Jack: A Life with Writers by James King (review)

522 letters in canada 1999 soul, something far more insidious than the destitute outer circumstances of the lower classes, and therefore developed his Beat ascesis of inversion in response. Ragged glory, indeed. (JOHN WALKER) James King. Jack: A Life with Writers Knopf Canada. xxiv, 436. $34.95 James King's title indicates immediately and clearly the kind of biography he has written of Jack McClelland, Canada's most important and flamboyant publisher. It focuses almost exclusively on McClelland the editor and publisher. As King points out in his preface `When I asked [McClelland] for permission to write about him ... he agreed to give me his full cooperation , but with one caveat. I could say anything I wanted about Jack McClelland the publisher, but he asked me to tread carefully through his private life.' Had some of the reviewers in the mass media noticed this passage, King's thoroughly researched and very readable biography would probably have had a stronger press. As in his life of Margaret Laurence, King understands that his subject's life has a historical and even a symbolic importance in Canada. Jack McClelland may have sold McClelland and Stewart to Avie Bennett less than two decades ago, but the nationalist politics and what one is tempted to call the nationalist cultural imperative that underlay his managing of his publishing company are already a part of Canadian history. As well, they are inconceivable in an era of multiculturalism, the Internet, and the global economy. Always sympathetic to his subject, King tells the occasionally quixotic story of a handsome, energetic young man who, fresh from distinguished wartime service in the navy, enters his father's publishing house and decides to make McClelland and Stewart into `the Canadian Publishers.' In King's words, `he used his intelligence, savvy and gut instincts to transform M&S from an agency publisher, importing and distributing titles from the US and Britain, into one of the great cultural institutions of Canada.' In the thirty-three years during which he directed the company (1952B85), M&S published over twenty-five hundred books. Among these are many of the classics of Canadian literature: the novels of Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, and Margaret Atwood; the poetry of Earle Birney, Al Purdy, and Irving Layton; and the later work of Michael Ondaatje, including Running in the Family. McClelland's `life with writers' gives King the opportunity to offer informative biographical vignettes of figures like the elusive Gabrielle Roy, Laurence, Richler, Layton, Pierre Berton, Peter Newman, Farley Mowat, and Robertson Davies. He's particularly good at showing McClelland adapting to each writer's needs and personality. He's gentle, patient, and humanities 523 encouraging with Roy and Laurence; he treats Layton like the king of poets and Leonard Cohen like the second coming of Byron; and he indulges Berton and Newman, recognizing that the financial health of his company depends largely on the success of their books. Impressive in all these relationships is his ability to maintain his integrity despite the conflicting personal demands and the maelstrom of work. Impressive also is the fact that while running a business, often by the seat of his financial pants, McClelland was able to conceive projects like the New Canadian Library and the Canadian Centenary Library. Failure to discuss the last is one of the few important gaps in King's otherwise remarkably thorough account. And while he does justice to what one might call McClelland's visionary side, he's also very good on the strengths and weaknesses of the businessman. Like all charismatic individuals, McClelland was weak on translating charisma into routine, and he never did manage to delegate authority successfully or to balance the books. Although it may not have been clear in December 1985, when he sold the company to Avie Bennett, McClelland had found a successor not only willing to continue and to develop his major projects but also able to negotiate successfully the balance sheet. After offering an often informed and detailed account of the financial side of M&S, King concludes that `it is unlikely anyone could have made money undertaking the first-ever creation of an exclusively Canadian list on a large scale. ... McClelland did the best possible job, given...