A History of Canadian Literature (review)

This second edition of A History of Canadian Literaturereproduces the original text virtually without change. Apart from correcting a few factual and typographical errors, William New concentrates on adding a seventy-six-page chapter, 'Reconstructors: Literature into the Twenty-First Century,' and also on updating his long (though decidedly spotty) 'Chronological Table,' now stretching from 13,000 BC[ sic!] to 2002.

New published the first edition of his book in 1989, four years after my own Canadian Literature in English. However, these two literary histories could hardly have been more different in scope and approach. Most obviously, while I confined myself to English writing, New not only included literature in French but began with a chapter devoted to Aboriginal myth and culture. Moreover, where I was unabashedly (some might claim rashly or even brashly!) evaluative, preferring some authors to others, New offered a 'scholarly' as distinct from a 'critical' emphasis, aimed at detached objectivity.

As a result, he committed himself to covering a far larger number of writers, but by the same token was forced to consider most of them very briefly. Too often, indeed, he produced mere lists. To cite a somewhat extreme but not unprecedented instance, when faced with the explosion of lyric poetry in the 1970s, New wrote: 'To list the names of several effective anglophone poets in this mode ... is simply to hint at the number of people and publications involved.' He then listed forty, twenty-five of whom are never mentioned again. The result is, to say the least, unexciting reading that inevitably gives little impression of the kind of writing produced.

In the second edition, covering an additional fifteen years of literary activity, these problems are exacerbated. Moreover, certain omissions reveal that 'objectivity' (a dubious quality at the best of times) is not achieved. Thus seasoned readers of contemporary Canadian poetry will be appalled to discover that neither Don Coles nor Eric Ormsby is even mentioned (though Anne Carson is given a whole page). Such omissions are, of course, themselves subjective - and revealing - value-judgments. Mature writers who continued to publish in the later period also receive short shrift; they are treated selectively both in the added chapter and in the expanded 'Chronological Table.' Post-1987 writings by Atwood, Munro, and Ondaatje are duly noted; those by Davies, Hood, and P.K. Page are not.

New's general approach favours facts, social and political issues, and artistic trends. Subheadings in the new chapter include (if I may be allowed a list myself) 'Demography, politics, technology'; 'Changing perceptions'; 'Continuities'; 'Rethinking society'; 'Literature and aboriginality'; 'From laughter to violence'; 'Recuperative paradigms of identity'; 'Ethnicity and sexuality'; 'Living in print and performance'; 'Reconstructing history'; and 'The play of storytelling.' The sociological thumb, one might say, is heavy on the scale. There is little room in such a scheme for detailed consideration of stylistic issues, let alone illustration of verbal dexterity.

In short, this book offers a possibly useful (though by no means objective) account of the backgrounds out of which Canadian literature emerged, but readers interested in literature as art, who wish to be informed about its most distinguished practitioners, are likely to be disappointed. At best, they will gain some information about whatindividuals wrote but little or nothing about howthey wrote. Literature as academic study is covered in scholarly fashion; literature as enjoyment, as intellectual stimulation, as a dance of words, is sadly absent.