Kicking Ourselves: Why We Hate Canadian Literature

“You know what I hate, Gordon?”

“No, Joe, what do you hate?”

“I really hate it that I’m so petty as to feel angry when people from Canada succeed at something.  I also really hate it when my dated perceptions of Canadian literature make me look ignorant in a room full of learned people.  In spite of this, I can’t help trashing the shit out of every writer this country produces.”

“Well, Joe, what are you going to do?  Support Canadian artists or something?!”

“You’re right, Gordon.  That is ridiculous.  Pass me another Molson, buddy.”

“Only Budweiser left, Joe.”

“Same difference, Gordon.  Same difference.”

It’s hard to study Canadian Literature sometimes.  On a day-to-day basis, I will hear comments like, “CanLit sucks,” or, “What do you, study Margaret Atwood or something?,” or, “That’s not real literature.”  It’s kind of staggering, when Canadian Literature is at its most globally relevant, that we are still justifying the study of our own stories.  The abuse of Canadian Literature is ritualized in this country, and I often wonder from where such a thing emerges.  The only answer I have come to is that we are still a deeply colonial country, fearful of exercising our own voices and overwhelmingly confident that nothing we can produce could ever be quite good enough.

In her seminal text on the state of Canadian Literature in the 1970s, Margaret Atwood comments that we spend too much time critiquing our own stories for not being like the literatures of America or Britain.  She points out that no one would critique Faulkner on the basis of his not being Austen.  To do so would be obtuse, and would show no capacity for critical thought on the part of the critic but instead mere ignorance.  Yet we condemn Canadian Literature, and we do so on the basis of it being overwhelmingly dark, bleak, and focused on issues of survival.  In short, we condemn it for being the literature of a colonial people – and we condemn it in turn because we are a colonial people.

Our books are dark because, historically, the literary landscape has been dark.  Our books are bleak because, as colonized people, we have internalized a level of victimhood that has been hard to shake.  Our books are about survival because we are survivors.  This is who we are, and it is worth learning and reading.

But things are changing.

It was only to be expected, in the early days of Canadian nationhood, that we would look to the mother country for influence in our literature.  What came from England was what was good, and for many years all that was produced in Canada was literature that attempted to imitate the popular works emerging from overseas.  Later, American novels were the hot sellers in Canada and the imitative hand turned south.  This is not a point of criticism of this country, however.  Young countries have young artists who seek influence from what they know.  They seek out their heroes where they can, and in the absence of a literary tradition in our own country at that time it was natural to look to older English-speaking countries for guidance.  Canada is a colony, and as such is naturally imbued with a colonial mindset that predetermines that which is local as inferior to that which comes from the colonizing power.  Canada has been colonized literally by England, and metaphorically by America in terms of culture and media sensibility.  It is natural to want to believe that art happens elsewhere, because when you are a colony, life happens elsewhere.

Things have changed, however, in the years since 1967.  The Centennial brought to Canada a real sense of nationhood, and as we developed as a country with a sense of identity, our writers had more to hang on to.  Literature has flourished since that point in our history, with Canadian writers becoming major players on the world stage.  Carol Shields won a Pulitzer.  Alice Munro is widely considered to be the greatest writer of the short story form.  Douglas Coupland named a generation and coins terms used in daily life (have you ever held down a McJob?).  Canadian writing has never been so important.  Luckily for us, it has also never been better.  Emerging artists from collectives like the Burning Rock in Newfoundland (whose stars include Michael Winter and Lisa Moore) are playing with form and challenging literary conventions, but they are doing so in immensely readable ways.  Winter’s This All Happened and Moore’s Open are triumphs, and they show us all the possibility of the “new” Canadian Literature.

Maybe you haven’t read a Canadian book since someone forced The Stone Angel down your throat in the tenth grade.  This has historically been another problem with Canadian Literature – we seem to teach it with the intention of making it inaccessible.  Where fifteen-year-olds might really relate to the more youthful plights in Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners or A Jest of God or The Fire Dwellers, we ask them to read the story of an elderly woman preparing to die.  It’s not surprising when they can’t relate.  If you were once bitten in high school English and find yourself shy to approach CanLit again, realize two things.  First, there is power in telling and hearing our own stories, stories that unfold here and are about us.  We owe it to successive generations of Canadians to support a culture that tells our children that their stories are worth something, not that real life is something happening outside of our borders.  And second, ignorance is never a proud trait.  To stand steadfastly against something on the basis of vague stereotypes is the definition of ignorance.  You are welcome to dislike Canadian Literature – but only if you’ve given it a fair shake first.

Here are some titles to get you on your way tip-toeing back into the wilds of Canadian Literature.  Along with the fabulous books mentioned in this article, I can whole-heartedly recommend:

Baltimore’s Mansion by Wayne Johnston:  In this fictional memoir of three generations of the author’s family, we are taken through the Confederation debates that raged in Newfoundland in the years leading up to (and even after) 1949.  A touching and tearful book, Johnston’s humour also infuses every page.  The emotional investment is worth every penny.

Strange Heaven by Lynn Coady:  Bridget gives her baby up for adoption and ends up in psychiatric care.  As she struggles to put her life back together, we get to see what life is like when you live within a cultural taboo.  Coady’s biting wit prevents this from being just another novel about a teenager in trouble, and instead allows her to create an endearing character you will wish could jump off the page and into your life.

Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway:  Some writers can speak of horror and hardships in such a way that it becomes painfully beautiful: impossible to look away from, but difficult to endure.  This semi-autobiographical novel deals with residential schooling and abuse, but above all it is a novel about the enduring promise of art.

Alice, I Think by Susan Juby:  There’s nothing more endearing than a socially-retarded, brutally honest, and charmingly real protagonist, and Alice gives us all of that in one delightful package.  This series of novels inspired an excellent CTV series of the same name and is targeted at the young adult reader, but anyone who felt misplaced or displaced in high school will relate to Alice’s very real experiences in the world of dating, peer interaction, and parental navigation.

Unless by Carol Shields:  This is the kind of novel that pushes you to re-evaluate your life and question your priorities.  This is unquestionably, in this reviewer’s estimation, the greatest of Shields’ novels.  It tells the story of a mother dealing with the pain of a runaway child and the difficulty of redefining herself when motherhood is no longer something she can cling to.  It’s a touching journey of the novel, and the greatest tragedy is that we will never see Shields top it.

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews:  Wishing for escape from her repressive Mennonite community, Nomi builds a life on dreams of New York City and works hard to ignore the world around her.  This was the Governor General’s Award winner for 2004, and the Canada Reads book of 2006.  It was heavily hyped for the two years it was in the spotlight, but in this case it is well deserved.  By turns funny, sweet, tragic and hopeful, this is a wonderful novel.

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