Todd wrote:
>Of course, most westerns involving Canada or Alaska
have often been
>considered "northerns" in the pulps and their
successor media, and may, in
>Canadian libraries at least, be considered simply
Canadian literature,
>whether that is likely to be segregated or not I know
not.
Sure, CanLit sections exist, though usually in bookstores
more than libraries, but don't hold your breath for
"northerns" to show up there. Almost every single one of
those stories were written by American pulp writers and were
often glaringly historically and geographically inaccurate.
The "northerns" were to Canadians what the minstrel shows
were to blacks.
Real Canadian Lit sections are generally reserved for
mainstream fiction & literature by Canadian authors
(Atwood, Davies, Ondaatje, Laurence, Richler, blah blah
blah). Of course, there is some interest in the sub-genre up
here, but like minstrel shows is certainly tinged with irony.
(Don Hutchinson's recent collection of pulp "northerns " from
the pulps, while all set in Canada, doesn't feature any
Canadian authors, as far as I know).
Still, those hard-boiled (or maybe frost-bitten) "northern"
stories in the pulp were an interesting sub-genre, to say the
least. They were wildly popular in their day, especially down
in the States, and their portrayal of Canada in the 1920's
and 30's as some sort of ice-bound wild, wild west, broken up
only by forests of giant Douglas firs and occasional log
cabins, and populated by treacherous lumberjacks (Blacque
Jacques Shellacque, anyone?) and heroic broad-chested
scarlet-clad Mounties lay much of the groundwork for every
misconception Americans still have about this country. I
mean, Dudley Doright wasn't supposed to be taken as a
documentary. Yet, amazingly, we still get Americans tourists
who are disconcerted to find out we don't all live in log
cabins and speak with heavy British or French accents, our
police don't wear bright red coats or that we have our own
currency. And we even still sometimes meet alleged American
historical western novelists, often praised for their
accuracy, who seem to think nobody really lived up here until
after the American Revolution.
It would be almost like Canadians expecting to see slaves
picking cotton in Colorado, or to see the Washington, D.C.
chief of police wearing a big star on his vest and twin Colt
Peacemakers hung low, marching down Main Street alone at high
noon for a showdown with some dangerous desperado. Instead of
just using his cell to call in the SWAT team.
But how many of you do take out books from the library? I
find there's very little in the way of hard-boiled at my
local library, though sometimes there's a surprise or two.
And they're usually quite good at taking suggestions on what
to order.
-- Kevin -- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
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