Hugh MacLennan

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 book reprints the papers from an academic conference on Hugh
MacLennan held at the University of Ottawa in 1993. Naturally enough,
most of the contributors are professors of English, but their essays are
framed, as it were, by the reminiscences of MacLennan’s last editor,
Douglas Gibson, and thoughts about the possible directions for further
research from librarian and Dictionary of Canadian Biography editor
Francess Halpenny. A case of two amateurs among a flock of
professionals? Perhaps, but if the criterion is a broad grasp of
MacLennan’s range and context, the amateurs win hands down.

With a few exceptions, the English professors are limited in scope and
narrowly rigid in their approaches. Few give the impression of reading
MacLennan for pleasure rather than studying him in order to take up an
intellectual position. By far the best is Francis Zichy on MacLennan and
modernism; I do not wholly agree with him, but he brings solid critical
criteria to bear and delivers an important challenge to the sheltered
“Canadian criticism” world. Christl Verduyn unearths useful material
in the MacLennan/Marian Engel correspondence, and one looks forward to
her forthcoming book. And Barbara Pell takes a useful first step in
discussing the important matter of MacLennan’s religious views.

The less said about the rest, the better. They range from the
simplistic (one writer begins “The theme of Barometer Rising ...”
and repeats the same formula for the other novels six times in six
pages) through the hilarious (another interprets a wine bottle in its
bucket in a Montréal restaurant as a phallic object in a female
receptacle) to the impertinent (a third wonders why, after his first
wife’s death, MacLennan didn’t marry a young French Canadian).
Depressing.

But Gibson writes humanely and warmly of the man he knew, revealing the
author behind the writing with all its old-fashioned yet essential
interest, and Halpenny upholds the importance of down-to-earth empirical
scholarship. They represent the discerning audience that is still
reading and thinking about MacLennan, whatever the postmodern professors
say or do.

Five worthwhile essays out of a baker’s dozen—with an updated
bibliography added.