Can-Lit | Erin's Clishmaclaver

Canadiana: Canadian things in general, but especially Canadian literature.

When it comes to Canadiana, I am un fanatique complet (us Canucks always use French when we’re trying to achieve haughty emphasis). Finding a new treasure for my already double-stacked shelves provides a rush only rivaled by the discovery I had enough foresight to buy two bottles of wine last night. Or kayaking. Pick one.

The new, Indigo/Chapters/Kobo flyer arrived the other day. Have you seen it? Oh my God, it’s gorgeous. Total bibliophile erotica, twenty-four over-sized pages dripping with earth-toned, name-dropping, lifestyle-pushing titillation. Apparently Ondaatje won the coin toss and got his name on the cover. That’s all right, though; Atwood’s been too busy these days baffling twin buffoons in Toronto to take any notice.

Thing is, buying Ondaatje’s latest alone (The Cat’s Table, $32.00) goes far beyond my monthly book-buying budget, nevermind picking up an embroidered felt loop pillow or two to lean on ($39.50 each) or a hand drawn teardrop glass lamp ($60) to romantically illuminate the pages. Fortunately for me, there is a bounty of used book sellers in this town to choose from. Value Village on Fennell at Upper Wentworth has a surprisingly well-stocked and organized selection, as does Talize on Upper James. Why, just the other day I picked up Stuart McLean’s “Extreme Vinyl Cafe” and Jann Arden’s “i’ll tell you one damn thing, and that’s all i know!” for about three bucks apiece. Take that, Indigo! Better yet – if you aren’t as paper possession-hungry as I, go to the dang library, where they apparently let you leave the premises, borrowed books in hand… for free!

My obsession with Canadian writing officially began in 1999, but there were evidences of it much earlier. However, I was fortunate enough to have a prof named Joe Zezulka who not only taught CanLit, but spoke about it so passionately you’d have to be a zombie not to be changed forever during his lectures. Plus, he refers to Atwood as ‘Peggy.’ Serious cool factor. In his class I learned the names Brand, Vanderhaege, Don McKay, Anderson-Dargatz, Marlatt, Steffler, Wiebe, and a host of others, including lesser-known works by giants of the profession. I found myself, quite literally, home.

I realize that for the most part, I’m preaching to the converted here. I mean, if you like DC Comics first and foremost, or WWII biographies, or burn the midnight oil hunched over tech manuals, then Anakin, you may just be too far gone to consider what I’m proposing here. But if you’ve always held in your heart a tangible but indescribable attachment to your home and native land, then may I suggest you give these voices a chance to bring your country to you in a way no one else can.

My humble recommendations (in no particular order) are listed below. It is nowhere close to being a complete list; think of it as Erin’s Picks, 101. Also, if I hated it or I haven’t actually read it, it ain’t here. If you prefer non-fiction or poetry, drop me a line and I’ll send you some suggestions. For you fellow fanatics, you just know I’ll have left out your favourite (I’m sure I left out some of my own). Don’t cancel our coffee date in a huff – just join the party and leave a reply with your addition(s).

Happy perusing!

The Wars – Timothy Findley (or, on a more lighthearted – sort of – note, Not Wanted On The Voyage)

The Cure for Death by Lightning – Gail Anderson-Dargatz

The Diviners – Margaret Laurence

Solomon Gursky Was Here – Mordecai Richler (I actually loved The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz more, however I realize many of you were forced to read it in school, and therefore picked another)

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (or if you can handle a harsher dystopia, try Oryx and Crake)

The Deptford trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonder) – Robertson Davies

The Book of Eve – Constance Beresford-Howe (a trilogy, further reading: A Population of One, The Marriage Bed)

Mercy Among The Children – David Adams Richards

The Afterlife of George Cartwright – John Steffler

Burning Water – George Bowering

Shoeless Joe – W.P. Kinsella (or, if you dig short stories, Red Wolf, Red Wolf)

Anne of Green Gables – Lucy Maud Montgomery (it ain’t just for little girls)

Farley Mowat – anything – a specific one of this guy’s novels is near-impossible to suggest. Read the back covers and choose one you like.

The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields (yeah, she was born in the US. But she’s been one of us since the 60s, so I’m claiming her).

In The Skin of a Lion – Michael Ondaatje (or for lovers of the literarily obscure, try The Collected Works of Billy the Kid)

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town – Stephen Leacock (there’s good reason our national literary humor award has his name on it)

Fall On Your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Englishman’s Boy – Guy Vanderhaeghe

Obasan – Joy Kogawa

The Sentimentalists – Johanna Skibsrud

Who Has Seen The Wind – W.O. Mitchell

The Outlander – Gil Adamson

Through Black Spruce – Joseph Boyden

The Book of Negroes – Lawrence Hill

Years ago I read an article that addressed the amazing ability of the ‘Friends’ characters to always have enough time to go to work, sit around a coffee shop for hours, have incestuous relationships with each other, do their laundry and sleep enough to wake up looking like, well, the cast of Friends. The writer referred to this seemingly impossible phenomenon as “Time Porn.” I attempted to find said article via Google in order to acknowledge the author, but you can imagine the results when I typed in “friends” and “porn” as search terms. So you’ll just have to believe me.

Time porn is only too common on TV. But here in suburbia, I barely have time to change my Facebook status before I’m schlepping breakfast, making lunches, ending sibling altercations, answering telemarketer calls, tossing the recycling in the bin, wrestling a ponytail elastic away from the dog and getting Thing 1 and Thing 2 to school. And no, I didn’t forget to add “getting myself beautiful,” because that doesn’t happen. Most days I look a lot like the other stay-at-home moms I see on the blacktop – lowest common denominator. I haven’t quite arrived at the male “sniff it and see if it’s still wearable” stage, but I’m close.

That said, my dismal uniform is utterly perfect for blogging, and that makes me happy. Not as happy, say, as having Rachel Green hair upon waking, or a freezer full of Tanqueray, but it’ll do for now.

Only thing is, back in my idealist, I-want-to-be-Margaret-Laurence days, I’d always imagined myself as Morag from The Diviners, living and writing blissfully in my isolated riverside home, putting the vintage teakettle on to boil, using a beat-up Underwood typewriter, and enduring only the interruption of gulls squabbling over bread crumbs outside. Here at my current homestead, this is time porn. Even now, as I sit here, I’m competing for brain space with the sound of Transformers playing not ten feet from me. Yesterday there were six kids in this house, apparently competing to see who would go hoarse first, when they weren’t begging for food. I almost never get dinner ready at the same time for more than two consecutive days. Last year’s kid school work is still neatly packed away in a box, waiting for the discard/keep ritual I’d planned to tackle July 1st. I haven’t printed off a digital picture since sometime in 2009. My dentist tells me I grind my teeth. Hmm. A few steps away yet from where I thought I’d be as a writer.

The author Virginia Woolf really ripped us off, taking her watery leave so soon. Back in 1928, she’d been asked to give talks to women’s colleges, which led to the publication of A Room Of One’s Own in 1929. Znaimer’s Idea City and the recently-popularized and (excessively) reposted TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) talks can’t compete with how cutting-edge this chick was, over eighty years ago. She told the girls that poverty sucked the life out of creativity, that women needed freedom, education and cash in order to produce artistic work, that one needed to defy outdated ideas of female ‘propriety’, and of course, that we need ‘a room of our own’ if we are to be able to write.

Well, Ginny, I don’t have a lot of cash, but I have enough to cover the ISP bill and a bottle of Tanqueray. I have a few hours free most nights, a university degree (it’s in Sociology but no one here minds, right?), and I’ve never much cared for what the Moral Majority regards as proper girly conduct.

So I don’t have the room of my own. Who wants perfection? Someone pour me a G & T. I have to get to work.