Salon des Refuses
The New Quarterly and Canadian Notes and Queries collaborating on a response to The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories
How ironic that John Metcalf in his CNQ essay 'Thinking about Penguins', would call out Jane Urquhart’s inability to weigh relative merit; say of The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories “[it] flatly does not represent the best in Canadian short fiction;” and accuse its editor of favoring friends, at the expense of quality.
Ironic because after a blaze of bombast and insult (Urquhart ‘trills,’ and is variously called ‘appallingly arrogant,’ ignorant, naïve and dim about short story development and history), Metcalf does the very same thing, championing stories that are truly awful, and criticizing those that offer genuine delight. It is he who has the weight problem. Short of possible friendship, I can see no reason why Hugh Hood’s gruelingly uninspired 'Getting to Williamstown' deserves even one syllable of praise. It stinks.
I have over the past several years enjoyed and respected Metcalf’s stiff, name-naming critiques of various sacred Canadian literary cows. Though I continue to enjoy his writing and agree with much of what he has said in the past about work he dislikes, after reading examples from authors he cites here as "great", I must seriously question his critical judgment. In one breath Metcalf accuses Urquhart of including the inferior in her collection, in the next he lauds, and calls for the inclusion of stories that, in my opinion, are equally as poor. In fact, none of the stories he calls worthy are as good as the Penguin collection’s 'Constance' by Virgil Burnett.
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The experience last week of reading a small selection of Canadian short stories confirms in me both the belief that great writing is exceedingly rare, and the suspicion that current discussion around Urquhart’s book, though welcome, is largely hollow: akin to time spent trying to decide each morning which pair of identically coloured, equally drab grey wool socks to wear under the pant leg.This Salon des Refuses exercise, laudable as it is in its intent to critique what passes for excellence in the Canadian short story, fails in its execution; fails to present alternatives that are discernibly better than what is ‘officially’ on display. In so doing it smacks of the petty and personal.
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After corresponding with Dan Wells, Editor of CNQ, and receiving an invitation from Steven Beattie to contribute to his Salon des Refuse discussion, I decided, based on Metcalf’s aforementioned essay, to read and compare six short stories, three from Urquhart’s collection: 'Ring Around October' by Adrienne Poy (Clarkson), 'Constance' by Virgil Burnett, 'Dog Monday’s Vigil' by Lucy Maud Montgomery; three from the Salon des Refuses: 'In Lower Town' by Norman Levine, 'Meditations on Starch' by Clark Blaise, 'Getting to Williamstown' by Hugh HoodMuch as I may have wished otherwise, of the six stories cited above I can only in clear conscience glow about one, 'Constance'.
This story is far from what Metcalf calls an ‘awful,’ ‘second-hand Gothic Gormenghast fantasy;’ Burnett’s fable sings with clever phraseology, good humour, and tongue in cheek magical realism. It’s memorable, amusing and charming; entertaining both for its style and its story. Unlike the unfortunate, predictable, and paralyzingly dull efforts of Poy and Hugh Hood, there is real pleasure to be experienced in its reading.
Here are some particularly choice cuts: “Except for the fact of her marriage to an octogenarian, nothing about Constance suggested that she was fashioned for a passionless life.” “He thought nothing of keeping his opponents waiting fully armed and mounted in the hot sun while he dawdled over his weapons or adjusted his elaborate plumage.” “…Roscelin felt his resistance to her beauty weaken and crumble, as if some temple in his brains had been exploded to dust by the advent of a new and superior religion,” “…her crowded mind rejected the quiet challenge of the page,” “Like greedy carp worry bread crusts in a pond, the mob closed around the prisoners…”
The story smiles wide with amusing description reminiscent of Cervantes, and skips to a cheerful Marquezian cadence. In his haste to condemn, the dour Metcalf seems to miss Burnett’s humorous intent, demanding ‘Give me…a break.’ Well, 'Constance' does provide a break. A break from the tired meal served by Metcalf’s favored writer Hugh Hood.
As for the rest of the stories, I agree that Adrienne Poy (Clarkson)’s piece is the worst in a poor pack. It’s a confused mess, a coming of age saga in which it isn’t quite clear if anyone comes; an unbeautiful adolescent effort, by an aspiring 22 year old writer, that, unbelievably, won some kind of Maclean’s magazine award. Why this frustratingly inept story made it into a book that purports to represent Canada’s best is beyond me.
Norman Levine’s 'In Lower Town', found in The New Quarterly 107, is better. At least its prose is poetic, and there’s music in the writing; but ultimately, despite Michael Winter’s inspired defense of the piece in the same issue of the magazine, it remains a blank-faced slog. Dull. Boring, even as it tempts us with sex, a topic evidently used to make the point that immigrants can act differently outside their own milieu. It’s poorly handled, with a spray of crude comments about impotence and group sex left hanging, incomplete in the air. The message if there is one, voices the immigrant’s desire to tear down reminders of the past, to leave it behind and start new, in contrast with their children’s nostalgia for the past, and a wish to preserve it.
Despite emotional appeal, music and the skilled drawing of life in early Bytown, this story remains dull and predictable. I found the writing uninspired; which, according to Michael Winter, makes me a reader in want of “vats of liver.” One who doesn’t ‘get’ Levine’s ‘sophisticated and extremely subtle mode of storytelling.’ Though Levine may ‘flirt with banality’ his effect, according to Winter, apparently attacks the reader below a conscious level.” Winter’s essay is, in fact, better reading than any of the six short stories under review. It offers an excellent summary of how to create movement in fiction, and interesting insights into the techniques of story writing, techniques which though deftly applied, are overlooked by most of Levine’s readers. The problem here is that while the analysis is astute, it confers excellence where it is not warranted. Levine may use a lot of good technique, but the end result is a failure to hold interest. He doesn’t just ‘flirt’ with banality, he engages it in a full blown affair. His effects aren’t just below the conscious level, they are incomprehensibly buried.
Clark Blaise’s 'Meditations on Starch', though uneven, is probably the best of the Refuses cited. Potatoes, Corn and Rice serve to trigger memories of mother, 1930s Europe, India, family and Freud. Blaise calls mashed “Buttertopped, cream coloured bins of heroic self indulgence, inviting a finger dip the way a full can of white enamel compels a brush.” I like this. “Heroic” could go, but still, a nice comparison. He then ruins it by going into overkill, describing the first lick of a Dairy Queen cone, “the roughened vanilla from a freshly opened tub, the drowning in concentrated carbohydrate where fats and starches come together in snowy concupiscence.”
Capitalizing on the mystique of Kafka and Freud, Blaise’s flashbacks to Prague and Germany hold my interest, despite the use of embarrassing alliteration: ‘the germ of genius;’ his mother the ‘Degas of Dresden;’ and odd reference to Freud as ‘a foolish little man, racist and chauvinist, with bad science to justify it.’ The story also contains reflection on how ‘science and music and literature can be so advanced, and do nothing to influence a political culture in its infancy’ and ‘the imbalance of what we are capable of feeling, thinking, and what we have inflicted.’
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s dog story jerks tears, and helps fulfill a Penguin mandate that calls for representation of the entire twentieth century’s Canadian short story output. As such I’d say it isn’t out of place in Urquhart’s collection. Hugh Hood’s 'Getting to Williamstown', regardless of what Metcalf has to say about religion, gems, originality and recognition, is so excruciatingly boring I’m afraid that I can’t even bring myself to write about it, for fear of falling asleep.
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CNQ and TNQ should be commended for going after Penguin as they have in their latest issues. This kind of exercise is valuable. It has the potential to both help define and produce literary excellence in Canada. It is a shame however, in this instance, that better stories -- than the ones I read at least -- weren’t hung on the walls of the Salon. Maybe next time.
For what it’s worth, here is my ranking of the stories by merit:
Constance by Virgil Burnett
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Meditations on Starch by Clark Blaise
In Lower Town by Norman Levine
Dog Monday’s Vigil by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Getting to Williamstown by Hugh Hood
Ring Around October by Adrienne Poy (Clarkson)