Stories – Essays – Letters by Ethel Wilson (review)

HUMANITIES 169 abilities and capacities than one could guess from his public position. Scott continually questioned his motives and the directions and misdirections in his life, an indecisiveness not apparent to anyone who knew him personally, if not closely. The book successfully tackles his apparent ambiguities in relation to civil liberties in his late years, especially in what appeared to be his about-face in response to the Octobercrisis of 1970 and the War Measures Act. The referential apparatus of the book occupies sixty-odd pages, listing the papers and manuscripts consulted, and the interviews and correspondence ofthe author with figures associated with Scott. Yet there is no bibliography and little reference to those articles and essays devoted to Scott's literary work. Some references are vague; the notes indicate that Djwa discussed Scott with Pierre Trudeau and yet he is not listed in the catalogue of people the author interviewed. Some of the chronology is hazy, some of the notes not entirely clear. The book is an immensely detailed account and. covers all the significant events of Scott's life. I detected only one omission: there is no mention of what was probably the first conference to place Scott in the context of the life and literature of the 1930S in Canada, a conference held in Lennoxville in the late 1970s. Scottwas there, as were Leo Kennedy and others from that period. Scott seemed to enjoy himselfat that conference, but his feelings about the proceedings find no place in this biography. Sandra Djwa's book makes a valiant attempt to come to terms with the many facets of Scott's life, but as a portrait of a man who tried to establish the primacy of the imaginative response to life, it probably does an injustice to his character. (PETER STEVENS) Ethel Wilson. Stories - Essays - Letters. Edited by David Stouck University of British Columbia Press. xx, 260, illus. $29.95 Ethel Wilson's fiction is still not as well known as it ought to be, at leastin eastern Canada. Canadians still seem to find difficulty in responding to her articulate poise, her civilized ironies, her independent though profoundly traditionalist stance, her quiet maturity. Even the feminist movement has shown surprisingly little interest in her work, though the name-character's determination in 'Lilly's Story' and Maggie Lloyd's efforts to lead an independentlife in Swamp Angel ought to have earned its admiration. All the more reason,then, to applaud David Stouck for his compilation of the present volume from (for the most part) unpublished material. With the exception of one of the nine stories (which appeared in the Tamarack Review and is presented here in a longer manuscript verson) and two of the six articles (both written for Canadian Literature), all the 170 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 prose is offered for the first time. Over half the book, indeed, is devoted to an impressive sampling of her correspondence, eighty-nine letters between 1944 and 1974. For Wilson's dedicated admirers, this is a welcome, perhaps unexpected treat, and as long as they do not expect absolutely vintage work they will not be disappointed. Stouck transcribes five episodes that were discarded during the long writing and adapting of The Innocent Traveller, and these, though not polished to the bright lucidness of the novel itself, deserve to be made known. Aunt Topaz's mistaking for fountains what is in fact, the sound of Italians urinating against the side of a train is up to Wilson's best standard ("'Well, I do declare!" echoed Topaz exhibiting a pleased surprise. "Well, well! Foreigners do seem to go in a lot for that kind of thing, don't they!"'). Three other narratives present further episodes from the life of Mrs Forrester, whom we have already met in three stories in Mrs. Golightly. The essays provide more of Wilson's unprofessional but sane and sensitive comments on writing. In particular , the full text of 'Somewhere Near the Truth,' a discussion of her own books hitherto available only in intriguing snippets quoted by research scholars, ought to have been published long ago. But for many readers I suspect that the letters will be the most rewarding...