Re: message from the Mother Country
Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Tue, 15 Jun 1999 13:25:18 -0400 (EDT)
GRASS is always GREENER Department:
The ever-erudite Scottie suggests that:
>
> the essential quality of Colonial Writing
> is a kind of innocent freshness which we in the old world
> have now almost completely lost.
>
>
I'll accept this generalisation (on behalf of 'real' colonial writers--who,
like many Oscar nominees, are off doing exactly what they should be doing,
WRITING.... I doubt, for example, that Margaret Atwood will ever grace us
with her presence in the bananafishbowl.... ) as the compliment that it was
obviously intended be. But I'd LOVE to hear some examples! (Atwood, for my
money--who frankly probably doesn't make my "Top 25 Canadian Writers" list,
anyway--is the absolute antithesis of "innocence" and/or "freshness".... But
she's probably the best known Canadian author outside this former colony....)
In fact, I somewhat sheepishly suggest that two of my favorite "fresh"
novelists (Graham Swift and William Boyd) have both emerged from the cynical
slough of the Mother Country's mainstream fiction lists in recent years....
They may not be the best examples of the muscular Christianity that Scottie
seems to be suggesting.....
it radiates an honesty & vigour
> which - though mistakenly identified sometimes as paranoid
> - truly reflects that healthy, assertive life lived nowadays only
> in God's open air on the wide plains & lofty mountains of
> the Dominions.
>
>
.... but I guess I'd better book a ticket on the next flight for Moose Jaw,
just to see what I'm missing....
As for Mr. Bowman's suggestion that the not-so-friendly, gun-toting folks
south of the 49th parallel deserve to be included among us ex-colonials, I
can only resort to a quintessentially Canadian response: MERDE!
THE TRUE NORTH STRONG AND FREE must never be confused with THEIR COUNTRY:
RIGHT OR WRONG. In 1776, the Continental (sic!) Congress sent Ben Franklin
himself to Quebec (soon to be followed by Ethan Allan and his Green Mountain
boys), thinking that French Canada's inherent anglophobia would
automatically create a 14th (ex)colony.... WRONG! Americans have been
basically wrong about Canada (when they're not totally ignorant about
Canada) ever since....
There IS a border!
Why, even JDS himself created one of his most accomplished stories (De
Daumier-Smith's Blue Period) using Montreal as a backdrop!
Cheers, (Salut!)
Paul