Paul Barrett - Membering Austin Clarke

PAUL BARRETT, EDITOR

Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Membering Austin Clarke / Paul Barrett, editor.

Names: Barrett, Paul, [date], editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200300539 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200301403 | ISBN 9781771124775 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771124782 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781771124799 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Clarke, Austin, 1934-2016Criticism and interpretation.

Classification: LCC PS8505.L38 Z755 2020 | DDC C813/.54dc23

Cover images courtesy of the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library. Cover design by Guybrush Taylor. Text design by Janette Thompson (Jansom).

2020 Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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/ Rinaldo Walcott

/ Paul Barrett

/ Leslie Sanders

/ Camille Isaacs

/ Austin Clarke

/ Dennis Lee

/ Dennis Lee

/ Giovanna Riccio

/ Kris Singh

/ Austin Clarke

/ Kate Siklosi

/ Austin Clarke

/ Stephen Cain

/ Sonnet LAbb

/ Asha Varadharajan

/ Marquita Smith

/ Austin Clarke

/ John Harewood

/ Cyril Dabydeen

/ Austin Clarke

/ Patrick Crean

/ Andr Forget

/ E. Martin Nolan

/ Katherine McKittrick

/ John R. Lee

/ Winfried Siemerling

/ George Elliott Clarke

/ George Elliott Clarke & Paul Barrett

/ Michael A. Bucknor

/ David Chariandy

This collection would have been impossible without the tireless work of the editors of The Puritan literary magazine. E. Martin Nolan and Tyler Willis were instrumental in transforming a scattered collection of ideas into the special issue dedicated to Austin Clarkes life and writing, which in turn became the basis for this book. I learned more about Canadian literary history, publishing, editing, and how to make a decent martini in the months we spent assembling that issue than at any other time in my life. Thanks, Ted, for your support for this project from the outset. Special praise, thanks, and acknowledgement is due to Andr Forget, who championed this project from the beginning. Andr is a sometimes-unsung hero of Canadian literature who has worked quietly, often behind the scenes, to support the work of Canadian writers in his role as general editor of The Puritan and in other capacities. I appreciated our rides to Hamilton to work in the Clarke archives and evenings spent visiting some of Clarkes own favourite haunts. Andr not only ensured that this book came into being but helped me understand Austins writing in new, illuminating ways. Andr is a wise and insightful critic and the strengths of this collection, whatever they are, bear his mark.

Thank you to the archivists and support staff at the William Ready Archives at McMaster University. Your help in working through Clarkes archives, over a number of years, has been invaluable. Thank you also to my colleagues at Concordia University and the University of Guelph.

Thank you also to the collaborators and friends who generously provided their time and resources in supporting this project. This list is far from exhaustive but it includes Daniel Coleman, Patrick Crean, Dennis Lee, Loretta Clarke, Asha Varadharajan, Katherine McKittrick, Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Darcy Ballantyne, Rinaldo Walcott, Leslie Sanders, David Chariandy, C.J. Bogle, Adrian and John Harewood, Judith Muster, J. Coplen Rose, Richard Cunningham, Sarah Roger, Guybrush Taylor, Emmy Anglin, Michael Bucknor, Neil ten Kortenaar, Ryan Perks, and Murray Tong. Thanks also to Siobhan McMenemy for her support of this project and valiant efforts to wrangle a particularly baggy monster into shape. Special thanks to Kate Siklosi for her endless support, friendship, and timely shade. Thanks also to Susan Keenan and Patrick Barrett for everything.

This collection is dedicated to the memory of Austin Clarke.

Austin Clarke.
Permissions: William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library

Rinaldo Walcott

Kinship is a wonderfully strange relation. Austin Clarke and I came to be kin. And, in the manner of most kinships, we shared an intimacy that I still struggle to make sense of. These works collected in Membering Austin Clarke are striking for the intimacy the contributors share in their engagement with Clarkes writing and his life. Leslie Sanderss epistolary reflection on women in Clarkes work; Dennis Lee on their shared youth and editing Clarke; Sonnet LAbb on meeting him and his influence on and support of her; Katherine McKittrick on his library; John Harewoods exchange of personal letters with Clarke; Patrick Creans experience as his long-time editor (The Prime Minister and The Polished Hoe) and close friend; and George Elliott Clarke on visiting Clarkes childhood neighbourhood in poetic formall these evoke a certain kind of intimacy with Austin Clarke. And where the contributions verge on a more immediate intimacy, the readings and analyses of Clarkes novels, short fiction, and poetry all work at another level of intimacy within the fiction to reveal in detail the significance of Clarkes contributions, even when the representation he leaves us as readers troubles us. The mark of intimacy in this collection is, I think, very much conditioned by the fact that Clarkes own point of view as a writer was one of a carefully crafted and minutely documented observation of his surroundings. Clarkes fiction therefore always brings his readers into the intimate lives of his charactersfrom Dots to Bernice to Boysie to Mary-Matilda to Idora, as any reading of his work makes immediately evident.