The most important thing to remember when you’re dealing with CanLit—and if you’re unfamiliar with that term, it’s the semi-ironic shorthand for Canadian literature—is that obscurity is a virtue. We don’t really trust writers who have already made it big. And by big, we mean someone who’s moving units in the U.S.
Sure, we continue to respect Margaret Atwood, Alice Monroe, and Miriam Toews, but not like we used to before they became big down south. We know in our hearts—or at least we keep trying to convince ourselves—that the writers whose readership remains above the 49th parallel are the true Canadians. Even more, they remain noble of heart and uncorrupted primarily because of their literary obscurity.
The best example of the CanLit approach is the Vancouver-based podcast Can’t Lit. Hosted by poet Dina Del Bucchia and novelist Jen Sonkfong Lee, Can’t Lit is an irreverent treatment of Canadian letters, and that’s what makes it so good. You’re as likely to hear descriptions of the hosts’ skin-care routines as you are elegant uses of the semicolon,
and that’s the charm. Where your
typical CanLit critic might believe that describing a work of fiction as “entertaining” would be insulting, Bucchia and Lee embrace the term. The books they read and writers they profile are decidedly literary, but their love of reading, of being told a good story, is the real focus here.
At the other end of the CanLit podcast spectrum sits the The Next Chapter. If you’re looking for a more traditional CanLit approach, this is the place. It’s produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and transmitted over the nation’s public radio network before becoming available to stream online. It’s hosted by CBC veteran Sheila Rogers, although rumor has it that this current season will be her last with the show. The Next Chapter benefits from a relatively large budget, which leads to a well-produced podcast with extremely well-researched and often quite insightful interviews. This is a podcast with a reverence for old-school CanLit, invented in the mid 1970s: think of books where the women all came of age on the Prairies and the men knew how to make love in a canoe. If you’re looking for a podcast that will introduce you to award-winning CanLit books and bestselling CanLit authors, look no further.
In between these two opposing poles are several CanLit podcasts that cover a good mix of mainstream writers and independent publishers. Book Me, hosted by Lindsay Gloade-Raining Bird and sponsored by Nimbus Publishing; The Crow Reads Podcast, coming from Treaty 6 territory; and Get (Can)Lit are all worth checking out. Also, I’d be remiss without mentioning The Coach House Podcast, hosted by James Lindsay and sponsored by Coach House Books, which I produce.
Considering that we’re a country with only the population of Texas and New Jersey, there’s no doubt that Canada has created a literary tradition greater than its apparent means. And CanLit’s up and coming writers are not only confronting our colonial past, but imagining paths to reconciliation, and envisioning a better future for all. I encourage you to learn all about the world of Canadian letters by listening to these CanLit podcasts. What you discover might surprise you.
Andrew Kaufman is a novelist who lives in Toronto. His most recent novel is The Ticking Heart.
