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  • Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers: Volume 334 of Dictionary of Literary Biography
  • Jody Mason (bio)
Christian Riegel, editor. Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers Volume 334 of Dictionary of Literary Biography. Thomson Gale. x, 330. US$254.00

While Reverend Casaubon’s doomed pursuit of a ‘key to all mythologies’ comes to mind whenever I squeamishly consider massive encyclopedic projects like the Thomson Gale (now Gale cengage Learning) Dictionary of Literary Biography, it is nevertheless true that scholars, educators, and students alike depend on quality reference materials. Now numbering 349 volumes, the dlb aims to document bibliographical, biographical, critical, and ‘iconographic’ (i.e., author photographs, facsimiles of dust jackets, and manuscripts) material for writers (broadly conceived) from all periods and national traditions, although in practice the series privileges contemporary writers from the West.

Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers is the eighth volume in the series devoted to writers in Canada. Its editor, Christian Riegel, does an admirable job with a limited package: departing from the dlb‘s mission, borrowed from Mark Twain, to capture the ‘fine and noble and enduring’ ‘native literary product’ of a country, Riegel explains that literary value (i.e., critical and scholarly reception and commercial success) as well as the extent to which a writer’s oeuvre ‘reflects the larger Canadian historical, political, and cultural trends of the last decade and a half’ determine the volume’s selection criteria. The introduction sets out the unsettled context of a politically divided nation (one that has grappled with constitutional uncertainty and claims of sovereignty from Quebec and First Nations groups) and then acknowledges that the ‘diverse literary culture of the nation reflects the many perspectives that comprise the literal and imaginative terrain of the country.’

Respecting this diversity, Riegel has chosen forty-three writers (they appear alphabetically) whose careers were either well established or just beginning to show signs of promise in 1989, whose work represents the major genres (fiction, poetry, drama, as well as the stylistic innovations that have muddled these very distinctions), and who signify the ‘emergence into the literary mainstream of minorities, particularly Asian and African Canadians’ and the ‘increasing role of Aboriginal . . . authors.’ Riegel devotes numerous entries to First Nations writers (Armstrong, Crate, Highway, King, and Moses), chooses African-Canadian writers who represent the variety and complexity of Black diasporic art (Brand, Clarke, Harris, Laferrière, Mayr, Philip, and Tynes), and pays heed to both conventional and experimental writing in all the genres. While acknowledging the ascendancy of the novel in [End Page 419] the ‘public consumption of literature,’ the volume grants ample space to poets (playwrights fare less well). Dany Laferrière is the only francophone writer in the volume.

An impressive feature of the dlb series is the length and scope of its entries: unlike other author-focused encyclopedias that cover Canadian literatures (e.g., ecw‘s biographical guides to Canadian novelists and poets), Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers boasts a fairly complete bibliography (including information about multiple editions and reprints), a lengthy biographical/critical article, and a selected list of interviews and other secondary materials for each author.

Riegel’s para-textual material (the historical/critical introduction, the two appendices – a list of literary awards in Canada and an article that briefly documents the importance of the Canada Council, and a bibliography of recent literary and cultural criticism in Canada) offers a useful introduction to the ways that the state and the publishing industry have shaped Canadian literary cultures.

My principal criticism of Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers brings me back to my initial squeamishness – to, on the one hand, the immense ambitions and, on the other hand, the usefulness of encyclopedic reference materials. While my complimentary print copy of volume 334 of the dlb sits handsomely on my bookshelf, it certainly seems that the era of print reference materials is over. Through databases like Literature Resource Centre, Gale makes dlb entries available to paying subscribers in a format that is infinitely open to revision and expansion, and that, more importantly, requires fewer resources than its print companion.

Jody Mason

Jody Mason, Department of English Language and Literature, Carleton University

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