Michael Crummey - Most of What Follows Is True: Places Imagined and Real

Published by

The University of Alberta Press

Ring House 2

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1

www.uap.ualberta.ca

and

Canadian Literature Centre / Centre de littrature canadienne

35 Humanities Centre

University of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E5

www.abclc.ca

Copyright 2019 Michael Crummey

Introduction 2019 Margaret Mackey

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Crummey, Michael, 1965, author

Most of what follows is true : places imagined and real / Michael Crummey.

(CLC Kreisel lecture series) Issued in print and electronic formats. Co-published by Canadian Literature Centre.

ISBN 978-1-77212-457-6 (softcover).ISBN 978-1-77212-463-7 (EPUB).ISBN 978-1-77212-464-4 (Kindle).ISBN 978-1-77212-465-1 (PDF)

1. FictionAuthorship. 2. History in literature. I. Canadian Literature Centre, issuing body II. Title. III. Series: CLC Kreisel lecture series

PN3355.C78 2019 808.3 C2018-906240-1

First edition, rst printing, 2019.

First electronic edition, 2019.

Digital conversion by Transforma Pvt. Ltd.

Copyediting and proofreading by Peter Midgley.

Cover design by Alan Brownoff.

Cover photo : A house being moved by floating it from Silver Fox Island, Bonavista Bay, to Dover, Newfoundland. Library and Archives Canada/National Film Board of Canada fonds e010975948. Used by permission

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The Canadian Literature Centre acknowledges the support of Dr. Eric Schloss and the Faculty of Arts for the CLC Kreisel Lecture delivered by Michael Crummey in April 2018 at the University of Alberta.

University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Media Fund.

FOREWORD

The CLC Kreisel Lecture Series

WELCOME TO THE TWELFTH ANNUAL CLC Kreisel Lecture. On April 12, 2018, at the University of Albertas Canadian Literature Centre (CLC), Newfoundland novelist and poet Michael Crummey joined this lecture series that brings together writers, readers, students, scholars, teachersand with this book, publisher and research centrein an open, inclusive, and critical literary forum. The Kreisel has also fostered a beautiful partnership between the CLC and CBC Radio 1 Ideas , which has produced exciting broadcasts that feature the lecturers themselvesincluding this one, as well as Heather ONeill, Margaret Atwood, and Lynn Coadyand further probe each lectures themes. Through this partnership, the Kreisel Lectures are able to reach an audience of over a million listeners. The Kreisel Series raises a myriad of issues, at times painful, at times joyful, but always salient and far-reaching: social justice, cultural identity, place and displacement, the spoils of history, story-telling, censorship, language, reading in a digital age, literary history, and personal memory. In these pages, Michael Crummey confronts the age-old question of the truth behind fiction yet, more specifically, he tackles the perplexing, sometimes ethically troubling, question of history as a source of fictional appropri-ation and exploitation. The Kreisel Series confronts topics that concern us all within the specificities of our contemporary experience, whatever our differences. In the spirit of free and honest dialogue, it does so, as I think Crummeys lecture demonstrates, with thoughtfulness and depth as well as humour and grace.

These public lectures also set out to honour Professor Henry Kreisels legacy in an annual public forum. Author, University Professor and Officer of the Order of Canada, Henry Kreisel was born in Vienna into a Jewish family in 1922. He left his homeland for England in 1938 and was interned, in Canada, for eighteen months during the Second World War. After studying at the University of Toronto, he began teaching in 1947 at the University of Alberta, and served as Chair of English from 1961 until 1970. He served as Vice-President (Academic) from 1970 to 1975, and was named University Professor in 1975, the highest scholarly award bestowed on its faculty members by the University of Alberta. Professor Kreisel was an inspiring and beloved teacher who taught generations of students to love literature and was one of the first people to bring the experience of the immigrant to modern Canadian literature. He died in Edmonton in 1991. His works include two novels, The Rich Man (1948) and The Betrayal (1964), and a collection of short stories, The Almost Meeting (1981). His internment diary, alongside critical essays on his writing, appears in Another Country: Writings By and About Henry Kreisel (1985).

The generosity of Professor Kreisels teaching at the University of Alberta profoundly inspires the CLC in its public outreach, research pursuits, and continued commitment to the ever-growing richness and diversity of Canadas writings. The Centre embraces Henry Kreisels pioneering focus on the knowledge of ones own literatures. It is in his memory that we seek to foster a better understanding of a complicated, difficult world, which literature can help us reimagine and even transform.

The Canadian Literature Centre was established in 2006, thanks to the leadership gift of the noted Edmontonian bibliophile, Dr. Eric Schloss.

MARIE CARRIRE

Director, Canadian Literature Centre

Edmonton, September 2018

LIMINAIRE

La collection des Confrences Kreisel du CLC

BIENVENUE la douzime Confrence Kreisel annuelle du CLC. Le 12 avril 2018, au Centre de littrature canadienne (CLC) de lUniversit de lAlberta, le pote et romancier terre-neuvien Michael Crummey sest joint cette srie qui rassemble crivains et crivaines, lecteurs et lectrices, tudiants et tudiantes, chercheurs et chercheuses, enseignants et enseignantesditeur et centre de recherche grce ce livredans un forum littraire ouvert, inclusif et critique. Le Kreisel entretient aussi un magnifique partenariat entre le CLC et CBC Radio 1 Ideas dont les radiodiffusions mettent en vedette les confrenciersy compris celui-ci ainsi que Heather ONeill, Margaret Atwood et Lynn Coadyinterrogeant de plus prs les thmes de leur confrence pour un public de plus dun million. La Srie Kreisel met en valeur de nombreuses problmatiques, parfois douloureuses, parfois joyeuses, or toujours saillantes et considrables: la justice sociale, lidentit culturelle, le lieu et le dplacement, les dpouilles de lhistoire, la narration, la censure, le langage, la lecture lre numrique, lhistoire littraire et la mmoire personnelle. Dans ces pages, Michael Crummey confronte la question sculaire de la vrit derrire la fiction, mais encore plus prcisment, il aborde la question dconcertante, parfois troublante, de lhistoire comme source dappropriation et dexploitation fictives. La Collection Kreisel saffronte aux questions qui nous concernent tous et toutes selon les spcificits de notre vcu contemporain, peu importent nos diffrences. Dans une intention de dialogue libre et honnte, elle se produit, lexemple de Crummey ici, dans lardeur et la profondeur intellectuelles ainsi que lhumour et llgance.