Review of Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

If you never thought that a book about the Anglo Literary Revival could be a page turner, it’s only because you haven’t, yet, read Linda Leith’s provocative, insightful, and thoroughly engrossing Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis.

As many of you may already know, Leith, a Westmount resident, is the founder (and until recently) the director of the uniquely multilingual Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival.

As an author and as someone who has been involved in most of the key developments affecting the English Montreal Literary scene over the past 30 years, she was always ideally positioned to offer an insider perspective, and I have to admit… the end result is a fascinating ride.

In her book, Leith explores how rising Quebec nationalism in the ‘60s and ‘70s created in essence two separate countries; Two Solitudes, to borrow Hugh MacLennan’s own words. The book recounts how, during those decades, English Montreal went into decline and its writers became marginalized, forgotten and neglected, both here and in the ROC.

It’s a fundamental paradox that Leith explores in her book; one that many francophones may have a hard time understanding. How is it possible that members of the world’s most powerful linguistic community are complaining about marginalization? But here’s the conundrum: Anglos are a minority within a minority, living in a city which houses a majority that is also a minority in the rest of the world. Confused? So are the rest of us who live here most of the time.

According to Quebecoise literary critic, Gilles Marcotte, back in 1989, “there could be no such thing as an English-Quebec writer,” Leith recounts. “English-speaking Quebec had not only become a non-place; I had become a non-person living in this non-place.”

The book is essentially Leith’s story of how Blue Metropolis came about, partly as an attempt to showcase Montreal’s literary talent, and partly as a fervent hope to bridge the literary divides. But it’s about so much more; particularly the fragile and always-tenuous linguistic dynamics that make this city so frustrating, yet so exhilarating to reside in.

Those interested in the vital role that language plays in reflecting a community, but also in shaping it, will find this book of great interest. Over the years, artists from both side of the linguistic fence have climbed over and found a no man’s land devoid of politics to come together and create, as well as document, a common reality.

But, true to form, linguistic politics continue undaunted, both in Quebec and the ROC. It was only a month ago at the Juno’s that Quebecers watched a tribute to Canadian music that did not include a single French song. Only a month ago that ADISQ (Quebec’s recording industry association) chose not to award Arcade Fire (Quebec’s most celebrated musical export at the moment, winners of the Grammys and the Junos) an award, because “they weren’t Quebecois enough.” The Gazette’s Brendan Kelly wrote a pertinent column on the subject, entitled: “Arcade Fire said it best: Wake up.”

“Blue Metropolis is a Utopian idea,” Leith says. “It’s the city we want to love in, or at least the city I want to live in.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Leith chose to reproduce Rilke’s quotation (upon which MacLennan based his Two Solitudes title) in its entirety in the book. “Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” I think this is Leith’s subtle, yet firm, message to all of us who call this place home.


The Monitor

More Reviews of this title

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis provides an important personalized historical account of the politics and institutions that have informed the production and dissemination of Montreal English-language fiction from the mid 1960s to the present. Linda Leith’s teleological history begins even earlier, though, with a brief account of the “glory days” or “golden age” of English Quebec fiction in the 1950s—when Hugh MacLennan, Mordecai Richler and Mavis Gallant emerged as internationally recognized authors. The story then moves into its telling of “the decline from the glorious past to the inglorious present” during the decades of the Quiet Revolution (1960s), the rise of the Parti Québécois (1970s) and subsequent referendums on sovereignty (1980 and 1995). It goes on to describe the energetic and entrepreneurial activities of Anglo-Quebec writers like herself to develop an institutional infrastructure that has enabled, in Leith’s opinion, an “Anglo Literary Revival,” the seeds of which “were sown with the creation of Blue Metropolis Foundation in 1997 and then of the Quebec Writers’ Federation in 1998.”
    Leith tells the story with the same frank optimism and good-natured pluck that has characterized her work as a writer, scholar, teacher and literary organizer from the moment she returned to Montreal to teach at an English CEGEP (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel) in 1975. Leith’s narrative of her personal experience in Quebec begins when her family moved to Pointe-Claire Village, about 15 kilometres west of downtown Montreal, in 1963. She was 13 years old and had already lived in Northern Ireland (where she was born), London and Basel. These early memories of her arrival in Quebec describe an encounter with a traditional French Canadian village—“there were nuns on the streets”—that would soon be radically transformed by the major political initiatives of Jean Lesage’s Liberal Party of Quebec. That transformation included the nationalization of Hydro-Québec (in 1963, under the guidance of then Liberal Hydraulic Resources minister René Lévesque), the establishment of a Quebec Pension Plan (1966) and the secularization of education, including the replacement of classical colleges with CEGEPs (1967). And this is how much of Leith’s narrative proceeds, alternating between personal (but never very personal) observations and more generic accounts of the political events and changes that were going on around her. It is a sound procedure, and readers will learn much about the social and political history of post-war Quebec by reading this book.
    The real point, however, lies in how Leith makes connections between these personal and general political histories and the history of Anglo-Quebec literature. Montreal in the second regime of Maurice Duplessis (1944–59), a period since known as “la Grande noirceur” (the Great Darkness) for its corruption and for the repressive “authority of both the Catholic Church and Anglophone-controlled business,” is also the period that coincides with Leith’s above-mentioned “golden age” of English Quebec fiction. These “good old bad old days” were so nourishing to English-language writers, Leith suggests, not only because of the bohemian atmosphere that characterized Montreal at this time, but also because of the “often distant” relations between the French and English and the unproblematic self-identification of Montreal’s English-language writers “as Canadians.” With the death of Duplessis in 1959, the start of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec initiating change that “was overdue” and the subsequent articulation of new forms of Québécois and Canadian national identity came the impossibility for Anglo-Quebeckers of any simple mode of national self-definition. Here we are moving toward one primary thesis of Leith’s book, which states that the contending nationalist projects of Canada and Quebec arising in the 1960s and ’70s alienated, isolated and essentially exiled the English-language writers of Quebec: “The assertion of rival national identities called for clear boundaries, and writers working in English in Montreal were a complication that neither side was in any hurry to claim. We had become writers without a country.”
    As we follow along, a series of pervading binaries—Quebec versus Canadian nationalism, Toronto versus Montreal as dominant centres of English Canadian and French Québécois literature, Michel Tremblay versus Margaret Atwood as representatives of two distinct national literary identities—come to inform the logic of Leith’s narrative. While these binaries certainly oversimplify the complexities that Leith is genuinely interested in discussing, it is clear how they help push forward her narrative about Blue Metropolis and the recent Anglo Literary Revival.
    Leith poured herself into the work of developing the Blue Metropolis Festival in order to “promote the work of English-language writers” from Quebec in a manner “that would allow us to rub shoulders with international writers” and “to invent a new kind of literary festival for Montreal … that would cross the linguistic divide.” These two themes—international promotion and internal rapprochement—inform her understanding of what she has accomplished as a festival organizer and direct the connections she makes between national politics and local, organizational politics.


— Jason Camlot Literary Review of Canada

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

Linda Leith's passionate connection to Montreal is evident in every line of this book. Combining insider knowledge and writerly insight, she takes us on the surprising journey which led to the resurgence of Anglo writing in Montreal. Few have been as intimately linked to this history and can write the story as vividly as she can.


— Sherry Simon, author of Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

In her book, she gives an elaborate and highly detailed account of the possible ways and means she has used and turned to in order to realize her plan, which was to bridge linguistic and other divides between the two and the other solitudes. Her idea was to create a possible rapprochement between and among the different communities. The cumulative, immense, and often incredible number of difficulties she had to grapple with is beyond description.


— Judit Molnár Canadian Literature

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

Quebec anglophone writers do not exist. Except for Mordecai Richler, of course. At least, that’s what francophone writers will say... The cultural and political context for that perspective is explored in Writing in the Time of Nationalism (Signature Editions) by Linda Leith. It’s an overview of what it’s like to be a minority within a minority within a majority, written by someone in the middle of things... The book is informative and, at times, even a little gossipy. (Writers can be very sensitive.) Charting the Anglo Literary Revival, Leith also includes a useful bibliography of Quebec fiction writers who write in English.


Uptown Magazine

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

In the 1940s, Montreal was the literary capital of Canada. Modernist poets writing in English flourished alongside internationally published realist novelists, both anglophone and francophone. The post-war boom that shifted Canada's economic centre westward to Toronto coincided with rising support for independence among Quebec francophones. Between the early 1960s and the referendum of 1995, a series of political crises brought Canada to the brink of dissolution. As Linda Leith recounts in this candid, engaging memoir, these events cast English writing in Quebec into a void between competing nationalisms.

The return of Anglo-Quebec writers to international prominence may simply mean that global marketing has become stronger than the most stubborn nationalism.


Times Literary Supplement

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

If the true purpose of literary memoirs is to settle scores and put the record straight, Linda Leith’s Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis is as true as they come.

Like the best of the genre, Leith’s account of her 40-odd years as an academic, journalist, novelist and cultural activist in Montreal will inspire its share of chuckles and groans. I suspect those who’ve lived the times will give into deep and sometimes sorry sighs of recognition.

This second volume of her memoirs is a hybrid: part personal, part historical analysis. The latter theme is firmly stated up front: “How Montreal’s English-language literary community pulled itself back from the brink and created the conditions within which writers could thrive.” The personal part is about Leith making it happen, a vivid, sometimes breathless account of how an intrepid young explorer from the north of Ireland found herself in a West Island suburb just as all hell was about to break loose downtown. Pen in hand, Leith was on the scene, digging up Mavis Gallant’s local roots, befriending the neglected author in Paris, reviving and canonizing Hugh MacLennan, tending wounded egos, creating awards, organizing discouraged scribes and eventually becoming one herself by writing three novels.

Her thesis is as clear as the narrative arc: In the 1940s, Montreal was Canada’s cultural capital. But the coinciding births of Quebec and Canadian nationalism squeezed anglos to near-death, driving many writers away and forcing the rest to keep their heads down (except Mordecai Richler, a writer from most who stayed distanced themselves, Leith says). Gradually, through the hard work of institution-builders, things got better and now we have a publishing boom and an annual event attracting some 15,000 visitors each spring, the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, of which Leith was founder and, until recently, artistic director.

True. And yet also still true is much of what Leith abhors about the bad old days of yore: Literary works touching the immense political and social changes Quebec has undergone are few, interest shown by Toronto media and publishers in anglo Montreal almost nil. Novels set in Quebec have a better chance of being published in the United States or Britain than Canada: witness mega-sellers by Heather O’Neill and Louise Penny, both turned down at first by the who’s who of Canadian publishing.

Written in clear, exhilarating prose, this is a very fine book, the best Leith has written. Clearly, this is her subject and she tackles it with zest. Just when bleak truth threatens to bog things down, along comes Linda’s pep talk. Struggle is inspiring, even if it means starting right back where Hugh MacLennan began: “Being good is just not good enough. In the cutthroat world of literary reputations, you need a lot more than that. You need to be irresistible. Toronto will pay attention when there is something happening that Toronto needs to know about. For English Montreal writers, that eventually turned out to be international attention.”

What she doesn’t explain is why as founder and for 11 years director of Blue Met, she was so deathly afraid of ticking off Quebec nationalists, being careful to ensure that anglo and ethnic components of the festival never exceeded francophone participation. If international recognition is what counts, why not go all out to welcome the English-speaking world of letters? After all, Montreal is still a large market for English-language books, and French Quebec has a plethora of literary events with scant Anglo presence.

But Leith is a visionary, and visionaries rarely notice inner contradictions or flaws. If literary anglo Montreal is a little less confident, less buoyant than Linda Leith, it surely isn’t her fault. She has done her best to spin the tale around.


The Globe and Mail

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

I have been at the Blue Met this week, talking about From Then to Now, and I got the chance to hear Leith talk about this book. She is a central figure in what she calls the Anglo Revival -- of English language writing in Montreal. She has been not only a writer and teacher but a substantial cultural entrepreneur too, involved in most of the organizations and events by which English-language writers in Quebec have forced themselves upon the attention of Quebec, Canada, and the world. Blue Metropolis is the successful international literary festival in which both the readers and the audiences are as much French-speaking as English-speaking. Leith was the founder and until recently director of the festival, but the book is more than a record of the festival's creation.

Her memoir speaks from the embattled heart of Montreal's English-language literary community -- from the 1970s to today. In Leith's telling, English-language writing in Quebec was threatened not only by Quebec nationalists who resented Anglo attempts at cross-cultural rapprochement and denied there was such a thing as English culture in Quebec, but just as much by English Canadian nationalists who more-or-less agreed. Her fight, she argues, was as much against Toronto as against those who would exclude English from Quebec. "If there had not been a Toronto, we would have had to invent Toronto," she writes.

This is a good cultural history, detailed, first person, parti-pris, but also abundantly sourced and referenced. And as good cultural history should, it's a window onto many wider historical topics too.


— Christopher Moore, history author & journalist

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis

In the 1940s, Montreal was the literary capital of Canada.  Modernist poets writing in English flourished alongside internationally published realist novelists, both anglophone and francophone.  The post-war boom that shifted Canada's economic center westward to Toronto coincided with rising support for independence among Quebec francophones.  Between the early 1960s and the referendum of 1995, a series of political crises brought Canada to the brink of dissolution.  As Linda Leith recounts in this candid, engaging memoir, these events cast English writing in Quebec into a void between competing nationalisms.  

From the 1970s onwards, Quebec revised its history in a way that denied the cultural achievements of anglophones. Ontario-based critics, rewriting the literary history of Canada, fashioned a narrative that obscured Montreal's earlier dominance.  The nadir came in the 1980s and early 90s, when Canada's national institutions, both public and private, ignored anglophone Quebec out of nervousness at offending the rebellious province's francophone majority.  Writers within the anglophone community – which accounts for roughly 10 per cent of Quebec's population of 7.9 million – found they had no where to publish.  

Since 2000, for the first time since the 1940s, international literary prizes have been awarded to anglophone Quebec writers, such as Jeffrey Moore (Commonwealth Best First Book Award), Yann Martel (Booker Prize), Rawi Hage (Dublin IMPAC Award) and Miguel Syjuco (Mann Asia Prize). Leith is well placed to tell the story of "the Anglo Literary Revival". Her tendancy to overplay occasionally her own undeniable centrality to the rebuilding of anglophone Quebec's literary institutions is balanced by clear-eyed observations about the ironies of literary life in a city where the use of English is in decline.  The Blue Metropolis Literary Festival that Leith founded in 1999 to deal the diversions between anglophone and francophone writers has evolved into a model for multilingual literary festivals elsewhere.  Yet it is unclear that the competing nationalism have receded.  Though Blue Metropolis is by some measures the biggest literary festival in Canada, it is regularily omitted from articles on Canadian literary festivals published in Toronto.  In Quebec, certain nationalist intellectuals continue to avoid the festival, whose multilingualism they see as an affront to Montreal's "French face".  The return of Anglo-Quebec writers to international prominence may simply mean that global marketing has become stronger than the most stubborn nationalism.  


— Stephen Henighan The Times Literary Supplement

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