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  • Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland, Letters by Laura K. Davis and Linda M. Morra
  • Margaret Sweatman (bio)
Laura K. Davis and Linda M. Morra. Margaret Laurence and Jack McClelland, Letters. University of Alberta Press. x, 634. $39.95

The eloquent and serviceable introduction to this collection observes that Margaret Laurence's papers at York and McMaster universities have been accessible to scholars for years, while Jack McClelland's papers were restricted until quite recently. This collection, therefore, reveals the correspondence between Laurence and McClelland for the first time.

It feels like a voyeuristic indulgence, reading their dialogue from March 1959 until December 1986, just before Laurence's death in January 1987. There is rarely a sense (with the exception of one letter near the end of the book and near the end of Laurence's life) that their letters are a performance for posterity. The correspondence between Laurence and McClelland, writer and publisher, is blunt, witty, respectful (and evermore deeply affectionate), often confrontational, and consistently interesting.

It is a long book: the editors note that they contemplated the publication of all of their written exchanges in this book, and it appears that, despite their exclusion of short, irrelevant missives dealing with simple transactions, Laura Davis and Linda Morra have collected and carefully annotated very nearly the entire collection. Despite its size, the elliptical quality of the epistolary form creates that delightful balance between clarity and surprise, as time gallops by. The editorial notations are brief and illuminating and placed as footnotes so we are not scrambling to the back of the tome for supplementary information.

As a whole, the book gives voice to nearly three decades of Canadian literature, divided into three sections: Beginnings, 1959–1969; Challenges and Successes, 1970–1979; A Legacy, 1980–1986. Laurence's career seems allegorical, a national origins story, as it takes us into her canny understanding of the neuroses of the colonizer in Africa (in her first novel, This Side Jordan [1960]) which will develop into her intimate engagement with Canada's stricken relationship with the Métis (in her last novel, The Diviners [1974]).

The collection begins with a letter that writers might memorize and ululate during the midnight abyss: McClelland is making a cold call to introduce himself to "Mrs. Laurence" and ask her to submit a novel that he has heard she has recently completed, suggesting that his firm might arrange simultaneous publication in the United Kingdom and the United States. It is dazzling. [End Page 624]

The middle section sees Laurence's advocacy of the Writers' Union of Canada and the Writers Trust of Canada (a source of irritation to McClelland who was wary of an oppositional relationship with authors). She appeals to Jack, whom she eventually calls "Boss," for advice in regard to her first appeal for funding from the Canada Council. They observe the waves of creative writing students and subsequent avalanche of Canadian writers, amidst McClelland's lament that fiction is not selling well and his frustration over being scooped by international book distributers before he can get his titles to market. McClelland's chronic concern about staying afloat leads him to a crossroads partnership with the American publishing company, Bantam (which created the international hybrid, Seal Books, in 1977), and concludes with his eventual capitulation to international market forces in 1985 when he sells McClelland & Stewart to a real estate developer, Avie Bennett, beginning the rabbit hole adventure that would see foreign multinational ownership of big firm publishing in Canada.

There is too much in this book to cover here: for example, McClelland supplying twenty-five writers, Laurence among them, with free (newfangled) Macintosh computers. Or the debate between Laurence and McClelland about the composition of the New Canadian Library as a means of creating a pedagogical buzz around Canadian literature – an almost canon.

It is a bit like reading The Rise and Fall of Canadian Publishing. As with most good stories, the real stuff is beneath the surface. Two individuals came to their ambitions with a sense of civic identity and the expectation of an eager readership that has since been shredded by the agonizing truth of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and...

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