Finding Again the World brings together a dozen of the best stories by John Metcalf, a modern master of the form. Spanning more than fifty years and ranging from some of his earliest published stories, such as “Dandelions” and “The Eastmill Reception Centre,” to his latest, with “Ceazer Salad” and “The Museum at the End of the World,” this current gathering shows a writer whose voice, at every stage of his career, is unmistakeable. These are elegant and brilliantly charged fictions, entertaining and moving and mischievous: taking the dross and straw of everyday life and transforming it, through some sort of alchemical process of sensibility, into art. With an introduction by Keath Fraser, Finding Again the World is a landmark collection, a sumptuous gathering of singular work: these are stories that will last.
Captain John Glen Metcalf is a symbolic figure who represents the embodiment of the “buffalo soldier” and the dues that the black man paid for acceptance as a US citizen. The right to vote and to life, liberty, and justice—the all-American way. The characters within The Life and Times may be fictitious, yet their heroic deeds are real and are what helped civilize the West and paved way for black men in America to truly call America home.
John Metcalf's Shut Up He Explained defies expectations and strict definition. Part memoir, part travelogue, part criticism -- wholly Metcalf -- it is thoughtful, engaged, contentious and often very funny. It offers a full does of Metcalfian wisdom and wit, and provides ample evidence that neither age nor indifference nor attack have withered him: he remains as sharp, critical, constructive and insightful as ever. Indeed, this may just be his most important and engaged book. Certainly it will be among his most controversial. What his critics will refuse to see, of course, is that it is also among his most positive, that it is a celebration of the best literature Canada has to offer, the birth of which Metcalf himself both witnesses and actively encouraged. Shut Up He Explained is magisterial, a virtuoso performance melding several seemingly different strands into one coherent narrative, which should delight and entertain as it serves to argue, elucidate and celebrate.
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.
No other person has done more to celebrate and encourage the short story in Canada than John Metcalf. For more than five decades he has worked tirelessly as editor, anthologist, writer, critic, and teacher to help shape our understanding of the form and what it can do. The long-time editor of the yearly Best Canadian Stories anthology, as well as a fiction editor at some of the pre-eminent literary presses in the country for more than forty years, he has worked to support and champion several generations of our best writers. Literature in Canada would be far less without his efforts. Sifting through a lifetime of reading, writing, and thinking about the short story in this country, and where it fits within the larger currents of world literature, Metcalf’s magisterial The Canadian Short Story offers the most authoritative book on the subject to date. Most importantly, it includes an expanded and reconsidered Century List, Metcalf’s critical guide to the best Canadian short story collections of the last 100 years. But more than a critical book, The Canadian Short Story is a love-letter to the form, a passionate defense of the best of our literature, and a championing of those books and writers most often over-looked. It is a guide not only to what to read, but also one, its author’s most fervent desire, which aims to make better readers of us all.
John Metcalf has written some of the very best stories ever published in this country."—Alice Munro The Argus-eyed editor; the magisterial prose stylist; the waggish, inflammatory cultural critic; the mentor and iconoclast. John Metcalf is a literary legend whose memoir maps the underground he labored tirelessly to establish.
“[Metcalf’s] talent is generous, hectoring, huge, and remarkable.”—Washington Post In Temerity & Gall, Metcalf looks back on a lifetime spent in letters; surveys, with no punches pulled, the current state of CanLit; and offers a passionate defense of the promise and potential of Canadian writing. In a 1983 editorial letter to the Globe and Mail, celebrated Canadian novelist W.P. Kinsella railed that “Mr. Metcalf—an immigrant—continually and in the most galling manner has the temerity to preach to Canadians about their own literature.” Forty years later, in spite of Kinsella’s effort to discredit him in the name of a misguided nationalism both embarrassing and familiar, John Metcalf still has the temerity and gall to preach, to teach, and to write passionately (and uproariously) about literature in Canada. Part memoir, meditation, and apologia, part criticism and pure Metcalf, the present volume distills a lifetime of reading and writing, thinking and collecting, and continues his necessary work kicking against the ever-present pricks. As is the case with all of his critical work, Temerity & Gall will challenge, delight, anger, and inspire in equal measure, and is essential reading for anyone interested in literature in Canada and its place within the wider tradition of writing in English. Temerity & Gall is printed in a limited paperback edition of 750 copies signed and numbered by the author.
Eight interviews, eight stories, eight commentaries. Eight of Canada's finest writers. Writers Talking gives readers a chance to listen in: Terry Griggs on where stories come from, Michael Winter on writing Newfoundland, K. D. Miller on being an actor who writes. The volume also features stories by and conversations with Mary Borsky, Steven Heighton, Elise Levine, Annabel Lyon, and Lisa Moore.
Set in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, and Ottawa, Ontario, the stories in The Museum at the End of the World span the life of writer Robert Ford and his wife Sheila. Playing with various forms of comedy throughout, author John Metcalf paints a portrait of 20th century literary life with levity, satire, and unsuspecting moments of emotional depth.
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