Heather O’Neill - Wisdom in Nonsense: Invaluable Lessons from My Father

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 2018 Heather ONeill

Introduction 2018 Kit Dobson

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA
CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

ONeill, Heather, 1973, author

Wisdom in nonsense: invaluable lessons from my father / Heather ONeill.

(CLC Kreisel lecture series)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

Co-published by Canadian Literature Centre.

ISBN 9781772123777 (softcover). ISBN 9781772124002 (EPUB). ISBN 9781772124019 (Kindle). ISBN 9781772123999 (PDF)

1. ONeill, Heather, 1973 Childhood and youth. 2. Authors, Canadian (English)20th centuryBiography. 3. Fathers and daughtersCanadaBiography. I. Canadian Literature Centre, issuing body II. Title. III. Series: CLC Kreisel lecture series

PS8579.N387Z46 2018 C813.54

C20179070908

First edition, rst printing, 2018.

First electronic edition, 2018.

Digital conversion by Transforma Pvt. Ltd.

Copyediting and proofreading by Peter Midgley.

Cover design by Alan Brownoff.

Cover images: Engin Oztekin. Used by permission.

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The Canadian Literature Centre acknowledges the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for the CLC Kreisel Lecture delivered by Heather ONeill in March 2017 at the University of Alberta.

The 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.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

The CLC Kreisel Lecture Series

HERE WE ARE with the eleventh annual CLC Kreisel Lecture, delivered on March 9, 2017, at the University of Alberta. Anglo-Quebecker novelist, Heather ONeill, joins ten other authors in a series which continues to realize most fully the Canadian Literature Centres mission: to bring together writers, readers, students, researchers, and teachers in an open, inclusive, and critical forum focused on Canadas literary arts. The Kreisel Series showcases 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, storytelling, censorship, language, and reading in a digital age. In these pages, Heather ONeills lecture, an event headed this year by Acting CLC Director Daniel Laforest, presents personal reflections about growing up in an underworld of Montreals Plateau Mont-Royal, a setting that also vividly crops up in ONeills fiction. Led through this world of little criminals, street performers, and drug addicts by her bad advicewielding father, she depicts an oddly happy childhood and the wise tenderness of a daughters reminiscences. The Kreisel Series confronts questions that concern us all within the specificities of our contemporary experience, whatever our differences. ONeills lecture epitomizes, with thoughtfulness and depth as well as humour and grace, the spirit of free and honest dialogue that characterizes the series.

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 immigrant experience 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 2017

LIMINAIRE

La collection des Confrences Kreisel du CLC

VOICI LA onzime Confrence Kreisel annuelle du CLC, prsente le 9 mars 2017 lUniversit de lAlberta. La romancire anglo-qubcoise, Heather ONeill, vient rejoindre les dix autres auteurs dune collection qui ralise son plus fort la mission du Centre de littrature canadienne: celle de rassembler crivains et crivaines, lecteurs et lectrices, tudiants et tudiantes, chercheurs et chercheuses, enseignants et enseignantes, dans un forum ouvert, inclusif et critique consacr aux arts littraires du Canada. La Collection 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 et la lecture lre numrique. Prside par le directeur intrimaire du CLC cette anne, Daniel Laforest, la confrence de Heather ONeill dans ces pages nous montre la jeune crivaine grandir dans une pgre du Plateau Mont-Royal Montral, un lieu galement prsent dans les textes fictifs de lauteure. Conduite dans ce monde de petits dlinquants par un pre brandissant une abondance de mauvais conseils, elle dpeint une enfance curieusement heureuse et la sage tendresse des souvenirs dune fille de son pre. 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 ONeill ici, dans lardeur et la profondeur intellectuelles ainsi que lhumour et llgance.

Ces confrences publiques et annuelles se consacrent perptuer la mmoire du Professeur Henry Kreisel. Auteur, professeur universitaire et Officier de lOrdre du Canada, Henry Kreisel est n Vienne dune famille juive en 1922. En 1938, il a quitt son pays natal pour lAngleterre et a t intern pendant dix-huit mois, au Canada, lors de la Deuxime Guerre mondiale. Aprs ses tudes lUniversit de Toronto, il devint professeur lUniversit de lAlberta en 1947, et partir de 1961 jusqu 1970, il a dirig le Dpartement danglais. De 1970 1975, il a t vice-recteur (universitaire), et a t nomm professeur hors rang en 1975, la plus haute distinction scientifique dcerne par lUniversit de lAlberta un membre de son professorat. Professeur ador, il a transmis lamour de la littrature plusieurs gnrations dtudiants, et il a t parmi les premiers crivains modernes du Canada aborder lexprience immigrante. Il est dcd Edmonton en 1991. Son uvre comprend les romans, The Rich Man (1948) et The Betrayal (1964), et un recueil de nouvelles intitul The Almost Meeting (1981). Son journal dinternement, accompagn darticles critiques sur ses crits, parat dans Another Country: Writings By and About Henry Kreisel (1985).