Top 5 Canadian Storytellers
My wife recently complained that Canadian Literature has really become like the Emperor’s New Clothes — we expect a book to be brilliant and then overlook the fact that many of these novels fail to tell a story at all. In contemporary literature, it appears fashionable to completely disregard the plot; authors seem caught up in a play of words that present a series of images which us readers are then expected to string together. These authors are more tricksters than guides. We’re expected to scratch our heads at the story and simply applaud the author’s erudite phrases; we’re expected to lead ourselves down the garden path.
Where is the Robertson Davies or Mordecai Richler of today?
Well, for the record, here are my Top 5 Canadian authors that I happen to think are still doing an admirable job of telling our stories:
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The Benefits of Having Students Choose Their FCA Novels Early
April 14, 2009 by Brad W · 3 Comments
The Final Culminating Activity for my Grade 12 course will be a multi-genre project and presentation providing students with the opportunity to synthesize their learning from the semester and demonstrate their learning achievements in the areas of reading, writing, oral communication, and media studies.
A few weeks ago, I had the students each select a relatively recent novel from a list I’d created based on identities, the theme that has loosely tied the semester together. We’ve been considering identities that we create on our own, those shaped by our biggest influences, and those scripted by society.
Though we are still three weeks away from the Letter of Intent that each student must write for me, and another month from the first draft of the assignment, the requirement that they both select their novel and post a related reading reflection on their student blog has encouraged students to get a copy in hand and, in most cases, delve into it. I’m glad to see them starting well in advance, because I know that’s going to translate into more considered, interesting projects.
As an aside, I tried to emphasize relatively contemporary novels in the list from which students could choose. I had a couple of reasons for doing so. First, I wanted students to exit high school with at least a passing familiarity with modern, and possibly Canadian, fiction. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I surmised that the material available online for students to pillage and plagiarize would be much smaller, and therefore much less tempting, for more recent and sometimes obscure novels. We shall see.
For those of you who are interested, here’s the list that we’re working from this year. Next time around I hope to remove all of the older works and include more current (mostly Canadian) novels.
- Mercy Among the Children — David Adams Richards
- The Lost Highway — David Adams Richards
- The Friends of Meager Fortune — David Adams Richards
- Alias Grace — Margaret Atwood
- The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
- The Blind Assassin — Margaret Atwood
- The Penelopiad — Margaret Atwood (read with Homer’s Odyssey)
- Possession — A. S. Byatt
- The True History of the Kelly Gang — Peter Carey
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — Michael Chabon
- The Jade Peony – Wayson Choy
- The River Thieves — Michael Crummey
- J-Pod — Douglas Coupland
- Fifth Business — Robertson Davies
- The Piano Man’s Daughter — Timothy Findley
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime — Mark Haddon
- A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaleid Hossein
- Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishigiro
- The Colony of Unrequited Dreams — Wayne Johnston
- The Poisonwood Bible — Barbara Kingsolver
- The Stone Angel — Margaret Laurence
- The Way the Crow Flies — Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Two Solitudes — Hugh Maclennan
- No Great Mischief — Alistair MacLeod
- Life of Pi — Yann Martel
- Such a Long Journey — Rohinton Mistry
- Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje
- The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz — Mordecai Richler
- A Complicated Kindness — Miriam Toews
- The Stone Carvers — Jane Urquhart
- The Englishman’s Boy — Guy Vanderhaeghe
- The In-Between World of Vikram Lall — M. G. Vassanji
- I Am Charlotte Simmons — Tom Wolfe
- English Passengers — Matthew Kneale
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Image by L’Enfant Terrible <3
Reading Reflection: The Lark in the Clear Air
April 7, 2009 by Brad W · 4 Comments
Last week a colleague placed a novel in my hand as we passed each other in the hall en route to our respective classes. The Lark in the Clear Air, by Dennis T. Patrick Sears. “My all-time favourite,” he said. Indeed, his copy had a well-loved appearance.
Gingerly removing the disintegrating jacket lest I commit any further damage, I discovered a letter from the author, addressed to my colleague’s father, pasted inside the front cover. Dated the 2nd of October, 1975, Sears’ letter includes the following line:
This may sound silly in an age of cynicism but appreciation from readers is, to me, worth more than the financial rewards.”
Sears’ genuine gratitude and personal letter added to the book’s charm.
I immensely enjoyed both the time and place of this coming of age story — rural Ontario in the early years of the Great Depression, particularly the mentions of nearby Beaverton and Lindsay.
A little rough around the edges at times, readers currently enjoying the writings of Ray Robertson (Gently Down the Stream) would surely appreciate the tone and voice of this Canadian classic. It strikes me as a northern response to Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road or God’s Little Acre; I wonder how it is possible that The Lark in the Clear Air is not a part of today’s New Canadian Library series.
Sears is wonderfully witty, and his novel seems to suggest that, if we could simply clear the air a little, life truly would be a lark.
He knew, for instance, what made cock meadowlarks sing and fly in the clear air of the day, and it wasn’t simply to amuse a half-drunk old man and a raw slug of a youth. They did that, Mick said, for the purpose of staking claim to whatever territory they required to feed themselves and the family they expected. He said it wasn’t any different from what the human species set out to do, only a lark knew when to quit and he didn’t horn in and fence off a whole lot more land than what he could properly handle or what was needed for any given season. A human had more wart-hog in him than he had meadowlark and that was what was wrong with the world.”
Though I may never have a class set to teach from, The Lark in the Clear Air is a must read for both educators and youth with an interest in Canadian Literature.
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Canadian Literature in the Classroom and in the News
November 18, 2008 by Brad W · Leave a Comment
‘Tis the season of literary prize announcements, and most notably for me are the Giller Prize (awarded last week), the Man Booker Prize (awarded last month), and the Governor General’s Awards (to be announced today).
Perhaps because I am rarely satisfied with the judges’ decisions, I am actually much more interested in the lists of finalists than I am in the final awarding of the prize. I like that the lists of finalists give me the opportunity to take stock of which books I have yet to get my hands on, and to add titles to my ever growing ‘To Read’ list.
As an educator, I find that I also approach the prizes with the impression that it is these titles that future students will possibly be studying in our schools. But should I? Are these media and political circuses ultimately doing the novels and their respective authors a disservice? Will readers eventually notice that decisions appear to be based on the biggest potential splash, the most buzz and the biggest headlines? If so, will the short term financial gain disguise a possible long term respectability pain?
With the announcement last week in favour of Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce, despite the overwhelming preference by Canadian readers for Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, one of the jurists repeated for reporters that the decision was perhaps not the most politically correct one; and yet the more he spoke, the more radio listeners surely replied, “Methinks the Honourable Member for Toronto Centre doth protest too much.” What will people say ten years from now?
Oh well. Perhaps I’m simply still disappointed that André Alexis’ Asylum, surely the greatest book published in Canada this year, was overlooked by the prizes. In that case, perhaps I ought to start my own annual literary prize for fiction. …
The finalists for The Lamppost Literature Award, 2008 are:
- Asylum, André Alexis
- Good to a Fault, Marina Endicott
- Cockroach, Rawi Hage
- The Lost Highway, David Adams Richards
- The Great Karoo, Fred Stenson
And the winner is … Asylum! Congratulations to André Alexis, and thank you for giving our nation a beautiful, intelligent and cathartic novel of refuge.
I feel better already.
Reading Reflection: The Piano Man's Daughter
November 10, 2008 by Brad W · Leave a Comment
Recently, our school’s student book club met and discussed our first book of the year: The Piano Man’s Daughter
The students shared a lot of ideas and discussed the ants and their City of Thebes, James’ abacus, and the wreath of flowers, as well as the town of McCaskill’s Mills, the Great Toronto Fire, and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The highlight for me of our lunch-time meeting was the student-posed question, “Do you think Lily Kilworth is a Hamlet-like character?” Wow. I didn’t coerce the students into this train of thought; indeed, it hadn’t even occurred to me. But I’ve been able to think of little else since.
It makes sense. If we reverse genders, then Lily = Hamlet and Lizzie Wyatt = Ophelia. Also, Ede could be Gertrude and Frederick Wyatt could be Claudius with his dead brother, ‘the piano man’ Tom Wyatt certainly filling the role of the dead king Hamlet. The parallels are endless:
- Frederick Wyatt steps in and marries the ‘widowed’ Ede Kilworth
- Frederick is cruel to Ede’s daughter, Lily, and sends her to her fate (locked up in the attic)
- Lily is suicidal; she would melt, thaw, and resolve herself into a dew
- Lily’s wit is diseased, and she is dangerous; she must not unwatched go
- Lily is haunted by the ghost of her uncle John Fagan; she holds discourse with the incorporal air
- The ghost tries to inspire Lily to kill, to avenge his most foul and unnatural incarceration
- Like Ophelia after Polonius’ death, so Lizzie after his meddling father’s death immediately loses his mind and dies
… and on and on.
The Piano Man’s Daughter
The David Adams Richards Book Club
October 18, 2008 by Brad W · Leave a Comment
With the madness of September well behind us and a waning October moon, it is time to turn our thoughts back to the staff book club, time to meet and chat about the books that we read this past summer, and select a few potential reads for the winter.
Our staff book club meets infrequently and we select a few titles in the hopes that everyone will be able to pick up at least one of them. Then, during the following months, it is fun to see teachers carrying identical books through the halls. The students notice too: “Hey! I just saw Mr. K. reading that book. Is it good?”
Here’s a checklist of our last two years:
Our focus has obviously been Canadian Literature, and we are drawn to David Adams Richards titles — it was the discovery that several of us wanted to read Mercy Among the Children that gave rise to the book club in the first place.
Now, with Fall Break approaching, I think that it is time to gather the 20 fellow teachers, to express our grief (and rage) that The Lost Highway
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