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CanLit Canon Review #19: Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that have shaped this country. Leonard Cohen’s second and final novel, Beautiful Losers, published in 1966, is experimental and difficult. It is also mesmerizing, though, because of its swoon-worthy writing and enthusiasm for filth. You get this: “Come…
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CanLit Canon Review #18: George Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism
There is a lot of great stuff jammed into the 100 pages of Lament for a Nation: it is a short history of conservatism, liberalism, and socialism; it is an analysis of Canada’s changing place in the world during the Cold War; and it’s an emotional tirade by a brilliant thinker who no longer recognizes…
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CanLit Canon Review #17: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. It’s the day after you finish it, when you’re tying your shoes and see it on the coffee table, that you realize The Stone Angel has done something to you, that it’s now a…
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CanLit Canon Review #16: Northrop Frye’s The Educated Imagination
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Northrop Frye’s The Educated Imagination is about literature—why we write it, why we read it, why we bother at all—but it’s also about who we vote for and what we buy; it’s about civilization…
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CanLit Canon Review #15: Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, published in 1959, is a hilarious and rambunctious novel that gives little space to scenery or introspection. It is the story of Duddy Kravitz, a smart-ass kid…
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CanLit Canon Review #14: Donald Creighton’s John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing books that shed fascinating light on Canada’s history. Of all the books I’ve read as part of this project, John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician has most improved me as a Canadian. Published in 1952, this book explores Canada’s beginnings…
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CanLit Canon Review #13: Farley Mowat’s People of the Deer
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. People of the Deer, Farley Mowat’s first book, was published in 1952. At the time, the story was already old, but the way in which Mowat told it was new. It’s the story of white…
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CanLit Canon Review #12: Harold Innis’s Empire and Communications
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. What is most remarkable about Harold Innis is his consistency through the years. Whether it’s his first book, The Fur Trade in Canada or, 20 years later, his last book, Empire and Communications, Innis is…
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CanLit Canon Review #11: W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Published in 1947, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind arrived six years after As For Me and My House, Sinclair Ross’s Prairie-based depression trigger, and it has the same message as its predecessor:…
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CanLit Canon Review #10: Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy’s debut novel, explores poverty, war, and Montreal, and it romanticizes none of them. The book centers on the 10-member Lacasse family, which is trapped by poverty in the suburban…
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CanLit Canon Review #9: Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Two Solitudes, Hugh MacLennan’s 1945 masterpiece, sets out to do nothing less than explain Quebec to the rest of Canada and harmonize the dominion for future citizens. MacLennan attempts this with a generations-spanning soap…
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CanLit Canon Review #8: Sinclair Ross’s As For Me and My House
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. As For Me and My House, published in 1941, is a beautifully moody novel about weather and a terrible marriage. The book is written as a series of diary entries over 13 months during…