The Worlds of Carol Shields

Description

"Carol was a very fine writer and a remarkable human being, a wonderful person whose work I closely followed for more than 20 years. I interviewed her frequently over those years, with virtually every work she produced —novel, radio drama, play, book of stories. So I had a good sense of the span of her work and also her evolution as a stylist. But the key reason I wanted to make a book focusing on her life and work is that we were friends."
—Eleanor Wachtel

This book strikes the right balance between intimate accounts and literary analysis. It opens with reminiscences by close friend Eleanor Wachtel, which are followed by a study of Shields’ poetry by her daughter and grandson, then by various aspects of her fiction, including a detailed examination of her plays. It closes with reminiscences by four close friends: Jane Urquhart, Joan Clark, Wayson Choy and Martin Levin.

The 23 contributors offer new insights, new theories, and new perspectives about Shields’ illuminating career. Only one piece—her obituary written by Margaret Atwood—has been previously published.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Canadian

Informations

• Publié par: University of Ottawa Press
• Date de parution: 02 décembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780776621852
• Langue: English

Extrait

The University of Ottawa Press acknowledges with gratitude the support it receives from Heritage Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC), the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, and especially that of the University of Ottawa.
Copy editing: Trish O Reilly-Brennan
Proofreading: Barbara Ibronyi
Typesetting: Atelier Typo-Jane and CS
Cover illustration and design: Bartosz Walczak
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
The worlds of Carol Shields / edited by David Staines.
Includes bibliographical references.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7766-2206-4 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-0-7766-2186-9 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-0-7766-2185-2 (epub)
1. Shields, Carol, 1935-2003--Criticism and interpretation. I. Staines, David, 1946-, editor
PS8587.H46Z96 2014
C813 .54
C2014-907212-0 C2014-907213-9
University of Ottawa Press, 2014
Printed in Canada
To the memory of Lorraine McMullen 1926-2003
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
D AVID S TAINES
To the Light House
M ARGARET A TWOOD
Art Is Making: Carol Shields in Conversation and Correspondence
E LEANOR W ACHTEL
The Square Root of a Clock Tick: Time and Timing in Carol Shields s Poetry and Prose
A NNE G IARDINI AND J OSEPH G IARDINI
All That Below-the-Surface Stuff : Carol Shields s Conversational Modes
C ORAL A NN H OWELLS
Guilt, Guile, and Ginger in Small Ceremonies
E LIZABETH W ATERSTON
Revisiting the Sequel: Carol Shields s Companion Novels
W ENDY R OY
Bio-Critical Afterlives: Sarah Binks, Pat Lowther, and the Satirical Gothic Turn in Carol Shields s Swann
C YNTHIA S UGARS
Assembling Identity: Late-Life Agency in The Stone Angel and The Stone Diaries
P ATRICIA L IFE
Male-Pattern Bewilderment in Larry s Party
J OHN V AN R YS
Departures, Arrivals: Canada/United States Migrations and the Trope of Travel in the Fiction of Carol Shields
A LEX R AMON
To Be Faithful to the Idea of Being Good : The Expansion to Goodness in Carol Shields s Unless
M ARGARET S TEFFLER
Narrative Pragmatism: Goodness in Carol Shields s Unless
T IM H EATH
Shields s Guerrilla Gardeners: Sowing Seeds of Defiance and Care
S HELLEY B OYD
Cool Empathy in the Short Fiction of Carol Shields
M ARILYN R OSE
The Perfect Gift and the True Gift : Empathetic Dialogue in Carol Shields s A Scarf and Joyce Carol Oates s The Scarf
E LIZABETH R EIMER
Prepositional Domesticity
A RITHA VAN H ERK
Grand Slam : Birthing Women and Bridging Generations in Carol Shields s Play Thirteen Hands
N ORA F OSTER S TOVEL
Archives as Traces of Life Process and Engagement: The Late Years of the Carol Shields Fonds
C ATHERINE H OBBS
The Voices of Carol Shields
J OAN C LARK
The Clarity of Her Anger
J ANE U RQUHART
My Seen-Sang, Carol Shields: A Memoir of a Master Teacher
W AYSON C HOY
Carol Shields
M ARTIN L EVIN
Contributors
Acknowledgements
T his book originated in a conference funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The editor gratefully acknowledges the Council and its financial support. He also acknowledges the support and cooperation of the University of Ottawa Press and its director, Lara Mainville, its acquisitions editor, Dominike Thomas, and its production editor, Elizabeth Schwaiger.
Three individuals deserve special tribute:
Zachary Abram gave exemplary dedication to the planning and execution of the conference, including his superb skills as a computer authority.
Donald Shields gave his blessing to the planning of the original conference and supported its organization.
The late Carol Shields wrote the fiction and non-fiction, the poetry and plays behind these essays. Without her, there would not be this book.
David Staines
Introduction
D AVID S TAINES
F or Carol Shields, novelist and short story writer, biographer and literary critic, playwright and poet, art offers a means of confronting the joys and dramas of the human condition. As she said in her seminar, A View from the Edge of the Edge, at Harvard University on February 10, 1997:
Years ago, in an introduction to a book of short fiction, the American writer Hortense Calisher talked about the short story being mainly a new world form. Reports from the frontier, she called them, a lovely and accurate phrase that caught my attention. Perhaps, I remember thinking, this is what all of literature is: a dispatch from the frontier, news from the edge. Even given that the edges and centres of society are forever shifting, it does seem to me that the view from the edge offers a privileged perspective. Also freedom from cynicism if not from anger. Also a kind of real or willed innocence which is what I believe every writer must keep alive in order to write.
And Shields knew well the problems of the edge, as she continued, for she stood at the edge, too, by virtue of gender.
Where I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, I attended, first, Nathaniel Hawthorne Public School, and when I was a little older, Ralph Waldo Emerson Public School. I knew who these bearded, bespectacled, frockcoated gentlemen were; their portraits hung in a place of honour in our schools. They were writers. They were men. They were dead.
As Margaret Atwood observes, Possibly feminism was something she worked into, yet Shields was always aware of who she was, of her many readers both male and female, and of the power of art to give her a privileged perspective on life. Her unique voice, compassionate and forever human and humane, gave her the power to portray the worlds around her in her own wise manner.
The Worlds of Carol Shields brings together twenty-three people, some of them her friends, some of them scholars who are her readers, to shed fresh light on her many achievements. The author of ten novels, four collections of short fiction, three volumes of poetry, four published plays, one volume of literary criticism, and one biography, she carved out her special place in Canadian letters. Her many honours include the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction for 1976, the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Canadian Mystery, the Governor General s Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Orange Prize, and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. She is among the most honoured of all Canadian writers.
The Worlds of Carol Shields opens with four close friends, some of them relatives, of Carol Shields. For many years her admiring friend, Margaret Atwood pens an obituary which is a unique tribute to Shields s life and career. Eleanor Wachtel divulges the history of her strong friendship with Shields, explaining its origin and its effect on her life. Then the novelist Anne Giardini, Carol Shields s daughter, and her son Joseph use their intimate knowledge of the Shields family to stand back and examine Shields s poetry and its thematic relationship to her fiction.
Coral Ann Howells begins the examination of Shields s fiction. Studying her novels and her short stories as well as her biography of Jane Austen, she posits a close connection between Shields s works and the criture f minine espoused by such feminist scholars as H l ne Cixous, uncovering the feminist directions of Shields s writings. Elizabeth Waterston examines Small Ceremonies , the first novel of the neophyte Shields, and Wendy Roy furthers this exploration, analyzing The Box Garden as the sequel to Small Ceremonies and A Fairly Conventional Woman as the sequel to Happenstance . Exploring Swann is a question, according to Cynthia Sugars, of understanding the allure and even the necessity of literary ancestors. Patricia Life seeks the Canadian antecedents to The Stone Diaries in Shields s indebtedness to her own literary ancestors, Ethel Wilson and Margaret Laurence. And John Van Rys observes the male-pattern bewilderment of Larry s Party .
The only person (thus far) to have written an entire book on Carol Shields, Alex Ramon studies the Canadian and American dimensions of her fiction, beginning with a careful analysis of her volume of literary criticism, Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision ; her poetry; and her short fiction, leading into new readings of The Stone Diaries and Larry s Party . Margaret Steffler and Tim Heath offer their own readings of Shields s final novel, Unless. And Shelley Boyd traces the presence of guerrilla gardeners in Shields s writings as a further instance of her rebellious literary cultivations.
The final three essays on Shields s fiction look at her short stories. Marilyn Rose argues for cool empathy in her short fiction, Elizabeth Reimer posits a comparison between Joyce Carol Oates and Shields, and Aritha van Herk provides an overview of The Republic of Love and the short stories in emphasizing Shields s love of the preposition in her writings.
Nora Foster Stovel ends the discussion of Shields s writings with a detailed analysis of her plays, in particular Thirteen Hands . And Catherine Hobbs brings her archivist eyes to a concluding study of the final resting place of the Carol Shields s fonds.
The Worlds of Carol Shields ends, as it began, with four friends of Carol Shields, who offer their unique perspectives on her, her life, and her career. Joan Clark and Jane Urquhart present reflections on the woman they knew so well. Wayson Choy pays tribute to the teacher who inspired him and his own writing. And Martin