Here be Dragons

Reviewing books has its challenges in any age: this medieval monster would have made things difficult in 913.Phoebe Wang discusses the Canadian literary critical scene of 2013 (and beyond!) in this year-in-review post.Had I a choice, would I have picked 2013 to begin my stint as a reviewer in Canada? I might have preferred 913—a year dominated by saints’ lives, riddles, saw-toothed monsters and their mothers. New work travelled by word-of-mouth, often unintelligibly. Authors were content to remain anonymous, and so managed to avoid requests for interviews.Or 1613? Literary criticism made great gains with the rise of literacy. Though the public showed more interest in bearbaiting than Greek ideals. Anyone outspoken enough to express a diversity of opinion could find him or herself excommunicated, recruited by Cromwell, or suddenly without a head. Sir Philip Sidney had already written his Apologie for Poetry. Even then, critics felt an unavoidable need to justify their pursuits.No year is safe, it seems. Had my historical and cultural moment made it possible for a female writer, of Chinese-born immigrant parents, to write criticism in English while living in a former British colony, maybe it would’ve happened sooner. It’s not that I lack autonomy, but a sense of necessity also limits choices. Those choices determine not only what I write, but when, and where I submit it.In 2013, reviewing in Canada was hard-pressed with questions of legitimacy. The historical and cultural moment showered us with David Gilmour, gender imbalances, controversies that blew over the straw houses of social media. A strange thing happened, though, when I ventured out to try to sway the numbers—I saw I’d been in the midst of the storm all along, getting my skin soaked. Any writer in Canada who publishes, submits to prizes and grants juries, fingers the pages of the magazines and the matte covers of small press publications, who makes decisions about what to read and who they’ll steal from—is already a part of this country’s halting, unfinished literary climate.

One of the things Amanda Jernigan believes Canadian criticism could be is physical, which obviously means more cattle.In a 2009 interview in Arc Magazine, Amanda Jernigan mused on what Canadian criticism could be: “erudite (widely-read, not just in contemporary Canadian letters, but across a broad range of periods and traditions); rigorous (as attentive to bibliographic “minutiae”—details which are often far more important than we give them credit for—as to the big picture of an author’s life and work); and physical (grounded in the sensual realities—gardens, kitchens, cattle, stars—not only of the author’s life, but of the critic’s).”Jernigan’s description prompts an awareness of a writer’s conditions of production. But she also hints at a lack of awareness around how criticism is produced, what kind of labour is involved and how worthy or useful that labour is. What is the real price of this cultural capital, and how much capacity can Canada’s literary culture sustain? Who has the time, the space, the education needed to situate a cultural work within a wider context, who even has the access to works of literature? The venues where literary critical debates take place matter, too, and can mold that debate into rigorous shapes and larger arguments. Do we lack public forums for literary debate? Maybe not, though the amount of space allocated to reviews and criticism in national publications is hard-won. The platforms that are available are segmented and imperfect—the recent open letters and responses to Carmine Starnino’s interview in CV2 that took place on individual and publisher websites, a smattering of magazines, the CWILA blog, and on Facebook were exasperating, yet engrossing. Surely Canadian writers deserve better forums. If these online venues are the reality of the critic’s production, I would call for a closer awareness of how they affect our capacity for attention, and the kind of discussions that they deliver.In the interview, Starnino calls out the “insidious abdication” of his peers from “disagreement” though “withholding judgment.” He also claims “Canadians have a propensity toward consent and are loath to break rank. As a result, you never know how anyone really feels about anything, so powerful is the self-monitoring.” But who is a part of those ranks? Who wishes to join? Who will forever remain outside, by choice or by lack of access?More and more, I have turned these questions to my peers, the next generation of writers whose debut collections are stacking up like sudsy beer glasses. I have thought a lot about our conditions of production, where writers of mismatched styles form friendships because they belong to the same community or follow the same Twitter feeds, where ties develop through mentors, workshops, schools, publications, blogs, and so on. I rarely hear my peers withhold judgment regarding much of anything.

Madeleine Thien: our critics "decide the work that will be visible and the work that will remain invisible."In a few cases, literary judgement is suspended if a critic’s own background and education doesn’t equip him or her to attend to the details of a writer’s life and work. Refracted over time, the lack of cultural understanding leads to biases in a literary culture, an argument that Madeleine Thien made during the literASIAN banquet in Vancouver last fall: “In reviewing and critiquing the work of Asian, South Asian, African, and Arab-Canadian writers, our critics simply do not have a great depth of knowledge, whether that be historical context or literary precedents.” As a result, “together, they decide the work that will be visible and the work that will remain invisible.”In 2013, the poets I reviewed included Julie Bruck, Susan Gillis, Maureen Scott Harris, Erin Knight, Ann Shin, Susan Steudel, Matthew Tierney, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Russell Thornton, and Jan Zwicky. It’s a list that includes a documentary maker, a few first-time authors, and more than one Governor General’s award winner. As a critic, I try to clearly see the goals that a poet has set for him or herself. It’s tricky to differentiate what I expect from the poet, and what he or she expects from their own work. It’s like trying to judge the Olympics when each athlete has trained to compete in a sport specifically self-designed.What is possible is to consider each authors’ cultural and historical context, to give each the meticulous attention they deserve, regardless of whether they’ve advanced in their careers or are just starting out. For reviewers, it matters whether we’re paid or not paid for a review, though it shouldn’t. Again, how can we create the capacity for those visibilities and possibilities? None of this will just happen on its own. Even in a young publication such as The Puritan, where most of the editorial staff are under thirty, it has been extremely difficult to involve female reviewers and critics. Nor have the past twenty-four issues seen a substantial amount of work by Asian, African, and Arab-Canadian writers. At The Puritan, the editors and staff are questioning the magazine’s capacities, and have found that we can—and should—create our own precedents.In 2014, let's move beyond the old dichotomy of negative and positive reviews— it's neither the best nor the only way to take measure of a work's cultural and historical moment. Let's remember that the work of diverse authors is best read and addressed through a critical lens that attempts to be culturally neutral and universal, however unlikely such a reading may seem in the current literary climate. After all, the apologias have been written, Grendel has been killed. We’re our own monsters.