Canadian Writers and Their Works, Fiction Series ed. by Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley (review)

282 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 himself on tornadoes. Jirgens knows an enormous amount about Dewdney 's work, but such minor imprecisions leave me wary about the rigour involved in his writing of this piece. In fact, writing is this section's' great flaw: often wordy, occasionally repetitive, this monograph (the volume's longest) needed editing for style and length. A shorter, more polished version might have provided a significant overview of Dewdney's impressive body of work. Andrew Stubbs's discussion of Dennis Cooley and John Harris's ofTom Wayman frame the volume: each is off-putting, though in different ways. Stubbs lets his impressive intellect play over Cooley's work, offering not so much an introduction to Cooley as to his critic. Fee comments in her introduction that Stubbs's offering 'is a prime example of the refusal to articulate, clarify or interpret a poet'; such refusal leaves me wondering why Stubbs agreed to write for this series. He knows a great deal about Cooley, and has an enormous amount to offer a reader, but instead writes over Cooley and obscures him. 'This is criticism about itself, not about poetry. The critical act fascinates when probed, the musings of the reading mind are enormously engaging - but a volume of critical overviews and introductions is not the placefor the convolutionsand opacities which form Stubbs's critical self-reflection. John Harris's critique of Tom Wayman is less opaque, but no more engaging than Stubbs's monograph. Blessedly short in length, it is also short in tone. His reading of Wayman is thorough, but highly condescending . Wayman's writing is seen as a refreshing change from most recent Canadian poetry, which Harris finds overlyintrospective, but Harris rarely refrains from pointing out how few satisfactory poems any given Wayman volume contains. Wayman whines, Wayman sulks: Wayman's work may be boring, but at least it's not confusing. Here is another critic who seems intent on making himself look superior to the poet being critiqued; here is the critical act as cheek. Harris has useful information for a reader, but no love of poetry is palpable here, certainly not of Canadian poetry. Give me .a critic stirred by passion, who reads with respect and writes from intimate distance, who wants to find things out. Give me Margery Fee, Charlene Diehl-Jones, and Clint Burnham. Give me half this volume. (MARNIE PARSONS) Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley, editors. Canadian Writers and Their Works, Fiction Series. Volume 12 ECW Press 1995. 266. $50.00 The twelfth and (supposedly) last volume of ECW'S Canadian Writers and Their Works fiction series consists of critical essays on four contemporary Canadian writers (Sandra Birdsell, Timothy Findley, W.P. Kinsella, and David Adams l'(1c:na:ras ,,;o'rY""I: .....,..,....... ':.n .... of Canadian HUMANITIES series' mandate and to record .I.'-LlC ...."'_lI.,u.. concentrates onhow pe()pl~~S with an interest in baseball. While Kinsella as a comic he ..v ...............v American humour tradition and thus ..... ~....u.<........... ~'- of the to articulate what as with Harrison's treatment of of individual Kinsella texts this · 284 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 Canada. Mathews's polemical viewpoint becomes a particularly effective tool for rethinking previous treatment of Richards's texts. The volume, in its entirety, provides a sweeping and diverse collection of critical profiles of four Canadian authors and continues to fulfil an important role, mapping out a Canadian tradition by groupingwell-known writers with their lesser-known but equally talented colleagues. (JENNIFER ANDREWS) Donald W. McLeod. Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronolog1j, 1964-1975 ECW Press/Homewood Books. xviii, 302. $30.00 Although lesbian and gay studies has a relatively long history inside the academy - the first Canadian course according to the book under review was at York University in the autumn of 1971- it began mostly as a matter of the untenurable in pursuit of the unspeakable: its adherents toiled away in the knowledge that their work would at best be regarded with suspicion and that it might, at worst, leave them open to official condenmation or censure. Much of the early work in the field was thus produced by men and women who were amateurs in the old-fashioned sense: they were unpaid, although by no means unskilled. In the absence of any of the radical chic or publishing track record that now supports queer theory, their researches were pursued as labours of love and demonstrations of political commitment. Even though lesbian and gay studies has gained at least a toe-hold in most large North American universities, a number of its most important figures continue to produce work of the highest scholarly standards without the advantages of institutional support. Historians such as Alan Bray and Jonathan Katz have produced groundbreaking and in many respects authoritative work without the incentive of promotion or the luxury of sabbaticals, research assistants, and reduced teaching loads. Donald W. McLeod's Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Chronology, 1964-1975 follows in this tradition of independent &:holarship and should prove an invaluable resource for others working in the field. Using as its core theremarkable collection oftheCanadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, this work provides a record of events during an early, though important period of lesbian and gay politics in Canada. The milestones range from the apparently inconsequential (a Vancouver homophile organization sponsors a discussion of 'The Gay Bar in the Community,' September 1964; police raid the Twilight Villa Social Club in St Catharines, 23 February 1974) to the more clearly groundbreaking and influential (Parliament decriminalizes homosexual acts, 14May 1969; the first national 'gay' rights demonstration, 28 August 1971). Each event is supplemented ...