Wake-up call for Canadian writing
Literary iconoclast Alex Good takes on institutions, writers and our national character
In the introduction to his new book Revolutions: Essays on Contemporary Canadian Fiction, Alex Good, one of Canada’s foremost literary iconoclasts positions the work as a polemic, literally, in search of an audience.
He bemoans what he sees as Canadian writing and reading shaped by — among other things — “the effect of the Internet on habits and patterns of reading, publishing and criticism,” and, perhaps most damningly, “the Canadian character . . . with a knee-jerk submission to established authority and a passiveaggressive courteousness.”
Good sees that established authority as the Canadian Literary Estab- lishment, the writers of the mythic CanLit golden age who have shaped and dominated the discourse since the 1970s and ’80s, figures such as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje, and institutions such as the Giller Prize, which solidify their influence, both on the page and in the culture at large.
Like all great revolutionary polemicists, Good is given to hyperbole and a refusal to see any middle ground.
The Gillers, for example, are not just an institution with problems to be addressed, but “an institution so incestuous and sclerotic they have their own systemic biases.”
Writers are damned unequivocally: “Ondaatje has never mastered the basic fundamentals of novel writing,” for example, or, “David Adams Richards . . . is well past the point of giving up on, as he has shown no sign of growth or development, with his best work (which is of significant value) long behind him.”
These are, of course, fighting words, and that’s precisely the point. Revolutions is intended to wake the Canadian clerisy from their “anti-revolutionary” slumber.
This makes for a tremendously powerful, if occasionally overwhelming reading experience, but one of significant value for anyone with even the slightest interest in Canadian writing.
You may not agree with Good on everything (I certainly don’t, as his citing my review of Michael Winter’s Minister Without Portfolio to lash out at how Winters has been praised — wrongly, in his estimation — should attest), but this sort of spirited opposition is important in any artistic culture and has been lacking in Canadian letters.
There is also, it has to be said, considerable pleasure in these essays, in watching a cantankerous Quixote at full throttle. Robert Wiersema’s latest book is Seven Crow Stories.
These are, of course, fighting words, and that’s precisely the point. Revolutions is intended to wake the Canadian clerisy from their “anti-revolutionary” slumber. This makes for a tremendously powerful, if occasionally overwhelming reading experience