6
This article was downloaded by: [Flinders University of South Australia] On: 06 October 2014, At: 23:59 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK American Review of Canadian Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rarc20 Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!) Robert Thacker Published online: 11 Nov 2009. To cite this article: Robert Thacker (1998) Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!), American Review of Canadian Studies, 28:1-2, 7-10 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02722019809481560 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is

Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

  • Upload
    robert

  • View
    225

  • Download
    5

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

This article was downloaded by: [Flinders University of South Australia]On: 06 October 2014, At: 23:59Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

American Review of CanadianStudiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rarc20

Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing(or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)Robert ThackerPublished online: 11 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Robert Thacker (1998) Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or,Reviewing, Reviewing!), American Review of Canadian Studies, 28:1-2, 7-10

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02722019809481560

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is

Page 2: Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Flin

ders

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Aus

tral

ia]

at 2

3:59

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Page 3: Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

ROBERT “HACKER

Margaret Atwood. in Search of “Alias Grace.” Charles R. Bronfman Lecture in Canadian Studies. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1997.39 pp.

Eugene Benson and William Toye, eds. The Oxford Companion to Caw- diun Literature. 2nd ed. Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, 1997. xv + 1 199 pp.

Nathalie Cooke. Margaret Atwood: A Biography. Montreal: ECW Press, 1998.378 pp. $24.95 cloth. Michael Dawson. The Mountie from Dime Novel to Disney. Toronto: Be- tween the Lines Press, 1998. xii + 215 pp. $21.95 paper.

William Dean et al., eds. Concise Historical Atlas of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. 180 pp.

Charlene Diehl-Jones, ed. The New Quurterly. “New Directions in Cana- dian Writing.” Vol. 18, No. l (Spring 1998). 322 pp. $10.00 paper.

Coral Ann Howells. Alice Munro. Contemporary World Writers Series. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. xv + 184 pp. $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Robert Lecker. En&hCa& Litermy Anthologies: An Enumeran’ue Bibli- ogrujhy. Teeswater, ON: Reference Press, 1997. x + 209 pp. $35.00 paper.

Desmond Morton and Morton Weinfeld, eds. Who Speaks for Canada? Words That Shape a Country. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998. xx + 332 pp. $40.00 cloth.

W. H. New. Borderlands: How We Talk About Canada. Vancouver: Uni- versity of British Columbia Press, 1998. viii + 119 pp.

Francis Parkman. The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. Intro. Conrad E. Heidenreich and Jose Brandao. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. xxxi + 586 pp. $25.00 paper.

Christian Riegel and Herb Wyile, eds. A Sense of Place: Re-Evaluating Regionalism in Canadian and American Writing. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1998. xiv + 131 pp. $24.95 paper.

The American Review of CaMdian Studies (Spring and Summer 1998): 7-10

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Flin

ders

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Aus

tral

ia]

at 2

3:59

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Page 4: Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

a Thacker

Marie Vautier. New World Myth: Postmodernism and Post- colonialism in Canadian Fiction. Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1998. xxiv + 339 pp. $55.00 cloth.

y any standard, this is an idiosyncratic list, made up mainly of vol- B umes that for one reason or another caught my eye when they arrived here as review copies over the last several months. I say “mainly” because I have augmented the listing by adding one or two volumes I noticed else- where-review copies have not yet arrived at our editorial office and, given the process of such distribution, may not ever. What this assembling has made is, among other things, a fairly good-sized pile of recent books that interest me: biography, cultural and literary criticism, reference works, authorial statements, historical texts, and volumes that, variously, define the present cultural moment of Canada. More than that, and for me, at least, they represent ‘Canadian Studies.”

One of the volumes I added here is a slim one by W. H. New, Border- lands: Hoeo We Talk About Canada, the published versions of the McLean Canadian Studies lectures that New delivered at the University of British Columbia. The opening essay, “Giddy Limits: Canadian Studies and Other Metaphors,” offers a compelling reading of borders, boundaries, and other binaries in Canada generally and within this field called Canadian Studies in particular. A couple of quotations, to start: “Canada,’”ew argues, is a place constructed by “paradigms of boundary rhetoric” “as a place that includes, a place that excludes, as a place that &ni)lUtes resources and power, and as a place that embraces some ongoing principle of h&ry negoriQtion“ (5). A bit later in the essay New, after offering a succinct and precise reading ofonel two of Alice Munro’s stories, “Chaddeleys and Flemings: 1. Connection” and “Chaddeleys and Flemings: 2. The Stone in the Field,” meditates on the story’s/ies’ ambivalent endin& and asserts that “border lines are giddy, not fwed-because they are sites of translation and trandortnation, where accom- modation and resistance, cohesiveness and fragmentation, and a host of other forces interplay” (25). Moving from Munro to Quebec, and deftly at that, New then cites an instance immediately after the 1995 Quebec Referen- dum in which Le Monde inadvertently reversed the vote’s outcome, giv- ing the “Yes” side 50.6 percent. Lamely, the editors blamed “translation” and that, New maintains, is his point. Welcome, he says, to Canada, a borderland’s borderland where “a host of other forces” do indeed “inter- play.” New concludes his lecture by asserting his responsibility as a citi- zen “of the real counny of Canada” (what a gaffe, that phrase of Bouchard‘s)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Flin

ders

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Aus

tral

ia]

at 2

3:59

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Page 5: Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

Editorial 9

“to resist the subversive appeal of the binary rhetoric of restriction and divi- sion, of ethnic unitariness and reductive commitments to privilege, of exclu- siveness and enclosure, of separation and competitive margins” (32).

By now, some readers will have thumbed ahead to see if Thacker is really intending to review all the books on this list of his. I’m not, be as- sured. What New’s argument does, among many other things (and this is why some language from it is a necessary point of departure here), is to illustrate in very clear terms what we in literary studies would reasonably call the “subject position’’ of Canadian Studies in Canada. New himself differentiates such studies from those done outside “the red country of Canada,’’ writing that “Outside Canada, Canadian nationhood is less an emotional issue that the opportunity for a case study.” Subsumed into disciplinary, area studies, or theoretical practices, New says, Tanada’ is seen as a theatre of political experiment, an economic tangent, the site of geological processes, a cartographical challenge, a cultural ferment, a colonial irrelevance, a social alternative, a success story. And more besides” (29,30). Sharing New’s skepticism myself-and that’s with a “k” and not a “c,” by the way-I cannot quite accept his matter-of-fact categorization of those of us who engage professionally in Canadian Studies and, either or both, are not citizens of Canada nor live there.

Even so, New’s point that non-Canadian Canadianists-awkwardly put, but with meaning evident, I hope-do not have an equivalent emo- tional tie with Canada as Canadian Canadianists have bears both con- templation and a small bit of analysis here. Such a discrimination is, indeed, part of the reason for my list of new Canadian books. Professor New is quite right in one sense but, in another, he seems to be missing what seems a subtle point. Like any person active in Canadian Studies in this country, 1 am aware that the phenomenon of Canadian Studies out- side of Canada has been a bit bewildering to some Canadian academics. Notwithstanding, our purpose-and our role-is not so casual as New suggests here. We who focus on Canada from without need always to bring that perspective into our scholarly discourse; not to enforce any kind of greater claims-so-called “international standards” in literature, for ex- ample-but rather, and simply, to be heard-to help in the understand- ing of matters Canadian by contributing an “emotionaf” without to New’s “emotional” “within.” This concern and New’s definition of it in terms of his own analysis suggest probably the most compelling significance of my list of books here: they represent those volumes, culled at random but reflecting my own scholarly interests, that I intend to read myself, that I

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Flin

ders

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Aus

tral

ia]

at 2

3:59

06

Oct

ober

201

4

Page 6: Editorial: Reviewing Reviewing (or, Reviewing, Reviewing!)

10 Thacker

would like to see reviewed in these pages (most are still available: be in touch), the reviews of which I would, and will, read whether I am involved editorially with them or not. They are, for me, “Canadian Studies,” as I said, and they reflect the piece of Canadian academic publishing that is, for me, Canada-with literary criticism, biography, history, and culture most prominent. Everyone has her or his own list.

Readers of ARCS will have long since noticed a dropping off our review section over the past few years. There are a couple of reasons for this: first, having embarked on a program of theme issues-a feature which has proved quite popular and is continuing (our next issue, in press, is devoted to Canada-U.S. Agricultural Policy)-I have elected not to pub- lish reviews in such issues, preferring to devote the space available to matter focused on the theme. Concurrently, the Associate Editorship of Bruce A. Butterfield, SUNY Plattsburgh, began just at the time when the volume of books arriving in our offices-again, my list is just my list, and I could have made it much longer-grew by several times. Despite his most excellent and Herculean efforts, Bruce soon realized that the job of book reviewing for ARCS has moved beyond the capacity of any single indi- vidual; thus when he decided to step down the present alignment of five edi tordrawn from French, History, and Political Science-was effected. I t has begun well, and this issue contains the first fruits of the new edi- tors’ work in addition to Bruce’s. All of us here-using Her Majesty’s im- perial “we,” of course-still urge you to make up your own lists of books you must read, should read, or just would like to read and then approach one of us to see if that book (or those books) has (or have) been assigned.

And if by chance Political Science is your area, you should know that one of our editors, Jeffrey Ayres, has moved from Michigan to St. Michael’s College in Colchester, VT 05439. Speaking of changes, another is in the offing: During the 199902000 academic year my colleague Professor Joseph T. Jockel will be serving as Acting Editor of ARCS while I am off on sab- batical working on several projects of my own (and doubtless reading some of these books!). Not the least of these will be the initial research for a critical biography of Alice Munro-a book that, when published, will sit beside Cooke’s on Atwood and the several others on Canadian writers that have appeared in recent years. Every person’s list just keeps growing.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Flin

ders

Uni

vers

ity o

f So

uth

Aus

tral

ia]

at 2

3:59

06

Oct

ober

201

4