Literary History in English in the 21st century

This troubled period began with the Y2K scare, when ​COMPUTER​ programs
worldwide were expected to fail. 3000 people, 25 of them Canadian, died in
the New York Trade Center bombings on "9-11" 2001. In 2002, Canada
joined the ​NATO​ mission in ​AFGHANISTAN​, the first official military
engagement since the ​KOREAN WAR​; 158 Canadians were killed there over
the next ten years. In ​LITERATURE​ as well as on the street, anti-war
protests were common. So were protests against ​POLLUTION​, against
economic disparity (exacerbated by the international financial collapse in
2008 (​see​INCOME DISTRIBUTION​), and for ​ENVIRONMENTAL​ protection.
The "Occupy Movement," initiated by the editors of the journal ​Adbusters​,
spread internationally. Military and corporate rhetoric permeated public
culture. In 2012, government cutbacks altered the function of the ​NATIONAL
ARCHIVES OF CANADA​, restricting inter- library loans, and cancelled support
for overseas ​CANADIAN STUDIES​ programs. 2012 was also a year when
rumours of the end of the world were rampant; apocalyptic literature
thrived.
The most dominant Canadian literary figure in the early 21st century
continued to be Margaret ​ATWOOD​. Between 2000 and 2012, she published
one book of ​POETRY​, two of ​SHORT FICTION​, three new children's books,
four ​NOVELS​, a playscript (​The Penelopiad​ 2007), and six works of
non-fiction, including reflections on debt, morality, and ​SCIENCE FICTION​.
Her speculative fictions won a particularly wide readership. ​ORYX AND
CRAKE​ (2003) and ​THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD​ (2009) tell of an "America"
where violence has replaced order as an arbiter of power, cross-species
experimentation has resulted in unpredictable creatures, but where
goodness still has a chance to prevail.
Numerous other writers whose careers had been established in previous
decades also wrote into the new millennium: Clark ​BLAISE​, George
FETHERLING​ (​Walt Whitman's Secret​, 2010), Mavis ​GALLANT​, Douglas
GLOVER​ (​Elle​, 2003), Jack ​HODGINS​, Greg Hollingshead, Wayne ​JOHNSTON​,
Ann-Marie ​MACDONALD​, Alistair ​MACLEOD​, Michael ​ONDAATJE​, David
Adams ​RICHARDS​, Andreas Schroeder (​Renovating Heaven​, 2008), Carol
SHIELDS​ (​Unless,​ 2002), Jane ​URQUHART​, Rudy ​WIEBE​, and Richard B.
WRIGHT​ in fiction; George ​BOWERING​, Dionne ​BRAND​ (​Inventory​, 2006;
Ossuaries​, 2010), Robert ​BRINGHURST​, Robert ​KROETSCH​, Tim ​LILBURN​,
Daphne ​MARLATT​, Don ​MCKAY​, Erin ​MOURE​, Sharon ​THESEN​, Judith
THOMPSON​, and literally scores of others in poetry and ​DRAMA​. With ​The
Last Crossing​ (2002) and ​A Good Man​(2011), Guy
VANDERHAEGHE​completed his massive, border-crossing Prairie trilogy,
giving new life and form to the historical novel. Austin ​CLARKE​, with ​The
Polished Hoe​ (2002)--partly a "confession" in Bajan (i.e. Barbadian)
speech--recounted the wrongs that colonization wreaked upon ​BLACK
populations in the Caribbean and Canada. Alice ​MUNRO​, winner of the Man
Booker lifetime achievement award in 2009, published seven new collections
of stories (including ​Runaway​, 2004). Resisting denouement and judgment
while drawing on the resonance of nuance and image, these stories by
indirection reveal the complex motivations that shape behaviour.
Yet ​PUBLISHERS​ on the whole tended to seek new writers for the new
millennium. Publication lists were amplified by numerous texts straight out
of creative writing schools, frequently addressing topics of the day: lifestyle
choices, the challenge of a particular ethnic heritage, economic
powerlessness, urban trauma, and cultural ennui, represented in part by the
artifice of "reality television." By 2012, the international language of
contemporary advertising and electronic media had begun to shape the craft
of writing (Sina ​QUEYRAS​ alludes to "reality" being a Qatari parking lot, a
Malawi airstrip), and many young writers in particular were drawn to a
"post-national" literary sensibility, one that dismissed the ​NATIONAL​ focus
and free-verse conventions of the previous fifty years as pastoral, personal,
and provincial. Some championed ​LANGUAGE​ as a "technology" to be
deconstructed for intellectual effect; others sought meaning in a renewed
formalism, affirming complex accessibility over abstract minimalism. Both
positions declared that literature expressed ideas, and both allowed that
literature happens within social contexts, some of which crossed borders.
While dissatisfaction and unease marked the tone of the first decade of the
century, many people nevertheless found conventionality appealing, for it
enabled escape from both uncertainty and the speed of social change. For
publishers, conventional narrative was also a straightforward marketing
strategy at a time when the role of editors was being minimized, when
Amazon and other agencies were taking over a larger proportion of sales,
when street-front bookstores were closing, electronic media were
encouraging downloads, and the rules of ​COPYRIGHT​ were changing again.
PRIZE​ juries of new fiction frequently gave precedence to the accessible and
popular over the challenging, the innovative, and the stylistically
accomplished.
Several oppositional works did attract attention, notably Jane ​JACOBS​' ​Dark
Age Ahead​ (2004) and two books by Naomi Klein, ​No Logo​ (2000) and ​The
Shock Doctrine​ (2007), which attack the power of international corporate
capitalism, its political agenda (which can overrun national or local social
preferences), and the increasing divide between rich and poor. The urban
short stories of Michael Christie (​The Beggar's Garden​, 2011) and the satiric
anecdotes of Zsuzsi ​GARTNER​ examine this divide. Critical literary works,
and informed commentary on contemporary issues, tended to appear less in
university quarterly or newspaper format than in smaller journals
(​SeeL​ ITERARY MAGAZINES IN ENGLISH​) such as ​Geist​ and ​subTerrain,​ or in
electronic format, whether online ​MAGAZINE​ (​Tyee, Influencysalon​), website
(CWILA [Canadian Women in the Literary Arts], George ​MURRAY​'s
Bookninja,​ Sina Queyras' ​lemonhound)​ , or individual blog. Websites that
publish narrative include ​Wattpad​ and Emily Schultz's ​Joyland​.
Much ​CHILDREN'S LITERATURE​ of the time was also problem-centred,
focusing on ​POVERTY​, child abuse, disease, war and bullying. In contrast,
much active storytelling (for example, the work of Robert Munsch) and
poetry for children (as in books by JonArno Lawson, Robert Heidbreder, and
William ​NEW​), while sometimes embodying social concerns such as ecology,
friendship and family, also delights in language play and wonder. Patsy
Aldana's Groundwood Books remained a major children's publisher.
Ecology became a prominent issue in literature generally, as in the
philosophical poetry and essays of McKay (​Another Gravity,​ 2000; ​Vis à Vis:
field notes on poetry and wilderness,​ 2002), Lilburn (​Thinking and Singing,​
2002) and Rita ​WONG​ (whose ​forage​, 2007, links ecological crisis with forms
of social imperialism). Other works include John Vaillant's narratives of other
species; Christopher Patton's ​Jack Pine​ (2007), the basis for a children's
opera; and the reflective commentaries of Laurie Ricou, notably ​The
Arbutus/Madrone Files​ (2002) and ​Salal​(2007). Related books of "creative
non-fiction" include first-person engagements with gardens and darkness:
Patrick ​LANE​'s ​There is a Season​ (2004), Christopher ​DEWDNEY​'s
Acquainted with the Night​ (2004); and autobiographical adventures in
search of family and self, such as Charles Montgomery's ​The Last Heathen
(2004) and J.B. MacKinnon's ​Dead Man in Paradise​ (2006).
Several serious new novelists appeared, among them Michael ​CRUMMEY​ in
St. John's, Heather O'Neill in Montreal, Helen Humphreys in Kingston,
Camilla ​GIBB​ in Toronto, Miriam ​TOEWS​ in Winnipeg, Todd Babiak in
Edmonton, and Anosh Irani in Vancouver. Some critical attention focused
also on Peter ​BEHRENS​, David ​BERGEN​, David Chariandy, Patrick ​DEWITT​,
Marina ​ENDICOTT​, Rawi ​HAGE​, Elizabeth ​HAY​, Larissa ​LAI​, Yann ​MARTEL
(Life of Pi, 2001), Linden ​MCINTYRE​, Nancy ​RICHLER​, Eden ​ROBINSON
(​Blood Sports,​ 2006), Johanna ​SKIBSRUD​, Russell Wangersky, Michael
WINTER​, and Alissa ​YORK​. Will ​FERGUSON​'s ​Happiness​ (2002) established
his career as a satiric ​HUMORIST​. Some writers examined society quietly,
revealing indirectly the violence underlying appearances--Matthew Hooton in
a Bildungsroman (​Deloume Road​, 2010), Dianne ​WARREN​ using measured,
loping cadences to portray a country town (​Cool Water​, 2010), Devin Krukoff
in the interlocking, multiple-character narratives of ​Flyways​ (2011), and
Warren Cariou, in his family biography, ​Lake of the Prairies​ (2002). A related
portrait of a prairie town, Kevin Kerr's 2002 play ​unity​ (1918), addresses the
impact of the Spanish flu ​PANDEMIC​ in Saskatchewan.
By the end of the 2000s, novels by several other writers, whether praised or
neglected at the time of publication, began to emerge as significant
achievements of the decade. These include Steven ​GALLOWAY​'s ​The Cellist
of Sarajevo​ (2008), which reconstructs the competing passions of the Balkan
wars (violence and art, both compulsive); Thomas ​WHARTON​'s revisionist
Icefields​ (1995) and self-reflexive ​The Logogryph​(2004); Wayson ​CHOY​'s ​All
that Matters​ (2004; a sequel to his 1995 ​The Jade Peony​), which tells of a
cross-cultural understanding that develops over time in early Vancouver
Chinatown; Arley McNeney's ​The Time We All Went Marching​(2011), about
women's lives while men joined the On-to-Ottawa protest march during the
DEPRESSION​; Lawrence ​HILL​'s ​THE BOOK OF NEGROES ​(2007), about an
African woman trying to escape from the USA to Canada in 1783; Esi
EDUGYAN​'s ​Half-Blood Blues​ (2011), which in dialect rhythms, jazz
cadences, and standard prose tells of personal rivalries and racism against
Blacks in France and Germany during the 1930s and 1940s; and Joseph
BOYDEN​'s ​Three Day Road​ (2005), about two ​CREE​snipers in the ​FIRST
WORLD WAR​, and the long route back to mental health for the sole survivor
(the title of this book, the first in a trilogy, refers to the survivor's halting
recollections and to the traditional stories that a healing woman teaches him
on the way home).
In these, as in several other major fictions of the time, the narratives
acknowledge and address contemporary violence but refuse to accept the
inevitability of defeat. Annabel ​LYON​'s novel ​The Golden Mean​ (2009), while
ostensibly about Aristotle tutoring Alexander, was written as a response to
the 9-11 tragedy and its aftermath. Revealing how the two central
characters compulsively abandon moderation--one in pursuit of logic, the
other of action--Lyon nevertheless continues to champion an ideal. Hope
also survives in Steven ​HEIGHTON​'s ​Every Lost Country​ (2010), which tracks
the obsessions of a climber, a doctor, and a filmmaker as they pursue their
contrary and potentially destructive paths. Timothy ​TAYLOR​'s stories and
novels, especially ​Stanley Park​ (2001) and ​The Blue Light Project(​ 2011),
construct a borderland between straight realism and imaginative flight,
where aspiration can lead to amazing achievement or the dark mazes of
torture and recrimination. The first of these novels tells of a young would-be
restaurateur who accepts the help of a Mephistopheles figure, and of the
young man's father, caught up in a preoccupation of his own. The later
novel, set in a deliberately anonymous place so as to embody the
"corporate," monolithic character of contemporary cities, follows several
characters through their dilemmas; for each, celebrity appeals and threatens
to destroy: characters lie, abduct children, torture for the sake of
notoriety--yet even in this context, a stubborn intellect refuses to let
affirmation die.
In poetry, too, numerous voices were heard, some praised for imagery,
philosophy, or arresting technique (for example, Anne ​CARSON​, Christian
BÖK​, Margaret ​AVISON​, Anne ​SIMPSON​, Don McKay, Robin ​BLASER​, A.F.
MORITZ​, Karen ​SOLIE​, Dionne Brand, Ken ​BABSTOCK​: all winners of the
GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE​ (est. 2001). Some (mainly lyricists) were
acknowledged by the ​GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD​ (McKay,
George Elliott ​CLARKE​, Roy ​MIKI​, Tim Lilburn, Roo ​BORSON​, Anne
COMPTON​, John ​PASS​, Don Domanski, Jacob Scheier, David ​ZIEROTH​,
Richard ​GREENE​, Phil ​HALL​). Some were absorbed and admired only by
aficionados of the genre--or of a particular school of the genre, of which
there were many. A few people--for example, Susan McMaster, Sheri-D
Wilson, Gordon Downie, Shane ​KOYCZAN​--made their reputation as
performance poets, favouring such forms as song, rap verse, or poetry slam.
Writers such as Miki, Bök, Clint Burnham, and Darren Wershler-Henry broke
with conventional discourse for political reasons or to fasten, as does Bök's
Eunoia​ (2001, the title borrowed from Aristotle, meaning "beautiful
thinking"), and as in other ways bill ​BISSETT​'s and Steve ​MCCAFFERY​'s work
did before him, on the aural effect of the syllable and its intellectual
determination of meaning. Hall worked with the verse paragraph, Carson
(​The Beauty of the Husband,​ 2001) with sequential "tangos," and Blaser
(​The Holy Forest,​ revised 2007) with a multi-volume serial poem.
Experiments with other strategies multiplied: Sina Queyras's and rob
mclennan's "field" poems (where rhythm and repetition construct linguistic
fields), Kate Braid's work poems, Kevin McNeilly's jazz poems, Angela
Rawlings' blend of visual art with science and gender study (​Wide Slumber
for Lepidopterists,​ 2006), Barbara Klar's reflections on the mother and the
body, Ray Hsu's meditations on the grammars of perception (​Cold Sleep
Permanent Afternoon,​ 2010), Gregory ​SCOFIELD​'s "conversations" with his
Cree/Jewish heritage, Karen Solie's mordant play of irony, David
MCGIMPSEY​'s wry soliloquies and laconic characters.
Contemporary lyricists, many of them dealing with ecological or
environmental matters, include Elizabeth Bachinsky, Stephanie ​BOLSTER​,
Suzanne Buffam, Adam Dickinson, Patrick ​FRIESEN​, Susan Glickman, Susan
Goyette, Brian Henderson, Aislinn Hunter, Evelyn ​LAU​, David Manicom, Elise
Partridge, Steven Price, Jay Ruzesky, Sandy Shreve, Sue Sinclair, Shannon
Stewart, Rhea Tregebov, Yi-Mei Tsiang, and Patricia Young. The strength in
these poets' works derives from inventive image and musical control over
cadence, qualities that draw out a relation between the external world and
the inner life. Steven Heighton, too--poet and essayist as well as novelist,
short story writer, and composer of epigrammatic "memos" about the craft
of writing (​Work Book​, 2011)--translates the lyric into a cogent dismissal of
affectation and a tonally acute model of sensitive thinking. Several writers
linked lyrics into book-length forms, as in William New's serial long poems
(​Underwood Log,​ 2004; ​YVR​, 2011), which track the environmental and
psychological implications of border country. The eloquent volumes of Philip
Kevin Paul, ​Taking the Names Down from the Hill​ (2004) and ​Little
Hunger(​ 2009), draw on the orature of the Wsá,nec (Saanich) nation. Ken
Babstock might in many ways be said to embody the tenor of the decade;
criticized by some for being arbitrary or obscure, but called "playful, fierce,
intelligent" by the Griffin Poetry Prize jury for all four of his books--​Mean
(1999), ​Days into Flatspin(​ 2001), ​Airstream Land Yacht​ (2006), ​Methodist
Hatchet​ (2011). Babstock, through juxtapositions and double meanings,
probes the ambiguity of understanding in a fast and chaotic world.
Key to contemporary discussions of "Canadian" poetics is the intellectual
divergence between Christian Bök and Carmine ​STARNINO​, articulated in a
90-minute debate held in Alberta in 2009. Bök's position affirmed the
intellectual validity--even necessity--of "experimental" language, designed
for a post-national machine world, dismissive of pastoral imagery. Equally
post-national, Starnino (editor of a contentious 2005 anthology, ​The New
Canon,​ and dismissive of the vernacular free verse cadences of a poet such
as Al ​PURDY​) argued for a return to accessible but not simplistic formalism,
which sees "experiment" as simply another formal variation, too often held
up as an exclusive preserve of ideas. A group of poets that emerged in
Montreal, loosely associated with Starnino, admired the latest manifestations
of Modernism (as, for example, in the work of Eric Ormsby, Norm Sibum--or
Daryl Hine in Chicago) or the plain speech of David O'Meara. In Toronto, the
publisher Kevin ​CONNOLLY​ (​Drift​, 2005; ​Revolver,​ 2008) responded to pop
culture, surrealism, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and encouraged
fellow writers Gil ​ADAMSON​, Lynn ​CROSBIE​, and Stuart Ross. In Vancouver,
the Kootenay School of Writing, a writers' collective including Jeff Derksen,
Lisa Robertson, Colin Browne (​Ground Water,​ 2002; ​The Shovel,​ 2007),
Suzanne Buffam, Tom ​WAYMAN​, Fred ​WAH​ (​is a door​, 2009), Meredith
Quartermain and others at different times, argued for a more openly political
break with standard ("neo-liberal") language.
The genre that some criticism regarded as the most captivating form of the
new century was short fiction (​See​SHORT FICTION IN ENGLISH 1985-2012​).
Anthologies abounded; single stories (for example by Carol Matthews, Olive
Senior, Craig Boyko) were praised; but more characteristically readers
turned to the complex coherence of individual collections and to the
attractions of a flexible style. A few highly prized collections, such as Bill
GASTON​'s ​Mount Appetite​ (2002) and Michael ​REDHILL​'s ​Fidelity​ (2003),
displayed a remarkable range of techniques. More uniform in method, works
by Kevin Armstrong, Kevin Patterson, Michael Trussler, Lee Henderson,
Deborah Willis, Shaleema Nawaz, Miranda Hill, Jessica Westhead, Rebecca
Rosenblum (​Once,​ 2001), and Sarah ​SELECKY​ also attracted attention.
Displaying control over a single form, John Gould (​Kilter​, 2003) wrote
variations of the "short-short" story form; Warren Cariou wrote novellas;
Pasha Malla and Diane ​SCHOEMPERLEN​ used the fragment so as to shatter a
sense of wholeness, to catch only a glimpse of wholeness, or to interrupt
expectations of easy continuity. Michael Turner, in ​8 x 10​ (2009), openly
broke with linear logic.
Some critics also singled out such writers as Madeleine ​THIEN​, David
Bezmozgis, Vincent ​LAM​ and Anthony ​DE SA​, largely to examine how they
dealt with ethnic heritage, race, and rebellion. In each of these instances, a
familiar tale of growing up and/or discovering artistic talent or professional
skill informs a story sequence. The four sections of Joseph Boyden's ​Born
with a Tooth​ (2001) tell Cree stories of brutality, loss, and, finally,
reaffirmation. Other writers were also acknowledged for dealing with "real"
subjects, which generally involved bars, drugs, poverty, sex, death, abuse,
aimlessness and separation. Craig Davidson (​Rust and Bone​, 2005) focused
on classic "tough guys," exposing their varying degrees of strength when
faced with fights, fetishes, and fatherhood. Rough homes and rough
friendships also characterize D.W. Wilson's ​Once You Break a Knuckle​ (2011)
and Nathan Sellyn's ​Indigenous Beasts​ (2006), while mother-daughter
relationships inform Dede Crane's ​The Cult of Quick Repair​ (2008).
Other collections attracted critical notice for their technical flair as well as
their sophistication of thought. Neil Smith (​Bang Crunch​, 2007), Annabel
Lyon (​Oxygen,​ 2000), Lisa ​MOORE​ (​Open​, 2002), and Nancy Lee (​Dead
Girls,​ 2003) were praised for their elegant restraint and precise control over
image; Genni Gunn and Charlotte Gill for rendering narrative with sardonic
humour; Ivan E. Coyote for demonstrating the sprightly vernacular art of
neighbourhood storytelling. George Bowering (as in ​The Box,​ 2009) shaped
anecdote with multi-layered puns; Heather Birrell's jarring stories (​Mad
Hope,​ 2012) adapt fresh phrasing to conventional circumstances (one story
is cast as an exchange of blog entries); and Timothy Taylor's ​Silent Cruise
(2002) draws on a contemporary language of trademarks and technology to
tell stories with fantastic edges to them. Four more writers in particular
emerged as masters of their craft. The eleven stories in Steven Heighton's
The Dead Are More Visible​ (2012) range from a meditation by a foreigner in
post-atomic Japan to a tale about an outdoor zamboni driver in Ontario; in
every case, the language resonates like a musical score. Some of the stories
in Tamas Dobozy's ​Last Notes​ (2005) and ​Siege 13​ (2012) deal with
immigrants and war survivors, but--an undertow stretches these thoughtful
narratives--they refuse to take sides, exposing instead the ambiguity of
claims on morality. The stories in ​Siege 13​, for example, all of which touch
on the Siege of Budapest in 1944, relive the horrors of suffering (and
survival) and at the same time allow a strain of fierce comedy to vex any
easy assumptions about narrative authority. Alexander MacLeod, in ​Light
Lifting​ (2010), captured moments in the lives of runners, dancers, bikers,
young parents, all unprepared for the next moment in their lives, but
hoping. With Mark Anthony ​JARMAN​'s ​19 Knives​ (2000) and ​My White Planet
(2008), narratives of modern life ask to be lived through--here language
functions as both medium and essence, wide-ranging allusion and precise
original image exploding in energy, humour, and cautionary tale. Possibility
hovers at the edge of such narratives, but often it's presumed to exist more
in the fictive imagination than in experience. Repeatedly, in the stories of
this period, youth proves a battleground, where the language is rough, the
environment stark, and the characters stymied, trying for laughter,
sometimes even laughing, but unable to escape physical conflict or economic
despair.