Normally nice Canadians get nasty in literary feud
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A 700-page anthology has gotten the Canadian literary world in an uproar.
It started with the publication, late last year, of ‘The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories,’ edited by Jane Urquhart. Canada is home to some outstanding short story writers, such as Alice Munro; not surprisingly, she’s among the 60-plus authors in the anthology.
But who else is -- and isn’t -- became a matter of some contention. Some were confusing -- who knew Claire Messud spent part of her childhood in Canada? Others, like novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje and diplomat-memoirist Charles Ritchie, were hardly known for writing short stories. The roster began to eat away at Daniel Wells, editor at the literary journal Canadian Notes and Queries, and he tapped on the shoulder of Kim Jernigan, editor of another, the New Quarterly, who agreed.
Together, the editors put together a joint-tandem issue that would include 20 writers they felt were unfairly left out of the anthology. The issues -- out this summer -- are called Salon des Refusés, for the 1860s French exhibition of gifted painters, including Manet, who were excluded from the Paris Salon. In the introduction to the CN&Q issue, Wells writes:
And, indeed, Urquhart’s is a novelist’s sensibility, right down to the narrative nature of the stories’ organization. It also explains her sense of these stories as belonging to ‘the pre-novel fictional worlds’ of many of her inclusions, when these writers were ‘at the beginning of their careers singing in a pure voice simply because they feel the need for music, the need for a song.’ When I am feeling less generous this sounds a lot like Urquhart painting the story as a lesser form, the novel’s backward and rather weak-minded country cousin, the domain of younger writers before they move on to the more serious work of novel-writing, and if this is so, one must ask if she was a fitting choice as editor.
No matter how apt his criticism may be, the attack on the end there is pretty stinging. But it wasn’t Urquhart who responded -- who did, after the jump.
In her introduction to the Salon des Refusés edition of the New Quarterly, editor Kim Jernigan went another, warmer direction.
We decided to celebrate twenty of the writers not included in the Penguin Across the Summer issues of our separate magazines, tying them together by matching our cover designs and mailing them together to all of our subscribers.... Each story is prefaced by a short appreciation to let our readers know what we think the excitement’s about and followed by the writer’s own commentary on what the story taught her or him about what’s possible in the story form.
The contrasting attitudes of TNQ and CN&Q became a clash of cultures almost as prickly as the antagonism directed at the original anthology. Whereas CN&Q, the smaller publication, is curmudgeonly and critical, TNQ is nurturing and celebratory, Canadian magazine Macleans explains. In an interview, CN&Q’s editor, Daniel Wells, said, ‘It’s been a stressful and incredibly traumatic — well, yeah, traumatic — alliance.’ Maclean’s chronicles an event in Toronto for Salon des Refusés where tensions between Jenning (a model of ‘chipper determination’) and Wells began to show -- in front of a much-larger-than-expected audience of 200.
Before the differences between the literary editors emerged, their original target -- the good-but-not-perfect anthology -- had started out clumsily ruffling feathers. Urquhart told the Toronto Star, ‘Societies that are marginalized have a tendency to create more vivid and alive short stories,’ prompting Canadian Bookninja to blog, ‘I can hear you grinding your teeth.’
In the anthology’s introduction, Urquhart wrote, ‘Originally, in an attempt to open up and make more interesting the definition of the short story, I wanted to include memoirs in this collection,’ (which she did). This prompted author and editor John Metcalf to pen the ‘hardest reaction’ to the anthology. He wrote, in CN&Q, ‘What appalling arrogance in Urquhart (and ignorance).... What naiveté, what groping dimness about short-story history and development.’
In Canada, the short story is not dead. It’s a fair maiden, well cared for, standing aside as its suitors battle for it with rapiers and barbs.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Toronto pillowfight -- not among literary types. Credit: alexindigo via Flickr.
