Coming Attractions 95

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views
of Canada, 1880–1914.

The number of very fine writers “out there” who never achieve
“bestseller” status (and sometimes never find a permanent audience)
must be large indeed. The publication of Coming Attractions—new work
by new writers—is convincing testimony to that fact. The names
represented by the series since 1980—Isabel Huggan, Don Dickinson,
Lesley Kreuger, and more than 40 others—are not (by and large) ones
that are immediately recognizable in terms of literary prominence. And
yet, their contributions to Coming Attractions, like those of the
present contributors—Warren Carriou, Marilyn Gear Pilling, and
Franзois Bonneville—were not only eminently engaging but sure signs
of creative talent and potential. It is, therefore, a pleasure to sample
the writing of these three new writers, and to recommend them to anyone
interested in seeing the shape and motivation of future fiction. Judging
by these pieces, it seems obvious that Canadian fiction is becoming
(like Canadians themselves) more cosmopolitan—less insular, less
American, more European in terms of subject and outlook. Not many
regional idylls here—not much of either the prairie landscape or the
northern angst. They seem, rather, to be preoccupied with sexual
anxieties in European spaces. Nothing wrong with that, and one must
acknowledge that each is a capable writer. The only worry is that it all
seems a little too self-conscious and lacking in humor, which may turn
some readers off. This is not to diminish the achievement, but just to
say that a steady diet of Coming Attractions would certainly give the
ordinary reader a good dose of literary heartburn.