
The Search for the Great Canadian Novel - pepys
https://thewalrus.ca/the-search-for-the-great-canadian-novel/
======
nickelcitymario
> Why is it that in over a century of writing—much of it explicitly obsessed
> with questions of nationhood and identity—we have only a handful of novels
> that come close to representing the full sweep of Canadian life?

Being from Northern Ontario, I'd say the question kinda answers itself if you
simply follow it by asking: which Canada?

Although Canada tends to be viewed as a homogeneously multicultural society
(we all have our ideas of what any given country is like), Canada is (pardon
my language) fucking huge. To ask for a novel to capture "the full sweep of
Canadian life" is like asking for an American novel to somehow captures the
essence of American life spanning California, Florida, New York, Texas, Utah,
etc etc etc. America is best understood as union of otherwise unique states
(you could call it... a united states). Canada is similar.

While you might reasonably expect a novel to capture the essence of living in
France in a certain period of time, or in Spain, or in Italy, you could not
reasonably expect a novel to capture all of the European experience. It's
folly. And yet in Canada, we could fit most of Europe inside any one of our
provinces or territories.

Canada may be a unified political entity, but it's not a unified cultural
entity. There is a world of difference between the experience of growing up in
Québec versus growing up in Alberta -- a difference as great as what I imagine
it would be like to grow up in Utah versus New York, or Germany versus
Britain.

It's a foolish idea to try and capture "the Canadian experience" because that
experience doesn't exist. It's not a thing. Except maybe that it gets pretty
cold in the winter and hockey is fairly universally liked for some reason.

~~~
Alex63
Fair criticism, but I think the author of the article does address your point:

"A Francophone biker in Lennoxville, a Cree lawyer in Manitoba, a Punjabi-
speaking business owner on the Lower Mainland, and an anglophone trader on Bay
Street may not share any basic ground of identity or culture, but all are, to
varying degrees, united by practical bonds of jurisprudence, government, and
economics. The novelist’s job is to shed light on the brute fact of those
binding forces, and that usually means paying close attention to the
institutions and individuals responsible for the country’s current state of
affairs."

Personally, I would vote for something by Farley Mowat. ;)

~~~
Amygaz
That’s actually not true, just look at how the Quebec media vs Ontario media
report about the federal government.

------
decasteve
> Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes (published in 1945) and The Watch That Ends
> the Night (published in 1959) are valiant if flawed attempts to depict
> Canada’s struggle with its own identity in the middle years of the twentieth
> century.

I’d say the characterization applied to other works also applies to MacLennan:

> These novels omnivorously took in cross-sections of society...

Even with the apparent confusion around Canadian identity depicted in
literature, there are plenty of examples in the article where the cross-
sections are well described.

I enjoyed the article nonetheless.

------
magneticnorth
Margaret Atwood has written several non-sci-fi novels that would qualify, in
my opinion, as Great Canadian Novels - e.g. Alias Grace or The Blind Assassin.

------
doodlebugging
Pierre Berton - The Mysterious North

I really enjoyed this historical novel. The guy had a way of telling the story
that really pulled me in. I picked up the book at a book store in Edmonton
years ago and liked it so much I loaned it out, never to see it again.

It was such a great book that I recently found it on AbeBooks and bought a
replacement copy.

~~~
pinewurst
His Canadian histories are all excellent too and well worth reading.

------
ggm
Robertson Davies forever!

------
Amygaz
Lucy Maud Montgomery

