Writer Andy Lamey says the industry is facing big challenges, but that it’s currently in a ‘happy period’
“In Canada , we have sometimes been forced to choose between how we feel about our country and how we feel about good books,” Andy Lamey writes in. In this collection of musings on the Canadian literary landscape, the former journalist – who now teaches philosophy at the University of California, San Diego – takes a critical look at its history, from the heyday of cultural nationalism in the 1960s to the current moment.
I also wanted to make a larger point about the limits of a kind of thoroughgoing nationalism as a critical approach. Even though, as you can tell in the book, I end up adopting my own softer, more minimalist nationalism. Looking at the debate around Joseph Boyden and other artists who’ve been accused of cultural appropriation, it’s striking how much of that rhetoric from their critics has in common with the rhetoric of sixties and seventies cultural nationalists. There was a lot of anxiety about American influence, and this idea that Canadian literature had to be approached as something entirely distinct, especially at the level of influences.
I’m glad you brought up Joseph Boyden. Your book includes a robust defence – not of Joseph Boyden and his actions, but ofthe reverse impulse: writing “morally exquisite Indigenous heroes.” Walk me through why you thinkNothing about the book has changed in light of Boyden’s ancestry scandal. I’m really glad you said I’m defending the book more than the person.
Book Literature Canada Idea Boyden Influence Nationalism Orenda Alice Munro Margaret Atwood Globe
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