Last week, National Post columnist Barbara Kay stirred up some controversy when she trashed Lisa Moore’s novel February for being both unmanly and unreadable – a symptom of what Kay describes as an overly feminized, government-coddled publishing industry. In today’s paper, author Steven Galloway offers a rebuttal, arguing that Kay’s literary sensibility just isn’t very, well, literary:
Ms. Kay’s complaint isn’t with Canadian literature, it’s with the lack of Canadian blockbuster commercial fiction. My suspicion is that Ms. Kay can’t tell the difference – how is it that she thinks the literature of our country differs from the literature of any other country? Most contemporary literature is overwhelmingly reflective, personal and not ripped from the headlines. And that’s the way it should be. Novels are not twitter, they are not sitcoms and they are not action movies, and the moment they are, literature ceases to exist.
On the issue of arts grants, which according to Kay create a culture of mediocrity and smug navel-gazing, Galloway has this to say:
Yes, Canadian literature is subsidized. So are tourism, mining, forestry, automobile production, small business and oil. In 2006 the petroleum industry alone received $1.4-billion in government subsidies in the form of tax breaks. I’ll apologize for our subsidies when they apologize for theirs, because what writers do is every bit as important and vital as putting together cars, docking cruise ships or cutting down trees.
Galloway’s response is a well-needed antidote to Kay’s over-heated polemics. But the tinge of elitism that creeps into his argument – he says the type of book Kay would like to see more of in Canada “may well be entertaining but it would be neither a novel nor literature” – is a little off-putting. Surely, if commercial fiction can’t aspire to literature, it at least qualifies as culturally meaningful. And many novels that subsequently earned a place in the canon were first conceived of as entertainments.
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I’m an American author who lived in Montreal for 8 years in the 1970’s. I wrote for CBC Radio, edited a national magazine, and worked for Harvest House publishers. I recall that this argument about Canadian literature being dull by virture of its having no original voice was being debated in the media and among emerging writers like myself at the time. It seems to me, however, that Canadian literature had its own voice back then and has grown in prestige and originality since then with authors such as Atwood, Munroe, Odnaatje, and Yann Martel. At Harvest House we published Quebec novelists who clearly had a voice of their own. Ditto for Mordecai Richler and a host of other “ethnic” writers from Montreal. Has the case for an uniquely Canadian literature ever been truly valid? Perhaps one needs to leave the country to see that Canadian culture really does have the seeds of its own identity.
Always good to see the national literature debated in the national papers. Pity these debates always take place within such narrow parameters. In this instance, the reactionary Barbara Kay lobbing softballs at novelist-first writers like Steven Galloway. At issue, lyricism versus narrative – again.
Kay’s provocation is hardly worth repeating, though I can assure you, unlike Kay with Lisa Moore’s February, I have read her articles and “have no apologies.” Galloway’s argument, on the other hand, provides the usual B+ response, setting in motion his own blindered outlook.
Where I take issue with Galloway is not his connoisseurial take on what is “neither a novel nor literature,” but his denial of new forms (radio, film, television, internet…) and their influence not only on the literature but as literature – a position typical of a novelist-first writer.
I have read novels (let’s call them fictions, too) “ripped from the headlines” (American Tabloid), just as I have read them as “sitcoms” (Pride and Prejudice), “action movies” (Heinlein’s Starship Soldiers begat Starship Troopers), and, sooner than later, tweets.
Because Galloway has reminded us that “[o]urs is not a homogenous literature,” I would hope that he might prove that to us one day by acknowledging this country’s post-genre, post-medium literary tradition. Until then, and in his words, “literature ceases to exist.”
Yes, as Anthony Maulucci points out, Canadian literature was bursting with prestige and originality back in the 1970s, what with big names like Atwood, Munro, and Ondaatje.
And 30-plus years later . . . the exact same names. Which says something about the “growth” of originality and literary prestige in this country, doesn’t it? I think Michael Turner’s point is related to the same concern.
“Because Galloway has reminded us that “[o]urs is not a homogenous literature,” I would hope that he might prove that to us one day by acknowledging this country’s post-genre, post-medium literary tradition. Until then, and in his words, “literature ceases to exist.””
Michael: This is a well put. To it I’d only add that there is a cultural-nationalist argument for arguing not against the conventional novel (whatever that is), as much as arguing for a radical expansion of the idea of literature.
Canadians — curiously for a people who are not only perceived outside the country as rather conventional, but have, as far as I can tell, internalized this perception — produce a substantial amount of narrative culture that doesn’t take the form of the conventional novel. Unfortunately, this body of work tends to be overlooked.
Our national failing is not at the level of creative output, but at the level of filtering and assessment. And these days, given the dual crisis of economic viability and faith that is afflicting much of publishing, the filtering is getting more severe at the very first line.
“dual crises”
Kay’s piece is reductive, and there’s some off-putting gender thinking in there as well. But I wouldn’t entirely disregard what she’s saying, either.
Compare our literature to that of, say, Britain. The Brits produce truckloads of difficult, lyrical, experimental and non-trendy writing. But they also regularly give us successful crossovers in the vein of Zadie Smith, Ishiguro, Ian McEwan or Geoff Dyer – serious writers who put enormous effort into making their work accessible and exciting for a mainstream readership.
Such writers help nurture the literary ecosystem in any number of ways: by attracting educated non-specialists to serious reading, by reflecting directly yet intelligently on the popular culture, by keeping the overall lit scene from becoming too stuffy, etc.
I have nothing against Lisa Moore’s highly accomplished prose, and don’t believe that Canadian writers are too “feminized,” as Kay has it. But I do wish we had a stronger contingent of writers here working in the savvy crossover vein of the above-mentioned Brits.