Torontos: Representations of Toronto in Contemporary Canadian Literature

Torontos: Representations of Toronto in Contemporary Canadian Literature by Will Smith Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. School of American & Canadian Studies September 2011 Abstract This thesis examines how representations of Toronto in contemporary Canadian literature engage with place and further an understanding of spatial innovation in literature. Acknowledging the Canadian critical tradition of discussing place and space, the thesis moves the focus away from conventional engagements with wilderness motifs and small town narratives. In this way the thesis can be seen to respond to the nascent critical movement that urges engagement with contemporary urban spaces in Canadian literature. Responding to the critical neglect of urban representation, and more particularly, representations of Toronto in Canadian literary criticism, this thesis examines Toronto as a complex and contradictory site of symbolic power across critical, political and popular discourses. Furthermore, this thesis repositions an understanding of Toronto by paying attention to literary texts which depict the city's negotiation of national, local and global forces. The thesis seeks to understand the multiplicity of the city in lived, perceived and conceived forms - seeing Toronto as Torontos. Questioning existing frameworks deployed in Canadian literary criticism, the thesis develops a unique methodology with which to approach the complex issues involved in literary writing about place, drawing on contemporary Canadian criticism and transnational approaches to critical literary geography. The central chapters focus on four texts from the twenty-first century, three novels and one collection of poetry, approaching each text with a critically informed spatial lens in order to draw out how engagements with Toronto develop spatial innovation within literature. The thesis analyses how engaging with Toronto challenges writers to experiment with literary form. In tum, the thesis seeks to elucidate the spatial developments achieved through literary writing. The thesis then demonstrates an understanding of the material geography of the city, situating readings with reference to interview material from parties involved in writing, producing and distributing literary depictions of Toronto. Hence it combines traditional literary criticism with a spatially and socially engaged criticism, in order to clearly address the literary geographies of Torontos. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the University of Nottingham's Graduate School which, through the Sir Francis Hill Scholarship and the Travel Prize, funded this project and in tum allowed me to convey a small portion of its draft findings at the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) conference in Montreal in 2010. The International Council for Canadian Studies/Conseil international d'etudes canadiennes awarded me a Graduate Student Scholarship to fund a trip to Canada and continued to provide excellent support and resources from a distance throughout. The British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS) provided me with a lifeline during the entire project. The network of informed and interested Canadianists in BACS have been essential whilst conducting such research in the UK. The same generosity of spirit was also shown to me by the European Network for Canadian Studies (ENCS) and the Nordic Association of Canadian Studies (NACS). In turn, I would like to thank the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and The Eccles Centre at the British Library for providing such generous and continued financial support to emerging scholars. The Department of American and Canadian Studies provided an encouraging environment for the work, fostering a rigorous exchange of ideas. Susan Billingham has been a great source of wisdom, support and understanding throughout. Douglas Tallack's urban and urbane guidance at the beginning of the project and the detailed counsel of Gillian Roberts proved beneficial. At the University of Toronto, Nick Mount, Dennis Duffy and Magdalene Redekop all demonstrated great generosity of time and spirit. In the course of this thesis several of my peers have each attempted to educate me and it can only be my loss for not having taken better notes. Thanks go to the many unnamed and to Mark Storey, Keith Nottle, Rachel Walls, Michael Collins and Becky Cobby. Special thanks also go to the Chilwell Canaries and to Oryx and Karis Shearer in Canada. Thanks also go to my family, who have always ensured there were books. Finally, I would like to thank Polly - to whom I am forever grateful. 11 Contents Page Abstract Acknowledgements 11 Introduction 1 Toronto Literary Power - Placing Toronto in Canadian Literature Chapter One 19 Critical Literary Geography Chapter Two 48 Toronto the Uncanny: Michael Redhill's Consolation Chapter Three 93 Toronto the Diasporic: Dionne Brand's thirsty Chapter Four 123 Toronto the Mobile: Stephen Marche's Raymond and Hannah Chapter Five 157 Toronto the Terror-tory: Maggie Helwig's Girls Fall Down Coda 203 The discord and concord of literary Torontos Notes 218 Appendix A 228 Personal Interview with Michael Redhill Appendix B 239 Personal Interview with Stephen Marche AppendixC 253 Personal Interview with Maggie Helwig Works Cited 264 Introduction: Toronto Literary Power - Placing Toronto in Canadian Literature Observed from a distance, Toronto takes a multitude of forms, not always recognizable to those who live here. From various parts of Canada and the world we see ourselves reflected back in splintered, fragmented form. In my lifetime Toronto has been seen at various times by non-Torontonians as desperately dull and scandalously successful, as flatly homogenous and wonderfully varied, as miserably greedy and remarkably welcoming. Ithink that at certain times all of these opinions have been true; perhaps they are all true at the same time. --- Robert Fulford. We speak of 'Toronto,' but there are - and have been throughout the twentieth century - so many coexistent Torontos. Frequently separated in space, almost invariably differentiated by class, often distinguished by the national or racial origin of their principal inhabitants, they are not uncommonly seen to exist independently, unaware of each other's special qualities. --- W.J. Keith. This thesis seeks to re-place Toronto in contemporary discussions of Canadian literature. It addresses the representation of Toronto as a place and an urban imaginary, examining how the city is articulated in an era of globalization. Focusing on three novels and a poetry collection published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this thesis examines Toronto as a local, national and global place of interconnection. Addressing these four contemporary literary engagements with Toronto, the thesis situates literary representations in the wider framework of symbolic, perceived and lived Torontos. As the epigraphs of WJ Keith and Robert Fulford suggest, Toronto is freighted with multiple symbolic meanings. It is also, significantly, diversely perceived and inhabited in multiple ways. This does not alter the sense that Toronto is at once unique in its material location and symbolic resonance, however it gestures to the impossibility of one perspective of Toronto which may be taken for the whole. Attention to the material city drives this criticism to engage with the multiplicity of the city's inhabitants and the multiplicity of its meanings. * * * In 1968, in a survey of Canadian literature, Mordecai Richler notes the geography of Canadian literary production. Whilst emphasising that many writers of the time addressed their own localities in literary work, Richler suggests that the Canadian publishing industry is specifically located in Toronto (20). This centrality of Toronto to the literary work of Canada has not been reflected in either literary criticism or, as some would argue, the literary texts themselves. One way to explain this might be to examine the uses and depictions of Toronto in literary criticism, and more particularly the separation of Toronto's cultural power from reference to its material site. Toronto's cultural power can be seen to derive from its network of publishing companies, which at the time of Richler' s comments in the late 1960s were seen as national presses both in ownership and trade outlook. The Canadian stance of these Toronto presses was further shaped through their large subsidy from national and provincial government (Wright 18). In the 1990s Toronto-based Canadian publishers took an increasing global outlook through the transnational institution of first the Free Trade Agreement with the United States in 1988 and subsequently the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. In the late 1990s this led to the significant merger of Doubleday, Knopf Canada and Bantam Canada into Random House, owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann (Wright 46). Although opposed by a nationwide syndicate of small presses in Canada, the merger was approved by the federal government and has foreshadowed a number of similar global shifts in media ownership. The increasing foreign control of ostensibly Canadian publishing houses and imprints, whilst Canadian editorial offices remain in Toronto, has led certain critics to point to a rising 'foreign-owned-press' monopoly in national literary prizes. 2 Stephen Henighan's criticism suggests that Toronto itself, and its large literary output, is compromised by this complex

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