The Latest Literary Kerfluffle
The sort of literary types who frequent this blog have no doubt already heard about David Gilmour, novelist and lecturer at the University of Toronto, putting his foot in it in an interview with Hazlitt. Now, it is rather upsetting that he would so casually dismiss a large group of writers as unworthy of his attention, if you happen to care about his opinion. The worst thing about his saying “I haven’t encountered any Canadian writers yet that I love enough to teach” is that Canadians, as a group are too nice to kick up much of a fuss about being so denigrated.
Of course, he said pretty much the same thing about female authors, and they, as a group, are less polite and easy-going (female Canadians being a special case). That’s less shocking than the Canadian thing, of course, since women authors get dumped on all the time. It would be nice if certain male authors/critics/literature professors would realize that if they are trying to burnish their tough-guy, manly credentials by pointing out their preferences in literature they’ve already lost the game. Which is fine, because let’s face it, it’s a stupid game, but they should be aware that they aren’t impressing any firefighters or smoke jumpers or what have you.
There are also even more women than there are Canadians (in fact, more than half of Canadians are women, as it turns out), so one does begin to suspect that if he can’t find a good female author he may be working a bit to remain ignorant. Which is too bad, considering his occupation.