Ten authors you have to read (if you're a Canadian student)

by: David Berry

The idea of a canon, or at least an imperative list of books (some people don’t like that other word), isn’t really about objective quality so much as subjective experience: Those stories that resonate most with us also define us. If you want to know what it’s like to be a human (technically) or a Western European (in practice) or an English-speaking Canadian (for our purposes), well, read these.

Even if you have slightly less lofty ambitions, though, it’s still helpful to know what makes up primordial alphabet soup: Whether you want to admit it or not, there is going to be a collection of books that form a kind of literary vernacular, a shared experience that we all draw on that in some sense sets our parameters for discussion and understanding and reflection.

Surely we’ve all got our own opinions of what those might be. But rather than sit here and argue about them — doesn’t seem very Canadian, if you ask me — I thought it might be worthwhile to try and get some objective sense.

So I turned to the experts, or the closest we have to them: Canadian universities’ literature departments. They are, after all, paid to think about how our stories define us, and unlike the fickle bestseller charts, they are prone to taking the long and in some cases esoteric but potent view. Plus it seems fairly likely to me that people who are willing to take English are the ones who are going to end up discussing it later (and it’s still a requirement at most universities, so the books will still resonate with those who don’t ever plan on reading when they’re off-campus).

To that end, English chairs, professors and adjuncts from across the country responded with curricula, syllabi, entrance exams, recommended readings and personal preferences. They cited more than 170 writers, and books ranging from anthologies of pre-1800s poetry to last year’s Giller nominees. I compiled them, counted them and came up with the list below. It represents, if nothing else, what your 18-year-old niece is probably going to think of as CanLit for the rest of her life.

THE CORE TEXTS
 Michael Ondaatje
Not only was Ondaatje the most mentioned author, but his Toronto immigrant story In the Skin of a Lion was handily the most taught book. Although it seems worth noting that a curious kind of division emerged: Southern Ontario schools leaned on that one heavily, whereas selections from the rest of the country tended to be more diverse, split between Lion, The English Patient and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.

Margaret Atwood
A smattering of works were mentioned, but for the most part the instructors lean toward either the dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale or the return-to-home-template Surfacing. Some informal comments suggested that the former is loved (and tended to be the one taught abroad), whereas the latter is good but also just really thematically rich if you’re looking to talk about Canadian identity.

Alice Munro
Individual stories were chosen from across the spectrum, but the most cited of Munro’s books, by far, were the Governor General’s Award-winning Who Do You Think You Are? and the story cycle Lives of Girls and Women, with female teachers (perhaps unsurprisingly) leaning toward the latter. Stick with the classics, I guess.

Thomas King
As I was gently reminded, this list might be skewed, because Aboriginal literature is often taught in a different, separate context than the wider Canadian variety. Either way, enough people avoid the distinction that Green Grass, Running Water is taught in CanLit courses across the country.

Stephen Leacock
If you know Canadian humour at all, you are probably well acquainted with a dozen books just like Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Leacock’s humorous slice of Mariposa life remains surprisingly resilient a century after its publishing.

Robert Kroetsch
Though The Studhorse Man had its defenders, including one who was fairly emphatic about it being the best Western (regional, this is Canada) novel, it’s Seed Catalogue that most students are going to be parsing this fall: it was the most-cited book of poetry (or, well, poem).

Mordecai Richler
The strange thing about Richler is that, though many of the other top authors had broad lists with a few obvious preferences, almost everyone that taught a Richler book picked The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (fourth most cited overall). A man without a classic novel of Jewish life in Montreal is nothing.

Sinclair Ross
As For Me and My House, Ross’s most-taught work, isn’t just a great example of bleak prairie landscapes, it’s a model for Canadian success to this day: it was published and popular in New York before it caught on here.

Margaret Laurence
There was an almost an exact split between The Stone Angel and The Diviners, with apparently no rhyme nor reason besides personal preference. I wonder what your choice of Laurence novel says about you as a teacher?

Eden Robinson
Her debut novel Monkey Beach has the rare distinction of being the only book published since 2000 (just barely, but still) to make it into the 10 most-taught. Someone should tell her to write more.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Dionne Brand
Toronto’s poet laureate was one of the most-cited poets, although curiously there wasn’t much consensus on which book or poem you should lean toward. I read a bunch of No Language is Neutral in my CanLit class, for what it’s worth.

Lucy Maude Montgomery
Yes, students are still getting their Anne of Green Gables, but it may be more of an eat-your-vegetables thing: Montgomery rarely showed up in courses above a freshman level.

Howard O’Hagan/Susanna Moodie
Depending on your particular flavour of taming the Canadian wilderness, you’ll be reading O’Hagan’s wild man myth Tay John or Moodie’s autobiographicalish pioneer tale Roughing It in the Bush. But probably both.

Joy Kogawa
Apparently some things don’t require research: Obasan is enough of a staple of CanLit courses that that’s the second fact on its Wikipedia page.

FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS
It takes time for consensus to form, but if anyone is likely to be pushing their way onto that top list in the near future, it will probably be either Joseph Boyden or Lawrence Hill. The First World War narrative Three Day Road and the slave tale The Book of Negroes were both heads and tails above other contemporary novels in the classroom.

That said, one thing that came up consistently was a complaint that today’s students weren’t nearly as well-versed in Canadian literature as they used to be, with declining emphasis on Canadian authors in high school (or even university, if the complainant was teaching sufficiently advanced classes) usually cited as the culprit. Maybe that’s just a bit of “kids these days” curmudgeonry, but it’s worth keeping that idea about stories and identity in mind — and noting that, of all the storytelling mediums, Canadian literature is by far the most deep and diverse. Or, at the very least, read In the Skin of a Lion, so you have something more interesting than “How’s school going?” to ask that niece of yours.


from: National Post