Lives and Works: Interviews by Bruce Meyer and Brian O'Riordan

Anne Burke is the editor of the Prairie Journal Press.

In Lives and Works the editors have aimed not for regional balance but
for a national overview. (Nevertheless, genders and regions are evenly
represented.) It is debatable that Canada has ever been, in their
centralist view, “an integrated sum of all of its disparate parts”;
the view from the margins or “series of parts” has always been quite
different. Writers are the last to provide comfort for readers “who
are longing to believe again in . . . the Canadian experience.”

The reader may compare the sensibilities of Lorna Crozier and Patrick
Lane, who have much in common; Neil Bissoondath, who is wary of false
culture or folkloric multiculturalism; Margaret Avison, who says she was
agnostic in Winter Sun and a believer in The Dumbfounding; the Anglo
Quebecker D.J. Jones on the separatist referendum; Joy Kogawa on
repatriation and her withdrawal to the pen; Alistair MacLeod, who sees
himself as a kind of elaborate cook; and feminist Erin Mouré
(“culture has certainly failed women”). John Newlove, who has
learned to love again, says his childhood was “like one long hot
summer, playing in the dust with stray dogs.” Leon Rooke believes that
each piece of writing has its own pace, to which one must submit. David
Wevil is asked how living in the jungle altered his idea of nature.

And, sadly, there are late authors: Adele Wiseman holding up her clown
doll, declaring “making things makes us happy”; allusions to Eli
Mandel and Margaret Laurence. Bronwen Wallace concludes that “we are
constantly telling the story of our lives.” Hence the title of the
collection and its consistent format, beginning with Margaret Atwood.
Each titled and dated interview is accompanied by a black-and-white
photograph, as well as background and immediate physical setting, with
some brief bio-bibliographical information on each of the subjects.