This Is Our Writing

Punctuate his title as you like but T.F. Rigelhof considers This is Our Writing a declaration, an enquiry and an exclamation. As a writer of half a dozen, a reviewer of dozens upon dozens, and as a reader of a multitude more books, Terry Rigelhof knows much about writing in Canada.

In these eleven essays, he asks what is best in what has been written by Canadians in the twentieth century. He examines selected works of some writers whose accomplishments need serious revaluation. What are the real achievements of Robertson Davies, Carole Corbeil, Mavis Gallant, Mordecai Richler, Hugh Hood, Leonard Cohen and George Grant? Rigelhof comes up with a list that will surprise some and dismay others.

This is a book for readers who have always known in their heart of hearts that Robertson Davies was an egregious windbag and that underneath the inspired silliness of their carefully contrived and managed public images, Mordecai Richler and Leonard Cohen have produced three of the most intelligent novels we have. In a sequence of interlocking personal essays, Rigelhof explores living a writerly life in Canada at the end of the twentieth century. The text is fortified by a dozen photographs, all but one previously unpublished, by Gabor Szilasi, one of Canada's greatest active documentary photographers.

T. F. Rigelhof is a contributing reviewer to the Books section at The Globe and Mail and was recently used as the intellectual pin-up for the new book section at the National Post.

His essay on religion in Canada at the end of the millennium, A Blue Boy in a Black Dress: A Memoir, won the QSPELL/Royal Bank of Canada Award for Non-Fiction in 1996 and was also nominated for the Governor General's Award. His critically acclaimed short stories of contemporary life i