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Impressions of Canadians and our Writing

an essay by David Antoniuk

What to say by way of introduction? …I was seventeen when I woke up to realize that if I wanted to write good stories I would have to go live in the big city. Well, I have done that already, and I know enough to write a dozen novels about Canadians. But I only plan to write one or two – I’ve in mind other places and themes.

You don’t know me. I am a thirty-nine year old man, and I’m a Canadian writer. But, I’ve been living away from Canada for nine years. I haven’t stopped writing, and I don’t know why. I enjoy it.

Today, I need to take Canada to task. Because, for a long time I have harbored suspicions about all of us who have found it important to pose as "Canadian writers," as compared to simply being, "writers." We are too self-conscious about asserting our identity. So, it doesn’t seem to me very easy to be yourself in Canada; because, if you want to write, you must be "recognizably a Canadian…" You must fit into the university, the council; because – the Big System has rules of recognition! I find this situation more than absurd, it imposes a distracting and false set of preconceptions.

Put it this way: I consider myself a writer first. The idea of clinging to national and regional roles seems as obsolete as believing in a specific religious creed. But of course, I belong to that almost completely silenced species: the free-thinker…

In this essay, I will delve into the strange effects of modernity and human advance upon our natural human estate. Specifically, I hope to focus on the idea of being a Canadian, and a writer – as a set of evidential facts, character traits if you will, and as a situation in which some individuals deem it necessary to play games and assert certain truths about our cultural identity – whether you find those ideas agreeable, or obvious – or not...

What do you think about this? We Canadians are haplessly predictable and lugubriously stuck in our ways. Perhaps we Canadians are not half so interested in the arts and intellectuals as we pretend to be.

In fact, I sincerely believe that we actually promote those with average ability and often overlook the finest work… Canadians remain too innocent and boring for words. And like our neighbors to the south, we too easily take the numerically-governed cynosure of economic success as a new, if not false, definition for quality literature… Oh but, the methods of mass production have a way to win us over.

Let’s take a hard look at Canada… Why is it that many of us can be so wonderfully level-headed – yet so smarmy and bigoted? Canadians pretend to extol tolerance, but this is a means for rationalizing the blinders we use to ignore the world we fail to understand. Like my fellows, I still do my best not to see my failings and I try not to be a jerk – imagining that my "social enlightenment" supplies largesse enough to talk intelligently about difficult problems.

An author, I have been fortunate to live in various places around Canada. But, I have not read enough Canadian fiction. However, I have given plenty of thought to this problem: whether or not an author must sell his or her work to achieve recognition as a legitimate artist. Today says, "Yes." But yesterday and tomorrow whisper a quiet, "No." The cult of professionalISM has done a lot of damage to the literary scene everywhere around the world. Young authors fret over being successful, whether they can get a grant, or a university position – or sell-out successfully to a big commercial trade publisher. Everyone has heard those dire words: "Publish or perish…" That slogan has menaced too many young writers with imaginary vistas of fame opposed to lonely obscurity. I believe that we all take this grave "need" to become professional far too seriously; we now concentrate exclusively on selling, networking and "getting involved" – and consequently – it seems to me quite easy to forget about what art is all about...

Following the "market trends," the Canadian literary system has succeeded in doing no more than homogenize the styles, topics and forms of literature today. The current mediocrity of poetry in this country (and everywhere else) is almost laughable. Prose has fared somewhat better, but not much. The quality of literature everywhere around the world has plateaued, and it’s been that way for quite some time.

What are the implicit, or at least, probable causes at play here?

Perhaps television and class materialism have displaced the primary place that our sensibility for language used to have for inspiring the deeper intimacies of a cultured society that is truly refined – and subtly – sublimely so…

Perhaps the structure of technocracy promotes a recognizable situation: likes will protect likes. It’s a fact: those writers who get into the present national system tend to resemble each other in their stylistic efforts… It seems that a new "tradition" of formal monkeydom exposes an inevitable trend; stodgy familiarities have risen upon rule-governed assumptions about defining Canadian literature...

Today we live in times that have gone quite beyond tradition. I pity the conventionally successful author who must chew his lips over the salability of his newest novel. Am I lucky, not to have had to don the suit and public mask demanded by the promotional tour? My ego has not had to endure the trauma of sudden popularity… If coitus interruptus was once diagnosed as the worst hazard of modern sex, then the perception of necessary dependence on government support suffered by the average literary author in Canada has wrought a similar psychic distortion.

…Oh, the possibilities for ironic permutations are too many! Sex is easy for so many of us: we only have to nudge that beautiful jeune copieuse mooumoouching in da disco; that’s enough to bring her home to the freedom of new, thrilling sex. Now, for so many, it’s easy to dispel the hang-ups that have inhibited us since time immemorial. Yet – ha, ha – it isn’t as easy to get published as it is to get laid, even if your work is very fine…

Perhaps the literary patriarchy – the critics – are all to blame, and not nu-metal, ragga or rap… The literary patriarchy has bred itself around the same-old canon, ever-expanding, but so slowly – a sordid, swollen and lazy beast. Oh, how great a thing it would be for that tired old patriarchy to die away. Yet such a demise might actually have come about already – and not because of the advent of brilliant new art forms – as one might have hoped... The implicit demise of central literary authority and formal criticism may have already taken place, in the form of an implosion that is revealed by the void of content represented by the imaginary linguistic landscapes of rhetorical discourse that so many critics have invented to replace the actual criticism of literary content in specific works of fiction and poetry. But, nope, that doesn’t seem to be connected to the problem…

Well, perhaps we simply don’t see the effects of commercialism, and the effects that modern technological forms actually have on literate culture are not easy to trace. It’s not a change you can measure against anybody’s living memory...

It wasn’t too long ago that people had to learn Latin and Greek, besides English, in schools everywhere. In Canada, at least, it’s easy to study French in high school. But communal literacy for written language plays second fiddle to the raw perceptions of televised photons and verbal electronic-audio… Perhaps literacy has a subdued role to fulfill, nowadays... Maybe it doesn’t matter, and we don’t know how illiterate we really want to be…

It seems easy to replace culture and society with whatever money can buy, doesn’t it? Okay, I am too cynical. You don’t have to forgive me, either.

Perhaps the state of literature, everywhere, has always been weak? And despite the huge number of authors attempting to write, the simple truth remains that nature can only produce one true poet for every ten million souls – no matter where or when we live, and no matter which folk songs in whatever language we chanced to grow up repeating.

…As for discerning what has been happening for quite some time – the most expert sociologist must fail to sort out the complexities of social role, prevailing moods & ideas, and the effects of media diffusion, scientific-technological advance along with the mainstream & sub-cultural movements that stimulate the ever-evolving composition of the Canadian and the global milieus.

I must admit that I do not like our Canadian society, not because we are unkind or heartless – we are mostly good and honest people. It isn’t merely because we tend to exhibit behavioral-social-frigidity, and repeatedly insist on practicing contradictory – because exclusive – forms of "liberal" or "conservative" privilege. We fail to cultivate a broad perspective on ourselves and the whole world. ( Already the critics and psychologists among you are suspicious: and I wouldn’t excuse myself – that I don’t know how to outgrow all my inhibitions… I just haven’t bought the right-type yet, ha, ha… )

Many Canadians really do exhibit a collective and silent conservatism made of racially and class-inspired prejudices. All of us gain confidence adhering – tight-lipped or coarse-tongued – to our respective socio-economic type-caste.

Oh, of course, beyond even the requisite selfishness that we force upon one another, everyone knows that a gentle heart lives among Canadians. What really bothers me most is the material wastefulness, unabashed hypocrisy and wilful blindness, which make our pretence to civil character seem almost entirely incongruous.

I went to Montreal at a tender age – simply because I was obsessed with the city. I ended up returning twice, almost friendless, to that place. Montreal did give me women to love. …I have yet to write those novels.

Montreal proved to me that Canadians exhibit distinct, recognizable traits. Because I grew up in the West, in Alberta, it was fascinating to see that some personality traits are shared by Quebecers and Albertans alike. This surprised me at first. Of course, there are several divergent qualities of character separating us, and these differences reflect the distance between provinces and language.

Even so, unique to all linguistic cultures is a traditional personality. The people of west and east are made of different histories, speech and work. The traditional character of a people is very difficult to understand unless you are a natural born member of the family. At best, I can describe the traits of the Québecois character, but telling you that they love to wave their flag does not explain why.

So, instead, I focus on shared characteristics, and significant differentiations, because they reveal clues to the formative factors that have shaped the collective side of Canada’s "personality."

Canadians are very taciturn. Have you ever noticed, that when you go to a bar in any Canadian city – nobody will ever approach you, if you are a man? I have never been talked to by anyone in a Canadian bar without having had to take the initiative. This type of experience is the same in Quebec as it is in Alberta. But, at the same time, in the United States, individual women often freely start conversations with strangers in bars.

Complaining. We Canadians complain too much without knowing how to help ourselves.

Faux tolerance. Canadians are notably appreciative of the fact that other ethnic groups within the society are beyond understanding, and therefore, should be ignored and only occasionally, and superficially, discovered. Seriously, peasant Montrealers are somewhat more tolerant than western Canadians, all of whom tend to suffer from isolation, and are often highly xenophobic, racist and bigoted...

Let’s take a closer look at the assimilation of character among Canadians in Quebec. Montrealers are for the most part of working class, peasant origin. A diverse variety of ethnic neighborhoods dot the big city; most everyone lives shoulder to shoulder. I worked in Montreal textile factories. In these factories I found an older generation of ethnic Canadians still toiling; some of them spoke their mother tongue better than English or French; they seemed to be humble, quiet, and for the most part, very civil folk. At the same time, the newest, most recent immigrants, like Poles of the Solidarnosc generation, and West Indian blacks, were toiling in the factories or driving taxis; and all of them seemed to emit a frontier character; they faced all problems immediately with a pure instinct to work at anything, hanging on, hoping to get ahead, vocally... These fresh, new Canadians considered themselves fortunate to have arrived in the New World even though our languages and society were blocking them with as many walls as the free society opened doors to new opportunities. But the fact remained, the people were compelled to become French speakers and fit into the whole of the society more easily…

People in Montreal were closer together than all the people in my home province of Alberta. Montrealers in cafés and shops would talk to me as if I was a member of the family, even if I wasn’t really. I never felt so warm in Alberta, my home, which is a society of closed-in-circles. Obviously, the many ethnic groups and the physical proximity of people in Montreal made everyone more aware of worldly variety even though social and ethnic stratification were also an inevitable consequence of sharing the same place...

The collectivity of personality traits that define Canadians lead to the issue of class stratification. We Canadians advertise the submergence of our class differences, pretending that Canadian society represents a great example of social equality; and this appearance makes us make believe that we are all the same, no matter rich or poor. However, some most definitely duplicated qualities distinguish the personalities of lower, middle and upper class Canadian people. One experience that I had in Edmonton, Alberta revealed a lot about Canadian society. Walking door to door in an attempt to sell beef, I soon realized that, with some few exceptions, the upper-middle class and above tend to be very snobby, insular people. Time and again I encountered the riche stick-in-the-mud standing in the doorway of his or her palatial home, exuding an air of impatient superiority. But the people I met in middle class and poor neighborhoods, the working man and woman, in their small bungalows and run-down row houses – they were always easier to talk to. Now, that tells you something about Canada, doesn’t it? Sure, some Canadian people, less well-off, behaved like nasty white trash, but they don’t comprise so many Canadians as you might presume. Really, most ordinary, average middle-class Canadians go without the big presumptions inspired by illusions of class privilege...

Passivity. Maybe Canadians complain so much because we never open our mouths when we really ought to. Resignation to the easiest economic path, and perpetual dependence on the outside interest to shape our destiny has detached many of us from the idea that we might be capable of managing our individual fortunes.

The perplexity of being Canadian, albeit a source of argumentativeness, is a wonderful font for humour and laughter, too. We have a natural ability for not taking ourselves too seriously. Without this saving grace, we might be as bad as the Chinese, the French or the English, caught up in a stuffy – and consequently – often unfounded sense of better wisdom. Inspired by the wingless Canadian humor, the ugly blind spots of everyday presumption, and the isolating prejudices that have long undermined the Canadian attempt at sincerity comes a question that has bothered me for quite some time: why are so many Canadian writers so backwards-looking (read: historically impelled), and iconographic (read: creating characters imbibed with the burden of thematically absolute values)? Why are Canadians so iconoclastic?

It is as if that humor arose out of a desperate frustration to hang a counter-weight upon all attempts to fulfill grand, ideal, and often – one suspects – wholly imaginary conceptions of "cultural identity." Perhaps I was too shy for finding out her judgements, but ol’ Canada always gave me the impression that she was watching me – so she could control me…

I concluded that it was all some kind of snobbery, the society had to take life away from me to see if I would go crazy or not… Sometimes, for a few years, it was my privilege too, and I circled inside with new friends, too… Canada was a series of small globes of mutual love; some circles grew, some widened, others shut; too seldom did a new one open…

But that is really because, for the most part, my life in Canada was made of creative solitude – writing alone. Nowadays, not many people take to you if you need a lot of time on your own: it’s hard to find parties to go to after awhile, even if you are sociable... Anyway, growing up in Canada, as an artist – that just left me feeling like – I should be able to use my freedom more easily… Seriously, I still want cheap, free-loving, preferably, virginal girls… Really! I’m clean!

( Of course, I’m stuck in Asia, and the concept of free love is not well-known to most people here. Some of the loveliest ladies in Taiwan are pros, whilst back home in Canada, we assume that the most desirable women are cheap, free-lovers… But now, perhaps the most desirable women in Canada are actually pros, too, as well as some unavailable married ladies; I haven’t been home in quite some time… Then again, if you are stuck in the university, reading this, it’s not too likely that you know very much about the Cisco sluts of Toronto and New York… Privacy, oh, it works wonders for liberation… Taiwan seems like just one more sick and stupid place that I have to leave behind. In Asia, you have no choice: it’s either illiberal prostitution, or nothing free at all. All Asian societies linger far behind our Western concepts of personal freedom and privacy; everything is confined by means of money… It’s the great gulf between rich and poor of Asia that makes everything here look slightly grubby. Swinging is a fashion, not a passion… Everyone in Taiwan is inhibited by a deadly and over-protective hypocrisy, a stale and hypocritical patriarchy. Women cheat on their husbands, but they can’t conceive of free love. My advice is: unless you are keen to do business in China, which is developing at a speed beyond your capacity to fathom – avoid Asia… But as for me, I can’t come home: no chance to publish, no chance to get any teens in Canada. I have to go to Thailand, too – just like the dickheads – only I’m not a dickhead – )

I don’t think I could do one in six Canadian women, one in two Chinese, maybe one in three Americans, and no more than one in four English girls… You don’t know why, and I haven’t a clue, brother. It’s complex: because turning any woman on who wants you is easy. You can measure them by how long you had to talk – if at all – before getting into bed… Or, by the way they look at you when they want you to want them… It’s easy making a girl smile…

What do you want me to talk about? The gravity of the despair inspired by human stupidity? Do you want to be the poor sap sitting in a sweating tank, on the desert, waiting to be MXed to death? Not me, pal. I want to make some new friends, too!

Humor forgets despair, and comes from a more subtle understanding of the human weaknesses; humor comprehends the limitations upon our being placed upon us by the statutes of nature; humor can lead us towards the wishful hope that is inspired by an understanding of frail human failing… People cannot hide from themselves enough – you know that…

You and I can go out: nobody will stop us from finding love... It’s about wasting your time well, instead of going about the business of senseless mayhem… Global statistics: do you know how many guns there are? How many jet fighters and tanks? How many churches, discos, hospitals? A good spanking isn’t half so chilly as a wank… Let the girls talk about sucking me off? That could be risky – there are so many delicate hearts on the line… …But I don’t wanna be gay! I just want the girls to learn how to do it right. Is that too much to ask? …No more humour… Let’s move on…

A requisite type of cultural heterogeneity defines the Canadian communal organism. Canadians enjoy espousing an odd ethos, let’s call it: cultivating the remembrance of prior identities. In the now of everyday life, we also like to place ourselves, most consciously, in the society that we imagine is ours to define – and we make exuberant efforts to express that social character, in fiction and essay. Our efforts are sometimes fantastically wishful, and sometimes, perhaps, accurate – humanly expressive of mutual comprehension...

We Canadians do live in a fantasyland built upon geographic good fortune and the hard work of our dead grandfathers. Although somewhat hagiographic in our approach to self-definition, and while we remain far too limited with respect to the type of literary work liable to be included among to the currently prescribed forms – nowadays, we Canadians do attempt, in daily life, to project a collective, modern social respect for other cultures; now, we try to defy the myths of identity that have hampered our ability to see beyond our "whiteness"; so, we seem forward and open… But traditionally, "Caucasian society" in Canada has pretended, at best, to respect cultures that are not Western-like. The fact remains: as for Amerindians and gypsy souls – good luck, babies – you’re on your own! …What happened to those slim teen cuties I saw at that Edmonton Pow-Wow, and what about that wild native beauty walking along the river in Saskatoon? I wonder if they still keep those lovely Crees and Blackfeet hidden away – somewhere in Canada? I bet it would be a wild-time trying to live with one of those untamed, limby lasses…

For generations, we white Canadians have been silently bigoted and superior, unable and unwilling to overcome our prejudices against native Canadians. Even now, at least half of white Canadians are still silent bigots – resentful and condescending in their attitude towards the natives, and immigrants from "equatorial" lands…

In recent years, popular "commodified" literary forms have distracted and inhibited many writers. I am of the opinion that it was an inevitable, and of course, a great mistake, to make creative writing part of the university program…

The whole literary publishing world in Canada has become so systematized that the community is no longer capable of spontaneously publishing someone without carrying him or her through an embryonic process of training, planned production and publicized approval. The result has been a narrowing of criteria that inadvertently scants the merits of original work... In fact, independent authors are often entirely overlooked in Canada – unless they give in – and finally find a way to force themselves through the university/council sphincters. (Yeah, yeah, I’m sphincter, too. Looks like there isn’t much work for peacemakers this week, either. Hey, tell me – do you know who gets to make a killing for those perfect beach-cunts anyway?! Some slack-scrappers just like me… You KNOW that… Mostly I prefer being peaceful and easy, why not? That I am a cheap kind of helping bone doesn’t mean that I’m not very good at doing many other things… I don’t give a shit what I’m writing – you wouldn’t dare publish it anyway, even if I edited out the crap; I’m just scribbling till I can start a new novel, soon… Slap yourselves on the back and nod up, "Yungh, he waz nastee and dang’rous… But he waz a guddun, an eaz’y heart to please… didn’ ooonly smile, love and f r e t…" Hey, but I’m told that we got some babes so out of work – with minds of their own – that they’re practically living in Thailand… So, what am I still doing here in this ssshhh—hole, Taiwan?)

The segmentation of Canadian identity into regional sub-groups has been another big "no-no-factor" that causes unreasonable limitations: "She's a Saskatchewan author, so we'll publish her – but not him – because he's from B.C., and we live in Regina…" Or worse: "He’s thirty-eight and not twenty-three anymore, so he’s too old to join our permanently-green-emerging scene…" That kind of small nonsense makes the literary scene in Canada seem like a high school club. At least, for its few members, it remains fun, safe, and yet, entirely predictable…

I’ll tease you: the universities tend to produce average intellects who discuss only the winners of official approbation – no matter the actual intrinsic merit of their literary work. Judging by their mimicry of official adulation, it’s as if these prom queens of literature – writers and critics both – share the code to automate the infrastructure of New Jerusalem... Why all this appearance of seriousness and insider privilege? Because, a big country with few people must have a distinct cultural community – of some kind! But I’d suggest, true critical objectivity is impossible if the people actually writing excellent literary work, right now, are too few. The literature in Canada – that you are aware of – dare you observe – has become party to a single technocratic organism. Certainly, hundreds of "independent" authors live in Canada, but you don’t know anything about them; they publish through vanity presses. Unless you count those few commercial artists who publish with major trade publishers in the U.S.A, you’ll never see their work. Most everyone among the "official" Canadian literary community, writers and scholars both, do not even know who these successful commercial authors are! Pauline Gedge, from Alberta, is a good example.

There’s one much more obvious cause behind the systematization of literary output in Canada. Have you got a job? Everyone needs to put bread and butter on the table. Staying in school forever guarantees you plenty-busy-work, my man…

The truth remains plain: the population of Canada is tiny; and though several people try to write, few of us are really any good...

Perhaps the great novel is too difficult for us to read. The background knowledge with which people are filled today is comprised of trivial nonsense… The form of consciousness experienced by most of us is fractured and much denuded of cultural depth and knowledge. We are unwilling to think unless we are compelled to – unless we believe that we must! Aha! Wouldn’t someone like J. Edgar Hoover have loved the term, geek? Because, he could have used such a word to terrorize anyone with too much of an independent brain – to help transform America into its apparently proper form – a crew of "safe" monkeys, too-rude and blood-thirsty for words… I suspect that the mood turned against intellectualism a much longer time ago than we have realized…

We have become passive receptors feeding entirely on preprocessed images and untested truth statements... We choose junk food over good food, and so feed on prejudice and opinion instead of more profoundly critical reflections.

How many times have I seen ignorance give rise to fear of sound social critique – or fresh, audacious action!? This Victorian-constraint could be the product of too-much-TV, second-rate religion – and without a doubt: insufficient knowledge. Further, the structure of bureaucratized approval that imbues all university advancement, as well as the approbation doled out by arts councils, tends to support group dynamics only: you must participate in a community, and it can be helpful to imitate the current stylistic – if you want to get ahead… Yet, the fact remains: if you are an individual – you must think for yourself. You won’t get anywhere by continually citing the authority of others.

But there’s no doubt: our capacity for aesthetic discrimination has been diluted. If you visit a discount furniture store, you will find lots of pretty pictures for sale. Most of us buy whatever is mass-produced, cheap and available – but we cannot buy so easily what is recognizable as "fine art." Not anymore. This effect of industrialization was noted over one hundred years ago. Since then, fine art sales are small fry. For a long time, new techniques of reproduction have perpetuated that insatiable genie: Novelty.

Of course, while many of us are now much "more informed," we’ve become much more cynical and pig-headed in our beliefs, too; we often mistake a too credulous (and even cynical) faith in our own ignorance for true insights about the ways of the supposedly "real" world…

I really think that people have become too unworldly now – we are built all of ego and image-assumptions – and we tolerate only the sorts of ideas and impressions that tend to satisfy our expectation for what the truth of things "ought-to-be." Only people who filter their work through the calculus of business are taken seriously. A lot of nonsensical ideas are destroying art; and they teach these "sensible" ideas in schools now, too: like, "be popular, or go to hell."

We should figure out how to use what’s actually happening to make some solutions. Well, we do try, but we have a very long way to go, when it comes to replacing ourselves with a more peaceful human being. We are out of control. Economy controls us: we do not know how to build that peaceful, clean and efficient society, that better world that no longer needs to buy and sell the manufacture of self-destruction by means of better bombs and poisons… Oooops. Where did all those homes and gardens go? The linguists were correct: the only reason that we put our faith behind nuclear bombs was because of English grammar: "We will need nuclear bombs. We need nuclear bombs…" But of course, the force of the future is defeated by the irrevocability of disaster, viewed from the past tense: "We really needed those nuclear bombs, didn’t we?" After everyone has been killed, the notion of needing bombs doesn’t make sense, in any tense…

Who cares what being a Canadian is? This seems a trivial question compared to the gravity of our problems, and the want for sound solutions. We can’t live in fantasyland forever! We have to wake up and wonder: where has the capacity for critical investigation, and literary creativity, really gone?

Among literate folk, as popular forms become predominant, authors are obliged, inevitably, to lower their aims. But the rationale applies a more euphemistic language: we are now "clever enough to write for a market." Of course, it does happen that a Canadian author will unexpectedly sell something to a big Amercian publisher – but usually only after some formulaic calculation – and much much more seldom – after suffering a stroke of pure genius.

No more do we credit writing for ourselves as the higher end; even less, do we suggest that one ought to write from devotion to a well-articulated and personal concept of art…

A specific issue of great annoyance to me is the fact that the official critics have overlooked some real problems with Canadian fiction. (They come later…)

But first… Naturally, the qualification needs to be made: some few talents provide rare exceptions to all of the enfeeblements innate to literature in Canada, the result perhaps, of something like a sense of noblese oblige, attenuated and fading, but still recalling a lost generosity of imagination that once lived between true brothers possessed of absolutely free and independent minds… Now, there’s nothing to excuse your madness, or the world’s – everyone is crazy now – yes, it’s true... Look to see who’s feeling you up!

I know, it’s so easy to get freaked-out nowadays; the world is too crazy. People killing for no reason but some dumb belief in anti-human pish about redeeming allahahahahhh’s and yeshot’s fking grocery coupons. Having arrived to baptize us already, I just hope the ol’ holy ghost succeeds where others like me have failed to make peace… Such a quiet stake: peace – but you can only drive it through the heart of evil after the fight is over! That’s so funny: we have to wait until after all the dummies have shot each other to hell. Then and only then can everyone go home to fuck the cute young girls… Wow, isn’t civilization so peachy NEAT? Let’s be keen – and laugh at it – before it kills us all dead!

You tell me! You don’t know how weird things can get until you turn on the morning news to see that a disco in Bali was bombed. I was at a disco that very morning in Taipei – and it made me start to cry when I saw that tragedy. Makes me want to die, too. I wasn’t born smashing things up – were you? Oh yes, the madness of everyone else’s self-repression does hinder the best of us… (But when other people force those repressions on each other – then it seems obvious that the world is absolutely insane, superstitious, HYPOCRITICAL and repressed…)

Whose brains have the most mush and meatballs in them? What are you going to do about that!? How are you going to write about love now? …People are disaffected peons of their own tutelage to faith in some kind of perfect hell, or heaven, or astrological superstition – which ever "perfect truth" is most supremely appealing to the mood of civilization at the moment. Nothing makes sense: naïve cults, fake TV fantasy, and superstitions replace our reflective intelligence – everyone seems dumb to the sensual joys of being alive! Go for a walk through the forest and open your eyes…

In consequence, and in response to the world’s insanity, I always try (and often fail) to pursue my more natural appetites, quite self-persuaded that a strong bond with the satisfaction of my Earthly needs can help to establish my sanity, or at least, correct the madness forced on me by everyone who doesn’t want me to have any fun… That’s why I love to ride a bike or do something physical. That’s why I will move to Thailand and build my cabin in Sri Lanka – so that I can find time to write, swim, cycle and lay teenage girls, too. Refreshed physical and sexual intimacy restores your metabolism, and it’s easy to live with anyone who keeps active and free… Why bother to explain that we tire of being alone, or that we tire of being with the same person for too long? The technological age has addicted everyone to novel experiences; so we need them to thrive now.

Fresh from the hedges and pissin’ relief… What ? …e’s back on about Canaday writin’!? …Shaiyte!

Before interrupting myself, I was trying to say that Canadian literature suffers from certain odd – but for some of you – "agreeable" – habits of mind:

1) lack of realism and originality;

2) clichéism;

3) void of content and empty style.

The first problem is linked to the inability of writers to transpose their experience into real fictional worlds; Canadian writers will imagine an impossible situation and pretend that it is somehow "realistic." In this mode, a good example of poor writing (ie.: stilted, artificial and simplistic) is the work of St. Pierre. Passable writing in this mode comes from W.O. Mitchell, who, by the way, did not actually grow up in Canada at all – but in Florida. You didn’t know that?

The Canadian milieu reveals many strange perplexities, but perhaps it mostly reveals a bigger trend, a leveling downwards of the literary vernacular. How come everyone has heard of Matt Cohen? His work seemed to me simplistic, as I read a few passages, glancing through one of his books once, finally deciding that it would be too boring to read. At the same time, nobody knows anything about another Canadian author – Norman Levine, who is a brilliant thinker, and a stylist with a deep understanding of what language can be made to express…

Sometimes, our authors will choose a life-situation so mundane, that the theme can barely be discerned except as some abstraction that appears to bear no direct link with the dynamic of the story at all, except perhaps that it is attested to arise from the era and place, "on the prairie" or "in the city of Toronto." It’s as if formal pronouncements can supply substance where there’s none at all. The less imaginative of our writers have evaded the problem involved with expressing modern identity by writing historical novels the verity and authenticity of which cannot be questioned so easily.

Lack of originality is less difficult to explain because it may have something to do with that annoying form of exclusive bigotry that blandly seeks to void ground-breaking originality by breeding ignorance, ie.: the Canadian Silence. The best example of the Canadian Silence involves, obviously, all those topics of non-discussion that consume our silently-held prejudices, like our condescension towards Native Canadians, and the collective ignorance that we cultivate about the actual condition of our own culture…

I suppose that I am also a victim of the Canadian Silence, too; having only once subscribed to a literary magazine from Canada, how could I pretend to be "one of Canada’s finest living authors?" As for the few really fine authors, epic masters unfurling grand schemes, who are bold enough to sport an artful dynamic, like Hugh Hood, that poor star, well – nobody knows!

The Canadian Silence is made of a very typical fear – of knowing ourselves, and of improving ourselves... Amongst Canadian authors, the Silence is a fear of expressing ourselves in modes that do not imitate acceptable styles, forms and ready-made themes; perhaps the cause of the Canadian Silence is that inextricable winter that confines our spirit; this silent, cold idiom reflects our cautious intimacy, and too often its mood separates the idiosyncratic dispositions and personalities of many Canadians from mutual comprehension; so, in our ignorance, we seek security through unthinking mimicry of the brightest (and dimmest) lights.

Who are we Canadians – nobody but a mishmash of divergent characters – rural and urban, quirky – yet typed – and therefore, predictable… I intend "predictable" to mean that it’s all too easy to anticipate the content of our stubborn opinions well before we speak them; all Canadians share and oppose personal character by means of opinions and type-cast social dispositions…

Paradoxically, the exceptionally few number of early original literary voices makes it very difficult for Canadian writers and critics to begin any attempt to elucidate the definitive character of our national identity. …Of course, there is no such thing as a "national identity" – not here, not anywhere – and the idea of a strong national character remains a distracting and illusory concept, held-over from a past-time of intellectual discourse. We are well into the era of internationalized global citizenship, along with its attendant cultural forms, norms and interchangeable personality types. What seems most obvious is the fact that too many Canadian writers have felt cut-off, and have borrowed their roots, and even, invented them out of nothing! The artificiality shows itself up – time and again.

Clichéism runs thickly through Canadian literature. It permeates shoddy metaphors, trite plots and uninteresting writing styles. There is nothing to do, except to realize that this situation is all too true.

A void of content and lack of flamboyant style is a source of grave consternation. Few authors get beyond the most incredibly stolid dialoguing about nothing in particular. There is too much soppy idealization about the happier and unhappier realizations that are likely to possess our protagonists. There isn’t enough emotive and intellectual exploration. With mind-numbing frequency, these faults recur again and again – and the result is a literature that is quite boring to read... So many dull descriptions of people occupying physical spaces, and of their "to-and-fro movements" between "garage and front door," occur in Canadian fiction that one is led to suspect that such witless writing happens simply because these writers do not have anything much to say about human life at all, in the first place!

Strangely, the critics, for all their sophisticated blather about things like the "structure of narrative voice," say nothing about the vast gray barrens that denude the literary style of our authors… The greatest novel, as only a gifted and poetically attuned author understands, is actually an expression of pure imaginative contemplation. Nothing much more need be added to supplement that definition…

Yet what do we have? The boring minimalism, the diminutive realism and the coy fantasies popularized by Canadian authors are mostly bland and at best, vaguely clever. Without subtle themes or daring language – most of us Canadians are simplistic wordsmiths… Canadian fiction lacks intellectual depth and imaginative development. Look at it. We can’t talk about anything profoundly interesting at all, and seldom do you find a lyrically inspired metaphor!

The life of an author is a black comedy of compromise, despair and creative bliss. I hope to live long enough to complete many novels. In all probability, I will write only a few, and maybe only one or two really good novels…

The devotion I feel to art is sometimes an easy thing, while at other moments, a desperate burden. No regrets about my productivity.

I suppose my only regret revolves around imagining that I have been excluded from the fascinating sport of high-society that popular authors, pro-poets and entertainment industry hacks are so welcome to enjoy. Yes, I too long to join a fresh cocktail party in Manhattan or Toronto – every weekend – to prove my rightful place as a virile artist; I want to feel more than welcome to bring home that perfectly sophisticated socialite slut – with whom I can speak freely about everything – and then enjoy the thrill of first-time sex. But, perhaps that fantasy is already twenty years past, and I’m not waiting anymore; I’ve almost grown up enough to start paying for it…

So what’s the genuine artist's life supposed to be anyway – and who cares? One thing that I know for sure: it certainly is NOT defined by being able to stay in school for years and years, trying to teach kids how to write, and filling out application forms for projects processed by a regular crew of government technocrats and same-old-artists. …But remember, you can’t win any prizes unless you’re on view and appear successful. CVs before art! So, you all have to stay in school, and on display – forever! You won’t get your Nobel otherwise. Ha, ha, ha… I really pity you guys…

Really, everyone ought to know that the life of a free-minded novelist, of all artists, is nothing but a remarkable series of events that grow into an inspired vision of the cosmos and civilisation. Nothing but life experience should be an artist’s paramount source of inspiration and concern…

I am well aware that I always give the wrong impression of my attitude. I met (or almost met) some of Canada’s most respected writers and poets. Sometimes they were just sitting there on the street: Atwood sat on a sidewalk bench in Montreal, watching me as I strolled by; in an offhand way, as I passed, she said that "it’s all I can do to keep myself afloat…" (I assume that she meant… "by her writing work…")

I once went to a reading by friendly and humble Tim Findley – neither judging nor advising – he seemed to be waiting to escape from the reading room, quietly, without having to give away his true inner emotion – fear – perhaps of someone he perceived as meaner than himself...

Another day, I was walking along on Sherbrooke street – and this is the truth – nearby the remains of a recently demolished church; what should happen but a most seriously enraged-looking Northrop Frye walked past me, glaring; I couldn't bear to look into his angry eyes – so full of commanding expectation – or maybe that was condemnation?! At the very least it was an expression of exclamation: "See how serious you are." Or maybe he really meant – "Just look at how everything is ruined!" Whatever he was thinking, I refuse to believe that he, of all people, would have the lower, instead of the higher man!

Once I went to a great meeting of Montreal's finest living writers and met MacLennan and his cute wifey, only a year before he tipped off; he complained of the nation’s political malaise. But he was really perturbed, I think, about the steady-state of Canada, a country capable of neither growth nor disappearance; maybe life can be too long! At the same soirée, two doubles told me laughingly to go home – poet Gustafson and his brother. Layton talked about hate in his speech and afterwards, I asked him if he knew anything about love, as I poked his round little belly with my forefinger.

Dan Daniels had a better collection of books than I'll ever discover – and unabashedly kept his growing-up personality, Yiddish accent and all, intact. He wrote some leftist plays sixty years ago.

What was I doing with Lane and his wifey, Crozier? Nothing, except getting drunk and listening to Lane repeat, since he was drunk too, that I should, "Never give up, never give up..!"

Wishfully curious was that lovely girl, Susan Musgrave. She was so nervously turned on, reciting poems, nipples erect beneath the soft slip of her dress. She gazed with such longing and wonderment at my young face.

…Women are everywhere! Yeah, I did get up the Go, and a few instant lovers laughed with me besides her. Danced a lot. Got my head stuck so far up a cloud, I didn’t realize at first that that was sleeky Crate, sitting alone with me in the empty cinema, watching a new Canadian flick about an Italian family… Going out after the movie, I failed to introduce myself.

( Talk about the effects of the mass media on our "national" consciousness: Canadians have such an inferiority complex about our own movies that we won’t even go to a Canadian movie – if we can find one available – unless it appears to have won some international promotion and "success…" We Canadians only go to a new movie if it comes from Approval Machine, U.S.A., ie.: a movie that is already heavily advertised in the papers, on radio and tv. This situation is more or less the same everywhere now, except China and a few other countries, where going to the cinema can sometimes be like going to an international film festival – even in the sticks of Chengdu... You don’t know, I’ve been there…)

Kirsten Eyes wasn’t mine, nor Lovrics and Rita E… Such plums… Perfect pet Caron wanted to give herself, and she was exactly my type, too; as did Jane, Paula, Geng, and Peacocke, too. All the women of my generation are sluts before wives: it doesn’t matter which country you come from, girls… I wonder if you realize that? Ms. Thomas and so many other girls understand me… Today, the lusty little Taiwanese girls are free to do whoever they please. But you don’t know how hard I haven’t tried to get ‘em. Yeah, I’ll tell you one thing that I do know: chickenshits everywhere still have a lot to learn about coming on! Despite that, I’ll still try to get my tongue into a few new, untried, on-my-velvet-virginals… Some five-ninety-five amaaahs, some good and groggy lambs…

…Maybe it was shyness and a sense of failure that made me leave home. No chance to publish. I felt too confined and embarrassed by solitude – and I wanted to open my mind again… I felt that there was something wrong with me – and it had nothing to do with being alone. Leaving Canada reflected a need to see beyond the narrow confines of myself – and everyone around me. I wanted some therapy, to broaden my vistas and experience… It was time to go to a WARMER place, too. Not only to escape my sexual hang-ups and personal failings… . ( Like many of us – I’ve been gay, too. That’s even more complicated. I haven’t explained it well to myself. Now, I feel quite strongly that sex is sex: with man or woman, to me it’s all the same action. But I prefer spending time with women. Men, I like to talk with... )

Eight years since, and a few Taiwanese girls later, it should be as easy using me as a condom, or a lipstick. But everyone is just waiting for me to leave, again. I suppose that’s because I don’t really want a wife or family anyway. I’m not so worried about that… I can always try to meet someone new – any night of the week… I am free, and I feel free: I can just move on to another country – sooner than planned!

Because I’m forty now, and I still want someone new... Ah, you’ve seen all that come-down before. But I’m not so chilly, possessive or inhibited as to look down on truly free love: cheap sex is free of class hang-ups, and material greed becomes meaningless to the experience of physical and spiritual freedom. …That’s why I’m not so excited about having to pay for it! Why confuse love-making with driving a fancy car? Let pop-singers do that… I would, too – if I believed in all that money – and the silly illusion of social success and security that pretending to be rich promotes… All that "success" pollutes things and jams up the roads, that’s all…

…I know, I know that they want to go on doing the same old thing: lending-in the same safe troop of tired conservatives – raised to grow up fast, and get old prematurely.

So many people have I known, and whom I have lost – forever – because I’ll not be coming home for dinner, dear… Sure, I can drop more names, not all of them Canadian, but what’s the point? Permission doesn’t come from the public and the publisher – it comes first from your own soul…

Complacency is, by far, the biggest sin of the big-headed. If I appear too content with the little knowledge of everything that I’ve learned so far, perhaps that actually belies my ignorance, and perhaps, my fear of being found out. But God may not actually be able to help you out, without your faith in It… You have to compel your mind and heart to believe in GOD before you understand the experience of faith – isn’t that what all the Xmas salesmen say? But I don’t want to force myself to believe in things that seem like old myths to me… Uh-ohhh, Mr. Dave – he gotta-go!

Actually, I’m dissatisfied and feel fairly provincial now: quite permanently cut-off, as well as officially left-out. It’s an awareness of having missed so many good things – fine novels that I won’t get a chance to read, and all the women who aren’t ever going to cross my path at all. ( Even if they come to me, I probably won’t notice the brave darlings anyway... )

At the same time, I am happy about myself. I am happy to be a writer, and feel like one born to the art. I’m confident, while I’m not much of a professional, at least, not in the "serious" or "economical" sense. I’ll just go on playing dumb: no CV, no prizes… But plenty of writing – that you don’t know about… ( The blondes of Canada’s Queen’s Quarterlies have no choice but to reject my literary work; they tell me that their audience is so very "conservative." Ha, ha, ha… Man, the stupid shit that REAL people will actually say to you! Oh yeah, and if Hart Crane were alive today, they wouldn’t publish him either. )

Nowadays, the criteria applied to select material suitable for publication is not merely narrow, but it inhibits anyone with original work from flourishing! The opposite is ostensibly taught in school: "write what you want, say what you feel, be free to express yourself as you need to…" But in practice, nobody is actually encouraged to do this, probably because few people actually can write original work that’s any good! And original art is discouraged, too, because it finds no place in the systems of formulaic genre (whether it’s the shared-school-stylistic, or the commercialized-sale-maker-formula – the homogenizing effect is the same)…

Why should my poems or stories have to resemble someone else’s before they can be published? Don’t you realize that Canadian magazines have instigated an implicit expectation for a particular type of "current & standardized stylistic form"? The fallout of this watered down, monkey-criteria is: POOR literature. Originality and daring intellectual fiction has no place now.

Everyone is so bent on cultivating and preserving their respectable little pro-name. What a lot of timid crap! …Oh, I know that it’s important to keep up on your contemporaries; you have to take your community membership very seriously – not to appear too selfish or ignorant. But since I don’t much care for the type of work being done by my contemporaries – the McHewans, McEwans and Austers – I haven’t any excuse for my taste, besides saying, "Sorry, but I’m just not tuned into today’s literary fiction. I find it too freighty, the language is too spare; it’s boring, and it’s quite empty of interesting ideas. Character sketches, minimal cleverness and mood music – that just doesn’t do it for me."

Yes, I haven’t read enough to be a good judge. It’s my personal-vision-hang-up-bullshit. …I really need some sun, and a passive-solar-heater to shower with; I need a heely little zoomie – you know – lusty-wannas, early schrooners, headful babettes – ungree tongahs… What-a-mfk’n mess! Let’s-fk.

…a chisel – that, I’ve already got; so at least I can keep afloat assuming I can go on swimming, dancing and riding. And not get too lazy to go out and buy some fresh groceries. Let me go! …I’ll just hide behind some old stuff; I’d rather read an old Durrell anyway, at least it’s artful, and linguistically rich…

Put it this way: we haven’t much chance to figure out that too many strings are attached to our collective destiny. How can you realize a perfect-work-of-art when you’re all so told-what-to-do? Probably, you’ll be running out the door before you figure out what you could do with your writing after all…

It’s no wonder suspense-thrillers sell so easily now! Hey, maybe after I write the world’s tenth-ever lyrical-literate sci-fi novel, I’ll try my hand at the profitable sado-romance genre – why not? It’s a waste of time? …I know. Okay, instead I should try unraveling my 200 fresh ideas for believable human fictions: they lie loosely tangled and untried all around my imagination (and in my notebooks)…

I’ve got to get out of here and go write a few novels… I promise: I will, soon. Get them to put me back together, first. My heart’s on loan. …Sometimes I feel like the zombie of a fate that I could never believe is mine; then, my acute intelligence suffers an anguished resignation, and I feel almost embarrassed to be alive... Well, not really – not anymore. I like to be creative – the pleasure of finishing a new project always gives me a refreshing sense of substantial accomplishment – I really get a thrill from being creative! I feel blessed with the freedom to write exactly what I want; so, nobody in the whole world is as lucky as I! A gift feels easy – ecstatic.

I don’t mind being "unheard-of"… Nobody in Canada knows who our writers are anyway – except for other writers – and a few enthusiasts who love to read. As others have noted: we Canadians have suffered too much over-reaction in the effort to protect and promote our "literary cultural identity" – a compulsion to self-definition that becomes distended and ends all messed up, an embarrassing self-parody – atrophying. Face it: Canada, as a literary idiom, has too much fantasyland, and not enough demonstrable character. We are too preoccupied with trying to assert a recognizable mask for our identity… Why bother? The world is changing you as much as you pretend to make the world become whom you desire…

Why us? Perhaps this self-conscious phenomenon arises simply from close proximity to the dissemination of mass-market publishing, as well as the new dominance of electronic "aural-visual culture." Perhaps we have been set up to fall prey to realities over which we have no control. …The fading memory of European roots, West Indian roots, Asian roots… Whatever your roots – the past is effaced by the present day…

Trust yourself. If you are talented, the confidence to create good work comes for free, it seems easy. Mature talent is an inner calm, a complete knowledge of all that you are able to create, especially as you engage with the first instant of new work.

You can forget about me. I’m the same as everyone else: almost completely tame, I’m kept well under control, fully conditioned to bide all of my wasted time, at least as helplessly as you are...

…I want to float in the warm tropical sea – and relax all my muscles. Pain departs. Remember a favorite kiss. Much happier than this, my imaginary, hopeless stasis-state of perpetually crazy flight... But then again, don’t we all get disappointed with imaginary stuff?

What can a man say after he forgets what he should do? Give up fighting, first. Then walk out on yourself. …Find another woman, or a new place to go. Enter the real world outside imagination. Let all the bad habits of your heart pass you by. I learned to swallow my pride long ago – it’s nothing but anger against… I don’t know – the power that inanimate matter has over our destiny – the sorrow of a distant light smiling upon your pitiful idea of heaven.

Forget yourself: go out and search for a more novel touch. Nothing can return your helpless home to you… Your own heart calls out for you to live – despite the mad chaos and the cruel injustice of this world. You are blessed and lucky enough if you can read and understand these words…

Love doesn’t cease, and it never forgets. The wind falls through her heart, too. Your heart and his, hers and theirs: all of us love the same love... Be satisfied with yourself, at the very least. Then you can enjoy life…

She’s on her talking stool, just waiting for your cool, "…Hey, can I string you up, Miss Too-Witty-Too-Woooooo?"