The Case for Trollope

David Frum and I have had an interesting twitter debate about the merits of the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope (you can read the dialogue here). I have a much higher regard for Trollope than Frum does and I thought it might be useful to spell out at greater than 140 character length why he’s one of my favorite novelists (and also quote some sharp critics on Trollope).

I’ve had a soft spot for Trollope ever since I started reading his novels a teenager. It’s good to start young when delving into Trollope because it takes a lifetime to survey his work. He was one of the most prolific writers of good fiction. He had 47 novels under his belt, many of them hefty tomes weighing in around the length of Bleak House, Anna Karenina or The Brothers Karamazov. As if those novels were somehow insufficient there are also five volumes of (quite excellent) short stories and miscellaneous but still voluminous books of (solid, informative) travel writing and other non-fiction (including an excellent, rewarding memoir). All of which adds not just to an oeuvre but almost a mountain range, a formidable requiring time and perseverance to conquer.

The Strange Career of Bruce Bawer

Bruce Bawer in happier days.

I’ve been enjoyed Bruce Bawer’s essays on politics and culture for nearly 30 years, so I’ve been troubled over the last few weeks by the way his name has become entangled with that of the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

Bawer has had a fascinating career: he’s a gay writer who made his name in some extremely homophobic magazines, an avowed Christian has sought to reconcile his sexuality with his faith, a literary essayist who is also a formidable political polemist, and an American expatriate who has become a central figure in Europe’s burgeoning anti-immigration movement.

Paying for Sex: A Personal Note

Two unfairly maligned professions: prostitutes and cartoonists

Chester Brown has an amazing new book out called Paying For It, a challenging sexual memoir about romantic love and prostitution. I’d strongly encourage everyone to read it.

 

In the Globe and Mail, I write about the political and social implications of Brown’s book. See here. I hope to do a future essay that deals with Paying For It more as a remarkable work of art, rather than just a polemic.

Canada Reads: Life Raft and Lottery

Reading on the Life Raft

Over at the Walrus I have a think-piece about the meaning of the CBC Radio program Canada Reads, which I use as a jumping off point for a larger discussion of the difficulties facing Canadian literature. The article can be found here.

An excerpt:

As an inciter of excitement about our literature, Canada Reads is inarguably a phenomenon. The show’s triumph has come during a difficult decade in which both CBC and the Canadian publishing industry need all the success stories they can find. In a time of rising flood waters, Canada Reads has been a life raft for both public broadcasting and literature. Given how necessary Canada Reads has become to writers and publishers, it seems churlish to question the show. But the very power of Canada Reads, now a national public institution on many levels, demands that we give it greater scrutiny

 

WikiLeaks as Gossip

Assange: the ultimate gossip.

Over at the Globe and Mail I use WikiLeaks as a jumping off point for a larger discussion of the role of gossip. You can read my piece here.

 

Strippers Literature

Russell Smith's Girl Crazy

 

The new Canadian Notes and Queries is out and anyone interested keeping abreast of contemporary literarture should read it. As I’ve said more than once, it is my favourite literary magazine, and one I’m honoured to write for. The latest issue has a long essay I wrote about Russell Smith’s new novel Girl Crazy. The essay also serves as an overview of Smith’s controversial career. The essay can be found here.

Saul Bellow Versus Hugh Kenner

Saul Bellow: Hugh Kenner foe

Saul Bellow’s selected letters have just been published and, at least according to a review by Jeff Simon, they reveal that the Nobel Prize winning novelist really hated the literary critic Hugh Kenner:

There are 708 letters here and none of them seem much like practice, whether nominating Roth for the Nobel Prize in 2000 or cheerfully enlisting Karl Shapiro in a mock club for “haters of Hugh Kenner.” With his old friend Isaac Rosenfeld, he says, “I used to join clubs of this sort” including a “Faerie Queene Club to which nobody could belong who had read The Faerie Queene. When I read the first canto, I was put on probation, and when I read more I was expelled. But no one could ever dislodge me from a Hugh Kenner Society.”

What was the source of Bellow’s animosity? I’d have to read the letters to find out, but I strongly suspect that at the root of it all was a very critical  review Kenner wrote of Delmore Schwartz’s Vaudeville for  a Princess. Writing in the October 1951 issue of Poetry, Kenner dismissed Schwartz’s book as silly and sappy. Bellow and Schwartz were great friends, and the novelist felt particularly protective of the poet because of Schwartz’s mental unstability. Bellow’s novel Humboldt’s Gift (1971) is partially about his friendship with Schwartz.

Two Cheers for the Giller Prize

Alexander MacLeod's Light Lifting

The Giller Prize has often been criticized for its relentless, painful  middlebrowism.

However true these accusations might have once been, this year’s Giller Prize is shaping up to be much livelier, with a very strong and quirky longlist.

One of the long listed titles is Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting, a book I quite enjoyed. You can read my review of this short story collection  here.

Arguing With Andre Alexis, Again

A few weeks ago, I wrote  a response to an essay Andre Alexis published in The Walrus about the state of criticism in Canada. Now Alexis has answered my criticism. You can find the parry and thrust of our debate here, but to save time I’ve also pasted our recent discussion  down below. This will be of especial interest to fans of CanLit and John Metcalf.

Cucumber Sex in CanLit

An arousing fruit?

Over at the Walrus blog I reflect on the pornograhic potential of produce. Along the way I talk about Lisa Moore, Cynthia Flood, Philip Roth and Andrew “vegitable love” Marvell. You can read the essay here.