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Conference on Anglo-Quebec Literature
"La littérature anglo-québécoise: réceptions, analyses, ouvertures"

Tuesday May 11
Jean-Coutu Pavilion

Université de Montréal,
2940 Chemin de la polytechnique.

 

To my mind, Anglo-Quebec literature seems like a word someone invented to describe Brits stranded in 18th century Quebec. Does it really describe English speaking writers living in Quebec today (mostly Montreal)?  The books we see published are more and more written in a multiplicity of voices; recent bestselling authors have been immigrant voices (Rawi Hage, Miguel Syjuco) or “immigrants” to Quebec from Ontario (Neil Smith, Zoe Whittall), who represent the multiple-faceted voice of English writing in Quebec.

 

Montreal is a huge river, a song with many notes to feed the ear and heart. We let its rhythms lullaby us to sleep, wake us up on the radio, tell us the news, announce its concerns in many languages. As for writers, they may live in Quebec but they come from all over – the Caribbean, India, U.K., the Philippines, Australia, Ontario, Vancouver, Taiwan, Lebanon, Toronto, Africa. We are difficult to classify, except in the one way that that unites – we think and imagine and write en anglais. And we happen to live in Quebec, a French speaking province.

 

The bigger question is who are we writing for and where is our audience? Quebec? Canada? North America? The world? Do we need the Anglo label at all, except for marketing purposes or to equalize the grant system, so that Anglo-Quebec writers get as much of the pie as francophone writers? This was not really addressed by the panel, which consisted of several distinguished Montreal authors and poets, and one academician. What I heard seemed to be an argument between nostalgia for the past glory years of the Two Solitudes (when English Lit was king in Montreal) and the grudging acknowledgement of our similarities to other large North American cities. The sticking point, as always, is our status as a minority group in a francophone province, but this is a political issue that is anathema for publishers who want to sell books to the rest of North America. The most interesting thing about this panel is that the Anglophone writers were mostly conversing in French.

 

Playwright and author Marianne Ackerman, born in Ontario, came to Quebec in the 1980’s, where she promptly started Theatre 1774. She was interested in where we (English writers) were in relation to the Quebecois nation – but today she finds this tendency or question is finished, that English speaking writers are either writing about their ‘little corner of the world’, i.e. the Plateau, NDG, about the larger world, or about where they come from, but they are not engaging with the Quebec political situation. As an example, she read from A Fine Ending, based on the artistic life on the Plateau of Montreal, where the author, a poor musician, arrived from Kitchener during the ice storm. The idea of the 1995 referendum does not exist in this novel. Ackerman says this is because it’s suicide for a writer to engage with politics in Quebec in his/her writing. It doesn’t sell in Toronto, NY, or the UK. Rawi Hage, Yann Martel, our big Anglo writers, are writing as if Montreal or Quebec is a hotel they are just passing through. She finds their novels don’t deal with Quebec’s problems.

 

Poet Antonio D’Alphonso then read from a translation of a Filipino poem called “Yannick Dressing.” As an Italian, he represents the allophones in Quebec, who are forced to put on a new language, whether it’s French or English. He described reading as looking for friendship, with books as his friends, in whichever language. What he is looking for is something refined, a text written with grace. We live in a community of contradictions he said, “les trous de ce qui m’habite m’amuse’ – he wants a mirror without tinting, by which I think he was gently saying, you Anglos amuse me – you think you have language problems.

 

Katia Grubisic is a poet recently arrived in Montreal with a mixed cultural heritage: She grew up speaking French, writes in English and translates from the Croatian. She has not found any Anglo-Quebecois text that inspires her on this question. Nor has her own trajectory been articulated yet by other authors. She says that reading Mavis Gallant (an Anglo-Quebecer in exile), Mordecai Richler, even A.M. Klein (Anglo-montrealers really), gives the perception that we have come from Great Britain. She knows Montrealers better than Quebecers and finds that writers often write about Montreal as if it’s a sexy but seedy hotel, with a cheap bar. She finds they think it’s exotique to drop French words like ‘dep’ , ‘frippe’ or ‘ baguette’ – but this is not truly representative of living here, and only appeals to writers from elsewhere.

 

Grubisic read a story by Selema Nawaz – who arrives in Montreal from Winnipeg, and lives upstairs from her father’s bagel factory: It depicts life in the side streets and alleys, from a balcony overlooking the world of delivery boys, swearing, fighting, bringing out garbage; the author overhears their voices in French, English and Punjabi. She offers this reading as an example of the multiple voices that exist.

 

Novelist and translator David Homel started out by saying, it’s more like Anglo-Montreal not Quebec – yes, some Anglo writers live outside Montreal yet we have similar problems when we write about Montreal. In Sonia and Jack, his novel, there’s a sentence near the end that represents our situtation: “perplexed individuals in a city of minorities, where everyone tries to out-minoritize each other.”  Most of us have come from elsewhere, he says, which is why English Montrealers have  problems writing about Montreal as a place; he says it’s not exactly the fault of Two Solitudes but....people think we’re only about the English/French issue; they want to see conflict. He feels there is a total misunderstanding of our city.

 

Homel reads a lot of French Quebec fiction, and he says those authors suffer the same problem: They are unable to write about Montreal except as ‘lieu de perdition’ (the church’s image in the 40’s and 50’s.) Their tendency is to describe it as a place of trauma, where bad things happen to you, like in Borderline (the film). In fact, in his view, Montreal resists description because it’s so peaceful and quiet. It’s tough for writers. He read from his manuscript of a man, age 50, father 80, Jewish American, trying to take his dad for a walk, with a discussion of Hasidism and tolerance (the real theme in Montreal). Homel says political peace is a challenge to writers looking for conflict/plot. According to him, we have to find it in smaller dramas.

 

To poet David McGimpsey, the challenge in the very idea of Anglo-quebec lit – is defining it. We are not unselfconscious, but we don’t belong to a piece of land – we come out of places, institutions. He suggests we look at how Montreal is the same as other cities (i.e. not the usual tropes of bagels, Mount Royal, the river), that this is a more interesting question.

 

His thesis is that people living and working here are identical to anywhere in North America – especially in the idea of mobility – that cultural life is portable. The difference between Montreal and Missouri is not great. Anglo culture crosses boundaries. He feels writers have no obligation to engage Montreal as different, or to represent ‘Anglo-quebec’.  We have no accent, no heritage or story to defend, but a multiplicity of axes to grind, as in all cities.

 

McGimpsey’s father’s roots are in Point St-Charles, which he sees as separate from Montreal. There, it’s common for people to travel one and a half hours to work in the city. Urban sprawl means the experience of Montreal is not only about living in the Plateau or Westmount, but in the suburbs as well. This has been represented in books by authors like Zoe Whittall and Heather O’Neill who exemplify a contemporary idea of Montreal. In this, we resemble Toronto, or Cleveland: the model of city life is portable. He read a poem by Robert Allan, who lived in the Eastern Townships and was an American, but also an Anglo-Quebec author. McGimpsey read from Allen’s Thirty-eight Sonnets from Jimmie Walker Swamp, and added that French poets in translation influenced him while growing up in Toronto.

 

Jarrett Rudy, associate professor at McGill University, and head of the Quebec Studies Program, read from Sister Woman, an early 1900’s novel. It addresses questions of what is Canada, mainly from the point of view of immigrants. The story is set in a munitions factory during the war and deals with the sexual liberation that cities and work bring. It’s not the same Quebec that Marie Chapdelaine described (perhaps due to the relative freedom from the Catholic Church that Anglophones had). This discussion seemed to come out of left field, and was not related to the rest of the panel, who discussed current authors writing in Quebec.

 

In response to the earlier discussion, Ackerman expressed shock at the ‘two Davids’ (as she called them) idea of no conflict in Montreal and no difference from anywhere in North America. Our imaginations are paralyzed, she said. When she came to Montreal it was to find out what was happening here, and she wanted to engage. She finds it upsetting to claim that nothing is going on between the English and French. Montreal does resist engagement, however, says Ackerman. Publishers won’t touch writing about French/English conflict and TV and films use Montreal to stand in for American cities like Cleveland. But to Ackerman, it’s the most interesting thing happening in Montreal. When Louis Dudek was writing, it was still possible to call it as it is – English writers in Quebec had national importance and were firmly rooted in Montreal.

 

David McGimpsey responded that we should look at what makes novels sell. For the reader, it’s a question of intimacy. For instance, a book set in Montreal, like Barney’s Version, was more popular in Italy than in Canada. People loved the story, and related to the character. The production of books doesn’t situate itself in one place. The marketplace of publishing is in Toronto – should we relocate?

 

Katia Grubusic stated we don’t know what the political project will be – and writing with an agenda slips into drippy writing. She feels it’s dangerous to write with an ‘ism.’  She also feels the critical infrastructure is not there yet but will come later. For instance, the Vehicule Poets were self-conscious but their importance was seen only in hindsight.

 

Ackerman responded by saying, the political elephant in the room is our position as a minority within a larger community. She feels this is what leads to the paralysis, or schizophrenia of writers here.

 

McGimpsey pointed out that Lullabies for Little Criminals is set in Montreal, and there is a linguistic sense that it happens in English and French, but because the character is thirteen years old, the author leaves out the political question.

 

Homel brought up Zoe Whittall: The author tries to get something going, but the character sloughs it off – that’s not where it’s at. The book is about jealousy and possession, not politics. And then he said to Ackerman: “You sound like a disappointed separatist; the project is not dead, but sound asleep.”

 

Ackerman replied—speaking as an editor now— that she sees the tendency of writers who live here to be the ‘hotel’ writers, noting the seedy side of the city. She asked a very pertinent question: Where are the Mordecai Richlers of our time, to pick up on the ‘time and place’?

 

And yet, this question belies the nostalgia behind the panel theme. We have a vibrant English speaking writing community, winning all kinds of major prizes. Why are we still looking back to the 1960’s or 70’s for a model of English Montreal as cultural centre of the country?  The real minorities are the ones doing the representing.  In reality, there are more than two solitudes.  There may be two official languages (only one in Quebec), but in truth, the best part about being an English writer in Quebec, especially in Montreal, is rubbing elbows with other languages and cultures.