Comments on: Where are your favourite literary landmarks?

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:39:36 +0000

Thanks girls! These are great suggestions. One that has me thinking about CanLit in general and this project more specifically is this: where’s the funny?
Lately I’ve been reaching for books that lift my spirit rather than ones that make me ponder universal truths.
Paul Quarrington kind of gets me there – although we’re smiling at the observations of unhappy people.
Robertson Davies always – but he’s dead.
Ditto Stephen Leacock.
So who is out there in Can Lit that writes with a light touch?

Any thoughts?

BTW, Tom Robbins has a new book out.

Check it out at Amazon.ca

By: Gina

Gina — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:11:41 +0000

Lisa Lisa,
Of late, I’ve been thinking of Margaret Laurence. For location, I think A Jest of God and The Fire Dwellers stand out for me. Prairies and Vancouver: in my memory, those locations flowed in and out of the interior landscapes…. for that matter, A Bird in the House told me more about Saskatchewan than A Jest of God.

Other older books, Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese (1925), which was all grim landscapes and sucking bogs etc (and the titular Geese, of course).

Richer’s St Urbain’s Horsemen? A great one for Montreal (As was Duddy).

Finally, for location of late, I reread Donna Morrissey’s Sylvanus Now (which I had loved when it came out) and was blown away by the descriptive prose in that novel – for more that her earlier novels or last book. The flowers and trees and fields of the coast, the small off-shore communities and islands – and the evocation of the sea in all its moods were amazing.

I must admit, I spend lots of time reading material that “takes me home”. Canadian landscape and lit: they are sort of my “last link” home in many ways. Though in writing all that, it sounds a little naff to me – no matter how true.

By: Giselle

Giselle — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:12:08 +0000

Hi Lisa,
I agree re: Late Nights on Air. I never had any real interest in the far north until I read her beautiful descriptions and, especially, the attachment she describes between her characters and that place.

I would also nominate the Newfoundland described in both Michael Winter’s This All Happened and (though fewer pages are devoted to it) The Architects are Coming. Also staying with Newfoundland, Wayne Johnston’s The Navigator of New York provides a vivid look at turn of the 20th century life on the Rock. Ditto Colony of Unrequited Dreams (albeit a later time).
Finally, Beth Powning’s Edge Seasons is a beautiful, complete work that takes a close look at the rhythms of the wilderness around her home near Sussex, from the smallest bugs to the tallest trees in a way that made me want to move in with her!

By: Christianne Vachon

Christianne Vachon — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:43:46 +0000

The Rimbaud of Québec: Émile Nelligan. First poetry I ever learned by heart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdIQ8TCROGw
C’était un grand vaisseau
Taillé dans l’or massif
Ces mats touchait l’azur
Sur des mers inconnues

PS Yay you’re back