The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction by Linda Hutcheon (review)

HUMANITIES 147 it. There is too much categorization here, and not enough discussion of individual works of fiction. This leads MacLulich into some curious statements. At one point he refers to 'our early works of realistic or modernist fiction,' and has previously presented modernism as the champion of realism against idealism. I do not see how a useful discussion can be conducted on these terms. On page 88 he appears to link Ernest Buckler, W.O. Mitchell, and Davies (surely an odd trio) as having made 'sociological realism a primary goal in their fiction.' (The argument is far from clear, but I cannot interpret the page in any other way.) Later, Ostenso's Wild Geese, Stead's Grain, Grove's Settlers of the Marsh and Our Daily Bread, Frank Parker Day's Rockbound, and Knister's White Narcissus are all lumped together as 'early realistic novels.' MacLulich's realism must be broad indeed if it can encompass Ostenso's larger-than-life Caleb Gare and Stead's anti-heroic Gander Stake, the structured artifice of Settlers of the Marsh and the Gothic atmosphere of so much of White Narcissus. Literary-critical distinctions tend to blur. Thus he can refer to 'such books as W.O. Mitchell's Jake and the Kid (1961) and Who Has Seen the Wind (1947)' as if the extraordinary difference in quality between the two books was of minor significance. Although it is offered as a continuing argument, Between Europe and America is best read as a series of separate essays about different aspects of Canadian fiction. Thus there is a chapter on historical romance, one on the regional idyll, one on the image of Europe, one on the critique of material success, and so on. Towards the end, MacLulich has some interesting (if controversial) things to say about the relation between popular fiction and what he calls 'the art novel,' and the book ends with a lively epilogue, 'The Academy and the Literary Tradition.' MacLulich is both an enthusiast for Canadian fiction and someone troubled by many of the trends he sees in the current literary situation. I am not at all sure that I have succeeded in coming to grips with his book, but I also suspect that the reason for this lies in a certain slippery quality about MacLulich's arguments. For readers interested in the inner politics of contemporary Canadian fiction, the book offers much to think about - and perhaps to disagree with. But I confess to finding the argument as a whole indefinite and frustrating - especially since, after a thorough reading and several agonized returns to various parts of the text, I'm still uncertain what he means by 'The Canadian Tradition in Fiction.' Between MacLulich's conception and the book itself has fallen an obscuring shadow. (w.J. KEITH) Linda Hutcheon. The Canadian Postmodern: A Study of Contemporary English-Canadian Fiction Oxford University Press. xvi, 230. $16.95 paper In contrast to critics who lament that Canadian literature trails twenty or 148 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 thirty years behind American innovations are those who claim that Canadians are actually ahead of the times. Marshall McLuhan used to say that Canada has leapfrogged into the twenty-first century. If so, according to Linda Hutcheon we have landed in the mesh of the post-modern. While American 'surfiction' is really an extreme form of modernism, Canadian 'metafiction' is the genuine article, since writers here have been 'primed for the paradoxes of the postmodern by their history.' In The Canadian Postmodern she gives a survey of the authors, styles, and themes of the current metafictional scene. She is an impressive critic, 'not only in the sheer volume of her work, but also in the scope of her reading, in her nimble memory, and in her ability to juggle diverse sources. This book demonstrates her customary virtues. It is well informed and up to date. It draws easily on the most respectable critics from Bakhtin to Bowering, although it usually consigns them to footnotes ,and sometimes makes only the vaguest of allusions. The readings of selected novels are always rewarding, and the style is mercifully free of jargon, despite a few rough spots. Instead...