Wow, That is Scathing...

I was sorting through some articles today and I came across this National Post piece I had on the ten most overrated Canadian authors. I meant to write about this piece a few months ago, but for some reason I forgot about it. And I don't know how I could have possibly forgotten about it because it's Canadians getting mean. Nothing is better! And not only is it Canadians getting mean, it's Canadians being mean towards other Canadians! You don't see that often. Especially in the arts. It seems like Canadians tend to rally around Canadian artists because, well, they're Canadian. "He's Canadian, you know?" or "She's one of us", they proudly proclaim. I'm reminded of when the U.K.'s high commissioner to Canada between 1981 and 1984 said that Canadians had limited talent and that:

"Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do -- in literature, the theatre, skiing, or whatever -- tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once." (Now that's scathing!) 

I don't really agree with the statement, but it points out the idea/belief that Canadians have a tendency to loyally support their Canadian artists.

Well, fuck that, says Alex Good and Steven W. Beattie, the authors of this Overrated Canadian Authors list.

First they explain the parameters of their list, and they even provide a biting comment right off the bat! "The rules of the game were pretty simple. We considered living authors only. Some established track record was required (breathe easy, Vincent Lam, your time has not yet come)."

And then the claws really came out.

[My emphasis added below]

On David Adams Richards:

"Richards is a good example of an author, like the retirement-age Brits mentioned by Josipivici, who has kept at it long past his best-before date."

On Anne Michaels:

"Stuffed to the gills with abstruse metaphoric language and self-conscious, sonorous prose...[These books] are prime examples of Canadian fiction that is solipsistic, humourless, and alienating. Michaels' novels are emblematic of what gets lauded as great writing in this country: florid syntax married to heavy themes, often having to do with some combination of war, loss, and memory. They're the All Bran of CanLit: books that people read because they think they're good for them, not out of any expectation of pleasure of enjoyment."

[P.S. Someone obviously needs to get these guys a thesaurus...]


On John Ralston Saul:

"What followed was a slide into increasingly vague, unconvincing, and repetitive exercises in nationalist myth-making. Leading, inevitably, to his editorship of Penguin's dismal Extraordinary Canadians series, many of whose authors seem to have been culled from this list. Is there a Family Compact of bad writing in this country?"

On Douglas Coupland:

"In a seemingly endless series of twee commentaries on our post-postmodern, brand-obsessed age, Coupland has delighted in lampooning consumer culture by tossing into his work everything from cutesy line drawings to the 8,363 prime numbers between 10,000 and 100,000 -- all as if Kurt Vonnegut had never put pen to paper. What Coupland's apologists miss is that his lazy prose is every bit as self-conscious as that of Anne Michaels or Michael Ondaatje: he merely plays to the lowbrow end of the spectrum." 

On Erin Moure:

"She also demonstrates why people have taken to avoiding poetry so studiously. Cryptic without being particularly interesting, stricken with various political and linguistic theories, and barren of the sort of grace one typically looks to poetry to provide, it's all too easy to take a pass on."

On Jane Urquhart:

"The adjective reviewers and critics most often apply to Urquhart's writing is "lyrical," which should be sufficient in and of itself to secure her a place on this list...Urquhart, like many of the writers here, would do well to bear in mind Ray Robertson's admonition about "the literary value of not being boring."

On Michael Ondaatje:

"Surprise! What credibility would a list like this have if it didn't include the absurd figure of Michael Ondaatje, our very own poet laureate of pretentious, purple prose, our king of cliche, a sorcerer who has improbably managed for decades now to pass off his distinctive brand of inert slop as somehow being possessed of a "literary" value only detectable by prize juries, time-serving academics, and a handful of supine reviewers. It would all be laughable if not for the catastrophic effect the grotesque inflation of his reputation has had on Canadian writing..."

On Joseph Boyden:

"And did no one notice that the Manhattan sections of Through Black Spruce read as if the author had researched them by watching reruns of America's Next Top Model?"

On M.G. Vassanji:

"...Vassanji, aside from his comically stilted diction, is oblivious to the notion of a novel being informed by any personal sense of style. There are people writing prospectuses for mining companies who have more feel for the language. It's doubtful one could find an interesting sentence anywhere in his work. Further proof -- as if any more were needed! -- that prize juries in this country have a lot to answer for."

On Yann Martel:

"[Life of Pi] owes more than a little to Brazilian writer Moacyr Scilar's comic novel Max and the Cats (Martel may be the first institutional CanLit star of the Internet generation, where the line between appropriation and plagiarism is perilously blurry). He followed that up with the misguided Holocaust allegory Beatrice and Virgil, a book that became a bestseller despite savage reviews in the U.S. and Britain (Canadians critics, as if their wont, were more polite)."