The Letters of John Sutherland, 1942-1956

Norman Ravvin’s novel, Café des Westens, won the Alberta Culture New
Fiction Award.

Anyone who has been involved in literary reviewing, editing, or
publishing will find this book a compelling read. Sutherland’s
Montreal-based journal, Northern Review, provided a unique venue for
contemporary Canadian fiction, poetry, and criticism through the 1940s
and 1950s. His letters document his consistent efforts to expand the
Review and its readership, as well as to raise the profile of Canadian
literature in an era when one could write, “Whatever else is raising
its head in Canada, there are no signs of literary critics.”

The editing is unobtrusive. Whiteman’s annotations are helpful and to
the point; he has decided to include every letter he could locate,
“however apparently inconsequential.” This method gives the
collection a certain repetitiousness, but we gain a clear sense of the
texture of a life’s work committed to publishing Canadian writing.

Sutherland’s personal interest in the work of E.J. Pratt leads him to
discuss the poet with numerous correspondents, and the cumulative effect
of these discussions is a fascinating account of Pratt’s work in the
context of the postwar years. There are also early inklings in the
letters of a tradition that has come to be known as post-colonial
literature, as Sutherland recognizes similarities between the Canadian
literary scene and that developing in Australia and New Zealand.

Ironically, as an antidote to the sense that we live in an age when the
arts are underfunded and unappreciated, Sutherland’s struggles make
our own literary scene seem blessedly rich.