The Bumper Book

Edited by: John Metcalf

When Kicking Against the Pricks was published in 1982, readers across Canada were angered, surprised, titillated, and gratified. Finally, a major Canadian author had spoken his mind about Canadian literature and its writers, and actually named names. In the intervening four years, hundreds of people have testified to ECW representatives at conferences and displays that Pricks was one of the best-written, most provocative books they had ever read. And, it was very very funny. Metcalf has solicited articles and poems from such excellent writers as Norman Snider, Irving Layton, Fraser Sutherland, John Mills, Brian Fawcett, and Doug Gibson. Among the topics and writers covered are the Canada Council, Robertson Davies’ characters, Robin Mathews and nationalism, Margaret Atwood and Northern Journey, why The Mountain and the Valley became a classic, the problems with Canadian publishing, and how the arts councils steer the arts (by George Woodcock).

AUTHOR

John Metcalf

John Metcalf has been one of the leading editors in Canada for more than five decades, editing more than two hundred books over this time, including eighteen volumes of the Best Canadian Stories anthology. He is also the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, including Finding Again the World: Selected Stories, Vital Signs: Collected Novellas, An Aesthetic Underground: A Literary Memoir, and The Museum at the End of the World. Senior Fiction Editor at Biblioasis, he lives in Ottawa with his wife, Myrna.

Caroline Adderson is a Vancouver-based author of five novels and two collections of short stories. Her work has received numerous award nominations including two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her awards include three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction.

Kristyn Dunnion has authored six books, most recently Stoop City (Biblioasis, 2020). Her short fiction appears in Best Canadian Stories 2020, Toronto 2033, Orca, and the Tahoma Literary Review. Dunnion was raised in Essex County, the southern-most tip of Canada, and currently lives in Toronto.

Cynthia Flood’s stories have won numerous awards, including The Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award. Her novel Making A Stone Of The Heart was nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Prize, and her acclaimed short story collections include Red Girl Rat Boy (2013) which was shortlisted for the BC Book Prizes’ fiction award. She lives in Vancouver’s West End.

Shaena Lambert’s fiction has been nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Frank O’Connor Award for the Short Story, and have appeared in publications including Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Anthology. Lambert lives in Vancouver.

Elise Levine is the author of Say This: Two Novellas, This Wicked Tongue, the novels Blue Field and Requests and Dedications, and the story collection Driving Men Mad. Originally from Toronto, she lives in Baltimore, MD, where she teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

Kathy Page is the author of eight novels, including Dear Evelyn, winner of the 2018 Rogers Writers’ Trust Award for Fiction and the Butler Book Prize. Her short fiction collections, Paradise & Elsewhere (2014) and The Two of Us (2016), were both nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Born in the UK, she moved with her family to Salt Spring Island in 2001.


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When Kicking Against the Pricks was published in 1982, readers across Canada were angered, surprised, titillated, and gratified. Finally, a major Canadian author had spoken his mind about Canadian literature and its writers, and actually named names. In the intervening four years, hundreds of people have testified to ECW representatives at conferences and displays that Pricks was one of the best-written, most provocative books they had ever read. And, it was very very funny. Metcalf has solicited articles and poems from such excellent writers as Norman Snider, Irving Layton, Fraser Sutherland, John Mills, Brian Fawcett, and Doug Gibson. Among the topics and writers covered are the Canada Council, Robertson Davies’ characters, Robin Mathews and nationalism, Margaret Atwood and Northern Journey, why The Mountain and the Valley became a classic, the problems with Canadian publishing, and how the arts councils steer the arts (by George Woodcock).

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

238 Pages
9in * 6in *
0.894lb

Published:

January 01, 1986

City of Publication:

Toronto

Country of Publication:

CA

Publisher:

ECW Press

ISBN:

9780920763919

Book Subjects:

LITERARY CRITICISM / Canadian

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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