I began reviewing books and writing about writing where many people, do: at college, in my case for Acta Victoriana, the literary magazine of Victoria College, University of Toronto. To say that there wasn’t a long lineup for editorial positions would be an understatement. It was 1960 and cashmere sweaters and pearl-button earrings were still in, except among the few interested in the arts, for whom they were definitely out. Black was in.
So a handful of us, all in black, not only edited the magazine but practically wrote the whole thing, under pseudonyms and otherwise. I’ve spared you my pseudonymous parodies of Layton and Frye….
I notice that I was reviewing Canadian books exclusively, even though, I recall, none of us thought it was really possible to be a genuine writer and remain in Canada. The appearance of books by young writers like Marie-Claire Blais was, for us, a beginning.
Between 1961 and 1971, fate and the need for jobs took me to Harvard, back to Toronto, to Vancouver, back to Harvard, where I was working on material connected with the Superwoman essay here included, to Montreal, to Edmonton, to England, France and Italy, and finally back to Toronto in 1971, where I joined the Board of Directors of Anansi Press and, in 1972, wrote and published Survival. In the meantime I had of course published a number of books, but my reviewing activities were limited; I did some things for people who asked, mainly George Woodcock of Canadian Literature and James Reaney of Alphabet and Daryl Hine of Poetry. By 1967 Coach House Press and House of Anansi had been established, and the rapid growth of Canadian publishing that characterized the late ’60’s and early ’70’s was underway.
My reviewing activities weren’t unconnected with my own writing at this time, which included, for instance, Susanna Moodie and Power Politics, and, in 1970-71, Surfacing, which must have been started (or re-started, since I actually began it in 1965) shortly after I’d written “Nationalism, Limbo and the Canadian Club”; which itself marks a transition, since it was my first piece in anything meant for an audience which was not primarily literary.