Emergent Fiction

The omnibus review of Canadian fiction applies a broad perspective to identify new trends and celebrate the achievements of emerging literary talent. The featured works are noteworthy as they create thematic or aesthetic innovations that build on or completely break away from what has come before. The essays unpack these divergences by delineating what new insights the stories share and how authors creatively adapt, modify, or subvert the archetypes of Canadian fiction. The critical tone is deliberately celebratory: this is the fourth omnibus review I've authored, and there is undeniable evidence that an ethos of experimentation is, perhaps, the defining characteristic of recent emerging fiction. The feature stories are a delight to read, critical treats that challenge readers to expand their understanding of pertinent issues and contemplate new ways of telling stories.

The 2018 edition includes four mini-essays. The first considers how emerging authors are experimenting with pathos and tragicomedy. One might suspect that Canadian literature may be in cahoots with the tissue industry, for affective stories of genocide, suicide, euthanasia, sexual assault, and trauma pervaded. The pathos was so well crafted the works were often uncomfortable to read. The second essay builds on previous omnibus reviews by continuing the theorization of romance and speculative forms. Many works blurred the boundaries between psychological realism, magical realism, and fantasy. I reiterate that the sudden prominence of romance since 2015 marks a break from the realist forms that have historically characterized Canadian fiction. The third essay concerns nostalgic works, notably the romanticization of analogue technology and urban settings. Since the 1920s, the majority of urban fiction has been set in contemporary cities. It is intriguing that several works represented millennial and Generation X teenagers coming of age in urban settings in the 1980s and 1990s. The final essay includes two misfit collections of short stories about urbanites in Toronto and Vancouver. They are misfits in the sense that they defy the critical narrative I'm imposing on Canadian fiction, and the stories feature rebel protagonists. My organizational structure, though, is problematic, as many of the tragicomedies also use magical realist and speculative forms. I hope the omnibus review will help you appreciate the literary delights published in 2018 and the talent of emerging fiction writers in Canada.

Experiments in pathos

The archetypal tragedy has three key elements: pathos, hamartia, and catharsis. Pathos describes how art has the magical ability to make readers empathize with characters by feeling what they do. If a story makes you laugh or cry, that's pathos. In a tragedy, pathos generally elicits feelings of fear, sadness, and/or foreboding. Hamartia describes the protagonist's tragic flaw, usually a character trait or a strongheaded decision that instigates the drama and the protagonist's eventual isolation from society. Catharsis describes the release of emotional tension, usually through ending the suffering of the protagonist and their community. Catharsis is often facilitated through death, exile, or punishment. Tragicomedies have all these elements but with a notable twist: the protagonist's ordeal often facilitates reconciliation. Rather than being isolated from their community, they find belonging and an optimistic new direction. The fiction reviewed in this section plays with these three archetypal elements to produce new forms of tragedy and, more frequently, tragicomedy that draw on the turbulence of contemporary Canadian life.

Remember that video in Lisa Moore's Alligator? The one in which a gator chomps down on a performer's head? The clip the protagonist obsessively watches? Well, reading Catriona Wright's Difficult People creates a similar aesthetic experience but imagines an endless playlist of increasingly disturbing videos. This effect occurs, again and again, not only within an individual story but also across the collection. Each clause summons a new, horrific image. Consider the opening paragraph:

A toy airplane crammed between open legs, pale blue wings resting against pink labia. A dirty terrier whimpering while boots stomp and kick, and off-screen teenagers laugh. A dick, a bigger, veinier dick. An ornate swastika tattooed on a flabby back. A beautiful woman with immaculate eye makeup of swirling aubergine and charcoal shadows, wearing a tight black dress, both arms lifted, revealing lustrous...