Babble Book Club: What are the best Canadian short stories?

Great topic!

Two of my favourites -- two classics by two classic Canadian authors: Thomas King's "One Good Story, That One" and anything by the Canadian short-story master, Alice Munro. I rember "Miles City Montana," "Carried Away" and “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.”

Absolutely! I have never met a single person who didn't find her utterly charming and engrossing in every way. A true Canadian legend!

A colleague of mine who studies Aboriginal and Métis literature has recommended Richard Van Camp's "Mermaids" from Angel Wing Splash Pattern. I haven't read it, but I have read his short story/prose poem "The Uranium Leaking from Port Radium and Red Rock Mines is Killing Us," and his children's book What's the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses?

You can hear a reading of "Mermaids" by Cree actor Ben Cardinal on Richard's website (scroll down to image of ipod and click on "Mermaids").

@catchfire -- awesome suggestion! And cool that there is a recording

(also, super meta, we are on babble at exactly the same time )

Graham Greene's 'Dear Dr Falkenheim'

Greene sets the story in Calgary where he wrote it while visiting a relative who was living there.

Ho Ho Ho

@Left Turn: I can't believe CBC has an admission fee. Am I the only one who finds that ridiculous?

@NDPP: ha! Slipped a 'Canandian' story in there! 

I've put up a poll in the Babble Book Club Facebook group to see how people are feeling about the current topic and what it means reading wise as well as discussion wise. Please feel free to vote on the poll (or leave a comment underneath) or leave your opinions here!

She had a short story in The New Yorker back in about 1980 (anybody?) that was so strongly rural Ontario that I kept the scent even though I was reading it in northern California... hard to do

@DaveW and @Unionist I have been reading up on Munro for the last few days, and can't help but feel she is overlooked within Canadian culture, even though she is often lauded by critics and literati [that's you!]. I never read her in high school (goes back to my annoyance with the absence of Canadian authors in Canadian schools) or in University either. I think I have read a few passing stories, but never a collection of hers

The NY Times did an artist's retrospective on her as a good starting base, but does anyone have any recommendations for favourite Munro collections?

[I prefer reading short story collections because I think it is fun to discover the overarching theme of the stories]

Hey guys,

This is a great subject.  There are plenty of good Canadian story collections to choose from.

Right now, I'm reading John Vigna's "Bull Head," which deals with rural men in complicated situations.  John is married to Nancy Lee, whose story "Dead Girls" (from a collection of the same name) went over really well with a class I shared it with.  I also like the short stories of Lee Henderson, Cynthia Flood, and the Walrus normally features a strong story by a Canadian writer every issue.  Oh, and Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant.

Kevin

"In the critical assessment of literature, length is still considered a hallmark of virtuosity, and the hoary notion persists that the Great American Novel is a standard of literary achievement.  This fact has unfortunate gender and class implications, as short forms—especially flash forms—are particularly amenable to writers snatching time from obligations."

This is a excerpt from Joy Castro's piece in Brevity Mag called "On Length in Literature". She discusses the short story and novel mediums as a privilege of time (and among others class and gender). And also posits:

"Longer isn’t better. Sometimes it’s merely loose and rambling and self-indulgent. Or showy. Sometimes the impact of an entire book isn’t as strong as that of a powerful, incisive flash piece. Small doesn’t mean insignificant or reductive. Think atoms. DNA. Brief pieces can explode."

I think it is interesting how she aligns the idea of writing length with the privilege of time and availability. To me, this really rings true for Vancouver living because I find so many people who considered themselves artists don't actually have that field (or anything related to it) as their primary occupation. I know a lot of artists everywhere work outside jobs, but in Vancouver it seems especially compacted because of living fees, artistic space, weather.

A lot of people I know in Van City work 2-3 jobs (usually in the service industry, which has it's own special set of awful problems) so that they can afford crappy apartments and be able to rent out expensive studio spaces or work spaces. For me as well, the idea of 'the busy trap' really filtered in for writing and working and I found myself too burnt out to have extracurricular fun. When I had a day off, I just wanted to be left alone especially with the grey and rain outside.

I don't know if I fully buy the 'privleged people can write novels' completely, but if you wanted to make a more secure living writing (freelancing) producing a lot of smaller pieces instead of two huge ones sure makes sense economically.

What is CanLit? as rediscussed from Douglad Coupland's original theory.

The real issue is that Coupland, like others, thinks that CanLit, which he earlier said was simply a contraction for Canadian Literature, is synonymous with the Canadian literary canon, which has typically contained the same handful of writers who consistently won our literary awards over the past years until recently, and which apparently hasn’t changed an iota.

Relates to our discussion is the 'best' simply the measure of the before, the canonical? Not only has CanLit moved past "CanLit is when the Canadian government pays you money to write about life in small towns and/or the immigration experience" as referenced by Mr. Coupland and perhaps simply in to "book written by Canadian authors" as says the author of the article.

Has the Canadian short story grown beyond the canon? Was there even a canon? 

What I like about Michael Stewart's piece is that it does give high praise to the often neglected short story genre (and even tackles the history of its roots and growth into modern society). The process of reading, and the ability to reread, is markedly different.

I think this makes it decidely on the "Metcalf-side" of things because of this view as the genre of itself and not a precursor to novel, which is an idea heavily promoted in Urquhart's edited short story collection by Penguin Books.

(Although I don't think the curmudgeonness and pompous nods to only 'obscure' stories aligns)

I take literature like I would works of art or politics.  If it doesn't say anything other than announcing itself for sale, then I see little reason to be curious about it.

UBC professor and 'Canadian Literature' editor Margery Fee has kindly written about one of her favourite Canadian short stories, Lee Maracle's "Yin Chin", discussing different aspects of the story and what drew her to it in the first place. She writes:

"Maracle’s voice is unmistakably hers -- clear, uncompromising, no bullshit. Her diction varies from the intellectual to the street-wise in seconds. This story is about the connections between the Chinese and First Nations communities in Vancouver’s Chinatown, as well as about the ways in which racism divided them."

(Thanks to Catchfire for setting it all up!)