Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism ed. by Anton Wagner (review)

humanities 405 separation from `English Canada' remains a crucial and contentious issue today. However, the sense of urgency regarding `national identity' that characterized the Canadian cultural nationalism of the 1960s and 1970s strikes me as somewhat provincial now. After all, contemporary life in Canada is increasingly shaped by a moving beyond borders in order to see ourselves in a more global perspective. Canadian literature also reflects this trend. More troubling is Dickinson's restricting himself to a fairly narrow`canon' of contemporary queer texts. The roster of writers whose work he discusses, though very worthy, is also rather predictable and safe. Dickinson is careful to devote attention both to white writers and writers of colour, to lesbians and to gay men, to francophones and to anglophones. I applaud this concern for balance and diversity. Nevertheless, Dickinson has omitted from his book any discussion of works by some of the finest queer writers in Canada and Quebec: Anne-Marie Alonzo, Jean-Paul Daoust, bill bissett, Robin Blaser, Erin Mouré, RM Vaughn, Daniel David Moses, and André Roy, among others. Furthermore, among the writers whose work he does discuss, he tends to privilege their more accessible, narrative texts. Thus, Nicole Brossard's novel Le Désert mauve receives considerable attention from Dickinson, whereas he discusses her more demanding `théories-fictions' much more briefly. In fact, Blaser, bissett, Alonzo, Daoust, and other poets excluded from Here Is Queer have published works that are arguably more challenging and subversive B more queer B than many of the novels and plays that Dickinson presents. These criticisms notwithstanding, Peter Dickinson's book performs a crucial service to Canadian Literary Studies. The author skilfully demonstrates the multifaceted vitality and complexity of Lesbian/Gay/Queer writing in Canada in the twentieth century. One hopes that numerous other scholarly studies of queer Canadian literature displaying the same level of critical intelligence as Here Is Queer will be published in the twenty-first century. (JOHN C. STOUT) Anton Wagner, editor. Establishing Our Boundaries: English-Canadian Theatre Criticism University of Toronto Press. xii, 420. $60.00 In the complex of relationships that manifest themselves in theatrical culture B among artists, businesses, private philanthropists, governments, and audiences B the role of the critic may be the most difficult to define. After reading this thought-provoking book, a few roles come to mind: to sell newspapers at any cost through controversy and force of personality; to sell tickets at any cost on behalf of the theatrical producer who has purchased advertising; to act as an `average' representative of a hypotheti- 406 letters in canada 1999 cally homogeneous readership, reporting on the acceptability and accessibility of the event; to act as resident authority, informing a hypothetically less informed readership of the event's `value'; to advocate on behalf of an arts community, to its potential audience; to shape an arts community, sometimes against the will of its participants, through ideological, aesthetic, and ethical proselytizing; and, of course, to ensure one's own position and salary by showing that a word can destroy any possibility for a work of art to reach an audience. Anton Wagner has brought together some of this country's best theatre scholars to provide insight into these potential critical roles. The organization is chronological, from Patrick O'Neill's description of `puffery' in our colonial period, to articles on recent Toronto critics Gina Mallet, Marianne Ackerman, and Ray Conlogue (by Alan Filewod, Leanore Lieblein, and Robert Nunn, respectively). In between are discussions of William Lyon Mackenzie, Joseph Howe, Daniel Morrison, E.R. Parkhurst, Harriet Walker, Charles Handscomb, Charles H. Wheeler, H.W.Charlesworth, B.K. Sandwell, Lawrence Mason, Herbert Whittaker, Nathan Cohen, Oscar Ryan, Jamie Portman, Urjo Kareda, Don Rubin, Christopher Dafoe, and Brian Brennan. Readers may recognize some of the more recent names; indeed, many will have their own strong opinions about them. This book historicizes both their work and our opinion, delineating a tradition of theatre criticism in this country: that the pressure to sell papers affected the character of criticism no more or less in early nineteenth-century Halifax than in late millennial Toronto; that advocacy on behalf of a local (or national ) culture has always...