A friend of mine once wrote about a book that he carried everywhere, slung over his shoulder in a backpack so that it became like an “extra muscle.” This friend is within about five years of my age, talking about The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, by Michael Ondaatje.
There's a curious relationship between generations of writers, in that younger writers need to be inspired and, to a certain extent, need to admire older writers. Yet we often see those writers only at their best, reading their finest words, and must get a little older to learn (sometimes first-hand) that meeting the person in a bar or at a reading can be a very different experience.
I met Al Purdy for a few brief seconds at Toronto's Metro Reference Library, where he had given a reading. When I got up to him, I said, “Hey Al, I'm Alex. We had some poems published next to each other once in Ink magazine.” He said, “Great,” with the bluntness and lack of enthusiasm that makes a word sink like a concrete block pushed off the end of a dock.
Writers need more than coffee and reassurance with other writers their own age; they look for some sign that their work is part of a larger cultural fabric, and without any mentor or any connection to that larger community it would be difficult to feel like anything but a dinghy trailing behind a convoy. We want the love of writing to span the generations, and for the connections to be there. I can't imagine why older writers wouldn't want it, too, given that it means their work will live on and be appreciated.
William Butler Yeats: A great writer, but also an admirer of fascism
A large city hides a great many subcultures. Many people don't know Toronto poets, just as I'm sure I couldn't name the most talented blues musician in Toronto. On Walmer Road, people pass by Gwendolyn MacEwen Park or stop there with no idea who she is or how appropriate it is that an intelligent, creative poet is now represented by a patch of calm, as if to balance the struggles she knew in life.
Rosemary Sullivan's book Shadow Maker, about the life of MacEwen, declares that biography is “a form of revenge against life, a rebellion against the impossible fact that life can disappear so easily – all that energy, passion, humour that constitutes an individual can one day simply stop.”
I find a few things wrong with that statement. First, it isn't an “impossible fact” that we can disappear, it's part of the framework that helps us define our lives. We know we have a finite amount of time. If we had forever, there wouldn't be the slightest note of urgency or meaning in our decisions. And can anyone justify the need to take revenge against life, when it's life that allows us to be here to feel anything? I don't know how to interpret those lines from Sullivan's book, because they seem to combine celebration and bitterness.
The statement also overlooks MacEwen's writing (her own voice, her own rebellion, her own attempt to find coherence) in favour of assuming the accuracy and value of biography. I imagine most writers would prefer that, 100 years after death, someone make sure their own books are in print. It isn't that I seriously object to literary biography, but it feels like cheating a little, like looking behind the curtain at the actors when they aren't onstage. It's a tribute as much as a historical document, even if it feels like a shortcut to understanding a writer.
Every generation of writers needs to be inspired by older writers, yet not copy them
