advertisement
FYI

In Search Of Canada's Literary Tom Wolfe

He will not be remembered as a great novelist, but as one of the best American magazine writers yet and there needs to be an equal to his narrative skills here in Canada.

In Search Of Canada's Literary Tom Wolfe

By External Source

I am currently reading a great deal of contemporary Canadian fiction, as I am compiling an anthology. I am struck, as I always have been, by the great sad turgidity of most of it, the focus on the domestic setting, the family, the marriage, the kitchen in the small town, dad’s pickup truck. Mom is dying now and still smoking, dad is still an alcoholic and there is a trauma in the past we never really got over. Nobody lives in a city, unless they are there to write a thesis on something obscure and also dating a guy who has a shack on an island. Nobody works in finance or politics. There are no lawyers or advertising executives in Canada, apparently, nobody with an interesting job. There are no techno clubs or operas or ballets or fetish parties, no arguments about the Middle East or bitcoin. My frustration with the narrow tropes of CanLit is exactly the same as it was when I was an undergrad in the late 1980s and dreamed of overthrowing this boomer-imposed thematic dominance with a generation of urbanites who would write about subways and warfare and all the other things that journalism takes on. Nothing has changed.


advertisement

And I realize now that I am rewriting, once again, the argument that Tom Wolfe made at the time, in his essay in Harper’s, Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast. In 1989, that was the manifesto I was longing for. It argued that in the United States, creative writing programs had changed an ambitious literary history into an introverted obsession with the small and the personal. It had become artsy and paltry.

advertisement
Taylor Swift performs onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at BC Place on December 6, 2024 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Kevin Winter/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Taylor Swift performs onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at BC Place on December 6, 2024 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Concerts

Taylor Swift’s 8 Best Moments as the Last Eras Tour Weekend Begins in Vancouver

Vancouver night 1 set the stage for the last hurrah for Swift's epic, sold-out tour.

How will The Eras Tour end?

Here on Dec. 6, 2024, on a Friday night in Vancouver — home of Taylor Swift‘s final three Eras shows (Nos. 150-152, for those counting) — we’re among about 60,000 kindred spirits at BC Place.

“You and I, we’re about to go on a little adventure,” Swift, in a bedazzled blue-and-gold Lover bodysuit, teases the crowd. “That adventure is gonna span 18 years of music, and we’re gonna be doing this one era at a time. How does that sound to you, Vancouver?”

keep readingShow less
advertisement