Robert Kroetsch (1927–2011)

Phenomenal.

I'm an Albertan with indistinct European origins. I think four generations ago we got as far as Saskatchewan. The next brought us here, Alberta, Tilley, Brooks, Medicine Hat.

Fifty years since Kroetsch's "Alberta," yet still a book I needed to read today. Where am I from? Well, here. Alberta. I'm a prairie boy living in the parklands with the tomorrow-seekers of Edmonton. It seems Calgary won out on the battle for prosperity long ago.

"Alberta," 1968: "The process of naming is hardly begun in Alberta. We who live here so often cannot name the flowers, the stones, the places, the events, the emotions of our landscape; they await the kind of naming that is the poetic act." (p. 83).

To a large extent that is still true, but I'm comfortable saying this on a personal level and not a cultural one. I could not have named anything Kroetsch has named. I take this as a pretty big failure on my part. And that's why reading Alberta was an emotional process for me. Kroetsch lived in the world he wrote and wrote in the world he lived. He wrote the world he lived.

For the (un)naturalist, this book's language will absolutely stun you, as it did me. Those things out there that have distinct names are beautiful and are named beautifully. They lend a wholesome sort of understanding.

A picture of an age long passed, probably. Even the jacket's blurb reads as a prophecy never fulfilled. Still, what an incredibly diverse province in people and land.

I feel a sense of home and a sadness at not having it named. I'm here, though. Whether I'll catch up and get my bearings or continue to live in the looking-glass wood, who knows.… (más)

Sheer page-turning and character-building genius, the book is a ribald roam through a slightly magicly real prairie landscape of the recent past in the rough imaginary vicinity of Edmonton in the first half of the 20th century. I thought I read the echo of a Malcolm Lowry short story in the fictional biographer's intrusions, and in turn I wondered if Elizabeth Hay was inspired by the fire scene to use something similar in her novel Alone in the Classroom, which shared a rough timeframe. A tour de force that won the Governor General's Award for fiction, my only irrelevant comment is Why do Canadian publishers insist on publishing in American English? Have they no pride? But never mind--a superb novel by the U. of Iowa graduate. This novelist and poet died in a car crash in Alberta in 2011, and was an Officer of the Order of Canada.… (más)

The municipality of Bigknife, on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, is nothing if not curious. In some ways the novel strikes me as a combination of Mordecai Richler, Thomas King, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I draw the latter into the mix because there are so many days of rain in Macondo and, in What the Crow Said, there is a 151-day-long card game, but if I were better read in magical realism, I might be able to draw a more pertinent parallel.“They had not slept for three days and nights, the assembled players. It was almost dark in the basement, even during the afternoon; at night the holy candles, brought down from upstairs, hardly lit the cards.”At three-days-long, readers are thinking that the card game is stretching the question of credibility, but a 151-days-long card game is completely believable. No, that’s not a typo. It is completely believable. Because we’re not talking ordinary life as we know it, but ordinary life in Bigknife.There is something magical and bizarre and homespun and ordinary about this tale that begins with Vera Lang and a swarm of bees. There is something wonky and queer and comfortable about it. It’s a strange feeling indeed.More here, if you're curious.… (más)