/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4555448]

What is the best novel by a canadian author?

[Anonymous No.4555469]

Canadian literature is shit. If you're not black, Asian or female you don't stand a chance in hell of being published.

[Anonymous No.4555489]

Unless you like Stephen Leacock's satire a lot for some reason, Pierre Berton is probably the single best author we have, and he mostly writes Canadian history stuff. Probably his history of the War of 1812, in that case.

The rest is a wasteland of identity politics and old ladies trying to metaphysically condense themselves into a singularity of absolute quaintness by writing entire books on the wrist motion of a Hamiltonian woman washing a fake chinaware dish during the 1966 gas price freeze while Trudeau was on the telly warning of the crisis of national stability caused by a minor thing that happened with an Indian who refused to get off some land somewhere. At least Berton did something.

[Anonymous No.4555502]

Alice Munro is pretty good, but she also only writes short stories.

My professor also told me he was wary of assigning us her work because she writes a lot about things that resonate more with older people than 20 year old undergraduates.

I still enjoyed her stuff however.

[Anonymous No.4555504]

>>4555469
Douglas Coupland

[Anonymous No.4555506]

>>4555469
Couldn't they just go to an American publisher?

[Anonymous No.4555580]

>>4555489
Pierre Berton, really? Mordecai Richler was a better writer

[Anonymous No.4555584]

>>4555580
>Richler
>Canadian

[Anonymous No.4555626]

>>4555502
>she writes a lot about things that resonate more with older people than 20 year old undergraduates

That's for sure; I feel like I need to go buy a great big box Depends whenever I read her writing

[Anonymous No.4555630]

Robertson Davies - The Fifth Business

[Anonymous No.4555640]

I had a friend growing up. His mother was a writer. We were Canadian.

I tried searching her surname on Google but nothing turned up, so I assume she was a hack. She wrote fantasy btw.

I get the impression that most authors here are middle aged women. There are probably a few East Indians sprinkled in. I don't think there are many blacks in this country to begin with, and no black I've met has seemed particularly smart, so there probably isn't much black literature.

[Anonymous No.4555651]

>>4555640
There's like one black dude but he sucks ass.

[Anonymous No.4555652]

a collection of short stories by Alice Munro

[Anonymous No.4555659]

Has anybody here actually read anything by Alice Munro? Is it legitimately good work?

I feel like she got the prize last year because she's both Canadian and writes short stories, two areas that the Nobel Academy felt like they needed to shore up on

[Anonymous No.4555662]

>>4555448
>canada
>literature

Even most latin american countries at better at it.

[Anonymous No.4555665]

>>4555662
latin american detected

[Anonymous No.4555669]

>>4555665
>implying you have to be latin american to know that

[IMPERATOR GVILARDIMIVS AVGVSTV(...) !qz5X8fS6nY No.4555672]

>>4555662

Yeah but Latin America also sucks balls when it comes to philosophy, so shut your ass up and sit down.

[Anonymous No.4555682]

>>4555672
>hasn't read Ingenieros, Bunge, Kovadloff, Oribe or Carnielli
>being this pleb

I know Canada excels in philosophy, btw

[Anonymous No.4555691]

>>4555504
He's a Canuck? Generation X and Microserfs are both set in the US.

[Anonymous No.4555700]

The answer is: Canada's literature isn't very great and tends to be defined by its writers looking elsewhere, to their roots/ancestry in other countries or to particular literature's roots and history, also mostly in other countries. There are some good things, but I've yet to encounter anything I can say is "great" that transcends the country and becomes worth reading for others around the world.

Alice Munro is actually a masterful short story writer and the closest to a Canadian that Canadians and non-Canadians should read. Her short story collections, particularly as she got older, really show that she may be one of the great short story writers.
Her best stuff works better for 30+, if you're younger, her realities and concerns don't seem as powerful and relevant yet, but if it does...then you're probably super fucking depressed about being 30+ already.
The only bit of her work that really works for an undergrad/someone in their 20s is The Lives of Girls and Women, which is more of a novel than anything else, and about small town Canada and sex and love and religion. Her short story collections, particularly as she got older, really show that she may be one of the great short story writers.

Robertson Davies' Fifth Business (and to a lesser extent its two sequels) is a masterful piece of literature, well worth the read.

Mordecai Richler wrote some pretty sweet shit, like super vulgar and funny. It's Canadian Lit in the sense that it's very Montreal and Richler is a hardcore Montrealer, but otherwise, honestly it's much more Jewish Lit than anything else.

Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red: A Novel In Verse is one hell of a trip if you want some epic poetry and Greek myths and homoeroticism and some magical realism in Argentina.

Michael Ondaatje is a personal favourite and I think, maybe, he had a good chance of transcending the country but didn't. See: Running In The Family (for autobiography/poetry/short story/Shakespeare mash up), The English Patient for super Canada WWII horrible love story, The Cat's table for an intriguing but not super-exciting but still nice sea voyage.

Fuck Margaret Atwood, unless you like feminism, hamfisted anti-Americanism, and soft science fiction with poor literary pretensions.

[Anonymous No.4555722]

just listen to rush and call it a day

[Anonymous No.4555725]

>>4555722
To properly analyze Rush lyrics you need to have command of Ayn Rand's entire oeuvre. Are you willing to make that commitment?

[Anonymous No.4555745]

>>4555725
anything for geddy

[Anonymous No.4555775]

>>4555745
>implying Neil Peart isn't the heart & soul of Rush

[Anonymous No.4555794]

ondaatje's poetry is p fuckin nice
gwendolyn macewen is nice too
also if you include quebec, michel tremblay is a personal fave of mine. la grosse femme d'a cote est enceinte is gr8

[Anonymous No.4556048]

What about Erik Erickson or whatever the guy that wrote the Malazan series?

[Anonymous No.4556279]

>>4555794
just wanted to say props for gwendolyn mcewen, she's a really great poet.

Guy Vanderhaege's short story collection Man Descending is pretty good as long as we're throwing names out.

[Anonymous No.4557144]

Give me a few years, and Mathias Loe will be the most well known Canadian writer to have ever lived.

[Anonymous No.4557196]

Leornard Cohen. The Favourite game.
>>4555691
girlfriend in a coma is in cananananada