Margaret Laurence-Al Purdy: A Friendship in Letters

Lalage Grauer teaches English at Okanagan University College in Kelowna,
B.C.

In his poem “For Margaret,” written after Margaret Laurence’s
death, Al Purdy writes, “We argued about things / whether you should
seek experience / or just let it happen to you / (me the former and she
the latter).” This argument is ongoing in the pages of Laurence’s
and Purdy’s 20-year correspondence between 1966 and 1986. Laurence,
who largely stayed put at Elm Cottage in England, or in Lakefield,
Ontario, writes to Purdy during the composition of The Fire-Dwellers,
“I know what is there, with the characters, what they are and exactly
how they could come across, if I could do it as it should be done.”
For his art, Purdy seeks the stimulation of actual physical space; he
travels to Crete, Hiroshima, and Mexico, and writes to Laurence about
his pursuit of inspiration. Ironically, Laurence had previously lived in
Africa for 11 years, while Purdy, except for one brief trip to Europe,
had spent all his life in Canada.

The Purdy–Laurence correspondence is fascinating both as a
“writers-at-work” text in which novelist engages with poet and as
the chronicle of an evolving friendship between these two writers whose
differences nourish and sustain each other. The juxtaposition of
discourses, including Purdy’s poems (which are often appended to his
letters), creates its own surface and presents interesting intertextual
connections. The correspondence also documents Purdy’s and
Laurence’s strategies for economic survival and social
recognition—first as writers, second as self-consciously Canadian
writers during the flowering cultural nationalism of the 1960s and
1970s. Their correspondence reaches its height in 1974, just after
Laurence returns to live in Canada, and tapers off from that point to
her death in 1986.

John Lennox has selected 140 letters from “approximately 300”; the
letters he has chosen are so engaging and revealing that one wishes for
the total correspondence in book form. His introduction provides a
useful outline of the literary and cultural milieu of the
correspondence. Some form of division into parts would have made this
volume even more readable.