A Due Sense of Differences: An Evaluative Approach to Canadian Literature by Wilfred Cude (review)

HUMANITIES 439 Wilfred eude. A Due Sellse of Differmces: An Evaluative Approach to Canadian Literature University Press of America. xix, 216. $7.95 paper Over the past few decades academics with a talent for literary history, regional emphasis, thematic interpretation, and ideological argument have in increasing numbers had a go at categorizing and explaining Canadian fiction, For various reasons the results have been disappointing . Too often the particular approach necessitated excessive selectivity to make its points, thus excluding much that in itself is important. Too often there was evident an inordinate hurry or, what is worse, the hint of academic slumming in the exercise. Too oftenas welI the approach evaded pertinent comparisons to non-Canadian works and sidestepped the business of evaluating and measuring the capacities of the works under consideration. Notwithstanding Northrop Frye's pioneering efforts, it can be argued that Canadian criticism, despite all the busyness in the field, has lacked, and stilI lacks, a wise, courageous, and capable interpreter, one whose vision can light up the significant terrain while cogently and convincingly accounting for genuine achievement where it can be found. It is thus a refreshing change to find Wilfred Cude in A Due Sense of Differences setting out to make at least a partial adjustment in emphasis. Bypassing the idea of pattern or tradition, he seizes upon 'the lately much-neglected question: is there anything truly worthwhile, in the most rigorous of critical terms, to be found in Canadian literature?' What he offers is a study devoted to excelIence - excelIence in the texts examined and high intelligence in the methods employed. Inspired by F.R. Leavis (whose argumentative tones Cude often recalIs) and T.S. Eliot, Cude sets out to locate and ilIuminate those Canadian novels in which, in Frye's words, the reader 'can grow up ... without ever being aware of a circumference.' Admitting no substitute for the quality implicit in complexity , Cude bravely recognizes the inevitable subjectivity of the critic but counters that stigma by arguing that a novel achieves a sort of objective status first through the courage, then through the consensus, of its best - that is its most positive and intelligent - critics. So far so good. What the reader gets is, however, bothersome in certain ways. First, Cude's style, while generalIy analytical and clear, rather too readily (one sees this in essay after essay) shifts into the highly rhetorical or the downright cute. It is one thing to show the reader how he might respond to a novel, but it is something other to telI the reader how to think. This tendency to lead the reader by the nose is most evident in the framing essays in which Cude does a considerable amount of criticbashing , sometimes to good effect as in his reaction to Joyce Carol Oates's shrewish polemic against Robertson Davies, but often to meagre results as 440 LETTERS IN CANADA 1981 when he chastizes Walter Blair for daring to criticize the last section of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or when he seeks a little revenge at the expense of critics (Stephen Bonnycastle and Morton Ross) of his own work. More problematical is the narrowness of Cude's focus. He chooses only four classics to study, Fifth Business, As For Me and My House, St. Urbain'sHorseman, and most surprisingly Atwood's Lady Oracle. While he notes that his book is 'only a beginning' and that other classics lurk out there awaiting suitable examination (he mentions The Temptations of Big Bearand The Wars), itis clear that A Due SenseofDifferences is a collection of previously published essays - five appeared in the Journal of Canadian Studies - and that the only new ground here is Cude's attempt to lay down his critical principles. He offers no explanation, for instance, why The Stone Angel is not included. It certainly has consensus approval and shares with the texts he does analyse a complex, somewhat obsessive, self-justifying, first-person narrator. One can only puzzle over his principles of selection. Still, while lamenting the tone at times and feeling disappointment that Cude was not more informative or venturesome in his approach, one can still deeply admire his attempt. His pursuit of complexity does seem...