Saskatchewan Writers: Lives Past and Present

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

The University of Regina’s Canadian Plains Research Center is becoming
an important source of information about the region. In 2004, the
institute brought out this book as part of “The Saskatchewan Lives
Past and Present Series” biographical database.

Is Saskatchewan Writers worth reading? Most works are usually judged by
a reader’s or critic’s standards. In this case, the book must be
categorized as a biographical collection or reference book because the
former is read in its entirety, but the latter is not.

This book’s regular length and appearance should not intimidate the
casual reader, although it is recommended for those with a strong
interest in the subject. Editor Heather Hodgson’s policy of
encouraging living authors to write autobiographical entries makes this
collection more eclectic than other works of its kind.

Hodgson’s policy may not please everyone. Non-postmodern types may
not view the phrase “it was only within the postwar bourgeois
capitalist order that my sexuality emerged as a separate discursive
reality and I became interested in girls” as the best description of
poet Fred Wah’s “sentimental education.” Some may find puzzling
novelist Larry Warwaruk’s statement that he married “a lovely young
woman of Finnish-Canadian extraction, a genre one must probe deeply and
carefully to understand.”

This book can be assessed as a value-neutral tome, but the attention
paid to literary societies, writers’ workshops, and mentors may lead
to a hidden truth. This emphasis on institutions and instructors
represents the emergence of the province’s literary community as a
“collective hero.” Margaret Atwood’s literary term is brought into
the real world. Saskatchewan Writers is a worthwhile purchase for
libraries and interested individuals.