The Canadian Modernists Meet

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.

This volume reprints 14 papers given at a symposium with the same title
at the University of Ottawa in May 2003. In modernist fashion, the title
is an allusion to F.R. Scott’s well-known squib “The Canadian
Authors Meet,” a poem that the editor pigeonholes in the first line of
his introduction as a “portrait of modernist disconsolation.” If you
had always read it as a witty, high-spirited, youthfully mischievous
satire on the Canadian Authors’ Association, this book may not be for
you. It tends to be academic (sometimes to the point of pedantry),
serious (sometimes to the point of humourlessness), and theoretical
(occasionally to the point of impenetrability).

There are, to be sure, a small number of excellent and intellectually
engaging papers—Brian Trehearne’s examination of A.J.M. Smith as
surrealist; Tony Tremblay’s tracing of the divergent influence of Ezra
Pound on Louis Dudek and Marshall McLuhan; Tim Conley’s provocative
and poised study of the implications arising from the censorship of
James Joyce’s Ulysses in Canada; and Colin Hill’s exemplary
demonstration of how a minor writer (Arthur Stringer) can stimulate a
decidedly more gifted one (Sinclair Ross) in the production of a minor
masterpiece. All these are substantial contributions to their respective
subjects.

Some other essays are solid and informative, but too many are couched
in a dreary theoretical jargon that reveals their authors as insensitive
to the English language. No need, therefore, to waste time on them.

A few attempts are naturally made to reinstate forgotten Canadian
modernists, but illustrative quotations are usually scanty, and when
they occur the slack language and tired rhythms too often indicate that
their current neglect is well deserved. No undiscovered Eliots or Joyces
here.

Only occasionally was I stimulated to reconsider my previously formed
judgments, and I closed the book less sure of what “modernism”
means—if, indeed, it means anything—than I was before. Academic
libraries will need this book but, with the exception of those at work
on still more modernist theses, I can’t imagine many individuals who
will want it permanently on their shelves.