Review
WHEN WORDS DENY THE WORLD
By Stephen Henighan
Porcupine’s Quill, 192 pp.
Is there such a thing as Canadian literature? Most folks would answer "Well, duh."
But Stephen Henighan digs a little deeper and emerges with a surprising conclusion: maybe. Or maybe not anymore, not since NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
We are protective as hell about our literature, even if (like our country) we can't quite define it. We point to the massive successes abroad of The English Patient and Fugitive Pieces to show that it does exist, and that it is a vital thing.
But how Canadian are these books? Henighan convincingly argues that they could have been written anywhere, divorced as they are from the historical realities which provide the backdrop to their narrative. In particular, they give no insight, except by what they omit, into Canadian life at the end of the 20th century. "No one will know how we lived," he laments, in the way we understand Victorian England through Dickens or 19th century Russia through Tolstoy.
When Words Deny the World has a peculiar trajectory. The first section is made up of disparate reviews and essays written between 1988 and 2001, and make for a bumpy, if generally thought-provoking and entertaining, ride. The second, more cohesive, section is where the author's argument really shows its teeth. It launches an all-out attack on the "literary" Canadian bestseller list and the bland suburban slop that passes for Canadian literature, most of the time, these days. I've never said this about a book of literary criticism before, but I could not put it down.
I wish it had been a longer book with a broader scope. Instead of including two substantially similar essays on the issue of appropriation of voice and a review of Josef Skvorecky's The Engineer of Human Souls (a book which no one reads anymore), I would have liked to have seen essays on some of our excellent "regional" writers who have been ignored by the Toronto media machine, and whose works are deeply rooted in historical reality – the working-class fiction of Grant Buday, for instance, or the meta-autobiographico-poetical prose works (yikes! But what else can you call them?) of Harold Rhenisch. When Words Deny the World could use a little honey to soften the piss and vinegar that makes it so compelling.
By the book's close, Henighan's argument becomes a bit wearying – surely all the ills bedevilling Canadian literature can't be blamed on the twin axes of evil: Toronto and NAFTA. The taste of sour grapes lingers – this is, after all, a book that wouldn't have been written if the author had once been given a six-figure advance from a major publisher. When Words Deny the World, though, is a necessary read. It deserves a much wider audience than it will likely receive, despite the author's very public battle with Russell Smith (advantage: Henighan) and a spot on the Governor General's Award nonfiction shortlist.
Henighan's book may not have solidifed its place in history as a GG winner – it was a long shot, anyway – but just maybe it will be remembered as the book that made Canadians realize that the books they were reading might not be that Canadian after all.
|
