More Writers and Company

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.

This volume is, of course, a sequel to Writers & Company, which appeared
from the same publishers in 1993.

Because I was put off by the advertising hype that used to precede
Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, I’ve never been a regular listener to
CBC’s Writers & Company radio show—so I approached this book with, I
suppose, a certain skepticism. It consists of 22 interviews with writers
drawn from the international field (only two are Canadian). The
interviews are well researched and allow the interviewees, as Eleanor
Wachtel writes in the introduction to the first series, to “talk about
ideas and feelings with intelligence and candour.” Moreover, to quote
the same source, the original uncut interviews have been “edited for
print, unfettered by program time constraints.” To read an interview
is, I am convinced, better than to listen to it: one can proceed at
one’s own speed, turning back to check on precisely what was said, and
is not sidetracked by voices, timbres, or intonations.

Was I wrong, then, to be skeptical at the outset? Not, I think,
entirely. These are good interviews and well worth making available, but
I find myself wondering about the process of selection. Most of these
authors are primarily novelists; the rest, writers of nonfiction prose.
There are no poets and no dramatists (though some participants have
produced the occasional poem or play). Most of them (critic Harold Bloom
being perhaps the only exception) uphold a conspicuously
“progressive” sociopolitical position. It seems to me that
politically correct messages are given more attention here than are
discussions of language and technique.

Moreover, virtually all of those interviewed either have won notable
literary awards or are for some other reason centres of controversy.
They seem to have been chosen not merely for their writing but because
they are “in the news.” When speaking with Nicole Brossard, Wachtel
remarks: “you’re a good girl again now; you’re very established,
you win a lot of literary prizes, there are films made about you.” The
criteria for selection become manifest there.

Still, this is a provocative book, and I’m glad to have read it.