Graeme Gibson - Eleven Canadian Novelists Interviewed by Graeme Gibson

The A List

Launched to mark our forty-fifth anniversary, the A List is a series of handsome new editions of classic Anansi titles. Encompassing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, this collection includes some of the finest books weve published. We feel that these are great reads, and the series is an excellent introduction to the world of Canadian literature. The redesigned A List books will feature new cover art by noted Canadian illustrators, and each edition begins with a new introduction by a notable writer. We can think of no better way to celebrate forty-five years of great publishing than by bringing these books back into the spotlight. We hope youll agree.

Eleven Canadian Novelists

Interviewed by
Graeme Gibson

Copyright 1973 Graeme Gibson
Introduction copyright 2014 Graeme Gibson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Excerpts from several of these interviews appeared on CBC Anthology

First published in 1973 by House of Anansi Press Ltd.

This edition published in 2014 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801
Toronto, ON, m5v 2k4
Tel. 416-363-4343
Fax 416-363-1017
www.houseofanansi.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Gibson, Graeme, 1934, author
Eleven Canadian novelists interviewed by Graeme Gibson
/ Graeme Gibson.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77089-814-1 (pbk.).ISBN 978-1-77089-816-5 (html)
1. Novelists, Canadian (English)20th centuryInterviews.
2. FictionAuthorship. I. Title.
PS8081.G5 2014 C813.5409 C2014-902671-4
C2014-902672-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907273

Series design: Brian Morgan
Cover illustration: Michael Cho
All photographs: Graeme Gibson

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, for our translation activities.

INTRODUCTION

by Graeme Gibson

Eleven Canadian Novelists published in February 1973 was very much a creature of its time. The late sixties and early seventies had seen a remarkable growth of new, often experimental Canadian writing. This was followed by the appearance of small independent publishers, many of which had writers as editors or helpers.

Anansi was one of these presses. Notable among others were Quarry and Coach House, founded in 1965, and Oberon in 1966; then came Anansi and Mel Hurtig in 1967, Sono Nis in 1968, and New Press in 1970. On the whole these were avante garde and/or nationalist houses that produced a remarkable range of significant and often challenging writing.

Dave Godfreys collection, Death Goes Better with Coca-Cola (1967), was Anansis first prose fiction. Then, in 1969, Anansi published six novels and one collection of stories, all by previously unpublished book writers. In the two following years it produced two collections of stories and fifteen novels, including work by Austin Clarke, Matt Cohen, Marian Engel, and Roch Carrier. Two-thirds of the seventeen titles were by new writers. According to The Canadian Encyclopaedia, in 1969 Anansi produced a third of all novels published in English Canada.

Between 1968 and 1971, poets such as Allen Ginsberg, George Bowering, Joe Rosenblatt, and Michael Ondaatje joined the house. Anansi also published important non-fiction, including George Grants Technology and Empire and Northrop Fryes The Bush Garden. In response to the Vietnam War, Mark Satins Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada appeared in 1968. That this book sold 65,000 copies, mostly by mail, highlights the desperation of draft-age Americans.

By the early seventies there was a literary ferment from Newfoundland to British Columbia in both English and French writing. With the reviews of Bill French and Kildare Dobbs and others, critical attention significantly improved. The Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council had supportive and creative officers. Partly because of all this energy, writers living abroad, such as Mordecai Richler and Margaret Laurence, returned to Canada. Given that a mere five Canadian novels were published by Canadian houses in 1960, there had been a quantum leap: these were indeed heady times.

A critically important and remarkable man was CBC broadcaster and editor Robert Weaver. Not only did Bob feature Canadian writers and poets in the influential radio shows he hosted and created, but he also founded The Tamarack Review, edited many literary anthologies, and created the CBC Literary Awards. A very smart and genuinely modest man, he was tacitly accepted as the Godfather of CanLit.

To my good fortune, Bob engaged me to interview a couple of writers for Anthology, his flagship CBC program. The couple turned into eleven, and then thirteen. The last two, Norman Levine and Mavis Gallant, were unfortunately too late for this book.

At the outset, I intended to talk with a representative batch of novelists who were between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, but that category quickly collapsed. Weaver and I didnt insist upon it, we merely drifted away from it: somebody appeared in town unexpectedly or our attention was caught by a new book or, on the negative side, it became impossible to interview someone wed planned on.

I dont recall the order in which the interviews occurred, but I do know that I thoroughly enjoyed each one. Apart from Mordecai, who was in Montreal, I interviewed the others in the old CBC building on Jarvis Street. I first met Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro in one of its ancient but very effective burrows. They came one after the other, Jack Ludwig, Marian Engel, Timothy Findley, and all the rest, and they seemed to come with a sense of personal optimism, but also an optimism that must have been fed by the palpable energy of Canadian writing. Whatever it might have been, there was a curious camaraderie, one that perhaps had something to do with our ongoing concern with a writers union. Eight of us were present at the founding of the Writers Union of Canada in November 1973, and at least one other joined later.

It must be said there were many strong and interesting writers back then: nobody would have found it hard to suggest others we could have included. Inescapably this leads to a collective regret. Although entitled Eleven Canadian Novelists the book depends almost exclusively on writers from Central Canada. That was a result of our countrys size, the reality of the CBC budget, and the fact writers then did not travel as often as we do now.

I dont remember when Bob suggested turning the interviews into a book. Nor do I recall how we proceeded, apart from Anansi being the publishing choice. However, I do remember very clearly that the woman hired to transcribe the tapes turned out to be hard of hearing: as a result, she relentlessly translated The House of Anansi into The House of Nazis throughout the entire text which is not what we had expected.