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.
