Random Walks: Essays in Elective Criticism

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.

David Solway is one of Canada’s most accomplished, intelligent, and
neglected poets. As a teacher at a Quebec community college, he occupies
a somewhat marginal position in the university-oriented academic status
quo. Both his avocation and his vocation give him an enviable freedom
when he turns his attention to literary criticism. What he calls here
“elective criticism” allows commentators to choose their own topics
and approaches without any promptings from either current politics or
entrenched theory, and, above all, to demonstrate stylistic verve and
versatility. Random Walks is eloquent testimony to what can be achieved
in this manner.

The book is divided into two parts, the first dealing with general
literary topics, the second with specific writers from the Elizabethan
period to the present. Throughout, Solway reveals himself as a
wide-ranging and intellectually curious reader and arguer. Moreover,
unlike so many of his critical opponents, he is remarkable for
linguistic elegance, verbal pyrotechnics, and irrepressible humor. His
deconstruction of deconstruction and his dismantling of psychocritical
(and psychosexual) commentary in “The Autoerotic Text” is not only
cogent but also funny.

Solway is known for his universalism, and the book’s second part
contains essays on Shakespeare, Swift, Browning, Kafka, and Joyce. But
Canadian writing is not neglected: this section also includes an
excellent memoir-cum-appreciation of Irving Layton and a devastating
evaluation of the poetry of Erin Mouré.

Literary criticism of poets is generally worth reading for several
reasons: notably because of what it reveals about the poet’s own
practice, and because it is more likely to focus on the manipulation and
control of words rather than the discussion and evaluation of themes.
Solway’s criticism is valuable on both counts. And although his
vocabulary can sometimes stump even the better dictionaries, his wit
invariably shines through. The opening sentence of his preface sets the
tone: “My problem as a writer is that I have lots of axes to grind and
no hatchets to bury.”