The literary mavens are at it again, demanding to know how we define “a Canadian author.” This time, the inspiration is the just-released long list for the Man Booker Prize – a list apparently devoid of Canadians.
Or no, wait: Turns out Ed O'Loughlin, the Dublin-based, 42-year-old author of Not Untrue and Not Unkind, was born in Toronto. O'Loughlin spent his first six years in Edmonton, and his next 36 in other countries, mostly Ireland. No matter: One writer calls him Canada's “torchbearer,” while a headline declares him “the only Canadian long-listed” for the prestigious Man Booker.
At that point, the literati begin to agonize – and not for the first time. What makes an author Canadian? Place of birth? Current residence? When does an immigrant author become a Canadian? What happens when a Canadian-born writer turns American? Confusion, angst, disgruntlement: This is what comes of investigating authors instead of books.
A couple of years ago, here in The Globe and Mail, I reviewed a historical novel that recreated the harrowing true story of the final expedition of Sir John Franklin. As most readers know, Franklin disappeared into the Arctic in 1845 with two ships and 128 men, leaving behind a welter of questions.
Because the Franklin tragedy stands at the heart of Canadian history, it has attracted the attention of authors as diverse as Pierre Berton, Margaret Atwood, John Geiger, Rudy Wiebe, Gwendolyn MacEwen and Mordecai Richler.
The novel I reviewed, The Terror, transformed the Franklin saga into a supernatural, hell-bent narrative. I declared the book a tour de force and added: “The author's nationality notwithstanding, this novel is far more deserving of specifically Canadian attention than the majority of the books that, come autumn, we will see short-listed for this country's most prestigious literary prizes.”
Malcolm Lowry wrote much of Under the Volcano in British Columbia. So does that make it a Canadian book?
This prediction was a no-brainer. Despite its manifest relevance to Canadian readers, The Terror was not even eligible for most of this country's literary awards. Why not? Well, because it was written by Dan Simmons, an American.
At that point, I began to wonder. When we talk about a work of Canadian literature, wouldn't we be wiser to look at the book and not at the nationality of its author? Wouldn't it be wiser to ask: Does a given work speak specifically to Canadians, as distinct from Albanians, Bolivians, Belgians or Americans? If it does, then isn't that enough to make it a Canadian work?
Take a novel written by a native Canadian and set in Canada. Obviously, it's Canadian. But of course a work can be Canadian without being set here. If a novel is written by someone who came of age in this country, and so was psychologically shaped by this place, his or her creations can only be Canadian. Attitude and sensibility inform a literary work no matter what the setting, which is why Mavis Gallant will forever speak to Canadians.
English literature offers an illustration: The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. That trilogy is set not in England, but in Middle-earth, yet it remains as jolly-old-English as a pint of bitter. If anyone disputed this, I believe I could demonstrate the Englishness of that epic.
Giving priority to the work over the author is no revolutionary idea. When scholars hunt the first Canadian novel, they invariably turn up The History of Emily Montague. Set in 18th-century Quebec, it was written by Frances Brooke, an Englishwoman who spent a year in the colonial wilds. She wrote numerous other books that have nothing to do with Canada, and scholars rightly claim none of them for this country.
To my mind, Canadian literature is variously bilingual, multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, postcolonial, postmodern and even multinational
Consider Malcolm Lowry, also born and raised in England. He is best known for Under the Volcano, a modernist masterpiece set in Mexico. He wrote much of it in British Columbia, but the book shows no evidence of that. And I don't see that we can claim it for Canadian literature. Lowry's October Ferry to Gabriola, however, is set in the Gulf Islands. Clearly it belongs to Canadian literature, as well as to British. It illustrates the point that a work can belong to two or more national literatures.
