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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Image by qmnonic
last month with my Grade 12 College level English students, demonstrated to me that 30 students digging around in a novel are sometimes able to unearth a lot more than I could on my own in the same timeframe. Especially with the literature circle role of the ‘Investigator’ — researching names of people and places, and cultural, geographical and historical references – a number of Mordecai Richler’s allusions were cleared up for me. Throughout the novel, Duddy, always with a smirk, asks other characters whether or not they’ve ever read