CNQ shortlisted for National Magazine Awards

Congratulations are in order to Lynn Coady and Caroline Adderson, whose short stories published in Canadian Notes & Queries Magazine have been shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards.

Lynn Coady's "Dogs in Clothes," which appeared in CNQ 85 and Caroline Adderson's "Ellen-Celine, Celine-Ellen," which appeared in CNQ 86, both made the cut along with six other works of fiction published in Canadian magazines this year.

Further congratulations go to the numerous other Biblioasis authors who were shortlisted for various National Magazine awards, including Patricia Young in both the "One of a Kind" and Poetry categories, Lorna Jackson in the Fiction category, Russell Smith in the Personal Journalism category, and Robyn Sarah in the Poetry category.

The winners will be announced at the National Magazine Awards Gala June 7th at the Carlu in Toronto. For more information, head over to magazine-awards.com.

Good luck to all our finalists!

Nests, sticks, sweat, stones, and - Congress?

Good morning, all. We've been mired in trade show preparations this past week at the Bibliomanse, with Congress coming up this weekend in Kitchener and BEA the week after that. Storing up on lozenges and caffeine pills. Which is why--oh shame!--I haven't yet pointed you all to the lovely series of blogs that Alice Petersen is doing this week for The Afterword. So! Here we go & here I am, pointing it out with my digital walking-stick. They're there. By the clump of wild carrots, next to the hickory stump, just north of the ...


Sigh. 


Yesterday's post was especially nice. Torturous but nice. Between that and the sun and booking a ferry ticket from Victoria to Seattle for Mme Malarky's next tour installment, I'm feeling a little more--I was going to say Wordsworthian but that's not right, I think someone like Ernest Thompson Seton is closer to the mark--a little more woodsy than one ought to feel, heading to an academic conference. But if you're there, do stop by and say hello--we'll be reporting live from WLU throughout the weekend and early next week--booth number one. Starting bright and early Saturday morning. See you there! 


Objectively speaking one should mention there are some good deals to be had. Is your CNQ subscription about to expire? Breathe some life into it cheap. Ridiculously cheap. I mean, we were cheap before, but this is downright floozyish. What else? Sign up for our mailing list and get free swag. An issue of CNQ, a chance to win a prize-pack of ten books, the pleasure of bimonthly and quasi-harrassing emails from yours truly, flogging events at a TOWN NEAR YOU ... what's there to lose? TELL YOUR FRIENDS. 

On the Stand (& in Your Mailbox): CNQ 84

After a range of delays, CNQ 84 has finally hit news-stands and mailboxes across the country.  And last Saturday the issue came in for some early love from James Adams over at the Globe & Mail:

I'd but the latest CNQ just for its cover, a fabulous gate-fold of more than a dozen Canadian superheroes, conceived and drawn by the inimitable Seth.  All hail the King of Kanuck Kartoonists! As ever, though, with CNQ, there's plenty of interesting stuff inside.

And is there ever! Adams highlights K.D. Miller's exceptional Growing Into Alice, Alex Good's look at Douglas Coupland and Aaron Gibreath's On Discovering CanLit, but he could just as well have highlighted Phil Marchand's Faith and Literature, or Patricia Robertson's Against Domesticated Literature, or Brian Busby's continuing Dusty Bookcase look at Basil King, or Devon Code on Alvin Shcwartz, or the first of a new column by David Mason called Secrets of the Book trade, or our own Tara (no stranger to Thirsty readers) Murphy's look at the 2011 Griffin Prize, or the North Wing take on Robertson Davies's Fifth Business, or Alex Boyd's poems, or Shaena Lambert's story Clams, or.... and I haven't even made it to the reviews yet!

And what James Adams could not tell you about in his Globe column is this issue's collectible, as it is not available on the news-stand. But you, dear Thirsty reader, could get it for free with your paid subscription to the journal.  This issue's collectible is a hand-bound chapbook of the title fable from Mike Barnes's forthcoming The Reasonable Ogre.  You'll be hearing a lot more about this book in the coming weeks and months, but this story will hopefully whet your appetite for more.  It's a lovely little production (though our attempt to produce the cover letterpress on the old platen press in the garage failed miserably.  Give me time, give me time.)

The website has been updated with some new content from the current issue for readers to test drive.  And there are more plans afoot there, as well, that should help bring CNQ well into the ... err....  20th century.  But all of that will keep for a time and for another post.

CNQ has a New Blog

Though I have intended to start a new CNQ blog for a couple of years now, for one reason or another -- mainly: not enough hours in the day -- I've yet to do it. But one of my New Year's resolutions for the business has been to work on the online aspects of both press and journal, so this week I've started to update the journal blog. I'll try and update it with links, occasional interviews, articles and other material at least several times a week, focusing on writing by CNQ editors and contributors, and it is my hope that some of our contributing editors may occasionally step in as well to keep things fresh. It may be worth checking in on from time to time.

Today's link is to another article by antiquarian bookseller David Mason. His Selling Civilization (CNQ 76) was probably the most loved and commented article of 2009. There's a new article by him forthcoming in issue 78 on the art of book scouting, which ranks, in my mind, as one of the most charming and informative essays on bookselling I've read in many a year. I've linked to an essay on Mason's website, originally published in Descant, on the relationship between librarians and booksellers: another charming and informative Mason piece. To read A Tale of Illusion, Delusion and Mystery please go here.

Eventually much of this material will hopefully make it into a memoir, and I for one look forward most anxiously to its publication.

Some praise for CNQ 77

Over at Sans Everything, Jeet Heer has some praise for CNQ 77. On newsstands now, why don't you go pick up a copy and help us raise our readership numbers and please the Ottawa bureaucrats. Or, better yet, subscribe.

I’m always afraid to tell people that my favourite literary magazine is Canadian Notes and Queries. The name is so off-putting. It sounds like a mimeographed sheet devoted to esoteric bibliographic information about Duncan Scott Campbell and Stephen Leacock. And in fact that’s what the magazine was for most of its history. But for the last decade or so, it’s been the home to the best essays on Canadian culture, and also some excellent short fiction. (John Metcalf was the editor who re-invented CNQ and he’s been helped by Daniel Wells, Alex Good and others). Perhaps wisely, the editors have tried to rebrand their journal as CNQ, to hide their embarrassing original name.

The new issue of CNQ, number 77, is chock full of the goodies including a new story by Clark Blaise. And some of these essays are already available online.

For Jeet's whole piece, please go here. Or check out the journal website, at www.notesandqueries.ca

I should say though, that the real innovator behind Canadian Notes & Queries was Doug Fetherling. He's the first editor to transform it into a cultural journal, and much of what has happened since has been a basic fine tuning. Have to give credit where it is due. A lot of those early Fetherling -- and Metcalf -- back issues are fabulous. If you would like to try out some of those back issues, do let me know. They don't really date.

The Salon's Afterlife

Though it's been more than a year since the Salon des Refuses, and both issues of the magazine have been long-sold out, the Salon continues to have an afterlife. In the mail today, the above from Mount Royal College, where the Salon des Refuses issue of CNQ is being used for an Introductory Canadian Literature class. If there are any others out there who would like to put together a similar issue, do let us know: we'd be happy to get the work out there.

CNQ 76

Working away this eve gathering everything together for CNQ 76. Our first general issue in a year -- following the translation issue, Salon des Refuses, and 75th/40th Anniversary -- it's starting to really shape up. Not everything is set yet, but it should include Adam Getty's first installment in our Lives of the Poets series, entitled Poetry in the Slaughterhouse, Steven Beattie's tale of disillusion, Fuck Books, David Solway on Kavaris and translation, an interview with Rabindranath Maharaj, Mike Barnes's Portrait of a Portrait Painter, a memoir by Ron Shuebrook (pictured above), as well as reviews by Kerry Clare, Rebecca Rosenblum, Alex Good and many others. I'll give you the full list once we settle on it.

In other CNQ news, I met with a couple of fab designers when I was in Toronto, Aleks and Sean at Sobule Design, who will have a completely new, attractive and easily updatable CNQ website up by the next issue's launch (set for late May). I know, I know: we've said this before. But this time, cross my heart, t'is true. I'm quite excited at the prospect of getting that part of the CNQ program finally going.

Magazine Funding cont...

John Barton authors an editorial on why art and literary magazines should not be judged on circulation alone, here. It's worth taking a look at the comments.

An excerpt:

When it comes to their importance, there's so much more to small cultural magazines than their circulation.

On Feb. 17, Heritage Minister James Moore announced the Canada Magazine Fund and the Publications Assistance Program will be merged into the Canadian Periodical Fund, effective 2010/2011. During the press conference in Montreal, he mentioned that to qualify for support, magazines may potentially have to meet a base paid circulation of 5,000 units, which I read to mean a combination of subscriptions, single-copy orders, and newsstand sales. That number sent shock waves through the arts and literary magazine community, for the annual circulation of many of these magazine falls below this mark.

Except for the postal subsidy long offered through the Publications Assistance Program, Canadian Heritage is a newcomer to funding cultural magazines. Inaugurated under the Chrétien government in 2004, Support for Arts and Literary Magazines (SALM) has transformed journals like The Malahat Review, which I edit at the University of Victoria, Arc in Ottawa, and Winnipeg's Prairie Fire. We have been able to increase payments to contributors by 25 per cent, print longer issues (and more writing) on forest-friendly paper, and institute very modest salary increases for part-time staff. For the Malahat, it represents 15 per cent of our revenues.

Canadian Heritage support has helped us to dedicate other income to marketing. As a result, our circulation is projected to increase by 7 per cent in 2009, bucking the trend for contraction in these times of economic slowdown. Sustainability, I am sure Mr. Moore would agree, takes time.

CNQ: On the Globe & Mail's Newstand

Speaking of punching above circulation weight, the latest issue of CNQ was highlighted, alongside the current New Yorker and NYTBR, in James Adams's On the Stand in Saturday's Globe & Mail:

The Scotiabank Giller Prize (until 2005 just the Giller Prize) marked its 15th birthday last November. Old enough, in other words, for those so inclined to winkle out patterns and themes among the roughly 80 finalists and 16 winners and co-winners selected thus far.

Last year, much was made of the relative newness, output-wise, of the five finalists - three were sophomore novelists, one a rookie to the novel form, the fifth the author of a debut collection of linked short stories. But, asserts Steven Beattie here, plus ça change, plus ç'est la même chose. Review editor for Quill & Quire, Beattie provocatively contends the 2008 Giller jury "reverted to type" by anointing Joseph Boyden's novel Through Black Spruce the champion. The Giller has usually gone to a book that, in Beattie's words, "cleaves to the traditionally accepted CanLit pieties: obsession with geography and our psychic relationship with the land, staunch naturalism and lyrical, poetic prose." For Beattie, the more worthy finalists for last year's $50,000 first prize were Rawi Hage's Cockroach and Mary Swan's The Boys in the Trees. Alas, historical determinism meant neither "stood a chance."

In Peril

The subject of the proposed cuts to Canadian Heritage support of art and literary magazines is something that I've been meaning to write about for weeks. When the cuts we're announced, I received a call from Q&Q for comment, and spent much of the next two days trying to get a handle on things. But I've found even the thought of the ensuing battle to help sustain funding exhausting. During the last month it's been hard enough to keep on top of the day-to-day: the editing and copy-editing of spring books, the grants, the early publicity for spring titles, the accounting, the fall catalogue and bibliographic data for the US distributor, the early editorial work CNQ 76 requires, just to name the most obvious things. The life of your minor literary functionary is, alas, never done: I've not had the energy to wade into the fray on this, though wade in I need to.

There has been some excellent coverage of the issues surrounding these proposed cuts, and what it will mean for art and literary magazines. Nigel Beale has several smart posts on this, as does Kerry Clare over at the Descant blog. There's been coverage of it in the Globe, on Bookninja, Career Limiting Moves, and many, many other places. The proposed changes -- which will end Canadian Heritage funding to any magazine with a yearly circulation of under 5000 copies, or, really, all but a handful of literary and cultural magazines in Canada -- will have drastic, if not actually devastating effects on CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries: close to 25% of our budget comes from the SALM program. The loss of the $9000.00, should this go through, may not result in the folding of CNQ -- we can always reduce the page count accordingly, go to cheaper production standards, pay writers less, and these changes just might make up the bulk of the difference in the production of the journal -- but there is no doubt that these would be moves in the wrong direction for a literary journal I feel is only now beginning to hit its stride, one of the only critical journals of its kind remaining in the country. There are certainly those out there who would probably love to see CNQ cease publication, but I don't think I'm being too egocentric to state that its loss would be felt out there in the wider literary community by many. So too would the loss of Malahat, The New Quarterly, Fiddlehead and others.

Part of what I've had trouble getting my head around here is how the Minister of Culture and his team define cultural relevance. It seems to me that the introduction of a circulation cap of this sort equates cultural relevance with some definition of commercial viability. A magazine or journal that can't reach 5000 people over the course of a year can't be worthy of sustained public support. It shows an incredible lack of understanding of the industry, and of the nature of art and literary magazines, both historically and currently. Many of the most important literary and critical journals both at home and abroad, from T. S. Eliot's Criterion to The Tamarack Review, would have had difficulty making this type of circulation threshold. It matter less how many people pay to read the individual magazine as who those people are, what influence the magazine has, what services it provides the greater community, literary or otherwise. Many of the best literary writers Canada has produced began their careers with the small magazines now threatened: we all, to paraphrase Norman Levine, begin in small magazines. The nature of these cuts are further evidence of the same ignorance and arrogance many associated with Stephen Harper's comments about Canadian artists during the election. And it is a further sign that we need to be on our guard here: if Harper's conservatives ever get the majority they want I expect we will see much more of this.

I would have less of a problem with these cuts to Heritage support of magazines -- though the attendant financial difficulties for CNQ would be the same -- if it had been across the board, if they had folded the program entirely, or changed it in some other fashion. What sticks a bit -- who am I kidding? it stick a lot -- in my craw is the fact that the refashioned program, either purposely or ignorantly (and I'm not sure which is worse), targets the arts and literary programs a cultural agency like Heritage Canada should be supporting ABOVE ALL OTHERS. We are, after all, CULTURAL MAGAZINES. We are not commercial magazines. Whereas the CNQs and Malahats of the world may find themselves without the financial wherewithal to keep going after 2010, those wonderful contributors to the Canadian cultural landscape Canadian Biker ($26,139), Fashion ($133,881), Flare ($156, 560) Inside Motorcycles ($31,510) and Today's Parent ($125, 374) will be safe under the currently proposed program. And these are only a few of the commercial magazines which will continue to receive taxpayer funding while cultural journals like CNQ are left to flounder. How taxpayer funding of Inside Motorcycles contributes to a greatly enriched Canadian cultural life is well beyond me. Perhaps Minister Moore might explain it to me.

But then again, according to the Conservatives, we're just whiny artists. The fact that we're also business men and women capable of running a business on a shoestring and punching well above our circulation weight, that we show absolute responsibility and accountability for every dollar we're entrusted with, seems to be ignored. Or, perhaps, this is one of the reasons why government bureaucrats and politicians seem to have such a problem with us: we make them look bad. Very bad. CNQ received approximately 35,000 in government/taxpayer funding in 2008-2009: on this we put out three issues of a critical journal totaling more than 312 pages. We'll have paid more than 12,000 to writers and artists, 15,000 to printers, 1500-2000 to Canada Post, 4500 to typesetters, with the rest of the funding and subscription dues going to basic administration, office supplies and marketing. Not a dollar has gone to the publisher or editorial personnel in the three-plus years Biblioasis has run it. Despite our rather lackluster, at least according to Canadian Heritage standards, circulation numbers, one of these issues became a flash point, according to the Toronto Star, for one of the sharpest literary debates Canada has ever seen, resulting in a national discussion about canon making and the importance of the short story in Canada, as well as international coverage. Journals like CNQ, in terms of financial accountability, responsibility and efficiency, are models other businesses might learn from, especially in these troubled times. A point which should actually result in calls for increased funding, instead of further cuts. If we can do what we do on $35,000, imagine what we might pull off on $50,000, or $75,000.

Yes, yes: I know. Fat chance.

There are other reasons why these cuts and their underlying logic should be cause for grave concern to anyone who cares for art and literature in Canada. The same sort of commercial arguments being used to justify funding cuts to art and literary magazines could be used the next time a cultural program is being evaluated to cut funding to, say, literary presses or art galleries. Why should we fund the likes of Brick Books when so few Canadians care about poetry anyway? Who, outside, of course, of a handful of whiny artists would miss them? And as far as galleries go, how many Canadians really care for abstract or experimental art, derive any benefit from exhibitions of the work of Tony Calzetta or Adele Duck or David Urban or the Painters Eleven? What? Only three hundred people showed up for an exhibit of the work of Richard Gorman? Thaddeus Holownia? Only two hundred people showed up to a book festival in Windsor? Hardly seems worth the investment. Better to earmark such funding to those responsible titans of industry, GM and Chrysler. Now there's real bang for your buck.

When I first learned about these proposed cuts from Scott MacDonald at Q&Q, I did some calling around, and spoke at length to some people at Magazines Canada. I learned, thankfully, that this is not set in stone, that the ministry is aware that the current solution "might not be perfect." That the funding may yet be preserved in some fashion. But it was also stressed that the best way to ensure that this happens is to get in touch with members of parliament and to make the case for sustaining the funding to art and literary magazines. The good thing, this manager at Mags Canada told me, is that us artsies aren't afraid of making a little noise. So I urge anyone who reads this post to make all the noise they can, to make it clear to the government that the proposed changes to Heritage funding are not acceptable. This should be a flashpoint for one of the sharpest cultural debates the country has seen. Because this is not just about arts and literary magazines: it is about how the current government evaluates cultural endeavors and enterprises in the country. The consequences, should they get away with it, may prove much farther reaching than anticipated.

CNQ Launch: Montreal Edition

Back on the 28th of January, lo, before the flu-bug ensured I couldn't get out of bed for several days, Michael Carbert organized a CNQ 75 launch / Salon redux event at the Word Bookstore in Montreal. Despite the blizzard, a crowd of 40+ people showed up to discuss the Canadian canon, and listen to panelists Anita Lahey, Robert Lecker, Robyn Sarah and Carmine Starnino. I wish I could have been there: these photos will have to suffice. (above: Anita Lahey, Robyn Sarah and Robert Lecker, with host Adrian of the Word Bookstore watching)
(Carmine Starnino and moderator Michael Carbert)

(Robert Lecker and Carmine Starnino)

(Anita Lahey and Robyn Sarah)

CNQ75 is now, or will be soon, on the newstands. It is also arriving as I write this in mailboxes across the country. Our 40th Anniversary/ 75 issue, guest-edited by Carmine Starnino, it brings together a folio of essays that take the bearings on Canadian culture and fearlessly soothsay on what the next twenty-five years will bring. Then there's Steven beattie's sharp take on the Giller, Michael Lista's Open Letter on Brandt-gatepoetry by Jason Guriel and Mark Callanan, and much else besides. One way or another, please pick it up.

Russell Smith's Reading List...

... can be found here. On it, the Salon des Refuses, of which he says:

The "Salon des Refusés" joint issue of The New Quarterly and Canadian Notes and Queries. These two Canadian literary magazines published a joint alternative to the massive Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, which they saw as inadequately reflecting the best of this genre.

The litmags' choices tend to be rather artsier; the Penguin book is more of a survey of the writers who have been deemed important or popular in the genre. The Penguin criteria seem more aesthetically neutral. I would recommend reading the two magazines (they are still available in many bookstores, or you could go to their respective websites) not as an alternative to the Penguin book, which is historically interesting and has a few gems in it (Munro, Gowdy, Johnston, Lyon, Coady, Lee) but as a complement.

The journals' stories reflect the aesthetic of the small presses: dense, complex prose, oblique or otherwise unusual points of view. Where the Penguin anthology does feel good for you from time to time, earnestly plodding through important Canadian themes, the Salon des Refusés is sheer intellectual and sensual fun. Furthermore, there are very short commentaries on each story, either by the author or by another writer, that give insight into how writers' minds work - both how they construct stories and how they read them.

CNQ 75 launch / Salon Redux in Montreal, this Wednesday, January 28th

A Salon des Refuses lead-in to the launch of CNQ 75 -- pictured above, our combined 75th issue and 40th anniversary issue -- will be taking place this Wednesday in Montreal at the Word Bookstore (469 Milton Street). Contributing editor Michael Carbert will be leading a discussion on the CanLit Canon, with panelists Anita Lahey, Robert Lecker, Robyn Sarah and Carmine Starnino. Refreshments provided. Co-sponsored by MacLean's Magazine. 7:30 pm.

Phil Marchand weighs in on the Salon des Refuses

One last bit on the CNQ Salon in this morning's National Post:

Let us Compare Anthologies...

In the literary world, as in the everyday world, the end of the year is an occasion to make resolutions for the future - to try to get certain things right.

What do we need to get right?

An anthology of short stories

Let us begin with the object of this year's finest literary kerfuffle, the publication of The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, edited by novelist Jane Urquhart. A hefty book, weighing in at 700 pages, Urquhart's anthology featured 60 writers. Because of the importance of the Penguin brand name, and because of the sheer number of contributors, the anthology attracted close attention, particularly from writers not included. Goaded by critic and noted short-story author (not included in the collection) John Metcalf, some 20 of these banded together for public readings under the rubric Salon des Refusés, after the 1863 exhibition of painters rejected by the Paris Salon.

This is a matter of no small importance. Much of Canada's finest literature is in the short-story form, and publication of a first-rate anthology of short fiction would be like the appearance of a new literary classic on the Canadian landscape. It would solidify our sense of possessing a vital literature.

Over the years, attempts have been made. In 1929, the novelist Raymond Knister produced Canadian Short Stories, featuring such stalwarts of early Canadian literature as Charles G.D. Roberts, as well as the likes of Henry O'Higgins and Walter McLaren Imrie, long since forgotten. This was followed by the late Robert Weaver's 1958 Canadian Short Stories and a 1978 anthology titled The Best Modern Canadian Short Stories, edited by Ivon Owen and Morris Wolfe. This last was a brave effort, but a sentence from the editors' introduction such as, "The central character in Dave Godfrey's The River has to leave the city and step again into a river he frequently visited as a youth before he can truly understand that life is a process," indicates just how mildewed was some of the lumber they had to work with.

In 1990, Michael Ondaatje weighed in with his anthology From Ink Lake. Many of his choices were unexceptionable, but he displayed a fatal taste for eccentricity, including part of a memoir by diplomat Charles Ritchie, a long-winded speech by an Ojibway Grand Chief named John Kelly and incomprehensible musings by the late pianist Glenn Gould titled The Search For Petula Clark. (Sample sentence: "The principal motivic cell unit of that ebullient lied consisted of the interval of a minor third plus a major second, alternating, upon occasion, with a major third followed by a minor second.")

Urquhart, unfortunately, has adopted the same licence for eccentricity in her anthology, including an excerpt from that same Ritchie memoir, as well as two excerpts from Ondaatje's semi-fictional memoir, Running in the Family, and a short story by Adrienne Clarkson, who can no more write fiction than I can play the oboe. Also, 60 writers are too many. Such quantity indicates that Urquhart has an uncertain grasp of quality - even assuming that her 60 are superior to Metcalf's 20, which, by the way, I do not believe. Writers in the history of Canada capable of writing a great short story are simply not that numerous.

In fairness, the difficulties of compiling an anthology are formidable. The number of Canadian published short stories with literary pretensions is stupendous, and a sizeable portion of them have genuine merit - with the growth of creative writing courses in this country, crudities and excesses in short stories are often shaved off by reasonably competent instructors, and the end result looks quite presentable. To separate the great from the good in this mass would be daunting. My own view is that you would need two editors. A model might be the 1950 anthology Poets of the English Language, edited by W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson. This means that a Canadian publisher would have to find a scholar with the brilliance of Pearson and a first-rate literary artist with the breadth of appreciation for different literary approaches possessed by Auden.

Good luck. We may be faced with an impossibility at this point, but we can't give up the task - it is too important to get this business of a Canadian anthology of short stories right.

November 27th:The Salon des Refuses Redux: Windsor, Ontario

The real Salon des Refuses dirty work: play-doh pizzas.

Heather Birrell reading from her wonderful, wonderful story Impossible to Die in Your Dreams.


Mark Anthony Jarman reminisces about Old Timer's Hockey.


Rebecca Rosenblum reads from a marvellous short new short story, Hello Hello, currently in Rampike.


Mark. Rebecca, Kim Jernigan, Rosalynn Tyo.

Though the New Quarterly has already put out another issue, and we're working on our own Salon follow-up, three Salon-des-Refuse-niks came to Windsor on Thursday with Kim Jernigan and Rosalynn Tyo of the New Quarterly. It was a wonderful evening of short fiction and conversation at the Art Gallery of Windsor. It was a pleasure getting a chance to meet Mark, and Heather (along with her husband Charles and new daughter Maisie), and spending a bit more time with Kim, Ros and Rebecca.

Yet More Salon coverage

... on Steven Beattie's blog That Shakespherian Rag, where he does a far better job than I at showing just how sloppy a critic Wayne Grady is. (Since I belong to that "lazy" school, I couldn't be bothered." Well worth reading in its entirety, here.

Additionally, Michael Bryson gives his own, different take on the debate, here.

Salon des Refuses Coverage: the controversy that won't die

Or so says the Globe and Mail. There are days, certainly, I agree. I am as surprised as anyone of the legs this has had, and the coverage it has received. Late at night google searches show the breadth of discussion, both off and online, and it is rather astonishing. And though I expect that this must be getting to the tail end of official coverage -- after all, this has been going on for more than a month -- we'll likely be hosting Salons in Vancouver, Montreal, Guelph, Toronto, Windsor and perhaps Winnipeg over the fall and winter. It's my hope that these events can broaden the discussion away from the Penguin book, to the broader implications of the Salon debates. More later on these events as they develop.

If you want a copy of the Salon, I suggest you go pick the issues up on the newstand as soon as possible. Indications are both issues will soon be sold out. And though I looked into reprinting it, I don't think it is financially justifiable at this point.

So, the Globe Back Pages, where Martin Levin asked John Metcalf to write on the Salon controversy. I expect we'll see some other Symposium style reaction to this essay on the same page a few weeks hence. Though perhaps not: no one on the Penguin side of things has reacted "officially" or "on the record" thus far (beyond a short initial interview with the anthology editor in Q&Q), and they may continue to choose not to.

I came across a blog yesterday where the writer reviews three collections by Salon writers, at least one of which he'd never read before. A fourth will follow soon. There's been additional evidence others are picking up collections by the Salonists, that this has succeeded in helping people discover these writers for the first time (For my part, Heather Birrell's Impossible to Die in Your Dreams' was a revelation, and I'll be reading more of her very, very soon). Which was the point of all this, in the end. So, whatever else may be said about the Salon as an experiment (and quite a bit has been, both for and against): mission accomplished.

The roar of the canon

It's the controversy that won't die. Jane Urquhart's Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories has generated an uproar in the literary community, not merely over who's excluded (no anthology could contain them all), but, as John Metcalf argues, over what sorts of fiction should matter

JOHN METCALF

September 13, 2008

The current issues of two literary journals, The New Quarterly and CNQ (Canadian Notes and Queries), offer 20 short stories by 20 writers left out of The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, edited by Jane Urquhart. Both magazines title their issues The Salon des Refusés, in reference to the salon in 1863 that excluded, among other artists, Manet, Fantin-Latour, Pissarro and Whistler. The magazine editors felt that the Penguin anthology presented a distorted view of Canadian achievement in the genre. The Penguin anthology is important because of the cachet attaching to the imprint; the very name Penguin suggests authority, confers significance. This anthology presents Canada to the world; by this anthology, our achievement will be judged. It is a sorry book.

Urquhart, in her introduction, confesses that she had doubts about her qualifications for the job, and further confesses that she was not familiar with Canadian stories, her preferred reading having been novels. It shows. Among the many omissions are Hugh Hood, Norman Levine and Clark Blaise. To leave them out of a Penguin presentation is like omitting Ernest Hemingway, Eudora Welty and William Faulkner from an overview of U.S. short fiction.

Not only does she omit these monumental figures in Canadian short-story history, she also omits so many other, often younger writers, especially, it seems, those stylish innovators who perform with verve and sparkle: Patricia Robertson, Douglas Glover, Mike Barnes, Mark Anthony Jarman, Keath Fraser, Sharon English, Steven Heighton, Russell Smith, Diane Schoemperlen, Mary Borsky, Linda Svendsen, Cynthia Flood, Mary Swan, Patricia Young, Kathleen Winter, Terry Griggs ... As the names pile up, the list becomes, well, risible.

But the anthology is further distorted by the nature of some of Urquhart's inclusions. To include Adrienne Clarkson, Michael Ondaatje and Charles Ritchie - not one a story writer - is to edge toward the utterly bizarre. Too many of the selections indicate want of judgment, unfamiliarity, perhaps, with U.S. and British practice and achievement.

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The focus of the two magazines is not, however, Jane Urquhart. She is merely collateral damage. The objection embodied in the writing celebrated by the two magazines is to Penguin Canada. Why did Penguin commission a tyro to edit such a weighty book? The answer must be to capitalize on her popularity, to exploit her celebrity. This is vulgar and irresponsible; it is an abdication of Penguin's responsibilities to our literature.

This brouhaha has been commented on by Russell Smith in The Globe and Mail, by Alex Good in the Toronto Star, by Paul Wells in Maclean's and by Adrian Michael Kelly on the CBC radio program Q. The Los Angeles Times is carrying the story on its website. Good wrote, "this 700-page tome has become the flashpoint for one of the sharpest literary debates this country has ever seen."

The point that ought to be made is that these Salon des Refusés magazine issues shouldn't be news at all. Our literature should be in constant turmoil, continual debate, dissent, passionate uproar. If our literature is important to us, its importance should be worth fighting about. Accomplished, demanding literature can only be strengthened and nurtured by austere, honed criticism.

The media interest in the Salon des Refusés has happened because, for the first time since the 1940s in Montreal, CanLit has woken from its habitual placid somnolence. This is the first time the editors of literary magazines have banded together to assert a different aesthetic, a different hierarchy. This is the first time editors and writers have said no! to a canon being imposed by a large and wealthy publisher.

Our pleasure at the attention being paid to the genre is, however, somewhat vitiated by the fact that the media's real interest is in the feuding, the supposed "nastiness" of Dan Wells's critical introduction in CNQ (Tweaking the Beak) and what Russell Smith described as the "stomach-curdling" criticism of my own essay (Thinking About Penguins).

There is, unfortunately, no consensus in Canada about our literature. The difference between commercial entertainment and work of literary value is scarcely understood. Our critics, such as they are, eschew evaluative judgments. Agents and publishing conglomerates dictate and define; publicity budgets are our arbiters. A benighted pedagogue at the University of Toronto actually requires students to read Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees.

Why not Enid Blyton's Fun for the Secret Seven?

It is a world gone mad.

Concerning the short story in Canada, critic Philip Marchand wrote: "There is something both heartening and disheartening about the fact that so much of the strength of Canadian literary culture lies in the short story form. It is heartening because there are now many Canadian writers who are truly proficient in the art - so much so that whatever is enduring in our literature will be more likely found in their work than in over-stuffed prose epics such as Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance or Timothy Findley's The Piano Man's Daughter. ... The disheartening element in the situation, of course, is that few people actually read it."

There is, of course, a reason for the Salon des Refusés issues beyond the desire to castigate Penguin Canada; it is to celebrate what they spurned. What a feast of fiction awaits the reader, wonderful writers you may not have encountered before: the tight passion of Cynthia Flood, the enormous delicacy of Ray Smith, the meditative calm of Steven Heighton, the fragrantly nutty mind of Terry Griggs ... They are all here, worlds awaiting you.

Another 20 come easily to mind, among them Libby Creelman, Susan Kerslake, K. D. Miller, Robyn Sarah, Mary Borsky, Rebecca Rosenblum, all of them building the golden edifice that is the short story in Canada.

The Salon in the L.A. Times

The L.A. Times Book Jacket blog has picked up on the CNQ & TNQ Salon. "In Canada," Carolyn Kellog writes, "the short story is not dead. It's a fair maiden, well cared for, standing aside as its suitors battle for it with rapiers and barbs." The whole article can be found here:

latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/09/normally-nice-c.html

It should be said, as it has now been reported in several places a tad erroneously, that CNQ and TNQ are not at one another's throats. I spent more than a few minutes with Kim Jernigan, editor of TNQ, and Rosalynn Tyo, Managing Editor, yesterday at the rain-drenched Eden Mills festival, and all is well. I have greater respect for that group and their magazine and their enthusiasm and professionalism and approach than ever: I've learned a hell of a lot from the collaboration about how a professional magazine should be run. There's been a good deal of tension at some points, though a lot of this has been caused by, let us say, outside sources. But I don't believe a harsh word has been uttered between any of us. And though there's certainly been disagreements, both about the salon's objectives and the approaches of our magazines, and the limits of criticism, though there's been impassioned discussion and more than a few hour long late night conversations, this is as it should be. We don't have to get along all of the time, or agree with one another on everything. Our objectives were always slightly different with regards to this Salon, as one would expect of magazines with such differing mandates. And this is what discussion is supposed to be like.


This has not harmed our relationship in any way. It makes a much better story to think so, I realize, and for that reason perhaps I should leave it alone. But it is simply not true.

The Salon in Maclean's

There's an article about the Salon in the current issue of Maclean's. Entitled 'Short Stories. Very Long Knives,' it can be found here:

www.macleans.ca/culture/media/article.jsp?content=20080827_102027_102027&page=1

An excerpt:

Earlier this summer, in an unusual feat of co-operation, two literary magazines, The New Quarterly and Canadian Notes and Queries, published simultaneous special editions with near-identical covers. The goal was to showcase writers Urquhart left out of her collection last fall, to "tweak the beak" of the mighty Penguin. This jointly curated "Salon des Refusés" — named after a parallel exhibit for artists who were left out of the Paris Salon in 1862 — has become the talk of literary Canada. It has sparked debate, brought unprecedented attention to the two spunky journals at its centre, goosed the sales of Urquhart's own book and led to tension, even among the protest's instigators, over the proper bounds of criticism and dissent.


The juicy literary feud angle has pushed this into the mainstream, and for that, we are grateful. When was the last time short fiction and literary publishing were mainstream news items? But every once-in-a-while it needs be said: that though the Salon is about registering dissent -- and that is as it should be in a healthy literary community -- much more important is the celebration of writers and writing and the short story form. This is not about a feud with Jane Urquhart. We have taken issue with some of the choices she has made as an editor and outlined the
reasons for our disagreement. Nigel Beale is not the only one who disagrees with our choices, and though I've been saying a prayer each night that he is the only book reviewer unable to see the vast difference between Burnett and Levine, this is all well and good. There are many other writers out there who could have been included in this Salon des Refuses. There are several I wince at the thought of not including, and I think Kim feels the same. This Salon needs a salon! Steven Beattie's marathon exercise on his blog, That Shakespherian Rag, shows this as much as anything we did. Work towards claiming your own anthology of the heart. Better you than Penguin.

As Steven Beattie wrote last eve, the important thing here is that people are actually reading and talking about short stories as if they matter. And that can only be a good thing.

A US review of CNQ's Translation issue

A nice review of our last pre-Salon issue -- the translation issue, still on many newstands, and available direct -- on the University of Rochester international literature/translation website Three Percent. Chad Post comments most favourably on Mike Barnes's fabulous essay Spaceship from Across. It can be found here:

www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=1148