons have endured, internally and externally, in the name of cultural uniqueness, I have always thought we had a kindred spirit in our struggle to remain unique despite looming geopolitical influences just beyond our borders. So it came as a surprise to see the their perception of Canada described as “the US’s slightly slow cousin” in an weekend article on the London Guardian’s website.
Jean Hannah Edelstein is a London-based former New Yorker, who attended university in Montréal. Before coming to Canada, she “spent very little time even thinking about Canada, much less reading about it.” But upon arriving in Montréal to study, “I was swiftly — within hours — disabused of the south-of-the-border assumption that everyone in Canada is a bit sorry they’re not American.”
Her article in the Guardian is about Canadian literature, and she regrets that Michael Redhill’s novel, Consolation, did not make the shortlist for this year’s Man Booker prize.
“But though I can’t help but bristle when I come across people being dismissive of Canadian writing,” she writes, “I was disheartened when I worked in publishing to find that ‘Canadian’ is an adjective often used to justify not publishing a book in the UK.”
Accepting that Margaret Atwood has a well-deserved international reputation for her work, Edelstein goes on to list works by poets Gwendolyn MacEwen, Robert Kroetsch, and George Elliot Clark; novelists Robert McGill and Miriam Toews, and francophone writers Roch Carrier, Gisele Villeneuve and Monique Proulx, as worthy as anything else being published internationally.
She says, “a preoccupation with naming and identity runs through a great deal of the classic of CanLit, as writers attempt to explain what it means for a country to be a ‘cultural mosaic’ rather than an American-style melting pot.”
Canadians are right to reject “American-ness”, she says. “Canadians are quietly and deservedly smug about their rich and distinctive culture, which includes a distinguished literary canon.”
You can read Edelstein’s article in the Guardian at: blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/dont_look_down_on_canadian_lit.html
Huzzah! More grist for the mill of my book!
As a recent visitor to the UK, I can confirm that the Mother Land is a bit thin on details about ‘The Colony Over There’. The sheer size of our country is beyond them; they know it’s big, but ‘it’s not bigger than France and Germany combined, right?’ [NOTE: not an actual quote]
Actually I staggered myself with the reality that the distance from Victoria to St. John’s is equal to County Cork to the middle of Pakistan.
The Canadian authors known are few and far between, with people like Ms Atwood being an exception probably due to the RCS recent stage adaptation of The Penelopiad. Mordechi Richler is another one who is known, but not as a Canadian per se; merely as a good writer. Carol Shields is somewhat known, barely, Leonard Cohen is unknown as Canadian, a poet, or a singer — although I can see this being understandable — but mostly not at all.
Again, we’ve done a bad job of selling ourselves.
“Canadians kick ass!” isn’t a good approach either, as this sort of ‘in your face’, ‘we’re fucking important, so respect us or we’ll kick your teeth in’ doesn’t get one anywhere either.
Soon, I hope, we’ll be quietly able to introduce our works to the world and let the quality of them speak for themselves. Only then will we deserve the attention of the world for our culture.
Ian Alexander Martin [
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Loved your discussion on Candian writers but there is one aspect you all completely ignored, either through wilful ignorance or just plain simple ignorance.
Canadians are great writers but after the British and the Americans, it is the Indians that are the most published lot.
Some live in the US or the UK or even Canada but as such they carry just as much clout or perhaps more than Canadian writers.
Just go and read one.
Ignorance, I admit. But not wilful. I could claim it’s lack of exposure, popular culture doesn’t provide the Indian writers with the publicity they deserve, or a host of other things. All of which would be true, but not the actual reason I’ve not read the works of that culturally rich nation.
The real reason is that I’ve got literally two feet of books I have to read to enlarge my understanding of the material we publish, and there’s two more boxes on the way via post plus additional amounts via delivery services. Meanwhile I’ve got to edit, lay-out, and typeset more than ten books in the coming year. There’s only so many hours in a day.
My point above, about Canadian works being worthy of the World’s attention when we simply let the quality speak for itself, is equally apt for the works of the writers of India. Your point about them is that they are ‘the most published lot’ after UK and American writers. Ignoring the fact that there is a startling in-equality in the population sizes of Canada and India, surely the ‘clout’ that one’s literature wields is based upon the quality of the writing and not the sheer heft of its mass?
“Might” over “right” is something our neighbours to the south have been ignoring for altogether too long already. Let’s not extend that mistake of attitude to publishing as well.
Help us to expand our knowledge, rather than shaming our lack of experience: point us at an example of writing from India that will provide an apt gateway to the wonders which await us.