WO: The Life of W.O. Mitchell

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.

W.O. represents the first fruits of a two-volume project devoted to the
biography of W.O. Mitchell, written by Mitchell’s elder son and
daughter-in-law. It takes the story up to 1947 and the publication of
Who Has Seen the Wind. The information is relayed in three interspersed
forms: research-based, third-person, biographical prose; generous
transcriptions from numerous interviews with Mitchell himself; and a
number of personal memories in which Orm Mitchell recalls relevant
stories about his father. This sounds a clumsy, confusing device, but in
practice it works remarkably well.

W.O. Mitchell has two related but distinct reputations. Discerning
readers of Canadian literature recognize Who Has Seen the Wind as an
enduring classic, while his “Jake and the Kid” stories—in print,
on radio, and on television—have won him a popular reputation in the
area of folksy humor and warm sentiment. The authors of W.O. clearly
attempt to appeal to both groups.

In the main, they succeed in this endeavor, though a difficulty arises
with Mitchell’s own reminiscences. The interviews with W.O. Mitchell
date from the 1980s and 1990s, and he, great raconteur that he was,
after repeating these stories for decades—and had clearly
“improved” them in the frequent retellings. The authors claim that,
knowing him so well, they have been able to “differentiate fairly
accurately between fact and fiction.” Perhaps, but the bizarre and
hilarious anecdotes follow each other so relentlessly that it is
difficult not to suspect that they owe much to the oral “tall-tale”
tradition that W.O. Mitchell regularly draws upon in his work.

His popular audience will clearly cherish an unexpected batch of new
Mitchell set pieces, all told with his characteristic zest and verbal
energy. More academic readers may well have some reservations, but there
is plenty of background information about Mitchell’s life and about
the origins of numerous scenes in his novels and stories. Some will
think this documents both his weaknesses as well as his strengths, but,
however that may be, this book qualifies both as a scholarly work and as
an engaging popular narrative.