Canada Made Me - Softcover

Levine, Norman

4.06

16 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889841683 ISBN 13: 9780889841680

Publisher: Porcupine's Quill, 1993

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Norman Levine's Canada Made Me, first published in England in 1958, is a bitter, critical reassessment of the moral and cultural values of Canada. His account of his three-month journey from Halifax to Ucluelet, a fishing village on the west coast, is an unconventional portrait of Canada's underbelly. The book ends with the words: `I wondered why I felt so bitter about Canada. After all, it was all part of a dream, an experiment that could not come off. It was foolish to believe that you can take the throwouts, the rejects, the human kickabouts from Europe and tell them: Here you have a second chance. Here you can start a new life. But no one ever mentioned the price one had to pay; how much of oneself you had to betray.'

Canada Made Me was regarded as so controversial that it did not appear in a Canadian edition until 1979. Critical opinion, however, has slowly swung around to the point the book was recently described in the Globe and Mail as a `laconic classic'. For this new edition Norman Levine has written an introduction which traces the book's publishing history and reputation.

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From the Back Cover:

Norman Levine's Canada Made Me, a bitter, critical reassessment of the moral and cultural values of 'the polite nation,' proved so shocking it took 21 years?despite initial acclaim when released in 1958?to see a Canadian edition. A record of his three-month journey from coast to coast, Levine's vision of Canada's seedy and unpleasant underworld is now a laconic classic.

About the Author:

Norman Levine was born in Ottawa in 1923. During World War II, he served in the RCAF with a Lancaster squadron based in Yorkshire. He subsequently studied at Cambridge and McGill Universities, receiving his M.A. from McGill University in 1949. In 1949 he was awarded a fellowship to do post-graduate work at King's College, London. He left Canada with the manuscript for his first novel under his arm and spent the next 31 years in England, mainly in St Ives, Cornwall. He returned to Canada briefly from 1965-66 when he was the first writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick.

Norman Levine is the author of 2 books of poetry, Myssium (1948) and The Tightrope Walker (1950); 2 novels, The Angled Road (1952) and From a Seaside Town (1970); and several collections of short fiction, including One Way Ticket (1961), Canada's Winter Tales (1968), I don't want to know anyone too well (1971), Selected Stories (1975), Thin Ice (1979), Why do you live so far away? (1984), Champagne Barn (1984) and Something Happened Here (1991).