(The following is a response to a Canadian Poetry class.)
"Canadian literature is dead."
I think I've encountered that sentiment in other forms... Canadian literature is non-existent, Canadian literature is boring. But I mentioned that line to an English grad friend of mine, and I was met with the response, "Was it ever alive?"
This was the first time I'd encountered the Kingston Conference, and I'd like to study it further, but one of the things that aggravates me about FR Scott based on the portrayal I witnessed tonight is that he seemed to have just given up. For the past few years I've envisioned a collective of writers banding together to get literature thriving, and the class talks about the ins and outs of such an effort each week. Whether it's money or a failure on behalf of the established Canadian writers to help others along or the monopoly possessed by the big name publishers and chains, something is stifling the Canadian voice and preventing the nation's writers from discovering what really makes us function as a people.
We cannot read the thoughts and ideas of our fellow citizens if they aren't out there en masse for public consumption, this is true. There's something else that's been gnawing at me, however, and tonight's class crystalized it a tad. Canadian writers are apathetic towards each other. If the actions of FR Scott are any indication, the postmodernist movement has spelled the end of Canadian literature before it really began bellowing a distinctive voice, all because writers don't care about what others are writing. They may love the craft, but is it really true that deep down they don't love to see it practiced by a community? That the Canadian writer is afraid of being buried in a sea of people contemplating the same questions of identity and cultural formation, so he/she strives to get ahead on his/her own dime?
Perhaps that's part of the condition of being Canadian. We're a lonely people, striving to connect, but when it comes to the artistic realms we desire to connect only on levels of academia and/or the production of art that separate us from our peers. We are drawn towards being individually distinct, announcing proclamations such as, "Hey, this is me; I am the Canadian writer, and I am the Canadian writer worth reading. I am the creator and the voice without colleague or contemporary." Is this true? Are we simply not admitting it to ourselves?
Postmodernism doesn't help matters. Study of the individual does not allow for study outside the individual, and in Canada, perhaps it also does not allow for the writer's study of art outside that of the individual's own. Appreciation has fallen by the wayside. Sure, there were a few that congregated in Montreal and reaped success from knowing one another and deciding that a community would make the Canadian voice louder, but that was forty years ago, and while it's fun to romanticize what it must have been like to wine and dine and distribute homegrown material in the streets of such an internationally flavoured location, we must realize that we have made it a fiction to a certain extent and have made ourselves lackadaisical in our own setting and time. If what I heard a University student (studying English in the country's capital no less) say tonight is true, the Canadian voice has died, gone unnoticeable under the sounds of cash registers opening and closing, and the silent contempt of the "Canadian writer" for all other voices around them.
Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. In class, we're only midway through the 20th century. Although, we're at a point in class where postmodernism is just starting to come into focus, and I KNOW the condition of the Canadian writer doesn't get any more encouraging. I dislike postmodernism, even though a lot of the writing is brilliant (Kroetsch and Ondaatje are among my favorite writers, period), and I believe that it was an inevitable movement. But there's a flaw inherent in postmodernism that will see it die off - the literature will begin to eat itself. The scary part is that potentially, there seems to be nothing left afterwards. Canadians are studying themselves for an identity, but postmodernism is going to end up announcing that there is none. It already has; it's apparent in the way we struggle with it every week.
I refuse to think that postmodernism will put an end to Canadian literature. Our literature may be "dead," but we now have the opportunity for rebirth. It is time to put an end to postmodernism, time to end the way we look at ourselves only to discover that we are solitary and invisible. It is time to start caring more about what other people have to say in order to help them say it more clearly. It is time to write and read that which is being written, for only when we do so will we know what we are saying. It is time to move beyond complaining about the lack of a Canadian identity and literature and move towards an understanding of who we are right now so that we may move to change if necessary. And if we must change, we must change together.
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