Montreal Stories (Selected Stories) [Paperback]

Clark Blaise (Author)

Book Description

Series: Selected Stories | Publication Date: October 15, 2003

Here gathered together are the Montreal-set stories which made Clark Blaise famous -- such stories as `A Class of New Canadians', `Eyes', and `I'm Dreaming of Rocket Richard' -- alongside two new and unpublished Montreal stories, `The Belle of Shediac' and `Life Could Be a Dream (sh-boom, sh-boom)'.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`One way ... to approach the collection is to soak up the atmosphere of the city that Blaise describes with an almost uncanny acuity. He is a sure master, whether painting landscape -- the mean east-end streets of the 1950s seen as ``one big icy puddle of frozen gutter water, devoid of joy, colour, laughter, pleasure, intellect or art'' -- or charting social change in the Plateau, the district transformed in the 1980s from ``a low, squalid slum, dismal and tubercular'' to ``Soho de chez nous ... young, upscale, arty and French.'' '

(Elaine Kalman Naves Montreal Gazette )

`Mingling new pieces written especially for each collection with several older, `classic' stories, the series is an unprecedented event in the history of Canadian literature. Never before has such a large body of work been re-collected in such a way. Never has a writer been so quickly and so completely ``re-presented'' to us. The strength of the project is its ability to foreground the complexity of Blaise's geographical imagination. [ ... ] The series illustrates, more clearly than ever before, that there is something remarkably original about Blaise's work. Blaise is more than just a local colourist who ferrets out the curious details of ``marginal'' communities in order to delight cosmopolitan readers. Rather, if we consider the full arc of his work, we see that for nearly fifty years he has been challenging the way that we understand the concept of place in contemporary Canadian and American literature.'

(Alexander Macleod Essays on Canadian Writing )

`Clark Blaise is a born storyteller ... a writer to savour.'

(The New York Times Book Review )

`More than any other writer, Blaise has shown how Canada is linked by geography, immigration and cultural affinity to the wider world ...'

(Jeet Heer National Post )

`Those who have read Blaise will likely be familiar with his non-fiction bestseller Time Lord, not the four volumes of his Collected Stories that have sold somewhere in the low hundreds. Though he became a member of the Order of Canada in 2009, Blaise has never won a GG. And yet his body of work -- and one can speak of it as a coherent body -- is an entertaining and profound monument to the craft of the short story.'

(Alex Good & Steven W. Beattie The Afterword )

About the Author

Clark Blaise has taught in Montreal, Toronto, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, as well as at Skidmore College, Columbia University, Iowa, NYU, Sarah Lawrence and Emory. For several years he directed the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Among the most widely travelled of authors, he has taught or lectured in Japan, India, Singapore, Australia, Finland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Holland, Germany, Haiti and Mexico. He lived for years in San Francisco, teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to the novelist Bharati Mukherjee and currently divides his time between San Francisco and Southampton, Long Island. In 2002, he was elected president of the Society for the Study of the Short Story. In 2003, he was given an award for exceptional achievement by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2009, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada ``for his contributions to Canadian letters as an author, essayist, teacher, and founder of the post-graduate program in creative writing at Concordia University''.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill (October 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0889842701
• ISBN-13: 978-0889842700
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,857,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Canadian author Clark Blaise is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and was the director of the International Writing Program. He was one of the founders of the Montreal Story Tellers Fiction Performance Group. In 2009, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was the founder of the post-graduate program in creative writing at Concordia University. He is married to internationally acclaimed Indian American author Bharati Mukherjee.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The More Things Change..., August 14, 2004

By 

ITS (Calgary, AB, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Montreal Stories (Selected Stories) (Paperback)

I picked up this book while preparing myself for the next big step in my life: moving to Montreal. I have come through a long journey around the world, lived most of my adult life in the States, and now I am heading to Canada to start everything all over.

I could relate to most of the stories in this book even though they describe a time long gone. Clark Blaise narrates through Montreal, and it is exactly what I expect it to be: The city of immigrants, and the entry port for the dreamers all over the world. Most of the characters in his sories are always on the move, in the pursuit of happiness, very much like today's reality.

Without ever being to Montreal, through Blaise's stories, I feel that I belong there. I can see the melting pot of cultures, the struggle between the English and French heritage, the love and the pain associated with living in such a different place from the rest of Noth America.

The language that Clark Blaise uses is simple and pure, and it comes through as a very pleasant read. Once I started a story I could not put the book down until I finished it.

I would highly recommend this book to everyone who intends to move or just visit Montreal, as it would be an eye-opening account of what this city stands for, all beautifully told from a first-hand experience. And if you don't intend to do either one of the above, read this book just for entertainment, personal curiosity, or growth.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent style & keen, unflinching observations of a lame city, March 12, 2006

By 

toothygrin "toothygrin" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Montreal Stories (Selected Stories) (Paperback)

Clark Blaise's creates vivid life on the page with impeccable style. Most of the stories occur in the 50s, 60s & 70s. Granted, much has improved since then including abolition in the 1990s of the "confessional school system" wherein public education was run along religious lines including many clergy serving as teachers and principals. Americans romanticize Montreal as the Paris of North America, however its intensely xenophobic pur-laine-quebecois* denizens elect to live the lower-working-class lifestyle relying on the province's generous unemployment and welfare system. Apart from the more English-speaking western districts, most of the city resembles a barrio in Mexico City. Militant Quebec trade-unions still run the show, and not a year goes by now without a punishing winter strike: be it the snowcleaners, bus drivers, postal workers, hospital workers, janitors, teachers, utility employees, etc. Snow piles high on the duplexes' wrought-iron exterior staircases and 3-foot brown-stained snowbanks line the sidewalk gutters from the street ploughs. Blaise describes teachers, parents and other models as they blaming poverty, unemployment, drinking, violence to on English-speaking Canadians (who in Quebec are simply called "les anglais," even though they're not British) the Protestants & the Jews. Indeed antisemitic commentary is found in most of these stories. Blaise explores the overt pressure placed on French Canadian children to eschew professionalism, internationalism and innovation,for they are the trappings of the anglais. One English-speaking mother is married to a Francophone in Pittsburgh who is fired for worksite violence & they're forced to return to Montreal to lodge with his brother Theophile whose family speaks no English. The narrator starts French school where he is reguarly whipped by nuns and priests to get back at his unruly cousin Dollard. "Tu es hotage, you're just a hostage" they tell him. The mother secretly introduces him to the English department stores and English-style food and to her former friends, English intellectuals. However by this point his mind has already been jawboned to toe the Quebec-victim line and he insists he wants to leave her friends west of boulevard St. Laurent to return to home.
Nevertheless, within this theatre-verite compassion abounds for the victims of this form of socialization. We observe English and French Canadian characters of various ages. I enthusiastically recommend this book, I couldn't put it down. *Pur-Laine Quebecois (translates as Pure Wool Quebecers) was a term that the nationalist cultural affairs minister Camille Laurin coined to refer to the racially pure French Canadians.