Spider Blues: Essays on Michael Ondaatje

Nora D.S. Robins is co-ordinator of Internal Collections at the
University of Calgary Libraries.

Michael Ondaatje is a poet, playwright, critic, editor, film director, and one of the finest contemporary writers in Canada. Spider Blues is a collection of 27 essays, reviews, and interviews dealing with his poetry and fiction. Edited by Sam Solecki, a member of the Department of English at the University of Toronto, this collection represents the first sustained attempt at a comprehensive critical overview of an important author who is still very much in mid-career.

The articles in this anthology describe, interpret, and evaluate Ondaatje from several perspectives. Stephen Scobie, George Bowering, and J.E. Chamberlin present widely differing arguments about influence and tradition; Sheila Watson and Dennis Lee examine the larger implications of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; Dennis Cooley and Linda Hutcheon examine Ondaatje within the confines of post-modernism; the essays of Susan Glickman, Tom Marshall, and Sam Solecki attempt to define Ondaatje’s central concerns and myths; Ernest MacIntyre examines the Ceylon/Sri Lanka phase of Ondaatje’s past. Of equal interest are the two interviews with Ondaatje, conducted by Sam Solecki in 1975 and 1984, respectively. The collection concludes with a 22-page annotated bibliography of works by and about Ondaatje, compiled by Judith Brady. This bibliography is a radically shortened version of Brady’s annotated bibliography which will soon be published as part of ECW’s Annotated Bibliographies of Canada’s Major Authors.

While many of these essays have appeared in such literary journals as Canadian Literature, Descant and Canadian Poetry, eight were especially commissioned for Spider Blues. All are incisive and challenging studies of a writer who, as Margaret Atwood has indicated, evades “easy categorization.” This is an important book that helps to define Ondaatje’s anomalous position within Canada’s literary culture.