Sunday, August 29, 2010

Claustrophobia & Lists

In today's Sunday Star reviewer Patricia Dawn Robertson says writer Michelle Berry is "quite at home within the claustrophobic confines of the short story form" in her new book I Still Don't Even Know You. Can Robertson be serious? She thinks the short story a place for claustrophobia? She might to want to read or re-read Guy De Maupassant or John Cheever or Mavis Gallant or Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald or any other master of this difficult but far from claustrophobic form before she make such a silly assertion again. Robertson might also want to explain what a "mid-career writer" is exactly, which is what she calls Berry. Has it anything to do with age? And if so, age, as we all know, has absolutely nothing to do with a writer's - or painter's or sculptor's - ability to produce great work. Jane Gardham, who must be in her 70s, is still writing up the proverbial storm, and Magnus Mills, who's in his 50s, is one of the most spirited, provocative and original voices to be found writing in English today.

Oh, and one more thing: Alex Good and Steven W. Beattie's lambasting in the National Post of ten Canadian writers they claim are overrated is offensive, attention-seeking malarkey. Criticize if you must; that's your right. But leave out the puerility and insult.

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