sewn paper
Literary Criticism
1993
360 pages
ISBN 0-88984-127-6
$18.95
How Stories Mean
edited by John Metcalfand J.R. (Tim) Struthers
How Stories Mean gathers together criticism and theory
written by short story writers themselves. Several of the essays
were newly written for this book. The essays document the establishment
and growth of the story form in Canada over the last twenty-five years
but the collection is far more than archival. It offers endless
insights into how writers write and how they wish to be read.
In discussing the nuts and bolts of their craft, the writers
are inviting us into their workshops so that we can see how stories
are made and come to a more intimate understanding of them.
How Stories Mean is the one indispensable book for all those
interested in the short story in Canada.
Contributors include: Margaret Atwood; Clark Blaise;
George Bowering; Keath Fraser; Mavis Gallant; Jack Hodgins;
Hugh Hood; Norman Levine; John Metcalf; Alice Munro; Leon Rooke;
Carol Shields; Ray Smith; Audrey Thomas and Kent Thompson.
`As a student of literature
and as a university professor,
I have benefited significantly from the
lessons which the more imaginative literary
critics (Northrop Frye and Balachandra
Rajan, to name two) can teach us about
literature. But in the years since I completed
my formal academic training, I have found
that my interests as a critic have
shifted, and have been invigorated, as a
result of a unique education gained by
listening to creative writers. Some of my
university colleagues find what I have to
say on this subject a little surprising. They
understand my enduring concern with
literary form, but are a little bewildered
by my more recent fascination with the
possibilities of style.
How did I become interested in such
and such? Through editing my collection
The Montreal Story Tellers, I reply;
in particular by studying the memoir-essays
by Hugh Hood, John Metcalf, Ray Smith,
Raymond Fraser, and Clark Blaise which
open that volume. Or through interviewing
writers, I say. Hearing how they resist most
of my academically-based formulations. More
recently, I continue, as a result of many,
many conversations that I have enjoyed
with John Metcalf as publisher of two books
of his criticism through Red Kite Press and
as co-conspirator with him as acquisitions
editors for The Porcupine's Quill.
The formal training that I acquired
in the process of obtaining three academic degrees
in English has not been sufficient to teach
me to read the way I want to read now. Nor
has the huge body of literary theory that
absorbs many critics of my generation been
equal to this task. Narrowly academic obsessions
have led many critics to lose sight of our
principal responsibilities - to literature
and language, to the experience of life, to the
reading public - and to vanish into a haze
of intellection and semantics. In contrast,
many Canadian writers have succeeded in
speaking passionately and lucidly and
perceptively about the artistry of their
own and other individuals' work. By
casting light upon the nature of their
writing, the inside story, writers like
John Metcalf provide the means to enhance
our analytic understanding of literature and
our sense of wonder about literature.
If I had not read essays like John
Metcalf's `Editing the Best', `Punctuation
as Score', and `That Damn Clock Again', I doubt
that I would have started to investigate
the possibilities of style. Call this the
music of prose: it is what generates, at
some intuitive level, our sense of a story's
power the first and every other time that
we read the story. I would not have become
so finely aware of this music, I would not
have thought to comment on it, and I would
not have begun to grasp how I might
go about analysing it, if I had not kept
listening to John Metcalf and his
contemporaries talk about literature -
about their craft.
For more than two decades, John Metcalf
has laboured tirelessly to produce his
own illuminating assessments of the
art of fiction. He has also encouraged many
other Canadian writers to discuss the
making of their stories. Through his
anthologies of stories and commentaries,
John Metcalf has introduced generations
of readers to exciting new possibilities
of form, technique, style, and language
found in contemporary writing. The
present collaboration is even wider
in scope, reprinting various seminal
commentaries from John's earlier
anthologies, gathering other intriguing
items from relatively obscure sources,
and including several more pieces newly
commissioned by John. This book is a
spirited testimonial by fifteen distinguished
artists to the development of short
story writing in Canada. It pleases me
to have the opportunity to emphasize
how indispensable the role played by
John Metcalf in this ongoing history
has been, how much enthusiasm and rigour
he has contributed to the advancement of
the short story in Canada.' - J.R. (Tim) Struthers
J.R. (Tim) Struthers has won wide recognition for his efforts as a bibliographer, interviewer, critic, editor, and publisher. He completed a Ph.D. in English at the University of Western Ontario with a specialization in Canadian literature, was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada post-doctoral fellowship for study of the works of Hugh Hood, then joined the Department of English at the University of Guelph on July 1, 1985. He is the editor of three critical books: Before the Flood, a volume of criticism on Hugh Hood; The Montreal Story Tellers, a collection of autobiography and criticism; and New Directions from Old, a volume of criticism on Canadian short fiction. He has also prepared the two-volume anthology The Possibilities of Story and, with John Metcalf, the collections Canadian Classics and How Stories Mean. As an editor for The Porcupine's Quill and as the publisher of Red Kite Press, J.R. (Tim) Struthers has arranged for and supervised the publication of a considerable number and variety of books of criticism and literature.