Where are we standing here? Are we right close to the individual author? In which case, it’s the author’s voice, not the Canadian voice. Move back, you see a green thing in the distance. If you stand very close, you can see the molecules inside the tree. It all depends on where you stand in relation to the forest. But none of them sound particularly British, and as a whole, they don’t sound very American either. You would know the general area of literature that was being parodied. Each one is written in quite a different voice, but quite recognizable. It’s five different pieces, starting with the Maritimes, then Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, and B.C. I wrote a piece called “Regional Romances, or, Across Canada by Pornograph”. They would have got more usable material. They should have been looking for the kind of parody serious writers tend to produce when they try their hands at this. But I think they were looking for the wrong thing. The Union gave up the idea because they felt from the submissions that serious writers weren’t any good at writing pornography. It started out as a piece of porn about a woman fornicating with a bear. This was the genesis of Marian Engel’s novel Bear, by the way. Andreas Schroeder was going to put these together into an edited book. The Writers’ Union of Canada thought it would improve its fortunes by having all its members write a piece of pornography. I came across a funny thing I wrote some years ago.

Hancock: Could you say something about the writer’s “voice”? Is there a distinctive Canadian voice? Could you say something about your own voice?Ītwood: I hope there is more than just one distinctive Canadian voice.

Terrific read.Īnyway, in “Tightrope-Walking Over Niagara Falls”, an interview with Geoff Hancock from 1986, she has something to say about Bear within the larger context of Canadian literature in general (and I’ve been going nuts all day wanting to post this I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday or where I put my work badge, but I can remember reading about a thing twenty-four years ago): For some birthday or Christmas or other, my parents got me a copy of Margaret Atwood: Conversations, which consists of a lot of really interesting and enlightening interviews with Ms Atwood. So I’m an old lady and I first heard about this back in, oh fuck, 1990 or so (not 1989 as I thought earlier) shortly after I read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time and was wild for all things Margaret Atwood. So hey there! You know that thing that’s going around right now, the cover of Marian Engel’s Bear? And the accompanying OMG WTF?

Bear novel cover marian engel