Christopher Moore's Canadian History News, or Christopher Moore at least, is hitting the road for a few days.
Don't expect any new posts until early February. Unless I'm really inspired or provoked.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
History Prof Controversial
Lawrence Martin, in the Globe, reports on Michael Behiels, University of Ottawa constitutional history professor, who wrote an op-ed last November criticizing PM Harper's Quebec=nation resolution. Whereupon Senator Marjory LeBreton, Conservative leader in the Senate, wrote to the Chancellor of the University of Ottawa demanding he be disciplined. Don't the people in the government know the basics about free speech?
Apparently UofO is not going to comply. But apparently they have not yet told the senator just what she can do with her demand.
Michael Behiels must be feeling quite historic himself. When was the last time powerful public figures demanded that a university punish a historian for his views?
T'other hand, I saw a Michael Bliss byline recently that said he has retired from the University of Toronto and is now an independent scholar. I'd never reflected on that description before. I trust Michael Bliss's scholarship has always been independent and that Michael Behiels stays that way.
Apparently UofO is not going to comply. But apparently they have not yet told the senator just what she can do with her demand.
Michael Behiels must be feeling quite historic himself. When was the last time powerful public figures demanded that a university punish a historian for his views?
T'other hand, I saw a Michael Bliss byline recently that said he has retired from the University of Toronto and is now an independent scholar. I'd never reflected on that description before. I trust Michael Bliss's scholarship has always been independent and that Michael Behiels stays that way.
New Beaver column: Jimmy Gray
The Jan/Feb issue of The Beaver, Canada's historical magazine, went out to subscribers last week, with a nice essay by Lawrence Hill on the "Book of Negroes" that tracked black loyalist immigrants to Nova Scotia in 1784 (he's got a new novel out from HarperCollins with the same title) and much else, including my column on the late great historian James Gray and the recent biography of him by Brian Brennan. If you are one of the 50,000 subscribers, you have it in hand. If not, well, you should be.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
I've been reading: Dr Delicious
Dr Delicious: Memoirs of a Life in CanLit by Robert Lecker (Vehicule Press, 2006
Robert Lecker was born in 1951. Now that profs cannot be retired, his “life in CanLit” is probably not yet half lived. But don’t let that keep you from Dr Delicious, a lively read with some startling stories in it.
Lecker says “lecker” means “delicious” in German. He plays with a nice polarity between Professor Lecker (a sober authority figure at McGill, author of austere CanLit critical articles) and Dr Delicious (a crazy guy who had fun in class, played with his own life story, and aspired to be the wildman of Canadian scholarly publishing).
Dr Delicious is a pretty funny autobiography, but mostly it is a memoir of ECW Press, which Lecker and Jack David launched as grad students at York University in 1974. Jack David’s still running ECW, but Lecker wrote this after dropping out in 2003.
I always had an idea of ECW. It was born when grants and subsidies to scholarship and publishing were so lavish that two profs could run a publishing house in their spare time and devote it exclusively to monographs and bibliographies in Canadian literature. Those days came to an end; ECW should have died like a frog whose pond has been drained. But, I imagined, Jack David had come to like being a publisher more than a prof. So ECW metamorphosed from “Essays in Canadian Writing” to “Entertainment. Culture. Writing.” It took to putting out Shania Twain biographies and wrestling books and anything it might sell into the American market.
The facts are close to correct, but I find from Dr Delicious how absolutely unfair the characterization is. To keep ECW going for a quarter century, Lecker and David, it turns out, were constantly mortgaging their homes, maxing out their credit cards, stiff-arming creditors, ruining their marriages and their digestions. Dr Delicious is a fabulous account of what an insane business Canadian publishing is. What these two were doing was a terrible business and a heroic personal burden. They took it up and carried it for twenty-five years because of their love of Canadian literary scholarship and their thirst to make it lively, contentious, serious, and public.
Well, anyone can see the enterprise was doomed. But Lecker provides one cause of their doom I had not considered. They were publishing new scholarship not just on figures with some sizeable audience like Atwood or Robertson Davies (Lecker despises Davies’ prose, actually), but on Robert Kroetsch and Archibald Lampman and Hugh Hood. The only audience for this work was the coterie of people who shared Lecker’s and David’s deep scholarly interest in the work of these writers. Almost all of those people, the world being what it is, were and are professors of Can Lit at universities.
ECW foundered on what Lecker calls “the refusal of academics to buy academic titles.”
Lecker discovered professors will not buy books, not even books addressed specifically to them. It’s no surprise so many academics are so supportive of digital piracy. Professors are so subsidized they expect to get everything for free, and as Lecker shows, that includes the books they read. Even with books specifically designed for them and their interests, the kind ECW was publishing, professors “try to get them as desk copies or review copies.” They don’t buy them.
What a fascinating study it would be, to discover how many tenured professors in Canadian universities spend a thousand dollars a year on books in their field. On books in general, even. But whatever the actual numbers, the non-interest of his own colleagues killed Lecker’s dream of publishing cutting-edge scholarship that people might actually buy.
That non-interest nearly killed his academic career, in fact. Lecker, a dreamer of no small proportions, dreams of CanLit like an elite hockey league, where people of shared passion get together to contest, to strive to be better, to play at one’s very highest level, and to thrill the fans at the same time. Is CanLit like that?
Not so much. Lecker asks what point there is in academic conferences where no one listens, let alone responds, to new arguments. What is the point of crafting articles that go out to hundreds of journal subscribers – and elicit “a resounding silence?” Critical writing, says Lecker, goes “into the void.” No wonder Jack David prefers being a publisher. Actually, I know Jack David slightly and I know writers who admire him greatly, and I’ve even been to one or two launch parties he’s subsidized. Why shouldn’t the new, commercial ECW long continue? What does Jack David owe the university?
Lecker sticks to his professorship. His book suggests he is a odd mix of hyperactivity and reflective scholarship, someone in a constant drive both to appreciate the multiple subtleties in a paragraph by Clark Blaise, and to experience new activities, new battles, new sensations, and damn the consequences. About the time this book was published, I heard some writers inquiring about a new literary agent who had set up in Montreal and was trolling for clients. They did not know the name. It's the Robert Lecker Agency.
Robert Lecker was born in 1951. Now that profs cannot be retired, his “life in CanLit” is probably not yet half lived. But don’t let that keep you from Dr Delicious, a lively read with some startling stories in it.
Lecker says “lecker” means “delicious” in German. He plays with a nice polarity between Professor Lecker (a sober authority figure at McGill, author of austere CanLit critical articles) and Dr Delicious (a crazy guy who had fun in class, played with his own life story, and aspired to be the wildman of Canadian scholarly publishing).
Dr Delicious is a pretty funny autobiography, but mostly it is a memoir of ECW Press, which Lecker and Jack David launched as grad students at York University in 1974. Jack David’s still running ECW, but Lecker wrote this after dropping out in 2003.
I always had an idea of ECW. It was born when grants and subsidies to scholarship and publishing were so lavish that two profs could run a publishing house in their spare time and devote it exclusively to monographs and bibliographies in Canadian literature. Those days came to an end; ECW should have died like a frog whose pond has been drained. But, I imagined, Jack David had come to like being a publisher more than a prof. So ECW metamorphosed from “Essays in Canadian Writing” to “Entertainment. Culture. Writing.” It took to putting out Shania Twain biographies and wrestling books and anything it might sell into the American market.
The facts are close to correct, but I find from Dr Delicious how absolutely unfair the characterization is. To keep ECW going for a quarter century, Lecker and David, it turns out, were constantly mortgaging their homes, maxing out their credit cards, stiff-arming creditors, ruining their marriages and their digestions. Dr Delicious is a fabulous account of what an insane business Canadian publishing is. What these two were doing was a terrible business and a heroic personal burden. They took it up and carried it for twenty-five years because of their love of Canadian literary scholarship and their thirst to make it lively, contentious, serious, and public.
Well, anyone can see the enterprise was doomed. But Lecker provides one cause of their doom I had not considered. They were publishing new scholarship not just on figures with some sizeable audience like Atwood or Robertson Davies (Lecker despises Davies’ prose, actually), but on Robert Kroetsch and Archibald Lampman and Hugh Hood. The only audience for this work was the coterie of people who shared Lecker’s and David’s deep scholarly interest in the work of these writers. Almost all of those people, the world being what it is, were and are professors of Can Lit at universities.
ECW foundered on what Lecker calls “the refusal of academics to buy academic titles.”
Lecker discovered professors will not buy books, not even books addressed specifically to them. It’s no surprise so many academics are so supportive of digital piracy. Professors are so subsidized they expect to get everything for free, and as Lecker shows, that includes the books they read. Even with books specifically designed for them and their interests, the kind ECW was publishing, professors “try to get them as desk copies or review copies.” They don’t buy them.
What a fascinating study it would be, to discover how many tenured professors in Canadian universities spend a thousand dollars a year on books in their field. On books in general, even. But whatever the actual numbers, the non-interest of his own colleagues killed Lecker’s dream of publishing cutting-edge scholarship that people might actually buy.
That non-interest nearly killed his academic career, in fact. Lecker, a dreamer of no small proportions, dreams of CanLit like an elite hockey league, where people of shared passion get together to contest, to strive to be better, to play at one’s very highest level, and to thrill the fans at the same time. Is CanLit like that?
Not so much. Lecker asks what point there is in academic conferences where no one listens, let alone responds, to new arguments. What is the point of crafting articles that go out to hundreds of journal subscribers – and elicit “a resounding silence?” Critical writing, says Lecker, goes “into the void.” No wonder Jack David prefers being a publisher. Actually, I know Jack David slightly and I know writers who admire him greatly, and I’ve even been to one or two launch parties he’s subsidized. Why shouldn’t the new, commercial ECW long continue? What does Jack David owe the university?
Lecker sticks to his professorship. His book suggests he is a odd mix of hyperactivity and reflective scholarship, someone in a constant drive both to appreciate the multiple subtleties in a paragraph by Clark Blaise, and to experience new activities, new battles, new sensations, and damn the consequences. About the time this book was published, I heard some writers inquiring about a new literary agent who had set up in Montreal and was trolling for clients. They did not know the name. It's the Robert Lecker Agency.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Auger on Royal
Michel Auger, political columnist for La Presse, blogging on the French presidential candidate, Segolene Royal, who was dragged into Canadian domestic politics by Quebec politicians and journalists and found herself endorsing the "liberation" of Quebec:
"It's an old Pequiste reflex to go seek Paris's blessing, particularly when things are not going well in Quebec. It's as if, being unable to convince Quebeckers, they seek a little comfort from the French." (my translation)
"It's an old Pequiste reflex to go seek Paris's blessing, particularly when things are not going well in Quebec. It's as if, being unable to convince Quebeckers, they seek a little comfort from the French." (my translation)
Thursday, January 18, 2007
A Non-fiction writer can win the Charles Taylor Prize
Couple of years ago, I was trying to float an article entitled “Can a Non-Fiction Writer win the Charles Taylor Prize?"
The Charles Taylor Prize, y’see, is Canada’s richest prize for non-fiction writing. It’s now given annually. It's worth $25,000.
But the first winner was the admired novelist Wayne Johnson, and the second was the admired novelist Carol Shields, and the third was the admired short story writer Isabel Huggan.
Sure, these novelists won when they wrote non-fiction books, and indeed they are pretty good books. I’d say Baltimore’s Mansion is minor Johnson, and Jane Austen is minor Shields, and Huggan’s Belonging is a memoir aspiring to look like a collection of short stories, but sure, they are books worthy of notice.
Still there seemed to be a rule emerging: the way to be a Charles Taylor winner was to be a novelist first and to dabble a little in non-fiction. I began to wonder if the Taylor was slumming a little.
That is, it seemed the Taylor Foundation and its juries felt that fiction is the best writing and novelists the real writers, so that when novelists descend to give examples of how non-fiction should be done, they need to be honoured and recognized. The prize is called The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, after all. You don’t see prizes that specify “literary” fiction or “literary” playwriting.
Then I looked at the juries. The first year (when Johnson won) the jury was literature prof Eva Marie Kroller, who is the editor of Canadian Literature and a student of fiction, and the novelist Neil Bissondath, along with David Macfarlane, a non-fiction veteran as well as a novelist.
[Correction , January 29: Eva Marie Kroller writes: "I am not a 'fiction critic.' My first and third books were studies of travel writing, my second a study of poetry, number four will be a literary history and five a family biography." She's right. Clearly she is a substantial critic of non-fiction writing, and I was mistaken to characterize her otherwise.]
The second year (Shields), it was Kroller and Bissondath again, joined by Wayne Johnson.
The third year (Huggan), Kroller was joined by novelist Robert Kroesch and Wayson Choy, best known for his novel The Jade Peony, though he has also written a memoir.
These are fine writers and serious readers. I have no doubt that each of these juries was entirely honest and entirely honorable in choosing the works they found most worthy. But the richest non-fiction prize in Canada was consistently choosing juries of novelists and fiction critics to judge non-fiction writing.
Surely there was an ideology working here. The Taylor Prize seemed committed to firm principles: that fiction is the highest form of writing, that the way to judge writing is to rely on fiction writers and fiction critics, and the way of improve the status of non-fiction writing is to encourage works that look a lot like fiction and works of non-fiction by veteran fiction writers.
I had not quite gotten around to working up “Can a Non-fiction Writer win the Charles Taylor Prize” when the 2005 prize was awarded. Charles Montgomery, as far as I know, has never published fiction. He is a non-fiction writer full stop. And it seemed agreed that The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia was smartly written, did not feel like fiction, and had that quizzical, curious engagement with the world outside the writer’s mind that seems to me a hallmark of promising non-fiction. (Full disclosure: it's on my list, but I have not yet read it.)
The next year they gave the Taylor to J.B Mackinnon for Dead Man in Paradise, a book with many of the same credentials as Montgomery’s. Jeez, non-fiction writers could win this thing after all. I put aside my article draft. And I took another look at the jury lists.
In 2005 (Charles Montgomery’s year), Jan Walter, a veteran non-fiction editor and former principal at non-fiction house Macfarlane Walter and Ross, replaced Eva Marie Kroller to sit with Kroetsch and critic W.H. New. In 2006 (Mackinnon), historian, broadcaster, and senator Laurier Lapierre replaced Kroetsch. That was the first time you could easily find a majority of non-fiction writers and/or non-fiction-oriented critics on the jury. [Jan 28 -- see the correction above.]
This year, 2007, Walter and Lapierre have been joined on the jury by a second historian, Margaret Macmillan. The days of fiction-centred juries for the non-fiction prize seem to be over. With two historians on the jury, the (commendably short) shortlist has two thick histories on it, John English’s Trudeau biography and Ross King’s Judgment of Paris, about the rise of impressionism in Paris, as well novelist Rudy Wiebe’s childhood memoir. (The Shields-Huggan years of women winning the Taylor seem to be fading too.)
Frankly, one could find grist for grousing about whatever they choose here. We could see a Wiebe win as more fiction bigotry. But it would be just as sad to see the Taylor Prize swing so far from fiction-like memoirs by novelists that history profs come to dominate its juries, and only great, thick, research-heavy tomes will be considered. In fairness, Lapierre has not been a prof for decades; for all his writing, he may be more like the celebrity juror that expensive literary prizes have been turning to in recent years.
I have not read English on Trudeau, but I thought his Lester Pearson biography well written and well thought, certainly no mere report on research. King’s Judgment of Paris left me a little cold as literature, I must say: a readable story, but the prose never has a moment’s sparkle, and the argument emerges more from an endless accretion of detail than from vigorous exposition. Hell, maybe Wiebe’s is the best writing in the pack this year.
We can observe the trends of winners and juries over a few more years. Anyway, these days a non-fiction writer can aspire to win the Charles Taylor Prize. Good.
The Charles Taylor Prize, y’see, is Canada’s richest prize for non-fiction writing. It’s now given annually. It's worth $25,000.
But the first winner was the admired novelist Wayne Johnson, and the second was the admired novelist Carol Shields, and the third was the admired short story writer Isabel Huggan.
Sure, these novelists won when they wrote non-fiction books, and indeed they are pretty good books. I’d say Baltimore’s Mansion is minor Johnson, and Jane Austen is minor Shields, and Huggan’s Belonging is a memoir aspiring to look like a collection of short stories, but sure, they are books worthy of notice.
Still there seemed to be a rule emerging: the way to be a Charles Taylor winner was to be a novelist first and to dabble a little in non-fiction. I began to wonder if the Taylor was slumming a little.
That is, it seemed the Taylor Foundation and its juries felt that fiction is the best writing and novelists the real writers, so that when novelists descend to give examples of how non-fiction should be done, they need to be honoured and recognized. The prize is called The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, after all. You don’t see prizes that specify “literary” fiction or “literary” playwriting.
Then I looked at the juries. The first year (when Johnson won) the jury was literature prof Eva Marie Kroller, who is the editor of Canadian Literature and a student of fiction, and the novelist Neil Bissondath, along with David Macfarlane, a non-fiction veteran as well as a novelist.
[Correction , January 29: Eva Marie Kroller writes: "I am not a 'fiction critic.' My first and third books were studies of travel writing, my second a study of poetry, number four will be a literary history and five a family biography." She's right. Clearly she is a substantial critic of non-fiction writing, and I was mistaken to characterize her otherwise.]
The second year (Shields), it was Kroller and Bissondath again, joined by Wayne Johnson.
The third year (Huggan), Kroller was joined by novelist Robert Kroesch and Wayson Choy, best known for his novel The Jade Peony, though he has also written a memoir.
These are fine writers and serious readers. I have no doubt that each of these juries was entirely honest and entirely honorable in choosing the works they found most worthy. But the richest non-fiction prize in Canada was consistently choosing juries of novelists and fiction critics to judge non-fiction writing.
Surely there was an ideology working here. The Taylor Prize seemed committed to firm principles: that fiction is the highest form of writing, that the way to judge writing is to rely on fiction writers and fiction critics, and the way of improve the status of non-fiction writing is to encourage works that look a lot like fiction and works of non-fiction by veteran fiction writers.
I had not quite gotten around to working up “Can a Non-fiction Writer win the Charles Taylor Prize” when the 2005 prize was awarded. Charles Montgomery, as far as I know, has never published fiction. He is a non-fiction writer full stop. And it seemed agreed that The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia was smartly written, did not feel like fiction, and had that quizzical, curious engagement with the world outside the writer’s mind that seems to me a hallmark of promising non-fiction. (Full disclosure: it's on my list, but I have not yet read it.)
The next year they gave the Taylor to J.B Mackinnon for Dead Man in Paradise, a book with many of the same credentials as Montgomery’s. Jeez, non-fiction writers could win this thing after all. I put aside my article draft. And I took another look at the jury lists.
In 2005 (Charles Montgomery’s year), Jan Walter, a veteran non-fiction editor and former principal at non-fiction house Macfarlane Walter and Ross, replaced Eva Marie Kroller to sit with Kroetsch and critic W.H. New. In 2006 (Mackinnon), historian, broadcaster, and senator Laurier Lapierre replaced Kroetsch. That was the first time you could easily find a majority of non-fiction writers and/or non-fiction-oriented critics on the jury. [Jan 28 -- see the correction above.]
This year, 2007, Walter and Lapierre have been joined on the jury by a second historian, Margaret Macmillan. The days of fiction-centred juries for the non-fiction prize seem to be over. With two historians on the jury, the (commendably short) shortlist has two thick histories on it, John English’s Trudeau biography and Ross King’s Judgment of Paris, about the rise of impressionism in Paris, as well novelist Rudy Wiebe’s childhood memoir. (The Shields-Huggan years of women winning the Taylor seem to be fading too.)
Frankly, one could find grist for grousing about whatever they choose here. We could see a Wiebe win as more fiction bigotry. But it would be just as sad to see the Taylor Prize swing so far from fiction-like memoirs by novelists that history profs come to dominate its juries, and only great, thick, research-heavy tomes will be considered. In fairness, Lapierre has not been a prof for decades; for all his writing, he may be more like the celebrity juror that expensive literary prizes have been turning to in recent years.
I have not read English on Trudeau, but I thought his Lester Pearson biography well written and well thought, certainly no mere report on research. King’s Judgment of Paris left me a little cold as literature, I must say: a readable story, but the prose never has a moment’s sparkle, and the argument emerges more from an endless accretion of detail than from vigorous exposition. Hell, maybe Wiebe’s is the best writing in the pack this year.
We can observe the trends of winners and juries over a few more years. Anyway, these days a non-fiction writer can aspire to win the Charles Taylor Prize. Good.
Why you don't want to trust Wikipedia too far
I wanted a couple of details about Jean Drapeau yesterday. Went to Wikipedia. Had most of what I needed. Had this too, in the midst of a sober listing of his career:
"In 1950, he helped Pacifique (Pax) Plante in leading the inquiry into corruption and immorality in Montreal, thus becoming well known in the city. And he had sex with his mom "
Hmmmmmm.
"In 1950, he helped Pacifique (Pax) Plante in leading the inquiry into corruption and immorality in Montreal, thus becoming well known in the city. And he had sex with his mom "
Hmmmmmm.
Ancestors in the Attic -- History Television re-viewed
We've been hard on History Television for its crappy programming and lack of sense of what a historical channel could be. Scroll down a little to see.
But good television can happen on bad networks. I happened to catch some of Ancestors in the Attic last nights. It's on History Television at 8 pm where I live -- check local listings, as they say.
Host Jeff Douglas is channelling George Stromboupoulos pretty hard, and the roller-coaster editing is trying to make your head spin. ("Yo, Jeff! Switch to decaf, man" my kids were saying) But it's a show about a bunch of genealogists, and it takes the genuine interest many Canadians have in the lives and backgrounds of our ancestors and makes lively, engaging television out of it. It gets out in the Canadian landscape to do it, too, even if some of those landscapes are cemetaries. Into some strikingly non-dusty archives and research institutes, too, despite that patronizing "attic" in the title.
All this is the opposite of what History Television generally offers. This is people genuinely interested in the historical work they do, speaking to an audience that shares that interest. Good on them. And on the film company "Primitive Entertainment" that makes the program.
But good television can happen on bad networks. I happened to catch some of Ancestors in the Attic last nights. It's on History Television at 8 pm where I live -- check local listings, as they say.
Host Jeff Douglas is channelling George Stromboupoulos pretty hard, and the roller-coaster editing is trying to make your head spin. ("Yo, Jeff! Switch to decaf, man" my kids were saying) But it's a show about a bunch of genealogists, and it takes the genuine interest many Canadians have in the lives and backgrounds of our ancestors and makes lively, engaging television out of it. It gets out in the Canadian landscape to do it, too, even if some of those landscapes are cemetaries. Into some strikingly non-dusty archives and research institutes, too, despite that patronizing "attic" in the title.
All this is the opposite of what History Television generally offers. This is people genuinely interested in the historical work they do, speaking to an audience that shares that interest. Good on them. And on the film company "Primitive Entertainment" that makes the program.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Histories in Charles Taylor race
Quill & Quire reports the nominees for the Charles Taylor Prize in non-fiction (the big $25000 one). Two histories and a historical memoir:
John English’s Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968.
Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism.
Rudy Wiebe’s Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest.
Comment to follow.
John English’s Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968.
Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism.
Rudy Wiebe’s Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest.
Comment to follow.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
More on History Television
It seems CanWest has successfully purchased AllianceAtlantis and its cluster of specialty channels, of which one of the jewels, we are told, is History Television.
We were observing the other day that the "jewel" is paste. Okay, is crap. But some reflection on why it’s crap seems needed.
1. Who runs it
I looked into History Television when it launched, and I was struck by how it was run almost entirely by refugees from the clear-outs at News and Current Affairs at CBC. They all seemed to be people convinced that Current Affairs was important, and History… well, it was a little down-market for them.
You could see it in who they put on the air. History Television hosts have almost always been second-tier news or current affairs personalities. None gives the slightest aura of having any interest or authority when it comes to history. I think they even had Rick Mercer hosting an early program, and it even made Mercer look awkward and out of place. The other night I saw Anne Medina, former CBC newsreader, gamely “hosting” History on Film -- and the film was “Out of Sight,” an Elmore Leonard shoot-em-up with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Not a bad film, actually, but real history geeks could have found a hundred ways to have fun with it – the history of Elmore Leonard, the history of terrible J-Lo movies, the history of ghetto thugs in movies. Poor Anne Medina sitting there so stiffly, you could see her thinking, I’m a serious journalist, damnit, why do I have to lend my prestige to this stuff? Why indeed?
2 No identity.
Apart from rent-a-host floaters like the above, History Television has never projected the slightest on-air presence as a community of people who care about their subject. Compare Discovery, with flagship programs like @discovery.ca and Daily Planet. 22 Minutes can parody Natasha all it likes, but those people and programs establish an identity for the science channel. Discovery has its share of dreck, but it has always had a presence based on on-air people who convey that they know and care about science. (With all its Egyptology and archaeology, Discovery seems able to scoop up most of the engrossing history programming you would expect History to show.)
Space Channel, APTN, CityTV, they all find ways to personalize their networks. There is a little volunteer-run program called Structures on my local cable channel. It’s about Toronto’s built heritage, and it’s a hundred times more engaging than anything I have ever seen on History Television. The kids at Structures care about their subject.
History Television feels like it is run by people who don’t much care for history and who fear and avoid people who might show some passion for the subject.
3 Dumbing Down the Audience
That early and never-shaken reputation as “The Hitler Channel” reflected History Television’s lack of respect for its audience. One had the impression they were putting on programming they would not themselves watch, out of a belief that people interested in history were old geezers who would watch endless black-and-white documentaries of the invasion of Poland. I’ve no problem with History Television running movies or old TV series – good on them, actually. But their choices shout out that they aren’t seriously programming material a historically-literate audience might appreciate. They are just mining the licence. CSI is now on History Television -- except you have already seen it everywhere else. Everybody Loves Raymond is probably next – and they’ll try to get Laura di Batista over from CityTV to “host.”
4 Dumbing Down the Filmmakers
What’s worst, I fear, is History Television’s effect on the filmmaking community in Canada. I know lots of film makers around the country who are genuinely interested in history and historical filmmaking. What I don’t know is any who feel that History Television is supporting them or stretching them to do the best possible work. More the opposite, I suspect: do it cheap, do it lowbrow, go for cheap sentiment over thought and controversy, don’t take it too seriously or provide a podium for people who care more than we do.
Am I wrong about any of this? I don't survey History Television; my impressions are based on just what I catch. Some great little programs got under the radar. There may be some now. But I came across Structures without seeking it out. Hard to believe I just miss everything worthwhile on HT.
We were observing the other day that the "jewel" is paste. Okay, is crap. But some reflection on why it’s crap seems needed.
1. Who runs it
I looked into History Television when it launched, and I was struck by how it was run almost entirely by refugees from the clear-outs at News and Current Affairs at CBC. They all seemed to be people convinced that Current Affairs was important, and History… well, it was a little down-market for them.
You could see it in who they put on the air. History Television hosts have almost always been second-tier news or current affairs personalities. None gives the slightest aura of having any interest or authority when it comes to history. I think they even had Rick Mercer hosting an early program, and it even made Mercer look awkward and out of place. The other night I saw Anne Medina, former CBC newsreader, gamely “hosting” History on Film -- and the film was “Out of Sight,” an Elmore Leonard shoot-em-up with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Not a bad film, actually, but real history geeks could have found a hundred ways to have fun with it – the history of Elmore Leonard, the history of terrible J-Lo movies, the history of ghetto thugs in movies. Poor Anne Medina sitting there so stiffly, you could see her thinking, I’m a serious journalist, damnit, why do I have to lend my prestige to this stuff? Why indeed?
2 No identity.
Apart from rent-a-host floaters like the above, History Television has never projected the slightest on-air presence as a community of people who care about their subject. Compare Discovery, with flagship programs like @discovery.ca and Daily Planet. 22 Minutes can parody Natasha all it likes, but those people and programs establish an identity for the science channel. Discovery has its share of dreck, but it has always had a presence based on on-air people who convey that they know and care about science. (With all its Egyptology and archaeology, Discovery seems able to scoop up most of the engrossing history programming you would expect History to show.)
Space Channel, APTN, CityTV, they all find ways to personalize their networks. There is a little volunteer-run program called Structures on my local cable channel. It’s about Toronto’s built heritage, and it’s a hundred times more engaging than anything I have ever seen on History Television. The kids at Structures care about their subject.
History Television feels like it is run by people who don’t much care for history and who fear and avoid people who might show some passion for the subject.
3 Dumbing Down the Audience
That early and never-shaken reputation as “The Hitler Channel” reflected History Television’s lack of respect for its audience. One had the impression they were putting on programming they would not themselves watch, out of a belief that people interested in history were old geezers who would watch endless black-and-white documentaries of the invasion of Poland. I’ve no problem with History Television running movies or old TV series – good on them, actually. But their choices shout out that they aren’t seriously programming material a historically-literate audience might appreciate. They are just mining the licence. CSI is now on History Television -- except you have already seen it everywhere else. Everybody Loves Raymond is probably next – and they’ll try to get Laura di Batista over from CityTV to “host.”
4 Dumbing Down the Filmmakers
What’s worst, I fear, is History Television’s effect on the filmmaking community in Canada. I know lots of film makers around the country who are genuinely interested in history and historical filmmaking. What I don’t know is any who feel that History Television is supporting them or stretching them to do the best possible work. More the opposite, I suspect: do it cheap, do it lowbrow, go for cheap sentiment over thought and controversy, don’t take it too seriously or provide a podium for people who care more than we do.
Am I wrong about any of this? I don't survey History Television; my impressions are based on just what I catch. Some great little programs got under the radar. There may be some now. But I came across Structures without seeking it out. Hard to believe I just miss everything worthwhile on HT.
Monday, January 08, 2007
CanWest, Alliance Atlantic, History Television
I keep reading in the business press that CanWest is about to blow its bank account to buy Alliance Atlantis, which is a corporate jewel worth gazillions because of its speciality channels ... such as, they always report, "Showcase and History Television."
Shouldn't someone be providing a reality check here? That is, adding the obvious fact that History Television is the most crapulous network on television. It started as crap, it's always been crap. And being purchased by the crapmeisters at CanWest, it seems certain to be crap forever. Doesn't this need to be said? Shouldn't it be a factor in the negotiation?
Shouldn't someone be providing a reality check here? That is, adding the obvious fact that History Television is the most crapulous network on television. It started as crap, it's always been crap. And being purchased by the crapmeisters at CanWest, it seems certain to be crap forever. Doesn't this need to be said? Shouldn't it be a factor in the negotiation?
Friday, January 05, 2007
Short History of Optimism -- With Canadian History Too
The Edge Foundation has some smart guy inside it who asks smart people interesting questions and puts them on the web. This year he or it asked "What are you optimistic about?" See the answers at www.edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html.
One guy's optimistic that it's probably impossible to completely eliminate life on earth. That's not so hugely optimistic, really: he means whatever catastrophe might occur, at least part of the biosphere would endure, even if it's only some kind of plankton-thingy near a heat-crack ten k down inside the earth.
Another is optimistic about skeuomorphism, and offers both a new word and an interesting thought. He is talking of artificial corks that look and function like traditional ones, and he means it is a good thing that new technologies often make quite a substantial effort to imitate or preserve traditional practices or preferences. Some are predictable (I know Cory Doctorow's mostly anti-skeuomorphic work, so I knew precisely what he would say -- and he does), but the great contribution of Edge is that it offers ideas from a lot of very smart people you don't know. Worth a look. (Though it's hard to be optimistic about gender equality in leading-edge Western academic-intellectual circles when you see how few women are in the survey.)
What's to be optimistic about in Canada? Well, like the plankton, it will probably survive!
I felt optimistic to read of "an international conference to re-conceptualize the discipline of Canadian history." It's organized on the belief that Canadian history has been divided between political historians, who insist on the centrality of politics to Canadian questions, and social historians, who insist on microhistory and including the marginalized. Its solution is to bring together some bright young academic scholars who should be impatient with that polarity, and see what they come up with.
I'm not sure the polarity is an adequate description of what Canadian history is doing. Surely the other significant trend has been the post-modern turn, the habit of writing less about the past than about "discourse" on the past: who defines the past, who controls the past, who shapes the questions and frameworks.
Still, I like the idea of letting bright young people run free with ideas. Too bad the conference is in London, England, (in May 2007) and only available to Canadianists with that kind of travel subsidy. Details are and will be available from the website of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, one of the organizing institutions.
One guy's optimistic that it's probably impossible to completely eliminate life on earth. That's not so hugely optimistic, really: he means whatever catastrophe might occur, at least part of the biosphere would endure, even if it's only some kind of plankton-thingy near a heat-crack ten k down inside the earth.
Another is optimistic about skeuomorphism, and offers both a new word and an interesting thought. He is talking of artificial corks that look and function like traditional ones, and he means it is a good thing that new technologies often make quite a substantial effort to imitate or preserve traditional practices or preferences. Some are predictable (I know Cory Doctorow's mostly anti-skeuomorphic work, so I knew precisely what he would say -- and he does), but the great contribution of Edge is that it offers ideas from a lot of very smart people you don't know. Worth a look. (Though it's hard to be optimistic about gender equality in leading-edge Western academic-intellectual circles when you see how few women are in the survey.)
What's to be optimistic about in Canada? Well, like the plankton, it will probably survive!
I felt optimistic to read of "an international conference to re-conceptualize the discipline of Canadian history." It's organized on the belief that Canadian history has been divided between political historians, who insist on the centrality of politics to Canadian questions, and social historians, who insist on microhistory and including the marginalized. Its solution is to bring together some bright young academic scholars who should be impatient with that polarity, and see what they come up with.
I'm not sure the polarity is an adequate description of what Canadian history is doing. Surely the other significant trend has been the post-modern turn, the habit of writing less about the past than about "discourse" on the past: who defines the past, who controls the past, who shapes the questions and frameworks.
Still, I like the idea of letting bright young people run free with ideas. Too bad the conference is in London, England, (in May 2007) and only available to Canadianists with that kind of travel subsidy. Details are and will be available from the website of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, one of the organizing institutions.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Wot? No non-fiction?
What planet is John Allemang doing his daily reading on? In his year-end wrap up in the Globe and Mail December 30, he saluted the great issue-oriented non-fiction coming out of the US. Americans, he tells us, have actually noticed the Iraq war is going badly and are writing books about why. In Canada, he says, we have good fiction, but our issue-oriented writing is “feeble… tentative and tepid.”
Bile rises as I think…. Look at Paul Wells’ anatomy of the recent federal election or Denis Smith’s right up-to-the-minute attack on Michael Ignatieff. Think of recent books on the murder of Rena Virk or on the “Starlight Express” killings of young Saskatchewan Cree men, or the shooting at Ipperwash. Think of Andrew Nikiforuk’s books on education and the oil patch, or Paul William Roberts on foreign affairs or Erna Paris’s works on ethics and politics, or anything by Brian Fawcett or Stan Persky. Then think of Kimberley Noble and Elaine Dewar and all those books aborted by libel chill over the year.
I’d say almost all the serious issue-oriented writing in Canada is being done by non-fiction book writers. Allemang has heard that issue-oriented books have become the "hot" topic in New York publishing recently, but doesn't he know Canadians have been doing it here for years.
Doing it despite the newspaper and magazine industries, too often. The Globe and Mail, offering freelancers derisory fees and then stealing their copyrights, has long worked to undermine independent investigative writers in this country. The magazine industy has long been so feeble that books have become the only likely forum for long-form journalism in Canada. Then John Allemang comes along to deny that work even exists. Jeez.
Bile rises as I think…. Look at Paul Wells’ anatomy of the recent federal election or Denis Smith’s right up-to-the-minute attack on Michael Ignatieff. Think of recent books on the murder of Rena Virk or on the “Starlight Express” killings of young Saskatchewan Cree men, or the shooting at Ipperwash. Think of Andrew Nikiforuk’s books on education and the oil patch, or Paul William Roberts on foreign affairs or Erna Paris’s works on ethics and politics, or anything by Brian Fawcett or Stan Persky. Then think of Kimberley Noble and Elaine Dewar and all those books aborted by libel chill over the year.
I’d say almost all the serious issue-oriented writing in Canada is being done by non-fiction book writers. Allemang has heard that issue-oriented books have become the "hot" topic in New York publishing recently, but doesn't he know Canadians have been doing it here for years.
Doing it despite the newspaper and magazine industries, too often. The Globe and Mail, offering freelancers derisory fees and then stealing their copyrights, has long worked to undermine independent investigative writers in this country. The magazine industy has long been so feeble that books have become the only likely forum for long-form journalism in Canada. Then John Allemang comes along to deny that work even exists. Jeez.
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