sewn paper
Fiction
1987
248 pages
ISBN 0-88984-110-1
$12.95
Flying a Red Kite
Hugh Hood
It all started towards the end of the 1930s when the young Hugh Hood
serviced a flourishing Saturday Evening Post route with more than fifty
weekly customers. That was where the author-to-be first encountered the
short story, in the formula fiction of the famous magazine writers, Damon
Runyon, Guy Gilpatric, Arthur Train, and of course the Master,
P.G. Wodehouse. By the '40s, Hood had discovered Pocketbooks, and, in particular,
My Life and Hard Times (included in The Thurber Carnival) which
led first to a story called `Recollections of the Works Department' and
later to some of the methods employed in his opus, The New
Age / Le nouveau siècle.
For a writer who once professed `If in the course of my life I can get a
half a dozen stories printed, I'll be satisfied', Flying a Red Kite
marked a different kind of beginning. The first selection of ten stories was
completed in March of 1962 by John Colombo and Robert Weaver for publication
by the Ryerson Press. Both editors felt at the time that an additional story
was required to round out the sequence to a cohesive volume. Hood wrote `The
End of It', and that is how we have it here - the eleven stories of Hood's
first book-length publication, to which the author has added a lengthy
introduction and a checklist of bibliographical data.
`The only true biography of the artist, as George Bernard Shaw once observed,
is the work itself. The wisdom of this remark is particularly apt in the case of Hugh Hood, a writer whose
apparent realism causes many unsophisticated readers to conclude that his work
is a shameless transcription of personal experience very thinly disguised as art. Even
if it did nothing more than correct this misconception, this new edition of Hugh Hood's
first book (originally published in 1962) would be a valuable addition to the
shelves of our libraries. ...
`Despite the sneers of those who nibble and run, Hood's thirty-year career demonstrates his
profound and compassionate sensitivity to our human predicament. This timely reprint
of his first volume proves - if proof were needed - that he has always been far, far
more than a dreary chroniclet of the quotidian. So Flying a Red Kite
remains a splendid introduction to all the work of this subtle and prolific author.'
- Canadian Book Review Annual
Photo by Noreen Mallory
His work includes: Flying a Red Kite (1962), White Figure, White Ground (1964), You Cant Get There From Here (1972), Black and White Keys (1980), The Motor Boys in Ottawa (1986), which won the first annual QSPELL Award, and You'll Catch Your Death (1992).
Hugh Hood was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988.