The outsiders
In a piece on the Tyee site entitled “Lies That Writers Tell Themselves,” author Crawford Killan takes on the trope of the author as a social outsider who self-destructs, beginning with Horatio Alger and Jack London and continuing up to Truman Capote and James Baldwin. But no Canadians fit the pattern, he argues: “Canadian male writers have ranted against Canadian social ills and carried on doing so into great old age, like Farley Mowat, Morley Callaghan and Earle Birney. Canadian male authors have been hard drinkers, panting womanizers and sometimes plain nasty. But they’ve kept their wits and their powers, just like their female colleagues.”
Related links:
Click here for the piece on The Tyee
