Showing posts with label Quill and Quire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quill and Quire. Show all posts

18 July 2022

What Is a Canadian Fiction?


Several months ago, The Dorchester Review asked me to review David Staines' A History of Canadian Fiction.

Who am I to turn down an invitation.

Professor Staines' book was read at great sacrifice. Going through its 304 pages I ignored Stephen Henighan, a favourite critic, who shared his opinion of A History of Canadian Fiction in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement. A blind eye was turned to Stephen W. Beattie, another favourite, who reviewed the book for the Quill & Quire.

After submitting my review I read the two Stephens, sat back, and watched for more. I was more than rewarded with John Metcalf's newly published The Worst Truth: Regarding A History of Canadian Fiction by David Staines (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2022).

The Worst Truth quotes Henighan's TLS review, in which he makes this criticism of Staines:
He provides a useful introduction to Inuit literary culture, paying the 39,000 native speakers of Inuktituk an attention he denies to Canada's 7.3 million native speakers of French.
Well, the Spring/Summer Dorchester Review has now landed, bringing with it my review of Professor Staines' history, some of which adds to Henighan's observation:

How is it that a book titled A History of Canadian Fiction would exclude work written in French? Remarkably, Staines does not address this issue. In fact, he doesn’t so much as recognize the existence of Canadian fiction written in French. Of the hundreds of writers of fiction named in this book, we find two French names: Roger Lemelin and Gabrielle Roy. They first feature in a short list of “important people” who were once interviewed by Mavis Gallant and reappear as in another list of writers whose fiction Mordecai Richler had read. Roy’s name is in a third list, this of writers with whom Sandra Birdsell corresponded. 
     And that’s it. 
     The only mention of a work written in French appears in a nine-page "Chronology of historical, cultural, and literary events" that precedes the text itself. Next to the year 1632, we find: “Jesuit Relations, an annual, begins and continues until 1673.” But of course, they weren’t the “Jesuit Relations,” they were the Relations des jésuites.

More in The Dorchester Review.

And I have even more to say.

Invitations accepted.

13 October 2017

Talking Ricochet in Quill & Quire



Steven W. Beattie's piece on Ricochet in the brand new Quill & Quire is available free online. Some guy named Busby is interviewed. You can read it here.

Busby will be speaking at Bouchercon tomorrow at 5:00 pm.


04 September 2013

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 77



Oh, we of little faith!

Just as belief had begun to wain, joyous news comes from the East that the prime minister's hockey book is soon to be upon us.

I confess to falling into doubt. In my defence, the prime minister has been promising his hockey book for the better part of the millennium, going so far as to tease Jane Taber and Tonda McCharles about a 2012 publication date. I questioned the book's coming not two months ago, noting that it was not listed in the Fall Preview issue of Quill & Quire. I wondered why it was not included in Simon & Schuster's Fall Catalogue, and disgraced myself further by pointing out that neither book nor author were mentioned on the publisher's website.

Okay, so there's still nothing on the Simon & Schuster website, but this cover has been released to the media:


While cover image may not be familiar to Stephen Harper's fellows in the Society for International Hockey Research – BUY YOUR MEMBERSHIP HERE FOR THIRTY DOLLARS! ANYONE CAN JOIN! – hockey historians will recognize the Toronto Blueshirts ("Blue Shirts" in the Simon & Schuster press release). Colourized here most garishly (in the tradition of Turner Classic Movies), supporting members have been removed (in the tradition of Joseph Stalin).


The nonbelievers will weigh in, but I'm grateful.

I give thanks to Simon & Schuster for signing our prime minister.

I give thanks to the Harper Government™ for subsequently deciding to allow Simon & Schuster to publish Canadian authors.

I give thanks to Greg Stoicoiu and George Pepki.

But most of all, I thank Roy MacGregor for his dedication in bringing Stephen Harper's hockey book to print. We may never know Mr MacGregor's contribution. Steven Chase, his Globe and Mail colleague, tells us that he provided the prime minister "editorial services". Tristan Hopper of the National Post writes that "the final book was smoothed out with the help of both a full-time researcher and hockey author Roy McGregor [sic]". Mr MacGregor is a modest man.

The publication date of A Great Game is fortuitous in that it fairly coincides with the end of the Conservative Party's upcoming Calgary convention.

How many copies will the party purchase?

Enough to guarantee top spot on the Maclean's bestseller list is my guess.

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15 July 2013

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 27



Another July brings another Quill & Quire Fall Preview issue and the usual embarrassment of promised riches. Nothing from me, I'm afraid, and nothing from Stephen Harper either.

But that can't be right... We were told months ago by agent Bruce Westwood and publisher Simon & Schuster that the Prime Minister's long-awaited hockey history would be landing in November.

So, why no mention in Quill & Quire? Why nothing in the publisher's fall catalogues? Most intriguing of all, why is there not one word about the book or its author on the Simon & Schuster website?

For a while there it seemed like the stars were aligning for Mr Harper. In May, just three months after Simon & Schuster was outed as the PM's publisher, Heritage Canada announced that it would allow the company to publish Canadian books in Canada.

The reasons behind the decision remain a mystery. Never mind. For Simon & Schuster it was a twelve-year-old dream realized. And it couldn't have come at a better time for Stephen Harper, saving him the humiliation of having his book blocked from publication in the country he governs.

Since then, Mr Harper's heavenly bodies have really gone out of whack. The country has been beset by disasters both Shakespearean and Biblical in nature, including a massive flood that seemed intelligently designed to disrupt the Conservative Party's National Convention. In this, the summer of our discontent, Simon & Schuster suddenly finds itself saddled with an author who, like stablemate Paula Deen, is becoming more unpopular with each passing day.

The good news is that the convention has been rescheduled for All Hallow's Eve; perfect timing for the book's launch, presuming it's still slated for a November release. Curiously, the Conservative Party website maintains that Mr Harper is still working on it.

In related news, the man who should've been Mr Harper's chief foe in the last election has a new title coming this fall from Random House Canada.


It should be an interesting read. Michael Ignatieff may have been a bit of a wash as a politician, but he sure can write.

And he can skate.


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27 July 2012

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 39



Summertime and the living is busy... so busy that it wasn't until this past weekend that I finally got around to reading the annual Fall Preview issue of Quill & Quire, "Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews". Such riches! A new collection from Alice Munro, a memoir from Neil Young and – ahem – a selection of John Glassco's letters edited by yours truly.

Yes, riches, but I couldn't help but feel let down. Where, I wondered, was the prime minister's hockey book?

True, he's been promising the thing for years, but last December Mr Harper let it be known that it was finished and a 2012 pub date had been set. The news came courtesy of Jane Taber, who ended a Globe & Mail fluff piece about her invitation to 24 Sussex for "a Christmas drink" thusly: "Finally, there is a publishing date for the long-talked about and much-anticipated prime ministerial tome one [sic] hockey history. Mr. Harper said that after writing for 15 minutes every day for eight years, the book will hit the shelves next year."

Tonda MacCharles, who was also invited for a cup of Christmas cheer, reported something similar in the Toronto Star... and the rest chased the puck:

In fact, there was no publication date, nor was there a publisher. What's more, the PMO soon revealed that the dedicated Mr Harper was still setting aside fifteen minutes each day to write his book.

And so, I sighed... and reminded myself that the prime minister first told us he'd finish the book in 2006.

Then, on 25 February, my rolling eyes were drawn to a Toronto Star story that the book had "sparked a bidding war among major Canadian publishers." What's more, Bruce Westwood of Westwood Creative Artists had confirmed that in just six days the prime minister would choose the winner.

Since then... crickets.

No publisher stepped forward in triumph, Westwood has issued no press releases, and the media appear wholly disinterested. Not one outlet, Quill & Quire included, has remarked on the fact that "the long-talked about and much-anticipated prime ministerial tome" was not on any publisher's fall list.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party website has it that our prime minister is still writing away:


One hopes that this year's Christmas tipple will yield more info. Until then, I leave you with these words from sportswriter Stephen Harper:
I meet with many world leaders and representatives of foreign governments and invariably the subject comes up. Many have observed to me that we Canadians are seen as generally a pretty modest, quiet, unassuming-type people – but they notice with Canadians that when the subject of hockey comes up we get very loud and start waving our arms around. It's a bit of a standing joke.*
* From the prime minister's Foreword to How Hockey Explains Canada by Paul Henderson and Jim Prime, published in 2011 by Triumph Books of Chicago, Illinois. There is no Canadian publisher. 
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