Why is there no great Canadian novel

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravtiz is good

the fisherman are like poorest of the poor. they are all drunks and don't have time to write anything lol.

>they are all drunks

So where Malcolm lowry and Charles Bukowski

and Bukowski got famous after he retired from a full time job

true story. I'm 11 and get sent to PEI to stay for a month in the summer. stay with my grandparents. one afternoon my grandfather is drunk as fuck and says who wants lobster for dinner? I'm down sure. so he's like alright let's go get some. we'll drive down to the dock and take the boat out. I say aren't you a little drunk? he's barely staying awake. he says yeah that's true. he tells me to drive. ummmmm I've never driven a car. he tells me not to be a pussy. ummmmm. so he's like fine we will take the tractor. tractor is fucking hooked up to another thing that holds hay bails. he's to drunk to get it off. so I fucking drive this tractor halfway to the dock and he's fucking laying flat singing on the back on the empty thing that holds hay. he realizes he forgot the beer and tells me to turn around. I've never driven in my life and I'm basically driving an 18 wheeler hauling another fucking thing attached to this goddamn tractor. takes a half hour to turn around. jack-knifing everywhere. some dude stopped in his car to help me. get home. get beer. head back out. get to the boat. tells me to drive, because it will be funny. smash the boat along the sides of the canal and finally make it out to sea. catch lobsters and eat them on the boat pretty sweet. smash boat along the canal and smash it some more docking it. forgot to bring them back for the rest of the family. fucking drunk ass fuck.

Never understood the point of Canadia. It's like 2 good cities and an overgrown village, united in their love for maple syrup, Queen and welfare. How is that a country?

man fuck off our country is only like 100 years old.

man fuck off our country is only like 100 years old. my man I've never heard any canadian ever say anything about the queen.

Canada is better than your country in every way and our artistic production is bar none for a country of our population

They don't spend nearly as much money trying to on media

Death on the ice.

Thank me later

Authors gettine rekt by a moose

People only know about American authors because they are pushed so hard
But Canada has an excellent literary tradition.

My favorite Canadian novel is Neuromancer

Al Purdy

youtube.com/watch?v=vPKeczB3wrg

Anne of Green Gables

wtf canada is only 150 years old hahaha wtf

>our "culture" is being "multicultural".
So you have no culture at all, and import foreigners out of a lack of culture confidence while turning them at the same time into soulless global-capitalist drones like yourselves? (Quebec is the exception tho).

The colony is older and Quebec is 400+ years old

Lmfao please let this become cringe pasta

What about Ireland (on subject of population)

Oh I beg to differ

This seems like a solid foundation for the Great Canadian Novel.

The population of England was 4 million when Shakespeare lived. You guys have absolutely no excuse on those grounds.

Yes yes let's all hate Canada
The fact is some Toronto corpuscle probably has never bothered or cared enough to really embrace Canadian culture.
Canada is a nation of survivors and I think that's why immigration is generally seen with a sympathetic (but bipolar) light.
Canadian literature almost always follows the themes of survival, man in nature, man in society, man in the world, man in himself.
It's different from the pompous grandstanding of American exceptionalist literature or the almost paranoid "island mentality" of British work.
That's why canadas poetic epic is about the expulsion of the Acadians, and why even immigrants writing in Canada maintain this almost gothic survivalism in their work, like in a fine balance (which is nothing but depressing)
I think the Canadian mentality is that nothing good ever happens without a price, so better to enjoy the small moments than have hope.

let's see you be a country of immigrants and build a solid culture in 150 years lmao

Ireland has had some pretty unique struggles and has a larger literary output than china during the same period of time in the last 200 years or so

implying Bolaño is mexican

They realised that short story is better art form

Five Legs.

The idea of a great national novel is 1. very recent and 2. purely United Statesian

There's a reason that no one talks about "the great" English novel even though there's a longstanding tradition of English novels. Same thing goes for any other national literature except the United States'; the category doesn't exist anywhere else.

It's also arguable that the Great American Novel™ is a uniquely Yankee phenomenon. I've never heard anyone refer to any of Faulkner's novels as such, for example. I'm not from the states though, so I'm kind of removed from the discussion, which again I'm sure is almost entirely limited to the United States an the people therein.

novel is plebbiest form of literature, and americans are filthy philistines, so no suprises

Robertson Davies?

>The idea of a great national novel is 1. very recent and 2. purely United Statesian

What about ulysses

Parce que tu es trop stupide pour parler Francais...

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_d'écrivains_québécois_par_ordre_alphabétique_(A)

it's not america. that's pretty good

It's a great novel, surely, but something specific is meant by "the great American novel" for which there is no equivalent in other national literatures

By the time of the First World War Merica had fully defined itself.

Anyways, that's complete bullshit, because the ratification of independence doesn't automatically begin the start of some process named "culture." America already had an identity before 1776. The Yankee, John Edwards' fury, the deistic struggle of the soon-to-be founding fathers, puritanical physical labor and a love of nature, Etc.

Just admit it's because you are fucking loyalist Anglos, yet without a history like Britain. So just the worst of the worst (Australia is saved by Scottish and Irish). That's why Quebec is the only worthwhile province in terms of Culture.

This gave me a good laugh

This guy is pretty much spot on. The quest to become the
>next great American writer
is confined to the US. I've never encountered anyone from any other nationality discussing something similar. I guess it's another symptom of being too self-absorbed.

to sidestep the "great novel" meme and just comment on general cultural production, its because Canada is a nice safe boring place. We have no demons in our blood. The worst thing that happened here was some aboriginals getting sent to boarding school run by mean nuns. There isn't much to talk about.

There's also a strong South-tilting cultural brain drain, at least in recent times. Tons of big actors, comedians, screenwriters, creative types in the States are Canadians who moved to LA or NY because that's where the gettin's good - e.g. Seth Rogen, James Cameron.

no its not

Canada INVENTED the novel.

I would go into a five paragraph rant on why Canada is the best country on earth -- nay, the universe -- but frankly I couldn't give a darn what the pseuds on Veeky Forums think !