E.J. Pratt: The Truant Years, 1882-1927

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and author of The Salvation Army and the
Public.

It is a universal expectation that biography will, in Virginia Woolf’s words, weld “into one seamless whole” the “Granite-like solidity” of truth and the “rainbow-like intangibility” of personality. And that it will do so with the storyteller’s gift for narrative design and evocation. D.G. Pitt’s biography of E.J. Pratt, depicting the first 45 years of Canada’s best-loved poet, proves incontestably that the expectation can be met with great success.

E.J. Pratt. The Truant Years is, in fact, a masterpiece, revealing a complex personality shaped by a harsh Newfoundland environment, nurtured by Methodism, made rebellious by the study of formal psychology, refined by English literature, and assuaged by love. Guided by the desire to account for the peculiar genius of this man, Pitt shows us the Newfoundland outport, how Pratt might or might not have been a typical out-harbour juvenile, the parsonage in which he learned his moral ABC’s, the village schools and the University of Toronto from which eventually gained a Ph.D. — showing us, in effect, the many personas of this “unlikely Newfoundlander.” In a prose style that itself might be called Prattian — witty, anecdotal, expansive and metaphoric — he acquaints us with Neddie the “bay-boy,” Rev. Edward (the young and often reluctant clergyman), Dr. E.J. (the lecturer in psychology and Medical Inspector of Toronto Schools), “Ned,” the bon vivant, and E.J. , the author of such startlingly new works as The Witches’ Brew.

One does not have to be an aficionado of Pratt’s poetry — indeed, one hardly need have read any of it — to enjoy this biography. Pitt has avoided playing the literary critic, has not indulged in unnecessary psychoanalysis, and has not written a stodgy factual tome: this is biography of the purest kind — lively and full of life, entertaining to the last word. It is a tale “told with a flourish” without forfeiting either the “freedom of fiction” or the “substance of fact.” But of this I am certain: those who have not read Pratt will, after reading Pitt, want to become acquainted with what, to many Canadians, is the best poetry written by a Canadian.