Kicking Against the Pricks

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

An angry author, John Metcalf, evens some personal scores in this collection of nine essays, all of which are intended to deflate or debunk various of his pet hates: i.e., book reviewing and literary criticism in Canada; “Writer-in-Residence” programs in Canadian universities; Canada Council funding in all its whimsicality; teachers, students, and the Canadian literary establishment in general.

To call his criticism of the critics “outspoken” would do him less than justice. The title he has given his collection of satiric essays accurately suggests its flavour and his barbed wit. Effective, funny, and often painfully telling.