Wild Gooseberries: The Selected Letters of Irving Layton ed. by Francis Mansbridge (review)

162 LETTERS IN CANADA 1989 Margaret Laurence's achievement is one thing. This celebration of thanksgivingfor her life, and for life itself, isanother.The world would be poorer without both. (WALTER E. SWAYZE) Francis Mansbridge, editor. Wild Gooseberries: The Selected Letters ofIrving Layton Macmillan of Canada. 424· $29.95 Since Irving Layton is one of the most important Canadian poets (Al Purdy is his only peer), nothing that he writes can be without some interest for us, even if thatinterest is sometimes primarilyhistorical. Wild Gooseberries: The Selected Letters ofIrving Layton is a case in point. While few would claim on the basis of these selected letters that Layton is among the great letter writers, there is little doubt that the volume is among the indispensable books we have about Canadian writing and culture of the past half-century (the first letter is dated 1939, the last 1989). Like Earle Birney's memoir, The Cow Jumped over the Moon, the letters chronicle the making of modem poetry in Canada. For any who still believe the old legend that modernism arrived with W.W.E. Ross, F.R. Scott, and A.J.M. Smith, Layton's letters offer a challenging reminder that the battle for modernism was still being fought in the 1940s and 1950s. Of particular interest here are the diplomatic- in several senses of the word - letters to Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson which show Layton trying to establish lifelines with modem poets whose work he can't quite bring himself to admire wholeheartedly. His wrestle with Olson is particularly interesting in that it shows an essentially European sensibility - Layton's - resisting the pull of an essentially American one - Olson's. In contrast to Purdy, whose best work is weathered by Canadian or North American history and pre-history, Layton, in his letters as in his poems, turns resolutely to European culture and European history. Drawing his own genealogy, he begins with the Hebrew prophets, invokes Dante, Shakespeare, and Nietzsche, and closes with Mandelstarn among others. As one would expectin correspondence, some of this is simply playful bravado for the recipient of the letter. But more often than not, such an emphasis shows Layton's impatience with the limitations of Canadian culture and society. As he admits to more than one correspondent, he often played the Lawrentian wild man or poet as outlaw in order to secure a hearing for his kind of poetry. There's little doubt that over the years Layton has paid a price for this. Elspeth Cameron's recent gossipy portrait is simply the most obvious expression of an attitude which assumes that the poet is more interesting -because controversial-than the poems. Feminism's recent spectacular rise to dominance in criticism will also probably ensure that a writer as HUMANITIES 163 masculine in orientation as Layton will fail to receive a fair reading or hearing in the immediate future. This would be unfortunate, since even when he plays some ofhis more predictable roles, Layton is never less than intelligent, engaged, interesting , and always capable of surprising. The letters dealing with romanticism , Marxism, modernism, and film, for example, reveal an absolutely individual sensibility distinguished by a passionate intelligence. For those interested in discovering a less public, less combative poet, the late letters to Harriet Bernstein about the custody of their daughter reveal a side of Layton few would have suspected after reading Cameron's biography. Layton's letters may not be in the same class as Gustave Haubert's, D.H. Lawrence's, or William James's, but they are among the most interesting yet published in Canada. (sAM SOLECKI) George Woodcock. Powers of Observation Quarry Press. 124. $12.95 paper Half-way through this collection of his recent essays, George Woodcock writes: 'Perhaps because our vast country cries out for description, and for reflection on the descriptions, Canadian writers have been inclined to write essays.' Woodcock cites Grove, MacLennan, and Haig-Brown as examples, and couldwell have cited himself. Throughout his longwriting career he has successfully continued what he calls in the foreword 'the tradition of one of the great English-language genres, that of the occasional essay.' The particular variant of the...