Jack, a Life with Writers: The Story of Jack McClelland

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.

Jack McClelland, who controlled the self-styled “Canadian
Publishers” for over 30 years, is one of the most flamboyant and
colorful figures in Canada. Jack offers a breezy version of the story of
“M & S” punctuated with biographical accounts of the firm’s most
brilliant and/or popular authors. It is a “candid” portrait
presenting two radically opposed, almost schizophrenic sides of its
subject’s nature: his extraordinary courage and energy in championing
Canadian literature and Canadian books, and his infuriating inability to
insist on efficient work methods from his staff to make his
nationalistic dreams possible. (McClelland cheerfully describes his
company as “an incredibly sloppy, inefficient organization.”) It
evokes a vivid sense of the frenetic activity, the stumbling from crisis
to crisis, that characterized McClelland and Stewart at that time.

Its subject aside, this is the kind of book that McClelland, who looked
for “literary appeal combined with commercial appeal,” would have
welcomed. Complete with extensive notes and references, it represents
the fruits of considerable archival research and will need to be
consulted by anyone seriously involved in Canadian literary studies. At
the same time, it is addressed to a general readership—particularly, I
fear, to that trendy segment that likes tittle-tattle about writers but
avoids the intellectual effort of actually reading their books.

Perhaps inevitably, given the state of our culture, the latter wins
out. While King steers his readers through McClelland’s publishing
life and provides fairly basic facts about the authors involved, he is
primarily a conveyor of literary gossip and racy anecdote. The stories
of publishing misadventure, of prima-donna-like behavior on the part of
so many of his authors, and McClelland’s fondness for “direct”
language (one wonders which is the more disturbing: McClelland’s
indulgence in loud-mouthed crudity or King’s apparent eagerness in
reproducing it) are amusing for a time, but eventually become wearisome.
Those seriously concerned about Canadian literary and cultural standards
may find this, in the end, a depressing book.