Comments on: CanLit = Crap

By: rojse

rojse — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:46:19 +0000

Doesn’t the encouragement of “Canadian-relevant literature” (or literature directed at any one country or ethnicity, for that matter) help encourage stereotypes for that country or ethnicity?

Instead of books showing that, for example, Canadians are intelligent, open-minded, well-read and open to new concepts and ideas, we would instead be shown that Canadians are all poor immigrants with emotional problems and cannot integrate with the wider community, are closed-minded, intolerant, and so forth. Is this the image that Canada really wants to show?

Quite apart from all of this, doesn’t this also prove that the Canadian government will go to great efforts to show that Canadians cannot write books that neither entertaining nor relevant to anyone else except their own country?

Just my two cents.

By: saintchristopher

saintchristopher — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:07:41 +0000

It upsets me that Canada apparently has such an indignant sense of nationalism. Shouldn’t art stand for art’s sake? I mean, is it a serious issue among the public at large whether their literature, et al. is “Canadian” enough? It kills me to think how many great stories are going unpublished because of this insecure policy.

By: pandemonic

pandemonic — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:38:14 +0000

Pretty humorous take on it. Since I live on the border, I’m always amused by Canadians. Perhaps that’s not the intent, but I am. For example, most people here don’t realize that Canadian radio has to have a certain percentage of Canadian artists. This even goes for the rock stations. I wasn’t aware that this keeping of the pristine borders extended to literature as well. I’ve heard of certain states wanting to keep their authors corralled, but not an entire country, especially one that is just as vast and different as the US.

By: (S)wine

(S)wine — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:48:46 +0000

James, if that ever makes it out of your head and into some shee-shee froo-froo journal of lit, I respectfully request a teeny little mention. You know, something along the lines of: “…and thanks to my very close, boyhood friend (S)wine for providing the venerable inspiration for this story; without his stylistic influence and literary advice, I’d now be packing lighting fixtures into very narrow, cardboard boxes in some assembly line in Malaysia.”

That’s all I request. Oh yea, and include my link.

By: jamesviscosi

jamesviscosi — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:25:05 +0000

I actually had decent luck peddling stories to Canadian magazines (although I never cracked the Northern Lights anthology, which is what I was aiming for). Maybe they had to meet their quota of Americans.

On the Poe cognac raid … why do I suddenly have an idea for a horror story?

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:29:56 +0000

Honestly, I think the idea of borders does make sense in literature, even though the movement in the academy is away from it. Yet, there needs to be a fluidity to the borders — we need to understand that strict country lines and strict genre lines make no sense in a world with so few other boundaries.

By: (S)wine

(S)wine — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:54:36 +0000

it’s all bool-shite. agreed. speaking of Poe; I am looking to organize a small raiding party in order to snag that bottle of cognac anonymously left on his grave every year on his birthday. want to join? i figure…he can no longer make use of it.