Tuesday, April 28, 2009

For Shame...


I sit here this evening ashamed of myself; not as a person but as a would-be Canadian writer. For years I have dreamed of writing not just for my pleasure but for the pleasure of others. I have looked up to authors such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley as shining examples of what I wanted to someday evolve into; shining examples of what truly great and substantial writing should be. Embarrassingly not once did it occur to me that there was a comparable writing. I mean obviously there are Canadian authors, and I had heard of Margaret Atwood and Margaret Laurence, but for whatever reason I dismissed them. Not as unworthy of reading but I believe it was part of what some Canadians face; an inferiority complex in comparison to the United States. I feel that considering 90% of what is available to me on television and media is American I can hardly be blamed for feeling insignificant.

I now feel myself feeling quite proud and pleasantly surprised. I will be taking some Canadian literature courses during the summer term and have been reading course material now to get a head start. I find myself reading a novel which I have never heard of, from and author who I am not familiar with, and wondering how such a sparkling gem of literary wit escaped my notice all these years.

I do not profess to be the most intelligent nor the most informed literary student but I AM an avid reader and have been for at least 23 of my 28 years. I have a propensity for searching out new authors and new genres out of sheer curiosity.I am slightly surprised, in light of this, that I have not sought out more relevant -and by relevant I mean Canadian- literature.

Regardless here I find myself for the first time in quite some time, as most of my reading now consists of textbooks, completely and utterly enthralled by a Canadian author. This surprise is compounded by the fact that he wrote the novel almost 70 years prior to my birth. Not only do I associate with the characters but I feel absolutely transported to his little town of Mariposa. The novel which I speak of is
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock. If you haven't read it I highly suggest it. It follows the events and humourous characters in a small Ontario town and even though the setting is nearly a century past, manages to stay startlingly relevant in the portrayal of inner workings of small town society.

So here's my epiphany I've been leading up to. Canadians have made a substantial literary mark on the world. That may not mean a lot to some people but to me that means my inferiority complex is unfounded and I also have the potential to someday *knock on wood* make a substantial literary mark myself.

So wish me luck! Oh, and rave wise.

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