Wild About Writing

There’s an interesting debate going on in The Globe and Mail about what constitutes a Canadian author — birth, subject matter, association with this country, or whatever.

Ken McGoogan, unquestionably a Canadian author himself — and a good one — kicked off this little tempest with a piece on the fact that a contender for the Mann Booker prize, Ed O’Laughin, is being hailed as a Canadian author despite the fact he’s been out of this country since the age of six.

What’s worse, McGoogan observes, is that O’Laughlin’s book, Not Untrue and Not Unkind, has nothing of Canada in it. He went on:

At that point, the literati begin to agonize – and not for the first time. What makes an author Canadian? Place of birth? Current residence? When does an immigrant author become a Canadian? What happens when a Canadian-born writer turns American? Confusion, angst, disgruntlement: This is what comes of investigating authors instead of books.

A week later, University of Toronto literature prof Andrew Lesk took up his pen to challenge McGoogan.

McGoogan, Lesk notes, is willing to accept Margaret Atwood as a Canadian author — which she indubitably is –even through her epic work The Handmaid’s Tale, is set in the U.S. and has no application to Canada. Yet, Lesk adds, McGoogan rejects works of Canadian-based authors Rohinton Mistry and Brian Moore because neither author was raised here, nor were their books set in Canada.

And Lesk quotes Mavis Gallant, clearly the most gifted of Canadian short story authors — who has spent most of her life in France — “I suppose that a Canadian is someone who has a logical reason to think he is one.”

In a rebuttal, McGoogan says “forget the author and his or her nationality. Does it (the work) manifest a sensibility that is distinctly Canadian? Is it relevant in some unexpected way?”

What we have here are a lot of subjective arguments based on the assumption that Canadian sensibilities are somehow distinct unto themselves. In what way: post-colonial, pride of history, maybe even postnational?

Name just about any country, and you’ll find the same common sensibilities. Commitment to public health? Try France or Switzerland. Social justice? How about Sweden or Holland. Respect for “First Nations” people?” Look at what Denmark is doing in Greenland.

One of my favorite authors, W.P. Kinsella, is American-born but has lived in Canada since his youth. The author of Shoeless Joe crafted several books set in rural Alberta. One of his most hilarious, Moccasin Telegraph, is largely forgotten today but it’s worth revisiting for its dazzling political incorrectness. I have no idea whether Kinsella’s a Canadian citizen; I suspect he probably is. But if he’s not legally a Canadian, he’s not a Canadian author.

What I find amusing is that the whole debate has been set off by the choice of contenders for a literary competition that has dealt with this issue in a very simple way. The Mann Booker rules are clear: it’s open to any citizen of a Commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland.

There it is. Citizenship. One could make the case, perhaps, that landed immigrants to Canada could also qualify. Those are the rules I followed when I managed the Author’s Awards for magazine writing.

Beyond that, there is no logical way one can impose presumptions of “Canadianness” on an author’s work. I just published a non-fiction book about Scott Joplin and the Ragtime era — set almost entirely in the United States — with an American publisher. Does this make me, a Manitoba-born boy, any less of a Canadian author?

Come off it, Ken and Andrew. You’re both on the proverbial slippery slope. A Canadian is a Canadian. What they write about, where the story’s set, and whether it contributes to Canadian values — or, as with a lot of stuff, is literary junk — is really of no merit.

If it’s by a Canadian, it’s Canadian. We’re stuck with it.