Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

The intentions of this book are admirable, its achievement less
satisfying. Contrasts brings together a number of writers and
critics—mainly but not exclusively of Italian origin—to discuss the
achievements of Italian-Canadian writers in three languages (English,
French, Italian), and to consider the promise and problems of an
“ethnic” literature within official Canadian “multiculturalism.”

This is a pioneering endeavor, and, like all pioneering endeavors,
proves frustratingly elusive. In his introduction, Pivato calls for a
comparative approach, with special reference to “an international
context that includes an awareness of literature from both Europe and
the New World,” but the succeeding essays tend to discuss the theme of
emigration and the tired question of identity. Publisher Antonio
D’Alfonso criticizes his own introduction to an italo-québиcois
anthology, Quкtes, as “too sociological and not literary enough,”
and the same could be said about most of the contributions here.

In addition, there have clearly been publishing problems. The book is
described on the back of the title page as “First published in this
format 1991”—whatever that means. The essays seem to have been
written in the early to mid-1980s, and there are two tell-tale addenda
to the bibliography that try desperately to bring the book up to date.
But much of the political commentary is decidedly dated, and the absence
of any reference to Nino Ricci speaks volumes.

The significance of Contrasts, then, lies not in its actual
achievement—which, by the “international” and “comparative”
standards of literary criticism, seems to me (I regret to say)
negligible—but in its symbolic status as a first, tentative step
towards coming to grips with an increasingly important body of creative
material. It draws attention to the existence of a potentially exciting
new literature being produced in this country. In Di Cicco, di Michele,
Micone, Paci—and Ricci!—plus several others, we have the imaginative
beginnings; we now await critics of an equivalent standard to interpret
this material to the rest of Canada.