Why is Canadian literature so shit?

It's a puppet regime, like all members of the Greater NATO Co Prosperity Sphere

only if you're non-white or a womxn

>puppet regime

check'd. Yea, what should my pen-name be? I'm thinking "Usman Ali". I am a Pakistani immigrant and am also trans.

because Canada is shit
canada is fucking gay

Tue votre self

I had to read "The Wars" by Timothy Findley and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Rapewood in highschool. They were shitty even when compared to something as basic as To Kill a Mockingbird.

Whatever, still the best country in the world.

>A bestiality smut novel routinely appears in Canadian top 25 lists.

That is actually really upsetting, as a Canadian. Bestiality is fucking disgusting, and women don't seem to ever be called out on it.

>le hate Canada meme
lets not forget that despite being the global superpower there are only like 5 actually good American novelists

6 actually
the ONLY good American authors are Melville, Faulkner, Pynchon, Vonnegut, Hawthorne, and Mark Rippetoe

why is literally all of Veeky Forums jealous of Canada?

>The Canadians even gave the author an award
5 is still more than 0

I'm sorry that Canadian literature is too cerebral for you

Bear is unironically fantastic
also pic related

the only thing wrong with Canadian literature is that its largely locally known and most Canadians are consumer twats who only guzzle down whatever the yanks push out.

t. quebec

another good one
Americans and their cronies just don;t understand the Canadian survival spirit

I see your Canadian lit and raise you New Zealand lit. We do have one writer who's internationally noted, but the rest of the world sees her as a British writer (Katherine Mansfield).

Would you happen to be the autismo Yank from /brit/ the other night that's still pissed off at that leaf

God I love when the internet gives me new reasons to hate Canada.

Honestly you have to be Native or fellating Native culture to get any kind of prizes or awards or recognition for writing in Canada. Ah well, at least we have land and running water.

John Mulgan.

The Blind Assassin by Atwood is actually quite good.

The sex scene in this was much weaker and uninteresting than expected

I'm Canadian, and I self-published a few books. One of them are for free today and tomorrow, check it out if you like. It's a book about zombie survival however with intense focus on realism and survivalism so if that's not your then I guess it's just another shitty Canadian novel.

amazon.com/dp/B01M7S2Z0R

>brother in law marrying canuck
>bring anti-leaf meme into rl
>discussion on canadian film and literature begins at christmas table
>everyone looks at you weird when you mention the day of the rake and the emptiness of canadian cultural life
>realize your long-term family relationships have been adversely affected

False

There are grants for non Natives as well

t. Francophone

kys

Honestly, you never hear about Canadian anything, the only thing leafs have is basically some B-list actors that they borrowed to Americans.
What the fuck is Canada even? Is it there only to make me mad?

Have you tried curing your autism?

Have you faggots seriously not read mavis gallant?

Yo seriously. I notice this on all boards. I think it's because Veeky Forums is so American and America fucking sucks. Can't even go to a movie without getting shot. So they see there closest neighbor and just make fun of them to deflect from their own shitty country. They could choose Mexico but fuck everyone makes fun of Mexico haha

not that any of you will have read/bother/deign to read these, but

Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
Alice Munro - Lives of Girls and Women
Leonard Cohen - Beautiful Losers
Timothy Findley - The Wars
Anne Carson - Autobiography of Red

>Canadians need to scrape the barrel so furiously that they're scooping up random Facebook-tier pop-stars

>hasn't read any of them
this board in a nutshell I guess

My man, let me tell you something. This is what's currently on my "to read" list:
>Schopenhauer
>Heidegger
>Goytisolo
>Sartre
How much of a pseud would I have to be to put all those off for later and instead read the ramblings of some guy who literally became famous for punching metal strings?

>to read
>hasn't read
>facebook-tier entry level philosophy

you can put literally anything on your "to read" list and that's what you go with? ok

Reading those guys you posted makes you more of a pseud than reading those Canadians. I would respect someone more as a reader for having read those Canadians.

Stephen Leacock, Mordecai Richler, Michael Ondaatje, Alistair MacLeod, Alice Munro, Yann Martel, Margaret Laurence, Lucy Maude Montgomery, Farley Mowat, Pierre Berton and MARGARET FUCKING ATWOOD! All have individually produced greater work than over half the countries on this planet. Taking into account the length of existence of a country, and the population of a country over time, you'll find that Canadian literary output is ahead of, or on par with the greatest literary nations of this planet. Perhaps the only country that outperforms Canada in this regard is Ireland.

You would, wouldn't you? It would give you so much hipster cred, right? Go eat your own shit kek
And you read all works by those authors?

True dat. Niggas we barely 100 years old hahaha and we are spread out thin as fuck on this giant land mass.

yes, all of them

Congratulations, I haven't so I don't have time to be reading irrelevant and creatively bankrupt fucking leafs

I, for one, have read 3/4, and doing that I can tell you that there are many Canadian works more worth reading that anything by Goytisolo or Heidigger.

then stop shitposting and go read some basic goddamn books before you come on a literature board to discuss literature lol

It's my shitposting break, fuck off nerd

You already are a pseud.

>american
>complaining about the emptiness of other cultures

Americans shills the >le leaf meme the most because they know they are utterly soulless themselves and attack Canadians for trying to rise above

Quebec has a rich as fuck literature. Obviously Canadians will deny this. The truth is Canada has no culture, or bare remains of a lost culture. It's diet USA with more social policies.

Will rec Quebec Veeky Forums if anyone wants.

Why are you mad?

Most people here are Americans who don't read period.

I'm francophone who has lived in Ontario for years and honestly Quebec is the exact same as the rest of the country just with more qt villages and Catholics

Fuck off you stupid frog. I visited montreal and it was fucking ghetto run down garbage. Wtf is up with the infrastructure there. It's like time stopped in the late 70s or something. I thought the highway was going to crumble down on me. Habit 67 cool as fuck though.

I would add Robertson Davies to that list.

>Language is literally different
>Same as the rest of the country
Ok

Montreal is a dying city and nowhere near a good representation of Quebec as a whole.
>Fucking frog
Ok grandpa

The article in the walrus posted last week covered this. It's because not enough people in general read and there's not enough people in Canada willing to read enough Canadian lit to establish a canon. There are simply too many books to read and as a Canadian myself I'm not interested in wasting that time on Canadian books.

Thats not true at all, there are plenty of people here and Canadian books are generally no less valuable than other books, the fact that you do ascribe some sort of point system to literature is incredibly silly.
I've found plenty of time to read the classics alongside Canadian books

It's this attitude more than anything, not immigrants or "communists" that hurts Canada and turns people into these shiftless soulless consumer blobs

The language honestly doesn't make a massive difference, I get along with people here fine and we all care about the same things, Quebec is equally as Americanized with the same sort of survival complex

You could say this about pretty much anyone anywhere, but that says nothing about culture.

I get along well with the Spanish and care about the same things. To deny our differences would be silly though.

Hear! Hear!

seconding. mordecai richler's apprenticeship of duddy kravitz is one of my favourite books of all time.

Don't forget that Norm MacDonald, the greatest comedian of all time, is a Canadian. He just wrote a book. He's a huge fan of Tolstoy and Munro--two of the GOATS. Also famous for roasting Brett Easton Ellis on twitter. I think he recently has been feuding with Joyce Carole Oates and Atwood? Genius, nonetheless.

It's not just the classics that are better though, Canadian literature in general is deficient.

As others have pointed out, Canadian culture is too stolidly bourgeois to produce much worthwhile writing. There's also the poisonous effect of government subsidies for writers, which leads to too many preachy books about immigrants and natives.

Seriously, fuck Canada. When I get the chance I'm moving to the States.

I feel really bad for you. You actually fell for ironic internet memes and dragged them into your daily "life". Remember, you're on par with people who use rage comic memes and anime references in real life.

Kerouac was Canadian. Or do they look at Quebecans as different species?

b-b-but muh Robertson Davies

The Deptford Trilogy is really good though.

> implying

Alice Munro is some of my favourite short stories. The Diviners is my all time favourite.

He emigrated to the US when he was a toddler IIRC

I'm from the West Coast, so Quebec might as well be a different country to me.

>Jack Kerouac was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kéroack and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque.

Huh, so I guess that's who that guy named his dog after in the movie Down and Out in Beverley Hills. Very interesting flick from the 80s with a truly amazing theme song. Once in a Lifetime, by Talking Heads if memory serves. Oddly enough, the lead singer in Talking Heads has some Canadian connections as well if I recall correctly. In spite of our low population (typically half that of the UK and a tenth that of the US), a fair bit of talent comes from the Great White North.

By the by, my book Living amongst the Dead is still free all day today (March 29th) so go ahead and nab it if you like!

Pic-related is the sequel, but it's not for sale right now. In a month's time I'll be trying out that Kindle Countdown thing for the first time so though it's $2.99 right now it'll be going down to $0.50 or $0.99 depending on how low they'll let me go.

Farley Mowat is pretty badass. Also that book Death on the Ice which is about the disaster of the SS Newfoundland which happened in Spring 1913 or something like that. Recently another book has been published about it on the 100 year anniversary, Left to Die which I actually read last year. Great read. Death on the Ice was written in the 60s if I'm not mistaken, and though I haven't read it yet, it's basically a standard for Newfoundland literature. There's also "The First 500" which details Newfoundland's involvement in WWI and even has pictures of a HUGE amount of the Newfs who fought, as well as detailing when all the soldiers joined, along with when and where many of them got wounded and/or killed. Beaumont Hamel was brutal for Newfoundland on July 1st, 1916. Over 800 troops, but only about 70 or so made role-call the next day. That's why even though July 1st is Canada Day, it's been a Memorial Day in Newfoundland for far longer; we didn't join Canada until 1949. For a little island like Newfoundland that even today only has about 500,000 people (obviously FAR less 100 years ago), 700 deaths in a single day is a huge loss.

Even a cursory examination of Canadian prizes awarded or even examples in this very thread would debunk your claim. Way to prove people right by being the lazy shit people say you are.

>Michael Ondaatje
Fucking quality.

>>I have only ever enjoyed one book written by a Canadian author, and it was a book on hockey.

Wut. You are in a slim minority of people who are Canadian and want to move to the States. I'm assuming there are more issues then 'I don't like their lit'

Yeeaaaah, boi. I've only read Rebel Angels, but I fucking loved it. One of the characters is based on a professor I had in university. He met Davies when they were both younger lads in Oxford.

I don't count Kerouac as Canadian, because he came at such a young age. It was more that his family had touches of the Quebecois spirit, but he's an American through and through - not really of fan of him.

Not a fan.

Heck, Stephen Harper, the former Prime Minister wrote a book about hockey while he was in term.

---
I also want to recommend 'The Underpainter' as a great Canadian novel.

Also, Marie-Claire Blais' 'Mad Shadows' (La Belle Bete) as a great novella.

Oh look, another kid who hasn't read any Canadian lit mouthing off. Gosh, how I've missed you. Come back when you've hit double-digits in Canadian books read before you presume to judge an entire country's literary output.

>In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

does Quebec have an equally as edgy separatist version of houellebecq

You come at the leafs... you best not miss.

>Independentism
>Edgy

top-notch reference & underrated post

>he thinks it's jealousy

>French Canadian parents

He's Quebecan then.

the best Canadian literature reflects Canadian identity, and that's precisely why it has no international appeal. because nobody outside of Canada even knows what the fuck that is, especially nowadays. in fact, most anglo Canadians don't, and I feel sorry for them.

Americans, please stop acting like you are entitled to all the world's culture. much of it will be of no value to you. appreciate the fact that there's more to read within your own borders than you can possibly sift through within a single lifetime. experience the genius that's within your grasp.

Like John Cantius Garand, though I think the proper terminology is 'Quebecer'. Pronounced, basically, "Keh-Bek-er". It's "Keh-bek", not "Koo-eh-bek"

I wish Veeky Forums would stop making sweeping generalizations about nations and peoples. It's become so tedious.

>all those literally whos

Richler and Cohen are quite well known across the country

>b-but I don't personally know who they are

too bad kid

Waidup waidup waidup
You put Vonnegut in but not Gaddis?

READ MY BOOK