Can you name a Canadian author?
There is a lot of teeth gnashing going on about how little Canadians know of their authors and how young Canadians, especially, are ignoring books in preference to iPods, the Internet, and TV.
This latest burst of Canadian unease has come from the release of a survey commissioned by the federal Department of Canadian Heritage. It showed that unprompted, nearly half of all Canadians are unable to name a single Canadian author.
Among those who could name an author, Margaret Atwood was the most often mentioned (by 22%), followed by Pierre Berton (8%), Farley Mowat (8%) and Michel Tremblay (5%).
Strangely, the survey also claimed that Canadians, on average, reported reading about 17 books in the past year, devoting about six hours a week to turning the pages.
Surveys of this type are generally pretty accurate in reporting what people are telling the pollsters.
So why is there so little awareness in Canada of Canadian authors at the very time when Canadians read a lot of books and Canadian authors are winning world-wide acclaim?
This past Christmas, the biggest selling book in the United Kingdom has been the novel No Time for Goodbye, by the Toronto Star columnist Linwood Barclay. Sales topped 630,000 copies.
Also in 2008, the Montreal writer Rawi Hage, author of De Niro’s Game, won the world’s richest literary prize, the $156,000 Impac Dublin Literary Award.
Lawrence Hill picked up the prestigious Commonwealth Book Award for his newest novel, the Book of Negroes.
As well, we regularly celebrate Canadian authors through such programs as the Governor General’s Awards and the $50,000 Giller Prize for fiction. Is nobody listening?
A simple solution to understanding the dilemma of Canadian books is to point to the competition that all Canadian cultural products face from the larger English-speaking world. (The situation in Quebec is quite different, where a vibrant indigenous culture is largely unaffected by imports.)
The free market response to all of this is simply that Canadians buy, read, listen to and watch whatever most appeals to them, regardless of its source. The big promotional money is spent on American product, and the result can be seen in box office admissions and best-seller rankings.
Canadians soak up imported culture from kindergarten to the nursing home. My favorite reading as a small boy was the phenomenally popular Big Little Books.
These were little blockbuster volumes, about 4 by 4 1/2 inches, sometimes 400 pages of cheap pulp, put out by Whitman Publishing of Racine, Wisconsin. They cost 15 cents. I was telling Deborah about them one day when we wandered into a sale of ephemeral at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. There was a Big Little Book being offered at $50!
The thing is, they got me started on books. One of the first serious titles I read (I was about 11) was the modern classic What Makes Sammy Run?, the marvelous Bud Schulberg novel, another American product. About that time I went through the comic book stage and later got caught up in men’s adventure magazines and yes, the early Playboys, before settling into more serious stuff.
So I’m not uduly perturbed by the the low level of recognition for Canadian authors, even though I am a minor entrant in that league myself. What the latest survey tells me is what a tremendous opportunity there is out there to reach a massive reading public, all over the world, with great Canadian stories.
This won’t be acccomplished, however, without much stronger marketing and promotional efforts. This means more investment in the development of Canadian authors and their books. And more public investment in both Canada-wide and international promotion of their works. A boost up, not a bail out, is what Canadian publishing needs.
